Thirty years ago, I walked out of my office at church to find a young man standing in the hallway with no pants. (He did have underwear.) He looked lost. “What happened?” I inquired. “I had a religious experience, took off my clothes, and wandered in the woods for two days. And now I’m locked out of my car. You know how it is...” I asked him what I could do for him. “A pair of pants would be nice,” was his response. (It’s interesting that this was the first thing Adam and Eve desired after taking fruit from the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil.) I drove him to the outreach. He got some pants. I kept asking him if he needed more assistance, until all at once he turned, looked at me, put his finger to his lips, and said, “Shhhh . . . Shhhh. . . Shhhh . . . You ask too many questions.”

I had heard that voice before, and I would hear it again, even from religious folks: “Shhh... You ask too many questions. Just have faith.” “Faith in what?” “Jesus . . . The Truth.” If Jesus is the Truth, He is the objective truth, but I could never know the Truth unless I was Truth full — unless I was honest, unless the Truth was living in me, a Subject in me... even helping me to ask the questions.

What if, in a moment, you could see the Truth, but the Truth revealed that all your “rights” were wrong, your goods were not Good but stolen, and your Life had never been your own but literally belonged to someone else? Would you lie to yourself or be honest?

When I dropped off the man with no pants who now had pants, it felt like I dropped him off in “hell.” There is no greater bondage than freedom from the Truth. I hadn’t met him. He was like a phantom to me, an empty shell, a ghost. He was alone. “It’s not good for the man to be alone,” said God in a garden by a tree.

In John 8 at the Feast of Tabernacles, a group of religious men throw a woman — probably naked, for she had been caught in the act of adultery — at the feet of Jesus in the temple courtyard. They demand judgment. And Jesus doesn’t condemn her. Imagine that! If it happened to you, it would be the absolute worst: the death of your ego. And then, the birth of something other worldly. “Neither do I condemn you. From the NOW, sin no more,” says Jesus.

In John 8:15, Jesus says, “You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true because I Am not alone.” Last time we preached that He doesn’t judge, and yet He (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is the judgment. At this point, it would be easy to assume that Jesus is some kind of new age theological liberal . . . Buckle Up! And keep reading.

John 8:21, 26: “So he said to them again, ‘I go, and you will seek me, and you will die in the sin of you all. . . I have much to say and much to judge.” Look at the man on the tree in the middle of the garden on the Holy Mountain. He is the Judgment and He is your righteousness. If you think He is simply an object for you to use (like objective knowledge of good and evil, the law), you will take knowledge of him in order to make yourself him and only make an imitation of him, an “antichristos” in Greek, a body of death, in which you’ll be trapped. We’ve all done it. It’s original sin. It’s what we all do when we “should on ourselves.”

If I say, “I should have faith,” I’m simultaneously admitting that I don’t have faith but will try to have faith as if faith were not a gift; I’ll become an act. If I say, “I should love,” what am I saying? Do I not believe that “God is Love”? Jesus said, “You will love.” If I don’t believe that word is a Promise, I will become an act. The distance between who I should be and who I Am is who I Am NOT — that is, a false self, a walking lie, an “ob” in Hebrew, a “phantasma” in Greek, a ghost.

John 8:30: “As he was saying these things, many believed in him.” “The one believing in the Son has eternal life,” said Jesus (John 3:36). Another word for these folks might be “Christians.”

John 8:31-34, 40: “So Jesus was saying to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free.’ They answered, ‘We are the seed of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the one doing the sin is a slave of the sin... you seek to kill me.”

That was surprising to them. Is it, to you? When we lie, we crucify the Truth. He is “The Truth.”

John 8:43-45, 46, Jesus continues, “Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word [logos]. You are of your father the devil and your will is to do your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies... The one being of God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

What does it mean to die in the sin of y’all? How can someone who has believed also be of their “father, the devil?” And what is “not of God?” Answer: nothing. God creates everything that’s anything. The devil cannot father real people. Jesus just said it: “He is the father of lies.”

Jesus must be saying to these Jews who had believed in Him, “You are of your father the devil; you are nothing... like a nightmare, an illusion, a lie, a shadow, a ghost.

Fifteen years ago, a pastor friend of mine took a cell phone video of a dark shadow flying through the old church building which we were renting at the time. The next Sunday a new person told me that she and her husband had seen a dark shadow flying through the room as worship began. I showed her the video. She said, “That’s it. I’m an investigative reporter. Can I do a piece for the news?”

That afternoon, my wife and I started praying through the building. My wife kept hearing a voice saying “shhh... shhhh...shhh.” I took authority in the name of Jesus, demanding to know its name, and my wife heard “Secrets.” We bound “Secrets.” And then my wife heard many voices. Once again, I took authority in Jesus’ name. My wife said, “This is weird. It’s not like that. They’re not, so much, angry, but confused. They want to know if you own the building... it has something to do with the Masons.”

When the reporter returned to do her story, she asked me, “Did you know that in 1890, this church was built on an old Masonic Cemetery?” I said “no,” and thought, “Wow! My wife was right!” (We’ll talk more about this next week; Masons bind people up with secrets.)

Susan said, “It has something to do with the Masons.” We then went to the basement. Suddenly, she said, “Someone’s here.” Once again, I took authority. And once again, my wife said, “It’s not like that. I don’t think she’s a demon. She’s a little old lady. She doesn’t know why she’s here. Here name is Elise. She’s afraid.”I thought of secrets, the Masons, possible abuse in that old building (members of our prayer team felt that they had discerned this), and so I said something like, “Elise, Jesus is not like the men who did those things to you. He loves you. You need to go to Jesus.” Susan then said, “She’s gone.”

I think she was a ghost. How can a person be “spawn of the devil” and “a Jew who had believed in him (a Christian)”? It helps me to remember that “I” am a spirit, a consciousness, that observes “me,” a psyche, a soul, a self. And according to Scripture “I” have two “me’s.”

I have a “false self” — an apparition, an act, an old psyche. It’s the man I think I’m supposed to be, but I am Not. In the End, it’s my own condemnation of me. It’s the man that I think I have created. And I have a man who has been created in Christ Jesus but is being revealed in space and time, for “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” This Man is who I truly Am — the forever new Me, the Eternal Me.

I’m actually pregnant with this Man who is also “Christ in me.” I am a temple. My true self exists in my false self, like the Holy of Holies existed in the old stone temple built by man. “I,” my consciousness, can abide in the temporal and false self where I believe that I am what I have done and will do (believing I am my own resume). Or “I,” my consciousness, can abide in the inner man — I can abide in what God has done; I can abide in Christ, in who it is that I truly am NOW: the Beloved.

My grandson James is three months old. He’s at this amazing stage in which he’ll stare at me for a few seconds, recognize me, then suddenly smile, stick out his tongue, then I’ll stick out my tongue, and we’ll stick out our tongues together. He knows “me,” or I should say, “I.” I don’t think he could ever please me more than he does in that moment — It’s “I” contact; It’s Life.

He knows me, but one day he’ll try to hide himself from me in order to impress me with who he thinks it is that I want him to be. I think that happens to every Adam, and with every Adam. But God, our Father, makes a Judgment and a Promise like the one I desire to make to James. That promise is this: “When you get lost in yourself, I will remember who you are, and I will come find you, for I am you and you are me.”

Salvation is losing my false self and finding my true self in Jesus, the Truth. It’s the greatest gift, for once I come to know who it is that I am NOT, I will be eternally grateful for who it is that I Am — the beloved — and who I Am That I Am is: Perfect Love. Until then, I will feel lost, for I have agreed with the devil; I have condemned myself and everyone around me. “The sin of y’all” is choosing nowhere and nothingness.

Elise must’ve agreed with those that condemned her and so condemned herself — like the man with no pants who wanted to hide from me and reality, like Adam and Eve and each one of us who hides himself even from himself in an image, an act, a ghost.

If you don’t “give up the ghost” before your physical body dies, you can get trapped in your ghost for a time. But the Word of God, who is the End of time, descends even into Hades to set the captives free. I preached the Word to Elise. I said something like, “Elise, Jesus does not condemn you. Go to Jesus.” Susan said, “She’s gone.” It was like she disappeared from the timeline. I left to get my things and then came back to the Sanctuary to find my wife with a stunned look on her face. She said, “I just heard Jesus, clear as a bell. He said, ‘Welcome home, Elise.’ And then I heard Elise. She said, ‘I was lost.’”

Don’t excuse yourself as if you never sinned. And don’t condemn yourself as if you are not what God has done and is doing. Be honest. And then be forever grateful, for this is the Truth in you and now you know: You are not a ghost story; you are the Beloved and our God is Perfect Love. Welcome Home.