Words of Jesus Podcast - Substance Over Signs

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

The communication barrier between God and man thwarted every attempt to relay the truth Jesus came to reveal. You can hear the frustration of Jesus, "wicked and adulterous generations seek signs." Hunger and thirst after righteousness not signs. There's a way to bypass the issue of physical signs and education proof texts. Jesus said, "If you'll keep my commandments, the Father and I will teach you from the inside." Jesus said, "My words are Spirit and they are Life." ***Ch 43: Jesus Again Refuses To Give A Sign To The Pharisees AndSadduceesMatthew 15:39, 16:1-4; Mark 8:10-12IMMEDIATELY AFTER he had fed the four thousand, Jesus and his disciples went by boat to another part of the country.             The Pharisees and Sadducees came and tempted Jesus, asking him to show a sign from Heaven as evidence of his authority.            Jesus refused them, saying:            “When it is evening, ye say, ‘It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowering.’ O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah.”            Then Jesus immediately left them.

Think Red Ink Ministries presents the Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris. Hello my friends and welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. We're talking, speaking from actually chapter 43 of our little book. This is when Jesus refuses to give a sign to the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Jesus had problems with signs. I know you think that he did a lot of them, but he really had trouble with people who believe in signs. One time he says, you know, Gentiles seek after a sign,

trying to insult people who are asking for signs and trying to insult a Jew who despised the Gentiles. He says, you know these uh these uh what did he call them the the adulterous generations the the gentiles the people who you consider to be less than you those people they're always looking for signs so what are you doing here oh you're looking for a sign too uh but he he just didn't like the whole sign business um and unfortunately it's a big part of a lot of people's christianity they love signs they invent them they lie about them uh they they make them up they you hear somebody if you've

known somebody for a really long time and they have, you know, a little less than, they're less than honest. Or they exaggerate a lot or, you know, they like to embellish stories. You compare their story today with their story, you know, five years ago or 15 years ago. Or when you were actually there and you actually saw these things happen. And you hear them tell the story, you're thinking, wow, man, that has really grown into something huge. You know, God did these big, wonderful things. He spoke to me and he said, and which, you know, people, people do this all the time. You know, the Lord told me that, you told me that you know they they love to say that because

why they love signs they like miracles they like things like that that that justify them in the way they live in the way they think and what they do and everything they do is just fine and if they get any kind of adversity in their life it's the devil that's doing it. And truth is, is it's probably not. It's probably because you're a liar and you don't appreciate honesty and you don't appreciate, you know, you try to turn everything into a miracle to get people to believe you or to be impressed with you or to, you know, quit aggravating you or quit second guessing you. Preachers do this all the time. A preacher come up with a really stupid idea,

and then he'll say that the Lord told him to do it, so that you can't argue with him. You're going to fight against God? No, preacher, I'm fighting against you. Oh, goodness. We really need to stop a lot of this stuff. But no, the Lord didn't send a bluebird to sing on your windowsill to wake you up this morning.

I know you enjoy that. Why don't you just enjoy it? Why does it have to be some commission where some bluebird is getting a list of demands and giving your address? Now, this bedroom window is the one on the far right of the house. You know, it's on the first floor. What do you think is going on here?

What do you think is going on here? So, you need a sign? You're pitiful. If you need a sign, you're just pitiful. People, they'll tell me tell me you know that the lord told them this or the lord told them that yeah how did he tell you well you know he appeared in my bedroom or you know gold letters in the sky or you know some vision or something and i say aren't you ashamed to say that you know he didn't say that if i go away i'm going to give you

visions he didn't say if i go away that i'm going to write these things in the sky he didn't say if i go away that i'm i'm going to speak to you in your dreams at night um he didn't say any of that what did he say i'm going to teach you from the inside well what what happened to that idea well why isn't that good enough and uh why is it that we have to try to make things into some supernatural thing because we love signs jesus said uh you know you're just following me around because you want something to eat and they said well what's wrong with that moses fed people and and and so what sign do you work all right no i'm sorry before that they said well what does god want us to do he says he wants you to believe on the son of man he wants you to believe on me that's what that's the work god wants you to do

okay then do a sign that we might believe on you, let me just guess what kind of sign you might be interested in. Hmm. Does it have anything to do with food? Well, as a matter of fact, it does. And they told him, well, Moses, you know, he gave them food. Why don't you, you know, go out there in your little spiritual kitchen and make up something to eat? We'd like to have something to eat.

Jesus was, he despised this attitude. He just made him so angry. And then in this particular one, we're going to read today, he says, you know, you get signs and you don't even understand them. When you do receive a sign from me, you don't understand understand it and you're always wanting signs and and we're going to read as time goes on or as as the show goes on that he says he says you're always looking for a sign but i'm going to tell you something i'm not giving you one okay i'll give you one and you know what we did with it we destroyed it let me show you immediately after he had fed the four thousand jesus and his disciples went by boat to another part of the country the pharisees and sadducees came and tempted jesus asking him to show a sign from heaven as evidence of his authority

first of all let me say this. The Pharisees actually came to Jesus one time and said, now, by whose authority do you do these things that you're doing? And Jesus says, let me ask you a question. And you answer me, I'll answer you. Deal? Okay, fine. Now, there's many people that believe that because jesus didn't have to answer uh their question because they couldn't answer his that jesus was avoiding answering the question

he wasn't avoiding it at all he wasn't tricking them oh that jesus he's so slick he's so coy he tricked them no he didn't trick anybody he was saying you want to know about authority i'll prove to you you don't know authority when you see it it's true you don't know authority the authority of john tell me about the authority of john did god commission john to preach and teach like he did or Or was it of his own volition? Was it of man? Was it of the earth? And they sat and thought about it in their hypocritical way and using their doctrine of leaven, which is you got to care about what everybody thinks before you decide what you believe. They said, oh my goodness, if we say that he's of god jesus is going to ask us

then why didn't you believe what he said well then we'll say that he was commissioned by men oh if we say he's commissioned by men the people will stone us so they came to him and said we can't tell we're gonna we're gonna talk about that story one day but jesus was proving to them, you don't know authority when you see it. And here he's going to show them, you don't know a sign when you see it. Therefore, you get one.

You get this one wrong, it's over. Sorry. Now, you might think that his mercy endures forever and his long-suffering, you know, and he cares about everybody and he's just going to stick with you until the very end until you finally accept jesus as your personal savior i don't know where you get that from because my lord jesus says here's the way it is you know

he's compassionate and he cares and he'll stick with a guy but hey let's just face the fact to face the fact it's such a thing it's too late there's such a thing as this is all i'm doing this is it this is it you either you get this or you don't this is this is the lord that we serve it doesn't sound like my jesus because you're serving the wrong jesus that's why you're not serving the jesus in this book all right he says when it is did you say amen or oh me or did you turn off the tv all right he says um when it is um they ask him for a sign that they might believe or understand by whose authority he does what he does. Jesus said to them, when it is evening, you say it'll be fair weather for the sky is red.

And in the morning, it'll be foul weather today for the sky is red and lowering. Oh, you hypocrites. You can discern the face of the sky, but you can't discern the signs of the times a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign do you see this he's saying that there are signs in the earth that tell you exactly what's going on and you don't have sense enough to read them don't tell me you don't understand science because this is exactly the way you predict the weather the the sky doesn't say

you know 60 percent chance of rain tomorrow only thing it does is it just it turns red in the evening or it's red in the morning and if it's red in the morning you know it's going to be foul weather and if it's and if it's red in the evening you know it's going to be foul weather and if it's and if it's red in the evening you think it's going to be nice so it doesn't say that anywhere but you're interpreting signs and you have the ability to do that but you can't interpret the signs of the times boy this is such a huge indictment against us you know let me just say here for a moment how bad do the colleges need to be before we reach and grab these these chancellors by the pants and drag them into the street and fire them how bad do the schools need to be before we decide to to re-employ teachers based on character instead of their stupid pieces of paper

given to them by colleges who don't give a wit about god or anything else how bad do schools have to be before we duck walk the administration to the street and say you're fired how bad it have to be you don't see the signs of the times how bad do your churches have to be before you say this is enough we're going to go back to this we're going to start looking at red words we're going to become christians again we're going to put christ back into christianity let alone christmas you know there's people that spend a whole lot of time trying to put christ into christmas man just expend half of that energy trying to put christ into the church you know the building has the

door on the front that he's knocking on saying let me in that's the church he's not inside he's outside knocking on the door trying to get in oh how bad do they have to be how many how many preachers have to blow their brains out before the other preachers that are left alive in their states of depression and anxiety before they realize oh my goodness perhaps i have usurped an office that's not mine perhaps i have put myself in the place of christ i've been condemning the catholic church for 40 years for calling themselves the vicar of christ a man in the place of christ i've been condemning the catholic church for 40 years for calling themselves the vicar of christ a man in the place of christ on the earth i've been condemning them for 40 years and i find myself doing the same thing that's why blowing your brains out looks like a good idea

that's why you know taking sleeping pills and just not waking up seems like a good idea. Man, how bad do things have to be before you can discern the signs of the times? How often do you have to? How intense do you have to be? How much detail do you need about the house of cards economy in the united states to understand that we're just teetering on a precipice we're we've got our arms all around our little house

of cards and the wind is blowing and we're trying to keep things from from how long how how bad does it have to be before we understand this is the end of time how many families have to be destroyed how many families have to be split up and carried away how many insane asylums have to be full to capacity until the point that we park a bus in front of an insane asylum and ship all of our of our ambulatory insane people to another city in the middle of the night and dump them out over there how many homeless people do we have to have before we understand you know what things are falling apart how many times do we have to sit and watch uh you know crybaby politicians acting like six-year-olds before we grab them and duck walk them to the street

and start over. How long does this have to, we can't discern the signs of the times, really? You can tell it's going to be fair weather tomorrow, you just look at the signs. Well, listen, it's not going to be fair weather tomorrow. No, it's not you see a red sky in the morning sailors take warning and if we are going to take warning we're going to have to start doing something differently than we did before there you go there's some of your signs you can deal with before you ask the lord for a sign from heaven how about dealing with the signs he's already given us you can't discern the signs of the times now here's here he says i want you to know that as far as i'm concerned it's a wicked and adulterous generation that seeks after a sign why would he say such a thing as that you You know what? Wicked and adulterous people need signs

because they have no communication with God. Now, is that just a foregone conclusion to you? If it is that the wicked and the adulterous seek after signs, if that's a foregone conclusion to you, i don't think you understand what those words mean because he's not describing uh stalin hitler and hugh hefner that's not what he's doing he's not saying wicked adulterous i know that's what you think he's saying but friend he's describing us we're the most adulterous generation there ever was forget sex forget women and men forget the nakedness forget the junk you see on tv and the filthy movies and

the pornography and all that stuff no no no that's just the tip of the iceberg you know where the iceberg is we have walked away from our god as his perfect and and and chaste virginal bride and we are playing around with other gods constantly i don't think god cares about santa claus i don't think god cares necessarily if i keep christmas or keep ishtar you pronounce it ishtar oh you pronounce it easter well he pronounces it ishtar the goddess of the zidonians i don't think he cares that we that we just you know sneak around you know the the motel with Ishtar once a year. I don't think he cares. He's open-minded.

We have an open marriage. He allows us to play with other gods. It's not a real problem for him. Very open-minded. He loves everybody. You know what you are? You're an adulterer. You're a spiritual adulterer.

You're not worthy of him to be your husband and to be your outlook you know last time we were talking about we need to realize that he cares about our physical needs i think you're pretty smart in in in deducing that he probably doesn't care whether you live or die like a man who has lived with a cheating wife for 30 or 40 years and will not stop. He might love her, but you know what? There is no way that that relationship is the way it needs to be. And our relationship to God is the same way.

Why? Because we're an adulterous generation. There's no purity in our accepting him. Think about this for a moment. Why would the the lord say don't take my name in vain you ever think about that do you think that's just sticking the word damn on the end of the word god really is that what you think you think it's the just the the the connotation the uh the enunciation of the word Jesus Christ? How come you can say Jesus Christ and it's not cussing and say Jesus Christ

and all of a sudden it's cussing? Why is that? Do you think that's taking his name in vain? Do you think that's what he's talking about there? You know what we're doing? We're straining out gnats and swallowing camels again. So what's going on here? What is this whole thing about taking his name in vain?

You know the woman that I was just talking about that has been cheating on her husband and everybody in the town knows it and everybody knows she's a whore and everybody knows that he's the last to know, or he's ignoring the whole situation. Poor old Bill, you know. He just doesn't know.

He knows. He knows. You know what that woman has done? Stop her on the street. Ask her for her driver's license. Take a look. You know what you're going to find? Well, I don't know what you'll find today.

But there was a time when a woman would take the name of her husband. And you're going to find that her last name is the same as his last name. Hmm, what's that? Well, we're married. Boy, you sure don't act like you're married. You sure don't act like you're faithful. You sure don't act like you're faithful. You sure don't act like you love this person. You sure don't act like you're in his family. You break his heart every day and you say you're married. You know what you've done, sister?

You've taken his name in vain. And many of us who call ourselves Christians, the root, the stem of that word being christ we've taken his name in vain you know it's worse it's it's it's just the worst kind of adultery so a wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign uh-oh that scripture's starting to mean something differently now why are you looking for signs because you're not faithful to your husband you're not faithful to god it's going to have to be a sign for him to speak to you it's going to have to be a miracle for you to understand anything because

there's no relationship you don't have confidence in his love and his care and his compassion and you know what you shouldn't because you're an adulterer you can't play around with these other gods pagan gods pagan entities you know the the the hodgepodge that we call christianity that's more uh it's, that's more Buddhist and more Muslim than it is Christian. You know, we cannot do this constantly and not be an adulterous generation. Now, what about wickedness? You know what wickedness means?

You know what the word means? You might think that, oh, that's describing hitler he was a terrible man he killed people he was wicked no you know wicked just mean well of course he was wicked but i'm saying that the word wicked simply means lawlessness you don't live under anybody's rules you live under your own rules even those of you that think you keep the commandments. You're living under your own commandments. Oh sure, yours look a whole lot like his. It looks like you're keeping his commandments,

but you're keeping your own. You think you can just mix a few words here and there and keep his commandments? You know when he says, this is what I want you to do, this is what I want you not to do do you know what your choice is at that particular point i mean if you're not going to be wicked you're going to do exactly what he says you're not going to justify it well back then it meant this and back then it meant that and in the hebrew it means this and and play around with all these games and you know they'll do we really even know what day is sunday and what day is saturday and you really want to do that by the way you know if you're

considering the sabbath we've been talking about a lot jesus talks about it a lot and um if you have if you have a concern about sabbath and you want some answers in this area, as a conventional Christian, I know you have questions about it. I certainly did. And I've written a very small little booklet. You can get it in English, Spanish, or French. And if you want it, I'll be glad to send it to you. Just write to me, Think Rating Ministries, P.O. Box 718, Pytown town new mexico 87827 please do i'll be glad to

send it to you now the reason i bring up sabbath it's the most commonly broken commandment there is it is what makes many of us wicked when no other commandment makes us wicked i got no trouble with the adultery thing i got no trouble with the murder thing i got no trouble with the thief thing it doesn't it that doesn't plague me but man every seven days i find myself not keeping the sabbath day do you you see if that's the case, you know, the apostle made this very clear in one of the epistles, saying that if you break one of these commandments, you're guilty of breaking them all.

Do you realize that? You know what that makes you? Makes you wicked. Wicked. And because of that, you don't have any confidence toward god at all and in a relationship with him at all matter of fact if i ask you if you were saved you say yes glory to god hallelujah thank you jesus i'm saved i'm sure for heaven as if i was already there

okay fine and how do you know that well the bible says bible says bible says bible says that wow really so you've got a written contract somewhere is that what you've got you don't have a relationship all you know is is the bible says if you confess in the mouth of the lord jesus believe in your heart god raised from the dead thou shalt be saved and i believe it bible says i believe it that sett Bible says, I believe it. That settles it. No, that doesn't settle it at all. Do you have a relationship with him? That's what I want to know. That's what he wants to know. You know, when the Bible talks about Adam and Eve having a child, you know how it talked about the sexual union between Adam and Eve?

It didn't say they had sex. What did it say? Adam knew his wife Eve. It's a Bible word for that, which ought to be brought back, by the way. But it's very kind and a very benign word, and everybody knows what it means. But do you realize that when Jesus was looking at people

who were wicked and adulterous, and they called themselves Christians, oh, look at all these wonderful things we did in your name, in your name, in your name. In what name? Christ. These were Christians that were standing in line. They weren't Muslims. What do Muslims do in the name of Jesus?

Anything? What does the Lions Club do in the name of Jesus? Anything? Who does things in the name of Jesus? Christians do. This is going to sit wrong with a lot of people. But there was a whole line of people there that says, we've done all these wonderful things in your name.

And Jesus says, don't miss this. Depart from me. I never knew you. Do you realize that the marriage was never consummated? Do you realize that he never was intimate with you? You never were intimate with them friend we are we are that wicked and adulterous generation that he is talking about right here and no sign shall be given it except the sign of the prophet jonah and we have absolutely in christ Christianity, not in the world,

we're not opposing science here. We're not opposing the great minds of the world. We're opposing the church. They have absolutely destroyed the only sign that Jesus gave us, saying that if this comes true, you're going to know that I am who I say I am. I'm going to prove to you next time we come that Jesus is not the Messiah. That'll get you to tune in.

All right, I'm going to leave you there. It's time for us to go. Until then, think ready, my friend. Bye-bye. ThinkRedInc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you