790. Holiness and Hospitality

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.

The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything so he established daily chapel services. Today, that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from the University Chapel platform. Today on The Daily Platform, we'll hear from Dr. Tim Barr, senior pastor of Tri-City Baptist Church in Blue Springs, Missouri. Tim will lead us in a study of Zacchaeus in Luke 19. If you have your Bibles, open them with me to Luke chapter 19. Can we just pray that maybe God might use his word in this short time we have together to help us be conformed in the image of Christ? Father, we desperately need the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and we know that the Spirit works through the word of Christ so we ask that we might respond in obedience, that we might find ways to engage our culture and our world that are unique to us but follow a biblical pattern. It's in Christ's name we pray.

Amen. This morning, I will turn our attention to a gospel account that presents an evangelistic pattern that I believe is incredibly significant for this generation. Now sadly, the account we're going to look at is rarely discussed even in adult church rather than in an academic setting like this. This morning, we are going to learn about Zacchaeus. Now remember Zacchaeus? You probably first met him in a little children's toddler book, right?

He's the wee little guy that climbed up into a tree and for many of us, the last time we thought about him was when we were teaching junior church. And then some strange preacher who you've never met shows up at Bob Jones University in an academic world and contends that there is a missional strategy in this story that is significant for our generation. And some would say, is that possible?

And I would say, I believe it is but we have to do something different with this story than we did before. Just begin for a moment and imagine this story in your own mind. Use your sanctified imagination. Can you picture Zacchaeus in his Sycamore tree which we probably is a fig tree, right? Can you picture him in that tree? And then you ask yourself, why does this matter?

Why does it matter that this short man climbed a tree? And then maybe we should ask even a more important question, why would that matter for our understanding of a missional strategy in this generation? In order to answer that question, I would like to begin, if I could, by simply reading the entire account of Zacchaeus. I think you'll be surprised as I read it. There's a lot of details that are kind of lost in your picture book. So let's see if we can find them in the original text. We're in Luke chapter 19, starting in verse one. And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho and behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans and he was rich. And he sought to see Jesus, who he was and could not for the press because he was a little of stature. And he ran before and climbed up into a Sycamore tree to see him for he was to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste and come down for today I must abide at thy house. And he made haste and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all murmured saying that he has gone to be a guest of a man that is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood and said unto the Lord, behold Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor.

If I've taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. And Jesus said to him, this day is salvation come to this house for so much as he also is a son of Abram, for the son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. How often have you read that statement, the final statement in the scriptures for the son of man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. Do you agree with me from a simple reading of the text that there is something in this story that should shape our understanding of the mission of the message of Jesus Christ. There's something about gospel proclamation that is wrapped up and communicated in this account. So let's begin if we can by thinking of this as a story of an interrupted journey.

And in order to do that, we need to kind of reconstruct in our own minds the story that we know incredibly well. So if I could, I'd like to retell you this story, but put it into its historical and theological context so that when we are done, here's what I want you to know. This is not really the story of Zacchaeus. This is actually the story of Jesus Christ on a journey of which Zacchaeus was part of Jesus's bigger story.

Now I've never seen that in any of my picture books, have you? When I look at a picture book, what I always see is the little guy in the tree and Jesus is off to the side. The center of the picture is Zacchaeus, but if we were to think about this correctly, the center of the picture ought to be Jesus and the tree and Zacchaeus are to the side. You see, Jesus was on one of the most important journeys of his lifetime. Jesus leaves Galilee in the north for the very last time before he goes to the cross. Bible scholars disagree significantly on how long the journey took.

We all agree kind of on how it happened. We know that from Galilee, Jesus goes over towards the Jordan River. He comes down, as was often his case, when he would go that direction, he would stop at Jericho before going up to Jerusalem. Now Jericho becomes important because this is where the story of Zacchaeus took place. Now when I say Jericho, few of us think of the story of Jericho, right? If I said, what is the most important story that took place in Jericho, most of us would have gone Old Testament, not new.

But here is the story of Jesus. He is coming into Jericho, he has just passed, as you enter into Jericho, there was an area where many of the poor beggars were there, and Jesus engaged one of them. And as he enters into this town, it's about 15 miles northeast of Jerusalem, and as Jesus is entering into this town, it was a wealthy community.

Now I think we know why. You see, if you were on a trade route, you were a city that could make a lot of money. If you were the last city on a trade route, from a Roman perspective, the Mediterranean circle, going all the way out to the south and the east, then the last city there became the hub city of all of the trade that went out towards the desert. And that is where Jericho was, and that meant that Jericho was a wealthy town in the time of Jesus. But as you might not be surprised, wealthy towns do not always mean godly towns.

Think about the United States, the most powerful cities, the wealthiest cities. When I say New York City, you think revival, right? When I say Las Vegas, you think holiness.

When I say Los Angeles, you don't know what to think. But we think of our cities, we don't think of holy places, but when you think of trade cities, you often think of the worst, and this is exactly Jericho. And Jesus goes into this despised town and meets the most despised man in the town. If you look carefully at your Bible, you notice that when he goes in, he sees the chief, in verse two, among the publicans. And maybe a better way to put it is, he is the chief tax collector. Now, it is fascinating to me that Jesus is going to meet the tax collector, but when I'm reading the story, I find out it's actually the other way around. It is this tax collector desired to see Jesus. Now, why would someone who is involved in collecting taxes for Rome in a major metropolitan community ever want to connect with Jesus?

That's the last person you would think would be interested in Jesus and his message. Now, of course, we all know this man had a certain problem, and that was he was short. I can somewhat identify with that. When I was in seventh grade, I was the tallest, one of the tallest kids in my class. I was on the basketball team. I was a center, if you can remember back in those days, that's what we called them, right?

And then we moved to a forward, kind of like a second guard. Then I ended up being a guard. I was never fast enough to be a point guard. I then became a bench warmer.

Then I decided it wasn't worth even being on the team. All because in eighth grade, everybody came back about my height. In ninth grade, they surpassed my height.

In tenth grade, they kept surpassing my height, and mine never changed. And there's a sense and where our stature is not something we can control. Now, of all the things that could be controlled here, it's not his stature that is shocking to make him want to see Jesus. It is his choice of professions. This is a man who had joined with Rome.

He was one of the chief tax collectors for Rome in this, if you would, an economically prosperous city. And this man was interested in Jesus. If I were to pick one person that I think would be least likely to be interested in the message of Jesus, Zacchaeus would be at the top of that list. And yet this man was interested, he was so interested that he climbs up in a tree. Now, when I picture that in my mind, I always imagine him climbing up in a tree because he was pragmatic. You know, in the storybooks, he was short, everybody was tall, he climbed up in a tree, that gave him a better view.

But I don't think that's why it's in the story at all. If you think of a wealthy businessman today, what kind of clothes would he wear? Name brand, right? Always. Maybe a suit. Now imagine him being so excited about seeing Jesus come by that he's realizing he's lost in the shuffle, so he lays all of his dignity aside and climbs up into a tree because he is so motivated to see Jesus. When you think of Zacchaeus climbing in a tree, don't think short guy getting a view. Think, here is a man who from the outside was willing to lay aside his own respectability to get a glimpse of Jesus. There was something stirring in his heart. As Jesus is going by, Jesus stops and looks up at Zacchaeus, and then he speaks to Jesus, then Jesus speaks to Zacchaeus. Now this is important.

Any time you're studying a narrative, any time you're studying a story, you should always pay attention to the actual dialogue, what is said, because often the key ideas are wrapped up in what is said in the story. And listen to what is said, Zacchaeus, make haste, come down, today I must abide in your house. Now can I put that into modern English? Jesus is walking by, sees the man up in the tree and says this, Zacchaeus, can I come to your house? No, no, Zacchaeus, can I come to your house and eat your food?

Zacchaeus, can I come to your house, eat your food, and stay at your house? That's an amazing statement of Jesus. Jesus doesn't look at him and say, Zacchaeus, do you know you're a sinner? He doesn't look at Zacchaeus and say, if you die today, are you certain you're on your way to heaven, right? He doesn't say, let me get out a pencil and pen and draw for you a bridge, all of which are great ways to share the gospel.

He doesn't do any of them. He just looks at Zacchaeus and says, Zacchaeus, do you mind, can I come to your home? Do you want to make a meal for me?

Do you just want to like take care of me for a while? Now that is the most shocking thing that Jesus might say. And this third action that is described where it said he wants to abide in your house is maybe the most clear way in the New Testament language to say, hey, could you show me hospitality? Would you entertain me? And you know, Zacchaeus immediately offered the food and the housing with much joy. And in the ancient Near Eastern world, there was no greater way to show respect than to offer someone hospitality. Now, remember, you got a picture in your mind.

Hopefully I'm painting a beautiful picture in your mind. So I need you to do this. Imagine Jesus walking into Jericho. The crowd is thronging around him. Zacchaeus loses all of his dignity, climbs up into a tree.

Jesus stops in the middle of the crowd, sees him and says, hey, can I come to your house tonight? Can you feed me? Come down quickly.

Take care of me. Now he's not the only one you're picturing in your mind, right? There's all the other people that are around and that's really the next word that is mentioned. All the people began to mutter in their breath. You say, what does that sound like?

You ever been in a class where the teacher stands up in the class and says, we're going to have a pop quiz? The sound that you heard from your mouth and all of your friends, that is the sound that erupted from all the people when Jesus said, can I come to your home? Hey, come down quickly.

Come, come feed me, come take care of me. The response of all the people was a grumbling, a muttering under their breath. They say, well, why? Well, remember Zacchaeus was a tax collector, right? And we know that they would often collect money for Rome and they would collect a little extra for themselves.

We know from his own words later in the account that I've already read that he used false accusations to cause people to pay more than they should have paid. So when Jesus says, hey, can I come to your home? He's, can I eat your food? All the people around are like, where do you think the money came from for that food?

Does he know who he's talking to? This is a polluted politician. And thus the money that the politician got must be polluted. Therefore, if Jesus was to eat from the polluted money that the polluted politician has, wouldn't that by definition make Jesus polluted? The arguments begin to grow within the account.

And certainly we can imagine how easy it would be to say a corrupt man with corrupt food could corrupt the person with the message of hope. And I have no idea when Zacchaeus's words are said, because that's the next thing we get in the account. Remember I said you need to always pay attention to the words, what is said, what is quoted. Listen to the words that Zacchaeus says.

They're just amazing. Verse eight, Zacchaeus stood. It gives me every hint to say this, that as Zacchaeus heard the grumbling, Zacchaeus likely did not wait until he went home, but I cannot prove it, but I am inclined to think that because the language of standing and listen to his words, behold, Lord. Does that word Lord matter to you now?

I mean, think about what he's saying. He was up in the tree losing his dignity. And then when he stands up and speaks likely in the presence of everyone, he says, Lord, there there's more going on here than just casual interest. There's a sense of understanding who Jesus, the master is. Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor.

And if I've taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore to him fourfold. I think what Zacchaeus did is he realized that he wanted Jesus to be able to come to his home. He wanted to show hospitality to Jesus, but then as he heard the grumbling and the murmuring, he's like, I know the message of Jesus. And if he comes to my home and I stay the way I am, I'm going to pollute Jesus's reputation. So what Zacchaeus does is fascinating. He publicly repents of all of his sin and seeks to restore all the broken relationships that he had created out of his own greed.

Now just think about that for a second. Jesus started on this journey, starting in Galilee, going all the way to Jerusalem. And we're asking ourselves, is this an interruption in Jesus's ministry?

Is this stopping, breaking what Jesus is all about? Well, Jesus is walking into town and there's a man who's identified by his sin. Jesus said, Hey, can I come to your house? Come down quickly. Help me.

Let me stay at your house. And the man responds in open repentance and declares the Lordship of Christ. This is not an aberration from Jesus's journey.

This is the point of the journey. And of course, Jesus then says something of significant importance. He says that salvation came to this man's house.

And by the way, I think you can even expand that out to the house of all Israel. And then in verse 10, this is the reason for Jesus's entire journey for the son of man is to come to seek and to save that which was lost. And this incredible little account, we have a microcosm of what becomes the great commission. We have a savior who goes into a world that is bound by sin, declaring a message that can take even the worst sinner and radically transform them to where they trust in Christ as Lord and savior and the sinner publicly repents of a sin. This is the gospel on display. So we thought about this as a story of a journey interrupted, but now what I'd like to do if I could is rethink through this story from just a slightly different lens, but you're going to see it's not really different.

It's just we're changing the way we envision it so that we can begin to think, how does this ancient story land in a practical mission strategy for us today? Let's think of this story in terms of, here's my fancy word. I want you to learn this word, redemptive hospitality.

I want you to think of it in terms of redemptive hospitality and in order to do this, we have to really focus in again on the interaction between the characters. Now let's start with noticing the names of our characters. Now Jesus, we know that name, right? His name will be Jesus because he will do what? Matthew chapter one, he will save his people from their sins. Does that happen in this story? I mean, was Zacchaeus a Jew?

Certainly. And so does he end up with real salvation? Yeah, Jesus does what Jesus does. But more interestingly, how about Zacchaeus?

Anybody have a guess what his name means? So Zacchaeus is the Greek or Hellenized form of the Jewish name Zakai, and Zakai means the righteous one. Now, would any of you have thought this man that climbed up in a tree was the righteous one? Well, certainly not, because while the righteous one was his name, his title, his legal profession defined his character, not his given name. And his legal profession is he was the chief of the tax collectors. It is fascinating that this is the only example that we have of this word chief tax collector.

And normally we would look and say within the Roman structure, we know what these roles are. We know what a tax collector is, but a lot of scholars believe that this name was really strategic to the location of Jericho. Because this was an economic hub city, this man was not just a typical tax collector who collected taxes from the area. This is likely a man that was also collecting international tariffs on all the money coming in. This was a man who was Jewish, who was collecting taxes for the enemy, not only from the Jewish people, but from all the people the Jewish people should be trading with.

In other words, everyone that was supposed to bring their wealth under Solomon and bring it into Jerusalem so it would stay there, this Jewish man was collecting from all those people as well and sending that on to Rome, or at least some of it and keeping the rest for himself. So the one whose name is the righteous one turns out to be anything but what? Righteous.

So here's the amazing thing. By the end of the account, Zacchaeus becomes what? Zacchaeus. He repents and he becomes a righteous one.

Why? Because Jesus showed redemptive hospitality. Now let's talk about redemptive hospitality for a second. What is it that Jesus said and did that transformed so much? He didn't come preaching long messages on depravity, although that is needed. He didn't come declaring the full gospel message, although I think that is essential for redemption. He came and offered hospitality. And even more in this case, he accepted the hospitality.

One last account that I think maybe will help you. I remember I was walking one time down a road in a small little town. There were two men in that town that were probably as offensive to the town as Zacchaeus was to his community. Both of these men lived together in a house in a small country town. I was walking by them and a storm was coming in that day and I was just walking my way to a church building and the men had started taking off their shingles off the roof of their house.

They were kind of, I never really knew if they were like in a partnership, but I really, everybody assumed the town they were. And as I was walking by, I thought, you know what? I'm a contractor a little bit by background. I got air tools. They had hammers and they're going to try putting a roof on, right? And I thought, I don't know if it's a good idea for a Baptist preacher to go up on a roof with two men to put a roof on a house when those two men live in that house.

Got my idea here? And so I was walking by them and I walked totally by and actually walked by the house. I got to the next road.

By that point, I was feeling so incredibly guilty of my soul. I turned around and walked back and I said to the guys, I said, hey, I don't know if you need any help, but can I help you put a roof on your house before it ends? And they said, hey, we just called some family.

They're coming, but thanks for the offer. And from that moment on, they began to, every time I'd meet them anywhere in town and a store, they would stop and talk to me. And I was able to build a friendship. I was able to share the gospel with one of them.

You see, this model is exactly the model we are called to. We are not called to be distant from people, but rather we are called to love them. Now I have to ask one last question because if we're going to talk about redemptive hospitality and I'm picturing all this in my mind, I'm picturing Jesus willing to be at a tax collector's house, which is probably as offensive as me putting a roof on a house of someone, two men who are living together, right?

I mean, you're like, wait a second. Doesn't holiness protect us from hospitality? I mean, isn't there like a, like an antithetical relationship between holiness and hospitality?

And isn't that exactly what everybody was murmuring about? You know, how can Jesus go to this man's house? How can he be there? And what I would say is this, whatever I know about Jesus, he was tempted in all points as we are, yet without what? Sin.

He was completely holy. I'm not arguing for a kind of hospitality where you sacrifice holiness to be hospitable. I'm arguing that there is a kind of hospitality that allows us to be holy, but still accepts the hospitality of the lost. In other words, we must become friends of the lost so that we can share with them the redemptive message that allows them to become holy as well. The hardest thing that we've had to learn as a group of churches is hospitality and holiness do not fight with each other, but rather there is a way for us to be holy and engaged.

So before I'm done, can I ask a single question to you? Is there someone right now in your life, maybe in your family, maybe someone in the community, that right now you know they're lost, but if you went out to coffee with them, if you connected with them, someone might growl and go, oh, they're really kind of into this sin and I don't know if a Christian should ever hang out with those people. Can I encourage you, follow Jesus' model. Say, hey, can we get together for coffee?

Can I come over to your house? Don't abandon your holiness. Take the message of Jesus to them. Don't hide behind your holiness. Do not use it as an excuse, but rather bring your holiness together with hospitality and engage the culture around us. Father, help us to never use as an excuse the sins of others to excuse our apathy and evangelism, but help us to find in Christ this clear awareness that we can take the gospel to anywhere in the world, even the most broken places, and share the message of Christ. Help us to know that we never need to sacrifice our holiness, but we can be holy and hospitable at the same time. And may we bring these together in our evangelism. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon from Dr. Tim Barr, senior pastor of Tri-City Baptist Church in Blue Springs, Missouri. Join us next week as we'll begin a study of the Ten Commandments on The Daily Platform.