Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning church,

This morning we are in week 4 of our series on Counterfeit Gods.

We’ve spent the last few weeks talking about the counterfeit gods of love, success, power and glory.

And this week we are going to be talking about the love of money.

It’s interesting that I get this topic because I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life talking about money.

As an accountant that was my life, that was what I talked about, what I read about, what my nightmares were about.

I spent most of my days counting and then recounting the wealth of companies and people.

I remember this one time as a young accountant fresh out of university, I was auditing the books of a Members only Golf Club in Bermuda.

And if you don’t know what auditing is it is simply someone checking the records of the person who is doing the day to day accounting for a company.

On this particular job I had to review the accounts receivables of this club, this is money owed to the golf club, and on the list of people who owed money was the whose who of wealthy people in Bermuda, the people who would be considered the top 1% or upper class of the country.

And I remember wondering what it would be like to live that way.

To have a ton of money to be able to do with what I wanted when I wanted.

Then I considered what it must’ve took for these people to get this money.

For some of the people that where on the list I had there were stories of them being very unscrupulous business people who would do whatever they needed to do to get ahead; they would lie, cheat and maybe in some cases take what wasn’t theirs in order to have the large amount of money they had.

And you know what as as young accountant my focus too was on the money.

My goals and desires revolved around what I needed to do to work my way up the corporate ladder to increase my pay, which would allow me to buy more stuff and to do what I wanted to do.

And a lot of what I thought about during that time in my life was what I needed to do or how I could be better than the person sitting next to me to get to the next level or to get a bigger bonus than they did.

I hope in what I just said you were able to pick out what the common denominator was; ME.

My focus in getting more money and more authority that came with the money was myself.

During this time in my life I was blinded by the seductive power of money.

I can recognize now that I was greedy for more and more in order for me to satisfy my own desires of stuff and doing things that made me happy.

And the funny thing is that in the midst of all of this I had no idea that this was the condition of my heart.

I considered myself an upstanding member of society, a decent Christian, a person who would give to others as it was required of me.

But it really wasn’t until I spent time later a few years later, and then I was reminded as I spend time reading this chapter in Counterfeit God’s, that I realized that I had fell into the trap of greed.

Money for this time in my life was a god of mine.

Tim Keller states, “Jesus warns people far more often about greed than about sex, yet almost no one thinks they are guilty of it”.

This is where I found myself in as a young accountant.

Tim Keller also shares this quote by Friedrich Nietzsche which says, “What induces one man to use false weights, another to set his house on fire after having insured it for more than its value, while three-fourths of our upper classes indulge in legalized fraud . . .

what gives rise to all this?

It is not real want—for their existence is by no means precarious . . .

but they are urged on day and night by a terrible impatience at seeing their wealth pile up so slowly, and by an equally terrible longing and love for these heaps of gold. . . .

What once was done “for the love of God” is now done for the love of money, i.e., for the love of that which at present affords us the highest feeling of power and a good conscience.”

Keller, Timothy.

Counterfeit Gods: When the Empty Promises of Love, Money and Power Let You Down .

Hodder & Stoughton.

Kindle Edition.

Nietzsche talks about the idea that money in Western culture, would become perhaps its main counterfeit god.

You see in our culture the pursuit of money, wealth and things has become the main focus, the main desire of many people.

Now I’m not saying that money in of itself is bad.

Money is a useful tool; we need to buy houses, groceries, pay for utilities and to get from place to place.

What the issue that we need to consider and confront in our lives is whether we are making the pursuit of money our main thing, our god.

And so with all of this in mind we must ask ourselves, we need to consider whether we are making money or the pursuit of money our god.

Are we making that the main thing in our lives.

Our passage this morning is in , would invite you to turn there with me.

It says, “Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town. 2 There was a man there named Zacchaeus.

He was the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich.

3 He tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd.

4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was going to pass that way.

Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town. 2 There was a man there named Zacchaeus.

He was the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich.

3 He tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd.

4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was going to pass that way.

5 When Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name.

“Zacchaeus!” he said.

“Quick, come down!

I must be a guest in your home today.”

6 Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy.

7 But the people were displeased.

“He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled.

8 Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much! 9 Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.””

Tyndale House Publishers.

Holy Bible: New Living Translation.

Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013.

Print.

* 19:10 “Son of Man” is a title Jesus used for himself.

Tyndale House Publishers.

Holy Bible: New Living Translation.

Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013.

Print.””

Background

We see just before our passage this morning that Jesus is just coming off a bit of a teaching series.

We see him teaching both the disciples and the pharisees, prophesying about his death and healing people.

Then in our passage we see the book of Luke introduce us to a man named Zacchaeus.

He is described to us as a tax collector and not just any tax collector but the chief tax collector.

I learned through my accounting classes that the tax agency is both a feared and not very well liked entity here in Canada.

And this was no different than in ancient Israel.

During this time Israel was a conquered nation, they were under Roman rule.

The Romans had their own system of taxing the nations that they conquered so that the wealth would get transferred back to Rome.

That’s where Zacchaeus comes in.

He was a local person who was contracted by the Roman authorities to collect the taxes on their behalf.

The only people who lived in comfort and ease at this time where the Romans and the local people who collaborated with them, the tax collectors.

Now these tax collectors were obligated to collect the tax requested by the Roman rulers but in order to gain their wealth they added a bit more on top so that they could get rich.

As a tax collector people like Zacchaeus were despised by the people, why would anyone throw their own people under the bus and not only work for the Romans but extort more money from the people?

The tax collectors were both the wealthiest people and the most hated people in society.

You see what is different about the time in our passage is that here in Jericho there was a stigma that was attached to wealth and spending money on things that might be unnecessary.

Zacchaeus wasn’t worried about any of that.

He was willing to sacrifice everything to get the money, to get the wealth.

And so this brings us to our first point, which is ultimately a warning for us.

I want you to remember our main question this morning which is to consider whether we are making money or the pursuit of money our god?

1.

Money as a Master ()

Is money our master?

In the beginning of this passage through Luke sharing with us about Zacchaeus we see Luke is emphasizing to his readers that greed is a form of idolatry.

Everyone reading this gospel would have known about the tax collectors and that their main focus was on getting wealthy.

That their main goal in life was to gather as much money and wealth as they could.

What I really believe that Luke is trying to communicate to his readers and to us today is that the pursuit of money and the desire for it to either hoard it or to use it for our own selfish desires is a form is idolatry.

This is placing money and the pursuit of it above everything else in our lives, making it god and master.

And as I shared before I was in this mindset.

I might’ve not been cheating people out of taxes but the desire to get wealth to be able to spend it on what I wanted was my goal, it was the thing that was my focus at that time in my life.

And I want to encourage you that this is something that we need to fight against.