Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:06] Yeah. God, we just, we just thank you for what you're doing in this church. Thank you for all that you're doing with all of us here. And yeah, we want to hear from you this morning.
[00:00:17] So, yeah, Jesus, we just pray. Come, Lord, speak through, through this word this morning, Lord. Lord, touch every heart. They'll change lives.
[00:00:26] This morning we pray in Jesus name.
[00:00:29] Amen.
[00:00:31] Yeah. Okay, so we're still in Luke. Oh, used to a timepiece thing. We're still in Luke and we're getting there, aren't we? Jesus is getting there as well.
[00:00:42] We've reached Luke 19:1 to 10.
[00:00:45] It's coming up on the back there. And I'll just read this, the story of Zacchaeus.
[00:00:56] If you were like me, you went to Sunday school or you had one of those children's Bibles, then we're familiar with the story.
[00:01:06] I can still see this picture of this little man sitting in a tree and Jesus is coming through with the crowds.
[00:01:16] So it's a well known story that we're looking at this morning.
[00:01:20] So I'll just read this. Read this to us. So Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short, he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
[00:01:46] When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.
[00:01:54] So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
[00:01:58] All the people saw this and began to mutter, he has gone to the guest of a sinner. But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, look, Lord, here and now. I give half of my possessions to the poor. And if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount Jesus said to him today. Salvation has come to this house because this man too is a son of Abraham. For the son of man came to seek and to save the lost third hand.
[00:02:37] Cool. Okay, so Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. Yeah. He's just 15 miles northwest of Jerusalem in this town of Jericho.
[00:02:48] Yeah. Jericho was named the city of palm trees. Yeah, it's like an oasis, this place. It sounds beautiful. It's a good climate.
[00:03:00] King Herod built one of his winter palace is there.
[00:03:05] It's actually the lowest city in the world. It sits 258 meters below sea level.
[00:03:15] And this is this is the gateway, if you like, from Galilee to Jerusalem. Everybody went this way. Yeah. And this was the place to be.
[00:03:26] And if you attack collector like Zacchaeus, it's a very prosperous place to be. Okay. A lot of trade was going on here. Yeah. If you want to be a tax collector and you want to make the best money, Jericho is a good place to do your trade. Yeah.
[00:03:44] So he wasn't just any tax collector. Okay. He was the chief tax collector. This phrase isn't used anywhere else in the Bible. And if you find the Greek translation, you. It says architelonus. Okay. Which means architect, taxman. Yeah. This guy.
[00:04:05] This guy devised the whole thing. Yeah. This guy worked out how much. How he could get the most money from his fellow men to give to the Romans who were occupying the land, as we know. Yeah.
[00:04:19] So this guy would not have been liked very much. Yeah. This guy knew how to. How to manipulate the system so that everybody was getting ripped off by him to give to the Romans and, of course, take a fair chunk for himself.
[00:04:33] So as you can imagine, this guy wasn't very popular. Yeah. There's no way that people were gonna get out of his way to help him reach Jesus. That's for sure.
[00:04:48] Now Jesus knew who he was.
[00:04:50] Okay. Remember, Jesus was fully God.
[00:04:54] Jesus had to depend on the Holy Spirit, the way we do today, to do anything to glorify God. Yeah. And we know that Jesus was come up in slide 4. We know that Jesus was spending a lot of time in prayer. Okay. Every morning, Jesus will be spending time with his father, with God. What do you want me to do today? Where are we going today?
[00:05:23] How are we going to glorify you today? How are we. How are we going to grow our kingdom today?
[00:05:29] Yeah. This is what Jesus was doing every time. And of course, God would have said to him through the Holy Spirit, Jesus, we're going to go to Jericho today. We're going to meet this guy called Zacchaeus. We're going to save him today.
[00:05:43] Yeah.
[00:05:44] And this is what Jesus was setting out to do. Remember, Jesus is just weeks away now. He's on his way to Jerusalem. You'd have thought he'd be more worried about himself. Yeah. He's going to suffer a terrible death. He's going to be arrested, okay. He's going to be tortured. He's going to be beaten. But no, today he's interested in Zacchaeus. Yeah. And he's stopping for Zacchaeus. So we've got some scripture here. He. Yeah. So we've got Luke 6, 12, 16. Before choosing 12 disciples, after a night spent in prayer on a mountainside, Jesus chose and appointed His 12 apostles.
[00:06:22] After feeding the 5,000, Jesus went up on a mountain by himself to pray. Mark 6:46. Before his transfiguration, Jesus took Peter, James and John up a mountain to pray.
[00:06:35] During the prayer, he was transfigured and Moses and Elijah appeared to him. Yeah, so Jesus had a regular habit of prayer. And this is so important. We all need to have this routine where we're praying with God regularly, daily to progress our walk with Him.
[00:06:55] Okay, so we tend to disqualify ourselves, don't we? We tend to think, well, that was Jesus, he could do that. But we can't do that. That's not true, is it?
[00:07:13] We've got John 14, 12, 14. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father and I will do whatever you ask in my name. And so that the Father may be glorified in the Son, you may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. That's what Jesus says. That's the truth.
[00:07:37] How do we get that truth from here to here?
[00:07:41] Yeah. And trust God that when we pray, when we ask for things, when we seek for things, that he's going to give them to us.
[00:07:48] How do we do that?
[00:07:51] Okay, but Jesus, he knew that he was going to meet Zacchaeus that day. He knew exactly who Zacchaeus was. He knew that Zacchaeus was a bad man. Yeah, aren't we all? Yeah, but he was not outside of God's grace and he was going to be saved today.
[00:08:13] Okay, But Zacchaeus had to get to Jesus first, to be seen.
[00:08:18] He had obstacles in his way.
[00:08:22] Now, if we turn to slide 5.
[00:08:29] Haha.
[00:08:32] That's me, 20 years old, I just secured the job of my life.
[00:08:41] I was head zookeeper and I got to look after tigers and lions and monkeys.
[00:08:50] Lots of things happened. I'm lucky to be alive, to be honest. We didn't have health and safety in those days.
[00:08:57] How I survived some of the things we got up to, I have no ide idea.
[00:09:02] But one of my jobs was feeding the lions. Yeah, we had three beautiful lions. We had the male lion, Bobby, he was called.
[00:09:09] We had two female lions, ruler and Roamer.
[00:09:14] And they were kind of key. They were central to the zoo.
[00:09:17] They took up the largest enclosure right in the middle of the zoo.
[00:09:22] And it's my job to feed them.
[00:09:25] I need to explain this to you somehow. Okay, so imagine you've got this big outdoor enclosure where the lions live, and we've got two indoor enclosures as well.
[00:09:35] And we'd use the indoor enclosures to feed them.
[00:09:39] Sometimes we feed them outside, put the meat through the bars, and the lions would jump up and the crowd would go, yeah. But when I was feeding them, sometimes I'd be feeding them stuff that we didn't really want the visitors to see. I would chop horses heads in half and we would pound a head bargain. And we would take these horses, I would take these horses heads in me wheelbarrow when the visitors weren't there. And I'd always have someone with me, my assistant.
[00:10:10] And we'd have this system where we'd roll the doors down so that lions couldn't get in, obviously.
[00:10:17] And I'd open up the gate and I'd take the meeting and I'd put it down on the floor and I'd get back out. We'd lock the gate, we'd roll up the door, the mail lion would come rushing in, we'd lock the gate again, roll the door down again, quick. Otherwise he'd fight with the ladies because males are greedy.
[00:10:36] And I'd do the same. The other side, I would go to the other side. The door's locked to the outside.
[00:10:43] The door's locked between me and the other side where the male lion is. I'd open the gate, I'd go in, I'd put the meat down on the floor and I would leave the enclosure.
[00:10:56] I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened on this particular occasion. We're getting too casual. I was chatting away to my sister.
[00:11:03] I got into the enclosure, I put the meat down, I looked to my right, the door was open between me and the other enclosure where the male lion was. And he's pacing towards me.
[00:11:17] What do you do?
[00:11:19] Yeah, obviously I didn't have time to think or anything. I literally decided that I could not get back out before he reached me.
[00:11:29] So I ran towards him, waving my arms, and he went backed off. And I ran out of the enclosure, locked the gate and breathed very deeply.
[00:11:42] That was close.
[00:11:44] That was close.
[00:11:46] Okay.
[00:11:47] He was my obstacle. Yeah. I had to confront my obstacle to reach freedom.
[00:11:54] Okay, what's your lie and what's your obstacle?
[00:11:58] Zacchaeus obstacle was one. The crowd. There are masses of people. Masses of people. There's no way this little man, he was only little.
[00:12:09] Yeah, I can relate to that.
[00:12:12] He was only Little. He was not going to see through the crowd. This crowd was not going to open for him. This crowd didn't like him. This crowd despised him. He had no way of. Of reaching Jesus.
[00:12:25] Now, the passage says that he really, really wanted to see Jesus. I imagine that the Holy Spirit was stirring his heart to seek after Jesus that day. Yeah, we don't have to be Christians for the Holy Spirit to act on our hearts. Yeah, the Holy Spirit can act on our heart before we even know Him. Guiding us, leading us to Jesus.
[00:12:48] And this was what's happening here. He'd heard that Jesus changes lives. He knew that Jesus had been making the blind see the lame walk.
[00:12:57] He had been casting out demons. He had been setting people free.
[00:13:02] And Zacchaeus wanted a bit of this.
[00:13:05] Zacchaeus wanted to meet this man.
[00:13:09] So he had a moment of, I don't know, genius, I don't know what you call it, but he decided that, I know, I'll run ahead.
[00:13:21] I will climb this tree so I can see him above the crowd.
[00:13:27] Verse 3. I wanted to see who Jesus. He wanted to see who Jesus was. But because he was short, he could not see over the crowd.
[00:13:40] So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
[00:13:50] So Zacchaeus overcame his obstacle. Okay. He had the boldness to run ahead of the crowd, maybe look a little bit silly. I don't know how many grown men climb up on trees when everybody else is on the floor.
[00:14:07] Okay. To get to Jesus. But he wasn't afraid to look a little bit silly to do that.
[00:14:13] And he broke through this barrier that he had.
[00:14:19] Now, as we mentioned this morning, we've started doing Freedom in Christ now with our alpha group. It's great, isn't it? Yeah, it is.
[00:14:29] It looks a great course.
[00:14:31] I forgot how good it was.
[00:14:33] Okay. And this is what freedom in Christ is all about. It's about recognizing that what we read in here in our Bible is the truth.
[00:14:43] Okay, so if we read this and it says something, then it must be true. Yeah.
[00:14:48] Okay. And this is what the Bible says about barriers and sin. In slide 6, 1 Corinthians 15:57. But thanks to be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, we have the victory already.
[00:15:08] He's already beaten that barrier. For us.
[00:15:11] It's just an illusion now. We think it's still there. We're confused by it, but it's not there. We can walk through it.
[00:15:19] Easier said than done, I know, but this is what it says. Yeah. John 8, 34, 36. Jesus tells his followers that whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. But if the sun sets you free, you're free indeed. We're free.
[00:15:35] Yeah. We're not. We're not tied to this barrier anymore that's getting between us and God.
[00:15:40] Okay. We're free from it. And we've got Romans 6, 1, 14.
[00:15:45] If I concise this down, it says that we were buried with him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life and no longer be slaves to sin.
[00:16:01] Yeah. This is what the Bible tells us. This is true. Yeah. And Steve Goss, who's one of the leaders of this freedom in Christ thing, you know, he wasn't afraid to talk about his own personal issues.
[00:16:16] He. To everybody else, he looked like he was this amazing leader at church. He's doing all the right things. Things. He said the good, prayers, prophesied, worshiped worship leader.
[00:16:30] But he. He had. He had a barrier of his own.
[00:16:32] You know, late in the evening when everyone's gone to bed, you know, flicks on the wrong channels, starts looking, you know, at sexual content, films, whatever. Yeah. This was his barrier. And. And no matter how when he tried to fight it, he ended up in the sin repeat cycle. Sin repeat. Fell for it again. Oh, God, I'm so sorry. I'm useless. I won't do it again.
[00:16:56] You know, a few weeks, months, whatever, later, falls into the same trap. Does it again. Oh, Jesus, I'm so sorry. I won't do it again. Round and round in circles. This is a church leader. Yeah. We're all weak. You know, we've all got things that we're trying to deal with that get between us and God.
[00:17:13] And it wasn't until someone was preaching and.
[00:17:17] And explained the truth of. That he had already beaten this obstacle that he was able to break through it. Yeah.
[00:17:24] So this is what we need to accept this. We need to recognize, guys, okay, that some sin, you know, whatever the sin is, whether it's pride, fear, something in our past, addiction, tiredness, timidity, whatever it is that we know is getting between us and God. Okay. We already have victory over it.
[00:17:43] We've just got to step into this. Yeah. And walk with God the way he wants us to. We're already free from it. We're already forgiven.
[00:17:52] Yeah. He died for our sins before we even committed them. Yeah. And he's already accepted us. We're already accepted. We're already Accepted. Just like Zacchaeus was accepted by Jesus that day.
[00:18:06] Now I know that some.
[00:18:09] Some obstacles just seem impossible. And again, yeah, Kev, I know I've heard all this before, but that obstacle's still in my way.
[00:18:18] Oh, way ahead.
[00:18:22] Another little story. We were taking some of Sharon's artwork to a place called mortonhamstead. Anybody know?
[00:18:30] Middle of nowhere, isn't it?
[00:18:32] We looked on the map, it said it was like about 5, 7 miles away and it would take us half an hour. Like, what roads are these?
[00:18:41] So off we set off to Morton, Hampstead. The storm's blowing, it's wet, it's windy.
[00:18:48] We get there. Amazing little drive.
[00:18:51] We drop off Sharon's paintings, we start heading back.
[00:18:56] I think Sharon had the bright idea, we don't need the sat nav. We'll find our way back. There's loads of signs to Buvi Tracy. We'll be all right.
[00:19:04] So off we set driving back, don't we? And the storm's blowing. It's raging.
[00:19:12] I started noticing signs by the side of the road that have been blown over by the wind. I'm thinking, I wonder if they're road closure signs.
[00:19:21] And we keep going. And yes, lo and behold, road closed. We're following this van. It's a big van, wasn't it? There's another photo. So with us following this van, literally all you can see on in Sharon's photograph is a van and a hedge. And a hedge. There's no room between the van and the hedge whatsoever. These. These are the roads where you got grass still growing down the middle. Yeah, those sort of roads.
[00:19:46] And we're thinking, this isn't good. We're following a van. There's no way any car can pass this van. Or. Or we could pass any car.
[00:19:56] Keep going.
[00:19:57] Start looking behind my mirror. More and more cars lined up behind me as well, having to give way with this lorry in front of us.
[00:20:05] We eventually get to this point where there's nowhere to go.
[00:20:10] We're behind this white car here.
[00:20:13] There's about 20 cars behind us and there's cars coming the other way and about 15 cars behind them. And I'm thinking, I don't know how we're going to get through this. I really do not know how we're going to carry on our journey. There's nowhere to go. We can't. There's this lady Range Rover.
[00:20:31] Do you drive Range Rover? No. Good, good, good.
[00:20:35] Nothing against Range Rovers. She's going, I'm not reversing, I'm not reversing.
[00:20:40] We couldn't reverse. We had a car. We had a lorry with a trailer behind us, a works lorry. There's no way he could reverse a mile back up the road. We were stuck.
[00:20:50] So good old wifey Shaz here.
[00:20:53] I know. I'll pray.
[00:20:55] So she prayed. And lo and behold, a farmer comes along, opens up his gate. All these cars are heading towards us. We're able to reverse into this field. We're able to carry on our way. Yeah. Nothing is impossible.
[00:21:10] Nothing is impossible with prayer.
[00:21:14] I came home on Friday. I was in a bad way. I only just got to the toilet in time. It was touch and go.
[00:21:21] Oh, my stomach. I was so cramped up. I thought, this is typical. This is. I'm not going to be able to do this preacher on Sunday. I can't move stomach. I can't. You know, I'm in a bad way here. Sharon prayed. My stomach was fine immediately.
[00:21:37] Prayer. Prayer will get us through our obstacles. Okay?
[00:21:43] And if you need prayer, come here after. After this talk and when we're having tea and coffee and we can pray together. Yeah.
[00:21:53] So Jesus called Zacchaeus by name.
[00:21:56] Yeah. He didn't just say, oh, are you up there in the tree? Don't know who you are coming here. Come down here, have a chat. He called him by name.
[00:22:04] When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.
[00:22:12] So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
[00:22:20] Okay. Do we feel unseen? Do we feel unseen sometimes? Do we think, I'm not gonna. There's no point me praying. God won't see me. He won't hear me.
[00:22:29] Jesus knows you by name. He cares about every moment, every detail about you.
[00:22:35] However small you might think it is.
[00:22:38] My stomach ache, however small that might seem, it could be easy to go. It's only a stomachache. I'm not gonna pray for it. We prayed for it. Jesus stepped in and healed.
[00:22:48] Okay? He knows who we are. He knows what's broken and he knows what's hidden already.
[00:22:53] Yeah. There's no surprises, no shock. Oh, I didn't know that was going on in your life.
[00:22:59] That's not how Jesus works. Yeah. He knows everything about you. Yeah. And he loves you and he accepts you.
[00:23:06] Okay. And he welcomes you into his family.
[00:23:11] Okay. So Jesus didn't say, zacchaeus, clean up your act first, and then we'll see how we go from there. He didn't say that. Okay.
[00:23:20] He said, I want to come and spend time with you today.
[00:23:28] Yeah, that's what grace does. Grace meets you where you are, but it doesn't leave you there.
[00:23:35] Yeah, we're just going to do verse 7 very quickly.
[00:23:40] Verse 7. All the people saw this and began to mutter.
[00:23:45] We're good at muttering, aren't we?
[00:23:48] He has gone to the guest of a sinner.
[00:23:51] I don't know why we muttered.
[00:23:53] We're not going to spend too much time on muttering, but don't mutter.
[00:23:58] Yeah, I've heard some muttering lately, and I was disappointed to hear them muttering.
[00:24:04] I just want to read Hebrews 13:17 to you.
[00:24:07] Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account do this so that their work will be a joy. Would you like your work to be a joy, Phil? Yes. Not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you. Yeah. So if we don't support and encourage and look after our leaders, we'll be a burden to them and then they can't help us as well. Yeah. Don't mutter. Don't mutter about anything that you disagree with.
[00:24:43] If you haven't got anything good to say, say it.
[00:24:51] Moving swiftly on.
[00:24:54] Point six, we're out of time. Point six.
[00:24:59] Zacchaeus heard Jesus and responded to him.
[00:25:05] I'll read the verse. But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, look, Lord, here and now, I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.
[00:25:20] Okay? Zacchaeus didn't have to do that. Jesus had already given him his approval. Jesus had already accepted him into his family.
[00:25:32] Yeah. So he wasn't doing this to win approval from Jesus. He was doing this because Jesus changed his heart.
[00:25:41] Jesus provided him with this opportunity where he wanted to give back. He wanted to give back to Jesus. He wanted to give back to the people he'd been taking all his life, and now he wanted to give back.
[00:25:59] There's a difference between religion and relationship.
[00:26:05] Religion says, change first and maybe God will accept you.
[00:26:09] Relationship says, God accepts you and that's what changes you.
[00:26:14] Yeah.
[00:26:21] The man who once took from people now wants to give back. The one who once hid in shame now stands in grace.
[00:26:28] What can we do for Jesus? What can we do for Jesus? We don't have to do it. We're already saved.
[00:26:34] But do we want to do. Do we want to give back to Jesus?
[00:26:40] You're in luck.
[00:26:42] There's loads of things for you to do.
[00:26:45] Okay. Esther mentioned it this morning, didn't she. Okay, we need volunteers for.
[00:26:51] This is the bride. This is the church here. This is Jesus's bride. Yeah. If we want to give to Jesus, then we give to his bride. We give to the church.
[00:26:59] Yeah.
[00:27:02] We've got so much that needs to do. We've got children's work, We've got minibuses. We've got tea and coffee.
[00:27:09] We've got the internal welcome, we've got the external welcome. We've got Cafe Gloria. Dio Gloria. Sorry, I didn't get the name right. Dio Gloria.
[00:27:19] Yeah.
[00:27:21] We've got so much that you can do. You can give back. Don't worry about that. Yeah.
[00:27:26] Just come and see Fair Lester, anybody that's involved, new connect groups. Maybe there's something that you can lead and put together as a connect group. There's so much that we can do for Jesus in this church. We're really lucky, guys.
[00:27:41] Okay. I stopped going to another church because there was nothing for me to do there. They had it all sorted. They had it all organized.
[00:27:48] They just wanted me to come along and sit there.
[00:27:51] You can't be part of a church if you're not giving into that church.
[00:27:56] You need to be giving in one way or another.
[00:27:59] Not just our money on a Sunday morning or through, you know, through an online account. We need to be given our time. We need to be giving our life to the church.
[00:28:10] Yeah. And we can all do it. There's room for everyone.
[00:28:22] Verse 9 and 10. Jesus said to him, today, salvation has come to this house because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the son of man came to seek and save the lost.
[00:28:39] Okay? Jesus accepted Abraham Zacchaeus into his family.
[00:28:46] And he can accept. And obviously every one of us can be accepted in the same way. He didn't come to reward the righteous. He came to rescue the broken. He didn't come for the people who had it all together. He came for those who had run out of options. And that means he came for you and me.
[00:29:06] That's what salvation does. It stores what. What was broken and brings us home.
[00:29:13] Can we go Back to Slide 5? Good.
[00:29:20] Maybe it's slide. Maybe the next one up.
[00:29:24] Me and the tiger.
[00:29:27] Yeah. Okay. Look at this guy.
[00:29:30] He's looking good, isn't he? He's got it all going on. Yeah. He's got his whole life ahead of him. He 20 years old.
[00:29:38] Okay?
[00:29:39] This guy's got his dream job.
[00:29:42] He's rocking it. Yeah. No, he's not.
[00:29:45] That guy is really angry, sad and bitter. That guy was kicked out of a church.
[00:29:52] Only 12 months earlier, that guy decided it would be okay to live with his fiance.
[00:30:00] Okay. Unfortunately, fortunately, the gods, the church is so much full of grace now. And if anybody's doing that, then God will help you through relationship. Yeah, but the thing is, when 30 odd years ago, 36 years ago, there wasn't quite maybe so much grace in the church. And again, no bad apple in the church. Off you go. That's what you want to do. You're not welcome here. And I got confused between the church and God and thought I'd been rejected by God.
[00:30:29] God doesn't reject us.
[00:30:33] So I was not a happy bunny. Okay. And for about two years, okay, everything went well. I was rubbing shoulders with Paul Gascoigne, having a drink with him, Terry Nutkins on the really wild show, Michaela Strachan.
[00:30:48] And I was having a good time doing the zookeeping lark. But I was drifting so far away from God.
[00:30:55] Then the inevitable happens. God always knows best. My fiance leaves me.
[00:31:01] That's why we don't get involved too much until we're married. Yeah.
[00:31:05] My fiance leaves me and all of a sudden I find myself working seven, six days a week, ten hours a day, living in a caravan on my own, on the zoo.
[00:31:16] Not really any time for friendships other than the people I worked with.
[00:31:20] And that's getting more and more depressed, really. I suppose.
[00:31:24] So what do we do? We get depressed. We find ways to solve that depression, don't we? So, yeah, I turn to drugs. Yeah, I've smoked a bit of cannabis. That'll make me feel better.
[00:31:35] Of course, none of these things work for very long. The only way we can find peace, love, joy and acceptance is through God. We know that. Yeah, but I didn't.
[00:31:45] There's this idiot here.
[00:31:47] I didn't realize that, okay? It took me nine years, okay, Until I found myself in a position just like we are today. I went along to church, my parents.
[00:32:00] I was sat there in the congregation. I was still a little bit. I was still quite angry and bitter. I had a broken leg. My life was in ruins.
[00:32:09] I had no job at the time.
[00:32:11] I lost my job when I broke my leg.
[00:32:14] I'd already given up zookeeping before that. It's another story.
[00:32:18] And I was in a bad place. I was the one with lots of barriers in the way. I was the one that couldn't see a way forward.
[00:32:26] Okay? And there was a guy preaching on that Sunday morning and weirdly enough, he was talking about barriers. Yeah. What's the chances of that? First time I've Ever done a preach, and it's the same similar sort of preach to what brought me back to God.
[00:32:39] And on that Sunday morning, I was 29 years old. About 37 years ago now.
[00:32:47] No, 27, 26 years ago, I was sat in a building just like this on a chair.
[00:32:55] And the preacher said at the end of the service, if you want to come and pray with me, we can put you right with God. Okay. He didn't know he was talking to me.
[00:33:05] I knew he was talking. I knew God was talking to me. And if anybody's out here right now and they're finding their way back to Jesus or come to Jesus for the first time, you'll know if he's talking about you right now. Yeah. Okay. And if that is you, I'll be here after the service and we can pray together.
[00:33:27] Conclusion? I'm a little bit early, but I'm sure.
[00:33:32] Look out for that last one.
[00:33:34] Zacchaeus thought he was climbing a tree to see Jesus, but really Jesus had arranged that moment long before. It was a divine appointment. Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, to the cross, but he stopped for a man in a tree. And today he still stops for people like you and me. Maybe you feel like Zacchaeus. You're curious, but distant.
[00:33:57] Ashamed but searching or stuck behind obstacles you can't overcome.
[00:34:02] The good news is Jesus knows your name. He's still calling. Come to me. I want to be with you when you let him. He doesn't just visit your home. He changes your heart. He turns takers into givers, sinners into sons and daughters and wanderers into worshippers.
[00:34:22] Okay? So, yeah, we've all got barriers.
[00:34:30] I'm no exception. I've still got barriers, okay? But I'm believing. I'm believing through this freedom in Christ course that we're doing together that I'm going to overcome all of these barriers and we're going to get deeper and deeper into Christ. Yeah. Me and him. And I want that for every one of you here as well.
[00:34:49] Yeah.
[00:34:50] So believe, trust, seek God. Find someone you love and know and trust. Pray with them and break through those barriers.
[00:35:01] Amen.
[00:35:08] Bless you, Kev. Thank you so much for that.
