John Gunter: Glad that you're with us this morning. This spring break week for a lot of the kids. We have got some really good singers. I had to turn around, miss Kinley was singing on top of her voice, doing a great job. And so it is a blessing.
Logan did have to tell me on one of those first two songs, he said, that last note you were blaring or something, I can't remember the word he used, it didn't sound good, whatever it was. So my apologies to anyone who I may have offended. Sounds good to the Lord. That's what I need to tell them. There you go.
Well, again, we have been going through this series. I hope you've enjoyed Encounters with Christ and Lives Transformed. And so we continue that this week. This is week five of that series, and you can get all the sermons on YouTube or Facebook and also on podcast if you like to listen that way. If you like me and have to do something have to do multiple things all at once, you can, you know, listen while you mow or something like that.
So I always enjoy that. But this week, we're going to talk about a certain story that's very familiar to you, and I want to start out this way. Imagine a man who has built an incredibly successful life. He has money, he has influence, he probably has the nicest house in town, but when he walks into a room, conversations stop. Not because people admire him or are afraid of him, but because they resent him.
They know how he got his money. He lives surrounded by wealth, but separated from people, successful but alone. And this story this morning is about Zacchaeus. Luke tells us a couple of things about Zacchaeus. He as Jesus entered Jericho, he was passing through, and it says, and behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus.
He was a chief tax collector and was rich. So Zacchaeus was not just a tax collector, he was the chief tax collector. And so what you need to know about this is Jericho was a very wealthy trade city. It had heavy taxation because of the goods that came in and out of that. Date palms and things would be traded there, and so it was prime real estate to collect taxes in this area.
You can think about it like the place where we live. Right? Because of well, really because of the salt domes, it makes it a very valuable place to live and to work, and so certainly there are a lot of taxation that goes on. But remember as well what they thought of tax collectors. Think of what you think about taxes.
Now consider that that that that tax person has a face. You have to live by him, you have to walk by him, you understand that the way they make their living is not only to tax you what you owe, but to tax a little more so they can fill their pockets. And so every time you pass by their house, you probably kick a rock down the street, hopefully not a dog or anything like that, but you're not happy. Right? And so they saw these tax collectors as the worst of the worst.
You live among us, you're one of us in a in a sense. Right? You're you're of our people, yet you are taking advantage of people. I don't know what your thoughts are going through your mind, but I know they did not like people who were tax collectors, much less someone who was a chief tax collector. And so we're gonna see in this story that Zacchaeus has everything money could buy, but nothing money could fix.
And so in verse three, it says, and he was seeking to see who Jesus was. So you can see by that, he doesn't know Jesus. He was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd, he could not because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up in into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And so what I want to do, hopefully it'll show up here, this is my buddy, Kendall, in a sycamore tree.
Now that is a good climbing tree, isn't it? Look how far out on that branch. That tree does not care, it is not bowing anything. It's a fantastic tree, but I wanted to to give you that visual just so you could see kind of what Zacchaeus was doing here. But what what you may miss because of our culture being different from theirs is that dignified men do not climb trees.
K? This is a culture of honor and shame. There are things you do, there are things you don't do. This would have been considered childish. You are losing your dignity, you're acting like a kid.
Okay? We also get a similar thought remember in the story of the prodigal son, where the the father runs to meet the son, and we don't think anything about it. We think he's excited, he sees the son, which is true, but in that culture, you don't do that. That's a childish thing, you need to keep, you know, upright and straight laced, we might say. And so, what we're seeing here is this feeling of, I don't care about my image in this moment.
I don't care about the dignity, the whole honor, and shame. What I care about right now in this moment is to see Jesus. And that's our first glimpse of where Zacchaeus' heart is in the moment. Might not catch it in our culture, but in theirs, it was a big deal. Alright.
In verse five, and when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, you come down from going to your house today. Right? We sang it on the way here. He says, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down for I must stay at your house today. Now, I can only imagine how shocking this is, because remember Zacchaeus is like, I wanna know who Jesus is.
I wanna see him, get an eye on this guy. And as he climbs a tree, the man you're trying to find you ever you ever look for a celebrity? I like going to sports games, I like seeing the athletes up close. Like, oh man, I want to see Jordon Alvarez, so I'm going to sit down close. And as I sit down close, Jordon looks up in the stand and says, John, what would your reaction be?
What what have I done? Right? Who's looking for me that he knows my name? Right? And so that's I would imagine Zacchaeus is probably a little shocked.
What what do you mean? You you know who I am? I I've come to to know who you are. I I don't know how you know my name. And so in this moment, we see that Zacchaeus thought he was looking for Jesus, but Jesus was looking for him.
He points him out. In John 10 verse three, says, to him the gatekeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. This is one of those God passages, that God knows you. Sometimes we feel like we're alone. Right?
But God knows you. He knows what you're going through. He knows you by name. He knows every hair on your head, even those of us who don't have many. Right?
God knows you. He's able to call you by name. Y'all quit laughing. Verse six, so he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, this is the crowd, they all grumbled.
Now, the word grumble here is not just a, they're mad. They all grumbled, he has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner. Alright? How many of them do you think were sinners? What percentage would you say?
100? That's probably a pretty good guess. So what's going on here? They they are mad, not not just that he's a sinner, but we like to rank sins, don't we? You know, my sins aren't nearly as bad as yours.
Right? Now, that that plays into it whether I did it or you did it because I'm again, we've said before, I just make mistakes, you do so out of a bad heart. Right? Bad motivation. That plays into it.
The sins of others often, because I don't struggle with that and you do, that seems worse in my eyes, so you're worse. So the chief of the worst is the guy who Jesus is going to. And and remember what you what we need to know here is that when Jesus is going in to be with this guy and to to have a meal with him, culturally, that is that is a sort of acceptance. That we can sit down together as as maybe even brothers. We accept one another, we're gonna have this meal to to form this community.
And so the crowd sees this, and they see this chief tax collector, and they know, I helped pay for that big house he has. I helped pay for the things he has because of the way he's acted, and that's the guy that Jesus goes to eat with. So you're trying to wrap your mind around, how does he deserve this and I don't? So you can see a little bit of selfishness and and maybe even pride in this. He's gone in to be the guest of a man who had who was a sinner.
And so for them, certainly, Zacchaeus didn't deserve this honor, he deserved condemnation. And so you see the difference in the heart. The glimpse of the heart we've gotten so far with Zacchaeus is, I will put away my image, my pride, and even my dignity just to get a glimpse of who Jesus is. Their heart is, this man, because he's a sinner, because I think he's a worse sinner than me, deserves condemnation. I'm going to grumble about it, I'm going to tell everybody I'm mad, and I don't have the heart for this.
And so you see this contrast, so they think they are in the right, who's actually in the right? And unfortunately, even our churches today are often like this, aren't they? We don't know how to deal with sin. Sometimes, we avoid it altogether, or if we believe that person to be a sinner, you are to be avoided. But in this story, the person who everybody thinks should be avoided, Jesus said, I'm going to your house.
And he does this in other places too. Jesus explains that, well, it's not the healthy who need a doctor. Right? It's not the healthy who need a physician. I have come to seek those who need me.
That's exactly what he does. And often again, in church, we don't know how to to do this. Verse eight, and Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, that's a big old if. If somebody was listening to this conversation, if. If I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.
Now what you need to know from this is that what was common, what was by the law was really a 120%. If you have done something to somebody, you restore it a 120%. Okay? So a 100% plus 20 because you have done this. Fourfold is actually like a a a big theft.
And so he is saying at the moment, okay, I will I will lay everything, I will do this fourfold, we will call it what it is. It is theft. I am going to just submit myself to the law in this moment. But notice that Jesus doesn't ask him to do this. Jesus doesn't demand that he gives this four times what he has defrauded.
This is just an outpouring of this man's heart. Jesus doesn't demand, but his presence brings about this change, this desire to make everything right, and I think that's a that's a big deal here. In verse nine, it says, and Jesus said to him, today salvation has come to this house since he also is a son of Abraham. If you were here last week, we talked about a woman who had had an issue for a long time, making her unclean. And through this touching she walked up in a crowd and touched Jesus and was made clean.
And she tried to kind of sneak away, but Jesus said, who touched me? And as they're trying to figure it out, she finally comes up, I'm sure scared to death. And Jesus talked to her, and he calls her daughter, the only time that Jesus ever ever calls someone daughter. Because what he is doing is not only restoring her health, but he is restoring her to the greater community. You belong here.
And so, when Jesus says, today's salvation has come to this house, you are saved, he is also a son of Abraham, you are a part of this community. Now, have no doubt because I've been in church my whole life that not everyone was happy about this. Yes? I want you to think about it and think about the heart that goes into our judgment on other people. You're in, you're out.
I know what you did, you're out. And I think the only way we can really relate to this is that how many times have you heard they left the church? Now, they might not have left the church at all, but they decided to go to another place, or they believe this and so they are out. We are in. I've never heard anybody describe themselves as leaving the church.
It's always someone else. And so we we decide at moments in our life that other people have no place with us in the presence of God or something to that extent. And so we stand in God's place in judging other people as if we know their hearts. What we see here is the very man that everyone would have said, there's no way there's any good in this man, we know what he's done, you can see very visibly what he's done because of what he owns, or the house he has, or something like that, the title he wears. Again, working for the foreign government that controls the area, taking from all of us.
Will that be your best friend? Not mine either. In verse 10, for the son of man came to seek and to save the lost. And again, Zacchaeus thought he was looking for Jesus, but Jesus was already looking, for him. What I think, we can see throughout the course of scripture is that Jesus interacts and impacts people that everyone else has given up on.
And so we like to we even as we invite people to church, a lot of times we invite the people that we think fit the best. Yeah? People we feel like, oh, well, they're they're already a good person, they'd be good in church. Right? And maybe they're the people who we relate to.
But who is it who needs Jesus? I hope it's everybody. It's the person you don't relate to or with. And and so I I think we might need to kind of restructure the way we think about that. How do we deal with people that we don't understand completely?
Do we judge? Do we say they're out, there's no way they could be in? Do we grumble? Are we angry that salvation might come to someone else? Or are we accepting and hopeful, understanding that, yes, they are a sinner, but so am I.
And so I would imagine there are a few kinds of people in the room today. What this story how this story began is is kind of with this curiosity from Zacchaeus. I just want to see who Jesus is, to get an eye on the celebrity to say, I remember when he walked down the street. I was there. I was in that dream.
And so, you may be the curious person watching Jesus from a distance. You may be a resistant person, holding on to control, knowing what Jesus wants, but you're not letting go. You may be a changed person, someone who has begun to have your life changed and to move in a new direction. Have you been in that place before? That's a different feeling, isn't it?
But an encounter with Jesus always changes something, as we have seen week in and week out. It has to change the direction of your life. Some people came this morning thinking they came to church looking for God. But maybe it is, God's been looking for you all along. I believe that to be true.
Jesus still seeks people who everyone else has written off. And so, in the ancient world, powerful men protected their dignity, but in the stories of Jesus, something surprising keeps happening. Tax collectors climb trees, fathers run down roads, because when people truly want grace, they stop worrying about how everyone else sees them. Amen? What is the barrier that you have placed between you and God?
Because I believe it is a barrier we place. A common theme that I hear from people is, I have been kept from doing this because of my view of everybody else saw me. I knew nobody would accept me, so I didn't. I knew that what I had done was not good, and I didn't think the Lord could forgive me. Do you believe that to be true?
Do you believe that you have done something in your life that God cannot forgive you for? Do you believe that what other people see in you, or what other people think about you, should keep you from restoring your relationship with God? I believe we ought to throw all of those things aside, make that relationship right, and walk forward in the grace and the love of our savior. We can only do that when we drop that pride. When we say, enough's enough, I want to get close to him no matter what.
I don't care what they think, I don't care what I feel as far as my pride is exposed. To me, it almost feels like when I was a kid, I was scared to death to sing in front of people. I wouldn't sing in front of people, I was sitting like you guys were. Was sitting in a pew that was way too uncomfortable facing forward. Right?
But I was scared like it like it was some kind of it was not as cool if I was singing with my friends. Right? And sometimes we put these goofy things in our mind to keep us from a relationship to him. And you guys know me well enough to know singing is my spiritual love language now. But it's only when you drop the the whole goofiness of pride or whatever it is that you can begin to experience things in a different way.
And when you do, watch out because what you'll experience is a new freedom, a new understanding, and a way to walk forward and I I just can't describe it other than freedom and peace. So we wanna encourage you this morning that if that relationship is not right with God, don't let anything stand between you and me. We'd love to pray with you. We'll we'll share our own stories if you want to. I'd be happy to.
Because what I wanna do, I don't wanna hold something back. I don't wanna hold back, my faults or anything like that. If it helps you, let's move closer to God together. Would you come this morning as we stand with this?