Words of Jesus Podcast - What Will You Give To Escape Hell

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

The Scriptures testify of Jesus. Prophets come and go (often martyred) and their clear message goes unheeded. Have courage to personally investigate ideas and dogma inherited from family and professional leadership. Keep the commandments. Take time every day to hear the Word of God. Never, ever violate your conscience. Communication will increase. Believe in Jesus.***Chapter 16. JESUS DECLARES HIS SONSHIP WITH GOD (Part 5)THE AUTHORITIES persecuted Jesus and sought to slay him because he had healed the lame man on the Sabbath and had told him to carry his bed on that day.  Jesus said to them: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”These words angered the authorities further; because Jesus had not only broken the Sabbath but had also said that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.     To his persecutors Jesus replied: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.  Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.  If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.”            “There is another that beareth witness of me; and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true.  Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth.  But I receive not testimony from man: but these things I say, that ye might be saved.  He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.”  “But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.  And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not.”   “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.  I receive not honour from men.  But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.  How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? Do not think that I will accuse you to the...

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus Series with Don C. Harris Hello friend, welcome to the Words of Jesus series. I'm Don Harris and it's Think Relink's ministry's goal to bring you this show so that we can reinforce Christianity with the wisdom and words that Jesus said to us and really was the reinforcement in Christianity for hundreds of years. It's been deteriorated over time, but I'm just determined to just continue and preach and teach what he had to say.

So what we're doing is taking our little journey through this Words of Jesus book where these are the words of Jesus as recorded in the scriptures. Do you know what Jesus said? Do you know what he did? Do you know what he said to do? Well, what's nice about this series, stay with us because after you've gone through this, you're going to know what Jesus did. You're going to know what he said. And you're going to be doing something that perhaps you've never done before which is my whole goal, which is what I want to accomplish in you. I want you to think red ink.

Now, we have been in our little book. We have been in chapter 16. We're going to finish that up today. And although I have read all the text, the text has not been expounded upon, if you will. There's just so much, there's so many things here. And you'll find as time goes by and as we continue doing what we do, that we'll hit a lot of these subjects again because they kept coming up in Jesus' life. This thing about the Sabbath day, man, he was just plagued by the Sabbath cops. They're out there

watching and accusing him. He had the cops from the church, if you will, following him around and listening to what he said, trying to catch him on tape and bring it back to the Sanhedrin and condemn him for what he said. But it just all kept backfiring and backfiring and backfiring. And you'd think somewhere along the line some Pharisee would say, you know, this guy deserves more than we're giving him.

Perhaps we should talk to him and see what he's all about. And I assure you that over the course of time and through conversations with the other members of the Sanhedrin, it was decided, nah, let's not do that. You know, they even said one time that if this guy has his way, he's going to overtake all Jerusalem. You know what's going to happen then, they said? We're going to lose our nation to the Romans. We're going to lose our

right to the kingdom of God by our birth. And we're going to lose this beautiful temple. The Jews knew way long before Messiah came that one day there would be no need for that temple because God was going to do what He's always wanted to do which was dwell within the heart of every man. He made that available to us since the day of Pentecost. We have a, the Bible

calls the earnest of our inheritance. I love King James, I can't help it. But you know we still the Bible calls the earnest of our inheritance. I love King James. I can't help it. But we still use some of these words. If you go off and find a car that you want and somebody's selling a car and you say, I want to buy that car. Okay, it's X number of dollars. Well, I don't have that money but I'll have it at the end of the week. Well, I can't guarantee I'm not going to sell it to you at the end of the week. Well, I can't guarantee I'm not going to sell it to you at the end of the week. You know, somebody else might buy it.

How about putting down earnest money? You ever heard that? Sure, you've heard of earnest money. What does that mean? That means that my desire, my intention to do this deal is actually in earnest, and I am willing to hand you forfeitable money as an earnest of my intention.

And the Bible teaches that whatever relationship that we have with the Father, whatever communication that we can have with Him right now is just the earnest of our inheritance. There's going to come a time when he's going to be so real within us. You know, frankly, we're going to be Jesus. I mean, okay, you want to take that and run with it and say that I'm some kind of heretic?

He thinks we can all turn into Jesus, you know. You're looking for reasons not to believe? I can give them to you. But that's a silly one. Because the truth is that we are little Christs and the truth is that we do have, or should have, the seed of Christ within us and it is our intention for that to grow up within us and that it is our intention for that to grow up within us and that Christ be formed in us until we become the people that God intended for us to be. So if you take offense to that

well just take offense to that. I'm not even going to say I'm sorry. I'm just telling you what the scriptures teach us, what is available to us. Jesus made it clear that what you need to do is to search out your sources. The Jews happen to believe that whatever eternal life that was available to them, and in their case it was more or less the reward of a properly spent, a properly executed life.

There's many Jews that don't have any concept at all, never have had, of eternal life. But Jesus asserts the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. He was teaching us, you need to go to your sources and see what they say. I assure you they don't say what you think they say. This was his warning to them that you need to know that you're putting

your confidence in something that does not necessarily or should not necessarily give you that confidence. I know you think that you're sons of Abraham, but you need to know something. God can raise these stones up to be seeds of Abraham. That's not a big deal. I know you're a member of Jerusalem, but you know there's many strangers living here in Jerusalem. I know that you believe that because you've been commissioned

to give place to the temple, that temple can be, has been destroyed and rebuilt by men that aren't even Jews. All the things that you put your confidence in are going to fall around you. You need to know that I'm not here necessarily to destroy this or to destroy that. I didn't come to destroy. I came to give life and to give it more abundantly. I came to save you. I am the Savior. I am trying to save this nation. I wish you could treat me like an enemy. I'm not your enemy. I've been your God all of your life. You don't even know who I am.

I inscribed the Ten Commandments in rock. The ones that you worship and carry around and tote around your synagogue and kiss the Torah as much as you can. I wrote that. That's my work. And he kept telling them, you act like you love Moses. Moses knew who I was. Do you know the New Testament actually says that Moses chose rather to suffer the reproach of Christ

than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Moses, Christ, isn't there some kind of a time anomaly here? Isn't there a chronological problem here? No, you see, I believe Moses knew Christ. I believe that he was totally familiar with him. He met him on the mountain. The Bible says that Moses held the distinction of being the only man that ever spoke to God face to face. So did he know Christ?

Of course he did. Of course he did. And he's trying to get across to the poor Jews out here that are so intrigued with the writings of Moses. We are Moses' disciples. Remember Remember we ended last show with that. We're Moses' disciples. As for this man we know not whence he is. And so they were just willing to discount him and to accept Moses. Jesus is screaming at the top of his lungs. If you knew Moses you'd know

me. He wrote of me. And he's trying to get these people to see their depraved condition, the depth of depravity that they're living in, the assumptions that they're living in, the presumptions that they pray by, the ideas that have no value whatsoever, no redemptive value whatsoever, and he's trying to say, folks, we've got to stop this. This has to end, and it ends with me. If you don't believe this, you know what you're going to end up doing?

You're going to end up hating me. You're going to end up killing me. But I'm going to see to it that the blood that I spill is going to pay for your sin. And if you just have faith in me that I'll raise you up on the last day. How can you do that? I'm the son of God. You're not the son of God. You're not equal with God. You're not a God. Why are you saying you're a God?

Jesus says, if you don't change that idea in your head right now, if you're not able to put within your head the proper ideas, the proper theology, the proper doctrine, do you know you're going to be in big trouble? All right. So I paraphrase that. So I'm putting genes on Jesus. Here's what I want. You want the scripture on this?

He says, if you don't believe that I am he, you'll die in your sins. Boy, that's solemn. That's kind of sad. And he says, you know, you consider yourself to be the epitome of spiritual understanding. You're the spiritual leadership of Israel. He told Nicodemus, you're a teacher of all Israel and you don't understand being born again? He was just constantly shocked. These people who are leading Israel are blind.

Blind leaders of the blind. He stood off far off one time and looked down and he says, look at these sheep with no shepherd. And he was just constantly astounded by the fact that he came to be their shepherd, to be their savior, to be their link between them and the God that they supposedly worshipped. And they wanted nothing to do with Him. But as many as received Him, hey this is you brother. This can be you if you'll just make this work in your life. To as many as received Him

to them gave you power to become sons of God. And we can do this. And what little bit of dribs and drabs or whatever little bit of communication we can receive from God, most of the time what we receive from God is understanding, knowledge above our means, wisdom above our means. And he puts these things and plants these things within us, and they come out in some of the most beautiful times. And we find ourselves able to handle situations that essentially could not handle before. And so the situation that we find ourselves in now, even though

it is sometimes sketchy communications and such, we need to know that this is just the earnest of our inheritance. It gets better from here. And you can have communication with God. Good, solid communication with God. And it just gets better and better and better, but nothing compared to what it's going to be one day. And boy, I can hardly wait.

Even talking about that kind of thing, it makes me want to say, come Lord Jesus. Now he says, you which receive honor one from another and seek not the honor that cometh from God only, how can you believe? And he's saying that there is an impossibility and your method of behavior, your method of living the way you live and what you think is correct

what you think is doctrinally pure and theologically pure and these kind of things, you need to know this is absolutely hindering your ability to believe and you can hear the tone of impossibility in his voice when he says, how can you believe? Because your only concern is what your brothers around you think of you. Your only concern is what the church thinks of you. What other people who call themselves Christian,

I'm bringing it up into the 21st century here, only people who call themselves Christian. I'm bringing it up into the 21st century here. Only people who call themselves Christians. Famous preachers, famous singers, famous people within your own church, famous people, you know, people that are of renown. We care what they think of us. And I'm being very generous when I say we and us because frankly as you start to learn these things, you realize there's no way I can live this way. There's no way I can believe what I believe,

what I read in the scriptures that say is required for me to believe and be friends with these people. They won't allow, I'll allow it. I don't care what you believe. You can believe that when you die, you go to Venus. I don't care. I mean, you can believe anything you want to. You can strap on your Nike tennis shoes and wait for a hail bop comment if that's what you want to do. I'm not going to get mad at you. I'm certainly not going to tell you that I'm not going to have lunch with you or, you know, I'm not going to associate with you. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to treat you better than you

treat me because I don't happen to believe your denominational stand on everything. Now this is the way that we're supposed to believe. Now if you want to go around preaching that Jesus Christ was indeed not the Son of God and that He was not the anointed one and that He does not have the power that we give Him and He does not deserve honor and worship and the majesty and the glory that goes along with being the Son of God,

alright, now you're talking about something that is antithetical to what I believe. That's different. But people who just, you know, believe wrongly or incompletely or whatever, and they love the Lord, I can be friends with them forever. Some people can't. Some people insist that you believe what they believe or, you know, you're out, baby. It's anathema,

maranatha. We're finished with you. Jesus' attitude was, he tells his disciples, you know, they come back from wherever they've been, and they said, hey, we saw people casting out demons in your name. Jesus said, really? So what'd you do? We told them to stop it. You told them to what? We told them to quit. You did? Yeah, we told them we were your disciples and we spoke for you and we have the authority to tell them to stop and by golly, we told them to stop. Jesus said, why did you do that? Why did you do that? They're doing a good work in my name. No, they don't know everything you know.

No, they don't have the doctrinal depth that you do, and frankly, you're going to find out your doctrine's not so deep after all. They don't have your level of dedication, and by the way, frankly, you're going to find out that your level of dedication isn't what you thought it was. But no, they don't walk with us. No, they don't understand everything, but neither do you. You know, why don't you let these people do what they're doing? They're not against me. So anybody that's not against me, I'm going to consider them as for me.

Now, isn't this exactly what I just said? If your philosophy isn't antithetical to good sound theology, if it's not sacrilegious against Jesus Christ as being the Son of God or God Himself then we can get along. Can't we get along? Sure we can get along. I can get along with you. Can you get along with me? And so I'm afraid that our voices over the pulpit have moved these into

areas to where people are scared to death. Talk to anybody that doesn't believe like they do. You know the average Christian will tell you that, you know, they see a knock on the door and they look outside, and if they're dressed like decent men and women, if they're dressed decently, the women are wearing dresses and the men look like they've had a bath and their hair is combed and they look nice,

they determine right away, they must be Jehovah's Witnesses. And so they tell you, you know, we hide. Or, you know, or we bring them in and grill them and see if we can make them mad. Or, you know, they talk about all the ways that they avoid the Jehovah's Witness. I want to know, why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? They consider themselves a witness for Jehovah. What do you consider yourself to be?

A witness for your denomination? There's so many disparities in the way we get along with one another. And if you look in the Scriptures, and you look all through the Old Testament, you're going to find there's one of the things that really ticks God off is the way we treat one another. We need to go treating each other so badly. And you know, considering people who don't believe exactly like we do, as if

there's some kind of hate, as my family uses the term hate, as if there's some kind of spook or some kind of, you know, a demon, a wicked, or, you know, an injurious person. I don't think that really goes anywhere. Let's be nice to each other, shall we? Alright, time's running out and I wanted to make sure that we

talked about these things. One thing that I want to explain to you is that if you do take my advice and keep the commandments and not disobey your conscience and take time every day to hear the voice of God for yourself. You may become a little disappointed that you don't hear a voice in your ear. I think we talked about these things. If not, go in the archives and find these shows and learn these things for yourself. But you may become

a little bit discouraged that you're not receiving a personal revelation from God or things such as that. And I think Moses is trying, or Jesus is trying through Moses to show us that we need to be faithful in the prophet's visions in order to receive them for ourselves. He says, if you don't believe Moses,

how are you going to believe my words? Now, you know, naturally, at first blush, you look at this, and you're thinking, now wait a minute, are you saying that Moses' words are on the same level? Really? As your words? You're saying that how can I believe Moses' words and not yours?

How can I not believe Moses and believe yours? What in the world do those two things have to do with each other? Well, there's a lot of things that are written that are purported as the words of Moses, and there are some things that are absolutely the words of Moses. And his testimony, especially in writing the laws and the history of Israel. And Jesus is saying that in what Moses had to say, he constantly introduced

me to the world. And what I'm finding is, as I hang around Jerusalem and talk to some of you people, that you've really never made that connection. And I can't help but believe that it's because you just frankly didn't believe the words of Moses. He said he was going to send a prophet. He said he was going to send, as a matter of fact the Lord's prophecy that was

given through Moses was, I'm going to send a man like you. And in the same verse, if I'm not mistaken, in the same verse he says, I'm going to send them a prophet like you, I'm going to send them a prophet like unto me. Here you have God describing the Messiah in that he's going to be like Moses, in that he's going to be a man above men, but he's also going to be a prophet like unto God himself, in that

he is the Son of God, empowered by God to do certain things. This was so well known among the Jews that when they came to Elijah, they were expecting three things to happen before the Messiah came. One of them was that there was going to be a prophet like unto Moses. One of them was that there was going to be a prophet like unto God. And the other was that Elijah was going to come and make the way for the Messiah.

They came to John the Baptist and said, Are you Elijah? And he says, No, I'm not. And they said, Are you the Messiah? And he says, I am not. Art thou that prophet? You ever read this and wondered that prophet? What prophet? Well this was the prophet that Moses constantly was trying to tell the children of Israel by his writings that there was going to come

a prophet in the earth that he says when he speaks you will listen to him and you will do what he says. This is very clear. And anybody who doesn't do what he says I am going to require it of that man. Prophets come and prophets go. I am going to require it of that man. Prophets come and prophets go.

But many times they come because God sends them and they go because we kill them. But God has been essentially tolerant up to this point. But he's saying that when I send this prophet, this prophet we're talking about now, when I send him, they will do what he says. So the Jews were under the impression that whoever, whenever this prophet comes, he's going to be different than every other prophet. And we've got to admit, that John character out in the wilderness, he's different. Let's go find out who he is.

So they go out there and they ask him the three questions. Are you Elijah? He said, no. Are you the Messiah? He says, no. Aren't thou that prophet? All right, when I read that, I'm thinking, what prophet? What prophet are they talking about? You go back and you find the prophecy and then you run up on this scripture where Jesus is saying, he says

don't think that I will accuse you to the Father. Don't think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one that accuseth you even Moses in whom you trust. Had you believed Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote of me. Now, you hear that? He's saying that Moses told you this prophet was coming. And I'm not going to accuse you to the Father.

I want you to know Moses has already set this into motion. And it was that he said that anybody who doesn't obey that prophet, I'm going to require it of him. So there is one that accuseth you. It's not me, but it's Moses in whom you trust and if you'd have believed Moses you would have recognized me and you would have received me and you would have believed in me and I saved you because that's what I'm here for is to save your soul they and I think that in

many cases they pled ignorance I think in many cases, they pled ignorance. I think in many cases, their plea was, we didn't know. Jesus says, that's not going to fly, guys, because every time I talk to you, you tell me how much you know. Every time I talk to you, you tell me we're not blind. We can see. We understand. He says, out of your own mouth, I'm going to judge you.

You know, if you'd have said, we're blind, it would have been different. If you said, we don't understand, we can't see, you'd have no sin. But you say, we see. Therefore, your sin will know. And if you believe not that I'm he, you're going to die in your sin.

Friend, that's a fate I don't wish for anyone, especially not for you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being a part of the broadcast. That's all the time we have for today. All right, until next time, Think Red, Inc. 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