Words of Jesus Podcast - Racism: Hatred Without Cause

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

There is a standard of behavior required of Christians. Sin creates an impact on our neighbor, on our relationship with God and on our own life. The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) reveal the secret to achieve a happy life and to open the door for communication from God. Matt. 22: 36-39 "Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."Strive to enter into the narrow gate. ***76: Jesus Teaches His Disciples Repentance, Faith, and ServiceLuke 17:1-10When Jesus had completed the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, he turned to his disciples and said:         “It is impossible but that offenses will come. But woe unto him through whom they come! It were better for him that  a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.Take heed to yourselves. If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, ‘I repent;’ thou shalt forgive him.”         The apostles said to Jesus:            “Increase our faith.”            Jesus replied:            “If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, ‘Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea;’ and it should obey you. But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, ‘Go and sit down to meat?’ And will not rather say unto him, ‘Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink?’ Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow [think] not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done that which was our duty to do.’”

Think Red Ink Ministries presents the Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris. Hello my friends, welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. I'm Don Harris, your host of Think Red Ink Ministries, Pytown, New Mexico. I'd love to hear from you if you'd like to contact us. And as simple as writing me an email, you can write to Don or info at thinkredink.com. And if you have any questions or comments, we'll be glad to help you and correspond with you. We've been talking from chapter 76. Well, actually from, we were in chapter 75.

We're in chapter 76 today. This is where Jesus teaches his disciples on repentance, faith, and service. When Jesus had completed the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, he turned to his disciples and said, it is impossible, but that offenses will come. Don't let the King James throw you here. It throws us a curveball every once in a while.

We read something like that and we say, what? He said, it is impossible but that offenses should come now what is he saying it's impossible to live a life that offenses do not come offenses are going to come there's just not there's no way around this is all he's saying. thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him. And if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day, turn again to thee and saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him. Now, first of all, let's not miss so much here. This particular verse was pulled from the scriptures and he was talking about that if people

treat you good, in other words he says if a cup of cold water only given in the name of a disciple that you're not going to lose your reward. And I want you to treat these little ones good. Well, what little ones? He's talking about his little ones. He's not necessarily talking about children. I understand, and I get it, and it's certainly applicable.

I'm not saying that it's wrong, but we should understand that as far as he's concerned, we are his little ones. Do you remember when Jesus was speaking to Peter, he said, he says, I'm going to give you power and whoever sins you remit, they will be remitted. And whoever sins you retain, they will be retained. And of course, you know, the Catholic Church took that and pretty much ran with it. And was, I think they used it incorrectly in that Peter had the ability to forgive sins.

No, he doesn't have the ability to forgive sins. I'm going to go ahead and take the time and talk about this because I think sin, sins against God, sins against man, sins against Christ, sins against the Holy Spirit, sins against our fellow man, sins against God, sins against man, sins against Christ, sins against the Holy Spirit, sins against our fellow man, sins against ourselves, they're all different things altogether. You know, I've heard people say, you know, a sin is a sin. Well, you know, if you're talking about the commandments, you're talking about breaking one of the commandments, the Bible's clear, and it will certainly bolster that idea and back you up to the hilt that if you break one of the commandments, the Bible's clear and it will certainly bolster that idea and back you up to the hilt that if you break one of the commandments, you might as well break them all.

No, it doesn't say might as well. It says it is as if you have. You're in violation of them all. One commandment does not have more value than another commandment does not have more value than another commandment. Now, in saying that, I also need to say that when we're talking about the commandments, they are a whole. They are ten commandments in stone, not 613, not they haven't been erased in the Beatitudes replacing them on a rock

or any of the rest of the foolishness that we have, all the things we've come up with so we don't have to keep the Sabbath day. But they are a whole. You break one, it's as if you have broken any or all. So there is some truth to that. And I think it's interesting that when one of the Pharisees came to Jesus and said, he said, what is the greatest commandment? Jesus didn't even pick from the ten.

I thought this was very wise on his part. He says, the greatest commandment is that you'd love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength. You see, he actually quoted from Leviticus, is it? And so he didn't choose from the ten. Now I assure you that's exactly what that Pharisee wanted him to do, was to choose from the ten which is the greatest commandment.

And Jesus even said, don't even think that the ten commandments have entered into second place because the second is like unto it, that you'd love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus is a very wise man. And so in this encounter with this Pharisee, the Pharisee wanted to know what was the greatest commandment. Then later on, we hear Jesus say that if a man violates the least of the commandments and teaches men so,

he'll be called least in the kingdom of heaven. That leaves us with the thought, they do have some value, but it's not really value that Jesus was talking about. I happen to believe he's talking about impact. Because when we violate a commandment, it has a certain impact on us, the people around us. Job asked the question,

if I sin, what is that to God? Well, he's not talking about breaking the commandments of god which i happen to believe that the book of job was written before these commandments were put into stone and um he wasn't talking about a sin against god at this point he was talking about sins against his neighbor. And he was saying, how does this impact God? Here's Job thinking about the impact of sin. And so when we talk about a commandment as being least, notice Jesus didn't say which one it was. But I think that with just honest and common sense evaluation, I think we can see that there are certain sins that if we do them, if we break these commandments, for example, murder,

you have caused an impact in the community that you live in uh you've sinned against god uh you know violating violating one of his commandments you've made a a widow out of a wife you've made an orphan out of children you very impactful to a society. Not only are they impactful to that society, but to evaluate that sin as to what it actually causes, like I say, with this common sense evaluation, we can see that, for example, I've asked people many times in discussions and asked them a question such as,

what do you feel like is the least commandment? And they mentally sort through them, and we want to leave those you know those first three alone because there's a lot we don't know about this the lord is very protective of his name he's very jealous of his worship that he receives from people and and he's not interested in being reduced to a god and i don't know that we can really you know i don't think we need to touch those but let's look at as as the commandments continue you'll find that the fourth commandment is uh the sabbath day the fifth being honoring your parents and so forth we you know we have theft and we have adultery and we have these kind of things.

But in most cases, people pick as the least commandment by their impact, Sabbath day observance, which is, you know, just insulting to God in a lot of cases. As a matter of fact, it goes back and forth with people who discuss these kinds of evaluations of the law whether the fourth commandment is indeed in that first, it should be included in that first three that these are sins against God. Because in reality, you can do all the jammer jawing

that you want to do about the Sabbath, saying that the Lord wants us to rest, and it's good for us, and it's good for our health, and trying to somehow bring in some kind of health benefit to the sabbath but he never mentions health he just says that it's an honor it's it's god's honor so i mean uh i don't know that the that the fourth commandment ought not be included in the wit along with the first three as sins against god because if you don't keep the sabbath day

you're not really sinning against yourself um and you're not really sinning against your fellow man but you are dishonoring god because well frankly he said to do it so we're just saying yeah okay yeah yeah yeah i got you sab Sabbath, right, yeah, okay. And it's insulting. Okay, so we deal with the following commandments, which are our relationship horizontally, our relationship toward the people that we're around. We don't steal from them. We don't take their wallets.

We don't take their wives. We don't lie to them. We don't lie for them we don't lie for them or against them in court and it's pretty easy to see the impact of of violating those next commandments in line but honoring your parents it's one of the laws that people say you know perhaps that's not as bad as and they'll quote another it's not as bad as murder um and then they'll say uh covetousness uh the sabbath day and and they will throw these the these three usually get named when we're talking about what do you figure the

least commandment is and um i can't help but believe that Jesus did not cite a commandment as being the least commandment. You can bet that if he had called the Sabbath the least commandment, it would be quoted by every Sunday keeper around the world. But he didn't. And I think that the takeaway from what Jesus was preaching and teaching that day was these Ten Commandments are a whole. They are whole. And you either keep the Ten Commandments or you don't. And if he and the Apostle Paul and, well, the other apostles and epistle writers,

they always took, included keeping commandments as a part of our salvation. I mean, all the way to Revelation. You find John asking the angel, who are these people? Well, these are the people who kept the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. And John looked at the angel and said, well, brother, that's faith and works. That's a works-oriented salvation. No, he didn't. They didn't have those kind of problems in the vision.

Everybody was on the same page, so to speak. So we find that keeping the commandments and salvation are inextricably coupled together for all time and eternity. Jesus said these laws aren't going anywhere. So what are these offenses that happen to us? What are those sins that Jesus actually gave Peter the right to forgive? Well, here's the point I want to make for you. And that is that we are his children. And he says, if you offend one of these little ones

you're not going to get away with this now here's the interesting thing when it comes to sin it's always been odd to me that people sometimes they talk about forgiveness of sin, and they say, well, you have to forgive yourself, right? I mean, that's what we say all the time. You have to love yourself, and that kind of thing. Something Jesus was just totally unaware of. He says, I'll tell you, I got an idea for you. How about denying yourself? However uh we have this idea that we need to forgive ourselves we need to deny ourselves uh no we need to forgive ourselves and we need to love ourselves and if we do that that we're going to be better people the truth is that when it comes to forgiveness, we are supposed to forgive those who sin against us.

Now Peter wasn't under any other impression, but modern religion, or I should say Catholicism, took Peter, put him in the place of Papa, that's where the word Pope comes from, and made him the father, made him the vicar of Christ, the voice of God in the world, and the one who has the ability to forgive sins. And I encourage you to look into the history of Martin Luther. He asked some very good questions in the 95 Theses that were nailed to the door of the Wittenberg Church, one of which was, if you have that power

and you're a wonderful and holy and loving man, why don't you just forgive everybody? Nevertheless, somehow we have an idea that God can forgive us for offending our brother. Do you think that? Do you think that God can forgive us of a sin committed against our brother? If we treat him in some way that is, well, there's no sense in iterating every instance.

We know when we've sinned against our brother. It could be something as minuscule in your mind, but huge in their mind is ignoring what they have to say, treating them as if they're a second-class citizen. I think one of the most pronounced and obvious sins against our neighbor is racism. You know, just to hate somebody for no good reason. As a matter of fact, Jesus said, by the way, I mean, if you're sitting there struggling with racism, let me tell you something that you may not know. Maybe you've

never put this together, but is there a better definition of racism than hating your brother without a cause? I can't think of one. Do you know what Jesus said at that point? If you're a racist, you're a murderer. That's what Jesus said. You hate your brother without a cause, then you've committed murder in your heart. That's who you are. So, I don't know, you're struggling with racism? You know, struggling with putting it down, putting it out of your life? Holy mackerel, friend, you're talking about murder here.

I'd say you better get on it. I don't know why this is such a struggle. But to hate somebody without a cause? Friend, first of all, you're not Christian if you're racist. I'm sorry. Well, you know, hey, that's your opinion. Yeah, that's my opinion. Forty years of reading this book and living by it

tells me that if you're a racist, you cannot be Christian. I don't care what you say. And, you know, there's people out there right now that are saying, amen, glory to God. Preach it, brother. Well, guess what? You hate Muslims?

You know, that's real common that's that's being preached in churches i happen to know a church in san antonio that just loves to tell you that it's okay to hate people but it's not now these are sins that are committed against us p Peter had, he told Peter, now listen, I want you to know that if someone sins against you and you decide to retain that sin, not remit it, not forgive it, I mean, of course we're commanded to forgive.

But to not actually, you know, I guess we're just destined to talk about the word imputation here because that's exactly what happens when we retain a sin against ourselves. Now, friend, you need to be very, very careful with this. If, let's say somebody actually did something against me. It wasn't a violation of the Ten Commandments. They didn't steal from me. They didn't take my wife.

They didn't, you know, whatever sins that are listed in the Ten Commandments. But what they did to me was really really wrong perhaps perhaps they cheated me i mean cheated me big time perhaps they did i have as a christian power to forgive, to remit, to retain. Do you understand that? I have that power. He gave the church that power. We have the ability to forgive those sins, and you should, however, and you need to be very careful with this because you're talking about the Lord getting involved in sins against you. He's saying that although you're my children,

I'm not going to have you treated badly. Those who are against you are against me. That's the way it is. But should you choose to remit that sin, in other words, not impute this sin to that person, I'll forgive it as well. Now see, that's a wonderful thing. That's a wonderful thing to do for your enemy. All of a sudden we can learn how to love our enemy. Isn't that a wonderful thing? We don't have the power to forgive somebody,

or to pardon someone, forgive someone, to remit the sins that they commit against God. This is the other misconception about sin. You know, they say sin is sin. No, it's not. No, it's not. And when somebody actually commits a sin against God, one of the Ten Commandments, that's really none of your business. You know, I'm sorry that he stole from you, but he committed a sin against God.

He'll have to go there for forgiveness. It'll be God who forgives him. I can forgive him as far as whatever injury it's done for me or done to me, but he's committed a sin against God, against the Ten Commandments. He's going to have to deal with God on that because God put it in the list. So sin not just sin we all we also have sins against ourselves the bible says that a man who plays around with fornication and which i think includes all sexual perversion well you say perversion and people shut off it has to do with sexual activity that is outside of marriage you play around with that kind of thing. The Bible says you're sinning against yourself.

Not adultery. That's a sin against God. He put that into the Ten Commandments. But when you're talking about fornication, man, although that's not written in the Ten Commandments, you're sinning against yourself. Why? You're creating appetites and such within yourself

that you're going to struggle with the rest of your days. How many men would you like me to interview to show you that what I'm telling you is true? They never, ever get over this. You have committed a sin against yourself. We have sins that we violate our neighbor in some way. That's not necessarily the Ten Commandments, but it's really bad, bad behavior.

Take, for example, lie not one to another. Speak every man truth with his neighbor. That's not in the commandments. Some people say that where it says thou shalt not bear false witness is lying. It's not. That's perjury. That's a totally different thing. The Lord based the whole nation of Israel on a set of laws that were very, very important and could not be violated, and it was all based upon the testimony of two or three witnesses. Remember? Well, if you are one of these witnesses, you better tell the truth.

You better tell the truth as you know it. And what I mean is that if you don't know something is a fact, you don't need to testify that it is. And if you know something is not a fact, you don't need to testify that it is. And if you know something to be a fact, you don't need to testify that it's not. This is, that's the commandment that says not to bear, not to be a false witness.

Now, we lie to each other and we're not honest with each other. We're not violating one of God's Ten Commandments. We're not sinning against God, but we certainly are sinning against our neighbor. So Jesus goes on to explain to him, explain in this thing where he's talking about repentance, faith, and service, that if you commit a sin against your brother, or your brother, and actually what he says here is, when your brother commits a sin against your brother or your brother, and actually what he says here is, when your brother commits a sin against you,

you need to forgive him. He says if he commits a sin seven times in a day and comes to you seven times in that day and says, forgive me, you'll forgive him. One place he says, should we forgive seven times and he says i say unto thee not seven times but 70 times seven now you can look at that scripture and say okay 490 times i better start keeping track of how many times i forgive this guy because when we hit 490 i'm done you know if you're doing that you're not letting the Spirit of God, not in the least. Jesus isn't saying forgive 490 times.

He's saying forgive them forever. There's a reason why we do this. You know that, right? All you folks that love to play around with the ideas of once saved, always saved. Let me tell you something. You don't forgive your neighbor. You don't forgive them. You're not going to be forgiven.

If you've got some other way into the kingdom of God without being forgiven, perhaps you need to tell me what it is. But look, just because you're so-called saved or born again or whatever, doesn't mean you're not going to really barf things up from time to time, and we're going to have to forgive one another. And in doing this, Jesus is saying, don't think that when these things happen to you, well, Peter actually said,

don't think when these things happen to you that some strange thing has happened. Jesus says, it's impossible, except that offenses should come. And if they come, here's the way you deal with them. You deal with them with forgiveness. Our time is gone. Oh my goodness. I'd love for you to write to me. Send your questions or your comments to Don at ThinkRedInc.com. I'll be glad to answer your email. All right, I'm going to see you next time. You'll be right here, and we'll see you then. Until then, think red ink, my friend.

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. you