Words of Jesus Podcast - The Crowd Recognizes - Then Rationalizes

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

“This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” The suspense of prophesy is so enticing that tangible fulfillment is difficult to accept. Messiah is here! Jesus clearly claimed to fulfill the prophesy of Isaiah.  Hallelujah!  Right? Wait, no so fast.  The candidate must be examined.  Scriptures become secularized with tradition, causing the leading experts to miss Messiah. “If what you believe is not true, do you want to know it?”***Jesus and His Message Rejected at Nazareth (Part 4)HEARING that John had been cast into prison, Jesus returned to Galilee. He began to preach the gospel of God in the synagogues, saying:            “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent ye, and believe the gospel.”           His fame was spread through all the regions round about.            Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been reared, and went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, as was his custom. He stood up and read from the book of the prophet Isaiah, were it was written:           “’The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.’”           All eyes fastened on him as he began to preach, saying:           “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.”           Many of those present were bewildered, and others were awe-inspired. They questioned among themselves.           “Is this Joseph’s son?”           Others hearing him were astonished. They said:           “From whence hath this man these things? And what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Judas, and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?           And they were offended at him.           Jesus continued, saying:           “Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal thyself. Whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.’ But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when then Heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land. But unto none of them was Elijah sent, save unto Sarepta, a city Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many the lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.”     

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus Series with Don C. Harris Hello friend and welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. Think Red Ink Ministries is really, really happy to be bringing this to you and to your particular area. Hey, have you invited any friends to watch the show? I'd love for you to do that. That's the way things get done, by the way. All the advertising in the world is nothing like somebody just word of mouth telling somebody that they're enjoying the show.

If you want to set your recorders, whether you've got the old-fashioned tape recorder, CD recorder, TiVo, I don't know what's going on out there today, but if you have some way of setting it up to view this channel at this particular time when we come on, you can watch these shows at your leisure. And Think Red Ink Ministries has in mind to make all these things available to you in one way or another. And you keep up with what's going on there

on the website at thinkredink.com and you'll be able to find what you need. A lot of these shows I realize they're kind of packed and sometimes you just need to hear them twice sometimes you just I don't know you just got to do it again just to think you know did I hear that right? I understand that. I understand that concept very, very well. But most of the time, the reactions we get to our show is, gee whiz. I never heard anything like that before.

But over time, as people listen with an open mind and honesty, it's one of the prerequisites to understanding and appreciating what we do here because we take great pains to eliminate the dishonesty that is so prevalent in Christianity today. I don't want to take time to list them all because they condemn people. People get upset when you talk about them making up stories and making situations that are

by all intents and purposes are natural occurrences but they like to turn them into miracles and these kind of things and turn things into spiritual warfare and this kind of stuff when it's really just you doing whatever you want to do for your own reasons and you caused this situation because you didn't have the will, the strength, the capacity, the spirit, whatever it takes to serve God in a proper way and in a proper manner and you find yourself out there

in the wilderness wondering what to do. Well, try to eliminate those kind of things in your life by appreciating God for everything that He does for us, whether it's something that's pleasant or something that's unpleasant. But, you know, like the preacher says in I think it's Ecclesiastes, he says, you know what, I've been living a long time, here's what I've figured out. Good and bad things happen to good and bad people.

It's a shame, but they happen. If you have that kind of fortitude that you really do want to serve God in spirit and in truth. There's a lot more to that than living in some realm of Christianity that we developed that we say, oh, it's spirit and it's truth. It's my truth and it's whatever spirit we can conjure with loud enough music. But no, no that's not so. There's a spiritual aspect of Christianity that

cannot be ignored. And that has to do with doctrines and theologies and understandings of exactly who our God is and how He intends on doing what He does and how it affects our lives. But then there's that aspect of just truth. When things aren't true, you do well to remove them from your life. We don't need any more fantasy. We don't need any more things that aren't necessarily real. There's a whole generation of people that are

growing up that think that Star Trek is history. We've had the Star Trek Enterprise since 1965 and visiting Alpha Centauri or whatever else. I don't know. It's fantasy, folks! And a lot of times preachers figure out early on in their ministry that that's what sells. People are interested in fantasy. They like to believe things are true that aren't necessarily true.

There's no reason to believe them, but it makes them happy. Just recently I talked to a pastor who was talking to another preacher that he says, you know, how do you teach this with the scriptures saying essentially the opposite of what you teach? And he says I know that's not true. I know that that concept is not necessarily valid, but it gives people comfort. And I'm thinking, jee-lee-peasy, where in the world

did our preachers get the idea that that's their job to make us feel better? But it's what sells. We have been in chapter 4 when Jesus stood up in the temple and read from Isaiah. Let's see if we can get some more of this story read here. We find that Jesus read from Isaiah about the ministry of Messiah and claimed it by all intents and

purposes, claimed it as his own and made himself the Messiah. And he really flipped out a bunch of people there. And on top of everything else he didn't let it go as this is something that you might suspect because you're watching me and you hear me say this you think oh my goodness you know this could be the Messiah. He didn't leave it to their wonderings and leave them

in some quandary wondering whether or not this is the way it is. He had to add right at the end of it this day this prophecy is fulfilled in your ears. And removing all doubt, removing everything from their minds that yes, I am seeing and hearing exactly what He's trying to say to me and present to me, I'm seeing it. This man's claiming to be the Messiah.

Many of those who were present were bewildered and others were awe-inspired. They questioned among themselves, is this not Joseph's son? Others hearing him were astonished. They said, from whence hath this man these things? And what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands?

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. This is the realization that is occurring to the people in the audience that day that not only is he claiming to be Messiah, but it really does look that way to me. These people are not only arguing against or for and with

other people in the congregation. They're arguing with their own self. These are questions they're asking within themselves. Now, you'll find as we continue that the Pharisee says, we know you're not the Christ. How do you know I'm not the Christ? Because we know where you came from. And we know that when Messiah comes no man knoweth whence he is. No man knows where he comes from.

Now, you know, I'm thinking, okay, so where did you get that idea? Where did you get that idea? I've looked for it in vain in the scriptures. I can't find it. But they were totally convinced of it. The reason I'm saying this to you in this particular age that we live in, the reason I'm thinking that this is important and wanting to say it to you is because we have some of the greatest religious minds in the world. You know, you can speak disparagingly of the rabbis if you want to, but the fact of the matter is that these

scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, these people's lives were dedicated to knowing, understanding the scriptures, understanding the prophecies. This was their whole life. They weren't shoe salesmen or in Jesus' disciples case, you know, fishermen and tax collectors and these kind of things that kind of took this on last week. These are some of the greatest religious minds in the world. And they had

over a period of time mixed man's commandments in with God's commandments man's prophecies and his sayings and his little maxims that they lived by all these things were so interspersed with the scriptures, they couldn't tell them apart anymore. Friend, that's where we are today.

I mean, you can hear somebody out there say, well, you know what the Bible says, a penny saved is a penny earned. What? What? And I'm thinking, yeah, I mean, well you don't agree? Well, yeah, I mean I agree that a penny saved is a penny earned. I get that. You know, yeah, it's good advice and that kind of thing but saying it's from the scriptures, do you really need to do that?

And I mean Ben Franklin said that, didn't he? I'm just wondering, what is this all about? Man's doctrines and his commandments get so interspersed with religion we can't tell it apart anymore. I was at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota and they had, I think it was on the 4th of July. So it was a big deal, right? They were having fireworks and they were having displays and they were having these kind of things. And the government

has among their parks and stuff, they have people that they call interpreters now. They're not guides. They have people that they call interpreters now. They're not guides. They're not rangers. They're interpreters. Isn't it exciting to be involved in a progressive world? And this particular interpreter was playing a little game with the audience. And she would say,

all right, I'm going to give you a quote, and you tell me which one of these men, and she's pointing at the four men that are lit there, it's at night, and pointing at these four men on the mountain, tell me which one said this thing. And she would give a quote, and somebody would call out a name of one of them. Yeah, that's right, or I don't think anybody's wrong today.

If they give a wrong answer, it's, well, we're going to try anybody else? Anybody? You know, because nobody's wrong. Well, this little game went on for a while, and then finally she said, she's going to give a quote. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. Well, Big Mouth Don's in the audience, so what's going to happen?

Is he going to stand up and attribute this to Abraham Lincoln like everybody else in that crowd is going to try to do? Oh, no, no, no. That would be plagiarism. So I stood up and said, Jesus Christ! Well, I got to thinking, okay, my whole life's involved in red words. Am I the only one that knows this of this whole crowd out here? And I thought this is what's happened. Things have become so secularized

and we have added man's words to God's words, God's words to men, and we've done man's words to God's words, God's words to men and we've done this so much that we can't tell it apart anymore. One of the reasons why, we're doing the Words of Jesus series. You need to know what he said. And if the Lord is good to you and gives you revelation, not only will you know what he said, but you're going to know why he said it. The situation around a lot of the sayings of Christ

have a tendency to enrich and in some cases change the meaning completely from what we've always understood it to be. So hang on tight and enjoy yourself. The argument that was being made here was, it's obvious to me and it's obvious to a lot of people around here that just perhaps this man is the anointed one. But they started arguing with themselves saying, isn't this Joseph's son?

Couldn't be the Messiah because we don't know where the Messiah comes from. He was making a judgment based on something that was not necessarily revealed to him or given to him by the Scriptures. What was happening was is he was trying to convince himself wrongfully by something that some man had taught him. As a matter of fact I've heard, and you may have heard, people

quote that God does not hear sinners and the Bible says God heareth not sinners. I've heard people quote that as if that's so. But in reality that was being quoted but that was being quoted by a Pharisee. He was saying something that people have always said. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's true.

I thank God it's not true. If you didn't hear sinners, none of us would be able to have his ear and cry out for salvation. We know that's not true, but people say it because it's in the Bible. God hears not sinners. Well, I'm sure the list is long of things that are said in the scriptures that are not necessarily true because they're said by people that don't know. And there's, when Jesus said that he was the son of God,

he said, now we know you have a devil. Well, how'd you, what do you mean you know I have a devil? Well, you said you're the son of God. So what? They said, well, that makes you equal with God. Who says? Well, that's what they grew up believing. That's what they said to each other. You say you're the son of God, that makes you equal with God. No, it doesn't. But they said it did. And they rejected him for it. I guess what I want to get across to you

is that you're not dealing with a bunch of stupid religious people here. This isn't just a group that meets at Denny's on Friday afternoon. These people knew the scriptures. The scribes knew the scriptures so well they could quote it book at a time. They knew the scriptures. But here's what you need to realize. If you're all excited about end time prophecy and you're all excited about learning more and more about Jesus and reading your Bible and memorizing

scripture and not letting anything take you by surprise in the end days, you're excited about all that and you spend a lot of time in that. Let me tell you something. There's a group of men described in the scriptures that were the people and the ministry and the priesthood of God Almighty that sat and watched John the Baptist walk the streets of their city and watch Jesus come in, do miracles,

fulfill prophecy after prophecy after prophecy, and they still missed him. Why is that? Well, it goes back to the same thing I told you weeks ago this is not education this is revelation do you want protection from the strong delusion that's coming on the earth

do you want protection from false prophets it's not by holding their feet to the fire and listening to their sermons and checking out and seeing if they believe this and they believe that and if they confess this and they confess that. If they do that, then they're good. And if they don't do that, then they're bad. They're false prophets. That is not what, man, we're supposed to know these things within our own self, within our spirit.

This isn't guesswork. This isn't T-charts and pros and cons. This isn't making a decision in some logical fashion through your education or through what you think you know. This is revelation. These kind of things are revealed. Jesus said, you know, if you'd have known my Father, you'd have known me. If you knew me, you'd know my Father. Nobody, but nobody knows the Father

except the Son. And to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Oh, oh, oh, back up. What did he just say? Nobody knows the Father except who the Son reveals him to? You mean you can't educate yourself into this? You can't learn so much that you can logically deduce who the Father of lights is to know who Jehovah is to understand him and his way and and all about him. You can't learn that from books.

No, you cannot learn that from books. If it's never been revealed to you, it's never been revealed. Peter says thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus said flesh and blood didn't tell you that Pete. Where'd you get that from? Well gee, I don't know. He says, with a slight British accent. I don't know. And he said the father revealed that to you.

This is the revelation. This revelation is the rock upon which I'm going to build my church. I'm going to come into you and I'm going to live in you and lead you and guide you into all truth. You're going to have one teacher, one pastor, one rabbi, one master. Who is that? Me, me, me, me. Nobody else but me.

You want to know the hierarchy of the children of God inside the kingdom of God? You've got Jesus Christ, little box right here, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Messiah, Anointed One, and all those names underneath there. And then a little stem coming down to a line with boxes from hither to yon of us. He said, one is your master and all of you are brethren. Really? Is that the way this works? Yes, that's the way this

works. He is to be our teacher. He is to be our guide. You want to do it some other way? Oh, you'll have company. You'll have friends. You'll be a part of a big denomination somewhere. But when it comes down to closing your eyes in death, I hope it's sufficient. It won't be. I don't know how many people you've seen die, but it's not a pretty sight. And it's an embarrassing sight when they've been a Christian all of their life and they still have no assurance. And they still are scared to death of death. It's sad. Really? You didn't believe this all your life? They thought they did, but they didn't. Why? Because they got it through their brains. They got it through their ear holes.

They got it through their eyes and reading. They got it through their brains, they got it through their ear holes, they got it through their eyes and reading, they got it through preachers, they got it through socializing with the right people. But nobody but nobody received revelation from God. You know, you don't have to live that way. You can receive this kind of revelation. How do you do it? First step, keep the commandments of God. Work on that. We'll get back with you on the next two steps.

Got to move on here. It says that they were trying to determine that he was not the Messiah, and these are the reasons why. They all had to do with his familiarity with the neighborhood and who he was, who his brothers were, who his sisters were. And they were offended at him. Now

when it says offended, this is King James English. This is back in the day when words meant different things. They were saying that this was huge stumbling stone. This was big. It wasn't that they were offended that they went off into their crying room. No. No. They were offended in that they couldn't move any further than what's in front of them right now. That's being offended. You can't move forward. You know the Bible

uses the term a rock of offense. Do you know what that is? It's a rock laid in the path of a warrior that can't go through with a chariot or he can't go through with a horse. Some of them were so strategically laid out that a man couldn't walk through them. Those were rocks of offense. And they stopped people from moving forward. And that's exactly what

happened to these people we cannot go past this right here jesus says you will surely say unto me this proverb physician heal thyself whatsoever we have heard done in capernaum do also here in thy country verily i say unto you no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you the truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heaven was shut up three years and six months. When great famine was throughout all the land but unto none of them was Elijah sent, save unto Sarepta, city of Sidon,

unto a woman that was a widow. We're going to talk about this as we continue next time. Because I think that you'll find me referring constantly to a huge stumbling stone in the lives of many Christians is the idea of universality, instantaneous salvation and miracles and instantaneous this and that and also the

surety or almost obligation under which God has to operate when we ask that He essentially has to do it. I realize there's a lot of people that wouldn't dare say that. Boy, they sure talk that way. You know, why is it you're in that wheelchair? I thought you were a Christian. Really? Would why is it you're in that wheelchair? I thought you were a Christian. Really? Would you say that to somebody in a wheelchair? Well, probably. It's been done.

But it's that instantaneous, that, what is that? It's kind of like an entitlement that we have. The entitlement idea, this is very, very dangerous. Well, time's gone for today, and we appreciate you coming by and making this a part of your day. Join us next time for the words of Jesus. We want to hear from you. Hey, just send me an email, don at thinkready.com, and I would love to hear from you that you're listening and what you think of the show.

Well, until next time, bye-bye. ¶¶ you've been listening to don c harris of think red ink ministries ThinkRedInc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you