Grace Thoughts

Guest (Male): Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelley.

Tim Kelley: Luke 19. The purpose of this series, Discovering God—we've got one more week left on this series—is to help us change the way we think about God. When we change the way we think about God, we change the way that we think about ourselves, and we change the way that we think about others. What happens with us, I know what happens with me, is we've got to untangle our often lifelong religious and denominational concepts and images of God that we produce in our fallen hearts.

Sometimes these things are produced by people producing things in us. What do I mean by that? I'm going to use my own life as an example. I grew up in a very non-affirming home. I had good parents. They provided for me, and they weren't abusive in any way. I'm not cracking on my mom or dad or anything like that, but there wasn't a lot of encouragement. There wasn't a lot of pats on the back. There seemed to be more critical analysis. If I got a B—and I didn't get many Bs, I got mostly Cs and Ds in those days; As were like a non-entity to me in my childhood—but if I got a B and said, "Hey, I got a B!" they would say, "Well, you could have got an A," instead of, "Yeah, that's great! You got a B because you usually don't ever get them!"

It was always critical. And what that did for me, it didn't make me try harder, it made me quit. It didn't make me want to try at all at that point. So what happens is we sometimes have a tendency to take our earthly parents and earthly experience, especially in our younger years, and transfer them onto God. Because for a young child, who is God? Parents. The provider, the protectors, the affirmers, the lovers. So, we enter into our adult years and unless we apply the word of God to that image we have of God and really see who God is, we're going to have a human image of who God is, and I can guarantee you it's going to fall far short of who the Father really is.

That's the purpose of this series, Discovering God. We're taking a little bit of a different look, and we're going obviously some in the Old Testament, really looking at Jesus Christ as being God in man's flesh. We know Him to be, as John 14:6 says, "If you see the Father, you see me." And so we want to look at Christ, and we've been looking at Christ in this whole series. We've one more week on it, some of the different things that happened. So, I ask this question: What would you say is your first impression when you think of God?

Now, you could say, "God is love!" and I hope you really believe that. You're way ahead of the curve if you really believe that. But I'm not talking about your religious response, your well-trained response, or your Sunday school response. I'm talking about your deep-down personal impression, those first impulses when you think about God. Is it this? This is mine. [Knocks on wood]. Is it that? Because that's what I remember growing up. It's like, "You did it again." Or is it a pointing finger? Or maybe a slap? Is that your first impression? Again, we know enough to say, "No! God is love." But what is really your first impression?

That's what we want to change: the first impressions. We want to have our first impulses be to who God really is. Now, this will probably be a lifelong transformational process here; don't think you're going to get it from one message. But we want to start pouring in what I like to call thought options—ways and abilities to think differently about life, and in this case, really about God. Let me read you this great quote. I've used it before by Tozer. It's a sort of a long quote that I excerpted out here.

"What comes into our minds when we think about God? More important question, the most important question I can ask myself. Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, 'What comes into your mind when you think about God?' we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man. Without doubt, the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God. God will conform to an image of the one who created it and it will be base or pure, cruel or kind, according to the moral state of the mind from which it emerges. A God begotten in the shadows of a fallen heart will quite naturally be no true likeness of the true God." A.W. Tozer.

Now the title of the message today is "A Story of Two Men." Last week was "A Story of Two Women." I'm only going to get to the one man today, so we'll do the other man and something else next week. But right now, we're only going to get really through half of what we want to get across. Luke chapter 19, if you have your Bibles, I'll be reading in English Standard Version. This is the story about Zacchaeus. Verse one: "He entered Jericho and was passing through," talking about Jesus there.

"And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, and he was the chief tax collector and was rich." We'll go back and comment on that in a few minutes. We've talked about tax collectors already. "And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, for he was small in stature." He was vertically challenged, as we like to say. "So he ran on ahead, climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, 'Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.'"

"So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it," that's the crowd, the Pharisees, and the crowd, "they all grumbled." Remember a few weeks ago, in week two we saw the grumbling Pharisees? Well, they're still grumbling here. "He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner." And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. If I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold." And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. And the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost."

So we read this account, and we've read this account before if you've been in church. You know the story of Zacchaeus. But now we want to take it, as we've been doing with this series, and sort of frame it inside the historical setting and cultural setting of the day. You'll find that the story adds a whole another dimension when you do that. Some of these things we already discussed in a previous message. Zacchaeus was a tax collector. Some would call them a tax farmer; that was actually their term. These tax collectors were considered collaborators with the Roman occupiers. The Jews hated the Romans. You can see why. They occupied their land, they ruled with an iron fist, and they would charge this tax on all the Jewish people.

Zacchaeus's job was working for the Romans. He was to go in and collect the taxes. So if he goes to the Peneaux family and Caesar sends a thing that says, "I want five dollars from every household in this neighborhood," Zacchaeus would go in and show the Peneaux family and say, "That'll be ten dollars. And if you don't give it to me, then I'm sending the soldiers over to take it from you." So he'd give five dollars to Caesar and pocket five dollars for himself. The Jews knew he did this. The Romans knew he did this. This was not something that was done in the dark; this was done right out in broad daylight. And based on the backs of his people, his neighbors, and his family, he got rich. He was a rich man, as the passage tells us.

So he was hated and he was disdained because of the wealth he got on the backs of people who couldn't afford it. You think of the hardships that Zacchaeus caused in people's lives when you can barely pay your bills and all of a sudden this guy comes along and you know he's stealing from you. Everyone knew what he did and everyone felt the same about him. He wanted to see Jesus a lot. Now, a couple things here. He was short, we know that, but he was also hated. You've been there, maybe you've been to Disney World. You're in a concert like Night of Joy or something and you're there and you have the little kids with you. Those little kids are the ticket to get up front of the crowd.

"Excuse me, do you think my little daughter could come up here up front so she can see the singers?" and they all say, "Oh yeah, that's fine!" and you bring them up there. They are your ticket. Because if not, you're stuck way back in the crowd smelling people. But now you're up front and it's really good because everyone would be gracious enough and kind enough to let the little kids up front. Well, here's Zacchaeus, here's a crowd, and he goes, "Hey, I'm short. You think I could get up front so I can meet this Jesus guy?" "Oh okay... oh, that's Zacchaeus! You're not going nowhere. No, you're not getting in front of me. Get out of here!"

So not only was he short, he was hated. And the other thing that was very common back then is the Zealots, the people that were trying to fight for the liberty of Israel from Rome. They hated the tax collectors and the collaborators with the government so much they'd run a knife in them. So you put a crowd around Zacchaeus, and you don't know if he's going to come out of that crowd in one piece. It could be Zacchaeus-kebab. Just made that up off the top of my head; that wasn't in my notes or anything like that. So it was dangerous for him. He was short, he was hated, and it was dangerous.

So what did he do? He said he wanted to see Jesus, so he ran. Remember a few weeks ago we talked about running, the father running to the son, and how undignified it was in Luke 15? Adult Jews did not run. It was undignified. It was culturally unacceptable. They wouldn't show their ankles and they wouldn't run. And then usually what they wore, you'd have to lift the tunic to get any speed anyway. So that's the first thing: he ran. Then he climbed a tree.

Now, that again is a cultural thing. We read it and it's not that big a deal. He was short, so he climbed a tree. But based in the culture of the day, it was an offense. It was undignified. It would bring another level of scorn on you. To illustrate this, there was John Kennedy's ambassador to Egypt, John Badeau. He was in his ambassador's residence in Egypt back in the 60s, and a light went out, so he climbed a tree to replace the light bulb. He didn't realize what he was doing. He was an American, but he didn't know that Egyptian men didn't climb trees. Next thing you know, he has an audience with General Nasser, the Egyptian president, and he was confronted. Our ambassador in Egypt was confronted with the fact: "Why were you climbing a tree? We're Egyptians. We don't do that. That's so undignified. That's so base. We wouldn't expect that from a foreign ambassador of another nation."

So when you read that he climbed a tree, it adds a whole another level of understanding that what Zacchaeus was doing here was pretty radical. Now there's also no trees within the city limits. He had to go outside the city. He had to run up ahead of the crowd and climb a tree. A sycamore tree is known for low branches and big leaves, and you could hide up in those trees pretty good. He ran and climbed a tree at least 75 feet out of the city limits. Now here's where it gets pretty cool. Jesus walks by. I don't know if Jesus was told through the Spirit that Zacchaeus was in that tree. What probably happened, culturally speaking, the mob that was with Jesus had their arms around him. "Hey Jesus! Hey Lord, how you doing?" They were hanging out with Jesus and they said, "Hey Jesus, look! The guy in that tree up there? He's a tax collector. Just thought you ought to know. It's not gossip. I just thought you ought to know, that's a tax collector. Just so you can not like him, like we don't like him."

They wanted him to know he was not one of them and not part of the family of Abraham. He's a collaborator with the Roman government here. Wow. What's Jesus do next? He walks over to the tree. He's going to let Zacchaeus have it now. You can see them; they're thinking in their brains. Here's Jesus looking at Zacchaeus. He's going to lambaste him. He's going to say, "How dare you! You scum! You collaborator! You take from the people of God and you pad your own pockets with it! How dare you!" Jesus is going to let him have it. Somebody get my iPhone out, I want to film this. Oh, they didn't have them back then. And so, Jesus goes and talks to him and says, "Zacchaeus, I'm going to have dinner with you tonight."