Transcription
God, I'm so afraid of this. God, this is producing such guilt in me. God, what do you say about guilt? And God's like, "I never accuse man. I'm I'm not the accuser of humanity." So whatever voice you're hearing accusing you, not mine. Read the Bible. What if you just knew that was true? Do you know how much fear, guilt, and shame would vanish if you believed that God was not an accuser of people? There is an accuser of people, the liar, identified as the accuser of people. And like, God's really challenging me. It's how many times did Jesus accuse the disciples of stuff? Never. He doesn't do it. So confession is like, "God, I feel so accused right now." And I feel like, and then, and what do you say? And see, this is a process. You jump in a process like this. Well, so the process is going on right here, but the process is also going on with me and another person. It's the same process. It's the beauty of nature, right? It happens here. It happens like this. It's it's not it's a mystery, but it's not it's not like a puzzle you can't ever resolve.
So when you're reading from Genesis all the way through to Revelation with Jesus as the main central point through which you read and understand the whole thing, because he is the word of God, he is the word of God, right? Um, so as you're reading throughout, you just watch these processes happening. What's Moses doing there? What what happened? Why? How is he here? And now he was a prince of Egypt, now he's a shepherd over there. What caused that career change? Because that was pretty high, and now he's over here. What happened? What was the what proc he got? There's a process that he got to here, and then there was another process that he got to there, and then there's another process that he got back to here. Like there these. And so what's the process? And the process is always the same because God's like, "I better do this like a thousand times for you guys to get it." And so you can start to see it. So then when if you see that process occurring all through scripture with all kinds of humans, male and female, drunk and sober, all of them different, it's pretty much like, "Wow, they're all the same. They're all the same."
So watch this process here. And this, so we we start with self-emptying. That's always how you have to begin. You have to release. You have to get the junk out for 10 minutes. And then I we praying people was like, "Just let God have the anger for five minutes. Just five minutes. Put the anger down so you can actually hear his voice." And then you'll know what to do. But as long as that anger's in the way, just give us five minutes and help them put it down for five minutes and let the Lord speak to them like that. So so here we have a story here, and I picked one that I figured you've all at least sung this at some point in your life. Um, this is in the King James, I think. I hope this is in the King James. Yeah. Um, so so watch the process here. I'm just going to do a piece of it. So we're going to go through this this little thing the rest of the day. So I know we've already done part of it.
"And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho." So it's interesting, Jericho today is in the West Bank, right? Um, Jesus would go to prison for two years if he went to Jericho today. He That's the law there. So because he's Jewish and couldn't go there. But "and Jesus entered and passed through Jericho." Now look at this. So he's just passing through. "And behold, there was a man there named Zacchaeus." Donna just kind of talked about this. Now the name Zacchaeus means Pure or innocent one. Okay? Now, so the the the writer here, okay? So like if I if I call Abram, Old Testament Abram, who remember Moses is the one that tells the story of Abraham. It's so fascinating. Every time you're reading those stories, Abraham, Joseph, Jacob, the story of Jacob, Moses is telling that story. And there's a reason why he's telling it the way. Imagine you're an Israelite and you're hearing the story of Jacob, which is a story about don't manipulate your life like your mom taught you. Jacob learned how to be a liar and a manipulator from his his mother, right? He learned it. He was taught it. He wasn't just a mean guy. He was doing what he was trained to do by the worldview that he lived in, which was separation and scarcity. And yet God said, "You're going to serve." But you better get to work making that happen. It's how a lot of us think. So Moses is telling that whole story, and the way he tells it, he's telling it to a people, and he wants them to understand where to get their identity from. Look what happens when a guy blessed by God and promised by God thinks his identity is fulfilled by his ability to make it happen. Look at the disaster. Still, God works it out, but wow, how painful was that process when he could have just walked with God and let it unfold in the way it would have unfolded. Same with Moses. I think Moses would have probably been the next Pharaoh, and the way Israel would have become free was him going, "You're free now." He was on the path to do it, but he believed a lie, one little lie, and then he started acting like the lie was true, and then he became a shepherd. "I guess I'm a shepherd now." Anyway, so they're in this process.
So oh, I was going to say about Abram. Sorry. Abram. So Abram gets the name Abraham, right? Which is the injection of God's name into the name Abram. So God is na is naming Abram Abraham by putting Yahweh in the middle of his name. And he does the same same with Sarah. So which means the father of nations. So if he's just Abram and he's walking around and and uh Sarah is just Sarah without the Yahweh injection identity in their lives, they would just be saying the given name to each other. But when God puts the H in it, and they're 90 and they're not don't have a kid yet, every time she, even when she gets mad, she has to call Abram now, "The father of nations, father of nations." "I wish you would pick up." So every time she says his true identity, she's affirming what God says about him. That's how powerful identity. And he and he, you know, he's like, "Mother of thousands." "Will you stop?" He doesn't call her, "Yeah, my wife's barren." He doesn't call her the barren one. And so what the way they're the names they're calling each other is not because they have faith in each other to do what God said, but they have faith in what God said about them. Do you understand that? So it's not like, "God, give me the faith to do the, give me the faith." It's like, "God, help me to have the faith to see myself and my future the way you see it." So my faith, as Paul says in Romans, my faith is in his faith in me, which is huge. So every time you go to the Lord, he's like, "What are you doing? Come on, you know, do you not know who you are?" Like, "Don't you? I have tons of faith in you." You Jesus is sharing his faith with you. That's what he's doing. And then he's going to ask us later to share our faith with other people that don't have it. Do you see that? Not go evangelize, which means fight and conquer and then measure the results, scarcity, separation worldview, right? No, go connect with the ones that you're already connected with, but you decided you're not, and now you call them "me," which is a word of separation. God doesn't have those. One of the guys that's working with us in this trafficking video we're doing, we asked him, one of the directors asked him, because he works in a pretty intense situation, "Aren't you afraid that the trafficker might kill you?" And he said, "They're not traffickers, they're my neighbors." Jesus said this famously too. And then he said, "I'd be, I wouldn't be surprised if a trafficker killed me, but I'd be shocked if my neighbor killed." Right? They're not your enemy, they're your neighbor. So why don't you treat them like what God calls them instead of what you call them in a separation world? You see that? And then they're like, "Who's my neighbor?" Well, yeah, Samaritans are your neighbor, which is like telling them Hamas is their neighbor. Anyway, there's this guy named Zacchaeus. He's up in a tree. So who's up in the tree? Jesus. Who's up in the tree? Oh, the innocent, pure one is up there. That's how he identifies that man. The innocent, pure one is up there.
"And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus." Which was, here's here's the worldview, separation, identity of the guy, which or our this would be our view. Uh, there was a man who was the innocent, pure one, which was chief among publicans, the worst of the worst. And I like this, and he was rich. It's like he's the innocent, pure one. He's got two things working against him. He thinks that he's chief among sinners, and he thinks he's rich. Both of which are false. But the real guy, the innocent, pure one, that's who Jesus is going to talk to. He's not going to talk to the Publican sinner rich person. Man, when you talk to people like they're rich, you're you're right in line with the enemy. Or like they're poor. Those are terms of measurement, aren't they? You can't say the word rich unless you're comparing and making a comparison. Rich being good, and poor being, I'm sorry, right? And so this is the way the separation worldview is just so in our brains. We use it all the time and don't pay any attention to it. What kind of guy is he? Well, he's gone back, but he is rich. So there's hope for him, right? So the man, he's the innocent, pure one, chief among publicans, and he was rich. Okay. And he sought to see Jesus. Here's, so we have two different identities there, right? The rich, slimy, nasty traitor, and the innocent, pure one. Um, and he sought to see Jesus. Who, who he sought to? Which he sought to see Jesus? The innocent, pure one, or the Publican sinner rich guy? The innocent, pure one. Do you know why? Because that's the real one. That's true. And the other one's not even true. Doesn't even exist. It's only the true one. So the innocent, pure one sought, look at the word, to see Jesus. To see him. To he probably has heard of Jesus. He wants to see him. Say this to Jesus, "I want to see you." Yeah, that's different than "I'd love to read all kinds of verses about you all day long." This is this is what Jesus says, "I only do what I see." There. It's not like an intellect. They see it. The the Peter and James, they see that the man had the, that's what the word. They see that the man had the faith to be healed. How? They can see it because they're seeing through the spirit of God. That's how they're looking at the world. And when you see the world through the eyes of God, there is no separation. There is no separation. In fact, if you see reality through the eyes of quantum mechanics, there is no separation also. The only ones that see separation are the ones in the lie. There is no separation in our universe. You don't have to be an Christian to know that that's true. Take the wolves out of Yellowstone. The fish in the stream die. Why? Because it's all connected. Whether you like it or not, whether you want to believe it or not, you can deny it. It's connected. Do you see that?
So Zacchaeus, he wants to see. He wants to connect. He wants to see Jesus, who he was, who he was. But he could not for the press of the crowd. The crowd was there, and he was a man. This is a great statement. Little of stature, small of stature. So we think that means, you know, he's like a leprechaun or something like that. He's like a wee, he was Irish. He's a wee little man. He's, you know, it's but but look at the description. He's a Publican, and he's rich off of his own people. He's a traitor to his own people. And he is a man of no stature. He's a little man. So if you say that term in the Middle East, yeah, he's a little man. They don't think that he's short. He's like, he's a dirt bag is what he is. He's not even a real man. I think that's more what that means than. And he had to climb because he was short. What would prevent not Zacchaeus, what would prevent the chief among publicans who is rich from going through that crowd? Why? They I don't think they'd want him there. Why? We don't allow short people. No, because among them, he's like the worst. And I don't think he can go into that crowd personally. And why would he go to a crowd that's looking to see Jesus? His crowd ain't going to be looking for Jesus. Like it's the wrong people. You got to be a certain kind of person to want to go see Jesus. And so he, his only way to do is what his false identity would do in his vocation is to deceive and sneak around and to hide. But I still wish I could see Jesus. Even in the midst of, even with, I can't even get in that group of people because, you know, they're not going to let me in. I still want to see Jesus. And he ran before and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was to pass that way. Just see, I just want to see you, Jesus. I just want to see you in the situation that I'm in because I feel like I'm so small and powerless in this thing, and everyone hates me, and I just want to see you. If I could just see you, it would be different. And he's exactly right. What he doesn't expect is that Jesus would see him. That's that's what he didn't expect.
"He ran before and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was just to pass by." "If I could just see Jesus pass by." "Jesus, I'm over here dying." "There he goes like that." "And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him." Who did he see? The innocent, pure one. Because that's all he's ever been in the eyes of Christ, in the eyes in the eyes of the one that made him, which is Jesus. He looks up at that tree, and he doesn't go, "Oh my gosh, what a disaster. That guy, we can't let him in our church." He looks up and he sees the one he made. That's what he always. That's why you always want to run to Jesus because he sees you as you truly are. And then which makes you see him as he truly is. Zacchaeus, he doesn't want to get too close to Jesus. I don't think. He might like incinerate or melt or something because he's, you know, a thief. Uh, and when he, when Jesus came, "Polly," he looked up and he saw him and said unto him, "What does he call him?" "Hey, hey, innocent pure one." Nobody in that crowd would have looked up and go, "Hey, there's innocent pure one from down the street." They would have all said, "There's that just like we do when we're identifying the good guys and the bad guys in the world." You know them. You know that those people kill them. Good, good, good. Uh, and when he, so he looked up and saw him and said unto him, "Innocent pure one, hurry up because I'm running out of time." No, because let's get out of the false as fast as we can. Come on, you've already spent years in this. Let's speed this thing up and get back into the true and get about it. Get down here. Stop acting like that. Get down here in the true self. Come on.
But imagine Zacchaeus being called that by Jesus. Do you know when I'm with men, especially, and I'll and they'll be, you know, they'll be struggling with, "I'm not a good enough husband or a good father or what." And you, we all know what a good father looks like. No, we don't. We have no idea. But anyway, but the measurement that we're in, the measurement system that we're in, that says, "You're not a good father," or "You are a good father," or whatever. And I just say, "Well, it's easier instead of trying to find which book really tells you what a good father is so you cannot be that and be embarrassed when you read the book and feel ashamed." Why don't you just ask Jesus if what he thinks of you as a father? And do you know what most men say? "I don't want to do that." Why? Why not? Why? What's Jesus going to say to him? "Yeah, you're the worst father." But boy, he's not the accuser. So what would Jesus say to a person says, "What kind of father do you think I am?" He's not going to speak to the false. He's going to speak to the true. And here's what he's going to say. I think it's what he said to the woman caught in adultery. It's like, "I, these guys don't have the right to judge you." So we can just dispense with them. And then a lot of us would be out of our jobs because we don't have the right to judge like that. And he says, "I'm the only one that has the right to judge you." And he is judging her. He is judging her. But he's a great physician. That's what he is. That's what he calls himself, not the great guy with the gavel. I'm the great physician. And what does he come to do with people? He judges them to do what? Heal them. Heal them. Like a good doctor would do. He doesn't, "You come in, you have cancer, and like, 'Oh my gosh, you have cancer. You're going to hell, buddy.'" Like, why would he do that? He's like, "You have cancer. Okay. Bad some bad choices, maybe. Let's get on the road to healing. And I'm going to make a judgment on your diet and your smoking, and you can decide whether you're going to follow this or not. But this is the only way you're going to get well." That's what he's doing all the time to people, every day, judging people. But when we're when we die, we're afraid to stand before him because we don't believe that we're not taught that about that's what he's doing. Do you see?
So Jesus says, "Get Maye, come down, for today." Look what he says here. This is great. "I must abide your house." Look at the word he uses. What does Jesus mean when he uses the word abide? Like, "I'm coming for a quick ca." No. What's he want to do in his house? He wants to remain there. So he can't just mean, "I'm just coming to sit at your house and have a meal and take off and do evangelism and leave." And when he says house, he means way more than your brick and mortar. What he's saying to him, "I must abide in your house. This is where I'm coming. Get down here. I'm coming here." It's like he is going to go to his house, but he's going to this house, and I must abide there. Why? Because if I abide in you, and you abide in me, then you can ask whatever you want, and it'll be done for you. And you won't have to steal in a scarcity separation worldview that you live in and manipulate people and fight and compete and compare. You won't have to do any of that because then you and I will be connected. Do you see that? "I must abide at thy house." And look at, look at Zacchaeus' response. "Well, I can't. I haven't really cleaned up." And he made haste and came down and look at the word and did what? Received him. Do you see the power of those words? Joyfully. And then all the people said, "Yay, finally Zacchaeus is discovering his." Nope. They said, "Well, he's going to be a guest with that Democrat, that scum." Whatever. We would be shocked. We would be disappointed. "Wow, Jesus went over there and hung out with that group. Doesn't he know who they are?" We'll have to make sure Jesus knows. We'll tell Jesus who they really are. That's our job on the planet. But they were upset, and that's the separation worldview in action. We don't want you to be connected. We do not want you to be connected.