The Worst People in the Best Place - Part A

You see, in the Bible, heaven is not where good people go. Heaven is where saved people go. And some of those saved people were not all that good.

In fact, some of those people were at one time the worst people. But they get taken by God's grace and through an act of their repentance to that good place. The world has countless TV adaptations about what heaven looks like, but they don't match what scripture describes. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares what you can look forward to when it comes to heaven.

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Call 800-922-1888 to give, or visit connectwithskip.com. Okay, we're in Luke chapter 15 as we join Skip Heitzig for today's study. There's an old joke about a pastor and a taxi driver. Both of them died. They were in heaven.

Peter meets them at the gate because Peter's in all these dumb jokes. And so he admits them into heaven and says, welcome to heaven guys. And I want to show you your heavenly reward. So he takes the pastor and gives him his mansion in heaven, his home, his heavenly reward, his good place. And the pastor is all excited.

It looks really good. And he's thankful until Peter shows the taxi driver his eternal abode, which is far nicer than the pastor's. It's a bigger mansion.

It just looks better. And so at this point, the pastor is a little miffed and says to Peter, Peter, I've given God my whole life. I've served him my whole life.

I just don't understand why the taxi driver would get a better place than my place. And Peter said, well, it's pretty easy to understand, Reverend. When you preached, people slept.

When he drove, people prayed. You know, most people have an idea about heaven and hell. The idea of the afterlife is pretty straightforward.

It's not correct. It's not theologically correct. But most people's view of the afterlife goes like this. Good people go to heaven. Bad people go to hell. Good people go to the good place. Bad people go to the bad place. So if I live a reasonably good life, I will go to that good place. And then they define good as whatever they think that is, and they have earned their way to heaven. There's actually a show, as some of you know about, called The Good Place.

It has endured four seasons and 52 episodes. It is about the afterlife. And the good place represents heaven.

The bad place represents the other place. And they discover that some of these people discover they're in the good place, and they go back through their lives to discover how they got there. But it is a view of heaven that, of course, isn't a biblical view of heaven, because this is Hollywood.

And so this is a comedy, which is typical for Hollywood, because Hollywood has never taken heaven and hell seriously. And it's all about a works-based righteousness. If you do good things, you will get to the good place.

You earn your way to heaven. And, by the way, the good place, heaven, is depicted in this TV series as a place where people are bored. And it is very, very different from the biblical view of heaven and hell.

First of all, you need to know this. The Bible depicts heaven completely differently. You see, in the Bible, heaven is not where good people go. Heaven is where saved people go. And some of those saved people were not all that good.

In fact, some of those people were at one time the worst people. But they get to the good place. And they get to the good place. And they get taken by God's grace and, through an act of their repentance, to that good place.

Also, heaven is certainly not depicted as boring or dreary, but as filled with joy. With that, as a little introduction, let's go to Luke chapter 15 and begin in verse 1, where we read, Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to hear him, and the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them. And so he spoke this parable to them, saying, What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.

Most world religions view heaven, the afterlife, very much like that television series, The Good Life. You earned your way there. You work your way there.

Here's a sampling. In Islam, if your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds, you have a pretty good chance of making it to heaven. And so they recommend good deeds that include the reciting of prayers. It includes going on Hajj or a pilgrimage to Mecca once in your lifetime. It includes doing benevolent acts.

And all of that, they figure, will tip the scale in your favor. And eventually, you may, though you're never guaranteed, you may make it to heaven. Then another huge world religion is Judaism. And because, as you know, the Jews have no temple anymore for sacrifices to atone for their sins, it's now all about their works.

They can earn it. So by acts of repentance, by doing good deeds, by living a life of personal devotion, stand a good chance, and you're going to make it to the good place. That's Judaism. In Buddhism, you can get to heaven, but it's not called heaven.

It's known as nirvana. But that requires following the eightfold path. If you follow the eightfold path that is required, you can make it to nirvana. And then in Hinduism, because of the cycle of birth and death called reincarnation, if you break the cycle of reincarnation by ridding yourself of bad karma, then you can make it.

In all of those world religions, the basic element is the same. You are doing something to earn your place in the afterlife. Only Christianity teaches that man can do nothing to get to heaven.

Absolutely nothing. That to get to heaven, it is not by human achievement, it is by divine accomplishment only. God saves the lost.

God saves the worst. Now in Luke chapter 15, we're reading verses one through seven, but actually, if we were to read the entire chapter, you discover there's not one parable, but three stories back to back. The first is about the lost sheep.

That's what we'll cover. The second is about the lost coin that a woman loses. And the third is about a lost boy, a lost son who runs away from home, the prodigal son.

In each case, it's basically the same. Something valuable is lost. The owner or the superintendent goes out to look for that which is lost.

When that thing that is lost is finally recovered, there is joy and a celebration is underway. Now, I figure that probably the boys and the men would have loved the first story about the lost sheep because many of them were probably shepherds in the crowd. They would have said, yeah, I like that story.

I relate to that story. The girls and the women would have liked the story of the lost coin because scholars believe it's a coin from a wedding necklace that was lost. So that would have appealed to them.

And then finally, parents would have loved the story of the boy who came to his senses and came running back home to dad. So it's as if Jesus wanted to tell the same story, but he wanted to speak in a hard language that everybody could understand. All of it is basically the same truth, just with a different nuance. What I want to do is kind of go through what we just read, verses one through seven, but show you the elements in it, one by one. Five elements.

Number one, I want you to notice the spectators. They're introduced in verse one. Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to him to hear him. Interesting designations, right? You have here tax collectors and you have here sinners.

Now, let me explain those two categories. A tax collector is considered a traitor to the Jews in those days. Most tax collectors, like Matthew, were Jewish people. They were considered traders because they extorted money from people through taxation to put into the coffers of the Roman government. They were utterly despised by people.

Most people lumped tax collectors in the same category as robbers, murderers, and prostitutes. Nobody liked them. Not just Jews didn't like them. Even Romans didn't like them. One Roman author said, I have never seen a monument to an honest tax collector.

Now, have things changed from then to now? Do people love the IRS? Do any of you ever even pray for the IRS? I mean, nobody likes to get money taken from them, but what you need to know is it was so bad in those days that the exorbitant tax rate was like a burden on the back of every citizen.

Let me explain really briefly. First of all, there was a tax known as the poll tax. That's the tax to get polled, to get counted. Just to breathe air and to be counted in their registry, you paid a poll tax.

A female from age 12 to 65 and a male from age 14 to 65 were under the poll tax. On top of the poll tax, on top of the poll tax, you paid an income tax. A flat 10% of all that you own belong to Rome.

On top of the poll tax and on top of the income tax, there was what was called the ground tax. So if you're a farmer and you grow grain, a tenth of your grain goes to Rome. If you grow grapes, a fifth of your wine and the products go to Rome. On top of that, if you say, well, I'm not an agriculturist, I'm not a farmer, I'm a fisherman. Well, there was a fish tax and you were taxed per fish. So the more fish you catch, the more taxation you pay. Then if you have grain or fish or grapes, you have to transport them in a cart. So there was a cart tax and you were taxed based on the number of wheels you had on your cart. So if you have four wheels, more taxes.

So a wheelbarrow is your friend because it has one wheel. You'll get taxed less for that. Then on top of all of those taxes, there were road taxes, there were harbor taxes, there were import and export taxes. So people hated tax collectors. Then notice the second category, sinners. Now you would think that tax collectors, if they're hated that much, would just be lumped together with sinners. But sinners have their own category, their own designation.

Because sinners were the irreligious people, the non-religious people, the riff-raff of society, the notoriously immoral people hated by the religious establishment. And what is interesting to me is that Jesus attracted these people. They came to him, they flocked to him, they were interested in his sermons, they wanted to find out what he had to say. And it wasn't because he catered to them and it wasn't because he criticized them, it was because he genuinely cared for them. And they could feel that.

They knew that. Now you discover as you read through the gospels that Jesus was often criticized for this very thing that we're reading in verse one. Because so many notoriously irreligious riff-raff were attracted to Jesus, Jesus got a lot of flack for that. I'm going to take you back a couple chapters into Luke chapter 5.

You don't have to turn there, you can if you wish. I'll read it to you. Luke chapter 5, just to show this to you in verse 29. It says, Then Levi, Levi by the way is Matthew, a tax collector who becomes a disciple.

Then Levi gave him a great feast in his own house. And there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them. And their scribes and pharisees complained against his disciples saying, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?

There's those categories again. Jesus answered and said to them, those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.

No wonder they loved him. He's saying there's a lot of sick people out there and I'm a doctor who makes house calls. Now go two chapters further to Luke chapter 7. If you're doing that, if not, again I'll read it to you. Luke chapter 7 verse 31. And there's so much in this chapter that kind of bears this point out but I don't have time to do it. Verse 31, the Lord said, To what then shall I liken the men of this generation?

And what are they like? They're like children sitting in the marketplace calling to one another saying, we've played the flute for you and you did not dance, we mourn to you and you did not weep. For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine and you say he has a demon. The son of man has come eating and drinking and you say look, a glutton and a wine bibber, notice this, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

That's what he was. He was their friend. He attracted people to himself and it was bad enough that people flocked to him. What made it worse is Jesus sat down and ate meals with them. And we have that in our text in verse 2.

So now let me take you from the spectators to the skeptics. They're introduced in verse 2. And the Pharisees and scribes complained saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them. You already know this but Pharisees and scribes, they're like the varsity religious squad.

They're the A-string. They're the penultimate, the ultimate religious gurus, respected by all, feared by all. Josephus called them the leading religious sect, the most accurate interpreters of the law. Now there were only 6,000 Pharisees in existence at the time of Jesus. Very, very strict in their religion. And you read this in the Gospels, whenever Jesus and Pharisees got together, there were fireworks, right?

It was always an adversarial interaction, or usually it was. And so Jesus would just unload on them. He'd call them whitewashed tombs. He would say, hypocrites, over and over again to them. So this crowd, the Pharisees and the scribes, the religious elite, and those who study the law, they are disgusted that Jesus associates with those in verse 1, the tax collectors and sinners. I mean, sure, they're attracted to him, but he, Jesus, shouldn't be too excited about the fact that they're all attracted to him. He shouldn't like promote that, call himself a friend of tax collectors and sinners, and he was attracted to them.

He loved having them come near. Now there's something you need to know, I think. The Pharisees and the scribes had a distinct dichotomy. There was us, and there were them, and them, they called them the people of the land. The people of the land were the people who were not as good as they were. And listen to what the Pharisees said about the people of the land, quote, when a man is one of the people of the land, entrust no money to him, take no testimony from him, trust him with no secret, do not appoint him guardian of an orphan, do not make him the custodian of charitable funds, do not accompany him on a journey. In other words, when a man is one of the people of the land, do not accompany him on a journey, end quote. Stay far away from those people, don't associate with them at all. They're bad.

They're the bad people who go to the bad place. The Pharisees were forbidden to be a guest of the people of the land. The Pharisees were forbidden to have as a guest in their home anyone considered the people of the land.

Except from business dealings from any of the people of the land. So you get the idea, tax collectors and sinners want to hear Jesus, the religious elite, they're shocked by this. So we have two basic responses, right? In verse one and two, some that love Jesus, some that hated Jesus, some who are interested in what he had to say, some who were not. They were disgusted with him. And I would submit to you, nothing has changed.

It's still exactly the same. Jesus Christ divides people. Jesus Christ today is the most loved and the most hated person who has ever lived.

Some love and some hate. Now that's not the only response you can have. There's a third response and I would say most people have this response to Jesus and that is pure indifference.

They don't care. Jesus makes no difference to them. Jesus is irrelevant. He's a guy who lived a long time ago.

He has nothing to do with my life every day. That's how most people view Jesus. But if given more information, if somebody witnesses to them, if somebody lets them know about the moral authority of Jesus or the personal claims of Jesus, who he said he is, what he demands of people in terms of absolute surrender, usually those indifferent people will slip into category number two and just reject him, want nothing to do with him. Now some may be converted.

By God's grace, they will. Jesus certainly is looking for them, but most would probably reject. So we have the spectators and we have the skeptics. Now look at verse three.

It shows us the style. It says he spoke this parable to them saying. You discover in reading any of the gospels that Jesus spoke in stories quite a bit. In fact, one third of all of Jesus' teaching was in story form or in parable form. Now a parable is different than a story in this. The word parable parable is a word that means to place something beside something else or to throw something next to something else. So the idea in using a parable is that I'm going to throw something unknown next to something known. I'm going to take something you know about, a situation like shepherd and sheep in those days, and I'm going to use that which you know to teach you something you don't know. I'm going to place something, a spiritual truth next to something that you know to bring it into your heart.

So this brings us to a very important question. Since Jesus spoke so much in parables, why did he do it? What were the reasons Jesus spoke in these stories? Three reasons. Number one, to appeal, to appeal to people.

Stories are appealing to people. I see it from right where I stand. Whenever I cover some spiritual truths, if I get into the theological weeds, I notice people drifting off, glazing over. Oh good, he's talking about justification again. He gets a little deep and I can lose people. I can see it. But if I say, let me tell you a story about what happened to me yesterday and what my wife said to me and you, oh, you perk up.

I'm interested in that and that's good. That's what speakers do. They use stories to draw you in because they are appealing and the truth can be appealing that way. So think of a parable as an earthly story with a heavenly meaning and the idea is you're going to hear the story and the truth is going to stick.

It's going to be memorable. Your gift is so important to keep these teachings coming your way on the air and going out to connect others to the gospel. So I hope you'll give as generously as you can to make that possible.

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Again, that's 800-922-1888. Tune in again tomorrow as Skip Heitzit reveals comforting insight about Jesus' tender care for you. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzit is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.