Words of Jesus Podcast - Jews Rejected the Gospel and Jesus

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

Jesus went about all Galilee demonstrating his authority, his mission and his ministry. It was the expectation of Jesus that the religious leaders would recognize him by revelation or by faith because of the works he did. In this chapter, Jesus instructed the healed leper to show himself to the priests and tell no one. However, rather than keep silent, the leper told everyone what happened to him. The objective of Jesus was to win the priests. The leper's press release caused crowds to form around Jesus and hinder the ministry planned for the area. Additionally, the increase in popularity created envy in the church leadership. Do you know what Jesus said? Do you know what Jesus did? Do you know what Jesus said to do? ***Chapter 11: Jesus Heals A Leper (Part 2)WHILE JESUS was in one of the cities, a leper came to him. The diseased man knelt before him and besought his aid, saying:"If thouwilt, thou canst make me clean."Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand and touched the leper, saying:"I will; be thou clean."Immediately upon the words and the compassionate touch the leprosy left the man.Jesus then instructed:"See thou say nothing to any man. But go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them."But the man did not control his tongue. He spoke widely of the event and the fame of Jesus spread so greatly that he could no longer openly enter the city. He remained outside and multitudes came to him from every direction. ***Matthew 8:2-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus series. Glad to have you on board. And I hope you're ready for more because Jesus isn't near done talking yet. Last time we were here we were talking about chapter 11 in this little book, The Words of Jesus. And we found that Jesus healed a leper. I gave this as an example, or I guess labeled it as an example of a very sincere request made of the Lord to where there was essentially no dialogue other than he says,

if you will, you can do it, and Jesus said, I will, and did it. So the dialogue here is almost nonexistent. There happens to not be that much need for dialogue when we are sincere, and I think that it's very important that we be sincere. One of the aspects of Think Red Inc. Ministries, one of the things that I feel like is really important that we help one another with, that you would learn as you come here or to go to thinkredinc.com, As you're learning from this ministry, I would hope that over the course of time, you would actually start to replace some of the

misdefined words in yours and my vocabulary with the words of Scripture or at least properly defined English words that we would use in our speech to one another and to the world. The world, they speak their own language.

Let's just face that fact. They speak their language and I think you should speak it too. I don't think that as evangelists to the world that we have some need or necessity or even obligation as far as God is concerned, to go out there and speak in these thousand and quote scripture all the time and give references all the time

and praise the Lord, hallelujah, thank you, Jesus. And they don't understand that. Why are we doing that? Are we trying to prove to them that we're something that we're essentially not? I think it's a dangerous lifestyle. I don't know that it even produces any fruit. I think we should speak their language. However, when we're talking about theology, we're talking among ourselves.

When we're speaking in churches or over pulpits or in discussion groups or wherever else, I think we should use language properly. I think that we should use scriptural language. I think we should define words properly. If I say grace, if I use the word grace in a conversation, I would want everybody in the whole room that hears what I'm saying to know what I mean when I say grace. That sounds like I was praying over a meal, didn't it? See? That's what I mean. There's people that use the word grace when they mean mercy. They use grace when they mean forgiveness. They use grace

when they mean, in some cases, even salvation. People have all different kinds of definitions. One of the things that I want to help with is try to bring the body of Christ back to an intelligent conversation. An intelligent conversation cannot take place in a group of people that have their own definition to every word. And for you to just kind of cock back and cross your arms and say, well that's not what it means to me. We don't care what it means to you.

I love you my friend. But when we're trying to converse this is one person speaking to another person. And it's really important that the two people define words the same way, or we're not having a conversation. I understand perceptions, and I understand that certain words can mean certain things to other people that they don't mean necessarily to you. These kind of things happen. But for the most part, we need to define words correctly so that when we do speak to one another,

that we can essentially understand what one another says. If we talk about compassion, are we talking about passion? Do you know a lot of people don't see any difference in those two words? The Bible says here that when Jesus healed this leper, that he immediately upon the words and the compassionate touch of Jesus, the leprosy left the man. The Bible says that they came to Jesus

and they told him that John the Baptist had been murdered. The Bible says that he was moved with compassion and healed the sick. I've heard people preach that as if Jesus became extremely aggravated that the devil had killed John the Baptist. And in doing so, or in feeling that

he decided to strike out war against Satan by healing the sick. Okay, that's maybe that's one way of looking at it. But the Bible says that he was moved with compassion. I think that when he heard of the death of John the Baptist, he saw another mile marker go by. And he was saying, no, this is moving on. This thing is, we're moving on down this highway.

There went, did you see that sign? That was the death of John the Baptist. If you remember, and I'm sure we'll get to it, but it's probably a good time to mention it. There was a time when John the Baptist sent word to Jesus and said, hey, art thou he that should come? Or do we have to look for somebody else?

Now, I don't know what kind of relationship Jesus had with John the Baptist, but it was evidently loose enough that he felt that it was okay to speak to the Son of God that way. But John the Baptist had a concern. What was that? Are we getting on with this thing or not? He was concerned because the plan was sort of retarded. It was kind of slowed down. It was backed off.

We should be well ahead of where we are right now. Now, they say that John the Baptist was discouraged because he was in prison and nobody was there to help him. And so he was crybabying to Jesus and saying, no, I don't think that at all. I think John the Baptist was well aware of his destination, of the situation. I don't think that the decree to have his head removed was any surprise to John the Baptist. I think that he knew what he was there

for. I preached what I preached. I introduced the Messiah. Now what in the world's going on? You should be the king of Israel by now. You should be. I mean, these people, they don't know who you are. They don't understand what you're here for. What's going on? Now you think, well, how do you decipher that from, are you he that should come or look we for another because of the way Jesus answered him and he said you go and tell John that you know the lame are walking the blind have their sight restored to them I'm doing what I'm supposed to do you know I'm winning the

people but the thing with the church it's not happening and we talked about that last time, that there was huge discouragement on the part of Jesus Christ when it came to the church. Why aren't they accepting this? Why are they so mad at me? Well, and as I told you, it was just a general response that we're not going to have this man to reign over us. See we like it when God reigns

over us. Now I want you to listen very carefully because this one's going to hit us right between the eyes. We like it when it's God who's in charge. Because when it's God who's in charge we Because when it's God who's in charge, we know one thing about God that's just irrefutable. Chances are, we're not going to see him today. Chances are, he's not going to show up today. Chances are, he's not going to point his finger and say,

hey, Don, you're doing the wrong thing down there, and I'm going to tell everybody in the world about it. So as long as he just stays there on his throne and minds his own business and just stay away from me, then I can pretty much do whatever I want to do and say that God is leading me. I can't believe you said that. What a horrible thing to say.

Do you realize we say this almost every day? As Christians, as church leaders, as writers of books, of producers and authors and speakers and everything that we do in Christendom, as long as God stays over there, he's fine with me. As long as Jesus just stays sitting at his right hand and y'all just sit up there and play checkers we'll take it down here oh what a horrible attitude i can't believe anybody has an attitude sure they do sure they do as long as god is invisible and as long as he's off

somewhere we got it made and we can say that anything that we do is led of the Lord. But to have a man, a tangible man, an audible voice, a voice from God running our lives, not interested. We're not going to have this man running our life. We're not going to do that. We're going to do what we want to do. And if good things happen, we'll say, well, thank you, Lord. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. And if bad things happen, we're going to curse the devil. You know, who's in charge there? We're in charge. That's who's in charge. And so when I think that this concept, this philosophy by which the church seems to live and teach and do and grow,

I think this is so popular and it is so old. As a matter of fact, do you know there was a time when, and I think, if I'm not mistaken, this is written in the Talmud. I tried to read the Talmud. It's a huge collection of books for one thing. But I tried to read a condensed version of the Talmud and I don't like pornography so I quit reading it. And so in the course of

reading this I found certain things being said by certain rabbis that I thought, man, that's sassy. I can't believe that they would say something like that to God. That's just unbelievable. How can you feel like that's the right thing to say? How can you believe this is the right thing to do? One of the things that was their attitude was about the Talmud. They have the right to interpret the Talmud any way that they wish. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I just said Talmud.

The Torah, we're talking about the law of God that they have the right to interpret the law of God any way they want. Why? Because God's in heaven. The Torah's on earth. This is where we live. The Torah's in our hands. We can make it say anything we want to say. You might think, well that's brash. That's sassy. They shouldn't say that. Christians do this all the time. As a matter of fact I kind of respect the Jew for having guts enough to write that

down. For even admitting that. It's one reason I respect the Catholic Church. You know, the Catholic Church is solely responsible for moving the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. And you know what? The Orthodox, the believing, the faithful Catholic, you know what their answer is for that? We don't care when the Bible says the Sabbath is. The Pope says it's on Sunday, so it's on Sunday.

Now, you might think that's brash. You might think that that's sassy on their part. You might think, oh my goodness, that's blasphemous. You might think that. But tell me which is worse. For them to say, we don't care. The Pope is our authority. He's the vicar of Christ. He stands in the place of Christ on the earth. So when he speaks, we listen. It doesn't matter what the

Bible says. The Pope trumps the Bible. You might think that's sassy. But tell me which is worse. That attitude or the Protestant's attitude you might think that's sassy. But tell me which is worse, that attitude or the Protestant's attitude of saying the Bible's a holy, infallible, inspired word of God. It's inerrant, it's infallible, there's no contradictions in it. I believe it's the word of God from cover to cover.

Do you do what it says? Well, I try. I don't know that you do. Why is the Sabbath day not existed in the conventional Christian's life? Why is that? Because the Pope said so? This Bible doesn't say so. How is this the holy and foul-inspired word of God?

Unchangeable. Cover to cover. Inspired of the Lord. God-breathed. How come that is, but you don't do what it says? unchangeable, cover to cover, inspired of the Lord. God breathed. How come that is, but you don't do what it says? Which one of those is a more honorable stance? This is why I honor the Catholics. I think at least they had guts enough to say,

we don't care what the Bible says. The conventional Christian doesn't have guts enough to say that. They just change the words in there, change the meanings, add innuendo, let you infer. They just insinuate, and they leave out verses. There's certain verses they don't read,

they don't talk about. There's certain things that they say, well, you know, we'll never understand God. You'll never understand him. You know, we see through a glass darkly. And they make excuses for it, but they don't do what it says to do. It's not just the red words, folks.

It's in the black words, too. They don't do what Paul says to do. Paul wouldn't be welcome in many of the conventional churches if by virtue of his language alone he wouldn't make it in many churches because women run the churches. And if you read the Apostle Paul and understood Greek at all, you would think that this man's got a filthy mouth! You know, that's true for our Lord God, too, if you read the Old Testament. Some of the things

he says in there are not for mixed public. So we have a lot to answer for when it comes to the authority that we place, the fake authority that we place in the scriptures, the fake authority that we place in the church. We've got a lot of repentance to do here. You have alienated, and I say you, we, the conventional church, we have alienated some of the finest

minds, some of the finest minds, some of the finest thinkers in the world. Some scientific minds. We have totally alienated them from Christianity by being so silly in our doctrines, by teaching things that don't make any sense. They can make sense if we went by the scriptures, but no, we've got to add our little pieces in there. It would make sense if we taught people

to listen to the voice of God, but no, that's not what we do. We tell them to listen to us. We tell them to listen to our interpretation of the Bible. One of the reasons why the King James is so popular. They want people to read the King James because they don't understand it. The same reason that the Catholic Church made it a rule that you're not allowed

to read the Bible on your own. Until in Vatican II that was a fact. Do you know that? You weren't allowed to read the Bible on your own. Well even Vatican II has certain things in their agreement with the parishioners that they're not really welcome to interpret the Bible. But what we do is we hand people a King James Bible, something they don't understand, and we say, that's okay, we'll take care of it. We'll explain it to you. It assures them a job.

It assures them of a position. But one thing we do not want, we don't want this man to reign over us. This man has a tendency to speak to people. This man has a tendency to change people's minds and let them think for themselves. This man has a tendency to open people's minds and let them think for themselves. This man has a tendency to open people's understanding. And they may not follow our doctrine anymore.

They may find out that what I'm teaching is not true. Hey, guess what, preacher? We've already found out it's not true. It's not a secret anymore. Now, we find that in all these silly attempts, these pitiful attempts that we've made, we have kind of poured all this stuff together in one big jug and shook it up,

and we've gone from door to door trying to evangelize the world. And I saw a cartoon recently where this guy's walking into a church and they're taking his brain out and saying, you won't be needing this. And that is a shame. That's a shame and a scandal. Just sit there, shut up and listen. And oh, pay your tithes.

It's really sad. Is the church really in that bad of shape, Don? Let me ask you this. How could the church be worse than it is? It's a lot easier to make that list because it's a very short one. It's a lot easier to make that list because it's a very short one. It's a lot easier to make that list than it is to make a list of things that are wrong with it. So let's just think about this another way. How could the church be worse? You're going to be hard-pressed to find

some way for it to be worse. How could theology be more convoluted? You're going to be hard pressed to come up with some way for it to be worse. We have a serious problem. Man, I'm calling on preachers. Will you just stand up and preach what Jesus preached? Will you just say what he said? Will you just say that when he says to do something, this is what we should do? Is that so difficult? You know what? It's not profitable.

It's just simply not profitable. You think we could have all this and not ask for money? Well, okay. You've made yourself very clear to me. And as far as I'm concerned, you know, next! And so that's what I've done. I've just hollered next until there ain't no next. And I've just decided I'm going to do what Jesus said.

And you know what it's done for me? It opened my brain up. It made me start thinking for myself. And, you know, we've got a little motto around here. When you get the red letters right, it all makes sense. There's just, there's hardly an incentive better than that. Let me finish up chapter 11 here. We were talking about this leper that was cleansed.

And Jesus told him, see that thou say nothing to any man, but go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them. This is Jesus still trying to save the religious institution of the day. But the man did not control his tongue. He spoke widely of the event, and the fame of Jesus spread so greatly that he could no longer openly enter the city. He remained outside,

and multitudes came to him from every direction. Now, here you find that when Jesus, he has a certain plan and he wants things to work according to the plan and that is true yet today. That he has a plan, that he's really trying to work but something keeps getting in the way. Now, if you're one of these people who worship the devil,

I mean the people who speak to him regularly, and there's a lot of Christians that do that, or people that call themselves Christians, and they speak to him regularly, and they praise him. Yeah, they praise him. They talk about all the things that he's doing. They worship him. Yeah, they worship him. They do what he says to do. These are what I call the devil worshipers. And these people who are

just totally intrigued with the devil, they want to talk about the devil all the time. They want to blame him for everything that happens from warts to wars. And they just give him the credit, give him the honor and the glory so to speak. They have a tendency to get their point across by blaming him for things that go awry or mess up the plan of Jesus. Let me tell you who's messing up the plan of Jesus. Both in this story

and for two millennia since then and yet today in our 21st century. It's people. People who can't keep their mouth shut. They just have to go about spreading abroad their wonderful knowledge of the things of God. They don't know squat, but they like to talk about it. And they want to preach their little thing.

And they want to get their little two cents in to every Sunday school conversation, every Bible study. They want to evangelize the world. They want to go out and tell people that they need to be saved. And that when the person does say, well, how do I go about being saved? Well, the fact of the matter is they have no idea. But what they do is they take them down the Roman road or they take them along a path that some tract or something has laid out for them. They have no idea how to be saved. They've never been saved themselves. As a matter of fact, hey, here's a little secret for you.

None of us have. None of us are saved yet. He that endures to the end shall be saved. Who says that to a person who wants to be a Christian? Do you know of that ever being said to them? Hardly ever. If ever. So people, they don't have any intention on teaching what Jesus taught,

doing what Jesus did. They insist on doing their own thing. Here Jesus had a plan for the entire city. And it all came contingent upon one man doing what he was told. And he didn't do it. Because he couldn't control his mouth. He couldn't control his emotion. Couldn't control his mind.

And he just wanted to praise Jesus. Do you think what he did was wrong? I mean, except for the fact that he didn't do what Jesus told him. His motivations were that he cared. That he loved people. And he wanted them to know the truth about Jesus. I don't know that he had any other motive. He wasn't exalting himself.

Telling them, look what Jesus did for me. It sounds good. It sounds wonderful, but it wasn't the plan. The plan was keep your mouth shut. I need to preach to these people. I need to do it in little groups around town. But no, he went around and blazed abroad the matter. And you know what it did? It caused uncontrollable crowds that absolutely hindered the perfect plan that Jesus had in mind. One man messed this up. Time for us to go. Time flies, doesn't it? Join us next time to hear more of the Words of Jesus series. We want to hear from you. Let us

know who you are, where you're listening, and let your station know that you're enjoying the show. All right, time for us to go. See you next time. Bye-bye. you've been listening to don c harris of think red ink ministries ThinkRedInc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you