“Who are we sent to?”

At the church where I serve, we are unpacking the kingdom mission that we have been given by Jesus to live our lives as missionaries that engage and embrace the kingdom mission that we have been given as a church to be a city in a city that reveals and reflects Christ as we love and serve the city in a sermon series entitle “Sent”. During this series our hope and our prayer is to answer four specific questions. Our hope and prayer is that we would answer the question “Who sent us?” “Who are we sent to?” “What are we sent to do?” and “Where are we sent to?”

Our hope and our prayer is to answer these questions in a way that enables and empowers us to live our day to day lives as a follower of Jesus that have been sent on a mission 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.

This week I would like for us to ask and answer the second question that we are going to ask during this series, which is “Who are we sent to?” In other words, if we are to be a sent people, who have been sent by a person, who was sent, then who have we been sent to? Who are we as followers of Jesus supposed to be missionary’s to?

To answer that question, we are going to look at a section of an account of Jesus life that is recorded for us in the Bible called the gospel of Luke. Now the writer of the gospel of Luke, and the book of Acts, was a doctor named Luke, who many scholars believe was from Antioch, which was a city that is located in the southeastern corner of what is now modern day Turkey. Luke was hired by a man named Theophilus, who was a wealthy Roman official who hired Luke to research and to provide an accurate and orderly account about the origins of Christianity.

And as a result of the generosity of Theophilus, Luke, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, spent several years involved in intensive research and investigation that produced this two volume set that we now have as a part of our Bibles today. Luke traveled throughout the regions where Jesus lived and ministered, investigating and interviewing individuals who were witnesses to the events that occurred during Jesus life. Luke interviewed Mary, the mother of Jesus, along with the disciples and other close followers of Jesus.

Luke is universally recognized, by skeptics and followers of Jesus alike, as being a scrupulously accurate historian. One archaeologist carefully studied Luke’s references to thirty two countries, fifty four cities, and nine islands, without finding a single error.  As a matter of fact, many have credited the gospel of Luke as being one of the most beautiful and historically accurate pieces of literature ever written.  

And it is in a section of the gospel of Luke that we see Luke record an event that occurred in history that will provide us a timeless answer to the question “Who have we been sent to?” So let’s discover this answer 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 section of his account of Jesus life by providing us the context by which this event from history 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.

As we have talked about before, 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 physically and 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.

Tomorrow, we will see Luke reveal for us how Jesus responded to seeing a grown man in a tree…