Words of Jesus Podcast - Jesus Calls Us Where We Are - And Expects Change

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

Jesus called his disciples, as fishermen, but he did not intend them to stay fishermen (not as they had been). It is not our righteousness that compels a call to "follow me". Our relationship with Jesus may not lead to a new occupation, but it will require a change. Jesus makes demands on his disciples and on us today. We are compelled to "do justice" to "love mercy" and to "walk humbly with our God". God tolerates our sin against him. Our disrespect. Our rebellion. Our violation of the commandments which outline what He expects of us. However, He does not and will not tolerate our treating each other badly.  ***Jesus Calls Four Disciples (Part 1)JESUS stood on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, teaching the word of God to those who pressed abut him.           He entered one of two ships that were standing by the lake and requested Simon, called Peter, whose boat it was to thrust out a little from the land. Simon did so, and Jesus taught the assembled crowd from the boat.           When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon:           “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nest for a draught.”Simon replied:           “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing. Nevertheless, at thy word, I will let down the net.”           They did so and caught a great multitude of fished, so many that their net was broken. They beckoned to Simon’s partners, James and John, sons of Zebedee, who came and helped them. They filled both ships so full that the ships began to sink.           When Simon saw the great catch of fished, he knelt at Jesus’ knees, saying:           “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”           For he and all who were with him were astonished at the amount of fish that they had taken.           Then Jesus said to the fishermen:            “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”           When they had brought their ships to the land, Simon and his brother Andrew followed after Jesus. Also James and John, the sons of Zebedee, left their ship and their father and followed Jesus. (The gospel of John omits the Temptation scene and seems to place the calling of the first disciples nearer to the time of Jesus’ baptism that do the other three writers. John mentions Philip and Nathanael, instead and James and John. Nathanael asks the well-known question, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”) ***CHAPTER 5 SCRIPTURES (KJV):MATTHEW 4:18-22And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets, and followed him. And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he...

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris Hello and welcome once again to the words of Jesus. I'm excited to share this series on this book with you. It includes the story of Jesus, his life, his friends, his ministry, as recorded in the four gospels. You're going to see how Jesus examines, how he instructs, corrects, and ultimately confounds the people of his day, all the while loving them. We're in chapter 5 now,

and we're going to be talking about this for who knows how long. The book is just so rich dealing with the words of Christ it's hard sometimes to stay on subject I hope you excuse me I'd love to keep these times that we have together as informal as possible and kind of go where the Spirit leads as much as we can and I hope it's

it's not necessarily confusing to you, but you enjoy it as much as I do over here on this side of the television. Jesus calls four disciples. Jesus stood on the shore of the Sea of Galilee teaching the Word of God to those who pressed about Him. This comes from Matthew 4, Mark 1, and Luke 5. He entered one of two ships that were standing by the lake and requested Simon, called Peter,

whose boat it was, to thrust out a little from the land. Simon did so. And Jesus taught the assembled crowd from the boat. When he had finished speaking he said to Simon, launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a draft. Simon replied, Master, we've toiled all night and not taken anything. Nevertheless, at thy word, I led down the net

and did so and caught a great multitude of fishes, so many that their net was broken. They beckoned to Simon's partners, James and John, sons of Zebedee, who came up and helped them. They filled both the ships to the full that the ships began to sink. When Simon saw how great a catch of fish is, he knelt at Jesus' knees saying, depart from me for I'm a sinful man, O Lord. For he and all

who were with him were astonished at the amount of fish that had been taken. Then Jesus said to the fishermen, Follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men. When they had brought up their ships to the land, Simon and his brother Andrew followed after Jesus. Also James and John, the sons of Zebedee, left their ship and their father and followed Jesus. Jesus calling his disciples.

I think it's very interesting that when Jesus does call his disciples or calls people to follow him perhaps when he called you, and I'm certain when he called you, and I'm certain when he called me that he calls us right where we are. And I think that perhaps we have construed that idea, applied that idea

to that problematic teaching that we all live under, the just as I am thing. I'll explain what I mean. But we have to understand that Jesus may call us in our sin, in our confusion, in the middle of our vocation, our avocation. He may

call us in the middle of that part of our life but I cannot believe that He expects us to stay there. I can't expect anything less with a calling from God that there be changes made in people's lives. I know that it's common to talk about or to purport the idea

that God calls us just like we are. And He doesn't expect us to make any changes in our lives that in order to follow Him. And I'm afraid that this idea comes from the very common understanding or the common idea that when he calls a man

it is not the righteousness of that man or whatever is in that man's life that he has accomplished by works that brings about this call. That part is true. However, the idea that he's just intrigued with you in your sinful condition and that don't worry about the sin part. We'll take care of all that later.

As a matter of fact there's some cute little saying that is said by the faith only people a lot and that is I'm going to make you fishers of men. You catch them and I'll clean them. Now, I've heard that applied in many different ways. One way I kind of like it, in that it's not really our duty or up to us to see to it that people meet some stage or level of righteousness in their life, and they don't necessarily need us to point out their sin or their shortcomings.

I agree with that part. But the idea that there is no preparation to make in order to answer the call of God on a person's life is a really wrong assumption. The idea that God loves sinners and more cute little sayings that you don't find them in Scripture,

but they're there, they're in Christendom, they're everywhere, is the idea that God doesn't, He hates sin, but He loves the sinner. I know that there is a certain amount, there is a certain idea among us that God loves us and hates sin. I understand that, but I think sometimes

that we get the idea that if He loves the sinner however it is that the sinner is living, it must be okay with Him. It must be alright. He understands. I've heard people say that God understands, saying or implying that he understands why I sin or the fact that I have troubles. And these things are all true to a point.

But man, anytime you find one of these silly little ideas allowing you to continue the way you are, the way you were, that no changes be made, I think that's a very dangerous attitude to take. If we have the least amount of intelligence and understanding, when we read the scriptures we find that there are a few things that are absolutely intolerable

to our God. As a matter of fact, I see our Father God allowing Himself to be disrespected and tolerant of that behavior. Worshiping other gods, attributing His works to some other God or some other power, even attributing his

works to our own hands, bragging about our own accomplishments and not acknowledging the fact that God gave us the strength to gain certain things in this life. I've found that his tolerance of his own disrespect is much, much greater than his tolerance of us treating one another badly. How the average person treats the other person in their life is extremely important to our God. He expects us to love mercy, to do justly, and to walk humbly with our God. But to love mercy,

to have an opportunity. You've got some situation with somebody in your life and you're having trouble with them. You know, I'm not really sure which way to go. I know which way to go. Go the merciful route. Now, offer toward that person the same, if not greater amount of mercy that you would want someone to deal with you. I've made mistakes in life that

my friends offered me absolutely no mercy whatsoever. No mercy, no understanding, let alone justice but not even mercy not even an an understanding heart i'm talking about christian friends and it's like it's it's like these things are absolutely intolerable. Yet when it comes to themselves, or when it will eventually come to themselves, they're going to expect mercy. And you ever heard the saying that a person wants their day in court, a lot of times you will find that

innocent people, and sometimes guilty people that think they're going to get away with it, will make the comment that they want their day in court. Well, you know, there have been times in my life when I've thought to myself, you know, I'd really like to have my day in court on this. Because I don't feel like justice is being done. Now, you know, if you've got trouble in the world, and you've got trouble with the judicial system or something like that,

and you've got some wicked judge that's not merciful or understanding and just absolutely exacting according to the law and his intention is to put you under the jail. I understand that. But you know what? That's the world. That's just the way the world does their business. But when you're talking about among Christians, we should love and do justly toward one another and it should be so obvious that people

will attribute that quality, that characteristic to our Christianity. We should suffer wrongfully. We should understand another person's shortcomings. And if you don't understand it, can you have some mercy? Can you just be, well, I'm not going to let them do me in. They did me in once before, I'm not going to let it happen again. Okay? But

I'm afraid that we're going to have to face a judge one day that we did in, as you say, over and over and over and over again. We're going to have to treat our fellow man the way we want to be treated. Not only by our fellow man the way we want to be treated, not only by our fellow man, but multiplied over and over are we going to want that kind of treatment when we stand before our God. The wonderful thing about standing judgment before God, I know that sounds very negative, and I know that that is almost frightful. But do you know if you have lived your life, and I mean

properly, and you've done the right thing for the right reason, and you just don't have a whole list of fouls against you in this game, actually our judgment is going to allow those things to come to light. There are going to be some good things about judgment day if you live your life according to the way you're supposed to. Now if you've been selfish and you've always sought your own way and you've never given

in and you've never been humble and you've always sought your own way and you've never given in and you've never been humble and you've never offered mercy or forgiveness and sought to it that justice was done among your neighbors on the earth. I don't know how pleasant judgment's going to be for you, but judgment is not something that needs to be feared if we are doing what we should do from day to day. Now, the idea is that we have to constantly examine ourselves, just like we're doing right now. As I'm speaking, as you're thinking, you're thinking of people that have done you wrong, people that you could

have done better. I don't know how many times I've walked away from an encounter with another person and thought to myself, you could have done better than that. You know, that, you know, that, what was that? Was that, was that done from the past or what was that? You just weren't going to be done in, you weren't going to be taken advantage of. You just had enough. I've had it to here. You know, that kind of thing. And it kind of empowers you to, you know, to treat people badly. But those are the kind of things that as we self-examine, we find these things within us. Now, many of these things are never going to be cleared up in us until we face that time of regeneration. And we're judged of the Lord. We judge ourselves. And in order, we find that we've got problems in our life over which we have no power.

These are the kind of things that will come after a person has established and maintained some relationship with God on a daily basis. But there are some things in our life that can just go. There's some things that just need to go. Come on. How long are you going to hang on to that? How long are you going to continue to do that?

How long are you going to hurt people's feelings on purpose? How long are you going to be selfish? How long are you going to be grumpy? How long are you going to do that? Now, these are the things over which we have power and we know their problems and somehow we just don't intend on ever fixing them. Well, you need to intend on fixing them.

And I say that because we just really need to analyze our nastiness and analyze exactly who we are, who we are in Christ and who we are without Him. And look at the disparity there and let's make some changes. Now, let's get back to the initial change that needs to be made. I've often said that you can gather a stumbling drunk out of the gutter and talk to him about becoming a Christian and he will say to you

that I'm too bad to be a Christian or there's too many things I have to change in my life in order to become a Christian or become a child of God or to move into that particular religious realm. Now, modern Christianity and unfortunately the kind of Christianity that many of us have experienced in our century would counsel you to say to that man or would say to that man in that situation,

now, you know, you don't have to worry about, you know, being good to be saved. You see, it's not by works, it's by faith. Now this is when the faith without works thing becomes a detriment to a Christian and his Christian life and his Christian future. And that is when we teach or we imply or whatever we're doing for whatever purposes, it's inferred on the part

of the person we're talking to that no changes need to be made. I assure you, changes need to be made, changes that you can make. Now, if you've been told that, you know, given the if you've been given the idea that you just catch them and I'll clean them, Jesus is saying. And you're saying all you have to do is you can put your faith in Christ and you can be saved now and sanctified later. I want you to be very careful about having

told somebody that. Perhaps your one was told that. And you find on the other side of that that sanctification is a very difficult thing. It is because you were told that faith in God is enough for salvation. And I'm afraid that there's, we have to be so careful when we speak to people because we're using a language that essentially we don't understand. If they have some strange

definition to the word believe and you tell them that they need to believe in Jesus and they have some strange definition of faith and you tell them it's by faith, it's not by works, they have some strange definition of works. You don't know what you're communicating to this person. But I'll tell you one thing the Spirit of God that is dealing with that person and that has called that person, they have a perfect vocabulary, they have perfect understanding, and it will

be made perfectly clear to that individual. That's why, well you know when it comes to evangelism, when it comes to church in general, when it comes to discussion groups and Sunday school groups and Bible study and all the rest of this stuff, you know, some of the best advice you could ever get from anyone, I don't know who's going to give it to you other than me, and that is to just shut up and stop saying these things. Stop being the guy in the crowd with the cute saying.

Stop being the guy with the quick answer. There are no quick answers here. You find somebody, like I say, you can scrape a bum out of the gutter and they'd know more about what it requires to become a Christian than the clown that is trying to evangelize him. And it starts with, I don't know that I can be a Christian. I have a lot of sin in my life. Well, you know, what does that person need to hear? Friend, we all had sin in our life when we first started. That's what they need to hear. They need to hear, you know, what you need to do is

take care of what you can do. Put your faith in Christ. Let's go His way. And He's going to put power within you to make all the changes that you need. And He's going to give you those necessary changes as time goes by. You know, this isn't something that's going to happen this afternoon. This is a direction that you're going. Now there are people

who have trouble with that because they like to believe in an instantaneous salvation. You just throw your head back, ask the Lord to save you, ask Jesus to forgive you, and a lot of other things that you just can't find in Scripture. And they think that from that point on that they are born again. And that it is just that easy and just that instant. But the fact is, and we said in subsequent programs, I'm sorry in previous programs

I've mentioned that we would feel it, we would think someone was just absolutely silly if they told us that somebody had a baby last week and you knew fully well last week they weren't pregnant. How do you have a baby in one day? You'd think, well, that's just nuts. That didn't happen. You'd think it was an impossibility. I want that concept of impossibility of having a one-day pregnancy and deliverance of a baby I want that to be in your mind

when it comes to being born of the Spirit of God. Because it is just that impossible for this to happen instantaneously as a lot of people have said. The Bible compares it to a birth because it is a birth. Paul talks about people who make these changes in their life and want to go God's way. And he talks about until Christ be formed in you. He talks about planting the seed within us.

He talks about salvation being a new birth. This is a very old concept. And how it became instant, I don't know. But it's not. A person decides to go God's way like they decide to have a child. And it's a lot of things are going to have to happen between now and having the little cuddly bundle in your hand. There's a lot of things that have to happen.

And I want it to become just as impossible in your mind to be saved that way as it is for a woman to give birth that way. It just doesn't happen. He could have compared it to a sunrise sunrise and that's just a few minutes. He could have compared it to a lot of things in nature that are a lot quicker than birth if it wasn't something that was just that precarious and actually no guarantee

that it's actually going to happen. There's always a possibility of a miscarry when you're talking about a birth. And I'm afraid a lot of us were just plain old miscarried. You know, a doctor has a serious discussion with a woman when he finds out that she is pregnant. And one of the things he says to her is, you know what? There's these habits in your life, this one and this one and this one and this one.

This one just has to go. This has to go. Why? You have no, you're creating a hostile environment for your baby. And you are increasing your risk of miscarrying like crazy. Who's going to counsel with a person who wants to become a child of God and say, you know, these particular things have to go in your life? Would you really tell a person that they can continue to worship idols

if their intention was to go God's way? I want you to hear from Peter's mouth the very thing we're talking about because when he realized that he was in the presence of the Son of God or at least someone of supernatural power that could master the things of nature like he did. He knew that he was around a person of consequence. This was a very serious time.

And the thing that he had to say to him is the thing that the gutter bum will say to you if you'll listen to them. Depart from me. For I am a sinful man, O Lord. There is nothing wrong with what he said. As a matter of fact, it's a darn good first step to salvation. We're going to continue talking about this next week.

Our time is gone already. Join us next time to hear more from the words of Jesus. If you'd like to write to me, you can do so at Don at ThinkRedInc.com or you can send it to our post office box, Think Red Inc. Ministries, PO Box 718, Pytown, New Mexico. I appreciate everything that we hear from our folks out there.

Let me know that you're listening. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. ThinkRedInc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you