Words of Jesus Podcast - One Greater Than The Building

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

"For [Pharisees] bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers." Jesus came to abolish the statutes and ordinances which were added to the law. Most first century Jews, in fact many present-day Jews have an understanding that the temple will no longer be required after Messiah came. ***Chapter 17. JESUS REPLIES TO THE PHARISEES CONCERNING KEEPING THE SABBATH (Part 2)ON A SABBATH day Jesus and his disciples went through a grain field. They were hungry; so the disciples plucked grain and began to eat. When the Pharisees saw this, they said:               “Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day.”            Jesus replied:    “Have ye not read what David did, when he was hungry, and they that were with him: how he entered into the house of God, and did eat the unleavened bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests? Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless? But I say unto you that in this place is one greater than the temple. But if ye had known what this meaneth: ‘I will have mercy, and not sacrifice,’ ye would not have condemned the guiltless.  The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.  Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.”***Matthew 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-5

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus Series with Don C. Harris Hello friends and welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. I'm Don Harris of Think Redding Ministries. My goal is to reinforce Christianity with the wisdom and the words of Jesus, which incidentally are recorded in red in your Bible. Do you know what Jesus said? What Jesus did? What Jesus did?

What Jesus said to do? This series is based on Jesus, his life, his friends, his ministry, and his relationship with his Father, as recorded in the four Gospels. We've been talking from chapter 17 of our little book, and we have just discussed the fact that Jesus and his disciples walked through the cornfield that day

and were getting themselves something to eat, plucking the ears and rubbing them in their hands. The other... Some of the Gospels use terms that the others don't, but one of them will tell you that they were rubbing them in their hands. And we were talking about how the Jews had defined what work actually is, and this fell into that category.

And they were not allowed to do this on the Sabbath day. Among the Jews, the Sanhedrin, the rulers, the priests in the temple, these kind of things had a kind of an amalgam of law enforcement and also spiritual leadership. So the only threat that these high priests, or whoever was involved in the temple or the Sabbath cops, the only way that they could enforce

their will upon the people was to threaten their acceptance in, or their membership, if you will, in the temple itself. So people were essentially deathly afraid of offending these Pharisees. And so the Pharisees would use that intimidation to keep people in line so that they wouldn't displease God, so that God wouldn't put them back into captivity or whatever. Well, in all the good intentions, they had made the commandments of God of no effect by their traditions, Jesus said. By your traditions, you've made it of no effect.

Now, what effect is the Sabbath supposed to have for us? Well, it's supposed to set aside a day of dedication and communication with our God, a day of rest. There are some people that have prioritized the effects, if you will, of Sabbath day, and they've gone about to keep the Sabbath day in another way. Example, the Sabbath day was given to us because, you know, it's a medical fact. It's not, but they say it's a medical fact that we have to rest one day in seven. That's probably a good idea. I don't know that it's any medical fact and I don't know that the ratio of one in seven and all the rest of these things are considered to be facts upon which a person can

base a prognosis of health. However some people have decided that that's what the Sabbath means. And so all God really expects us to do is to rest one day in seven, and I happen to choose Sunday. Or, you know, in some cases I remember when I was a conventional preacher, I worked so hard on Sunday I couldn't even consider that a Sabbath. It certainly wasn't a day of rest.

So Monday was my Sabbath, if you want to call it that. I never was so presumptuous as to say it was indeed a Sabbath, but it certainly was my day of relaxation because I'd just been through a grueling Sunday. And so I didn't see any rest in that. So I moved my day of rest to a more convenient time. Now, can you do that? Are you allowed to do that? Does it count, as they say?

I don't think that that's really the idea at all. I don't think the Lord gave us the Sabbath because we need one day in seven. He gave us the Sabbath day because, you know, what's really odd about the Sabbath day is if you take all the commandments that were carved in stone that day, with the exception of having gods, I think, if I'm not mistaken, that's a pretty wordy commandment. But do you realize there are more words dedicated to the Sabbath commandment

than any other commandment in the book. Any other that was carved in rock that day. Not only does it tell us to keep it, it tells us when to keep it and why we should keep it. And we really have to try. We have to exercise some severe mental calisthenics to figure out some other way to do it. Well, we've done that, haven't we? Well, there are fallacies that have come

out of the Catholic Church that we have changed the Sabbath to Sunday because Sunday's the day of resurrection. Well, we found out just recently as we studied this that that wasn't the day of resurrection at all. That was the day they found him gone but we know that three days and three nights from the time that he was crucified, executed, the time he died three days and three nights

brings him out of the grave just before the sun goes down on Sabbath. So we know that's not so. We also have his instruction to us that we're not under any obligation. I shouldn't even use the word obligation. He never told us to celebrate the day of his resurrection. Did you know that? He said that we are to remember the day of His death. We were never told to celebrate His birthday.

We were never told to celebrate His resurrection. He said it's the day of death. That's what we have to remember. And so a lot of these arguments just don't hold water. And I have heard some pretty poor arguments about Sabbath day. One fellow says, well, we keep Sunday because it's the Lord's day. I said, who told you it's the Lord's day? Well, the scriptures. And I said, really? Where? I'm interested. You're telling me there's a Scripture that says

Sunday's the Lord's day? Well, sure. And I said, well, let's go there and let's take a look. Well, he goes and he says, he shows me the Apostle John in the book of Revelation said, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. Yeah, and? Well, there it is. What? He said, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. The Lord's day. We all know the Lord's day is Sunday. And I'm thinking, this is good enough for you.

I don't understand what he's talking about. I don't see this as saying anything about Sunday or the Sabbath or anything else. But he insisted that Sunday's the Lord's, yeah, yeah, yeah, Saturday's the Sabbath, but Sunday's the Lord's day. And I'm thinking, all right, my mind immediately goes back to the scripture that we were just reading when he says that the Sabbath wasn't made for man, but man was made for the I'm sorry, I said it the way they believe it. That the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath day. So you're telling me that the Lord's day is Sunday, but the Lord is the Lord of the Sabbath day. Look, I'm telling you, there's a whole lot of information you're going to have to ignore. There's a whole lot of commandment you're going to have to disobey. There's just a whole lot of scripture you're going to have to circumnavigate for the rest of your life until you get a hold of it. Like I said, when we started

the show today, perhaps that was yesterday, where I was saying that for the last three chapters of this little book we're talking about, the Sabbath was the subject of everything that Jesus happened to try to do. It was the subject. And we know essentially, conventional Christianity knows essentially nothing about it. And boy, when I started looking into it and I started realizing oh my goodness, has that been there all along?

Has it always said that? Yes, it has. Well, where have I been? Well, Sunday school. That's where you've been. And they don't talk about these things. But I think that the Sabbath is a wonderful gift from God, and I think that it's a wonderful honor to him to keep that day the way he wants it kept.

Now, what about the one day in seven? Can we do that? Is that all right? Can we make those kind of changes? Well, let's just say that perhaps you read the commandment that says, honor your father and mother. Your father is not honorable. Your mother is not honorable.

These are, you know, look, do you know, as a counselor, I have to deal with this a lot because when people want to keep the commandments of God, they find that one in there and they say, oh my goodness, how am I going to do this? You don't know my mom, you don't know my dad, these people were terrible to me. You know, they beat my little brother, they sold my little sister into slavery or something, I mean, drug addicts or whatever else. And they say, these are not honorable people. Well, first of all, and we will talk about that in future shows,

but to honor them is not to endorse everything they do. But let's just say somebody read that and said, you know, my parents aren't honorable. But that old sweet old couple that lives down the road, they are. They are great people. You know, your wife goes down there and has tea with her every day at 4 o'clock. Or you play golf with him on the weekends and you fellowship and you have fun. They're great old people.

Great old people. You know what? I'm going to say they're my parents, and I can honor them. Well, have you kept the commandment? Or did you just change it so that you can feel like you're honoring the commandment, but you really aren't? Well, I think that that's what happens to many Christians when they consider, I keep the Sabbath day

I keep it every Sunday why? why are you doing it? and chances are you're not doing that either but why is it that we need to change it just a little bit just tweak it a little bit so that it fits our lifestyle I don't think we would dare do this need to change it just a little bit, just tweak it a little bit so that it fits our lifestyle. I don't think we would dare do this with any other commandment, but this one suffers the brunt

of everybody in modern Christendom with an opinion. And so I would encourage you to find out what this is all about and understand it. Now, you could have a problem. If you try to take these words and understand them in the context or in the framework that you're living in now, you may find that it's harder to understand. If we don't approach the scriptures in here with a pure heart

and with what I'm going to show you is the key of David, if we don't approach the scriptures that way, we can walk away with a pretty poor conclusion and essentially no obedience to them whatsoever. Remember David was trying to explain to these Pharisees at this time he says, you know, you're saying that these disciples are violating the Sabbath because they're eating corn, but you remember David when he came and ate the showbread?

Now that showbread was not lawful for any man to eat, except the priest alone. Yet David ate it. And was it Abiathar? I think it was Abiathar. The priest, he said, Well, you know, what do you think about this? And he says, well, you know, my men are with me. We haven't been carousing. We haven't been doing anything that would be considered unclean or sinful. And we're hungry. So he gave him the bread and they ate it.

Now, Jesus said it was absolutely unlawful for David to eat that bread. But you see, David knew something that many people don't know. He was, the Bible teaches us, that David was a man after God's own heart. David understood some things that, frankly, modern Christianity and all religion David understood some things that frankly modern Christianity and all religion does not understand. He says, now

let's take for example, he says the priest in the temple. He's born on Friday and the eighth day is the Sabbath day. Yet the commandment says he has to be circumcised. The priest don't have any trouble doing that on Sabbath day. Now if you don't have any trouble with the priest taking somebody apart on Sabbath day, surely you can't have trouble with me putting them together.

And he says also, the priests work like crazy on the Sabbath in the temple and are considered to be blameless. There's something to this in the temple that excludes these laws and rules and things like this that this key that David has, this understanding of the Lord, there are certain things that can be done in this shelter of the temple that couldn't be, shouldn't be done outside.

And in understanding this, he was able to feed his crew that showbread in the temple. Jesus said that the priest violate the Sabbath day because they work like crazy on the Sabbath day. That showbread had to be made every day. But they were doing it in the temple and they were blameless. Do you know the temple has always meant something very, very special to the Jew. And that was the place

that, well as a matter of fact, some of the first manifestations in our society of the temple, so to speak, it was known as the, prior to this it was known as the tabernacle, and prior to that it was known as the meeting tent, the tent of meeting. Now in our vernacular, the way we speak today, when we hear tent of meeting what do we think

well you know if you're an old pentecostal boy like me you're thinking of the old meeting tent that they set up in the cow pasture out there about once every six or eight months and they had revival out there that's the meeting tent and that's where people come to meet and that's where they have meeting. So we understand meeting tent a little differently than the Jews. Well actually the Jews had this problem as well. It was the Lord himself that said this is going to be my tent of meeting. What is my tent of meeting? What is the meeting, so to speak,

of, or what happens in this tent? This is not us meeting together. This is the Father meeting with us. And one of the works of Jesus that he accomplished when he came here to the earth was he actually dispossessed that temple of all of that mystique and if you want to call it power of power and placed

all of that within the heart of mankind and now as Paul says the heart of mankind and now, as Paul says, the temple of God is within us. We are the temple of God. So what is he saying? This is the place of meeting. Right here. Within us. That's the tent of meeting. That's the place of meeting. That's the tabernacle. What do we talk about when this tabernacle be dissolved, right? This is a tabernacle. This is a tent. This is our earth suit.

This is our earth clothes. Our flesh is our earth clothes. And the cloths with which the flesh is constructed is the very same cloths spiritually as what the tabernacle is made of and the tent of meeting was made of. The parallels between the temple, the meeting tent, the tabernacle, the temple,

and the flesh that we live in today we ourselves, all those parallels are striking and consistent. There's no reason to believe that there was any need of a temple after Jesus Christ came and made us containers of the Holy Spirit, something we could never be before. On the day of Pentecost, it came to fruition that the people of God, that temple was indeed

sanctified and set aside and then filled with the Spirit of God, just like that tent was out there in the wilderness. You remember that when they got all done building it? When they got all done building it then the fire fell from heaven and it filled that tent and that vapor and the smoke and it must have been a huge thing. Well it was as huge if not a little less than what happened on the day of Pentecost

because we see them, it's said that they spoke in tongues and that these tongues of fire, here's your fire, sat upon each of them. Now, this is probably figurative speech. Maybe it's not. I don't know. Wasn't there. But nevertheless those parallels are striking and absolutely consistent. There's no reason to believe

that the temple of God had any use whatsoever after Jesus Christ came and made his sacrifice. As a matter of fact because Jesus made his sacrifice. As a matter of fact, because Jesus made His sacrifice, there was no need for temple sacrifice anymore. Josephus tells a story, I don't know, I wasn't there, as I say. Josephus tells a story that the priest, when they would do the scapegoat offering, and they would go to lead this goat away from the temple

having upon him been confessed all the sins of Israel. That they would tie the doors of the temple together close them and tie them together with a scarlet ribbon and that when they returned from this trip, I don't know if this is so, it wasn't there, but the ribbon had supposedly turned white. And he says that after the sacrifice of Christ, that never happened again. Never happened again. I don't know how true the story is. Look it up.

You know, you can decide. You're as qualified as I am. And it was pretty obvious that the temple was essentially, as far as God was concerned, in disuse when we became the temple of God. He gave Israel 40 years to repent from what they actually did and how they treated Messiah, His Son.

He gave them 40 years. So if you take the fact that Jesus died in 30 A.D., and I don't want to argue about it, but there's many different ideas. I've just come up with 30. So if he died in 30 AD and we add 40 years to that, we fall right on the timeline of Antiochus Epiphanes offering that pig on that altar and discrediting and unsanctifying this temple

and eventually the Romans tore it to the ground. Many Jews believe that when Messiah came there would be no use for that temple anymore. Well that's exactly what happened. And it was torn down not because of disuse or not thinking that they didn't need it, but it was torn down because it was pretty obvious it would never be torn down. They would continue to do sacrifices just like they did before Jesus came. And it was an abomination to God for people to give sacrifice after His Son shed

His blood for us. Now I say all that so you'll understand this idea of the temple. There is such a thing as living within this temple. It's all part and parcel of my instructions to you about keeping God's commandments, never disobeying your conscience, and taking time every day to hear the voice of God? You see, that time that we take to hear the voice of God, he may very well explain things to us in such a way that what we do might look to the world, like me out mowing grass on Sunday,

it might look to the world like we've given up on our faith. It might look to the world like we're dishonoring God, doing something that's sacrilegious, violating some commandment or ordinance or whatever as David would have been considered had he been seen eating the showbread. But it's really not a problem when it's really not a problem

when it's done by and through a good solid communication with God. You see, his intention was to not keep 613 laws, and I'm using 613 like they do. I don't believe there's 613 laws. But instead of trying to preserve these 613 laws, what he said was, I want you to keep my commandments. Not all the ones that have been attached over the years, but these 10, these are my commandments. These are the ones that I

expect you to keep. As a matter of fact, as Moses explained these commandments to the children of Israel and opened them and showed them wider vistas about each of these commandments and applied them in different situations, there was created a second law. If you want to say second law in Greek, you would say it Deuteronomy. So the book of Deuteronomy is indeed the second law. Well, even though it's the second law, it was written by men. This is not necessarily God's law. And so there are many of these laws and rules for the priesthood, rules for the temple and all these kind of things that in the ultimate plan of God were to be done away. They would be nailed on the cross.

The statutes and ordinances that were against us, they were nailed to his cross. Now, many people try to put the 10 there, but you're not allowed to do that. But these, they were to be nailed to the cross, done away with. Actually, the word that the King James uses is abolished.

Abolished. All the time Jesus saying, this law will never pass away how can you justify that because he's not talking about the same law those 10 commandments will never pass away till all things are fulfilled and the other ones oh sorry you know they're on their way out david knew this god knows this and from his understanding and because he dealt from the inside from that area of the temple within himself he was able to do what he did without violation to god our time is gone i'm so sorry but we'll see you next time be right here and we'll see you next time. Be right here's ThinkRedInc.com.

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