Words of Jesus Podcast - The Key of Knowledge

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

The commandments bring life, order and communication with God. It is important work.  However, the traditions making the law more difficult creates barriers and voids the benefits of keeping the law.  Past consequences of commandment disobedience (i.e. 70 years of slavery for violations of the Sabbath) motivated religious leaders to set boundaries (fences) around the law with the intent of protecting the law.  These fences made the law grievous and difficult to obey.  Over time these fences became a favored source of authority, as people were required to continually consult religious leaders regarding every-day life.   Jesus corrects the practice of the leadership and further expounds on the "weightier matters" of the law.  Jesus said, "These things ye ought to have done" and "not avoid the weightier matters..." ***64: Jesus Rebukes The Pharisees, Scribes, and LawyersLuke 11:37-54A Pharisee invited Jesus to come to his house to eat. Jesus entered and sat down to the food spread before him. The host was surprised that Jesus began to eat without washing before dinner.            Perceiving his thoughts, Jesus said to him:            “Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also? But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you. But woe unto you, Pharisees! For ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God. These ought ye to have done, and not leave the other undone. Woe unto you, Pharisees! For ye love the uppermost seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.”            Then a lawyer who was present said to Jesus:            “Thus saying thou reproachest us also.”            Jesus replied:            “Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! For ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe unto you! For ye build the sepulchers of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers; for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchers. Therefore also said the wisdom of God, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute’ – that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple. Verily I say unto you, ‘It shall be required of this generation.’Woe unto you, lawyers! For ye have taken away the key of knowledge. Ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.”

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus Series with Don C. Harris Hello friends and welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. Don Harris, your host. And we are going to continue with the red letters in the scriptures. You thinking red ink yet? Good for you. This particular one is, we begin in chapter 64.

Jesus rebukes the Pharisees, scribes, and lawyers. We talked about the word lawyer before, right? You remember? These weren't necessarily attorneys. Well, they weren't attorneys at law, but they were doctors of the law. And so we find them as part of the religious leadership in the synagogue. A Pharisee invited Jesus to come to his house to eat. Jesus entered and sat down to the food

spread before him. The host was surprised that Jesus began to eat without washing before dinner. Receiving his thoughts, Jesus said to him, before we begin, washing before dinner was considered to be, I'd say today it would be praying before dinner. There are people that are appalled if people don't pray before they eat. Under no mandate to do so, never been told to do so,

they consider it to be a most heathen practice. For you to understand how a Jew felt, for a person to sit down and eat without going through the ceremonial hand washing, the little vessel that has clean and unclean handles on it and has to be poured in such a way and your hands have to be wiped in a certain way. It has to do with ceremonial cleanliness. It has little to do with the fact that one's hands may be dirty. In order for you to understand

how appalling that was to the Jew, it would be pretty much like going to a Christian's home and diving in and eating without praying. Let me say that I think that diving in to eat without proper thanks to the host or hostess, without waiting for one another to come to the table and just being plum rude is something that we should avoid.

And we're really not talking about that kind of respect for for family and for people who are caring for you we're talking about people who just don't participate in ritual now i have people come to my home and i always ask if it is their manner or their habit to pray before they eat that they do so and feel free to do so. However, it's not necessarily my habit to do so. I don't pray from habit or I don't pray because it's time to pray or because of anything that happens to be going on around me at that particular point I believe that we are to pray as we are led to do

so and not expect God to drop whatever he's doing to hear us give our half-hearted thanks. And I assure you sometimes it's not half-hearted but those are usually in times of need. But nevertheless this was appalling to the Jews and they had real trouble with his disciples not doing that. Jesus said unto them, now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter

but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. Ye fools, did not he which made that which is without make that which is within also? But rather give alms of such things as you have, and behold, all things are clean unto you there's a concept i don't remember ever anybody ever preaching um in in in the day that we live in and in most of the so-called christ Christian churches and faith and fellowships and denominations, this kind of

thing. I have never heard alms attached to giving of thanks. You remember when the Lord said one time, is this not the fast that I choose? Not that you do without food, but that your neighbor who has none would receive the food that you would eat. You're not really understanding what we're trying to accomplish here, I hear the Lord say. And here we have Jesus essentially saying the same things. There's a lot of things that you don't seem to understand. You know, you're the kind that strain out gnats and swallow camels. You wash your hands. You may wash the cup and the platter

and you make sure all these things are ceremonial clean but you need to know that within you is what needs the cleansing. The ravening and excess one of the King James scriptures says. Here it says ravening and wickedness. Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also? But rather give alms of such things as ye have and behold, all things are clean unto you.

The concept of giving of alms, making our lives clean in the sight of God, is not a concept that I've ever heard preached. You? How about you? You ever heard that? I never have. And so here we have Jesus giving us a clear teaching that we are to give alms. And it's the alms that we give. And if you're not familiar with the word

alms, it's strictly offerings made to people of less supply, of less means than you have, giving to one another. Here we have it again. Us taking care of people around us. Do you want to have that cleanness in your life? You need to give alms.

I know that's a work. And we're not saved by works. Well, I'll tell you what. Here, it's pretty clear that you're cleansed by them, if that's important to you at all. I've often wondered if the book of Tobit, which was in the King James Bible and removed, wasn't one of those, this wasn't one of the concepts that had it removed, because Tobit taught

that that's the way we're forgiven of our sins. It's by doing of alms. And that goes against modern Christianity and many of the religious person's thoughts and mental processes. He says, But rather give alms of such things as you have, and behold, all things are clean to you. But woe unto you, Pharisees, for ye tithe mint and rue, and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God. These things you ought to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

Here, by the way, it's a small verse it's not there's not much um there's not much instruction here but here you have jesus condoning tithing and tithing to the smallest degree remember when he says uh he taught you you tie uh you tithe of your anise and rue and mint and cumin these you're you're tithing spices and you leave the weightier matters of the law undone this you ought to have done what this t This. Tithing, even to the smallest degree. When you're talking about rue, mint, anise, and cumin, buddy, you better have a nice flat table and a ruler or something to count these things off. You know, you got a hundred little seeds of anise there, ten of those get pushed over to the side, and they go to the priest. And he says, this

you ought to have done. Is Jesus condoning tithing here? Absolutely. Tithing never went away. It's a perfect way to give to God. It's His rule. It's what He said He wanted. So tithing, as far as Jesus is concerned, you ought to do it. Maybe that's why these things aren't preached. I don't know. But he says this you ought to have done and leave not the other undone.

The other being what? He says you have omitted the weightier matters of the law. And what are those weightier matters? He says, the love of God and judgment. The love of God and judgment, how do we pass those over? Well, first of all, you don't give alms to people who need them. What you have is what you have. It's not held in an open hand. It's not

given to those who need. So there the love of God, which he wants to distribute to his people, essentially cannot be done because his people won't do it. What about judgment? Well, we pass over judgment because we make rules, we make laws, and we enforce our laws, but we don't enforce God's laws. I mean, for example, what would you say to a young girl who decides to get an abortion and

you say that's wrong? And they look at you and say, well, it's legal. Does she have a point? It's not against the law. How can you say it's wrong if it's not against the law? Does she have a point? Because if we are, in that particular case, we're passing over judgment. Whose judgment are we passing over? We're passing over the Old Testament Scripture that makes it very clear. By the way, if you've thrown away your Old Testament, you're going to have a real difficult time

arguing the abortion thing. But, know in the old testament he laid out laws and says that if a woman is struck or she's harmed intentionally by somebody else and her child go from her in other words she miscarries child. What's the judgment for things like that? Life shall go for life. I see Christians all the time sitting there wringing their hands, discussion, discussions galore. And does life begin in the womb? You know, when does a child actually,

what happened to the scriptures? Where did the scriptures go? Why is it that we're floundering over the scriptures to make it clear? Life should go for life. When that baby's in the womb, God considers it to be a life. So why do you consider it to be anything else? So we're going to pass over judgment, not our judgments, not our laws. Well, if it's not against the law, then it's okay. It's one of the reasons that the legalization of certain chemicals and such.

I'm thinking, do you want to open that door? I don't want my 12-year-old coming home from school and saying that there's nothing wrong with dope because the law's not against it. I don't want that to happen. But that's what we do when we pass over judgment, pass over the judgment, pass over the judgment of god and these kind of things happen and these kind of things are a part of our life and the most important thing to you is to count out 10 of 100 antecedents in order to honor your god

when you're not even honoring his judgments when you're not engaging in the love of God that is shed to the whole earth and people who need, and people he's trying to answer their prayer, but he's got nobody on his payroll. He's got nobody. He has no employees. I'm sorry. It happens here at TRI all the time.

You know, people call and they ask for certain things, and they might write back and say, you know, I didn't, it happens here at TRI all the time. You know, people call and they ask for certain things and they might write back and say, you know, I didn't receive it. Well, you know what? We're doing the best we can. You know, we don't have a whole staff full of people here to answer, you know, whatever your request happens to be. And I see God in the same situation.

People pray, yeah, it's my will. Yeah, I'd like to see that done. Let's see if I can find somebody that'll do it. So he says, you pass over judgment and the love of God. These, tithing, you ought to have done, but not to leave the other undone. Woe unto you, Pharisees, for you love the uppermost seats in the synagogues

and greetings in the market woe unto you scribes and pharisees hypocrites for you are as the graves which appear not and the men that walk over them are not aware of them the um this is a, this is a, you ever heard the, I remember when I was younger, and you'd get a little goose bump or a little chill or something like that, and somebody would say, somebody's walking over your grave plot right now. You ever heard that? I don't know how that relates. But I think about this when he says that, know there there may be there's there's things there's excess and and as he says extortion and excess and you know the a rotting corpse

under the ground you don't know it people walk over it because they don't think that it's a that it's necessarily a grave not that there's anything wrong with walking over a grave some people are very superstitious about those things but uh there's not necessarily anything wrong with it he's just saying that you know up here it looks like a nice little path but nobody knows that just below them is something that is you know you know a very uh repulsive and he says this is this is what i see when i see you you look like a holy man you got the clothes you got the beard you got the hat you got the hair you got everything that you need to look like a holy man but i happen to know that within you is extortion and excess. Then a lawyer who was present said to Jesus,

Thou dost saying, thou condemnest us also. And Jesus replied, good catch. No, he didn't. But I think that it's interesting that the lawyers didn't see themselves on the outside of the religious Pharisee. They were one of them. And he says, you're reproaching us, and we haven't done anything wrong.

We don't purport ourselves to be holy men. We don't purport ourselves to be worthy of some religious respect or positions of leadership. We're just doing our job. And so our job, you're saying, it could easily fall into that area of being a hypocrite. Well, Jesus really didn't let him off the hook, did he? He says, well, woe unto you also, you lawyers,

for you laid men with burdens grievous to be born, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. Now, this was a practice among the Jews, but I believe within myself that it was born in good intention. We cannot forget the fact that the worst thing that ever happened or happens to Israel is that they would lose their sovereignty and find themselves in subjective slavery to another nation. And this was most humiliating and probably the lowest time in Israel's history. The lowest times in their history.

And Neh know it says that our captives wanted us to all get together and have a sing song one night at the campfire, but we all hung our harps on the willows and wept. How can we sing? How can we sing when our country is being held captive by heathen people? And so it was a terrible thing in their life. So terrible, in fact, that they took the words of the prophet, they took the words of the scriptures literally

and understood that they were being held captive for a certain amount of time because they neglected the Sabbath day. They didn't keep the Sabbath day for 490 years. And the Lord says, I'm going to get my Sabbath. You're going to give me my Sabbath days. So I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to have you in captivity for 70 years to pay me back for these 490 years that you didn't obey the Sabbath day. And God's a pretty good mathematician. And he's fair. And so what they did was, is when they found themselves back in Israel and free, the religious

leadership said, look, this cannot happen again. This is a bad thing that we would neglect the Sabbath day. This need not happen again. And we're going to see to it that it doesn't happen again. And the lawyers were obviously instruments in this decision and in the implementation of laws that the way I say it is, they build fences around the laws. Well, the fences that they built around the laws were things that were grievous to be born.

You can't walk more than 3,000 feet away from your possession. Well, who says? That's not possession well who says that's not what moses said it's not what the law says it's not what's carved in stone where did that come from well it's known as a sabbath day's journey that's as far as you can walk on the sabbath day and if you keep that we don't have to worry about you working on the sabbath day you can't get more than a thousand paces from your house you know so this this is going to be a safeguard well jesus was saying to the lawyers you know you're making these laws that i didn't give anybody and i'm afraid what you're doing is is

you're you're making the commandment of god of no effect. Why are you doing this? Well, you know, we're trying to be safe. Well, I'll tell you what. Here's the problem with what you've done. You've taken something as wonderful and as beautiful as the Sabbath day and you turned it into a whole list of rules. I didn't build you for the Sabbath day. I made the Sabbath day for you.

You're supposed to be enjoying this. This is a feast of the Lord. A weekly feast of the Lord. And now nobody enjoys it. As a matter of fact when the Catholics tried to change they were successful in changing, at least in their own mind the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, they did so in just such a manner. They made the Sunday a day of feasting and worship and

everybody gets dressed up and goes to church. But on the Sabbath day they insisted that people work, that they do certain things to desecrate the Sabbath, which was one of their goals. But their main goal was to make the Sabbath so distasteful to the average person, and Sunday, something that was very pleasurable. It was like, you know, Sabbath day, we all go to hell,

and on Sunday, we all go to hell, and on Sunday we all go to Disneyland. And so it doesn't take many generations to go by before all of a sudden the commandment of the Lord is grievous to be born. Well, Jesus says, you're the one that's making it grievous to be born. These rules are not grievous. And we find John reiterating the very thing. The commandments of the Lord are not grievous. And he says, you are making them that way.

You're making them difficult. And what I've noticed is that the burdens that you put on people, they don't seem to affect you. You're not obeying them. Wow, this is the forerunner of our Congress, is it not? They make laws that they don't have to obey. They put restrictions on the people that don't restrict them.

You know, they have all kinds of immunities in this and immunities on that. And they get paid for stuff that they charge us for um you know this is this is nothing more than just regular old leadership gone amok so that they can make whatever rules they want but they don't have to worry about obeying them themselves so he says um for because i told you that the word for can usually be exchanged for the word because. He says, because you build the sepulchers of the prophets and your fathers killed them.

Wow. What in the world is he talking about here? For they indeed killed them and ye build their sepulchres. I just wonder, what exactly is he talking about here? He's talking about the respect and honor that is given to their fathers as long as they're dead. We don't have any intention of obeying the prophets. We don't have any intention on living our life by their words.

But respect. Oh my goodness. Saint this and saint that. Let's call them saints. But do what they say? I don't think so. You know we do that in our country? You know we hold up certain men, certain fathers of our country. You know John Adams, he wouldn't even know what this place is.

The United States, really? Come on. I mean I encourage people to read things like the Federalist Papers and men who fought for the freedoms of this country. Oh, we honor them. We build statues to them. But do what they say?

To actually implement their ideas and their philosophy and to try to mimic their character? No, we don't do that at all. Well, that's exactly what they were doing here. We build their sepulchers, we give them monuments, we make them honored people in their death. That's the way we can enjoy these people, is after they're dead.

Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, Therefore also said the wisdom of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple. Verily I say unto you, it shall be required of this generation. Woe unto you, lawyers, for you've taken away the key of knowledge, and ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering you hindered.

Friend, this is an indictment against religious leadership. That's all there is to it. I don't know that you can be a good religious leader. There is one leader. There's one teacher. We have one father of us all. The Spirit of God is our teacher. The Spirit of God is to be the one teacher. We have one father of us all. The Spirit of God is our teacher. The Spirit of God is to be the only teacher.

So what's men's purpose in the earth? How about overseers? Whatever happened to that term? What's wrong with being an overseer? Because somebody has to oversee things. Somebody has to see to it that, you know, things are on track and that things are working and things are whatever they need to be. There's always going to be overseers,

but religious leadership, it's a mistake. It's a problem. They do take advantage and they cause people to not enjoy the things of God because it just turns so religious. And it turns religious why? These people, they're not born again. These people are not entering the kingdom of God, and those who are entering the kingdom of God find themselves constantly in conflict with them. So we need to be very careful in these areas. We need to be very careful who, and in the case of the Holy Spirit, what we're following. All right, it's time for us to go. You can write to me, Don, at thinkredink.com. Until I see you again, my friend, think red ink. Bye-bye.

Email don at thinkredink.com. That's thinkredink.com. Bye-bye. you