Words of Jesus Podcast - The Word of God More Than Words in Ink

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Genesis chapter one records the incredible power of God's word in creation of the world (and man) in six days. It's a beautiful story worthy of revisiting. In the cool of the day God walked and communed with Adam. Soon, however, the disobedience of Adam created a schism which made such communion impossible. As Adam and Eve were removed from the garden a promise of reconciliation shines through the darkness. The Scriptures record the copious actions and plans of God to restore communion with His man. A man of faith (Abraham), the ten commandments (Moses), a priesthood (from the Levite to Melchizedek) and a meeting place (from a temple to the heart) prepared the way. In time, Immanuel, Jesus, the Word of God, came to make the blind see, the deaf hear, the captive free, and the dead to life. "Be opened." "He that has ears to hear let him hear."***Ch 41: Jesus Heals A Deaf-And-Dumb ManMatthew 15:29-31; Mark 7:31-37 JESUS left the coastal regions of Tyre and Sidon, where he had driven the unclean spirit from the daughter of the Greek woman, and crossed the Sea of Galilee to the coasts of Decapolis.             A deaf man, who also had an impediment in his speech, was brought before Jesus, who was asked to put his hand upon the man.            Jesus took the man to one side, put his fingers into his ears, and touched his tongue. Looking up to heaven, Jesus said:            “Be opened.”            Immediately the ears of the man opened, the impediment in his speech was removed, and he could hear and speak plainly.            Jesus ordered them to tell no one how he was cured. But as in other instances when charged not to publish the great healing works of Jesus, they spread the word widely.            All men were astonished beyond measure and said:            “He hath done all things well. He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.”

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus Series with Don C. Harris Hello my friends, welcome once again to the Words of Jesus series. I'm Don Harris of Think Credit Ministries. You wonder what we're doing? We're reinforcing Christianity. The Christianity that we suffer with today is devoid of many of the words that Jesus said and things that he did and the interactions that he made throughout the scriptures. And by the way all of these are written in your Bible in red ink. And we just

don't feel like, I don't feel like, and you shouldn't feel like. These things should be ignored or circumnavigated in any way by our doctrines and our pet ideas about Christianity. Let's put Christ back into Christianity, shall we? All right, well, let's get started with the words of Jesus. We're in chapter 41 of our little book. This is about Jesus healing a deaf and dumb man. And we'll just begin reading.

Jesus left the coastal regions of Tyre and Sidon, where he had driven the unclean spirit from the daughter of the Greek woman, and crossed the Sea of Galilee to the coast of Decapolis. A deaf man, who also had an impediment in his speech, was brought before Jesus, who was asked to put his hand upon the man. Jesus took the man to one side. He put his fingers into his ears and touched his tongue. Looking up to heaven, Jesus said, Be opened. Immediately the ears of the man opened,

and the impediment in his speech was removed, and he could hear and speak plainly. Jesus ordered them to tell no one how he was cured. Isn't that odd? But as in other instances, when charged not to publish the great healing works of Jesus, they spread the word widely. People just do what they're told. All men were astonished beyond measure and said,

He hath done all things well. He maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak. Now, this particular, this has been analyzed, or this story has been looked at by people that know more about situations of people's inability to hear and their inability to speak. And it's been said that this particular person had an impediment in his speech. As you'll notice that many people who are deaf will speak in a way that sounds, well it sounds kind of mumbly, it's not very you know, they're very articulate in their thought

but their speech is somewhat distorted. The reason that it is, is because I hear by people who know more about this than I do that the reason that their speech is distorted is because as they were raised and trained to speak, that they would mimic as you did when you were a child exactly what they heard. And if their hearing is

impaired they very well may be making the sounds that they hear. And so an impediment in a person's speech is very likely to straighten out if indeed their hearing is changed and they will hear people speaking. I'm sure it probably sounds strange to them at first. But as time goes by, their speech becomes better and better because they hear better and better. I was always impressed with this particular story because although it is a complete story, when it comes to red words, there's only two.

Be opened. Jesus was not necessarily or on purpose or for a particular reason short on speech. It was that what he said he meant. And it was enough that he say, be opened. I've always wondered in these situations when jesus says be opened who or what was he talking to uh you know it's easy if you're the kind of person that believes that all these things are demons in their spirits and that and that uh you know that that there is indeed an entity of some kind, somewhere, somehow, that would hear what Jesus actually has to say, you could believe that he was speaking to a particular spirit,

or a particular demon, or as in some, even Jesus told us to say unto the mountain, be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea. These are things that are foreign to our understanding as human beings living in this three-dimensional world to speak to inanimate objects. But he did indeed do that, and he instructed us to do that from time to time i think that um i i as you know as if you're if you're following this ministry at

all i just um i don't believe that any of these things any of these declarations any of the promises that jesus made all these instructions that he gave us i don't believe that you can just arbitrarily read them from the bible and take them to yourself and just say these things and there's one huge insurmountable reason that i believe that because't work. Now however, on the other hand when you have been instructed of the Lord to do a particular thing, to say a particular thing, or to a particular thing, then I believe that you should do just that. But most people believe that God is dead. Most Christians believe

that God cannot speak. Most Christians believe that God cannot speak. Most Christians believe that Jesus is absolutely dumb, sitting on the side of the throne of God. They're up there doing something that we're not aware of, but he cannot speak to us today. Well, you don't believe me? Oh, sure, absolutely. They don't believe that Jesus Christ can speak to them today. They don't believe that God can communicate with man

because I hear it all the time in every Sunday school across the country. We speak to God in prayer and He speaks to us. Do you know the rest of this little ditty? We speak to God in prayer and He speaks to us by the Bible. Have you heard that? Nothing could be further from the truth. The Bible is a record of men who heard the voice of God.

The Bible is a record of men who lived by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Now we live by their words. Now, I don't know how we got into this mess, but it would have to be based in a general idea that God does not speak to us today. He just doesn't do it. And if he does, why it some earth-shattering gold letters in the sky or thunders through the heavens or he speaks to us in dreams or visions or whatever else, you know, some supernatural spooky thing, you know, or, you know, they turn it into something fantastic or in many cases a spiritual thing. But in reality, it has always been,

since the Garden of Eden, it has always been God's will, way, and desire to speak to his man. The Bible says that, I'm going to say it this way, the Bible says that God walked with Adam in the cool of the day. I don't know that anybody that's ever read the beginning of the book of Genesis that hasn't run across that scripture and you might be nodding accordingly or at least agreeing silently with me when I say that.

Do you know the scriptures don't say that? The scriptures say that the what? Do you know the scriptures don't say that? The scriptures say that the what? Do you know? The voice of God. The voice of God walked with Adam in the cool of the day. The voice of God. When God himself, the Father, manifests himself to the earth, it comes as a communication.

Now Jesus said, no man has seen God at any time or heard his voice. So this communication that God speaks to mankind is obviously not his voice. But he voices, if you'll allow me to use the word this way, he voices his communication to mankind. So what language does God speak? Well, that we know of, none. I mean, we don't know of a language that we can put into God's mouth or insist that he speaks a certain language. There's some people that think that he speaks a certain language there's some people that think that he speaks in elizabethan english that he speaks when he does speak it sounds very much like you know 17th century king james english i know this because you know god told me the other

day you know thou shalt do this and thou shalt do that. And in some of the Pentecostal churches, they love to say, thus saith the Lord. Yea, I say unto you, right? Like that's the way God speaks. Some people believe that God speaks Hebrew. There is essentially no reason except for personal preference for anyone to believe that the voice of god is a it's a it's a communicative uh uh a spirit of connection between he and us that his thoughts become our thoughts or hit the message that he's trying to convey goes within us with a wordless word it is a wordless thus languish language lessness wow there's not a language involved in this

there's not a lingua there's not a tongue. There's not a speaking in one language and interpreting in another. It is the pure thought and it's the pure understanding, the wisdom and knowledge of God imparted to our spirit. It is more of a knowing than it is a conversation. I should say it's more a growing of this knowing more so than it is a conversation of any length. If he speaks a word, you know he's giving you the knowledge of that word and its meaning and its depth and everything about it without a word.

Now, I know there's people that insist that God does indeed speak to them. And they say that he comes to them and says, Son, I was just a thinking. You know, sometimes God has a southern accent. And I was thinking that you ought to do this or you ought to do that or whatever. And I know, I mean, if this person is sincere, and many times they are just simply not sincere, many times they fit better into the category of liars

than they do in people who speak the truth. But nonetheless, I am willing to concede that when a person speaks, thus saith the lord as the prophets had to in the old testament um and of course in the new the thus saith the lord is a translation of that knowing into the language of the people. And this was what the prophets, this was part of the prophets job. There were many things that prophets just simply did not know. There were many things about the knowledge of God imparted to a prophet. That were hugely conditional.

You ever think about the story um that um well when uh elijah um went to the king and and handed him um a fistful of arrows and he said strike the ground and so he hit the ground was it once or three times it wasn't much and the prophet says oh no you should have stricken the ground five or six times because had you done that then you would have won against your enemy but because you only struck the ground once or twice i forget what the number was but because you've done this they're going to overtake you. You know, I'm sitting there thinking, if I was that king, I'd think, why didn't you give me the rules before you handed me these arrows? Well, it's because the Lord imparted this knowing to this prophet,

saying that this is how we're going to determine the outcome of this situation. I don't know if he was psychoanalyzing the king. I don't know if he was trying to decide whether or not the king had sufficient stick-to-it kind of a personality that he was aggressive enough or whatever it was. I don't know what God's intention was there, but I do know that the outcome of the prophecy

was contingent upon the action of the king. These are not words. These are not instructions. These are thoughts. These are understandings that are put within a prophet that the prophet must translate to the people to whom the message is sent. There are many communications with God that we simply and frankly do not understand. I was fascinated

when I started looking into some of the things that the prophet said. Ask the king, when this person came to visit the kingdom, what did you show them? He says, well, I showed them everything. There was nothing that I didn't show them. And he says, then everything you have will be taken away. It was like the action that was the, of the person to whom the message is sent,

had some kind of effect on the prophecy that was given. Very much like the prophecies of the Lord Jesus Christ coming to the earth as Messiah. You can find prophecies in there that he came to be the king of Israel, that he came to be our everlasting father, the prince of peace. I mean, that's what he came to do. You can also find prophecies in there that he was murdered horribly, wounded in the house of his friends. What are these holes in your hands? So the prophecies were all contingent upon the actions or the responses or the situation of the people to whom the prophecy was sent. These are not paragraphs of words that are given to man and the Lord saying to the prophet, you know, this is what I want you to say.

There are some situations where the Lord lays out exactly what He once said, but many times the prophecies that were given to prophets to deliver to the people were the thoughts and the intents of God that were placed within the heart and mind of that prophet. And then a translation occurred. Well friend friend the wonderful thing about this is that there is much more behind the communication of your father than this book there it is so hugely and vastly different it is it's a drop in the, it's a drop in the bucket. It's a drop in the ocean.

It is, it doesn't even compare. You know, it's like even when John walked around with Jesus on the earth all this time, he says, you know, I'm, you know, I took the time to write this gospel of John and, and, you know and I hope you appreciate my work, but you need to know something. This book doesn't even get close. I am convinced that if everything that not could be written, but should be written, if it were, the world could not contain the books. Do you know what we're listening to there? We're listening to a man who has heard the voice of God

You're talking to a man that has experienced The the the knowledge and wisdom of God imparted to him. He has he has witnessed that he's felt that he's seen it He has experienced the voice of God Now it is it doesn't surprise me, not in the least, that when Jesus Christ, our Messiah, came to the earth, that he was given the title, the Word of God. This is the Word of God to us. It can't be contained in a sentence.

It can't be ink on paper. It can't be bound into a codex or into a book or scratched onto a scroll with a feather and ink. It cannot be done. Jesus Christ is the word of God to you. Do you comprehend all of Christ? I bet you don't. I bet you don't. It's almost impossible to do so. This is why he's our perfect teacher. He imparts to us what we need to live for the next six hours, for the next six days,

perhaps for the next six months or years, but he imparts to us exactly what we need when we need it. He does not sit with a little wooden carved out loaf of bread on his breakfast table with little cards in it and get up every morning and read some inspiring scripture, nor does he leaf through his daily bread magazine, nor does he read the Bible to find out what to say to you. There is so much more to this than you can even understand. You want to know why we speak so stupidly? You want to know why we use words that we don't know what the meanings of them are? You know why we don't make sense when we speak? Do you know why when we words that we don't know what the meanings of them are you know why we

don't make sense when we speak do you know why when we ask and we don't receive the the the disciple the the apostle says because you ask a miss do you know why we do that i'll tell you very clearly why we do that here it is right. The man could not speak because he was deaf. When the deafness was repaired, the speech changed. And when your deafness to the word of God, not the book, when your deafness to the word of God, Jesus Christ, when your deafness to the word of god jesus christ when your deafness to god the father so that he can speak to you when that is cured you're going to start speaking right you know some people say that i'm picky some people say that i'm critical you know i know i'm using the word grace and i don't mean mean grace. I actually mean hope, or I mean faith, or I mean favor,

or I mean unmerited favor, or whatever else you've learned in Sunday school. I know, you know, but you're just too picky. Well, why don't you use the word that you're supposed to use? You know, you sound like a deaf person trying to speak. It's very difficult to understand you. Is it because they have, as this book used the term, is it because they have an impediment in their speech?

Or do they have an impediment in their hearing? This is hugely important. This is something that you need to get a hold of right now because your entire the the prosperity of your future life in christianity depends on what i'm talking about right now so what was jesus talking about what are these two words in the story that we're talking about today. To whom do they apply? To what do they apply? Who was he speaking to when he said, be opened, friend? He was speaking to you.

You need to be opened. You need to be opened because it's that opening of your ears. It's the opening of your ears. It's the opening of your understanding. It's the removal of all the brick-and-mortar doctrine that you think is immovable, the brick-and-mortar theology that you feel like would be a sin for you to lay down. It's the removal of all the leaven.

And by that I mean the hypocrisy of people's lives where they care about what the audience thinks. They care about what people think of them. And so they make up their mind according to whatever is suitable and whatever will facilitate more acceptance on the part of people. Friend, all these things, they're clogging you up. And I mention the speech thing because i'm telling you your speech has given you away i know your relationship to god i just need to speak to you for 10 or 15 minutes and if you're mouthing all the and parroting all the stuff that

i've heard a million times before by a million different lost people so-called saved people so-called christians blah blah blah there's so many things that we don't know you know one of these days it'll be worth it all or whatever other little silly little song you've got running through your head the reason that you're that you're choosing song verses the reason that it's that that you know the the the physical and the the temporal side of christianity so well because you don't have any spiritual understanding be opened be opened and if i could say that with the power of jesus christ and and and say this is the word of god to you oh i wish so much i could be opened we're going to have to open ourselves to hear the voice hear the word of god as it was in the in the days of creation when the voice of God

walked with Adam in the cool of the day one day he shows up in the garden there's nobody to talk to Adams busy doing something else Adam where art thou? What happened? Something got in the way. And there's a, you don't want him wandering around in the garden looking for you. You don't want him doing that. You want to be opened. Friend, there's only one way to do this, and that is to spend time in front of him every day. Jesus says, here's the promise. Keep my commandments. I'll come into you.

If I come into you, me and my father move into you because he'll love you, and I'm going to love you, and we're going to lead and guide you from the inside. You think you've got this any other way? Do you think he said, to lead and guide you from the inside you think you've got this any other way do you think he said you know if you want to be led of the lord if you want to do the right thing then read your bible every day and do everything it says and if you find any verse in there that you like just stand on it in the name of jesus and sing a verse or two of standing on the promises i think he had the capability of saying that. Or don't be discouraged if I go away.

If I go away, I'll send unto you a book, and it will lead you and guide you into all truth. You'd think he would have said that if it were true, but it's not true. That is not the plan. The plan is not for you to just become Bible literate. The idea is for you to be opened and hear the voice of God for yourself.

And you're going to have to do it through his instructions. What are they? Keep my commandments. If you do that, I'll come into you and I'll lead you and guide you from the inside. Here's my little bit of advice. Never disobey your conscience. It's the closest thing that you have ever experienced in your life as the leadership of the Holy Spirit of God. Pay attention to your conscience. Don't shun it. Don't turn away from it. Pay attention to what it actually has to say to you. And three, most important of all, take time every day to hear the voice of God.

Just as Adam missed in the garden, just as we see the father standing around with his hands up looking around saying, where are you, Adam? Adam, where art thou? It's the first game of hide and seek, and it doesn't ever seem to have ever stopped. It's going to stop with you. I hope, hopefully it will stop with you today. Hey friend, be opened. All right, time is gone. I'm going to see you next time right here.

Till then, think red ink. Bye-bye. ThinkRedInc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you