Lara Gboyega Adedeji: Good day everyone and welcome to Bible in Focus. Today we'll be sharing together on: How to decipher, how to decode in the 21st century, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our focus will be Matthew chapter 16, from verse 5-12. And it reads:
“Now when His disciples had come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. 6 Then Jesus said to them, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” 7 And they reasoned among themselves, saying, “It is because we have taken no bread.” 8 But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, “O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? 9 Do you not yet understand, or remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? 10 Nor the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many large baskets you took up? 11 How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread? — but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” 12 Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”
Gboyega Adedeji: Now, if we look at that verse 11, look at how Jesus concluded the reasoning He was having with His disciples. He said: “How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread.” That means that prior to this moment, even though Jesus had spoken to the disciples, they still did not understand what Jesus was speaking to them. Now, if these people were standing face to face with Jesus, if they were sitting with Jesus in the same space, and Jesus was looking at them in the eyes, and He was speaking to them, and they could not discern, they could not understand, they could not decode the message of Jesus; the truth is, many of us are pastors today, many of us are members of churches today. Many of us are born again Christians today. And indeed, we don't understand what Jesus is saying to us.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: Yes, very true. And it is important that we bring this to the fore, because right now all of us have been hearing Jesus at some point or the other in our walk with Him. How many of us truly understand what He's saying to us? Hope we're not also like the disciples of Jesus in this passage, how Jesus was communicating a certain truth to them, and they were understanding it differently from the intention of Jesus. So, what is the Lord Jesus saying to us today, in our contemporary times in the 21st century, that we truly understand? Are we also having the understanding of the disciples or we truly understand the intention of Jesus, the communication of Jesus.
Hope the communication of Jesus to us is effective, because until we are able to decode the message from the sender to the receiver, communication has not taken place. And that is why it looks as if many of us are just tagging along Jesus, listening to Him, and following the crowd. But His word to us does not have any effect and not making sense in our lives, because we truly don't understand what He is saying to us. And for us to be able to decode and understand what Jesus is saying to us, we must be able to understand the Spirit of Jesus. The Bible says, “who knows the heart of God except the Spirit of God? Who knows the heart of man except the spirit of man? Until we are able to come into alignment with the Spirit of Christ, we cannot decode, we cannot understand, we cannot decipher what the Lord Jesus is saying.
Gboyega Adedeji: You know, there's a place in First Corinthians chapter 14, that really brings home this matter. If you read from verse 7, it says: “Even things without life, whether flute or harp, when they make a sound, unless they make a distinction in the sounds, how will it be known what is piped or played? 8 For if the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle?” Many people are struggling in life today, and they are wondering: “Lord Jesus, You are my Lord, Lord Jesus, you are my savior. Why are you not saving me? Why are you not lording my life at this point? Why does it look as if you've shot yourself off from me.” And yet God is speaking, yet Christ is speaking. But the problem is, people are not able to decipher what the Lord is speaking. It looks like someone who has a television in his house, and he has a dish, but the dish is nowhere positioned to the right satellites to receive the signal.
Or you even have the right dish and your dish is positioned. But you don't have the right decoder in your living room to decode that signal that is peculiar to the channel and to the satellite. So irrespective of the effort you're putting in place, you could even conclude “nobody's sending signals across the word.” But the truth is, signals are sent. You don't just have the right decoder to decode those signals and make your life beautiful by the pictures that you see and the audio that you receive. So, in the same vein, God is always speaking, the Lord Jesus Christ is always speaking. Jesus said: “My sheep will hear my voice, the voice of a stranger they will not hear.” But the truth is the sheep of Christ Jesus are men and women who have come to the place of discerning the voice of the Lord, they can recognize. Jesus said “the voice of a stranger they will not hear” but when I speak to them, they will hear. They will understand, they can interpret and also make decision. They can make sense of my words.
Many of us today are struggling, we can't make sense of what Jesus is saying. What is Jesus saying concerning my marriage? What is Jesus saying concerning my ministry? What is Jesus saying concerning my finance? I want to start a new business; does the Lord have any message to me? The question is, have you come to the place of understanding that; it is beyond the letter that kills? It is beyond somebody telling you that “Jesus said, and I quote”, can you discern the coded messages in the kingdom of Christ? This wisdom that is shared on a daily basis across the internet, or YouTube, everywhere you go to, you get a message from the Lord, can you discern it, or you also, are like a muse that no understanding, that needs to be led by being beaten with sticks and rods? You must not make your life to be like that.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: Yes, it's important to understand the messages of Jesus because that is when it becomes applicable to us. So, when Jesus is sending a message across to you, when He was on the earth, He was speaking in parables, and He was speaking to people about the kingdom but they could not understand it. He was speaking to them about the relationship they should have with God, the kind of relationship that they should have with God. When Jesus was speaking about the parable of the prodigal son, He was explaining to us how God is the Father in the kingdom. And many of us are still like those multitude following Jesus, only listening to parables. Hope we will come into that place where we are like the disciples of Jesus, where we go back to Him in personal fellowship and say “what does this mean Jesus, speak to us clearly so that these words can benefit us, not talking to us as servants, but as friends and sons!”
It is important. Because until we do that, until we come to that space, we cannot benefit from the words of Jesus, the words of Jesus cannot make sense in our lives. It cannot make sense to us in our marriage and in every aspect of our lives. Jesus said “the words that I speak to you, they are Spirit and they are life” only if it is decoded.
Gboyega Adedeji: And it has to be spiritually decoded. It says “the word that I say to you, they are spirit, but must be spiritually discerned, spiritually decoded for it to become life to you.
Lara Gboyega Adedeji: So, that's the word that we have brought your way from the Lord today on Bible in Focus, that it's important that you discern the words of Jesus, you decode the words of Jesus so that the life in the words of Jesus can be profitable, can be beneficial and can flow in your direction.
Gboyega Adedeji: All right, thank you for being part of our moment. I believe God has spoken to you. It's important that you start from now to use the things that we've shared with you, as the Lord has helped us, even in your day-to-day life. It's important you understand that it's not enough that you read the Bible, you must understand. Do you remember that Ethiopian Enoch, Philip asked him: “Do you understand what you are reading?” And the man said, “How can I understand except somebody guides me?” You see, the words of Christ, even though they may not be easily understood by all, they can be understood by you, if you ask the Holy Spirit to guide you.
Allow the Holy Spirit to brood on the Word in your heart, let Him help you to decode it, it could be coded, it is not because God hates you, it is because God does not want the message to be intercepted. He has encoded the message; He has sent them to you. It is your responsibility at this point to decode it and make it useful in your life. Let people see the word of God at work in your life. Let them see your love, let them see your joy. Let them see your patience, let them see your growth. And they will say “indeed, this is a Living Bible”, a Bible in motion, a Bible on the go, and their lives will be influenced by your own life, and they will give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Till the next time we bring you another interesting episode on the same channel, we want you to remain at the feet of Jesus, hearing and discerning what the Lord is saying to you and your household and prospering in the new year with the word that the Lord has sent to you.
God bless you.
