Words of Jesus Podcast - The Bread of Life

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

The message of John the Baptist and of Jesus to the people and the church-leadership was "[Change]! Repent.” The Kingdom of God is at hand.  The Jews murmured at this because Jesus didn't fit their ideas.  This is also true in our generation.  Jesus instructed people to look for the anti-Christ, tribulation, persecution, death - and resurrection.  He did not speak of “a rapture escape” or of going-to-heaven-when-we-die.  Don’t take offense.  Repent. Change.***Ch. 38 - Jesus Speaks of the Bread of LifeJohn 6:22-71The next day the people on the shore he had left sought Jesus but could not find him. They knew that no boat had been there but the one his disciples had entered, and they knew Jesus had not entered it with them.            Many other boats came to the place where he fed the five thousand. Those on these ships, hearing that Jesus was gone, sailed to Capernaum, taking with them many from the shore who were also searching for Jesus.            They found Jesus teaching in a synagogue in Capernaum and they said to him:             “Master, when camest thou hither?”            Jesus answered them, saying:            “Verily, verily, I say unto you, ‘Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.’ Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you; for him hath God the Father sealed.”            They said to him:            “What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?”            Jesus replied:            “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.”            Then they asked him:            “What sign showest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee? What dost thou work?Our fathers ate manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from Heaven to eat.’”            Jesus answered:            “Verily, verily, I say unto you, ‘Moses gave you not that bread from Heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from Heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from Heaven, and giveth life unto the world.’”            They said:            “Lord, evermore give us this bread.”             Jesus said:            “I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. But I said unto you that ye also have seen me and believe not. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from Heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me, that everyone which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have...

Think Red Ink Ministries presents the Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris. Hello my friend, welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. Don Harris here, your host, and we're going to take you through some more red ink. Take your shoes off, let this ink sink up through your skin. I love the one Jesus said one time, he was telling them something that was very important. He said, let these words sink down into your ears. I think he knew that most of our ears are just full of mud and it's going to take a while for it to get through there.

But once it gets in there, once the word of God is in you and alive and you're starting to think red ink, things are going to change. So many of you are experiencing it now. And I'd love to hear about your experience. You can write to me don at thinkredinc.com now last time we talked about how we were still in chapter 37 of our book and we talked about how the jews murmured against christ refusing to believe in him because he didn't fit their idea of who christ was supposed to be. Relating these ideas to John the Baptist and of course here Jesus,

I was warning that the Antichrist will again come on this earth and be mistaken for Christ himself. And those of you who believe in the rapture idea are in the most dangerous situation that you can be because um i mean i meet people on the road all the time you know they you know they say are you are you anticipating jesus return pardon me are you looking for jesus to come back are you looking for christ and i said no actually i'm looking for the antichrist you know and they get all puffy about

it well jesus said that's exactly what we're supposed to do when you see the abomination of desolation stand in the holy place who so you know that it says in the book of daniel who so readeth let him understand then you'll know that these things are come on us. And even though he instructed us to look for the Antichrist, we're still looking for him to come back. Jesus is not coming back. You're not going to find him pop up tomorrow. You might find Antichrist pop up tomorrow. I really doubt that. I think he's coming at Passover personally. And then we're going to

live through three and a half years of tribulation and then we're going to see Jesus Christ come and make the kingdoms of the world the kingdoms of his God. And then he is going to bring about these people who have resurrected and they're going to be given these cities as rewards and we're going to enter into the millennial reign of Christ, the prophesied Feast of Tabernacles that's going to last for a thousand years with

his city here having been firmly planted on the earth, the bride of Christ. No, that's not you. It is a city that is going to come down from God out of heaven, and he's going to rule and reign here on the earth. There it is in a nutshell. And I'm sure we'll cover it again and again as we go through the words of Jesus, because this is something that he believed. This is something that he taught. I'm sorry if it goes against what you've been taught, but I don't have time to go through all the millions of opinions. Let's just read what Jesus said. All right, so the Jews, they rejected Christ because he didn't fit their list of criteria. And Jesus was answering them

because they were saying, you know, how can he say that he's the one that comes down from heaven? How can he say that he's the anointed one? Well, Jesus says, murmur not among yourselves. No man can come to me except the Father which has sent me draw him, and I'll raise him up at the last day. It's written in the prophets, and they shall all be taught of God.

Wow, I wonder when that's going to happen. I thought we're all being taught of Bible teachers nowadays, and books and tapes and CDs and DVDs. No, we're going to be taught of the Lord. And every man, therefore, that hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto me. Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God. He that hath, he hath seen the Father.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead. I can see him pointing at himself when he says that. not die i'm the living bread which came down from heaven if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever and the bread that i give him is my flesh which i will give for the life of the world the the jew says how's this man going to give us his flesh to eat you see again you've got this poetic style, poetic kind of language where you have Jesus saying, you're going to have to eat this flesh. He's saying, I'm going to have to become a part of you. It's a common understanding that certain foods

give us certain benefits. Because what we eat does eventually become who we are every cell in our body is made up of what we have consumed and as we consume christ every bit of us is transformed into him over time and he's saying that when this happens to a person and i love it in the gospel of thomas it says when the outside becomes like the inside the inside like the outside uh that's when that's when a person has really entered into the kingdom of god here on this earth and it's it's very much what jesus is saying here um he's also trying to explain to them that look you don't understand what you're talking about

i know that's kind of a rude thing to say, and I know that probably goes against your sweet little Jesus, you know, that that's not my Jesus thing. But the truth is, is that he was, you know, he was not, he wasn't coy, he wasn't afraid, he wasn't a coward, he wasn't shy about saying these kind of things, because they were very important. But truth is, you don't know what you're talking about you're mad because i said i'm the bread that came down from heaven holy mackerel what are you going to do when when you see me go into heaven what are you you're just going to fall over and faint you can't even take the words much less the reality of what I have to say. Jesus continues,

Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye shall eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. He keeps referring to the resurrection. For my flesh is meat indeed. By the way, you do know that when the King James uses the word meat, it means food.

And sometimes people get the idea that meat is what, in our present day vernacular, is essentially what the King James time, those people would have called flesh. So there is such a thing called flesh so there is such a thing as flesh and there's such a thing as meat so when he says uh except you eat my flesh there you go and drinketh my blood hath eternal life and i will raise him up at the last day for my flesh is food indeed you see that my flesh is meat indeed it almost sounds like he's saying the same thing twice but he's not saying this is food this is sustenance for your body this is you know what what comes into you to give you life um and uh he says as the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father,

so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is what I mean, that it's just a fact of life that something has to die that you may live. You ever think about that? We're so extracted from the land in the time that we live in today're so extracted from the land in the time that we live in today

so extracted from the farm uh i think that people don't understand you know we think meat comes from the grocery store friend it doesn't it comes from the cow that was standing on her hooves yesterday and today she's on the table well what happened to happened to Bessie? She gave her life that we can live. You see, that was just an understanding among people. They understood this more so than we do today. Jesus is saying that I'm going to have to die that you might live. And you're going to have to take me into you like you do food. That every cell in your body can be recreated by the atomic structure of the food that you eat. You take me into you and you're going to become me. It's going to be a wonderful thing.

He says that he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. Let's return to our reading. Many of his followers murmured among themselves, saying, this is an hard saying, who can hear it? Jesus, knowing what went on in the minds of his followers, asked, does this offend you? And what and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before? It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.

The words that I speak unto you, they're spirit and they're life. But there are some of you that believe not. Here Jesus is saying, okay, these words are hard for you. You need to understand that what I'm saying to you is a spiritual concept. This isn't a physical concept. Don't get all bent out of shape about eating blood or eating flesh. That drove them crazy, you know. The truth is that after this and as we continue to read, you'll see this happen. Boy they were

hugely offended at this idea because wow, human flesh? Human blood? What in the world are you talking about? The Jews were extremely offended. Jesus had known from the beginning the ones who had not believed and who would betray him. He said, I'd really like to return to this thought, but I want you to see that from that moment,

many of his followers abandoned him and no longer walked with him. Jesus turned to his 12 disciples and said will you also go away now simon peter answered him and says lord to whom shall we go thou hast the words of eternal life and we believe and are sure that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus answered, Have I not chosen ye twelve? And one of you is a devil. He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for he was one of the twelve who later would betray Jesus. I think that Jesus is making it clear here that we have an ability to hear his words and reject them on physical grounds, but you need to be very careful because what I'm telling you, I'm not just prattling words here. I'm telling you that if you look at these things spiritually, you can see what I'm talking about.

And there is an ingestion of me into you. There is a digestion of me into you. There is a cell transformation of me into you. This is not something that you paint on or that you put on or that you act in a certain way. This is you becoming me. Look, I have an advantage, Jesus says. My father was not a man. My father is

the father in heaven. If you want to be a part of my family, you're going to have to reject your father no no no we're not supposed to reject our earthly fathers but he's saying that we're going to have to take on a new father we're going to take on a new family we're going to take on a new name you know the idea of names is was not new to the Jews, that people who were of the Father, that were of Yehovah, Yahweh, Jehovah, it was not an uncommon practice for them who took these things on to themselves to add to their name his name this is why uh you'll you'll find that a lot of the hebrew names end in jah or they say like eliyahu these you know within there is um is god's name in there. Yeramiyahu. This is Jeremiah. And we have Yah at the end of that name.

We have names all through the Old Testament that have El. They have the ideas of Elohim. They have Yahweh. They have Yah. They have His name as part of theirs. What is that? This is joining the family of God. This is one of the things that the Lord God was concerned about when He gave the Ten Commandments. Don't take my name in vain. This is not an empty exercise

for you. This is not for you to sit around and and and play with a scrabble game and come up with a name for your kid and stick ya on the end of it and make them and pretend like they're one of my own no no no you will not take my name in vain taking his name in vain is to emptily use his name which we do all the time praise the lord hallelujah thank you jesus right don't we say those kind of well don't don't some people say those kind of stupid things all the time you know i i've eliminated them from my vocabulary i just i don't care i i put them in the same category as cussing you know to to say his name emptily you know it's it's it's it's blasphemy it's it's against the commandment i'm not going

to do it i'm not going to say his name in vain i'm not going to take it in vain so this all comes from and stems from the understanding that we are supposed to be becoming Christ. He is supposed to come into us and be a part of us and be our God from the inside out. It's a really, really a lovely thought. And Jesus is playing on that very idea when he says that you're going to have to eat my flesh and drink my blood. The Jews are saying, oh man, if we do that, we will be totally against everything God has ever told us. No, he's saying, look, my words are spirit. My words are spiritual. Does that sound better? Is that easier to understand? My words are spiritual, and life is found in what I have to say.

So don't take these kind of things so literal. Don't take them so that you have, you know, misapprehensions about, about oh he wants us to drink blood he wants us to eat flesh this happens all the time when when prophets stand up and try to preach and teach the word of god to god's people you know they say oh well he believes this and he believes that and you know he goes against our understanding here, very much like the Jews did with Jesus and Elijah. He doesn't fit our understanding. But it's because a person may be speaking in very, very spiritual terms, and it ends up just taking their entire thoughts away

and carrying people off and becoming, as he says, offended in him. He says, if you think for one minute that what I have to say to you in words, printed on a page, or come out of my mouth, if they're offensive to you, and again, here it is another problem with today's vernacular and the king james when it talks about offense it doesn't mean you know that you make me blush or that i'm offended or you've hurt my feelings that's not what offense means he's saying that if what i'm saying is stopping you dead in your tracks because that's what an offense is by the way i've used the the analogy before that uh many times a big boulder would be rolled into a road that they don't want

the enemy to pass over and that big boulder is called a rock of offense it it stops it hinders if you're hindered by what i say man you wait until you see what's going to happen to me when i'm when i am raised up in front of everybody else when you see the son of man ascend you think this is a you think this is gonna this is stopping you wait until you see that because this is going to go against everything that you've ever been taught. Man, from the very beginning, from the time that John the Baptist opened his mouth until Jesus ascended into heaven saying, nothing is going to be like it ever was. John the Baptist was saying, everything's changing,

and we have to be prepared for that change. Because, friend, we don't have a whole lot of understanding in these areas and we just need to back away hold what we believe loosely and not be so concerned about what other people think i mean would you really rather belong than be right of course you wouldn't i hope not but we're it's going to take courage and it's going to take something that's going to have to be true to ourselves and to everyone else and especially true to our god this is that bread which came down from heaven not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead he that eateth of this bread shall live forever over and over again the bread leads to eternal life.

The eternal life is begun by the resurrection. It is all facilitated through two things. The life that is sustained on this earth by the eating of that bread, by the eating of that flesh, by the eating of that blood of christ that develops the life that is on this earth and finally that life's arm and wrist and hand reaches and turns the doorknob on the on the door called death and when that happens you you are going to uh the next stage in your life hopefully is the resurrection the resurrection of the just you're going to stand again on those two feet that are aching right now oh those those two feet that are so sore right now and the ground that you're standing on you're going to stand on

that ground again that's what resurrection is it's not an esoteric and nebulous idea about somehow you know if we if we never forget them they never die where'd you get that idea how did where did you who told you that because uh i i know it you know it's a pleasant thought to think about you know we should we should think about. We should never forget them because as long as we remember them they're still alive. No, no, no. I get that. But the truth is there is such a thing as life after death. Real, honest to God life. And one day we're going to stand again on this planet. On this very planet right here.

This one. And we're going to be raised from the dead come up out of the grave we're not going up anywhere we're going to we're going to inhabit this earth and we're going to do so with a king and a priest named jesus christ who's going to rule and reign from the new jerusalem from the city of god and satan being bound for a thousand years i can hardly i hardly want to talk about anything else this is going to be a wonderful thing and yes it's all by faith i've not been there i've not seen this this isn't some vision or revelation that i've had i hear my lord say it it rings true in my spirit I don't know if it's ever occurred. Have you ever been to an art exhibit

and seen the work of men who are true artists? Have you ever been to an orchestral music show or seen an orchestra play or a choir sing and really exposed yourself to true talent you ever heard a man speak and it's just you know it's just unbelievable that that kind of talent could one day breathe its last go into a box go into the ground and never be heard from again you know i don't know about you i mean i'm not speaking disparagingly of nature or anything, but, you know, I've had a few pussycats.

They're all pretty much like, you know, I don't like to think about them dying, but my goodness, you know, you can replace a dog with a dog. You can replace a cat with a cat. The birds that are singing outside my door are probably not the ones that were singing outside my door are probably not the ones that were singing outside my door last year and certainly not two years ago not with my cat around but i'm saying that there are some things that can be replaced and they just don't seem to

have that eternal resonance that eternal ringing that that that that eternal depth that a human being has. I don't know how you can look at another human being and see that person as dead and gone forever. Well, there's a reason why you can't see it. Because it's not true. We have been infused with a life and a spirit from God himself. An eternal spirit has been put within us and our bodies aren't eternal but we are and that's why when he raises us from the dead when he raises our bodies

out of the grave and he changes you know remember paul said those of us who are alive and remain you ever want to remain from what there's so many things to talk about but when he says those who are alive and remain are going to be changed changed into what the same thing those bodies were changed into when they came up out of the grave yeah they look just like they always did i believe that they're going to look just like we do i think they're going to have the very scars that we created in our life jesus had scars when he came out. He had holes in his body because of swords and nails and such. And I believe that when he appeared to his disciple, I think there were pieces of his beard missing. I mean, because it was pulled out at the resurrection. Look,

I don't mean that you just throw all this stuff on the ground and let people trample it that's not what that's not my purpose my purpose is for us to understand that these things are very very real and in this millennial reign of Christ the time is gone I can't I just can't continue in these thoughts. But in that time of millennial reign, do you know what's growing inside the walls, the gates of that new Jerusalem? A tree of life. And the leaves and the fruit on that tree are for the healing of the nations. Healing of what? Man, it's going to be such a wonderful thing to to have access to that fruit or that fruit being brought to us by those chosen ones that have the ability to go in and out of the gates of the temple and and and those fruits and those leaves and the things that come from those

trees start to restore us back and give us our health. And I mean, our actual lives are going to be starting to live in reverse years. We're just going to, it's just, it's a wonderful thought. You think, wow, man, that sounds like a fairy tale. You know what? It's a lot better than the fairy tale I've been told because it's backed by scripture. You keep finding these things in the Scriptures. And anyway, it tells a beautiful story, and time has beaten us to death here. That old clock just seems to run too fast, but we'll pick it up here next time.

Thanks for being a part of the show today, and I want to hear from you. I want to know who you are. I'd like to know where you're listening and how you're listening. And if you have any comments about the broadcast, I'd love to hear them. You can write and tell me wonderful things about your life. You can tell me things that are giving you trouble. I'd be glad to help if I can.

And I invite you as well to visit our website, thinkradinc.com. Go there, look around. Any materials you think that might be helpful to you, please let me know what they are. Send me your address. I'll be glad to send them to you. And we'll all do this thing together. All right, now my email address,

if you want to write to me, is don at thinkredink.com. If you'd like to write to the ministry, you can do so at Think Red Inc. Ministries, PO Box 718, Pytown, New Mexico, 87827. All right, time is gone for now. We'll see you next time. Think Red Inc., my friend. Bye-bye. You've been listening to Don C. Harris of Think Red Ink Ministries. Email don at thinkredink.com. That's thinkredc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you