At the church where I serve, we have been spending our time together in a sermon series entitled
living on mission. During this series our hope and
our prayer is that God would equip and empower us to live our day to day lives
as a follower of Jesus on mission as a missionary to those that God has already
placed in our spheres of influence who are far from God in a way that reveals
and reflects Jesus to them.
And if you do not buy the whole Jesus, Bible, church
thing, let alone whether you should follow Him or live for Him, here’s the
thing. What you will discover during this series is that there is a way that
those who are followers of Jesus are supposed to live. And there is a way that
followers of Jesus are supposed to talk about the claims that Jesus made about
who He was and what He came to earth to do.
And my hope for you is that you would see what Jesus
calls His followers to so that you can see how He feels about you and what He
calls His followers to do when it comes to engaging you. That way, you can cut
through the bad experiences that you have had with Jesus followers to see the
truth when it comes to what Jesus calls His followers to be truly about as they
live around you.
This
week, I would like for us to look at a section of an account of Jesus life that
is recorded for us in the Bible called the gospel of Luke where we will see
Jesus have another unlikely encounter. And it is in this unlikely encounter that we see God reveal for us a
timeless truth when it comes to living on mission. So let’s look at this
encounter together, beginning in Luke 19:1:
He entered
Jericho and was passing through. And there was a man called by the name of
Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector and he was rich.
Luke brings us into this most unlikely encounter by
providing us the context by which this encounter would take place. At this
point in Jesus life, Jesus was headed to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover,
which commemorated God’s deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery at the
hands of the nation of Egypt. Most scholars and historians believe that this
event from history occurred within two weeks of Jesus arrest. Within two weeks
of this event from history, Jesus would be arrested, tried, and put to death.
Luke tells us that on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus passed
through the city of Jericho. As word spread that Jesus was passing through
Jericho, large crowds came to meet and greet Jesus. And one of the members of
the crowd was a man named Zaccheus. Now if you grew up in church, you are
probably familiar with Zaccheus because Zaccheus was a wee little man, a wee
little man was he, or at least that’s how I heard that the song goes.
Zaccheus was a Jewish man who was a chief tax collector
that worked for the Roman Government. In other words, Zaccheus was great at his
job. Zaccheus was a great tax collector. Zaccheus was so good at his job that
Luke tells us that he was a very wealthy man. And Zaccheus was so good at his
job as a tax collector that he was promoted to the position of being the
supervisor who was in charge of all of the tax collectors that worked for the
Roman Government.
Now Jews who were tax collectors were hated by their
fellow countrymen for two reasons. First, these tax collectors were hated
because they would often charge higher taxes than necessary in order to make a
profit. Since the Romans did not care what these tax collectors charged as long
as they received what was due them, many tax collectors became wealthy by
charging over and above what the Romans asked. So Zaccheus had become wealthy
at the expense of his fellow Jewish countrymen.
Second, Jewish tax collectors were hated and were viewed
as traitors because they were working for the enemy. Jewish people so despised
tax collectors that they had a separate category for them. There were tax
collectors and there were sinners. There were those who sinned and then there
were tax collectors. After providing the context for the story, we see Luke
bring us into this story in Luke 19:3:
Zaccheus was
trying to see who Jesus was, and was unable because of the crowd, for he was
small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree in
order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way.
Luke tells us that as Jesus was passing through the city
of Jericho, Zaccheus tried to get close to Jesus. However, because of the large
crowds that had also come to meet and greet Jesus, Zaccheus was unable to get
close enough to Jesus, because Zaccheus was a wee little man, a wee little man
was he.
But it wasn’t simply that Zaccheus was small in physical
stature that he was unable to get close to Jesus. Remember, Zaccheus is the
chief tax collector. Zaccheus is hated and despised by the crowds that had come
to meet and greet Jesus. Zaccheus was an outsider who had no status or stature
in the eyes of the community. Zaccheus was small in stature in the eyes of the
community who viewed him as a traitor who was far from God and was an outsider
when it came to how God viewed him.
Luke then explains that Zaccheus responded to his small
stature by running ahead of Jesus and the crowds so that he could climb a
sycamore tree. Now Sycamore trees, which grow to a height of thirty to forty
feet, are one of the few trees that grow to a large height in the desert. So
Zaccheus, pulled up his robe, ran ahead of Jesus and the crowds, and climbed up
this large tree.
Can you imagine what that must
have looked like? Can you imagine what it would have looked like to see a grown
man frantically running and climbing up a tree in order to get an opportunity
to see Jesus before he passed by?
Now a natural question that
arises here is “Why would Zaccheus expend that much energy and effort to see
Jesus? I mean climbing a large tree is not something that a grown man usually
does, so why did Zaccheus climb the tree?”
You see, Zaccheus climbed the
tree because Zaccheus had already been watching Jesus from a distance. Zaccheus
was already familiar with who Jesus was. Zaccheus had heard the word on the
street from his tax collector friends when it came to Jesus. And now Zaccheus
wanted to be in a position where he could see Jesus more clearly. Zaccheus
viewed the crowd as an obstacle to him getting to know Jesus at a deeper level.
So Zaccheus was willing to do whatever it took to get a closer look at Jesus.
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