Words of Jesus Podcast - Jesus Warns

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

The parables go beyond the surface question to the heart of the matter under discussion and end with the immutability of God's law. Things are not the way we think they are; strive to know God. Laws are God's personality on paper - obey God, not creeds. Fear God. Air of humility. Do what you are told to do. We do not know. What we know versus what is to be known reveals we do not know anything. "Think Red Ink" autobiography by Don C. Harris***75: Jesus Warns In ParablesLuke 16:1-31The Unjust StewardJesus told a parable to his disciples, saying:            “There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called unto him, and said unto him, ‘How is it that I hear this of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.’ Then the steward said within himself, ‘What shall I do?For my lord taketh away from me the stewardship. I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.’ So he called every one of his lord’s debtors unto him, and said unto the first, ‘How much owest thou unto my lord?’And he said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ And he said unto him, ‘Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty.’ Then said he to another, ‘And how much owest thou?’ And he said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ And he said unto him,‘Take thy bill, and write fourscore.’ And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely; for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, ‘Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.’ He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?            “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”The Rich Man And Lazarus            When the Pharisees, who were covetous, heard Jesus, they derided him.            So Jesus told a parable to the Pharisees, saying:            “Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. And it is easier for Heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail. Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.            “There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.And it came to...

Think Red Ink Ministries presents the Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris. Hello my friends and welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. I'm Don Harris, your host, and we've been wading our way through the red ink. I hope you've been enjoying this. I certainly have. I was just thinking that this is so simple. I mean, all you have to do is pretty much read what Jesus said. It preaches itself. And so naturally, I enjoy this, you know, in even kind of a fleshly way, because, you know, it's just such a wonderful thing to have some communication with the Jesus who walked around on this earth.

I have often thought about the Christians that were in between the time that he was here, even the time of remembrance when he was just, you know, recently here. And then all those years in between where the only thing that people knew about Christ was what was being told them by people who supposedly had read the scriptures. And there was a time when there was nothing, essentially nothing on the earth, except for a few spotted little questionable, historically questionable

incidences of certain congregations and such as that. But there was essentially nothing on the earth pertaining to Christianity other than the Catholic religion. And it went bad fast. And I know it's kind of ridiculous to sit here as a minority in Protestantism and in Christianity in general and criticize one of the second largest denominations in the world. However, I think that if there's a lesson to be learned here, I think that we can learn, if we will learn,

that in order for a group to be incredibly large, it has to be less and less discriminating. And you're going to find that Jesus is very, very discriminating about the group which he calls his disciples, the ones that he calls his servants, the ones which he calls his disciples the ones that he calls his servants the ones that he calls his friends and as the discrimination and the you know the prerequisites the requirements for us to be Christians to be stewards to be servants to be sons to be as, to be stewards, to be servants, to be sons, to be as we're supposed to be,

as they increase or become more and more stringent, I'm afraid that the population, so to speak, kind of just gets less and less. Several shows back, we talked about the coming of the Lord Jesus and how he described it by saying that you remember the days of Noah? You remember how that went? There were eight souls saved alive. Eight souls saved. And as it was, Jesus says, in the days of Noah so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man.

So we shouldn't let numbers discourage us or encourage us. The fact is that this is an individual situation. I remember as I started on my journey, I talk about it in my little autobiography called Think Red Ink, the book. And I talk about in those days when I started seeing things and things were revealed to me about Christianity and the scriptures in general and those kinds of things. And as they were filling up in me, I thought,

wow, you know, the whole world needs to hear this. You know, this is the salvation message. And I remember it wasn't long after that that the Lord explained to me in terms that I could not misunderstand. It's amazing how sometimes He can give you three words or two words or one word and and the whole message come through just blaringly apparent but his his advice to me was save yourself and i thought well you know don't i have a duty to the world? Not until I say you do.

But as it is, you need to save yourself. And I never really realized that, wow, it's not that we are a long way off that's my problem. The problem is I am a long way off. And I'm going to have to live this out and walk through it, walk it out. And I'm going to have to see this for myself. And so from that day on, I decided to pursue my own salvation. I decided to work out my own salvation and fulfill the duty of every man on earth, and that is to work out his own salvation. You don't join a group. You don't join a bunch of believers. It's not a big group Bible study. What is it? It's that personal time with God, and let him teach you. Let him guide you, and there's hardly anything better.

Well, this isn't a selfish thought. It's not a selfish thought at all. It's self-preservation. What was Paul's main concern? In that while I preach to others, I myself should become a castaway. You know, if Paul had that concern, I'd say it'd probably be good for us to have that concern as well.

Well, I appreciate all the years that I spent before the Lord and allowed him to teach and have him read the Bible to me, is the way I say it. And I appreciate all those times. And many of the parables were shown to me in ways that I never thought possible. Sometimes absolutely backwards from what they're being preached today. And instead of running down to, as Paul says, running to Jerusalem and asking the Apostle's opinion

about what the Lord has revealed to me, I decided to stick with what he had to say and not make it, not put it under the scrutiny of men. And I have enjoyed a wonderful life of revelation between me and my Father. It's not always been pleasant. It's, as a matter of fact, in some cases, it's very distressing. And I have arisen from, arised, ar allowing the Lord to teach me and got up with sort of an angry spirit and said, well, that's great. One more thing. You're going to tell me one more thing to drive a wedge between me and every other Christian

I know? Well, I couldn't argue with it it is the truth i mean this particular item that he was talking about i don't want to get into it now but it is absolutely diametrically opposed to what most every christian in the world believes today and uh therefore i'm not really allowed to um uh to run it through that filter or change it in any way in order to get along or to to become a part of a group because i'd rather i would uh much rather be right and righteous before the eyes of my God, then I would belong to any group. That's why I always ask people, would you rather belong or be right?

I found that you can't do both. Well, I say all that to tell you it's confession time here on the Words of Jesus series. We're about to read a parable here. And at the end of which, I will offer you a confession. Jesus told a parable to his disciples. By the way, we're reading from the 75th chapter of our book.

Jesus told a parable to his disciples saying, there was a certain rich man who had a steward and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest no longer be steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? For my Lord taketh away from me the stewardship. I cannot dig, and to beg i'm ashamed i'm resolved what to do that when i'm put out of the stewardship they may receive me into their

houses so he called every one of the lord's debtors unto him and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my Lord? And he said, A hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, sit down quickly and write fifty. He said to another, How much owest thou? And he said, Well, a hundred measures of wheat. And he said,

Take thy bill and write four score, 80. And the Lord commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely. For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, make yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that when they fail when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations he that is faithful

in that which is least is faithful also in much and he that is unjust in the least shall in the least is unjust also in much. And so, if you therefore have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will trust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters,

for either he will hate the one and love the other. Remember I told you that hate actually means reject. He's going to reject one of his masters, and he's going to love or serve the other. Or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Okay, confession time. I have no idea what this parable means. I have looked at this 100, 150 times. I've read it as many. And I'm telling

you, I cannot put this together. I have no idea what he's trying to teach. I even thought, is the Lord being sarcastic? I can't believe that. Make to yourselves friends with mammon of unrighteousness that when you fail they will receive you into everlasting habitations this is probably a mixture of translation uh hebrew to greek greek to english or greek to latin this is probably a trouble with the 17th century english the king james english i all these things mixed together to make this an absolute mystery for me so may i apologize and uh move to the next parable there's a there's a hundred way i've read the commentary some commentaries just skip this one all together uh but i've read commentaries.

I've heard preachers preach on this. I've seen words changed. Well, when he said this, he actually meant this. And they've played games that, frankly, I don't play. I'm not interested in just changing the words until it makes sense. But I'm also committed to you that that if it if it's not my conviction if it's not my revelation then i don't have any intention on preaching it or teaching it to people and pretending like i know better when i really don't. I don't understand this parable.

Now, usually when I'm on the radio and I talk about Revelation and I say, you know, there's a certain parable in the Bible that I have just never been able to make sense of. And don't ask me what it is, because if I give you the reference, I'm going to get all these emails from people that are going to try to tell me what it means. Well, you know, as I talked with other people about this, I found out pretty much everybody says pretty much what the commentaries say. Well, I own a Matthew Henry commentary.

I own a lot of commentaries, and I'm disappointed in a lot of commentaries and uh i've uh not only have i never been fully satisfied with what people say about this i am determined to receive this by revelation from the lord god he's not chosen to reveal this to me so here i sit so i as i as i confess this to you um you are um in this particular audience uh someone who has coupled together my confession that there is a parable i don't understand and you know what the parable is so um if the lord has revealed something to you i don't mind listening to what you have to say but uh this has always been a very difficult thing for me. I just, I see, I don't, how do you end a parable that tells you,

use mammon in order to fix your bad situation in your job, or to provide you an eternal habitation, and then end it with, you cannot serve God in mammon. There's a lot about this I don't understand. So, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to pretend like I do. The next one is the rich man and Lazarus. Jesus told a parable unto the Pharisees, saying, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men, but God knoweth your heart.

For that which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time, the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one tittle of the law to fail. Whosoever putteth away his wife, marrieth another, committeth adultery.

And whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband, committeth adultery. Now, this is not a dissertation on adultery. He is saying that, as a matter of fact, the subject, the entrance sentence to what he has to say, is actually what's highly esteemed in the eyes of men, is an abomination in the sight of God. So, the parable that he's trying to tell us, is that things are not the way you think they are. Now he starts out by saying, now look, don't you take from this that I think that the law is a problem. Don't take from this that the law needs to be abolished. The law will never be abolished the law will never be abolished but if you take

the law and in your own own way which lawyers are famous for doing take certain words that mean certain things and the syntax of a sentence and you know it actually is saying this and not saying that or we're going to make this sentence sound like it's saying this but it actually means something else and the legal bindings and loosings that are that take place in a writing lawyers are famous for this and the lawyers of his day the people who studied the law and and wrote the law and and and tried to make it a part of their life, insofar as they tried, they decided that, okay, adultery is like having sex with another man's wife. So what do we need to do?

Well, let's not do that. No, that never occurred to them. Let's not commit adultery. Nah, that's out of the question. What's next? Well, what they did was is they decided to write a bill of divorcement. This is why these sex perverts would come up to Jesus and say, Master, you know, Moses says we can put away our wives. What do you you say remember this and and it was because it was a hobby with these so-called religious leaders and with the people of israel that they wanted to commit adultery but they didn't want to sin against god so what we need to do

is is we need to have a legal document that says she's no longer my wife or he's no longer her husband. Therefore, I'm free to do whatever I want to do. That's not adultery. You see what they were doing? And this is why Jesus was saying, I don't care if you've got a writing of a divorcement or not. That's adultery. Because you see, gentlemen, things aren't the way you think they are. God didn't write a law to abide by that law.

He wrote a law for you to understand how he thinks. There's just a total difference in those two things. And if you think you can twist the law or change the law or change words in the law or make provisions or find loopholes and such as that, forget it. Forget it. It started out to be adultery.

You lusted after a woman that was married to somebody else and that's when the adultery started. And I don't care how many papers you sign, I don't care how many stamps of approval you get, or final decrees, or wrinkled up paper and notarized, and signed by the Pope, I don't care what you get. Adultery is adultery. And you've already committed adultery in your heart now what are you going to do going to commit it in your flesh you do that you're sinning against the law that has gone nowhere it's still there every jot every tittle of that law

so this was all he was saying well and his message was what you remember things are not the way you think they are this is probably one of the the best little cliches that you could stick in your head do Do you know what you understand about the things of God? Essentially, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Your best bet, if you want to call it a bet, that's probably bad language, but your best bet is to find out who God is.

This is why Paul says, What do you want, Paul, above all things? That I may know him. That's the most important thing in the world, is to know God. The Bible talks about, you know, we have, you know, we talk about Yehovah and his name. Do you know his name? Do you know his son's name? What is that scripture all about? Do you really know the God you serve?

Do you know when you know the God you serve, you understand fully why, where, when, how the laws were written. We understand perfectly. This is God's personality on paper. And we have a duty to obey that. It's very, very important to us to know who he is, more so than anything else. Most people who are obedient obedient thinking they're obedient to god are really obedient to a to a stone tablet at best most people are obedient to a bible some

people are obedient to their church some people are just obedient to their christian parents or somebody they respect in the faith no No, they wouldn't call themselves obedient, but they comply to their wishes. They do what they say. They allow them to interpret. And it's wrong. We do what we do because our Lord God said that's the way it is to be done. This is the way it is to be done. You want to stick the question why on the end of a commandment you are headed for trouble you're headed for trouble because i

guarantee you'll figure out some other way to keep that commandment why doesn't god want us to commit adultery well sexual diseases what do they call them stis or stds i'm glad there's some things i'm not so familiar with but we call them stds sexually transmitted diseases that's why god doesn't want us to commit adultery oh well good news we have penicillin now we have medications now so i guess it's okay to commit adultery now how did we get how did we wait a moment what happened you know how that all started why he wrote the commandment why did he write the sabbath commandment because he wants us to rest one day in seven okay Okay, so I pick Tuesday. Is that what the commandment says?

Take a day in seven? Doesn't matter which day. Just a day in seven? No, as a matter of fact, he said, I rested on the seventh day. You rest on the seventh day. So how did we get into this mess? How are we violating the Sabbath day?

Somebody, somewhere along the line line thought they knew why the commandment was written things are not the way you think they are this is why if we take on this this air of humility and realize we don't know everything you know what we're going to be left with doing? What we're told to do. Remember your parents? Yeah. They were trying to tell you way back then, why don't you just do what I tell you to do?

It's our nature to want to run our own life. It doesn't matter if it's our father or our mother or the school teacher or the policeman trying to tell us what we can do don't walk on the grass watch me it doesn't matter what the rule is we don't like being told what to do so we invent ways to get around it now you don't know there you you you do not know you don't know i mean when when you lay up what you know against what is to be known we're all idiots we don't know anything here's what i do know you told me what to do and I'm going to do it. To the best of my ability I'm going to do it. Why?

Because I know who He is and I know who I am. My goal in life is not to know the Bible from one end to the other. It's not to know all my church doctrines. It's not to be able to recite the Apostles' Creed. It's not to study my Sunday School lesson and and get an a do they grade in sunday school i wonder why they don't grade in sunday school can you imagine coming home and telling your parents i flunked sunday school uh no nobody fails everybody wins here how do these things happen we get to thinking that we know most dangerous place to be is to think that you know

what a what a silly place to put yourself because frankly we don't so we're introducing this parable we're going to talk about it next time we're introducing this parable so that you'll understand what this parable is and what it is not. All right. Have I piqued your interest? All right, you should be here then, because we're going to talk about one of the most famous things that Jesus ever talked about, the rich man and Lazarus. All right.

Time for us to go now, but I'd really like to hear from you you can tell me who you are and where you're from how you're listening to this broadcast whether radio, television, what station you listen to and let me know something about yourself I love to get these kinds of emails if you have questions or comments

send an email to don at thinkredinc.com alright I appreciate your attendance and I expect to see you here next time. Until we do see one another again, Think Red Inc., my friend. Bye-bye.

You've been listening to Don C. Harris of Think Red Inc. Ministries. Email don at thinkredinc.com. That's thinkredink.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you