Words of Jesus Podcast - Man of Valor - Go in Your Strength

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

As soon as a commitment is made to be Christian, temptation comes to steal the seed that is planted. We should expect difficulty and persecution in this life. Rejoice, the success of Jesus as a man in the earth, shows the ability we also have to over-come; in spite of adversity.***Related Material: The Parable Paradox - Watch here: https://iamreadytoknow.thinkredink.org***The Temptation of Jesus (Part 2)IMMEDIATELY after he had been baptized the Spirit of God led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted of Satan. After fasting for forty days and nights he was hungry.           Satan came to him, saying:           “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.”           Jesus replied:           “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’”           Then Satan took him into the holy city and thence to a pinnacle of the temple and said:           “If thou art the Son of God, cast thyself down; for it is written, ‘He shall give his angels charge concerning thee; and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.’”           Jesus replied:           “It is written again, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’” Then Satan took Jesus to the top of a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, saying:           “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”           Jesus repulsed Satan with these words:           “Get thee hense, Satan; for it is written, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.’”           The temptation overcome, angels came and ministered unto him.***CHAPTER 3 SCRIPTURES (KJV):MATTHEW 4:1-11Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot...

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris Hello friends, Don Harris here. We've been talking about the words of Jesus and using this little book to introduce some of you folks to the red ink in the scriptures. I hope you're enjoying the series. If you miss any part of the series,

if you will check with us at thinkredinc.com if you go there you'll be able to find your way around and be able to get on a mailing list so that you can be aware when these shows are produced into dvds we haven't fully decided as to how they are going to be produced into what particular format, but as demand is made, we'll get those things to you. And you can fill in some of the shows that you happen to miss. We've been talking about Jesus in the Mount of Temptation. Some people call that situation the Mount of Temptation.

Some people just simply refer to it as the Temptation of Christ. But Jesus, after he called his disciples, after he was baptized, entered into this mountain to be tempted of the devil. The Bible teaches that he was led of the spirit into this temptation situation. There was a reason why Jesus had to do this. One of them is temptation is one of the first uncomfortable situations that we're going to find ourselves in as Christians.

And that is that even after we have decided to go that way, to drop our way and go His way, we're going to find the old life and the flesh and the eyes and the pride of life and all the problems that we have are going to tug upon us to go back to the old way. And this is a matter of will on our part. It's a matter of works on our part. It's a matter of doing

on our part. And I think the people who are most displeased with their Christian walk are those who have decided that the common understanding of Christianity, the common understanding of salvation, of all you have to do is just believe in Jesus and everything's going to be just fine. Well, anybody with a modicum of intelligence and just a handful of years experience knows that that's just not so. So there is something more to this. The Christian life is not supposed to be drudgery.

Yet it's not, you know, a fishing trip either. It's not it's not vacation time. It's not Disneyland. We all know this. It's like yesterday we. It's not Disneyland. We all know this. It's like yesterday we talked about living without sin. And even that comment is distasteful to many people. You can't tell people that they can live without sin.

Well, sure you can. If you quote the Scripture you'll find that the Scriptures are able to say that unequivocally, that he that is born of God doesn't commit sin. For his, Christ's, seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he's born of God. Well, those kind of things are extremely important, and these foundations have to be laid or we're going to have a lot of difficulty with our Christian life.

I don't know if it's happened to you yet, but surely it will, that you're going to come to a point and a time in your life when you're just flat going to need help. It's When you're just flat going to need help. And it's not a matter of just throwing your head back and looking toward heaven and saying, oh God, please do this and please do that. And that he's going to see to it that it all happens. We all know that doesn't happen. I don't know

why, except perhaps in desperation and sadness that we even engage ourselves in that. I know that this is a balance between that happy go lucky fool hearted attitude of I'm a child of God, nothing can happen to me. God is wonderful and God is good and He gives me parking places at Walmart.

To the person that I essentially became when I gave up on Christianity and that was that cynical kind of this doesn't work thing. Well I thank God that I learned in my time that I decided to apply logic and wasn't willing to lie for Jesus. Well you know what I mean. And that is when you attribute every good thing

in your life to Him that God is doing all these wonderful things for you and anything that's bad is of the devil, anything that's good is of God and you determine what's good and bad and you pray and things don't happen but when something does happen you're just, the magnanimous person you are is you're willing to give God the credit for it. And you present the idea that your life is full of miracles when it's not. You present the idea that God is interested in everything you do, which he's not.

You put on like you're some kind of a Christian that, well, you just get everything you ask for. But you know that's not so. Well, that's the lying that I wasn't willing to do. And it caught up with me. And I had to come to the conclusion that I have a lot to answer for in those areas. And I decided to be logical. I decided to tell the truth and only say what the Scriptures say.

And no, no, no. Not as I interpret them. No, no. Everybody's doing that. You know, our denomination is based on the Bible. I bet it's not. It might be based on your interpretation of it, but not on what the Bible actually says. Do you realize that when you do things His way and you think red ink and you live in such a way that allows the truth to come through

that you don't have to interpret a whole lot of the Bible anymore. It just says it just like it actually is. And a six-year-old can read it and understand it. And it makes perfect sense. You don't have to interpret it or say, well back in the day this meant that and that meant this and they used to do this. And back in the day it was different than it is now. And you don't have to make all those silly excuses. It's just wonderful living this

way. But what you do end up doing is you end up giving up your fantasy life and you start dealing in reality. And that means works. That means you've got to do something. God has to honor what you do. He doesn't necessarily honor what you believe. He honors what you do. He doesn't necessarily honor what you believe. He honors what you do. I can't help but think of poor little Gideon out there

cutting his, I guess it was barley? It might have been wheat, but he's out there putting it into bundles and then he had to carry it off into the woods and find a place out in the woods to hide it. Why was he doing that? Because he knew as soon as he got it sheaved that the Midianites would come by and load it on a wagon and carry it off and burn the rest. Well, it was because they were under the oppression of the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord came to Gideon and said,

Hey, almighty man of valor. And he says, you talking to me? Me? Mighty man of valor. First of all, you need to realize that the tribe that I'm of in Israel is the smallest of the tribes. The family that I'm in is the smallest family in that tribe. And I'm the least in my family. So you got the wrong guy if you're talking about a mighty

man of valor. Well the angel was speaking prophetically about Gideon because that's exactly what he turned into be. But let me show you how this relationship started. The relationship started with him saying, of course the angel said to him, Hail thou mighty man of valor, the Lord is with you. And so he decided that he was going to deal in logic and deal in truth and decided I'm going to ask you a question, Mr. Angel.

And that was, if God is with us, then why have all these things befallen us? Why do the Midianites torture us every day? Why do they come in and steal our food? You know, the Lord's with us? No thanks. You know, that's just not my experience. Well, the angel had to explain to Gideon, if you want to change this situation you need to what? Study your Bible? No.

You need to go to church? No. You need to pray? Yeah, that'll do it. No, didn't say that. He said to get up in your strength and do something about it. And I'm just afraid that there's a lot of Christians, so called, out there that are suffering with things that they could very well, if they were living under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, that they would be given things to do.

And if you think that that is works and therefore it's anathema because it's essentially not faith. I happen to believe it is faith. Faith is doing things. Faith is doing things for reasons other than your own. Doing things because of a logic or a faith or information that comes to you supernaturally. I think that is faith. You can work that out on your own if you wish, but there are a lot of people who

feel like, well, you know, we need to just let go and let God. No, no, no, no. You don't need to let go of any ropes. You need to pull on them. You don't need to let go of the oars that are paddling your boat. You need to pull on those oars and get things going in your life and do something and let Him bless what you do. This is an aside of what we're talking about here. But I think that it's important that foundationally we understand that our Christian life has

a lot to do with our effort and God's power used on our behalf. There's a concept in Christianity that it is all by faith and there are some people who are equally wrong in this area that teach that it's all by works. There are some people who teach that it has to do with whatever liturgical practices you're involved in,

how many times you pray a day, how many times how you pray, what you pray, and all these kind of mechanical things. But what I've found is that the Christian life is just a wonderful, even symmetrical sometimes asymmetrical, but symmetrical balance of all these stations of life coming together under the leadership of God and making essentially a happy Christian and a powerful one.

Let me share with you some concepts in this area. One of the most detrimental foundational principles in Christianity is trying to take the idea of salvation, regeneration, redemption, all these things that we understand as Christians and things that we actually want to receive from our God and we put them into a category of things

being spiritual and to the neglect of the physical. Yes, there is a problem with religion becoming a physical exercise. You do things a certain way, you say certain things, you use certain words, you go certain places, you dress in certain ways and I just recently saw somebody in town and it was obvious from across the way that this person was in a particular

denomination that I'm well familiar with. And it was just so obvious that they were wearing a uniform, that they had their hair done in a certain way, they had certain clothes that were acceptable to their denomination. And I'm thinking, why can't we get that kind of dedication to our Father God? Why is it that people will dedicate to what other people see and not to

what God clearly lays out in His Scriptures as to what He expects of us. I don't know. I really don't know why that's easier or that's more preferable. But it seems to be that it is. There's a particular denomination that I'm thinking of that, well those that are familiar with this denomination is going to know exactly who I'm thinking of that, well, those that are familiar with this denomination is going to know exactly who I'm talking about. But it seems like everybody shops for their briefcase at the very same store.

And it's like there's just an idea that this is acceptable and this isn't, or they want to fit in and this kind of thing. I don't get it. Well, I don't want to set myself outside of all that and say, you know, that doesn't affect me. Sure it does. Oh my goodness. I'm sorry to say that I feel that way in a lot of cases that these kinds of things are important. Jesus talked about caring about what other people say to you, about you, for you, with you in conversation, with others about you in conversation, how people feel about what you do,

what you say, who you are. To really care about persons or to have respect of persons in one way or situation or another is, Jesus tried to tell us that this is very, very dangerous. Unfortunately, this lesson, and we're going to talk about this as we go through the words of Christ because it's going to come up, that he called that kind of living,

that kind of lifestyle, he used a term to describe it which was leaven. If you ask the conventional church today, what does leaven represent or describe or symbolize or whatever? In the scriptures, most everyone will answer sin. But you might be surprised, as you learn to think red ink, that Jesus didn't say it was sin at all.

He never said it was sin. As a matter of fact, he said it was something else. And I've always been shocked that people are not so curious as to ask, well what did he say? It's like people don't really care. It's like, hey, I learned that it was sin, so for me it is sin. My grandpa believed it was sin. My grandma believed it was sin. My denominations, my preacher said it was sin just last Sunday. And so I'm thinking,

well, yeah, but the Son of God said something different. Yeah, well, that's really something. And they move on. Don't you want to know? I'm always shocked that people don't really care what Jesus said. And we're going to talk about it as we find it in chronological order anyway, as we go through the words of Christ. But there is a no I'm not going to tell you. You can look it up.

But there is a driving force within the Christian world that is a, that seems to have a lot of sway. It seems to carry a lot of power with people. And that driving force is what others think of them. And I just love the fact that by the way, as we've been talking about in our

particular subject here, in this particular chapter 3, we've been talking about the temptation of Christ and I was telling you as we closed with the last show that there are only three stages of temptation, which is the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. This particular thing we're talking about now where people are concerned about what others think of them, this is so close akin to the pride of life

that we need to be very, very careful of it. As a matter of fact, Jesus taught us that if we don't steer clear of this, that it could easily take our souls from us. Again, I am amazed at people who don't just beat the door down wanting to know, what did he say? What did he say? Or at least go to the scriptures and find it for themselves and find out exactly what this horrible, heinous action

that is going to destroy us, what he actually says about it. But we cannot be concerned with what people think of us as Christians. You can't be concerned. You know, naturally, when you say that, somebody naturally starts to think immediately that I can't be concerned if someone is criticizing me. Isn't that right? When I say you can't be concerned with what people think of you.

We naturally think of, okay, I should ignore when someone criticizes me. Well, okay, you're half right. Because the obligation, the important aspect of what I'm saying applies equally with those who think you're great. If you would be the odd person if I said you can't be concerned with what people

think of you and you naturally thought at that point, yeah you're right. I can't be concerned about people who think that I am better than them, think that I'm greater than them, think that I'm more spiritual than them, think that I am something above them. You would be the odd person if that's what crossed your mind. But it is equally true in that area. As I said, there's a lot of denominations out there

where people are more than willing to change the kind of clothes they wear. They're willing to change their vocabulary. They're willing to change their attitudes, their character. They change all the things, how they present themselves to the world. I always get a kick out of people. You can stand out in front of some store, you know,

and you're just having a conversation with somebody about the weather, just being nice, I don't know. And you'll say something, you know, about, about, well you know I was saying to somebody you know I was quoting somebody the scripture where Jesus said such and such bink, bink, bink. These little keywords hit their heads. Uh oh. I'm talking to somebody who's a Christian. And when those keywords hit their head,

somehow they go in there and they flip on these switches. You know, vocabulary and attitude. They start flipping these switches over to the Christian side. And they start talking, yeah, brother, amen. Glory to God. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. And I'm thinking, where was all this talk, you know, for the last 15 minutes when we were talking about football or we were talking about fishing

or we were talking about changing oil in the car? You know, where was all this to all of a sudden you're going to start talking Christianese? Look, friend, don't look for that out of my mouth. I mean, if it's in my mouth talking about oil changes, you can find it when we're talking about, you know, the things of God. You know, if we're going to be talking about religion or what the Bible happens to say or we're talking about end time events or whatever else. I'm not interested in playing

those games. I am not interested at all and frankly I'm not interested in listening to you do it. These kind of things bother me so badly I'm almost ashamed to bring them up because I have been I don't know if you have been but I have been so scarred and treated in such a way inside the church that things that bring that back to my mind they don't

sit right with me. I was so glad when I found out that I didn't have to say, praise the Lord, hallelujah, thank you, Jesus, and amen when I really mean I agree with you. I found out there's nothing wrong with saying I agree with you. I don't have to say amen when you say something to make you think that I'm a Christian or to make you think that I'm as good as you are. I don't know what they do that for. I think it's just to belong.

Just so you can belong. The ideas of belonging are a very dangerous thing. We're going to have to understand that we have to be careful who, as the scriptures say, who we strike hands with and who we supposedly belong to. I belong to the living God. My relationship is with Him. It's not with the church, it's not with

the pastor, it's not with religious people. It's not even with the Bible. My relationship is with him. And I think that that's so foundationally important that to neglect it is to neglect it at your own peril. It will eventually turn out that you have huge dissatisfactions with your with your christian faith and and frankly you're going to come in and go out of it and never really even know why you're not going to understand why you've been a christian all your life yet you're afraid to die you're not going to understand why you've been a Christian all your life, but as your grandbaby's dying, you are absolutely powerless for comfort in that situation or power to change it or anything else. You're going to be severely disappointed that you've spent your whole life

as a so-called Christian, and you have no more power, no more understanding, no more revelation, no more relationship with God than the guy across the street who could not care less. Now, if that scares you, good. It scared me. And I decided to find out exactly how I can fix this in my life. One of the things was, is I decided that if our scriptures don't teach it, I'm not teaching it. If it doesn't

say it, I'm not going to say it. And if it teaches against it, I'm going to teach against it. I'm not willing to change or to bend or anything else. Well, if you do that, you're going to be all by yourself. That's fine. You know, I mean, I miss people. I miss fellowship, but not to the point that I'm willing to give up on what I understand to be true. I'm certainly not going to give up on the greatest thing that has ever happened to me, which is my Christian faith that is now being lived according to the scriptures. All right. Hope you've enjoyed the show today. Join us next time to hear more from the words of Jesus. Listen, we want to hear from you.

We'd like to know who you are and that you're listening. Do you know you can do that simply by sending an email? Do it now. Don at thinkredinc.com Or you can write to, if you're not a computer guy, you can write to Think if you're not a computer guy, you can write to Think Ready Ministries at P.O. Box 718, Pytown, New Mexico, 87827.

All right, if you're wondering what Jesus said, hopefully these shows are going to put it in your brain and you're going to be able to recall them simply by thinking ready. See you next time. Bye-bye. You've been listening to Don C. Harris of Think Red Ink Ministries. Email don at thinkredink.com. That's thinkredc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com.

Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you