Words of Jesus Podcast - Starting Over With The Red Words

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

Jesus came to heal the rift between God and man. However, much of modern Christianity is based in paganism and tradition. When it comes to Christianity, the Scriptures often reveal a different view of God. For example, consider how many times this occurs when you read the Bible, Jesus says, "don't". We do. Jesus says "do". We don't. It is worthwhile to examine our actions and beliefs in the light of Scripture. ***Ch. 30 - Jesus Teaches the Kingdom in ParablesThe Tares (Weeds)  Matt. 13:24-30; 36-43THEN JESUS told another parable, saying:            “The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field. But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, ‘Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?’ He said unto them, ‘An enemy hath done this.’ The servants said unto him, ‘Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”            Later on, after the multitude had been sent away and Jesus had gone into the house, his disciples came to him, saying:            “Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.”            Jesus answered them, saying:            “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of many. The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one.  The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.  As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of the world.  The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.”THE SEED (Mark 4:36-29)            Jesus spoke another parable, saying:             “So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.  For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.  But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.”A MUSTARD SEED (Matt. 13:31, 32; Mark 4:30-32; Luke 13:18, 19)            Then Jesus, speaking another parable, likened the kingdom of God to a mustard seed that grows from a small grain into a large plant:            “Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or with what comparison shall we compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth. But when it is sown,

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus Series with Don C. Harris Hello friends, welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. I'm Don Harris and I'm taking you through the Red Ink. I hope you're enjoying this excursion through the scriptures and with our special emphasis in stopping and listening to what Jesus had to say. You're going to find comfort in what he says. You're going to find, in some cases, condemnation in what he has to say you're going to find you're going to find comfort in what he says you're going to find

in some cases condemnation in what he has to say but all in all i think everything all combined together i think the saddest thing about our study and and these are the things that you think about in the middle of the night when you wake up and you're staring at a black ceiling and you're thinking about your life and you're thinking about your life and you're thinking about your your christian experience and and you're in you're wondering why certain things happen and and you're you're giving it the the due consideration that you should i think that it will occur to you as it did to me my my goodness, you know, I am, my family is, my church is, everything that is in my life that I've always considered to be Christian and a part of my Christianity

is so far away from the words of Jesus. How did we get this far away? How is it that he could say, don't do this? And we always do it. How come it is that he says, you should always do this, and we never do it? How is it that his life, his habits, his habitual lifestyle, there's certain things he did on certain days of the week. There are feasts that he kept. There are things that he understood. There are feasts that he kept. There are things that he understood. There are so many characterizations and characteristics of Christianity

exemplified in his life that are simply not in ours. I don't know if that scares you, but it scares me. Scared me enough to give it all another look. Starting over with the red words. I got into them and I've hardly been able to get out. Because, frankly, everything that he says, I think it's absolutely essential. Am I being silly? Am I putting too much emphasis on Jesus?

There's a famous, well it's I don't know how famous, but if I called the name of the magazine you'd know it. It's just a liberal Christian magazine. Perhaps it wasn't a Christian magazine now that I think about it. It might have even been a newspaper the religious section of a particular liberal newspaper. But their comment just put chills down my back. But I'm afraid that it's

probably agreed to by millions and millions of Christians, preachers, pastors, seminaries, teachers, colleges all over the country and perhaps all over the world. And that was that we could have Christianity without the words of Jesus, but we could not have Christianity without the words of Paul. Now, it has been so long ago that I actually forget the context of what they were saying. I've tried to look at that in every other way that I can. And other than looking at the church as loosely based on the words of Jesus

and based on what's called Pauline Christianity, I can see how somebody would say that or could say that about this trashy duplicate that we have of Christianity today. That wasn't the name of the magazine, by the way. But this fake, cloned, plastic Christianity that many of us are involved in today, that has such a hold on America, on perhaps the world. I can't speak for the world.

But there are sayings, understandings, theologies, and philosophies that come from that that are so commonly held. I'm thinking, have you ever wondered where you got that doctrine from that goes absolutely against the words of Jesus? And sometimes the answer comes back, well against the words of Jesus? And sometimes the answer comes back, well, the words of Jesus have to be tempered with the words of Paul. Thinking, wow, man, really? You think that's true? Don't you think that if the apostle Paul were here that he

wouldn't grab you by the collar and perhaps pound you in the mouth when you say something like that as a blasphemer? Listen, the Apostle Paul was not here to clarify Christianity. He was here to preach the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. I just think that it's a mistake. Look, you probably, I don't know if you're going to find somebody that is more Pauline than I am.

I agree with the Apostle Paul. I got no complaints with him whatsoever. And frankly, I don't find any contradiction in what he taught as to what our Lord and Savior taught when he's here on the earth. I don't see any nuances. I don't see any clarifications. I don't see any expansions on what Jesus said that makes what Jesus said better. I see somebody who's preaching the gospel. Just preaching

the gospel. And to say that we need the Apostle Paul for Christianity, but we don't need Christ, that's just terrible. That's just, man, that's really stinking theology. I don't know that I would even feel comfortable listening to a guy that actually felt like that was so. Let's get to our Savior, shall we? He had, we started out the last show talking about the handicap under which Jesus had to preach, and that was the humanity of man. All the things that we know and have learned about him, all the things that are a part of our lives,

ended up being a part of his life. People will ask, do you think Jesus could sin? Well, absolutely he could sin. He's here as the sinless son of God because he couldn't sin? That doesn't even sound fair. That's why he took on flesh. Because if he'd have come down here as God, I don't know what he could have proven to mankind or to his Father

that if he had no propensity to sin, then to avoid it is not necessarily some kind of beneficial characteristic on his part. So when he did arrive here and he started to teach, he found out immediately that he was teaching to people that didn't have all their cylinders firing, so to speak. All their synapses in their brain weren't firing properly. And they had a very limited vocabulary, very limited knowledge of the world

and certainly a limited knowledge of spiritual things. And so he found himself having to explain spiritual things to very, very carnal people. These people were not antagonistic to what he had to say and it wasn't that they were or their particular drawbacks or their weaknesses were not necessarily a hindrance to what he had to say. It was that he wanted people to understand things that were beyond our understanding.

Now what we have done, essentially, is discounted everything He's ever taught us about the kingdom of God. And we've invented our own. Well, we invented heaven. You know, the idea of going to heaven. We invented that. We took a bit out of paganism. We took a bit out of theology. We took, I'm sorry, out of pagan doctrines and also out of perhaps the Norse

gods, Greek mythology, things such as the Gnosticism movements. We've taken all these things and created this hodgepodge of a God somewhere that was very, very cruel to us and that he was unfair, very exacting in his punishments and we really appreciate the fact that he let his son take over who was essentially a feminized God

who forgives everything automatically, instantly. And he's wonderful and he's all about love and caring and when he walks he hardly touches the ground. And we invented a place for us to go. We're going to go to heaven to be with him. Strictly pagan. Jesus says no man's seen God at any time. He's a spirit. Heaven is His throne. Earth is His footstool. He is so far transcendent from who we are. That was the whole purpose of Jesus

Christ. He's our God. And He has a God. And subsequently we do too. And His God is His Father. You didn't know Jesus had a God? It's one of the reasons why the idea that He is God is really kind of ridiculous according to the Scriptures. Of course He's God now, but you know when he was here on the earth he spoke of his father as his God. He told Mary

as a matter of fact at the tomb. He says, go and tell my disciples that I have risen from the dead. And I go to who? My God and your God. So he's under the impression that he's a mediator between us and the Father and we have kind of bypassed him and set this thing up as though we are essentially going to Heaven to I guess

sit with him. I don't know what people have in mind. You have to make it up from here because the scriptures don't even talk about this. You're not sitting on the throne with God. You're not going to go sit on his lap and kiss him on the cheek. It's not going to happen. Frankly, friend, he doesn't have a cheek. But so, you know, our destination was not good enough for us.

Jesus said the meek's going to inherit the earth. The earth is our inheritance. We're going to inherit this earth. He's going to come and rule and reign over us right here on this earth. And that is essentially our heaven. I allow people to talk about going to heaven and not argue with them. I understand what they think they mean. I understand that. When somebody says they want to make sure they're going to heaven when they die, I guess it depends on how much I know them

and how much I love them, to tell you the truth. Because some people I hardly even bother with. But many people I ask them and how much I love them, to tell you the truth. Because some people I hardly even bother with. But many people I ask them, where did you read this promise you have of going to heaven when you die? I'm curious. I've been on the radio for 15 years asking people to send me the scripture that says you're going to heaven when you die. By the way, nobody sent me one. As close as anybody came, I guess,

as somebody who quotes the scriptures, Jesus said that where I am there you may be also. But, you know, it doesn't take much investigation to find out that at the resurrection, when he's talking about bringing people from the resurrection we find that Jesus is not in heaven at all when we go to be with him. When we go out to meet the king. When we go out to find him in the air. When we see him in the air he's coming to the earth. He's not going up. We're not going

up to meet him. The scriptures don't teach that either. We're going to go out and meet Him in the air. Him in the air. We're not going up in the air to meet Him. So we have taken scriptures and we've pretty much kind of pasted them all over our little fantasy about what's going to happen to us when we die. And as I said in our last show, if we hadn't ripped 2nd Ezra 7

out of our scriptures 150 years ago, we would know exactly what's going to happen to us when we die. I hope I'm creating some kind of appetite or desire in you to go and find an Apocrypha that has the full chapter 7 of 2nd Ezra in it, and you can read it for yourself. It will absolutely change your life. You'll never wonder about dying again and you certainly won't sit around and wring your hands over it and you won't clog up the Sunday school class with what happens when we die.

And you can actually feel some kind of scriptural authority about what you believe and not just make up fairy tales. So Jesus is here trying to explain to us what the kingdom of God is. There's a lot of talk about that the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven are two different things. I have not been able to substantiate that argument. Not in the least. That when Jesus talks about the

kingdom of God, when he talks about the kingdom of heaven I believe that they're one and the same. You might not. I don't know how much that matters. I don't think that we should hinder ourselves with it. I don't think that we should necessarily give people that wagging finger and tell them that they need to believe things and understand them the way we do. But, well frankly Jesus is just not a shy guy that, I don't want to cause any

trouble. I don't want to cause any trouble. I don't want to cause any controversy. So if you want to believe in the kingdom of heaven, you can believe that. These people over here want to believe in the kingdom of God, so you can believe that. But y'all don't argue. No, see, that's just not him.

If the kingdom of God were different than the kingdom of heaven, I can hear him say, now the kingdom of God is different than the kingdom of heaven, I can hear him say, now the kingdom of God is different than the kingdom of heaven. And you need to know this. I can just hear him say this if it were true. I love that scripture when he talks about, as a matter of fact, talking about the mansions, the tents, the housing that we will inhabit in that new kingdom, he says, if it were not so, I would have told you. I admire that. I can follow a Lord like that around for the rest of my life. He's not mealy-mouthed. He doesn't really care about

how you feel about it. This is the way it is. I like him. Alright, Jesus is trying to teach about the kingdom of God and he finds that because of the crippled condition of our own thinking processes, our social orders, our political understandings, our scriptural knowledge, our spiritual understanding, all these things being so poorly developed and so vehemently hindered by these ideas. Jesus has decided to teach this by parables. And why does he do that? Remember we talked about this? And it was simply that for you it is given to know,

but for them it's not given. And so I'm afraid that many of our Bible teachers are talking about something that they've made up in their own mind because it wasn't given for them to know. Now, as we read this, if a picture or an idea or a concept begins to form in your mind and is setting right with your spirit perhaps you're one to whom it is given and what that would make you is

a person who has ears to hear so I don't know about you but I can't wait to read this. I want to see what this is all about. So you're saying, well, get on with it. Okay. These scriptures come from Matthew 13. It's chapter 30 in our little book. Jesus told another parable saying, the kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good

seed in his field. But while men slept his enemies came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up and brought forth fruit then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said, Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? From whence then hath it tares? And he said unto them, An enemy has done this.

Now, I want to stop here because it actually changes, the story starts to change into the area of repair. I think that we should know that some people look at, I mean, they go all the way back to the Garden of Eden with their questions on why. Why would God put trees in the garden and say not touch them? That's not fair. That's not right. That's not good. That's not wholesome. That's not just. Why would he do that? That's a terrible thing to do, to tempt Adam and Eve

like that. Well, of course they sinned. Anybody would feel compelled to do something like that. Well, let me tell you something. That's not so. That might be so with you, but it wasn't so with Adam. It wasn't even so with Eve. Just because something's prohibited, that it has some kind of an appeal to it? Friend, that's your sin nature. Adam didn't have one of those. Eve didn't have one of those. So you're trying to understand something from the perspective of

a person you aren't who's living in a place you've never seen who worships a God that essentially we've never known. Now that's does that scare you a little? It scares me. I'm a little worried about it, to tell you the truth, because I do have a tendency to try to understand everything according to my gathering of knowledge in my life. And I want to understand them, so I'm thinking, what's the difference in me and them? Why would God put a tree in the garden and say don't touch it? Why would he do that?

Well, let's just say that your 12-year-old was found out on the highway with your Buick. And he ran off the road and he ran into a cow or whatever and his airbags blew up in his face and now he's in the hospital and you're going to go see about it. Okay. Somebody walks up to you and says, why? Why?

Why would you have a car in your garage and tempt that boy by telling him not to get in that car and not to start it and not to drive it? And, you know, this is something that adults do. Why would you do such a thing? You look at them like they're crazy. You know, he's not going to be an 8-year-old forever. Or a 12-year-old. What did I say? I've forgotten already.

He's not going to be a 12-year-old forever. He's going to be an adult one day. And one day it's going to be just fine with me that he takes my keys and gets in my car and goes downtown for me. Or he takes the car out on a date. I don't know how old he should be for a date. We'll talk about that another time. But him using the car, that's not against my will. It's against my will today.

Now if the Lord God is creating the garden, he's creating the world, then wouldn't it make good sense for him to furnish it fully? Has it ever occurred to anybody that that tree of knowledge was there for a reason? That there would come a day, one day when Adam and Eve were of maturity and of a certain mental status,

a certain spiritual status, that they very well could have eaten that fruit? Okay, guys, you know, today's the day. We're going to eat of the tree of knowledge. Under God's guidance? Well, of course. He doesn't want us to be ignorant, naked people running around. But those kind of things come in time.

And when Adam and Eve reached that particular stage of completeness in their life, and what I tell you about the scriptures using the word perfect. Perfect means complete. And when Adam and Eve were perfected and they were able to, they did have the maturity and the character to handle truth and understand the difference between right and wrong and good and evil and they've eaten of that tree and they've digested that

and it's become a part of them and they've eaten of that tree and they've digested that and it's become a part of them and they have they've matured into this particular person that that pleases god who knows how long it would be i have no idea uh it could be a hundred it could be a thousand it could be ten thousand years i don't know how long he intended for adam and eve to live. But for whatever reason, for whatever time, if they were to enjoy their life under the leadership of God to the point that He would introduce them to that tree, then it's not necessarily forever, this restriction of this tree. That'll come in time,

just like the car in the garage for your 12-year-old. Do you understand this? And then they probably would have been introduced to the tree of life. Now what was God's concern in the Garden of Eden? His concern was, oh my goodness, they've sinned, they've fallen, they've messed up their brains, they shouldn't have done what I told them not to do. Now we have another problem.

It's what I call the only unfinished sentence in the Bible. And it's where God drifts off into a horrible, horrible thought. And that is, he says, in that sinful, lost condition that is away from me with no allegiance to me and all their allegiance to the serpent who beguiled Eve, because that was the condition they were in, he says, we've got to get them out of that garden and we need to get them out of that garden and we need to get them out now

now did he throw them out of the garden for punishment as so many people say was he just punishing them for doing wrong he was saving them he was saving them because the unfinished sentence is this. He said, in that condition, if they eat of the tree of life and live forever, and the sentence doesn't finish. It's like the thought was so horrible to our God that they're going to live forever in that condition?

There would be no redemption. There'd be nothing that could ever fix this. There's only one thing that'll fix our sinful condition, friend. It's the death that ends all sin. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. Death is your door. It is God's mercy to you. As you move through that,

all whatever was in the earth before that can't touch you anymore. It just can't. How do you know all this? Well, my Bible's got Zech and Esdras in it. These kind of things are stuff that we should all know this, but we don't. Our scriptures have the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and if that wasn't so polluted and so raped by the average preacher out there, it could give us these understandings as well.

And we're going to talk about it when we come to it, so don't miss that. Our time is gone? My goodness. I guess what I want you to know is that as he teaches about the kingdom of God, there are things for us to know, and there are things that are not for us to know. And there are things that are not for us to know. We're all individuals before our God who is trying to give us something by which we can live

and we can understand with a modicum of intelligence and a respect for logic and good, solid common sense. This isn't a game. It's not a fable. It's not just a fairy story. These kind of things can really make a difference in our life. Ah, time's gone. I'm so sorry about that. If you'd like, I'd love for you to write to me. Give me your questions or your comments. Don at thinkredding.com. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. ThinkRedInc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you