Grace Means Change: Biblical Justice

It's so good to see y'all this morning. I don't know why no one likes me and doesn't sit in the first couple of rows, but it's great to see all of y'all back there crowded to the back. We're so glad that you're here this morning. You know, church isn't what happens in this room. You are the church and when you come together, we are the body of Christ gathered and it's so important that we are here together today. So glad to see you all. A warm welcome to you.

We're going to turn our attention to God's Word. We're going to be reading together as is our custom from Luke 19. You can follow along in your bulletin or up on the screen as we turn our attention to God's Word. So let the people of God read the Word of God.

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through, and there was a man called by the name of Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. Zacchaeus was trying to see who Jesus was, and he was unable due to the crowd because he was short in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up a sycamore tree in order to see him because he was about to pass through that way. And when Jesus came to that place, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house. And he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. When the people saw this, they began to complain, saying, 'He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.' But Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, 'Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I am giving to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone, I am giving back four times as much.' And Jesus said to him, Today, salvation has come to this house because he too is a son of Abraham, for the son of man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. — Luke 19:1-10

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Next week, we'll begin our study for Lent as we'll launch into the book of Jonah, which will take us all the way up to Easter. Today is the end of a series we've been doing since January 1. We looked in the month of January about the means of grace. It is a passion of our leadership that Christ would be formed in you, as we sang in one of the songs this morning, that more and more your life, my life would be conformed day by day into the likeness of Jesus, that we would be more like Him.

We've pivoted from talking about the means of grace to ask this question: what does grace mean? What does it mean for us for the gospel to bear fruit in the lives of God's people? And of course, we long for the fruit of the Spirit to be individually born out in your life. More and more for you to be bearing the fruit of love and joy and peace and patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. But more so, as our elders have said, there are things we also want to see being born as fruit in our church community, us as God's people gathered. So we've defined those things as part of our vision. Over the last few weeks, we've been talking about what are those fruits, praying that God would bring about through the life of our church. We've talked about church planting and fulfillment of the Great Commission. We've talked about becoming more and more cross cultural disciples, a fulfillment of the Revelation 7 view of all people gathered around the throne together. And today, I want to look at biblical justice.

I love this passage from Luke 19, and it's really an answer to an Old Testament passage. If you're familiar with Micah 6:8, God says:

What does the Lord require of you? That you would do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. — Micah 6:8

These two passages, that statement and then this passage, are sort of in conversation with one another. I want to think about this because when we read this passage together, you probably didn't hear the word justice in there. It's not anywhere in there. But it shows us what is the heart of the gospel that produces the fruit of biblical justice in the people of God. And it helps us to ask this question: how does biblical justice actually show off our own gospel IQ?

So let's jump into this passage together and look together. This passage is all about sight, what people see, what people perceive. If you notice those words are littered throughout this, Zacchaeus went to try to see Jesus. So he climbs up a tree. He could not see on account of the crowd. We read that Jesus looked up in the tree. And then when the crowd saw what Jesus did, they grumbled. And finally, Zacchaeus, when he responds and repents to the Lord, he says, behold, or other translations, look, Lord. See, this is all about what is perceived, what is seen.

So today, as we look at this passage really simply, we're going to look at it in three parts. First is, what did the crowd see? Second, what does Jesus see? And then what did Zacchaeus see?

So what did the crowd see? We don't know exactly why there was a crowd in Jericho that day. It could have just been market day, or it could have been a paparazzi kind of day. Because we know from the passage right before this in Luke 18, that Jesus had just healed a man born blind on the outskirts of Jericho. So this crowd could have been people running, getting the news, something has just happened. There's been the miracle worker and he's coming to town. We don't know if that's what's happening. But again, at the end of the chapter right before this, it says all the people saw and praised God.

Now this crowd had shown up to see Jesus coming to town, but there's somebody else that they saw. There's somebody else they saw that day—they saw Zacchaeus up a tree. They all saw him. And some of y'all have done a lot of mileage in church. You got frequent flyer miles for church services and VBS, and you know the song. I know you know it. You've been singing it in your head, right? Zacchaeus was a little man. Oh, yeah. We are awake this morning, right? Remember that. We're going to come back to that song. It's not very helpful.

So Zacchaeus climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Man—y'all are gold star VBS Christians this morning, right? So Zacchaeus, we learn, was a chief tax collector. And I want to break that down a little bit. That phrase "chief" is used almost nowhere else in the New Testament.

The Occupation Analogy

A few years ago, there was a show on Netflix, a Netflix original called The Man in the High Castle. You might have seen it. The premise of the show went like this: What if at the end of World War II America lost? And it imagines what it would be like if America was occupied territory controlled by the Germans and the Japanese. That's how the whole show was set up.

So that's what we need. We need that kind of imagination to be able to enter into this story, especially if you know the song, right? Let's imagine the scene. Let's say you live next door in occupied territory under the Germans and the Japanese, and Zacchaeus is your neighbor. Now, this is one of your own people who is a traitor, who is working for the other side, for the occupiers. You feeling good about this neighbor? No, right?

And let's now imagine that he works for the tax revenue system of the occupying force. And it functions a lot less like the IRS and a lot more like the mob. Extortion—that's what's used in this passage, extort. Feeling good about your neighbor? Now let's imagine that he's actually really successful at this. He's really, really good at his job, so much so that he gets promoted to chief tax collector. Again, are you feeling really trustful of your neighbor next door?

Now you hate this guy. You don't just avoid him or dislike him, you hate him. That's how the people of Jericho saw Zacchaeus. That's one of the reasons I think why he couldn't get through the crowd to see Jesus. They ain't making no room for him. They're not letting this guy in. It's just a little chance for them to elbow, right? A little bit of a chance to remind Zacchaeus where he fits in the pecking order of that society. This is Zacchaeus. He's the worst of the worst.

The PR Opportunity

I think about what Jesus could have done if he was really good at PR in this moment. Jesus would go to PR—he could have scored some major points. All he had to do was sling some mud at Zacchaeus along with the rest of the town. And he doesn't have to make up stuff to do it either. Is Zacchaeus the worst of the worst? Yeah, kinda. So all Jesus has to do to score some points is to be like, yeah, that guy, we hate that guy. I hate that guy.

You know, we love—as Americans, and it's probably true worldwide, it's the only place I've lived all my life, right?—we love hating the bad guy. And we love stories where the bad guy gets his just desserts. This past year, there was a podcast that came out by Christianity Today called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. And it was a story of a pastor and a church in Seattle, Washington and about abuse of power within that church.

Now, one of the funny things about what happened with that podcast is how instantly successful and popular it was, especially most notably with people who didn't live through that. Now what's funny about that for me is I was part of Acts 29. I was at some of the boot camps that are talked about. I remember hearing those talks, and a couple of the really, really early ones. Now, we separated from Acts 29 a long time ago, but it was kind of weird and surreal to me where this was my lived experience as a pastor, but lots of people just jumped on board of this because it became catastrophe entertainment. This became something where we love to watch a car crash, especially somebody who deserves it. And people just jumped on this.

People who were generationally removed from it or had no experience with this—yeah, that guy. It takes any guts to hate someone everyone else hates? No, it takes guts to love someone that everybody else hates.

So Jesus is walking along through this crowd, and He stops at the base of the tree and He looks up. Now you know what happens when a crowd's watching a celebrity and the celebrity looks up—everybody looks up. Everybody looks up and they see Zacchaeus. Every eye is on him at this moment. What's Jesus gonna do?

And immediately Jesus goes from being the one everybody wants to see to the second most despised person in the crowd because he moves toward him. He doesn't throw mud at him. His heart is turned towards Zacchaeus. I mean, what is Jesus doing? This is what Jesus always seems to be doing, gravitating toward the very worst, toward the worst, right? Like His heart seems to be moved toward the worst of the worst, the unclean, the untouchable. He touches those who you shouldn't touch. He associates with those you shouldn't associate with. Jesus' heart seems to be exactly the opposite of the crowd. He's moved toward Zacchaeus.

It'd be like somebody getting on the rise and fall of Mars Hill toward the end of that podcast and going like, "I love Mark Driscoll. He's awesome." And everybody be like, "We hate that guy and we hate you for hating that guy."

This is why we're reading verse seven: the people grumbled. Right? They're like, of all the people, Jesus? They're scandalized by this. You know, bear with me, but I think we're very much like that crowd. I think that we love it when we have somebody to not like.

The Chief of Sinners

There's only one other place in the New Testament that the word "chief" is used. Paul uses it in First Timothy. He describes himself as the chief of sinners. I don't know about you, but that's crazy talk. I mean, I don't have written in marker on my bathroom mirror, "chief of sinners." That's not the way I see me.

You know, I'm having a bad day and you see my sin come out. My kids especially know this, right? What do I say? I'm like, "Not chief of sinners. I'm like, if you only knew what kind of day I had." Right? I have an asterisk. Right? Like, we do this: "Well, if you only knew my boss, my spouse, my day, my circumstances, right?" We're the "if only" people. We're not "chief of" people. We never see ourselves like that.

In fact, we divide the world this way. This is what the crowd's doing. This is what we do. There's Zacchaeus, and then there's the rest of us. Like, there's the bad, and then there's the not so bad, right? And you know, like when I'm found in my sin, it's "if only," you know, "if you only knew what I've been through today, you'd understand."

There's the chief of sinners and then there's the rest of us. There's the monster and then there's me. Right? We love to divide the world that way. And it's because we really radically misunderstand how absolutely ridiculous grace is. Absolutely bonkers it is the way that God pursues sinners.

The Heart of Jesus

See, I think that a lot of times this is what Christians—we wouldn't say this, right? You know, "Hallelujah, what a savior." But we functionally act like God has drawn more to our health than our unhealth. God has drawn more to our gifts than our weaknesses. God has drawn more to us in our strength than in our failures. It's diametrically opposed to the New Testament.

What do we see in the New Testament? The heart of Jesus is always moved toward weakness, failure, sinners—like the worst, toward the worst in us, right? Not us with an asterisk, us as chief of sinners.

This is what the crowd saw that day, right? They saw the chief of sinners and somebody who loves the chief of sinners and they were disgusted.

What did Jesus see? Now all you good VBS frequent flyers know the answer to this: Jesus saw a sinner in need of grace. But I'm afraid that the "Zacchaeus was a wee little man" song really messes with us at this point. Because let's go through it together, okay?

And as the Savior passed that way, he looked up in the tree and he said, "Zacchaeus, I'm going to your house today."

Right? I'm gonna—you know this, right? Is that what the text says? Does it sound that kind of sing-songy? No, that song misses entirely the ferocity and the sheer intensity of what Jesus says here.

Hurry, hurry down from that tree. I must be with you. I must eat with you and be in your house today.

I mean, do you hear the difference between the sing-songy and then what Luke tells us about Jesus?

Jesus is like, "Don't wait one more minute." This is—it's funny because Jesus could have done like the PR bid with Zacchaeus, like, "Hey crowd, you don't know him like I do. He's really not that bad a guy," which is not true, right? Zacchaeus is that bad a guy. But the first thing Zacchaeus hears is his own name: "Hurry, I must be with you."

I mean, do you feel the intensity of that?

Keenan Lowe woke up early on 05/17/2019 at his house in Portland, Oregon. He drank coffee, ate breakfast, and drove his Jeep Cherokee to work at Park Rose High School, a big school in an economically challenged part of town. Age 27, former All American himself, he was now coaching Park Rose's football team and track team, which made almost no money. So he supplemented that by working full time as a security guard at the high school.

At 11:30, the call came in to the security office saying, can you go and get Angel Granados Diaz from the Fine Arts Building and bring him to the counselor's office? Lo sighed when he heard this—the guards always grumbled about having to go to the Fine Arts Building, they call it the FAB Building, because it's across a field from the rest of the school.

So he remembers walking out the doors that day and walking across the field and seeing someone lining the softball field. He remembers opening the FAB door and remembers seeing out of the corner of his eye someone duck quickly into the bathroom. Well, first, Lowe went to the wrong room—he went to the health class—and then he found his way to the civics class where there was a substitute teacher. He says, "Hey, is there a Granados Dias in the classroom?" And as soon as he's asking that question, the door busts open and an 18 year old young man, Angel Granados Dias, comes in wearing a large trench coat, glasses, kind of moppish hair, and he has a shotgun and he's screaming.

In a moment, the coach has to decide: what am I going to do? And he doesn't really even pause. He decides: am I going to go for the gun or am I going to go for the kid? And he goes for the gun. He grabs the end of the shotgun and they begin wrestling over the control of the gun. He's trying to keep it out of his face or away from other people. They bang into a file cabinet, the two of them, and they end up out in the hallway where he finally wrestles the shotgun away from this young man.

A teacher comes running by and says, "Call the police." Another teacher comes by, takes the gun and they run off. And he ends up grabbing this young man in a bear hug. You can watch the CCTV video of this in the school. It's an amazing moment and there's an exchange that's happening that you can't hear. And it's where this young man is weeping. "Nobody loves me. Why does everyone hate me?" He's like, "I love you. I'm here for you." He held the kid until the authority showed up.

Incredible story. It makes me think so much of what's happening in this passage. The way that Jesus embraces an enemy. Jesus disarms him. This exchange between Jesus and Zacchaeus is so intense and immediate and so filled with the ferocious love of God for sinners. It's like Jesus is saying to Zacchaeus: the reason you're up that tree, and you're rejected, and nobody likes you here is both your sin and your shame. Your sin—you've extorted people, you've abused people, you've taken advantage. But it's also your shame. We know that he wasn't just a physically small person, but he was small in the eyes of that entire community, despised.

If you flip over just a few chapters in Luke's Gospel, you read about Jesus who goes up a tree. Jesus who climbs up the cross, so that Zacchaeus can come down. And Jesus says to him, says to you, says to me: I take your shame. I take your sin on me, in my very flesh so that you can come down and be part of the family of God. You can come down as one of the redeemed. You don't have to live that way. That's the heart of Jesus. Hurry, I must be with you. This is the heart of Jesus.

I told you it's all about seeing and perceiving, right? It may seem like Zacchaeus is the one in the story who's looking for Jesus, but what do we find in verse 10 at the end of it?

Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. — Luke 19:10

This whole time, Jesus is the one who came to seek and to save the lost. This is what he's about. This is why this is one of my favorite stories in the Gospels. It's a jaw dropping picture of radical grace for sinners. There's no like, "This guy might not be so bad." No, this guy's that bad.

And think about the words that are absolutely missing from this section. There's no words like earn or merit or deserve. If we talk about what Zacchaeus earned or merited or deserved, it would be destruction. And yet—incredible generosity, incredible grace.

What did Zacchaeus see that day? We don't have to look very hard to know what he saw. He looks at Jesus and what does he call him? Lord. A statement of authority over him, of submission of his life to Jesus. Look, Lord. Zacchaeus went to bed the night before and woke up with one Lord and went to bed this next night and woke up with a different Lord. Jesus is the one he's given his life to.

You can see this by the way he responds. This incredible repentance. Look, all I have.

You know, the question for us is, has the embrace of Jesus changed you in that way? That you've left behind things, that you're continuing to be changed by this and you're leaving behind things that were too important, and too controlling and too big in your life and Jesus is it. Look, Lord, You're the only captain of my life. You get to call all the shots. Jesus' embrace completely changes this man. I love this.

It's funny what people talk about. I've been a pastor for a long time, preach for a long time, and it's funny what people think we should be talking about in church. Like what people really need is a good rebuke, or to be shaken up. What they need is the law a lot more added to their lives. And of course, law and gospel do go together. But when you give the gospel and this kind of overwhelming grace, it does change people. I don't know what sometimes people think—like, if we preach too much of this grace stuff, everybody's going to be like the James Bond of sinners licensed to sin. That's dangerous. No, I mean, this gospel of free grace is what melts this man and changes him.

Jesus doesn't give him a list of things to do. He doesn't give him a checklist—okay, now I want you to check the box, and then we're going to be okay. The fruit of this is that Zacchaeus responds to this kind of grace with overwhelming generosity. And there are two movements here that I want you to see both of them.

First, he responds this way: here and now I give half of what I have to the poor. This is the exact opposite of the rich young ruler. The rich young ruler comes to Jesus and says, what do I have to do? What's required of me to be saved? Zacchaeus is like, how can I not? Jesus has to confront the rich young ruler with his greed over his possessions and his stuff and his money. And you can tell he doesn't want to do it. He walks away from Jesus. Zacchaeus is like, how can I not? Half right now.

And then the second movement that Zacchaeus does is restitution. He says, if I have wronged anyone, I want to pay them back four times over. I want to make things right. And it's not an argument about like, well, how much? Is it two times over that I should do? No, he's just like, four times. I'm going to let me go above and beyond. Let me get out of control with this.

Biblical Justice

These two movements actually show us what biblical justice is. Biblical justice is restoring. It's making restitution and it's caring for the most vulnerable. It's both movements. It's both giving and it's also making right.

What's funny though, is sometimes I hear Christians in the debate that's happened around what is justice and should Christians care about it. Sometimes I hear like, we're asking a very different question than Zacchaeus is asking. We're asking the rich young ruler question: what's really required with this? Whereas Zacchaeus is like, how can I not?

The case in point is I've heard this passage used to make the case that Christians should only be responsible for the things that we personally have intentionally done wrong as sins and to make those right. And they argue, well, if I didn't cheat anyone, and I didn't enslave anyone, I didn't create unjust systems, why should I feel responsible for things that I didn't do?

That comes from our legal system. That is not from the gospel. The legal system is like you pay back the damages. No one is expecting you to pay for somebody else's neighbor who wrecks their car. They pay for that. They pay for the damages in the accident.

But when we get into the realm of owe, earn, deserve, we can be confident we are far out of gospel territory. That argument is making sure I don't lose my rights. I don't lose my stuff. I'm in control. It's all from an argument of limitation. It's let's not get out of hand here. Let's not take this whole justice thing too far. The question—all the argument—is all about like, what do I have to do? And again, "have to" doesn't have any of the word that's about earn, deserve and owe. Those are not chief of sinners and unmerited grace language.

One of the biggest problems with the church in America is we're so concerned about my, my, my, my, my. I'm on Twitter, I promise you—get off—because it's all about Christians arguing about control of my stuff, my rights, protecting what I've earned, never being disadvantaged for others, ensuring I'm never trampled on, that I get all of what I owe and what I deserve. With regard to justice, it's making sure I never feel responsible. Never recognizing that the Gospel is never about restriction or limitation or protecting mine. It's not eye for eye, it's radical grace for the undeserving.

Zacchaeus did wrong and he made restitution for it. He acknowledges that, but Zacchaeus goes way beyond that.

He recognizes he benefited from and actually used a system that he didn't set up, thinking, "not my responsibility." But he used that system to make himself rich. He could say, "Well, Jesus, what do I have to do now?" But he doesn't do that. Gloriously, he gets out of hand. He gets carried away.

This is one of my prayers for our church with regard to biblical justice: Let's get out of hand. Let's get carried away. What's the big danger in that? That someone might take advantage of us? Don't we do that with the Lord all the time? Let's get carried away by the gospel. Let's get crazy. What's the big harm in this?

See, what else did Zacchaeus see? What did he hear? He hears this final thing, this benediction of Jesus on what's happening. Jesus says something which kind of pushes our categories:

Today, salvation has come to this house. — Luke 19:9

In Greek, soteria—where we get our word soteriology. This is not a neat and tidy theological argument. Jesus is saying something has happened here that shows forth that salvation has arrived in this household, that someone has gotten it. It's not that Zacchaeus bought his way to salvation, but his salvation is proven by his repentance. It's demonstrated.

May my salvation and your salvation be demonstrated by a heart of such incredible reflex response to grace—open-handed generosity. May we get carried away.

Three Applications

I have three applications for you this morning.

First, if you're not a believer, if you're not a Christian, this is what we want you to know: The gospel never arrives on your front door like a piece of mail that says "To Addressee" or "Dear Occupant." It comes with my name on it and your name on it. Just as the Lord Jesus stood under a sycamore tree and called Zacchaeus by name, He calls your name. We believe that God has brought you here this morning so that you can hear Jesus call you by name. The grace of God is that present, that immediate to you this morning. We urge you: don't walk out of this place without saying yes to Him. Hear Him—"Hurry, I must be with you."

Second, if you're a Christian, ask Jesus to help you see what He sees. We're surrounded by people all the time that I'm convinced we don't even really see. People at the gas station, people at the grocery store, even our neighbors—we're doing our own thing. We've got the AirPods in or we're just in our own mind. We're so in our world, we don't even see. Ask the Lord to see what you don't see.

The mission field for the kingdom of God is not somewhere else. It's your next-door neighbor. It's the people you work with. It's the people at Harris Teeter. It's people all around you all the time. You don't have to leave and go somewhere else to do biblical justice. You don't have to change your life. Ask God to show you what's right in front of you. I believe He'll answer those prayers.

Finally, third application: Come down from the tree. Come down from your tree.

The irony is, I think we've all bought into this myth that every one of us needs more downtime—a little more isolation with our devices so we can watch our shows. After the last two years, are you in need of more isolation in your life right now? Anybody feeling like, "I need some more isolation right now"? No. We're dying to be together with other people.

And so here's the invitation from Jesus:

He came to seek and to save the lost. — Luke 19:10

The beautiful thing is that He invites His people. He doesn't make us, but He invites us into that—into being a part of that, into the fellowship of being able to see what He's up to in the world. And yes, it'll mean your life gets messy and complicated. We don't want our lives to be messy and complicated. We want alone time. But in doing so, do we realize that we're cutting ourselves off? We're cutting ourselves off from other people. We're cutting ourselves off from seeing what God's doing in the world. We're cutting ourselves off from seeing the gospel at work in the lives of people around us.

What an incredible opportunity the Lord's given us. We don't have to. We get to. We get to come down from the tree.

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Let's go to the Lord in prayer together.

Father, we thank you for this passage. Thank you for the way that it reminds us of things that we'd rather forget about ourselves—that we are the chief of sinners, that we are those who are most in need of your mercy and grace. Lord, everything in us forgets that. Everything in us resists that. We pray, Father, that you would help us to see as you see and love as you love. We pray that our lives would be gloriously messy and complicated. We pray, Lord, that we would get carried away. And Lord, in doing so, we would find our joy cups overflowing because we get to see how you're at work in our world. We pray all this, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.