(9.26.26) Sermon | A Seat at the Table | Patrick Hardy

So just a just a couple weeks back, I wasn't here.

I had the opportunity to go.

I went up to Milwaukee and I went to go play some golf with my friends.

We escaped the heat and we came back and we actually brought this beautiful weather for you guys.

So you're welcome on that front.

But we went up and we played some golf.

And you know, as I was hanging out with my friends, I I was thinking about the kinds of friend groups that there are.

And I think friend groups that are from like schooling age, who went to college together, they are some of the most intertwined groups of friends because they've got some, they got a lot of memories.

They spend a lot of time together.

There's some inside jokes that they have.

And it just comes from the years and years and time that they've gotten to spend with one another.

And you know, when we get back together, me and all my buddies, we spend a majority of our time basically telling the same stories over and over about, hey, you remember when this happened, or do you remember when that happened?

And we just go over and over again with those stories.

And it's almost as if, although we hadn't been together for almost a year, it was like we got back together and it was like no time had passed for us as a group.

Uh it was a place where we all felt comfortable and felt like we belonged because of all the time that we had spent together.

Now, if I had taken you and I had placed you in the van that we were driving in, uh, we would have done our best to make you feel welcomed as we were going around.

Uh, we probably would have tried to engage with you in some conversation.

Um, we probably would try to be hospitable and nice and welcoming, but there would be come there would come some point along that journey when you would go, you know, I don't really feel like I belong here as we tell a story that you weren't a part of, or you hear an inside joke that just doesn't make sense to you.

You see, there's a difference between being present and belonging.

I mean, you may have had this experience when you've gone to a new church for the very first time.

You walked in, and although everyone was really nice and welcoming, as you walked around, you felt as though that you were not where you were supposed to be.

Maybe it was the stairs as you were walking around, or no one was really talking to you, or when you came into the sanctuary, you went to find a seat, and you were kind of like, Am I sitting in someone's seat?

Like, is someone gonna come fight me?

You can feel the stares of the eyes as you're walking around.

You're present, they're nice to you, but are you really welcome?

You may feel welcome, but you may not even feel like you belong.

There's different levels of that familiarity that we experience.

My hope is that no one in here felt that when you walked in today.

But I'm also not naive enough to think that that never happens when someone walks into a new space.

Because belonging is more than just being present.

Have you ever been somewhere where you just didn't belong?

I mean, there's no worse feeling than being surrounded by a group of people but feeling lonely at the same time.

Just as we've all experienced what it feels like to be on the outside, we've also experienced what it feels like to be on the inside.

And sometimes without even realizing it, we've made others feel like they don't belong.

I don't think we oftentimes do it intentionally, or at least I hope we don't.

And usually when we exclude somebody, it's because we're trying to protect the space that we that we have.

We have a safe space of community and belonging, and we don't want anyone to come in and mess that up for us, but by by us protecting our safe space, we miss out on the opportunity to provide that for somebody else.

We exclude, we draw lines, we judge others, whether we realize it or not.

Everybody in this room, I think, would say that you would want everyone to feel like they belong.

But that doesn't mean that we always go out of our way to actually put in the effort to reach out and to make that happen.

Why is that?

As we dive this morning into the story of Zacchaeus, I want to be you to begin to ask yourself this question: Who have you decided doesn't belong?

Maybe you've never said it out loud.

Maybe you wouldn't even admit it to yourself, but the truth is, every one of us, we all have lines.

We all have a Zacchaeus.

So if you've got your Bible this morning, open up.

We're gonna be in Luke chapter 19.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

We're gonna be there in just a moment.

Uh, if you don't have your Bible, no worries.

All of our scripture texts will be up on the screen for you to follow along.

But within the book of Luke, it can be broken up into two sections.

The first section is what can be considered the travel narrative.

This is where Jesus goes around from city to city, ministering uh with his disciples, teaching and performing miracles.

And then the second half of the book, we have what's called the passion narrative, which is Jesus' journey to the cross.

And the story of Zacchaeus, where it fits within this scope of the book of Luke, is it actually is the very last story found in the travel narrative.

This story is actually the pivot point of the entire book of Luke.

But before we arrive at the story of Zacchaeus this morning, I want to take a pit stop so we can get the necessary context to really be able to unpack this passage together.

You see, in Luke chapter 5, verses 27 through 31, we see a very similar story to that of Zacchaeus.

Luke 5:27–31

And in Luke 5, we find the story of Jesus and his interaction with the tax collector Levi.

Jesus, he sees Levi and he's sitting at his tax collector booth, and he says to Levi, he says, Hey, come follow me.

And without hesitation, Levi gets up and he leaves everything and he follows Jesus.

Then later on, Levi, he's uh he he decides that he's gonna host a big banquet for Jesus at his house, and this banquet is so large that many people from all over come to it.

And the crowd, Luke describes as is mostly made up of other tax collectors.

And the Pharisees, who are the religious leaders of the day, uh they took notice of who Jesus was spending time with at this banquet, and they ask him, Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?

And to be honest, I don't think the Pharisees were really interested in Jesus' answer.

They were more of trying to make sure that he knew what their feelings were about him and who he spent time with.

But Jesus, he responds to him by saying this.

He says, It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Jesus makes a profound statement in this moment and tells us his purpose for his ministry, and it's to seek and to save the lost.

And in the beginning of Luke, we see this story of Jesus, Levi, and the Pharisees, but then we close out this travel narrative in the book of Luke with what appears to be the same kind of story with Zacchaeus.

So as we move into Luke 19, I want you to know that the truth, that Jesus' message and his mission remains unchanged.

It was unchanged from Luke 5, it was unchanged all the way to Luke 19 where we are today, and it's all the way today where we are living now.

His mission has not changed.

And although that passage is not said here, that is the heart of Jesus' mission.

He's in the business of welcoming outsiders back into relationship with God.

So, with all that being said, would you stand with me out of the respect of the reading God's word?

We're gonna read Luke 19, verses 1 through 10 together this morning.

Luke 19:1–10

Says this Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through a man 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.

So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and they began to mutter, He is 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.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

You may be seated this morning.

So Luke, uh, when he writes, if you if you read the book of Luke, you'll see that Luke loves to give a whole lot of details.

Sometimes they're meaningless to be skipped over, but sometimes he's trying to tell us something really specific.

And this story begins with Jesus passing through the city of Jericho, and he's ultimately on his way to the city of Jerusalem.

The city of Jericho was actually a trade city, it was a watering hole of people from all different areas as they passed through or they came to trade their goods with others.

And this is important because Jericho isn't some obscure city off in the wilderness for no one to see.

No, this was a happening place with lots of people from a lot of different places.

So when Jesus encounters Zacchaeus, it's visible for a lot of people to see.

And in the city of Jericho, there was a man named Zacchaeus.

And if you've ever grown up in church, then you probably know the song of Zacchaeus.

Okay, never mind, I'm gonna stop.

And in Zacchaeus, he is a chief tax collector, and it says that he is very wealthy.

But although Zacchaeus is in this position of power, where of this position of wealth, he still seems to be seeking for more in his life.

Remember Levi, the tax collector from Luke 5, Jesus asked to follow him earlier.

Levi is just described by Luke as a tax collector.

But Zacchaeus, he's described as the chief tax collector.

As Luke wants us to know that there is this extra level of position that Zacchaeus has.

You see, tax collectors, they were not people that were very well liked in that day.

They were more despised than even the IRS agents of now.

And because of the way that they that that these tax collectors made their money, they weren't very favorable with people.

Because what they would do is you would come to the tax collector and he would say, You owe this much money.

But he always told you a little bit more than you actually owed so that he could pocket the extra for himself.

The tax collectors were like Patriots fans.

Nobody likes them unless you're one of them.

And Zacchaeus is the worst of them.

I am a Patriots fan, and I don't care if you like me or not.

You see, with the with the title of chief tax collector, we can assume that Zacchaeus was over the whole region.

So he was over many other tax collectors as well.

So his wealth that he had was actually made on the backs of stealing from lots and lots of people.

All of these other tax collectors, as they stole, Zacchaeus was also getting a portion for himself, which means he was stealing from so many.

Zacchaeus isn't just someone that this crowd disliked.

No, he's someone that they had already decided doesn't belong.

He needs to be on the outside.

So let me ask you this who's your Zacchaeus?

Because I think in all of our lives there are people who we overlook or ignore because of reasons that we may have.

Maybe it's the grumpy neighbor next door or the coworker who's a little bit odd who eats lunch by themselves.

Or it's the friend that you hang out with when you're not doing church things because you don't want those two worlds to merge.

There are people in our lives that we see and make excuses for why we exclude them.

Your Zacchaeus is not merely the unbeliever you don't share your faith with, but those you keep at an arm's length and a distance because you don't want to associate with them, whether you'll say it or not.

Before we begin to reach out to the world around us, we have to be open to who it is that God is calling us to.

Who have you been quietly decided doesn't belong at your table.

So as Jesus he's walking through this crowd on his way to Jerusalem, and Zacchaeus he gets word that Jesus is coming through.

And we don't know why Zacchaeus exactly wants to see Jesus, but we can assume that word has spread that Jesus has done some pretty incredible things, and Zacchaeus wants to see him for himself.

But there was a problem.

The crowd that had gathered around Jesus was really thick.

There were a lot of people around, and like the song says, Zacchaeus was a wee little man.

He wasn't a very tall guy, and it doesn't say exactly how tall he is, but we can assume that in this crowd of average height people, he was probably shorter than the shoulders of everybody else.

He couldn't see over them.

So in this crowd, he couldn't see Jesus as he was walking through, but he needed to take action.

He needed to see Jesus, so he decides you know what I'll do?

I'll climb that sycamorphic tree and I will hang out up there so that I can get a glimpse of Jesus.

You don't take the time and effort to climb a tree in the middle of a crowd if you're just a little bit interested.

Zacchaeus was all in.

He had a sense of urgency that he needed to see Jesus as he came through Jericho.

And from the outside looking in, I think it's hard for us to understand why someone like Zacchaeus would have any interest in seeing Jesus at all.

We face the same thing in our own lives as we look at our neighbors, our friends, our family members who are not Christians, and we jump to the conclusion that their lives are pretty happy and they're pretty good and everything's okay, so they probably don't even have an interest in the God that we serve.

What line have you drawn out of the assumption that somebody doesn't have an interest in God, so you don't have an interest in sharing Him?

What we forget is we forget about God's provenient grace.

God's provenient grace is this idea that before you ever made a move towards God, God was pursuing you.

Before you came to a place where you decided to give your life to Jesus, before you even decided to walk into a church for the first time, God was already working in your life.

You see, before Zacchaeus ever saw Jesus, God was working in his heart, drawing him to himself, drawing him closer.

And Zacchaeus thought that he was just climbing a tree in order to see Jesus, but what he didn't realize was Jesus was already making a move towards him.

Sometimes the person that you've written off is somebody that God is already pursuing, someone's heart that he's already softening.

And on the outside, Zacchaeus would have appeared to the religious leaders of that day as someone one who was unreceptive to anything of that sort, but also he was unwanted in those church circles, and yet Jesus radically transformed his life.

To share your life with others, it's uncomfortable.

It's not easy.

But as we look at Zacchaeus, we see that those who appear on the outside, those who appear to be the least likely to have any interest in God, can be changed through the powerful grace of Jesus.

But it requires us to invite others to the table of belonging and trust that our God can soften even the most resistant of hearts.

So while Zacchaeus, he's he's up in the sycamore fig tree and he's looking down with the hope of maybe seeing Jesus as he's passing on through.

And there's this large crowd that's surrounding Jesus.

I don't think Zacchaeus ever thought that Jesus would just stop in the middle of this crowd and look up and go, Hey, Zacchaeus, how would I come to your house today?

What fascinates me about this part of the story is the awareness of Jesus.

That in the midst of all this chaos that's going around around him, he takes the time and has the awareness to notice Zacchaeus up in the tree and he wants to see him.

If you've ever been to like a Bengals game or you go to a big concert or something, and you know, when when the show's over, the game hits zero and it's time for you to leave, everybody gets up from their seats and they all go towards the exits.

And when you go towards the exits, it's never quite wide enough for everybody to fit, so you're all kind of tucked in there and you're walking just as quickly as you can in order to get out of the stadium or conference center that you're in.

And as you're going, I think there are only two goals that you have.

One is I gotta stay upright, because if I fall, they're gonna trample me to death, right?

And the second thing is just keep moving forward.

I gotta get out of here.

And as Jesus is walking through this crowd that's so thick that Zacchaeus needed to climb a tree in order to see him, it would have been easy for Jesus to just think, I just gotta, I just need to get through here.

I need to not fall so I don't get trampled, much less have the awareness of his surroundings to see that there was somebody up in the tree looking for him, and yet Jesus sees him, anyways.

Zacchaeus, he isn't up in the tree waving his arms, going, Jesus, Jesus, come to my house, watch football today.

I got wings on the smoker.

He's not doing anything like that.

He's just up there watching.

And as he's sitting there, Jesus sees him and knows that he must stay at his house.

Whether you know it or not, there are people who are watching you.

They're watching the ways that you live your life because you claim to follow Jesus, and your life is a witness and reflection of the love that Jesus has for this world.

So who's in the tree watching you?

Where are my youth group students at?

Can I tell you something?

Number one, I love that you guys sit right up here in the front.

I love it.

But I want you to know something.

You're not just teens waiting to be the church of tomorrow, you're the church of today.

You are actually leaders in our church, the ways that you worship, the ways that you engage in prayer when we have an altar time, the way that you interact with one another.

There are others in our congregation who are watching you and you are making a difference and an impact in our church.

There's someone who's watching you.

Where are my parents at?

Did you know that your kids are watching you?

They're watching the ways that you open up your Bible, they're watching the ways that you worship, they're watching the ways that you interact with others around you.

They watch the ways that you put priorities on things in your life.

They know when you put Jesus first, and they know when you put Jesus last.

You might think that they don't notice, but they're watching you more than you know.

Whether you're at work, at the grocery store, or even as you're speeding down Turkey Foot Road here, you never know who's watching.

And I don't say that to scare you, but to say that the way you live might be the only Jesus that anyone sees in their day.

It might be the only Jesus they ever see in their life.

There is a weight that comes with that, but also an incredible opportunity to share your faith with so many.

And once Jesus sees uh Zacchaeus, he approaches the tree and he has a very interesting thing to say to him, doesn't he?

He didn't ask him a question like, hey, what are you doing up there?

Or what are you interested in?

Or what's your name?

No, he says, Zacchaeus, you gotta come down.

I must stay at your house.

And I don't know about you, I don't just let anybody stay at my house, all right?

Before you come to my house and you start sifting through my pantry, you start showering in my bathroom, right?

Before you start doing any of that, I need to know you on a certain level before that feels acceptable.

All right.

There is a level of closeness that Jesus is assuming by making this request to Zacchaeus.

Jesus is telling us that he wants more than to just transform Zacchaeus' life.

The intimate ask of staying at Zacchaeus' house is really an ask to know him deeply.

Jesus could have just had a meal with Zacchaeus.

He could have just laid his hands on him and prayed for him.

He could have even just smiled and waved at Zacchaeus as he passed through.

But Jesus cares more about Zacchaeus.

He wants to know him.

You see, your home is the safest uh place of comfort where you retreat to at the end of your day in order to recharge and rest without the fear of anybody else coming to bother you.

To welcome somebody into your home is to share your most intimate place with them.

And I've noticed that as culture has gone on, we share our homes with each other less and less.

You know, there was this thing called COVID that happened, and whatever happened back then, it has caused us to think that we can't have anybody over anymore.

We can't share meals, we can only go meet in third spaces, and we should actually go limit our interactions altogether.

But when we look at the life of Jesus, we see the one that oftentimes he places himself at tables across from others and he shares a meal with them.

There is something powerful that happens around those tables, and I think there's something that we can learn from that.

In verse 7, it says, All the people saw this and they began to mutter, He has gone to be a guest of a sinner.

The people saw this and they weren't too happy about it, and they began to place judgment on what was taking place.

He's gone to be a guest of a sinner.

The issue was that crowd that they that the crowd had was they had decided who belonged and who doesn't.

And Zacchaeus, who was the chief tax collector of the day, he was the worst of sinners, and is not someone who belonged, not someone who was worthy of the time of Jesus.

But here's the thing: Jesus' idea of who belongs is different than ours.

Although Jesus doesn't directly respond to the statement that's being muttered through this crowd, we already know what his response was because we read it back in Luke chapter 5 when he says, It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

How do you draw lines of who belongs?

Who is worthy of your time, your effort, your attention?

You see, Jesus has a heart for the sinner, the marginalized, the outcast, the widow, the poor.

And if our criteria for who belongs doesn't line up with who Jesus says belongs, guess who's missed the mark?

And it isn't Jesus.

It's us.

But then in verse 8 it says, 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.

Verses eight through ten here are the pinnacle of the story.

It's the good news that Christ can transform even the worst of sinners, and that salvation is available to everyone who is lost if we seek Jesus.

And I want you to I want to point out the two steps that Zacchaeus has taken in order to lead to this transformation moment found here in verse eight.

You see, it's a yes to explore, which leads to a yes to be transformed.

You see, Zacchaeus's initial yes was just one of curiosity and exploration.

That even just seeing Jesus was worth the effort to climb a tree.

Some of you in this room want to see our country be changed, our city look different, our county look different, our community look different.

You want to see your home look different, and yet you have not gotten into the game.

I believe that God is powerful enough to radically change the most hopeless of situations in this world, but our expectation that somebody else is going to do the work misses what God is calling each of us to do.

You see, a yes to Jesus actually starts with a yes to climb the tree, to see what Jesus is up to, to find out where we can get involved in the game, where we can partner in his story.

And then there's Zacchaeus's yes to be transformed, which leads to the radical action of him giving back all that he had stolen four times over and giving all of his possessions to the poor.

Here's what happens we start to do the little things that Jesus has called everyone to do, but then Jesus grabs a hold of our heart, and there becomes a desire to do more and more.

The more that we are around Jesus and pursuing him with the little that he's entrusted us with, it then begins to give us the specifics of what he's calling each of us to do.

For Zacchaeus, this was time for him to right the wrongs that he had made and to give back to those he had cheated and stolen.

But it's not just to give back what he had taken from them, but he also wants to bless them and gives them four times over.

Remember, he's the chief tax collector.

This isn't just a little bit of money that he's giving up.

This is a lot of wealth to a lot of people, and he's giving it all back to them.

When you say yes to Jesus, it's going to cost you.

But the blessing of living in the center of what God has for us is so much better than the cost.

Zacchaeus gave his wealth, but gained a relationship with the Son of God.

You might have to give up your time, your reputation, your money, your control, but what you gain in return is you gain a life that is full of purpose and partnered in God's story.

So as we get ready to close and the band comes on up, I want to I want to tell you about Alyssa and I's first home that we bought.

We we were young, a married couple, we had been living in a in a two-bedroom apartment, and what we had done is we had saved up basically every penny that we could in order to go buy our very first home.

And when we moved in, we took everything from our little two-bedroom apartment and we put it into this four-bedroom house.

And like many people who buy their first home, we did not have enough furniture in order to fill that entire space.

So as you walked around our new home, there were bare walls, there were rooms that were kind of empty, or they had like a little chair in this big room.

Um and in our dining room, we had this old antique wobbly table.

And as we were going through and we were deciding what it is that we were going to purchase for our first home, we decided that we were just going to leave the dining room table for right now because we had rooms that didn't have anything and this had something.

But this table, it was like, it was wobbly.

The chairs were like kind of tattered.

It it wasn't the most exciting space in order to invite people to come sit around.

So for Christmas one year, uh Alyssa's parents blessed us and they they bought us this brand new wooden table.

It was our dream table, and we were so excited about it.

And when it was finally delivered, it was beautiful, it was clean, it was freshly stained, and this wood, it looked just like it was out of like a magnolia magazine.

You know what I'm talking about?

And I didn't even want to touch it, much less eat at this table that was now there in our dining room.

I mean, it was like a showroom.

I wanted people to see it, I didn't want anyone to touch it.

But the very first people that we had over to sit around that table was was our friends, and we had greasy, slimy pizza, and that grease got all over our brand new table, and we sat and we talked about the future that we we all hope to have in our lives.

Then we sat around it with family.

Then we had a family come over, and we didn't have any kids at the time, and they brought their toddler.

If you have a toddler, that table's gonna get a little bit messy.

Then we hosted middle school and high school students for a variety of events, and although that table still looks great, there's some scratches.

It's been spilled on, it's been bumped into, it's been dented a little bit.

And I think we oftentimes want our lives to look like when we're when it comes to walking with Jesus, we want it to look like the brand new showroom table.

We want it to look absolutely incredible, flawless, clean, without blemish, but with the connections and with the meals that happen around it, it doesn't work like that.

You see, in Luke 19, we see Jesus, he has a desire to sit across the table from who's considered the worst of sinners.

Not out of duty, not because he has to or he should, but because he wanted to know Zacchaeus intimately.

Because of Jesus' outreach invitation, Zacchaeus' life was radically changed and he was saved.

Let me ask you again, who's your Zacchaeus?

Who is Jesus calling you to reach out to this week to sit across the table from?

It won't be comfortable, it won't be easy, but Christ has called us as believers to a life of purpose and to share our lives with those around us for the sake that maybe one person may come to faith in Jesus.

But more so than that, just to encourage and uplift one another as we try to follow Jesus in our own lives.

Your life has kingdom implications.

So get in the game.

Jesus came to seek and to save the lost so that salvation could be made available to everyone who comes to know him, who puts their faith in him, and his mission today is the same, and he's calling you and I to join him in that.

Would you sit around the table with someone who doesn't look like you, who doesn't think like you, someone that maybe you've previously drawn a line that says, you know, there's somebody else out there for them, that's not for me.

Jesus has called us to have eyes to see.

And we should share that same unconditional love that he shared with us, with everyone we come in contact with.

In just a moment, we're gonna close in a song.

There it is.

And we're gonna take communion together.

You see, Jesus, he actually gathered his disciples around a table and he instills a prayer.

And during that time, there's this practice that he has everybody do, um, and it's to bring unity to us as a church, but also to remind us that what unifies us is not our opinions, our preferences, but it's what he has done.

It's his blood that's poured out for us.

So this morning, as as we respond in worship singing this amazing grace, that the chains are gone, I want to remind you that the same blood that was poured over your life that you found salvation from is the same blood that's poured out for everybody if they would come to know of his love.

It is freely available, it is a free gift of grace.

So let's share it with everyone we come in contact with.

Would you stand as we respond in worship this morning?