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I am continually overwhelmed by all that is going on here at Grace. Sometimes
my head spins thinking about all of the amazing things people are doing. Yet, in the
midst of all of the action, I have to keep reminding myself that at the highest of levels, it
all boils down to two things: we make disciples of Jesus and we launch them into the
mission of God. Everything we do has to have something to do with making disciples of
Jesus and then launching them into the Mission of God. And we want to be very clear
about what we mean when we say this. To say we ‘make disciples of Jesus’ means we
do all that we can to lead people to a place where they will, first, surrender their lives to
Jesus and second, they will follow him. And when we say we ‘launch people into the
mission of God’ we mean that we are always searching for ways to involve our people in
bringing healing to the 6 broken places in our world. If you’ve been around Grace for
even a short I’m sure you’ve heard us talk about bringing healing to the world’s six
broken places. If you’ve been here any of the past four weekends during our series,
‘Your Story: Act One’ you’ve heard our call for you to be certain you’ve surrendered
your life to Jesus. And you’ve heard how many people did just this the last four weeks.
Well, today we begin ‘Your Story: Act Two’ a four week series focusing on what it looks
like for you to seriously follow Jesus; in other words, what it means to call yourself a
disciple of Jesus. And this is where the rubber meets the road… and the reason, as
Dave said in his introductory video, why we put so much time in creating the way of
discipleship for Grace. You see, Surrendering is just the beginning; now comes
‘following.’ Living into your best possible life through a character that is being
transformed to resemble Jesus and a calling that He has designed uniquely for you to
help change the world in His name. To be a follower is to be a disciple.
I looked the word ‘disciple’ up in a host of dictionaries and they almost all say that
this word has two meanings. It has a religious meaning; it is the word used to refer to
one of the original 12 disciples of Jesus and it is true that most people only think of
those 12 men when they hear the word ‘disciple.’ The word also has a more secular
meaning; it is someone who follows another person’s way of doing things, as in, “The
minute you walk into her house you can tell she is a disciple of Martha Stewart.”
Surprisingly, most dictionaries also say that this word, no matter how you use it, is
considered archaic and obsolete. Just for the record, we don’t believe for a second that
being a ‘disciple’ of Jesus is either archaic or obsolete. I do want you to know though
that the word ‘disciple’ had a very distinct, specific meaning in the ancient world,
different from any of our dictionary definitions. A first century disciple was someone who
had asked a teacher if they could follow him, if they could live alongside of him and
learn about life from him. Now, I know that this is different than we normally imagine
since Jesus asked his disciples to follow him. But, what Jesus did was completely
unknown in the ancient world. What normally happened was that a young man would
ask a teacher if he could follow him in the hope that the teacher would say, ‘Yes.’ And if
he did then over time, as the disciple lived his life alongside of his chosen teacher, he
would learn about the things of God from him, he’d pick up his wisdom and most
importantly over time his character would come to mirror the character of his teacher.
This was so much the expectation that it was common for the teacher to get the blame if
one of his disciples did something questionable. So, it is important to keep in mind that
following a teacher, Becoming a disciple was purposefully meant to bring about a
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permanent change your character… it wasn’t necessarily about learning a skill or
gaining great knowledge; it was about becoming a different person.
I learned a bit about this kind of change when I was a young man. My first couple
of years in college were not defined by scholarship. I was a runner and class work was
secondary to me. But during my junior year I had the opportunity to go to school in
England and study Roman British archeology under a professor who perfectly fit the
stereotype of a British scholar: beard and pipe; tweed jacket and corduroy trousers.
Well, after the course ended, he, for some reason still unknown to me, offered me the
opportunity to stay in England and work for him as his archeological site assistant. But
even more surprising his offer included living near his family in a small, rural English
village. I said, ‘Yes.’ And so, for most of the next year, my job was to follow him around,
which meant going to his lectures, working long hours at Roman archeological sites,
doing research in university libraries, going to meetings with other archeological
scholars, talking to farmers in country pubs about what they might be turning up in their
fields and overseeing volunteers and students… and by the end of that year I had
changed. I’d picked up the value of serious study and scholarly pursuit; I’d taken in the
importance of teaching from a deep well of knowledge. And this was all because one
man had offered me the opportunity to follow him around. And when I came home to
continue my studies, I was still a dedicated athlete but every single professor I’d had
before I’d gone to England asked, “What happened to you? I’ve never seen anyone
whose work changed so radically for the better.” I believe that year gave me the
grounding to be able to do what I am so privileged to do here at Grace. And it also gave
me a window into why it is that Jesus calls each one of us to be his disciples. Because
in the process of following Jesus what will change is the core of who you are; what you
value as important will change; how you respond to the events of life will change… in
other words, your character will change. In fact, we believe with all of our hearts that
when you become a true disciple of Jesus your character will be shaped into one of
virtue and integrity. Jesus’ call to you is that you leave everything behind and follow
Him. In fact, He promises that in following Him you will find that over time your old
lifestyle will disappear and everything will become new.
Truth be told, the Bible contains many stories of people having a tremendous
change in their character after becoming disciples of Jesus. There is one story, though,
that I find particularly compelling, the story we find in the Gospel of Luke about a man
named Zacchaeus. You’ll find the story in Luke 19 in the house Bible under the seats at
the 146th Street campus and if you need a Bible at the Fishers campus just raise your
hand and someone will bring a Bible to you. This story, by the way, is only found in the
Gospel of Luke, which makes sense to me since Luke’s overall purpose in writing his
Gospel was to show that Jesus’ message of the good news of the kingdom of God is for
everyone, no matter who they are: Jew or Gentile, man or woman, saint or sinner. And
in this case Luke introduces us to a man who was the essence of what might be called
the chief of Jewish sinners. Let’s read the story. Verse 1. Jesus entered Jericho and
was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax
collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short
he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to
see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up
and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.”
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So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began
to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood up and said
to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I
have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus
said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of
Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Verse one says,
“Jesus entered Jericho.” Jericho was an eastern border town and most goods that
entered or left Judea’s eastern border passed through Jericho. Now, the Romans made
a lot of money by taxing goods as they were shipped and sold across borders and
Jericho was a major location for Roman tax collecting. Verse 2 tells us that Zacchaeus
was a chief tax collector. This is important. A chief tax collector was a person who’d
made a grand deal with Rome that he would oversee the collection of X amount of
money from boarder taxes over the next so many years. He didn’t collect the money
himself; he hired others to sit at taxing booths along the roads and it was their job to
stop farmers, businessmen, traders and such and collect taxes from them. The Chief
tax collector was only obligated to give Rome what he’d contracted he would pay them
and he got to keep anything left over. And Zacchaeus must have been over-collecting
by a lot because Luke says he was ‘wealthy.’ I don’t know if I can express strongly
enough how hated Zacchaeus would have been in Jericho. He was a Jew who’d made
a deal with Rome to get Jews to extract taxes primarily from other Jews solely for the
purpose of supporting the Roman occupation of the Jewish homeland. Saying he was a
traitor is kind. He would have been shunned by everyone but the most corrupt and
greedy of his fellow tax collectors. But verse 3 says, ‘He wanted to see Jesus.’ Literally
the Greek says, “He sought to see him,” implying he was working hard to find a way to
see him. Why, we can’t be sure, but clearly Jesus’ reputation had made this selfabsorbed, greedy, untrustworthy man reconsider something. Verse 3 also tells us that
because of his size, meaning under 5 feet tall, he couldn’t see over the crowd. Now, for
most people needing a better view that day the thing to do would have been to go up
onto one of the roofs of the houses along Jesus’ route. All houses had flat roofs and
roofs were a part of people’s living space. My bet, though, is that Zacchaeus knew there
wasn’t a person in Jericho that would have let him into their house and onto their roof.
I’m sure this is why he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree. The reason your Bible
may say sycamore-fig tree is that Judean sycamore trees are nothing like our giant,
stately sycamores. They are more like fig trees: scrubby and bushy; there was nothing
dignified about the tree or Zacchaeus climbing one. In fact, no dignified Jewish man
ever climbed a tree, but this man really wanted to see Jesus. But the story also tells us
that Jesus was looking for Zacchaeus! I love the literal Greek here. ‘Zacchaeus, make
haste; come down! I must stay in your house!” What Jesus meant was, “I must eat with
you, today.” And we have to keep in mind that Jewish people didn’t eat with just
anybody. Eating with someone was a sign of a deep bond. And we know that this, ‘I
must stay at your house,’ from Jesus cut Zacchaeus to the core in a good way because
Luke tells us that ‘he came down at once and welcomed him gladly!’ Something earth
shattering was happening to Zacchaeus. But the notice verse 7 says, ‘All the people
saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”’ This ‘all’ by the
way, most likely included Jesus’ disciples. Jesus was way out on a limb here and most
people thought this was a terrible development. But look at the result: a public
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declaration of giving ½ of his money to the poor! ‘If I’ve cheated anyone’ 4x’s back! This
was way more than Jewish law dictated in situations like this! And there is an interesting
aside here as well: from what we can tell the only people he would have directly
cheated were other tax collectors. Here was a man who had really been lost and Jesus
found him, called him and saved him. And the result of Zacchaeus following Jesus,
becoming a disciple of Jesus, was that his character completely changed! A once
greedy, untrustworthy, cheating traitor of a man became repentant, generous and
honest. And my bet is that he probably found a new profession or at least a new way to
live out his profession that enabled him to regain respect in the Jewish community.
One thing is certain, Zacchaeus would have known what God expected from
Jewish men when it came to generosity and cheating others and turning your backs on
your own people. Jesus called him a Son of Abraham, someone who would have been
taught from an early age what the scriptures had said about greed and lying and being a
traitor. And yet it is obvious that Zacchaeus’s lust for wealth had cost him his reputation
with everyone. But I can’t imagine that Zacchaeus hadn’t wondered about things when
he was alone; wondered about the life he was living; wondered if it was all worth it;
wondered if there wasn’t something better. I’m sure that he knew full well how flawed
his character was. Now, I’ll admit this is just conjecture on my part since there is no way
to know for certain what Zacchaeus was thinking, but what I do know is this: most
people that I talk to are aware of themselves…. They know when what they are doing
and how they are living is keeping them from being people of integrity and virtue. But
the pull of things like money, power, greed, sexuality, gossip and such is so strong that
they feel helpless to change. I am confident that there are many here today who are
living in the guilt and frustration of feeling defeated by things you know are wrong…
things you know would damage your character if they were made public. Well, I can say
with great confidence, if your life is plagued by sin, even secret sin, your character is
being compromised in some manner and others feel it even if they don’t know the
specifics of your secret life. The reason Luke gave us this story, this real story of
change in Zacchaeus’ life, was to give you the confidence that if his life could be so
radically changed by becoming a serious disciple of Jesus then anyone’s character can
change by surrendering to Jesus and following him. And we really believe this. We
stand strongly in the belief that anyone’s character can be changed through being a
serious disciple of Jesus. This was much of the motivation behind our taking the time to
create the way of discipleship for the community of Grace. We know that when you
spend time seriously following Jesus, especially with another trusted follower of Jesus,
when you spend time together earnestly considering spiritual practices such as selfdenial, moral integrity, material generosity and loving others well your character will
change. You will become a different person. I know this is true. I’ve seen it happening
both in my own life and in the lives of the men that I’ve been blessed to lead as we’ve
been walking the way of Discipleship together. Truth is some of the men that I’ve asked
to follow me as I’ve followed Jesus didn’t have deep character issues in their lives, but
even so they became more aware of their need to allow God’s spirit to change them and
make them even more like Jesus. But I have spent two years with a Zacchaeus of
sorts… not an evil man but just a man who wasn’t fully aware of how strongly his words
and actions were impacting those around him… at home… at work… in social settings.
And what I’ve witnessed over the last two years and can I add that his life
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circumstances can only be describe as continually and unendingly difficult and primarily
not due to anything he was doing wrong, I have witnessed a change, a change that in
my mind is almost as profound as the change in Zacchaeus’ life. And while I’ve been
there to speak into his life and to push the issues at some level the truth is you can’t
spend time with Jesus seeking to follow in his footsteps in areas of life like moral purity
and loving others without either rejecting it all and pushing it all aside or surrendering
and becoming more like Christ.
The message today is a simple one: if you have not surrendered your life to
Jesus now is the time to do so; if you have, now is the time to get serious about
following Jesus. In four weeks Dave is going to tell you a good deal more about a way
you can do this. But in the meantime, today would be good time to take a serious look
into your own heart and be honest with yourself and admit it if you find places in your life
where your character is more like Zacchaeus and less like Jesus. Jesus is looking for
you. He wants to spend time with you. He wants to change you. He wants to make you
a woman or man of virtue and integrity. And He is giving you the opportunity to leave
behind the old things and become a disciple whose character mirrors the character of
Jesus. He wants to make you into a person who people after spending time with you
say ‘The minute you walk into their life you can tell they are a disciple of Jesus.”