The Short One
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Before we got old, my wife and I used to love to go camping. And my favorite part about camping was the campfires.
A story is told about William
As it turned out, camping was always more fun for me than it was for Annette. I would set up our big tent and our chairs and our kitchen, and by the time it was all done, I’d be a sweaty mess, and I figured my work was pretty much done until it was time to break camp and pack everything back into the truck to drive home.
Now, when I was a kid, I used to go to a summer camp, where they taught us important life lessons, things like how to row a canoe correctly and how to start a fire with one match.
I won’t get into the canoe thing today except to say that as an adult I learned that it’s dangerous to try to teach your wife the correct way to row a canoe while you are out in one in the middle of a large lake.
After we’d done this a couple of times a year for several years, Annette came to a point where she wanted to stay in cabins instead of tents, and soon camping turned into motel stays at Disney or some other place.
Finally I asked her why she never wanted to go camping anymore, and she told me it was too much work.
That’s the real lesson they should have taught me at camp: how to keep your mouth shut when you’re going to be stuck in a small boat together for several hours. But I digress.
I’ve always thought that the fire-building skills I learned at camp were some of the most valuable lessons I learned in my childhood.
Now I remembered all the hard work that went into setting up the campsite and then breaking it down, and I said something like, “Honey, I don’t mind all the work!”
Well, it turns out that there’s more work in between the beginning and the end. There’s coo
I suppose that most men here and probably many of the women, too, have their own preferred methods of building a fire.
But since we’re not stuck in a small boat together, and since I don’t have to go home with most of you today, let me tell you the RIGHT way to do it.
You start with a few small, dry twigs and build them in a teepee shape around some dry shavings. Light the shavings and as the twigs begin to catch fire, add more twigs and then some larger sticks and then small branches and then larger branches until you have a fire that’s big enough to sustain itself long enough to burn logs.
That’s an oversimplification, but you get the point.
Now, being the person I am, I tried during a trip to the mountains a couple of years ago to teach my son-in-law the RIGHT way to start a fire.
But he had his own method. It involved piling a great heap of huge logs into the fire ring, sticking a bunch of leaves in all the empty spaces and then cursing a lot when his efforts failed to produce anything other than a ton of smoke.
Now, my son-in-law eventually got his fire started with a half-can of lighter fluid, but I can tell you categorically that his method would never have been acceptable at the boys’ camp when I was a kid.
There’s an application to the church in this story.
You see, it’s easy to tell when something is on fire. “It ignites other material. Any fire that does not spread will eventually go out. A church without evangelism is a contradiction in terms, just as a fire that does not burn is a contradiction.” [Shelley, Bruce Leon. Christian Theology in Plain Language. (United States: Word Books, 1985) 162.]
[Shelley, Bruce Leon. Christian Theology in Plain Language. (United States: Word Books, 1985) 162.]
[Shelley, Bruce Leon. Christian Theology in Plain Language. (United States: Word Books, 1985) 162.]
And just as the best fires start small and add a little more fuel at a time, evangelism is more often successful done a little at a time.
The Bible surely gives us examples of the fires of evangelism stoked by an outpouring of lighter fluid: think of Peter’s Holy Spirit-fueled sermon after Pentecost, for example.
But some of the most significant Scriptural examples of evangelism are those where we see one person talking to another.
As His ministry led Jesus onward to the cross, where He would sacrifice Himself for the sins of mankind, He was often surrounded by throngs of people, and He used those opportunities to teach them about the Kingdom of God.
In fact, one of our favorite verses tells us that “God so loved the WORLD that He sent His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
Because of His great love for those who were created in His image, God sent Jesus to take the punishment that we deserve for our sins so that we who follow Jesus in faith can be reconciled to the Father.
This can certainly happen in huge revivals and other group settings, but God counts by ones. Each decision to follow Jesus Christ is an individual one.
And our Savior was ever alert for the chance to minister to individuals, to call them to repent for their sins and follow Him.
Today, as we continue our series on personal evangelism, we’re going to look at one little man whom Jesus singled out from a crowd, and I think we’ll learn something not just about personal evangelism but also about our Savior’s personal love for each of us.
Turn with me, please to Luke, chapter 19, where we’ll read the familiar story of Zaccheus.
After all,
As you are finding this passage, I want to give you the context of this meeting between Jesus and the little man whose life would change in this encounter.
The meeting with Zaccheus concludes a section of the Gospel of Luke that details Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem for His crucifixion.
This section begins near the end of chapter 9, and it concentrates on two themes: who will gain salvation and what will be expected of those who have been saved.
The story of Zaccheus provides a sort of exclamation point to an encounter that began in Chapter 15, and it’s important to understand what happened in between to see the significance of this individual’s encounter with Jesus, so bear with me for a few minutes while I bring you up to speed.
Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him.
Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”
What we see here are the main characters from the Gospel of Luke. There was Jesus, there were the tax collectors and sinners — the outcasts among the Jews — and there were the Pharisees and scribes — the religious leaders of the time.
Now, throughout the Book of Luke, the Pharisees and the scribes represent self-righteousness. These were people who believed that their heritage as sons of Abraham, along with their own perceived goodness, would earn them a place in the long-promised Kingdom of God.
The tax collectors and sinners, on the other hand, may have been able to claim their heritage as descendants of Abraham, but they were outcasts among the religious Jews because of their lifestyles.
In the case of the tax collectors, it was because they were known as thieves who took advantage of the positions they had been given by Rome to fleece the Jews. In the case of those to whom Luke refers as sinners, it was because they did not keep the Law of Moses.
Religious leaders simply did not associate with these people. So throughout the Gospel of Luke, there is significant tension created by the fact that Jesus spent so much time with them.
So we see here in chapter 15 that the scribes and Pharisees are grumbling about Jesus associating with such people.
And Jesus answers their complaints with three parables. He tells the parable about the shepherd who leaves 99 sheep to find one that is lost. He tells a parable about a woman who loses one of her 10 silver coins and drops everything to find it. And he tells the parable of the prodigal son. Each of those three parables ends with rejoicing over the one that was found.
One sinner who repents, Jesus says, brings more joy in heaven than 99 who need no repentance.
The parable of the prodigal son is especially important in this cycle, because there are actually two sons in the story.
There is the one who took his inheritance and went away and spent it on all kinds of sin and then came home in repentance. And there is the one who stayed home and refused to take part in the celebration when his brother returned.
In the parable of the prodigal son, the older son who had stayed home represented the Pharisees, and when he refused to take part in the celebration his father had arranged for the repentant brother he
showed that he did not value the same thing that his father valued. He did not value repentance, because he felt he had nothing to repent.
Now, jumping ahead to chapter 18, we see Jesus address this matter again.
And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt:
The parable He tells here is about the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the temple.
The Pharisee prays, “God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector,” and then he goes on to tell God just how good he is.
The tax collector, on the other hand, “was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’”
Jesus tells the crowd that the tax collector went home justified before God, rather than the Pharisee.
Right on the heels of that parable, Jesus tells the crowds to let the children who were present come to Him and warns that only those who come to the Kingdom of God like children will be able to enter.
And then, He has an encounter with the rich young ruler, who valued his money more than he valued eternal life.
Finally, chapter 18 closes with a blind man, Bartimaeus, receiving his sight as Jesus heals him. Bartimaeus responds by following Jesus and glorifying God.
Now, there’s a reason that all of this takes place in Luke’s account just before the meeting with Zaccheus. What you will see in the story of Zaccheus is how Jesus brings together all these teachings in one beautiful encounter.
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And there was a man called by the name of Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector and he was rich.
Now the first thing to note here is that the name Zaccheus means “pure,” which was ironic, considering that tax collectors of the time were anything but pure.
Rome hired these men to collect taxes from their countrymen, and the Romans allowed the tax collectors to keep whatever money they could get above and beyond what was required.
Apparently Zaccheus had done very well for himself in this scheme, and you can imagine that he was hated by all those he had taken advantage of.
But then Jesus came to town on His way to Jerusalem, and for whatever reason we see that Zaccheus was eager to learn more about Him.
I suspect the crowd was just as eager to keep this little man from accomplishing his goal, so you can imagine Zaccheus having to jockey for position to get a look at Jesus. Finally he climbs a tree to get a better look.
You should understand that climbing trees was something children did, not adults, and in that culture it would have been considered demeaning for an adult to do such a thing.
So what we have here is a man who is seeking Jesus — seeking the Kingdom of God — like a child.
When Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”
And he hurried and came down and received Him gladly.
Remember that there was a crowd here, one big enough to keep Zaccheus from being able to get near Jesus.
But Jesus stops and picks him out from his perch in the branches of the tree and calls Zaccheus by name.
Salvation is a personal thing. Jesus knows each of us by name, and there will come a point for each of us when He calls to us personally to make a decision.
Will you come down and invite Him in or will you stay in your tree and watch Him pass by?
I love the fact that Jesus loved the world so much that He died for our sins. But I am amazed by the fact that He loved ME enough to die for MY sins.
This is the thing the Pharisees just didn’t get: It was THEIR sins that had separated them from God. THEY were the lost sheep and the lost coins. We all like sheep have gone astray, and we all are desperate for the Good Shepherd to come and find us.
Each of us has fallen short of the glory of God in our sin. Each of us deserves the wages of our sin, and Scripture tells us the wages of sin is death.
But Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross — he took on our sins and the punishment for them — so that we would not have to receive that punishment.
And then He rose again on the third day and ascended into heaven 40 days later with the promise that He will return to take home those who have placed their faith in Him.
Now the cross was still in the future when Jesus encountered Zaccheus, but our little tax collector recognized Jesus as the one who would bring the Kingdom of God, and he came down out of the tree rejoicing like the blind man, Bartimaeus, who had received his sight.
But not everyone was happy about this turn of events.
When they saw it, they all began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”
What SHOULD have been their response?
They SHOULD have joined the celebration for the man who was coming to Jesus in repentance. Instead they were like the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son.
They did not value repentance and reconciliation with God. In fact, they considered those things to be unnecessary for themselves.
They might as well have stood up and said, “God, I thank you that I am not like this tax collector.”
But Zaccheus realized what a great thing had been don for him. He was like the prodigal son, coming to the father with his heart broken over his sin and realizing that he has been given an honored place in the household.
And HIS response was exactly what we should expect when someone comes to Christ.
Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.”
Look at the difference between the response of this rich tax collector and that of the rich young ruler.
The rich young ruler valued his money more than he valued an eternal relationship with God. But Zaccheus saw what was truly valuable, and he volunteered to give back everything.
He wasn’t saved because of his promise; rather, his promise was a result of his salvation. And his salvation was not something he deserved — I think he knew that, and that’s why he was rejoicing.
Zaccheus was saved by grace through faith. It was not a result of his works, but his good works of giving away his riches had been prepared by God for him to do as an outpouring of the grace that he had been shown.
And by his faith in the grace and power of Jesus to save him, Zaccheus had demonstrated that he was a true son of Abraham.
The Pharisees thought that their genealogy made them sons of Abraham, but throughout this section of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus makes it clear that the true sons of Abraham are those who share the faith of Abraham.
The Pharisees trusted their own righteousness to earn them a place in God’s kingdom. But Jesus had warned them in his parable about the prayers in the temple that their righteousness was not good enough.
In fact, it wasn’t enough even for Abraham.
Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.
It was Abraham’s faith that had saved him. And it was Zaccheus’ faith that saved him.
And all of this happened because Jesus stopped what He was doing to engage with one man in a tree.
He could have said, “I’m too busy for this” or “I’ll let the disciples come back and share the gospel later on” or even “I’ll stop here and teach the crowds, and Zaccheus will hear the message along with everybody else.”
Instead, he said:
“For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Here was one lost sheep stuck in a tree, and the Good Shepherd left behind the 99 who didn’t think they were lost to save the one who knew that he was.
Here is personal evangelism doing what it is supposed to do: recognizing a person whose heart is tender to the gospel, connecting with that person in a personal manner and showing them the way into the Kingdom of God.
Zaccheus was one little twig placed on the fire of the Kingdom of God. What’s interesting is that it seems he burned brightly for the Kingdom.
The Bible doesn’t tell us anything else about his life, but early church tradition, recorded as early as the fourth century, holds that he was the first bishop of Caesarea.
I would imagine that in that capacity he took many opportunities to do the kind of personal evangelism that Jesus had modeled for him.
Brothers and sisters, a church that does not take seriously the call to evangelism cannot rightfully call itself a church any more than a fire that goes out can be called a fire.
And the church is you if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your savior.
If you are a Christian, you have a calling and a responsibility to tell others about Jesus. You have a calling and a responsibility to look for lost sheep.
If you have never accepted the gift of salvation through Jesus’ death and resurrection — if you, like the Pharisees, are putting your faith in your own righteousness — then you ARE the lost sheep, and Jesus, the Good Shepherd is calling you personally today.
Come down from that tree. Hurry. Don’t let Jesus pass by.