Outcasts: Zacchaeus

This series looks at five different passages that highlight Jesus' pursuit of those many might label "outcasts."  This week we'll look at Zacchaeus, a tax collector, and see that Jesus loves even the people we view as "unlovable."  It doesn't matter what we've done, or how far we've wandered, God is actively pursuing us to come back to Him. 

This message is based on Luke 19:1-10.  To read it now, click here.
 
 
 
There is a story of man on vacation strolling along outside his hotel in Acapulco, enjoying the sunny Mexican weather. Suddenly, he heard the screams of a woman kneeling in front of a child.
 
The man knew enough Spanish to determine that the child had swallowed a coin. Seizing the child by the heels, the man held her up, gave her a few shakes, and an American quarter dropped to the sidewalk.
 
"Oh, thank you sir!" cried the woman. "You seemed to know just how to get it out of her. Are you a doctor?"
 
"No, ma'am," replied the man. "I'm with the Internal Revenue Service."
 
I guess if anybody could get the last coin out of somebody, it would be the IRS.  Tax Collectors aren’t exactly on anybody’s list of favorite people.  Here’s my image of the tax collector from last week…
 
This morning, Jesus called Zacchaeus, a tax collector, the worst kind of sinner.  To the devout Jew, the tax collectors were the scum of the earth.  They pressured the Jews into paying excessive amounts of taxes; they weren’t always fair about how much they had to pay.  In order to understand this, we have to understand how tax collectors got paid.  They didn’t get a salary.  Rome would tell them how much they needed to collect from a region or a city, they collected as much as they could, paid Rome what Rome needed, and the rest was theirs – that’s how they got paid.  That’s why they were so disliked, they extorted people, they cheated people, they charged way more than they had to, that’s just how it was done. 
 
I think it’s important that we remember that Jesus called tax collectors.  He called people who made their living this way, by cheating and extorting people.  And this surprised a lot of people.  Verse 7 said, “All the people saw this and began to mutter, ‘He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.’”  But do you want to know someone that wasn’t surprised.  Matthew was there with them.  Matthew was also a tax collector before Jesus invited him. 
 
In Luke 5 we see Jesus’ call to Matthew, then called Levi.  “After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth.  ‘Follow me,’ Jesus said to him, and Levi got up and left everything, and followed Him” (Luke 5:27-28).  And just like the invitation we saw this morning, that invitation also had the effect of having everyone talking.  Because Matthew had a big banquet where he invited his friends, some of them also tax collectors, and they all ate together.  The Pharisees and the teachers of the law complained to the disciples that they ate and drank with sinners.  That’s the same reaction we saw this morning, isn’t it?
 
Jesus’ response in Luke 5 was a classic – he said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32).  He said about the same thing this morning, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was Lost” (v10).
 
Jesus’ was a ministry of invitation.  In John 1:39 we see Jesus calling His first disciples, “Come, he replied, and you will see.  So they went and saw where he was staying and spent that day with him.”  This is the first of Jesus’ invitations to “Come” to him.  Shortly afterwards, He issued another invitation to some folks, “‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will make you fishers of men.’  At once, they left their nets and followed him” (Matthew 4:19-20).  They never went back. 
 
Just before Jesus went up into heaven after the crucifixion and resurrection, after he had appeared to his followers, he gave the great commission, saying “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”  Essentially what is He saying?  He’s telling us to start issuing these invitations, He is telling us to invite them into the Kingdom.  He spent His earthly ministry inviting people to follow Him.  Now it’s our turn.  We should be inviting people to follow Him.  Even the outcasts.  Even those, like Zacchaeus, who don’t fit, who may have done grievous things in the past, who you would rather not associate with.  Invite them. 
 
Last week we saw the son who walked away from his family to sow his wild oats, if you will.  He lost everything and became an outcast.  I hope we learned that we should be open and loving toward the outcast.  Truth is, some outcasts are harder to love others.  Zacchaeus was hated by the people because of how he made his living, extorting and cheating people by charging more money that what was required.
 
Last week we saw a warning to us in the response of the brother who was faithful to his father and stayed home and managed things after the wayward son left.  In fact we saw that his attitude was much like the attitude of the Pharisees.  They didn’t want those lost people coming to faith, being saved.  They wanted to keep God to themselves, as if that’s possible. 
 
We see a very similar warning here, too.  Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus, wants to hear His teaching, he’s desperate to find out more about Jesus.  And we see how he humbled himself by climbing the tree to see if he could catch a glimpse, hear a snippet, something, anything.  But the crowd was still against the idea of Jesus spending time with this man they hated.  Zacchaeus was desperate to know Jesus, but the crowd wanted to keep him an outcast. 
 
I suspect that if we’re honest with ourselves, there are some that we would just as soon like to keep as an outcast.  Everybody remembers hearing the story of Jeffrey Dahmer.  Dahmer was known as the Milwaukee Cannibal, he had raped, murdered, and dismembered seventeen men and boys.  Talk about an outcast, the lowest of humanity.  Yet years ago, I heard that a prison chaplain led Dahmer to Christ, and while I don’t know if that’s true of not, I do know that Jesus seeks to save the lost, even the lowest of the lost, even the Jeffrey Dahmer’s of this world.
 
A man in Dexter, Missouri, David Magnum, was arrested last August and charged with reckless exposure to HIV after he admitted to having unprotected sex with up to 300 people after being diagnosed with HIV.  That’s 300 people he knowingly exposed to an illness that has no cure.  Now that’s sick.  It’s a terrible thing.  But this man needs a cure to HIV just like everyone else, just like those he infected.  Jesus came to save the sick, there is no one too sick for His healing grace. 
 
I think everybody has room to grow in their grace toward the outcasts.  I know that I do.  And if you’ve felt marginalized or ignored in this church, I want to apologize.  If you want to come to Jesus, but you’ve felt like an outcast, maybe you’ve felt too afraid to come down from the tree to meet with Jesus, I want to reassure you that the church is here for you, and the church celebrates people meeting Jesus. 
 
This morning’s invitation was a personal invitation.  To Zacchaeus, the sinner trying to get a glimpse of Jesus from a sycamore tree, He said: “Zacchaeus, Come down immediately, I must stay at your house today.”  Zacchaeus came, and he shared an afternoon with Jesus, and he accepted the invitation of Christ.  And salvation came to his house that day.
 
In John 11:43, we find Jesus calling out to his friend Lazarus, dead and all wrapped in burial cloths in a tomb.  Jesus called out: “Lazarus, come out”, and not even death itself could prevent Lazarus from accepting His call.
 
Some of the final words in the Bible issue one last invitation.  We see it in Revelation 22:17: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’  And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’  Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.”
 
Maybe you have probably heard His invitation, and that’s why you’re here this morning.  Have you accepted that invitation?  Has salvation come your house, or do you still thirst.  Jesus is still calling.  And the decision to accept His invitation to follow Him is the most important decision you can make, and it doesn’t matter what you may have done.  It doesn’t matter who you are, or baggage you carry.  Jesus invites the outcasts.  So come, and take the free gift He offers today.