Rick Warren - When Jesus Comes to Dinner—Part One

Hey, everybody, this is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, and we

are so glad you're here. As we approach the new year,

it's a great time to reflect on your relationship with God.

What's behind you, what's ahead. And that's why Pastor Rick

has a timely and powerful message for you called how

Much You Matter to God? Now, if you've ever doubted

your value or wondered about your place in God's plan,

this message is for you. So let's get right to

Rick for the first part of this message.

Now, as an evangelist, I spend much of my time

with people who totally disagree with me. But does that

make sense? I mean, if you have the gift of

sharing the good news, you don't just share it with

people who already understand it. So I spend much of

my time talking to people who totally disagree with me,

and I would disagree with them, and I have. You know,

they've written all kinds of things about you know, Rick

Warren has at dinner with this religion group or that

religious group, or he's had dinner with you know, atheists

or Gaze or worst of all liberals, you know, And

I mean that's like the highest sin of alls. That's

the impardonable one, okay, liberals, And and you know, as

if you know, well, then that means I agree with

everything everybody I've ever had dinner with, well, of course not.

Can you imagine if Jesus we're alive today, what the

bloggers was to say about Jesus having dinner with a

prostitute or a corrupt government official or all the other

quote sinners. He hung out with lepers. These were the

off cast of society that nobody wanted to hang out with.

It'll be black people who have aids today. Who people

are I'm afraid I might get it, so I want

to get it away as far away as possible. And

you know, Jesus his answer to all of this was always, Hey,

the well don't need a doctor. It's the sick people

who need a doctor. And Jesus says many times, several

times he actually says, I didn't come for the righteous.

I came for the unrighteous. I didn't come for the saved.

I came for the lost. I didn't come for people

who think they've got it all together and don't need

to be saved. I came to save people who realize

they're broken. They don't have it all together. The things

don't always work in life. Frankly, people who think they

don't need to be saved, I don't have any time for.

But I came to be with people who know they

need help. I came for the insecure. Now. The truth is,

I've learned this after thirty years of pastoring. Everybody is insecure.

Everybody in this room, everybody's listening is insecure. He said,

Oh no, I'm not insecure. Oh really, Let me have

thirty minutes with you and I'll uncover you're hidden the insecurities.

I'm do it quite quickly. I'm very good at discovering

what people's insecurities are. It's the reason why people don't

get help before things get really bad in their life.

If your marriage is tanking and going down and you

don't get counseling, or your business is tanking and you

don't get help, or you got a relationship problem with

your parents or your kids and you don't get help

and you don't get counseling. And why do people are

afraid to go to a counsel because of insecurity? What

if that counselor reveals something to me that I can't

handle and he points out a truth about myself that

I don't really want to know. That's called insecurity. And

it's the reason why people wait until it's too late

to get help in an area of their life. It's

because of their own insecurity. What can they uncover that

I can't handle now? The truth is, one of your

deepest needs in life is to feel secure. One of

your deepest needs in life is to feel valued, to

feel valuable, to feel like your life matters, that it counts,

that it's significant, that you're not just a cipher, that

you're not just some kind of zero in life. You

want your life to matter. You want your life to

have value and significance. And as a result, you're constantly

doing two things, evaluating and comparing, and you do it

all the time. You do it consciously and you unconsciously.

You're evaluating yourself and you're comparing yourself to other people.

And we compare everything. It's an indoor national favorite pastime

of Americans. And the problem is the four ways that

we judge our value are all spurious. They're all false,

they're all phony, they're all fake. How the world tells

you you determine your value is one hundred percent wrong.

So let me just mention them, because I want you

to understand that your value is not based on what

the world says about it, just what God says about you. Now,

there are four things that the world tells you you

need to look at. If you want to know how

valuable you are, you might write these down. The first

way we judge our wealth are worth is by our appearance,

and that is how do I look? And we think,

you know, if I look good, then I must be good.

And if I don't look so good, then I must

not be so valuable. I must not be important. And

our society has an entire industry that is built on

the idea that your value is based on your appearance.

It's called Hollywood, and Hollywood says, if you really are ravishing,

you're stunning, you're really gorgeous, you're really handsome, then you're

really worth a lot. But if you're not so hot,

then you're not. Oh, I'm a poet and I don't

know it. Now. The problem with this is there aren't

that many really stunning people in the world. I mean,

most of us are just normal, average looking people. In fact,

everybody around you is normal average except you you're stunning,

but you're the only person in this room that actually

really is stunning. All the rest of us are just

kind of normal looking. Okay, we're just normal people with

normal looks. Now, if you only have high value in

your life by being super attractive, that leaves most of

us out, and the Bible says that's not what you

valuate yourself on. The second false way to evaluate your

worth is not appearance, but by affluence, and affluence is

what do I own? And that's the myth of materialism

that says if I have a lot of things, then

I must be worth a lot. That if I have

a lot of values, then my personal value is a lot.

But if I'm poor or I'm broke, then I'm not

worth much as a person. Now, I've told you many

times never connect your self worth with your net worth,

because if you connect yourself worth with your net worth,

the recession will cause depression. And I have seen that many,

many times. I've seen a lot of people who when

their business hits the toilet, then their personal feeling about

themselves hits the toilet. And when they tank in their portfolio,

then they tank and how good they feel about themselves

and I'm just not a very good provider, and on

and on and on. Your value and your valuables have

nothing to do with each other. Your self worth and

your net worth have nothing to do with each other.

The greatest things in life, as I've said many times,

are not things. But the world tells you you got

a lot of money, you got a lot of stuff,

then you are really a valuable person. Not true. The

third thing that we judge our worth on is achievement,

and that is what have I accomplished? And if I

get a lot of things done, then I feel good

about myself. And if I reach a lot of goals,

then I feel good about myself. And if I get promoted,

or I win a trophy, or I get an honor,

and I have accomplished a certain thing, then I must

feel good. And this is what creates workoholism, and it

drives us because we want to feel good about ourselves,

so we're trying to achieve to prove that we are worthwhile.

The fourth is approval, and approval Basing your worth on

approval says how well am I liked? And if I'm

liked a lot, then I must be worth a lot.

And if i'm only like a little, then I'm worth

a little. And if I'm not liked by anybody, then

I'm worthless. That's just not true. Some of you have

spent your entire life trying to gain the approval of

somebody who's never going to give it. And if you

haven't got your parents' approval by now, I'm sorry, you're

not going to get it. But here's the point. You

don't need it to be happy. Your happiness is not

dependent upon the approval of other people. If you build

your worth on what other people think of you, then

you you are going to be devastated every time you

get criticized, and it's going to hurt like the dickens.

And you're going to tend to always be going around

saying what will other people think? And if you're always

asking that question, what do other people think? You're already

a slave to the approval of other people. You've got

to learn to trust what God says about you. Now

it is true. Psychological studies have shown that you tend

to base how you feel about you on what you

think the most important person in your life thinks about you.

That's where you get most of your self esteem. What

you think the most important person in your life thinks

about you. So I highly recommend you make the most

important person in your life Jesus Christ, because he's going

to tell you the truth, and he's going to love

you unconditionally. And he's not going to say I love

you if I love you, if I love you, if

I love you, if I love you, if you love me,

I love you, if or I love you, because that's

conditional love. Jesus said, I love you period. In fact,

you can't make me stop loving you. Now. The problem

with these four things, appearance and affluence and achievement and approval,

is that they are are all unstable, unreliable sources of security.

I mean, let's just go down the list. Our beauty fades.

Anybody want to give a testimony on that. Okay, our

beauty fads. And if you think you're not looking so great,

now wait ten years. Okay, all right, okay, unless you're

like me on the Daniel plan, and in ten years,

I'm not half the man I used to be. All right,

Beauty fades. Possessions wear out, Okay, successes are surpassed. No

matter what goal you reach, somebody is going to break

your record. And you're going to feel bad then if

your self esteem is built on that, and other people

are going to reject you no matter what you do.

Some people just aren't going to like you. That's their problem,

not yours. The only solid foundation for self esteem, for

feeling good about you is understanding how much you matter

to God. That's what we're going to look at today,

how much you matter to God. And if you get

what we're going to look at today, it'll change your life.

And it will set you free from the expectations of others,

from the grip of materialism, from the pressure of workaholism,

from the need to have to improve and always look

your best at every time. When you see yourself as

God sees you, it transforms you. Now. A great example

of this is a guy in the Bible named Zachias,

and his story is in Luke chapter nineteen. If you

have a Bible, you can turn to Luke nineteen. It's

there on your outline. You can read the verse with me.

It's also on the screen. Now, Jesus is going through

a town called Jericho, and of course large crowds are

following Jesus wherever he goes. He's walking through these cities,

and crowds are following him everywhere. And there's a guy

in this town named Zachias, who is the most hated

man in the city. And the Bible tells us this

story Luke nineteen. Jesus was going through the city of Jericho,

and a man was there named Zachius, and he was

the chief tax collector, and he was wealthy. Now he

wanted to see who Jesus was, but he was too short,

too short to see above the crowd. So he ran

ahead of the place where Jesus would come, and he

climbed a sycamore tree so he could see him. Now,

when Jesus is walking through, when Jesus comes to that place,

and then there was this sycamore tree, he stops and says.

He looked up, and he said to Zachias, Zachias, hurry

and come down. I must stay at your house today.

Zachias came down quickly, and he welcomed him gladly. Now

all the people who saw this, they began to complain,

Jesus is having dinner with the sinner. Jesus is staying

with a sinner. But Zachias stood and said to the Lord,

this is at his house. I will give half of

my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone,

I will pay them back four times as much. And

Jesus says to him, Salvation has come to this house today.

This man is a true son of Abraham. In other words,

he's the real deal. He's in with us, and I,

the son of Man, have come to seek and save

people like him who were lost. This is an amazing story, now, Zachias,

of the four ways that we judge our value, this

guy has struck out on three of them. Okay, he's

struck out. He is wealthy because of his corruption, but

he has struck out in three different ways. In the

first place, Zakias doesn't like his appearance. The Bible tells

us he was short. In fact, he was so short

he couldn't see above the crowd, and he was shorter

than everybody else in the city. In fact, tradition tells

us that Zakias was the shortest man in the city

of Jericho. In fact, the Greek word here for short

describes the body of an underdeveloped child. This man is

not just short, like a lot of people short. He

is abnormally short. He's a little person probably dwarfed. He's

abnormally short, an undeveloped, fl developed body. Now because of that,

he's probably teased and ridiculed his entire life about his height.

Can kids be cruel and ruthless on the playground, Oh,

you can remember it. Kids can be meaner than adults.

And on the patio they can say all kinds of

mean things about the way you look, or the way

you dress, or what you did. And probably Zachias's entire

life was given hurtful, cruel nicknames, and he learns real

quickly don't worry about the opinions of other people because

he was constantly made fun of. He didn't like his appearance.

He's abnormally short, stunted, he falls short second. Zachias was

not liked by anybody else, so the approval factor is zero.

In fact, he was the chief tax collector, and that

means he's hated by everybody. Now, tax collectors are never

popular people. I mean, you don't just call up the

irs and say come over for dinner and do an audit. Okay,

that's not something you normally normally want to do. But

in those days it was even worse because the Roman

tax system was one hundred percent corrupt to the core

in the first place. In order to become a tax collector,

you had to bribe an official to get that job,

because once you got it, you were going to make

an a whole lot of money. But you had to

bribe an official to become a tax collector, so he

had to be dishonest justs to get the job. Then,

in the Roman tax collection system, Rome didn't care how

much you collected as long as they got their percentage,

and you could collect two, three, four, five, up to

ten times as much as Rome required and keep it

all for yourself. So really a tax collector in this

day is is more like a mafia extortionist. He can

come to your house and say you're gonna pay me

this amount of money, when Rome's only said this much,

and he said this much, and if you don't do it,

I'm going to throw you in jail. I'm going to

make you an offer you can't refuse, and you will

pay tribute to me. So everybody hated the tax collectors

because not only did they represent Rome, which was the

invading country of Israel, and they were under subjugation by

a foreign country, so they hated Rome. But second, the

Roman tax collector was corrupt, and you knew that that

guy was going to get rich off of you by

being dishonest, and you couldn't stop him. He could extore

all he wanted to from you. Now for a Roman,

for a Jew, which Zachias is, to become a Roman

tax collector is like treason. It's like going over to

the enemy's side. No who self respecting Jew would ever

become a Roman tax collector. It was unthinkable, without a doubt,

as Zachias was disowned by his family, because no family

is going to have a son who represents Rome in

the most corrupt area of taxes. So he's disowned by

his family. In fact, in those days, you were barred

from going to worship if you worked for Rome. You

could not go to the Jewish synagogue because they believed

you had sold out. In fact, Jewish law in that

day meant that the Roman anybody who was a tax

collector for Rome that wasn't considered in the same class

as a murderer. So he is not a popular This

is the most hated, unpopular man in the entire city

of Jerusalem. So he not only has an appearance problem,

he's got an approval problem, he's not doing good. And

worst of all, notice it says he was the chief

tax collector, which means this is the guy on top

who runs the whole scam. You couldn't pick a more

hated person in the city of Jericho that Jesus stops

to talk to and invite himself to dinner. Now, not

only is Zacheus, he doesn't like his appearance and he

has no approval. He's hated by everybody. But Zacchius doesn't

like himself. How do we know that because he's not

a proud of his achievements. He's got all this wealth,

but he got it by stealing from people, from extorting

it from people. You cannot be happy and guilty at

the same time. You cannot give up your integrity and

have harmony and happiness in your life. He knew he'd

ripped off people. He knew that all his success was

achieved by cheating others. So he lost all his self

respect and he didn't like his life. And he's got

a lot of money. He's got a lot of money,

but he's a very lonely, very unhappy man. He's miserable

and he feels pretty hopeless about his life, but on

one single day, his life does a one to eighty

and in one snap of a finger bailed his life

is transformed. What happens Jesus shows up.

Thanks so much for listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope.

You know your prayers and financial support have a huge

impact on millions of people here and around the world,

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Thank you.

And now Rick's going to share a letter from one

of our listeners who says Daily Hope is making a

real difference in their life.

Today, I want to share with you a very special

testimony from one of our listeners named Marquita, and thanks

to Daily Hope and your support, she recently asked Jesus

Christ to be the leader of her life. Here's a story. So,

Pastor Rick, I wanted to let you know that I

have prayed the prayer of salvation that you included in

the Deepening the Eyes of Faith message. I've been listening

to your messages for years. In fact, my child wouldn't

even be here today if it weren't for your words.

You wrote there may be accidental parents, but there are

no accidental children. Well, I've given birth to a beautiful

baby girl, and she's the light of my life. In fact,

it now hurts to remember a time that I was

fighting to decide whether I was going to have her

or not. But I repeated your words throughout my pregnancy.

There are accidental parents, but they're no accidental children. And

although I'm a single mom today, with the support of

my family, we're thriving. I want to make sure that

she grows up to find her purpose and to serve God.

So thanks for renewing my faith in God. And as

I still try to find and fulfill my purpose, please

pray for me and my child. Wow, Marquita, you are

so right. God does have a plan and a purpose

for every single baby. There are no accidental babies. So

I want to take a moment right now and just

pray for you in this broadcast, a pray for you

and for your daughter. Lord, I'm asking you right now

to put your hand of protection, your hand of blessing,

your hand of guidance on Marquita and her daughter, and

I'm praying for both of them to know your purpose,

to feel your presence, to discover your power, to live

in your plan for each of their lives. In Jesus'

name Amen.

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