Words of Jesus Podcast - One Message to the Entire World

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

"Have the mind of Christ." But, how? Jesus said, if you keep my commandments the Father and I will move in and lead and guide you from the inside. The Father and the Son; it's a package deal. Salvation is a process. Knowing the Bible is not enough to hear guidance from God. Jesus said, "My burden is light." ***Ch. 24 - JESUS INVITES ALL MEN TO GODJesus explained to the multitude how they could reach the Father through the Son, saying:             “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.  Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.  All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.            “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”***Scriptures: Matthew 11:25-30

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. Don Harris here, your host. I hope you're enjoying the series as much as I am bringing it to you. I love the red words in the scriptures. They're just a huge part of my life. I'd like them to be a part of yours. And most of all, I want you to learn to think red ink if we all start to have the mind

of Christ you will be thinking red ink what would Jesus do what would he what would he say what would Jesus say to do in this situation and that's really this is the key to a good solid Christian life is it not that our Lord has certain criteria by which he lives and by which he expects you to live. So how are we going to do this thing if we're not thinking like he is? Do you think more like your pastor or do you think more like the pastor? Do you think more like your Bible teacher or do you think more like the Bible teacher? We only have one, you know. I know you might think you have many Bible teachers, but Jesus says you have one. That's me.

So as we continue, we are, I guess we, the last show, we talked a lot about baptism and such as that, and we're going to be talking about that again. There's really nothing really to worry about as far as all these ideas about baptism are concerned. Especially if we take our clues from the scriptures and pretty much do what he said to do. And that is

that there was a time when John the Baptist instituted water baptism. But there was coming one after him that was going to baptize with the Spirit of God. If Paul insists that there's only one baptism, you're going to have to essentially choose. And I would say let's go with the Spirit baptism. I think it's the most important. Alright, we find that Jesus is explaining to the multitude how they should reach to the Father through the Son.

Very interesting portion of Scripture we're going to read here. We're in chapter 24 now of our little book. And here we have Jesus saying, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven. Now this comes from Matthew 11. And this is obviously Jesus praying. And he says, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent

and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son. And he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden. I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

I think from these words, we can derive an axiomatic thought. And that is that if your Christianity, if your church doctrine, if everything that you feel that you need to learn, everything you need to do or everything you need to teach or all the rest of this stuff is a burden to you, you're off track. You're just absolutely off track. Now somebody may say, now Don, it's important for us to read our Bibles and to study and these kind of things. I get that, but

I think that it has gone haywire that the most important thing for you to know is what the Bible says, when in reality we know very little about what the Lord is actually speaking to us. Well, what's the difference? Well, Jesus said there's a huge difference. He says, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Not that proceed, not that proceeded out of the mouth of God, which are the recorded words that we find in Scripture. But that proceedeth, which in our modern vernacular, our modern way of speaking, Jesus would have said here that we're guided by on a daily basis every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. You know what that tells me? That he's speaking right now. Right now

as you're sitting there and I'm sitting here there are in the atmosphere, between the ionosphere and the surface of the earth there are millions of radio waves and television broadcasts and all kinds of transmissions that are going through the air that we're breathing. We cannot hear those things. We can't see those things. And so those things are essentially off.

It wouldn't matter if the city that's broadcasting a television show right now, if they went and unplugged their transmitter, you wouldn't know it. Because it doesn't affect us. It's not a part of our perception. But right now, as we speak, there's a newscast somewhere that's telling us something very, very important, something they might think is important. But there's music in the air, different kinds of music,

different kinds of television shows, all kinds of things that we cannot hear and see because we don't have a receiver. We don't have, we're not on that frequency. And so they go absolutely unperceived. Well, just because I don't have a television set, I don't know that it would be wise of me to go around telling people

that there's no such thing as television. But there's many people who love to play the game that there's no such thing as God because you can't hear Him and you can't see Him. And I just think that that's kind of sticking your head in the sand. If you're convinced that there is indeed a God and you are convinced that the Son of God has the authority to speak on His behalf and you read in the Scriptures that Jesus says, if you will keep my commandments, if you will keep my commandments,

doesn't mention going to church. Nope. Doesn't talk about baptism. Nope. Doesn't say believe in the virgin birth. Nope. Not mentioned. What He said was, is if you'll keep my commandments then I and my Father will move into you. We're going to love you and we're going to manifest ourself to you and we're going to lead you and guide you into all truth by way of the Holy Spirit. If you believe these things then what is your next thing to do? Just nod your head and say amen.

I believe that. I believe the Bible, the word of God. I believe whatever you're doing, whatever rhetoric you spout or whatever, you know, little maxims or sayings that make you feel better. You want to go on like that? Well, you're free to go on like that. I'm not going to be mad at you.

I'm going to feel sorry for you, but I'm not going to be mad about it. But I would say that if you believe those things to be true, your next order of business should be, I need to get a television set. I'm referring to my previous metaphor, okay? I'm going to have to get a receiver. I'm going to have to get whatever I need in order to hear the voice of God. Because, friend, He's broadcasting. He's speaking.

He's speaking right now. He speaks every day. And when Jesus said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. He's not talking about the words that preceded. He's talking about the words that he is speaking right now. I can't think of anything more important in your life. As a matter of fact, if you think about it, just think about it for 15 seconds. It doesn't take long. But I think it will occur to any thinking person that the most important thing that any Christian, well, let's face facts,

that any person on the face of the earth could receive it would be guidance, would it not? Proper guidance from somebody who knows, from somebody who's been there, from somebody who's been around. Well, those words are there. They're in the ether. He's speaking them now, but essentially he can't hear.

I didn't mean to talk about this, but this is important. As a matter of fact, let me share with you a little story. You may remember at the baptism of Jesus Christ when the voice of God came down through the heavens. Look at the reaction of the crowd. There were people there who heard this and they looked at one another and said, an angel has spoken to him. Some said that it thundered.

Some people didn't hear anything at all. But you see, there were those that were on frequency, that were listening for the voice of God, or at least were in a position to hear it when he did speak. And it was very, very clear. Friend, you have to understand that you hearing his voice he does not feel like it's some contingency or a concern on his part as to whether or not he's going to or will speak. He speaks

and we should be there to hear what is being said. I often wonder maybe it's just me living in this delight of being Christian and listening for the Spirit of God in my life. However, if I'm standing outside and it thunders, I'm thinking was that the Lord speaking and I just wasn't hearing it or was that really thunder?

But I think that it's probably a good exercise for us to understand that God does want to speak to us and that we need to be in a position to hear what He has to say. These kind of things are so important and you'll hear me talk about them all the time because nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing is more important than guidance. You think about it. I don't care what situation you have. I don't care what your situation is at home, with your kids, with your spouse, with your job. It doesn't really matter. Can you think of

something more important? Can you think of something that would fix the situation, more remedial, better for you, edifying, more edifying than hearing the voice of God and receiving guidance from him? No, no such thing. All right, so here we have Jesus making a statement that I think has really come into its own in the day in which we live. This particular day in which we live, there's no doubt people listening to this broadcast that are intrigued with the newest movement in Christianity. Many of the disgruntled Pentecostals have moved into

the area of the Messianic faith thinking that if you know, Christianity hasn't worked up to this point. You couldn't, you couldn't drag somebody out of the Christian church if, if, if it was answering all their problems. So, you know, where are they, where are these people going? Well, they think that perhaps we weren't praying to the right God. Maybe we were saying the wrong name. You know, his name is Yeshua. It's not Jesus. And we need to do these different things and look I have there's a lot of things about my faith that are very similar to

the messianic way of believing Many people think that The TRI is a messianic Denomination messianic denomination because we keep the Sabbath and we keep the Feast of the Lord and that we don't discount the entire Old Testament and toss it away but I think that in this day and age when these kind of things are tugging on Christians I think that because of our fascination with all things Jewish and some of the Protestant denominations not even being inclined to go toward a

Messianic faith, but they you know the whole thing about being friends with Israel and people united for Israel and we have to love Israel, we have to bless Israel and they talk about all this kind of thing and so naturally it comes time for the Passover. Many Christians have no intention on keeping Passover. Their Passover is now Easter Ishtar, the goddess of the Sidonians holiday

and that's what they want to do. And that's what they're going to do. But Passover is close by and there may be an opportunity to invite a rabbi into the church. This happens everywhere. Has it happened in your church yet? And they bring them in there and they teach on the Seder meal and usually this rabbi is either friendly towards, at least not hostile toward the Christian faith. They may even consider themselves a Messianic Jew or a person who was Jewish and now they're Christian or whatever and they want to share with you the similarities, the

symbology, the characteristics of the Seder meal and how that relates to Christianity and these kind of things. Well if you are dealing with a rabbi that has essentially denounced what he always lived by, at least in the areas that Christ demands that certain things be denounced. What do you want? You want a list?

I mean, there are Jews that believe that the Talmud, the Mishnah, these writings of ancient Jews are indeed what they consider to be the word of God. Jesus says that's got to go. All these traditions that you have are making the commandments of no effect. You can't keep the commandments in a Jewish way because the Jewish practices of keeping the commandments are essentially how to get around them.

And that's not what we're all about. That's not what we're trying to do. And so there's many inconsistencies between. But had you found a rabbi somewhere that is indeed a Christian now, then this particular thing that we're going to talk about doesn't necessarily apply to him. But if you're talking about bringing in someone who is absolutely Jewish

that is not Christian, I want you to hear this warning that Jesus is saying here because many times these people are justified as being a part of a congregation, a part of Christian teaching on Christian television, Christian radio, and we need to listen to them. Why do we need to listen to them? Well, they may not know Jesus,

but they know the Father. Do you know that's what Jesus was just sitting here saying is not true? No man knows the Father. Do you know that's what Jesus was just sitting here saying is not true? No man knows the Father except the Son. Nobody knows the Son except the Father. And in order to know the Father, it requires that the Son reveal Him. Paul said that, no it wasn't Paul, I think it was Peter, said that he that denieth the Father and the Son is Antichrist.

You can't have one without the other. I'm sorry, but you just can't. Well, I'm not sorry. I guess that was just me being nice. There's hardly a way to be nice about that. You can't. You can't have any confidence at all that you're going to see the kingdom of God simply because you think you know the Father God. Jesus' experience and His

understanding was clear that if you do not know the Son, you do not know the Father. Well, this is a realization that every Jew has to come to. Everybody has to come to this. That it requires the Son to reveal the Father to us. Matter of fact, when Jesus asked his disciples, they came back from town and Jesus wanted to know, what are people saying about what we're doing over here? And he says, well,

who are they saying that I am, is what he was asking. Which, by the way, is the question on his mind. You can hear the question on his mind. It wasn't, you know, what do they think about me? Do they like me? Do they think I'm harsh? Do they think I'm mean? No, he didn't ask any of that. He just wanted to know who do they think I am? It's very important that you know who he is. And when you you know who he is and when you do know who he is it's going to show up in everything that you do because you're going to take orders from him you're going to understand

he's your boss but it's uh who do they say that i am matter of fact he told the jews one time he says except you believe that i am he who this anointed one the he says, except you believe that I am he, who? This anointed one, the son of God, except you believe that I am who I say I am, you're going to die in your sins. Wow, man, that's huge. This statement is huge. Nobody knows the father, except whoever the son reveals Him to. That is just hugely important. And it can't be just ignored and passed over and glossed over. You can't bring people into the congregation, have them teach on something.

I don't care how good it is. Come on. You know, here we are attached to the the the creator of the universe with a promise that he'll speak to us and we're out looking for teachers we have no need that any man teach us all right i'll try to relax all right he says here um when he says come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke, my load. I need you to pull what I'm pulling. And when you do, you're going to find out that this burden is not that heavy.

And come unto me all you that labor. And there's just people that are just laboring through their Christianity. One of the saddest things that I see are people who come out of the world and want to be Christian, and they feel this compelling need to learn the Bible and to read the Bible and memorize the Bible and all these kind of things.

It's not going to hurt them, but unfortunately, through the course of time, if they are approached by church leadership, they're going to be told that this is the most important thing in your life. And it's not. Hey, I'm a Bible reader. I read it all the time. Live my life by every page of it.

However, there is nothing more important in my life than spending time with the Father and making myself available to Him for Him to teach me, lead me, and guide me into all truth. Sometimes what He guides me and leads me in goes, many times it goes against what conventional Christianity says and what the seminary says. I'll tell you, it bothered me for a while. I was one of them. It was, you know, very, very difficult. How in the world, I had a man ask me one time, how in the world do you think

that you're right and all these millions of people are wrong? And I'm thinking, really, does it really matter to you what the majority thinks? Because if you do, you need to be Catholic. There's more of them than there is anybody. Or better yet, you need to be catholic there's more of them than there is anybody or better yet you need to be muslim there's more of them than there is anybody in the world so there's your majority they i don't know how we got to thinking this just ridiculously but look every prophet of god stood up at one time in his life as one man, one voice, saying one thing, one message, given to him by God for the entire world. So, I mean, it's not uncommon.

As a matter of fact, it ought not even be expected that because, you know, that you're preaching the truth that there's going to be a billion people behind you. It's not so. The million people are in line where they're passing out lies. What did the Lord say one time? He says, my prophets,

they lie to the people. And the people love to have it so. I'm telling you, he's just baffled when it comes to us he just does not understand what it's like to be a sinner in love with ourselves and being selfish all the time and we have no concern in the world except what belongs to me and the people that affect me

the ones that I love and the ones that I hate and my little sphere, my little world that I live in this is the most important thing and he doesn't understand that kind of thinking and my little sphere, my little world that I live in. This is the most important thing. He doesn't understand that kind of thinking. All right, so he's saying that I want you to take my yoke upon you because it's easy. My burden is light. How can he say that his burden is light

when he makes so many demands of us and he expects so much from us? Well, it's because we just don't do it right. We just don't do it right. We have, you know, there's many things that cause this. The idea of, you know, instantaneous, what do they call that? Yeah, instantaneous gratification.

Isn't that it? That's the way we live today. What we want, we want right now. And if we turn something on, we want it to be on. We don't want it to warm up. We don't want it to boot up. We want it on. If I want a cup of coffee, I want it now. I don't want it. I don't want you. I don't want to go in there and make it and prepare it and do all this stuff. I want it instant. That's even better, right? Everything we want, we want right now. Well, we have taken that and translated that into religious terms to the point that we want instantaneous salvation. You can't have it. It doesn't exist. It does not exist. You can be safe immediately.

You can have your sins covered immediately. You can not be enemies with God immediately. But salvation, he that endures to the end shall be saved. When it comes to these kinds of things about our burden being light, it's because you're saying, you're asking me to pull that load of bricks? You know, I'm a four-year-old boy, and you're asking me to pull that wagon load of bricks?

Yeah, I'm asking you to pull that wagon load of bricks 20 years from now. But right now, we're going to do something else. We need to work on your strength. We need to work on who you are, make you a better person, bring you about, bring you into where you need to be. You see, so you can be in the will of God and not doing what he's called you to do, because he's got a timeline involved. And if what you think he's called you to do because he's got a timeline involved. And if what you think he's asking you to do is some kind of burden or some kind of load, friend, there's something missing in your thinking. Perhaps it's just time. Speaking of time,

our time is gone. I'd love to hear from you. If you'd like to write to me, you can write to Don at thinkwriting.com and I'll get your email, your question, your comment, whatever. I'd love to know where you're from, how you're listening to the broadcast. Send your questions or comments to me, Don, at thinkwriting.com. All right, time for us to go. Bye-bye. You've been listening to Don C. Harris of Think Red Ink Ministries. Email don at thinkredink.com. That's thinkredink.com.

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