Words of Jesus Podcast - Truth Erases Falsehood

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

The fact of truth erases false doctrine. Like a wrong imagination about a place you have never been, once you have visited, facts replace the wrong ideas. “Do ye now believe?” asks Jesus.We must confront the words of Jesus with faith in his authority, knowing that Jesus is who he says he is. When Jesus spoke it was not an idle opinion or recitation.  Jesus spoke, in obedience to the Father, with the authority to bring to pass the words he was given to speak.  Truth makes us free.  Have courage to hold fast to that which is true; irrespective of what tradition or fallacy is in the way.  This leads to another red letter question from Jesus, “Wilt thou be made whole?”  We must be diligent to remove revealed false doctrines or more false doctrines will follow. ***Chapter 12 (Part 3) Jesus Heals A ParalyticSOON THEREAFTER Jesus was back at Capernaum.  Word spread that he was there and great multitudes came to be taught and to receive favors at his hands. One day, as he was teaching, there was brought to him a paralytic, carried by four men.  So great was the press of people, the bearers of the bed were unable to enter the doors of the house where Jesus was speaking.  Accordingly they climbed with their burden onto the roof, made a hole, and lowered the pallet and paralytic into the midst of the group around Jesus.  When he saw this display of faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man:  “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.” When they heard this, the scribes and Pharisees who were present reasoned among themselves, saying: “Why does this man thus speak blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Jesus knowing their thoughts, said: “What reason ye in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Thy sins be forgiven thee’; or to say, ‘Rise up and walk’?  But, that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins,” – Turning to the paralytic, Jesus said: “Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine own house.” Immediately the man arose before the eyes of all who were there.  He picked up his pallet and departed to his own house, glorifying God. And the multitude who saw this miracle were amazed. They, too, glorified God and were filled with awe, saying: “We have seen strange things today.”

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus series. I'm Don Harris, your host. Glad to have you, as always. And I'm glad that you make this a part of your day. Some of you just have to record this and play it back at another time. Which is fine with me. I think that's great. Matter of fact, it's kind of flattering if you go to the trouble of recording the show, not just happen to

stumble on it, but if you have happened to stumble on the show. I think that Think Red Ink Ministries has something for you that essentially you're just not going to find anyplace else. We happen to believe in a real God, a living God who, you know, may or may not be physically sitting on a throne. I know that's an anthropomorphism for God and there's people that have trouble with that. I don't know. I hardly care. If that's what it takes for you to have some understanding that God is on his throne and that he is a

sovereign God and that he rules the world from there and he does it through his son Jesus Christ who sits at his right hand. You know, if you need all those kind of things to worship God in spirit and truth, then just go right ahead and do it. It's an interesting study, by the way, if you look at some of the past ideas of who God was, what God was, and subsequently, I guess, who God is and where God is and whether or not he's on a throne. Is heaven up or is it here?

Is the kingdom of God heaven? Is the kingdom of heaven where God lives? You know, we ask all these questions, but you know, a lot of times our Lord Jesus and anybody who preaches the gospel, anybody who does what I do, we're constantly running into problems where we're trying to put into words

things that are ineffable. You know what that means? That's a big word. If you use it, people will think you've been to seminary. Things that can't be spoken. They can't be, in many cases, put into words. We talked earlier about Jesus having this particular difficulty. When he's trying to introduce his disciples about the principles or the ideas of the kingdom of God.

And he'd say, you know, the kingdom of God is like this. And in some cases he'd say, the kingdom of God is like that. And he'd give us all these different ideas. We're going to talk about all those, by the way. And he constantly found himself trying to explain something spiritual to people who would never understand by using their particular language and their vocabulary. And he always found himself in a very difficult position trying to get people to understand. descriptions of God or spiritual things put into secular, put into physical language, put into descriptive

language. I don't know how critical we need to be of that and how important those things are. We just have to understand that we don't understand. And we have to know without a doubt that we don't know. And there's nothing really wrong with that. The Lord knows. He knows what we're dealing with. He knows how many cards are in our deck. And so He's very good to us in that He essentially lets us, you know,

I mean, a good example of this is us constantly calling him God. I do it because I read the King James Bible and it's constantly calling him God as if that is his name. But it's not his name. I mean, his name is unequivocal according to scriptures, both Hebrew and ancient writings alike. His name is YHVH.

Some people spell it YHWH. Some people call him Yahweh. Some people call him Jehovah. I happen to think his name in Hebrew, of course, is Yehovah. Translated to English, Jehovah. That's his name. He says it's his name. He says it's his name, but he's always been tolerant of, much more tolerant

than the sacred name people and the people who think that this is very important that we say his name correctly, that we spell his name correctly, that we pray in his name correctly. They do the same thing with Yeshua, Jesus, his name being Joshua or Yeshua, or in Aramaic, Yesu. You can just play the name game for a long, long time, but what you'll find is that God's very tolerant of these things.

One of the things to kind of settle this forever, we're not necessarily talking about the name of God today, but it's kind of come up here. But one of the principles, scriptures to settle this thing is when he was speaking to Moses. Moses was being commissioned to go and get the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage and carry them to a place, bring them to a place that which was where the burning bush was. And

as he was getting this commission he was thinking, why are these people going to follow me? Why would they get up and follow me? Who shall I say sent me? Well, you know, I love the way the Lord answers him. And if you don't mind, I'd love to paraphrase this in just good old Don Harris vernacular so we don't get all hung up on the words in the scriptures that we've all memorized from children

and go off out there into fantasy land, out there into spiritual, scriptural land and walk away with absolutely no more understanding than we went in with, which is very very common. He says he told Moses you know, I've never been known by any particular name. Well you want me to tell you a name to give

the children of Israel? You know, who sent me? Who sent you? In whose name are you operating? If I gave you my name, they wouldn't know who I was. I've never been known by any name. Wow, did he say that? Yes, he said that and reiterated and backed it up by saying, you tell them I am who I am.

Now, I know that a lot of people, you know, they love to take the term I am and say that this is God's name. I am. But I think that you're discounting a wonderful little bit of revelation here that God is saying, I hardly care what you call me. I am who I am. And that's who I am.

You call me Bob, I'm still who I am. I wouldn't suggest calling him Bob. My apologies to anybody named Bob, but that's not his name. His name, he told Moses at that point, my name is Jehovah. That's my name, or Yehovah is probably what he said to Moses. My name is Jehovah. That's my name. Or Yehovah is probably what he said to Moses. My name is Yehovah. But nobody's ever known me by that name.

Wait a minute. Here we are all the way at Moses and you're telling me that nobody has known your name? Nobody has known you by your name until now? What about Abraham? You know Abraham likely called him by a pagan name. He didn't know any other name. So I can't see as where he thinks this is so all important that

people call him by his name. It is more important to God that we know his nature than his name. I am who I am. He didn't say my name is what it is. I guess we'd have theologians out there teaching that his name is it is. But he didn't say my name is what it is. He said I am who I am. This is his nature, his character. Who he is, what he stands for, everything about him

all wound into one complete idea, this is me. So you go back and you say Jehovah sent me so what they won't know who that is tell them i am who i am well you know what we find the children of israel didn't even care they didn't even care as a matter of fact uh uh he had real difficulty getting them to follow him um and i mean you know the story we don't we don't need to get into all that but And he had real difficulty getting them to follow him. I mean, you know the story. We don't need to get into all that.

But it's just interesting that there is so much emphasis placed upon his name. Now, so why is it a problem to call him God? I don't know how much of a problem it is. It's just somehow it's impersonal. You know, you have an employee that calls you boss. They're actually calling you by a name of what you are, not your name. And I'm thinking perhaps God is acceptable as his name God. Anytime the scriptures use the term

Elohim, the Hebrew name they exchange Elohim for God. Anytime the scriptures use the term YHVH, Yehovah or Jehovah, scriptures use the term YHVH Yehovah or Jehovah they use the term Lord so if you want to know what your Bible said at the beginning when it was being translated there's a hint for you if you see God it was likely Elohim and if you see

Lord it was likely Yehovah. Nevertheless somehow I think that us referring to him as God is pretty much like boss. And it's not really his name, but it certainly is who he is. I am who I am. So I don't think it's necessarily wrong to do that, but boy there's some cases, especially in my communications with him, when I'm praying or something, I just can't call him God.

I just can't do it because I know his name. And so it's, you And so it's Jehovah, my God. Jehovah, our God. Jehovah, your God. Jehovah, the creator. He has all these different kinds of accomplishments that are attached to his name. But I don't know.

I'm just not one of the name people. If you call him God, that's fine. But as you know his name, Jehovah, as it starts to occur to you that he does indeed have a name and that he's given us permission to use it is a huge step. You know, he could have told Moses, nobody's ever known my name and I'm not telling you.

He could have. Boy, the preachers would have had fun with that. But nevertheless, I don't know how we get off on these rabbit trails, but I guess I just want you to know that there's a personal relationship that we can have with our Lord God, Jehovah. And I encourage you to find that and to have that with him because his intention is to have a relationship with you. Now, may I continue about the story of Jesus healing the paralytic. We find that Jesus said to the Pharisees,

what reason ye in your hearts? Which is easier to say, thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, rise up and walk? Now, to Jesus, to say it was to do it. You know, anybody can say, thy sins be forgiven thee. Anybody can say that, but how many people can actually do that? Well, anybody can say, thy sins be forgiven thee, but who is it that has the authority to say such a thing as that if not Jesus Christ? And he just says, I want you to know I have the authority. I have the power. I am the Messiah. I am

the anointed one. I am the Son of God. Watch this. And he looks to that guy and says, stand up and walk. And he stood up and walked. Well, the Pharisees, what are they left with at that point? Well, I guess he does have the authority. Yeah, you guessed right, boys. Good for you. Turning to the paralytic, Jesus says, arise, take up thy bed and go into thine own house. And immediately the man rose before the eyes of all who were there

he picked up his pallet and departed to his own house glorifying God. I can just imagine this poor fellow after all these years of being in the state in which he was in all of a sudden able to walk and all of a sudden his whole life is going to change in front of him. Well, it says, and the multitude who saw this miracle were amazed, and they would be, and they should be.

They too glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, I love this, we've seen strange things today. And so they go home with this story to tell their loved ones and say, man, you should have been there. It was really, really something. Do you know Jehoshaphat, you know the guy that's been crippled all these years? He and his friends got together and they let him down in a hole in the roof.

And Jesus healed that guy and forgave him of his sins and the Pharisees went nuts. You should have been there. We have seen strange things today. You know what I've noticed is that if we live the life that he intends for us, Jesus becomes very, very real to us. He becomes real to us. And these kind of things happen over time. I don't know how long you've been a Christian. Perhaps if it's a short time or you've had a shallow time. You know you can be a

shallow Christian for 50 years and it doesn't make you an expert. It just makes you a 50 year old baby which is really a sad thing to see. But I don't know what your relationship to him is, but I assure you there is more waiting for you than your brain can fathom. There is more waiting for you in your Christian walk and your Christian life, your communication with him,

than you can even imagine today you will not be able to put this together as to... Remember several shows back we were talking about having to go someplace you've never been before and you imagine it to be a certain way. You imagine that that's the way it's going to be when you get there and when you get there it's totally different. And the truth of what you see with your eyes, hear with your ears, feel with your fingers and

your five physical senses start taking in all these facts. What they do is they start erasing the fantasy until it's very difficult to remember in your mind what did I think this place looked like before? What did I think about this particular place before? Because all that's gone. Can I confess something to you?

That's what we're doing here. The idea is to confront the words of Christ right in front of our eyes to read them to hear them to understand them and that's why well that's why the my nickname among a lot of the people in this ministry is the eraser but it's really not me that's doing the erasing i don't care if they say it's me but in truth it's just the the truth of god when it finds its place when it finds this little niche when it finds the hole that it fits in the little cubbyhole the little pigeonhole this is where this little piece of truth belongs look how well it fits well when you put it in there you realize it can't go in there until whatever's in there comes out

and so you erase false doctrine not by preaching against it loud and long and and and hard and and being very discriminating and being very cruel to people and making fun of them and all the rest of the ways that these preachers feel like it's their duty to expose false doctrine. No, just tell them the truth. Why is it that there's a famous Bible answer man that seems to spend his whole life trying to trying to dispel false doctrine. Well, okay, all right, that's fine, but why isn't it working? Why is it that false doctrine is as bad or worse today than it was

when he started so many years ago? Well, because you don't get rid of false doctrine by exposing it as a lie. I do my share of that. I have to say that, you know, a lot of times these things come from lies from people we trust. Well, that might help, but that really doesn't free us from that false doctrine. The Bible teaches that you shall know the, what? You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free. It's really not the exposing of something as a lie, or proving scientifically that this can't be true, or mathematically

it can't be true, mathematically it can't be true or experientially or historically. And I have to say, I'm involved in that. I do that. However, I'm not under the assumption that because you do that that you're erasing false doctrine. Man, you know what they do? They'll find another way around it. You'll find them with that same false doctrine. Five years from now, they still believe it. They still talk that way. They still believe that way. They're still in bondage. Why? I didn't replace it with the truth. That's why it's the truth that makes us free. It's not the exposition of what's false. It's the truth that makes us free.

And when we hear the truth, we read it, we hear the word of God come from the inside up. When that happens, and those words are in our minds, and we find that little cubicle where this little thing fits just so perfectly, Oh, this goes here. I get it. You know, when it's occupying that little cubby hole, there's no way that that false doctrine will ever wiggle its little tail back into that hole and cause you trouble. It's because it's true. You know it's true. I know it's true. It's obviously true. It's the truth of God. It's eternal truth. It fits in there and it stays in there. And that person is never inundated with that problem again.

You know this principle is found in demon possession? Are we changing subjects here? I don't mean to but it's really kind of interesting because Jesus says let me tell you something about demon possession that you ought to know you know if I cast a demon out of a man let me tell you what happens from that point on. That demon he says and here we go with anthropomorphizing spiritual things.

He says, that demon walks through the dry places of the earth. Now, does he walk, so he's in the desert? You know, that's a problem for a guy like me who lives in the desert. Is he really saying that he walks through dry places, or is he drawing the picture for us? This demon is never going to be satisfied. This demonic spirit is never going to be satisfied until he finds a nice, warm, cozy couch to live on. What is he saying? Walks through the dry places of the earth and seeking rest. So what's he want to do? What does this false doctrine want to do?

It wants to find a place to perch. And seeking rest, finding none, he saith. What does he say? Do you remember? He says, I gonna return to where i came from and when he comes back he finds a little cubby hole all swept and varnished and and swept and garnished and it's now it's got furniture in there and a nice little rug and pictures on the wall. Ah, this is it. This is home. It looks great. But he doesn't just move back in. He grabs seven demons worse than himself and says, hey guys, you want to go in on an apartment? I've got a place for us to go. And they move in. And Jesus says, now listen to me, because this applies to what we're talking about in false doctrine. Don't miss this,

because if you don't actively pursue removal of false doctrine from your life by exposing it as wrong, by exposing it as mathematically impossible, scientifically impossible, socially impossible, historically impossible. I don't care how you do it. But you better find the truth that belongs in that spot in your life that you call doctrine, that you call theology. You better find the truth that fits there. Because if you don't, these words of Jesus apply to you

just like they apply as he was explaining about the demon that goes back home and finds his place all swept and garnished, moves back in, brings people in our case is what we're talking about doctrines worse than the one that you got rid of. And moves in there, these words apply in this situation. Jesus says, the last state of that man is worse than the first. So we, as Bible teachers, can you see now why the scripture says

Brethren, be not many teachers Seeing that we shall receive the greater condemnation Can you see why this is such a dangerous profession to be in? Why there is so much responsibility here? Why this is so dangerous responsibility here? Why this is so, it's so dangerous and it's precarious. It's, it's, it's balanced that it could go either way. This is a very dangerous thing to do. I know you get a kick out exposing false doctrine. You love to get on the internet and find out, you know, what, what old Reverend so-and-so's doing.

Who's, you know, he ran off with his secretary last month. Let's see what he's doing this month. And now we don't have to listen to him because we found out that, you know, he's a false prophet. Well, you know, I'm going to tell you something. There's a danger to finding out false doctrine in your life and not replacing it with truth. That's what we're doing here. I'm trying to get this red ink into those cubby holes

that used to be clogged with false doctrine. It's the only way to do it because the truth will make us free. Time for us to go. Join us here next time on the Words of Jesus series and we appreciate you coming by here. I'd like to hear from you. If you would like

to write to me, send an email to don at thinkrating.com or you can write to thinkratingministries at P.O. Box 718 Piatown, New Mexico 87827 As you wander through life and need to make decisions

and need to do the right thing for the right reasons every time, I can't give you a better piece of advice than this. Think Red Ink. 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