Revolution // From Clenched Fists to Open Hands

Hey man, hey guys, I gotta tell y'all a quick story.

I I did something this past week that I I honestly I'm kind of ashamed to admit it, but it's something I don't do very often.

Um I was at a coffee shop and I felt like the spirit leading me to invite the barista to to our Easter services.

Now you do have to forgive me.

I was at Starbucks, I wasn't at uh Peace Coffee, so y'all have to forgive me for that one.

Um but I was like, I you know, like you just feel like the spirit like leading you to do something.

I was like, man, I'm gonna I'm gonna invite this lady to come to Easter services.

And I didn't even pull out the pastor card.

This was the what I did.

I said, I said, hey, literally this is what I said.

I said, at my church, like they're telling us, I said, at my church, like they're telling us that we need to invite five people to our Easter services.

So I want to give you an invite and invite you to our Easter services.

Get this.

She took it and she was like, Where's this at?

I'm looking for a church.

I was like, oh my goodness, it's like God is preparing the hearts of people, and like as we invite, God moves in people's hearts.

Somebody came in this morning, and we have that Easter five board where you put in the pins for the people you invited.

Somebody said, I got 14 pins to put in that board.

I was like, let's go, game on, bro.

Um, so let's keep inviting our friends, and God's gonna do a great work on Easter Sunday.

We're gonna be in Luke chapter 19 this morning.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 19, and this is the last week in a message series entitled Revolution: The Power That Changed Everything.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

And we're gonna see how the gospel changes us in maybe what is an unlikely place, our finances.

Now, Luke 19, this guy makes a financial decision that makes zero sense at all.

He does something that you look at it and you're like, why would this guy give away this large amount of money?

Like the dude does something that it's almost like financially irresponsible.

I do not think Dave Ramsey would approve of what this guy did.

The equivalent, we're gonna see this in it.

The equivalent would be like this.

Let's say you get your paycheck, and we all know that our paychecks in California don't go as far as they go in other places, right?

Y'all got gas lately?

Come on, man.

We have to take out, we gotta take out a loan on our way to the gas station.

You know what I mean?

Somebody say amen in the room if you hear me, right?

Come on.

Let's say you get your paycheck and you say, I'm gonna give half of my paycheck away.

Now, a lot of us are like, I couldn't do that.

Like, that's my money.

I gotta eat, I got bills.

Some of y'all got kids, they're expensive.

I can't give half of my paycheck away.

Like, that would be like irresponsible.

Now we go to a text of scripture where the dude doesn't just give away half of his paycheck, he gives away half of all of his possessions.

Dude had 10 pairs of Nike sandals.

He gave five of them away.

Two chariots, one gone, two kids, one.

No, I'm just kidding about that.

But he gives half of all of his possessions away, and you think about it, it's like, man, why would you do that, bro?

Like, why would you give away half of your possessions?

Who gives like this?

Like, it's one thing.

If you give somebody 20 bucks to help them out, or you pay for somebody's meal, or you you buy them a gift or something, but to give away half, half of all of your possessions, and and and and we go to a text where Jesus interacted with him, Jesus never told him to do that.

Jesus was never like, hey, you need to give your money, he just did it.

Why'd he do that?

Well, that's that's what we're gonna talk about today.

And we're gonna see somebody that went from clenched fists to open hands.

This is actually the title of our sermon to go from clenched fists to open hands.

And some of you are wondering what is the name of this guy?

Does anybody have any guesses?

Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus is the name of the guy that went from closed fists to open hands.

And you're gonna see what would cause a guy to do something so irrational, like give away half of everything that he had.

Let's pick it up.

We're gonna see it in Luke chapter 19.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

If you're ready for it, would you say amen?

Amen.

Luke 19, verse 1.

Luke 19:1

I'm excited to teach this this morning.

I think the the truth in this text is literally powerful and life-changing.

This is what it says it says he, that's Jesus, he entered Jericho, and he was passing through.

There was a man named, here it is, Zacchaeus, who was a tax collector.

He was a tax collector, but you forgot one word in front of tax collector.

He was a chief tax collector.

Chief tax collector.

You're right though.

He's a tax.

Okay, so he's a tax collector.

This tells us something about this, bro.

He's not a good guy, he's a bad guy.

Tax collectors are bad guys.

This is what they would do.

Tax collectors, they would they work for the Roman Empire, so they would tax people whatever the Romans said that they should tax people, plus they would charge people a little extra and they would put in their pocket whatever they wanted.

It'd be like this.

We're we're about our we're in this tax season, our favorite time of year.

Which how many, how many of you would say, Nate, I already filed my taxes?

Amen.

Okay, wow.

Overachievers?

How many of you are normal like me and you're waiting until April 14th?

No, I'm just kidding.

Let's say, let's say the tax man, let's say the taxman, let's say, let's say he went to your house and he like knocked on your door and he said, Okay, you're giving me all of your yearly taxes right now.

I look at your taxes, this is how much you owe.

Plus, I want you to give me another$750.

Be like, what?

No, no, you need to give me another$750.

You'd be like, No, you can't do that.

This is the kind of stuff that tax collectors did, and the Romans gave them a group of soldiers to enforce that.

You tell the tax collector, no, he says, okay, no worries, I'm calling the police right now.

That's the kind of guy Zacchaeus was.

And he wasn't just a tax collector, he's a chief.

He wasn't just on the team, he's the team captain.

To say he's hated.

That's an understatement.

He got rich by stealing from his own people.

Yeah, like the IRS.

We're gonna leave that right there.

But Zacchaeus is trying to do something, verse number three.

He was trying, he was trying to see who Jesus was, but he was not able to because of the crowd, since he was uh short man, you know.

I kind of like Zacchaeus.

I gotta feel like this internal connection with him, you know.

I kind of so Zacchaeus running ahead, verse four.

He climbed up a sycamore tree to see Jesus since he was past, he was about to pass that way.

Here's how hated Zacchaeus was.

If you're in a crowd of people and somebody shorter than you wants to come and see, you let them stand in front of you because it doesn't affect your line of sight.

Trust me, I know.

These people, they said, No, Zacchaeus, you're not getting in front of me.

Like, we blocking you out like we're getting a rebound.

So Zacchaeus is like, Well, I gotta I gotta go climb the tree.

And here's what's important to understand here Zacchaeus wasn't just disliked by people, he was totally rejected by people.

When he walked up, conversation stopped.

When he walked by, kids grabbed the hand of their children and said, Hey, don't be like him.

Zacchaeus had money, but he didn't have anybody's respect.

Zacchaeus had comfort, but he had no community.

Zacchaeus had stability, but he had lost any relationships that he had.

So he did something kind of crazy.

He climbed a tree.

Like, when's the last time you climbed a tree and you didn't have a dog chasing after you?

Zacchaeus, for for all of his issues with stealing and all that, it shows that he was willing to do what it took to get an accurate view and understanding of who Jesus was for himself.

Even to the point of I'm willing to look like a moron and climb up a tree.

Because I want to get an accurate vision of who Jesus was.

Now think about this: Zacchaeus had money, Zacchaeus had stability, Zacchaeus had security, but he knew something was still missing.

He had power, he had control, but he knew he still needed something else.

And friend, you can be in this room right now and you can have money and you can have control and you can have the career and you can have it all.

But if you don't have Jesus, you are missing something.

You are missing something, and you owe it to yourself to maybe be willing to look a little foolish in the eyes of people so you can understand who Jesus is.

So you can say it's Jesus who he actually says he's.

Did Jesus actually resurrect from the dead?

And if he did, friend, then you have to pay attention to him.

If he did, then everything he says matters, and everything he did matters.

And for some of you in the room, you're gonna have to be willing to look a little foolish so you can learn who Jesus is, so you can get an understanding that he's more than just a man, he's more than somebody has a on their necklace, he's more than just a movie, he is the living Son of God that came to seek and to save your soul.

Because he loves you.

And Zacchaeus was willing to look a little foolish to get an accurate view of Jesus.

And when he climbed the tree, something happened that he didn't expect.

It says verse 5 When Jesus came to that place, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry up and come down because today it's necessary for me to stay at your house.

Think about it.

Zacchaeus probably sitting up there in a tree, hoping nobody notices him, trying to keep it low-key.

Maybe got his phone out, you know, he's trying.

Jesus walks by, stops.

The crowd's pressing in on Jesus.

He stops, he looks through the branches.

And he sees Zacchaeus.

And he calls Zacchaeus by his name.

Zacchaeus.

Now in the moment.

What do you think Zacchaeus is thinking?

I'm a tax collector.

Like, why is he calling my name?

And he's like, I'm about to get a sermon right here in front of everybody.

But Jesus didn't shame him, Jesus didn't rebuke him, Jesus didn't lecture him.

This is what he said.

He says, It's necessary for me to stay at your house.

See, culturally, when somebody goes to somebody's house, that's a form of acceptance and love.

And here's what Zacchaeus experienced here: a rational acceptance of Jesus.

For Jesus to want to go to spend time with the tax collector, that is scandalous.

Like this is really high drama.

Like the religious, righteous people would never go to those guys' house.

Well, like, why would Jesus do that?

Notice what Zacchaeus did in verse 6.

He quickly came down, he welcomed him joyfully, and all who saw it began to complain.

They complained.

This is like scandalous.

What Jesus is doing?

He's gone to stay with the sinful men.

Why would Jesus go to his house?

What did he do to deserve that?

Like I've been going to the synagogue every day of my life.

Zacchaeus doesn't even.

If Zacchaeus walked through the doors of the synagogue, well, you know, like the temple, like lightning would strike him.

He never goes there.

I have been a very righteous person.

Zacchaeus is a sinful man.

Here's what those people miss.

Is that all people, including Zacchaeus, and including them apart from Jesus, are sinful.

It says in Romans 3:10, as it is written, there is no one righteous.

Romans 3:10

Not even one, not even your grandma.

Not even that really sweet person, you know.

Nobody's righteous that we all fall short.

And when we try to show God all of our righteousness as a way to prove ourselves and prove our righteousness and our value, God says it's like a polluted garment.

Isaiah 64.

All of us have become like something unclean.

And all our, watch this, all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment.

What do you mean?

Like our righteous acts, like they're not good.

Our righteous acts are not good when we think they're allowing us to gain favor with God.

It's only the righteousness of Jesus on our behalf, which we talked about a few weeks ago, that gives us a righteous standing with God before God.

So now we don't have to strive for righteousness.

We have the righteousness of Jesus Christ when we have repented from our sin and put our faith and trust in Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

And when we do that, we are accepted by God.

All people.

You say, Pastor Nate, you'll understand what I did last week.

All people.

And something about this text that's powerful is that before Zacchaeus shows irrational generosity, he experienced a rational acceptance from Jesus.

Did it make sense for Jesus to accept him?

And acceptance is a powerful thing.

There is a teacher that taught back in the 60s.

Some of y'all were born in the 60s.

Some of y'all lived in the 60s, but you don't remember it.

We won't talk about that though.

There's a teacher, he is he taught in the 60s, and uh he had this kid in his class, his name was Jason, and Jason was how do we say this?

Jason was energetic.

Now, if you've ever taught in any environment for any length of time, you've had a you've had an energetic kid.

He couldn't get Jason to be quiet, he couldn't get Jason to sit still, he couldn't get Jason to do anything.

He put, he gave, he, he, he corrected him time after time and time again.

He did everything he couldn't get Jason to listen.

So one day he went to Jason, and this teacher writes about this.

He went to Jason and he said, Hey Jason, how come no matter what I do, you won't listen?

If you're a teacher, you felt that.

How come you won't listen?

And Jason looked at him and he thought for a second and he said, Because nobody at my home listens to me.

The teacher writes that those words just stuck with him.

And the teacher decided to change his approach a little bit.

He started giving Jason responsibility.

So now, Jason, you were the guy that was officially gonna clean the whiteboard and you were gonna pass out the papers to all the kids.

And as the kids walked in the classroom, you were gonna welcome them and say hi to them.

And Jason was still talking a lot, but now he had at least a job responsibility to go with it.

And weeks after this happened, Jason's mom came to the teacher with tears in her eyes.

And she said, I'll understand.

Now he wakes up every morning excited to be in your class.

Some of y'all know that's a miracle.

She said, Why is he so excited to come to your class?

I don't understand.

I don't understand.

Well, he asked her, he said, why do you think he's so excited to come to my class?

And she said, for the first time in his life, it's like he finally has a place that he belongs.

And he found a place that he belonged.

And because he felt accepted, not because he was corrected, not because he was disciplined, not because he was chastised, it changed this little boy from the heart level.

And when somebody realizes that they're not just tolerated, but they're truly welcomed, something changes inside of them.

Zacchaeus experienced acceptance on this day.

Maybe for the first time in years, somebody didn't treat him like a traitor, somebody didn't treat him like a thief, somebody didn't treat him like a disgrace.

Jesus treated Zacchaeus like he belonged.

And some of you are in the room and you know exactly what rejection feels like.

You were the last one picked, you've been talked about behind your back, you've been forgotten about.

The person that should have been there for you the most was the person that rejected you.

And if that's you, friend, the gospel is good news for you.

Because the gospel says that you have been fully accepted by God when you put your faith in Jesus Christ, and your acceptance isn't based on your behavior.

Like God's not gonna kick you out, God's not gonna make you try out, and God isn't gonna wear you out.

You are fully accepted by God.

Yes, they said that, yes, they did that, but you are accepted.

And some of you in the room, you are still trying to earn God's acceptance.

But if you already trusted Christ, you already have it.

You are irrationally accepted by God, and this changes everything.

And Zacchaeus experienced this irrational acceptance.

Jesus says, I'm going to your house today.

And look what Zacchaeus did in response to this verse number eight.

Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, Look, look, I'll give half of my possessions to the poor, Lord.

And if I have extorted anything from anyone, I'll pay back four times as much.

Y'all notice Jesus didn't tell him to do that.

Jesus was like, hey, hey, hey, Zacchaeus, uh by the way, uh, I'm accepting you, but make sure you go, you're gonna take care of that stuff.

He didn't do that.

Zacchaeus was a Jew.

Zacchaeus understood the Old Testament law.

The old testament law said if you steal from somebody, what you need to do is you need to give it all back plus 20%.

Last line He said, I'll pay back four times as much.

I'm gonna

Give that for hundred percent.

That's irrational.

And when Zacchaeus understood that he was accepted irrationally, it caused him to want to financially give irrationally.

In verse number nine, the response of Jesus is today, salvation is come to your house.

Jesus told him, because he too is a son of Abraham.

Now Romans 4 and Galatians 3 tells us if our faith is in Christ, we are a spiritual son of Abraham.

So Zacchaeus didn't earn his salvation because he gave away his money.

It was his faith, and his giving away his money was a fruit of his salvation.

So our good works can't earn salvation, but they are a fruit of our salvation.

In Ephesians 2, verse 8, for you are saved by grace through faith.

Ephesians 2:8

And that's not from yourselves, it is God's gift, not from works, so that no one can boast.

You know, sometimes we forget that the people in here, they're real people.

Like they're actually real, like they had like clothes and stuff.

I don't know if they had toothbrushes, but I'm assuming they did some of them that brushed their teeth.

They took showers every now and again, I think.

These are real people.

Like Zacchaeus was a real dude that gave away half of his possessions.

That's crazy.

But but notice, notice what got him to this point.

He first was accepted by Jesus.

The acceptance of Jesus transformed him.

And it transformed him into being a generous person.

Some of us, we want to be generous and we try to like guilt ourselves into being generous.

Like, I need to be generous.

I need to stop being so stingy.

I want to give, but man, the gas prices are so much money.

I want to give, but like I got so many bills.

And we start with almost like guilt and giving.

When for Zacchaeus, here's where it started.

It started with the acceptance of Jesus in his life.

And if some of us would just understand how accepted we are by God in the gospel, it literally will change everything else about us.

Because when the gospel finally gets into your heart, it always comes out in your life.

Like when you understand the implications of the gospel, it reorients your value system.

It changes us.

And this is the kind of change like I can't preach you into.

I can't be like, y'all need to change and be better.

It's the kind of change that your group leader or your ministry leader can't talk you into.

It's the kind of change like you can't guilt yourself into.

If you ever you ever messed up and you're like, I'm just gonna try really hard, and I'm gonna like talk mean to myself and then I'm gonna do better next time.

You jerk, but it doesn't work.

You can't guilt yourself into it.

Stop trying.

It's a change that the gospel does in us.

And when you see the beauty of Jesus, what happens is you allow him to change your life.

You embrace what he's done for you, you embrace that you have a new identity that you're fully loved, and it changes every single part of us, including how we handle our finances.

Here's why because how we handle our money reveals our hearts.

Now, some of us, what we do is we look at our spiritual life over here, and we look at our finances and we separate it.

In fact, some of us we like really separate it.

We're like, this is my finances, like this is my money, this is my spiritual life.

But here's the thing what Jesus did all the time, Jesus all the time talked about our finances, and Jesus says that our finances are intertwined with our spiritual life.

Jesus says that our finances reveal what our true values are, they reveal what we're truly trusting, they reveal where our heart is.

We give because God's given everything to us.

We give because we've experienced God's grace in our life.

And if you're in the room, I want to ask you a question, not out of guilt, not out of obligation.

You've been around here, you know that's not how we roll here.

I would ask you this question: why don't you give?

What in your heart prevents you from saying, I want to be generous with all that God's given me?

Because when the acceptance of Jesus sinks into your heart, it loosens your grip on money.

I want to give you some ideas of how you can do this, of how you can loosen your grip on money, just like Zacchaeus.

And these are just ideas, and let the spirit lead you, however, the Holy Spirit leads you.

But one idea you can do is you can increase your percentage of what you give by 1%.

Maybe some of you, you give 1% or 3% or 4% of your income.

Why don't you increase it by 1%?

Maybe some in your room, you're like, man, this is something that the Lord's been dealing with me about.

I know I should give.

I just, guys, why don't you start giving 1%?

Learn to give, learn to trust God.

Here's another idea.

You can automate your giving at sassoonchurch.com.

Angela and I automate our giving, not because we're spiritual, but because we can forget.

So we don't have to think about it.

And for us, we have predecided, it's like a conviction in our lives that no matter what happens, we are going to give 10% of our income.

So, what have we done?

We have automated our giving, like many of you have in the room, and we give every single month to God's work.

Here's another idea: look for opportunities to give beyond the local church.

Some of you already give a high percentage of your income to God's work to local church.

And maybe in your life, it's time to look at other opportunities to bless people.

We had a growth group yesterday.

This is what they did.

They went out yesterday and they served 50 homeless people by providing meals for 50 homeless people in our community, which is amazing, right?

We love and serve the community where we live.

This is what those people did.

They said, Man, like, how can we give?

How can we serve others?

And they did that.

Like, what are opportunities for us to give beyond the local church?

And friend, here's the reality that I fully believe is that when we embrace that we have been irrationally accepted by Jesus, it will produce irrational generosity in our lives.

So here's a question I want us to end with and wrestle with and think about.

And I want the spirit to lead you in this.

And it's what we're gonna end with today.

It's this How can you financially respond to the irrational acceptance of Jesus?

If you're in this room and you've trusted Christ as to be your Lord and Savior, then you have been accepted.

So here's the question.

I'll ask this out of guilt.

I ask this for something for you to wrestle with and you to ask the Lord about.

How can I respond?

And as the Spirit leads you, would you just say yes?

Let's all bow our heads and close our eyes.

Let's just have a moment of prayer.