humble & hungry: grace is … what you do with...

Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

Transcript May 16/17, 2015

Humble & Hungry: Grace is … What You Do with It Aaron Brockett | Luke 19:1-27 Alright, good morning. How are we? Good. It’s good to see you. If you have a Bible would you please grab it and get to Luke, chapter 19. That’s where we’re going to be. I want to welcome you if this happens to be your first time to be with us. I want to welcome anybody tuning in online as well. We are wrapping up this four-‐week series of sermons that we have been in now. So if you’ve missed any of these messages you can get caught up online or you can get caught up on the church app. Before we dive in and tackle the last installment of this sermon series, I just want to let you know where we are going for the summer months. If you’ve been around here for the last several years you know that every July I usually take off for something called a study break. I usually get out of town and I primarily try to dig my wells a little deeper. I usually spend some time praying, and reflecting, and studying over a year’s worth of sermons—where are we going next. Every seven years our elders give each one of our pastors on staff something called a sabbatical. A sabbatical is a little bit of a longer period of time for a little bit of a different purpose. A sabbatical is basically—instead of just studying for a year’s worth of sermons—it’s more of a renewal and a refreshing and a recalibration for life and for ministry. And I’m up for my seven year sabbatical this summer. I will have been here eight years this coming November—that is kind of hard to believe. So, this summer—in fact next Tuesday, May 26, I’m going to be taking off for the summer for my seven year sabbatical. So, this is my last weekend to preach for the next 10 weekends. And while I’m gone, our family is going to be traveling out west. Our four kids who are all under the age of 12 will be in one Suburban for 3,500 miles—you can pray for us, alright? Pray for them actually, pray for their safety. We’re going to be going to the mountains, we’re going to go to the Grand Canyon, and we’re going to be going up and down the coast of California meeting with some people in different churches. We’re going to be getting back together with some of the people who we started a church with about 15 years ago to see them. I’m going to be meeting with somebody out on the west coast to just talk about a life goal development plan. I turn 40 next year, which is an interesting age because some of you are like, “That’s really young.” And some of you are like, “That’s really old.” It’s like, which is it? I don’t know. But I know that it is a mid-‐way point for many of us and so I want to plan out the next 10 to 15 years of my life and where God is leading me and where He is taking us. Most importantly I want to pour into my wife and kids. Because of our weekend schedule, we don’t often get a whole weekend together. So this summer we’re going to be spending time—developing some memories together. This really hit us pretty hard. Thinking about this, the next time I’m up for a seven-‐year sabbatical two of my kids will be grown and gone. So, I want to pour into them and spend time with them.

Humble & Hungry: Grace is … What You Do with It May 16/17, 2015

Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 2

I want to thank you that, as a church, you give us this time. Not every pastor gets that. I don’t want to take it for granted and I want to thank you for it. I just want you to know how much I love you. I love this church and I love being your pastor. And I’m excited about the future and where God is leading us. You’re going to be in really good hands this summer because Jake, Matt, and Petie are going to be leading us through a summer sermon series called Flawed Hero. We’re going to be taking a look at the life of King David out of the Old Testament. I went to lunch with those guys last Thursday and they were talking about this and how they are carving it up and I’m really looking forward to tuning in wherever I’m going to be in the country and just listening in on what those guys have to teach us from a great individual from the Old Testament. It’s going to be a really good summer sermon series. When I get back in August, we’re going to go through the Book of Acts together in a series called Turn the World Upside Down. And that’s going to go in conjunction with launching our north side campus. We’re going to be meeting in a portable church—set up and tear down site at Creekside Middle School beginning this fall. We’ll let you know the date as soon as we know it. Be praying about a more permanent location beyond that first year. Creekside is going to be a great place for us to get our start and a good facility for us to set up and tear down in. I’ve asked about 500 of you to consider going and to be a part of the core of that north side location. We’ve been in this for just about two or three weeks and already 200 of you have signed up and said, “We’re in. We want to be a part of that.” And I’m confident that over the summer months another 300 of you will come to the table as well. I know that many of you have been praying about it, thinking about it, contemplating it. If you’re ready, stop by the Humble & Hungry kiosk and check it out. Fill out a card. What we want to do over the summer is we want to get you together and we want to pray over you, to develop that core. We’ll try to announce a campus pastor here in the coming months as well. I’m really excited about where God is leading us in this. Stories continue to pour in over email and conversations that people have had. Our Humble & Hungry shirts made it to London. I thought that was pretty cool. Maybe that’s location number two, alright? I don’t know. Traders Point London has kind of a nice ring to it. Actually Rob and Toni McCuen are well loved friends of ours. They are a part of our church but she works in England. They’ll be there for another two years. They filled out their financial commitment online and then they got the t-‐shirts. And they wanted us to know how much they are supporting this. Man, I’m so encouraged by that. I want to read an email that I got last week from a member of another church, a member of Northview Church—many of you are probably familiar with Northview, great church in Carmel. Pastor Steve Poe is a really good friend of mine. I love him. I love their ministry. I got this email from a member of this church and I want to read it to you. I was really encouraged by it. It said, “Hey, Aaron. My name is Nick. I am part of the core team that launched a new, Westfield campus for Northview just a few months ago.” So they went multisite for the same reasons. They had people who were driving from all over the place. It was hard for them to get connected. He said, “I work at Carmel High School. I’m the faculty sponsor for the FCA here. Been listening to the Traders Point pod cast every week for over a year now.” Don’t tell Steve. Just joking, alright? No I’m not.



He said, “Just wanted to let you know that I’m excited for you guys as you start to launch your first multisite campus, really thrilled that you guys are going to make an impact in and through the Carmel schools. God’s doing some great things here and I’m excited that you guys will be joining that work here soon. Thanks so much for your faithful service and ministry. I learn so much from your pod casts. Love how you guys are so intentional in trying to reach Indy. Praying for you and watching expectantly. Your brother in Chris, Nick.” Man, I was really, really encouraged by that. So, Nick, if you’re listening thanks so much. Don’t tell Steve that you’re listening—thanks so much for your email. You know what guys? I want you to catch the same vision. He is a member of another church who is excited about this. We’re not in competition. We need other, Christ-‐centered, Bible-‐based churches all over this city that are healthy and growing if we are going to make a dent, an impact, on the city of Indianapolis. I want you to get this clearly, as much as possible. We are going multisite, not because we want to launch as many locations as we can. We are going multisite, not because I want to franchise Traders Point. This is not about launching multiple locations. It’s about launching disciples. That’s what it is. It’s a vehicle for building up more and better disciples because discipleship is all about a relational connection with others who are following Christ. Many of you know this. There are strengths and weaknesses to church size. And I’ve not always been a part of a big church. I grew up in a small church. My first five years in ministry—my church that I served in was 15 people. So I know the small church and the big church. Listen, they both have pros and cons. One of the cons or one of the weaknesses of a big church is that, at times, it can be difficult for people to connect. It can be difficult for people to meet people and to find people. It depends upon your relational makeup. What we are trying to do is that we are trying to launch smaller, decentralized locations that are closer to where you live so that you can know some people and be known, so that you can get involved and serve. The relational, chemistry dynamic would be different because we want you not to just come and observe a service but we actually want you to do life with other people and to get to know them and to grow as a disciple. That’s the heartbeat behind all of this. The heartbeat that is also behind this is that we want to remove the unnecessary barriers that keep people in our city from Jesus. So what we’ve been doing over the course of the last several weeks together, if you’ve been here, is that we’ve been studying various passages of Scripture that illustrate that, that say, “Here’s an unnecessary,” and I might even insert this word, “silly barrier that can keep people from Jesus.” And oftentimes that is what that is. A lot of people stay away from God, not because they haven’t heard of Jesus. They’ve heard of Jesus, they have just heard the wrong idea about Jesus and there’s this barrier that exists that keeps them from understanding who He really is, and what He came to do, and what He said, and how He feels about them, and what He one day will do. I just want you to know that one of the things that the Spirit of God has been taking me to the mat over for the last three weeks is simply this question: Aaron, do you care enough? I care. I care about the 1.7 million. I care about the millions of people around the world who are disconnected from Jesus. But it was sort of unexpected. It was like the Spirit of God dropped kicked me like: Do you care enough?



Now listen. I know that we are all busy. I know that we all have our own problems. I know that many of you are raising families. And many of us don’t have a lot of margin. But here’s the issue and the question. If you’ve been a recipient of grace, is there a burning desire within you to share that with others or are you content to just keep it to yourself? That’s not even a hypothetical. I’m just telling you that I’ve kept it to myself. I haven’t cared enough about those who are disconnected from Jesus Christ. So, our desire (and our goal) is to remove those unnecessary barriers. The church word for that is evangelism. And depending upon how you are wired, some of you really love that word and others of you—I just made you shudder. Evangelism, what does that bring up ideas of? A knock on the door during dinnertime and you say, “Go away, I don’t want to talk to you. Quit pushing your beliefs on me.” It’s this idea that I have to close the deal on somebody or that I have to force my beliefs down your throat. And in a culture that says that we need to be tolerant of everybody’s beliefs, evangelism is like a cuss word. It’s this idea, “Ew, why would you ever want to engage in that?” We need a different way of looking at evangelism. Here’s one—we’re all evangelists whether we like it or not. You’re an evangelist of the things that you enjoy, and love, and have brought meaning to your life. Any of you go to see a movie and then you are like, “You have to catch this movie.” Evangelist! I went to see the Avengers and I’m like, “Oh dude, you have to see that movie.” And all of a sudden I’m trying to push it on somebody. Lindsay and I went to eat at a new restaurant in Broad Ripple last Friday night. And I was becoming an evangelist for it. I was like, “Man, you have to check this place out.” Why is it that I have no problem with—nobody ever says, “Aaron, quit pushing your beliefs on me. I’ll eat where I want, alright?” And yet, it’s just a meal. It’s just two hours of entertainment and I’m fervently evangelistic about it. Listen, that’s all that this is. If you’ve received the gospel of grace—not religion, not moralism, not behavioral modification but the gospel of grace, it should quicken your spirit and you should figure out how to share that in a natural, authentic way. This is not Amway. My apologies to those who work for Amway—I just thought that, I just thought that. We love you. You’re welcome here—I’ll move on. Here’s what evangelism is. Evangelism is giving people an unobstructed view of who Jesus really is. And if you’ve received the gospel of grace and you are not actively investing that grace to remove those barriers, to lead people to Jesus then, listen, that is a barrier. You’re keeping it to yourself. You want to know how God feels about broken, disconnected people? Then just take a look at Jesus’ individual encounters with broken, disconnected people in the gospels and listen to what He says to them, and listen to how He treats them. Then you’ll know. You’ll see this common pattern or this common theme begin to emerge. Here’s a question I just want to tee-‐up this teaching with: Do I really care that there are disconnected people? And if not, why not because God cares and if I say that I’m really following after God then I’m going to care about what He cares about. So, here in Luke, chapter 19 what we have is a real story about a wee little man named Zacchaeus. Now if you grew up in church you know what I’m talking about. You’re like, “Oh, that’s hilarious.” Right? There is a song—now if you didn’t grow up in church, if you’re new to Bible study, I just want you to know that there’s a children’s song that has been written about the passage we’re going to study today.



Some of you went to Vacation Bible School or you went to church camp and you remember the song, right? “Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he…” I’m not going to sing it. It’s not my spiritual gift, alright? That’s like the quickest way to empty a room for me to sing. But he climbs up in a sycamore tree and Jesus says, “Zacchaeus come down for I’m coming to your house today.” I’ll break that out. John will come out and lead us in the Zacchaeus song sometime. I think that would be great. Some of you have no idea what I’m talking about. You’re not missing much. Here’s the thing—we have some fans of the Zacchaeus song! Did you just boo at that? You love the Zacchaeus song. Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for the song that I learned when I was a kid because it taught me this passage. Here is the challenge or the down side of learning the song. It blurred the lines of reality for me. I didn’t know if it was a fairy tale or real. I started to get to this place where I was mixing up Humpty Dumpty and Zacchaeus. I was like, “I know that they were both sitting up high. One of them fell and all the kings men (or was it disciples?) put him back together again. I just didn’t know. So, the challenge of the song is that oftentimes we go to these passages of Scripture and we just sort of think that it’s a fairy tale, once upon a time… We miss the meaning behind it. What I want you to know is that this is a story about a real man, who had a real image problem, and he meets the real Jesus, who extends to him real grace, and it really changed him—really! And what he discovers is that when you are the recipient of the gospel of grace it will change you and it requires you to do something with it. You can’t just sit on it as if it is some sort of propositional faith or belief that has no real impact on your decisions, your choices, your values, your finances, or your behavior. If grace doesn’t change you to the very core of your identity, then call it something else, don’t call it grace. Call it religion. Call it moralism. Call it behavioral modification. But the gospel of grace always changes you to the core of who you are and you always must invest it into the lives of others. So, here’s what I want to do. I want to just study through the passage together starting in verse 1. It says, “He,” referring to Jesus, “entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich.” So, there are two things that I want you to know about him. Zacchaeus was a tax collector which meant that he collected taxes for the Roman Empire and he was rich. He was in Jericho. Now, Jericho was a wealthy city on a major trade route and it was one of three major centers for collecting Israel’s taxes. And collecting taxes in this city had made Zacchaeus filthy rich. He was incredibly wealthy and at this point in his career he wasn’t the one going around collecting the taxes, he was actually the ultimate middle man who had tax collectors working for him. So, they were skimming off the top and he was skimming off their top collecting customs revenue on its way to Rome. So, he was a tax collector and had done very well and he was rich. Verse 3, “And he was seeking to see who Jesus was,” so here’s a guy who had everything but it wasn’t enough. He wanted to get a glimpse of who Jesus was, now here’s the silly, unnecessary barrier, “but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature.” That’s Luke’s nice way of saying he was a short guy.



Verse 4, “So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Him,” now just think about how he would have had to swallow his pride for a minute to do this. When was the last time you climbed a tree as an adult? I’ve thought about a couple of times and I’ve talked myself out of it, “I’m going to get hurt. I’m going to fall. I’m going to get stuck. That’s going to be embarrassing—local pastor gets stuck in tree.” Here’s a grown man who climbs up into a tree to get a glimpse of Jesus, “for he was about to pass that way.” So what’s going on here? Well there’s a practical thing going on, and a spiritual thing going on, and a social thing going on. The practical thing that is going on is that he is short. He can’t see Jesus. The spiritual thing going on is that there is a void in his life and he’s searching. The social thing going on is that the people hated him and nobody is doing him any favors. See, tax collectors were not considered men who were honest and had a lot of integrity. This is not just collecting a fair and reasonable tax for Rome. Tax collectors were seen as traitors and oppressors. They had turned their backs on their own people. They were working for the enemy, the Roman Empire, whose taxes were already inflated and then the tax collectors would inflate them even more so that they could earn a living. So, Zacchaeus had made a whole bunch of money off of the backs of other people and he had done it dishonestly and everybody knew it. So when they see him trying to work his way through the crowd to get a glimpse of Jesus they are like, “Nope, shorty. We’re not doing you any favors.” And they step in front of him, and they’re cold, and they’re hateful toward him and this is a barrier. And God’s doing something in his heart. I want to know why he was seeking Jesus out. It could be that he had just heard some interesting stories about Jesus and he just wanted to see the show—that’s possible. But I wonder if it was maybe emptiness inside. Here’s a guy who has reached the very pinnacle of his career and it didn’t do for him what he thought it would do. Here’s a guy who had made more money than he knew what to do with. And he’s like, “You know what? There’s still a hole in my life.” I wonder if guilt might have motivated him. That it finally just caught up with him and he’s like, “Man, I realize what I am doing. I’m cheating people out of their hard-‐earned money and I can’t live with myself, I can’t look at myself in the mirror anymore.” But he’s seeking out Jesus and he climbs up a tree to get a view of Him. And he could not have expected what was going to happen next because verse 5 says, “And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.’” The two words that I want you to notice in that verse are the words “hurry” and “must”. Notice the urgency that is in Jesus’ voice. Jesus doesn’t say, “Hey, Zacchaeus. When you come down from the tree—whenever that might be—could you pencil me in for a lunch meeting a couple of weeks from now?” No, He says, “Zacchaeus, hurry up and get down right now. You’re a grown man and you’re in a tree. Get down.” And then He says, “I must come to your house.” Notice He doesn’t say, “Could I,” or, “Will you think about,” or, “Could you give some thought to?” He’s like, “I must come to your house.” This is the idea that, “Zacchaeus, you’re in very real, spiritual danger that you don’t yet see. And with urgency, I want to give you something that will actually rescue you and save your life.”



Now, here’s what I want you to understand about this. Jesus has about 10 days to live. He’s going to be arrested and crucified in 10 days from this point here in Luke 19. Now, I have about 10 days before I have to leave town for my sabbatical. Let me tell you that I have a list as long as my arm. I have a to do list as long as my arm. I have some people who I need to meet with and some things I need to take care of before I leave. I don’t have a lot of extra time. Jesus is about to die in 10 days. Don’t you think that He has some stuff to do? Don’t you think that He has some people who He wants to meet with? Don’t you think that maybe He wants to spend a little more time with His mom? I don’t know. But he says to Zacchaeus, this guy who he has never met, this guy who is a cheat and a scoundrel and who is oppressive to the people, “No, Zacchaeus, I actually want to spend some time with you. I actually want to come in to your house.” Man, catch the heart of our Father here. See, there are a lot of people who feel a little like Zacchaeus. Maybe some of you walked in here today and are like, “I hope these people don’t really recognize me or know who I am. I don’t know if I’m one of you. I don’t know that I buy all of this stuff. I don’t know that I can sing those songs. If you actually knew who I was, the roof would probably cave in here.” I want you to know the heart of the Father here. He’s seeking you out. He’s like, “No, I actually want you to come to My house.” So in verse 6 it says, “So he hurried and came down and received Him joyfully.” That’s one of the things that, as you study through Scripture, when somebody comes to understand who Jesus really is, the response is always joy. I want you to ask that of yourself. We talked about conversion a couple of weeks ago. Has joy been a part of your conversion? It should be. The Ethiopian eunuch received Jesus and he rejoiced. He went on his way rejoicing. Zacchaeus comes down joyfully. And in verse 7 notice the difference here in response, “And when they saw it,” now who’s they? That’s everybody else who is gathered around Jesus. That is all of the people who thought they were okay with God. That’s all of the people who thought they really didn’t need anything from Jesus. They looked at this; they see this exchange of grace and notice their response here. It says, “they all…” what’s the word? Just say it out loud with me, “grumbled.” I hate that word. That and its cousin “murmur”. Murmur and grumble—nothing good comes from those things. And it’s like they are grumbling and here’s what they said, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” As if they weren’t. See, that’s what happens when you sit on the gospel of grace and you don’t do anything with it. All of a sudden it turns you into a sort of religious, condescending person like, “Yeah, I know that God saved me but he couldn’t possibly save that person over there.” Here’s what I want you to understand. This is what Luke is saying to us. Grace is for anyone. There isn’t anybody who is outside the reach of God’s grace. Luke, out of the four gospel writers is the one who really wants us to know that the most. Part of that is because Luke was a doctor—he was a physician. He took care of people’s physical bodies. But because of that, Luke was also concerned about people’s spiritual health, spiritual condition. Here’s what I want you to know about Luke. We’ve already established that tax collectors were hated individuals. Luke mentions tax collectors 6 times in his gospel and all 6 times he mentions them in a



positive light. Conservatives and liberals hated them, Romans and Jews despised them. Nobody wanted to be around them. But every time Luke mentions them he mentions them in a positive light. Chapter 3—tax collectors came to be baptized. Chapter 5—Matthew was a tax collector called by Jesus to come follow Him as a disciple. Chapter 7—tax collectors accepted God’s way as right but the Pharisees didn’t. Chapter 15—tax collectors and sinners were gathered around to hear Him. Chapter 18—Jesus tells a parable. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. And the Pharisee prayed a very self-‐indulgent, prideful prayer and the tax collector prayed this great prayer, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” Here’s the pattern that Luke wants you to see, broken people were attracted to Jesus and Jesus was always drawn to broken people. So the question of conviction in each one of our lives is, “Is my heart for people who are disconnected from God soft and pliable enough?” One of the things that casting the multisite vision for our church has unearthed is that for some of us—not all of us—for some of us, our evangelistic heart is a little weak. We are like, “Why would we do that? Why would we invest? Why would we go? Why would we stretch out of our comfort zone?” We’re not taking this seriously enough. It says in verse 8, “And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.’” What I want you to see right there in verse 8 is a real-‐ life, living picture of what repentance looks like. That is repentance. See, Zacchaeus didn’t get defensive. Zacchaeus didn’t try to say, “Well, You don’t understand. My dad was really disconnected and I didn’t have a good relationship with him and that caused me to grow up and make a few wrong choices. I really didn’t think I would be a tax collector. But when I got out of college that was the only job available and I thought I would do it for a while. But then it just morphed into something else and now here I am.” You don’t hear him doing any of that. In fact when Zacchaeus hears the grumbling and the murmuring about the fact that he’s a sinner do you want to know what his response was? You’re right. I am. I’ve cheated you out of money. His immediate response wasn’t to be sorry and to get his “go to heaven free” card. His immediate response was, “Here’s what I will do, practically, to change the way I’ve been living.” Here is what I want you to see. Not only is grace for anyone but when you get it, grace will always change you. And the way that it changed Zacchaeus was in the area of his financial treasure. He was willing to depart from a painful amount of his accumulated wealth. His attitude toward money dynamically changed here. Now here’s what I want you to see. He said, “Here’s what I’m going to do Lord. I’m going to give half of everything I own away to the poor and if I’ve cheated anybody out of anything,” which everybody in the crowd would have been, “That’s like every one of us here.” He goes, “I’ll pay you back four times the amount that I owe you.” Here’s what is astounding about that. The law did not require that. He’s going way above and beyond here. Not to earn any good favor but out of the depth of his sincerity and out of him saying, “Listen, I have more than enough.” Now, do you think that all of his anxiety and all of his worry about finances suddenly disappeared because he gave his life to Jesus? I don’t think so. I think that worry, and concern, and fear were still there. I just think that he reordered his affections. See one of the things that the gospel of grace should



do in your life and mine is that it steps on the umbilical cord of whatever it is that is bringing a sense of identity, comfort, and consolation to your life. Tim Keller said, “The heart is an idol factory.” And an idol is a functional savior that we lean our lives against for our own identity, our comfort, and our consolation. And anything can be an idol—absolutely anything. I mean, obviously, money can be an idol. That’s a really common one. But relationships can be an idol. Your kids can be an idol. Ministry can be an idol. Preaching can be an idol—it has been for me. Do you want to know how I know that preaching has started to become an idol for me? When I come home on Sunday afternoon and sulk because I didn’t think that the sermon was very good. That says more about where my heart is than anything else because I’m trying to perform for you and for the Lord. Anything can be an idol that we lean on to say, “I find my identity in that. I find my identity and my sense of consolation in that.” This is what the gospel of grace will do. It will step on that umbilical cord and it will suffocate it. For Zacchaeus the thing that he had built his world around was financial treasure and so that’s why Luke mentions this by saying, “This is the first thing that gets reordered in his life.” Zacchaeus says, “My attitude has fundamentally changed on this. I’m not just sorry. I’m willing to do something about it.” And the Biblical word for that, out of the Old Testament, is repentance. Repentance is different than I’m sorry. Repentance is this idea that I’m actually turning and I’m actually running after and chasing after godliness. Here’s what I’m sorry looks like. I’m walking in a particular direction in my life and I’m sorry and I stop. And I’m sorry about it. I don’t do anything proactive about it but I’m no longer walking toward that area of destruction. I’m just sorry. Here’s what usually ends up happening. Give it enough time, you’ll start walking again. That’s I’m sorry. Repentance is when you stop and you actually turn around and you are proactively walking in the opposite direction from where you were. It’s not enough to say, “My attitude about this has changed.” You actually have to make some sort of practical decision to change it. For Zacchaeus he said, “You know what? Money is one of the best indicators of where I am spiritually and so I want to obey God in this area of my life where I have most often sinned.” And in the previous chapter, chapter 18 the rich young ruler couldn’t do it. Look what it says in verse 9, “And Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham.’” By referring to him as a son of Abraham He’s basically saying to Zacchaeus, “Welcome to God’s family. You belong here.” And the people who would have been in the crowd—the Jewish people in the crowd they would have been shocked at those words. And then these last 13 words in verse 10 capture what Jesus came to do and to be for us. He said, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” He is actively seeking to save those who do not know Him. And so He says, “As my people who have already received this gospel of grace—you should be seeking and saving the lost as well. It’s not your job to convince them. It’s not your job to change them. That’s my job. Your job is to remove the unnecessary barriers so that they can get an unobstructed view of who I am.”



Here’s what I think was going on. I think that as soon as all of this went down, as soon as Jesus said this to Zacchaeus there were some looks of disdain in the crowd. I think there are people frowning. I think there are people with their arms folded. I think that there are people who are still grumbling and murmuring. So I think that this is what Jesus is thinking, “It’s time for a story. This hasn’t sunk in enough for you. You need to hear a parable” which is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. I have never connected Zacchaeus with the parable of the 10 mina. I have never done that before. But Luke does. Notice it in the passage. And Jesus does. Right after He forgives and offers salvation Jesus launches into a story. Look at what it says in verse 11, “As they heard these things, He proceeded to tell a parable, because He was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.” So Jesus is going to tell a parable about 10 minas—this is different than the parable in Matthew 25 of the talents. Here’s how I want you to understand it. In interpreting a parable you always have to look at what just came before and maybe what comes after it. There’s a reason why Jesus is telling this parable. There’s motivation behind it. It has everything to do with men and women coming to know Jesus Christ. So He says in verse 12, “A nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return. Calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten minas, and said to them, ‘Engage in business until I come.’” So the nobleman represents Jesus. This is a young king—he’s not a king yet—who is going to inherit the throne but before that can happen he has to go away and return. So, Jesus came once as a little baby, He left, He is going to return once again. That’s all the symbolism of this parable. And he brought in 10 servants. The 10 servants represent you and me. The 10 servants represent the church. And he gave them 10 minas. Now, 10 minas equal about a three-‐month salary. So think about how much money you make in three months—that’s what this nobleman would have entrusted to them. And he said to them, “…engage in business until I return.” Engage in business is simply this. Jesus is entrusting time, treasure, and talents to each one of us to make the gospel of grace known throughout the world. And He is expecting a return on this. You can’t just sit on the gospel of grace. Judgment Day is not just going to be about all of the bad things that I did that I shouldn’t have done. Judgment Day is equally going to be about all of the good things that I should have done with my time, treasure, and talents but didn’t do out of fear, selfishness, or greed. And He’s going to say, “Why not?” Frankly, that scares me to death. Not because He’ll kick me out of heaven and send me to hell, but because it will be embarrassing. To stand before the King and He’ll say, “Aaron, I gave you all of this time, I gave you all of this talent, I gave you all of this treasure now what did you do to invest it into the lives of others who need to know My grace?” I’ll be held accountable for all that I didn’t do out of fear, and greed, and self indulgence. You could say it this way. Heaven isn’t merely our destination, heaven should be our motivation. You should live every day with heaven as your backdrop understanding that your relationships, the way that you deal with money and finances, the way that you deal with your time, treasure, and talents should be seen in light of heaven. This is not about your salvation.



We talked about this a couple of years ago when we did a series on heaven. And one of the great misunderstandings about heaven is that it’s just going to be this big, blue sky with a bunch of white, fluffy clouds and that we’re all going to be in diapers playing harps. Or that we’re going to be in choir robes and we’re just going to sing all day. Listen, that’s not heaven. It might be part of heaven—not the diaper part—maybe the other part. Understand this, God created this world as good and it fell due to sin. Heaven is the New Heaven and the New Earth. Eternity is this earth restored to what God meant it to be. So this is the fact that we’re going to have responsibilities in heaven. We’re going to have work in heaven. We’ll have relationships in heaven. And none of it is flawed by sin. It is all in a perfected state. So listen. In the parable He’s saying, “While you are in this earthly body for this brief amount of time,” James says it’s a vapor, “God has entrusted to you time, talents, and treasures to invest for all of eternity not for your salvation but for the degree of your reward.” It’s this idea that some of us are going to be wearing some pretty fat crowns in heaven and others of us are going to be wearing this little bracelet, alright? It’s this idea that some of us are going to be living in a double-‐wide and others of us are going to be living in the mansion on the hill. And it will probably surprise us as to who [lives where]. From the first day that you walked down the streets of gold you’re going to be like, “You’re here? I had no idea.” “Hey, you want to come over to my place?” “You live there?”! That is what this is. Frankly this is such an area of personal conviction for me. I’m not saying this at you. I’m saying this with you as a fellow struggler shoulder to shoulder. Far too much of my time, treasure, and talents is wrapped up in the temporary and the moment rather than seeing it in light of eternity. And Jesus is saying that we’ll be held accountable for this. Look at what it says in verse 14. It may be the most sobering words in this passage, “But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’” You could place verse 14 on the umbrella of our culture. The citizens hated the King, “We don’t want You reigning over us so we’ll just make up stuff about You,” or, “We don’t think You exist.” Nothing new here. Verse 15, “When he returned, having received the kingdom,” so this is a reference to Jesus’ second return. He went away to a distant country but He’s going to come back. The first time Jesus came He was a helpless baby in a manger in Bethlehem. The next time He comes back it will be as a reigning King on a white horse with a sword coming out of His mouth and a tat on His thigh. I like that view of Jesus. That He’s a reigning King. And He’s going to come back a second time. It says, “…he ordered these servants,” that’s the church, “to whom he had given the money,” notice that it is a different word there. It’s no longer a mina. He actually said money, “to be called to him, that he might know what they had gained by doing business.” So, in other words, this is Judgment Day. He’s bringing the church in and there are 10 servants. We’re only going to see the response of three but the three represent common mindsets that probably represent everybody in this room.



Verse 16 says, “The first came before him, saying, ‘Lord, your mina has made ten minas more.’” That’s a really, really good return. That’s like a 1,000 percent return. If you’re talking three months salary—I don’t know what that would be for you, let’s just make up a number. It’s $15,000 that he entrusted him with. And basically he came back to hear, “Hey, I just made you 150 K.” That’s a pretty good return. Verse 17, “And he said to him, ‘Well done, good servant!” Does that sound familiar to anybody? Have you read that in the Scriptures anywhere before? When God looks at us and says, “Well done My good and faithful servant.” This is a reference to that. Here’s how I have always interpreted that, “Aaron, well done. You did your devotions every day.” “Aaron, well done. There was a pretty girl who walked by and you didn’t lust—well done.” That may be part of it, by most of it is, “What did you do with your time, treasure, and talent to invest in the Kingdom?” Verse 17 goes on, “Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority,” listen to this, “over ten cities.” Now think about that for a minute. Does that sound a little disproportionate to anybody? He gave him $15,000. He handled it well. Made him $150,000 and then he says, “Okay, now you rule over the budget of 10 cities.” Last time I looked at it the annual budget for Indianapolis was 1.3 billion dollars. So, here’s what he basically says. I gave you 15 K, you made me $150,000 now rule over 10 billion. That’s the infinite grace of God but you don’t look impressed. I’ll move on. Verse 18—I know it’s 12:01 hang with me through the rest of this passage. Verse 18, “And the second came, saying, ‘Lord, your mina has made five minas.’” That’s a pretty good return. That’s a 500 percent return, “And he said to him, ‘And you are to be over five cities.’” So, it’s proportionate to the work that he did. The reward is proportionate to his faithfulness. He had no regrets. Here is what I want you to see. Grace will always require a return on investment. The picture that Jesus is painting here is that God is holding his servants accountable for what they do with what they have been given while in this earthly body, with regard to a spiritual profit. So, the good servant is one who understands all that he (or she) has been given by God to turn a spiritual profit. The minas represent everything that God has given to you and to me to accomplish what He desires to be done. And it’s all centered upon the Zacchaeuses of this world. The down and out, the up and out who are removed from Jesus Christ for silly reasons. So, it’s not my mina. It’s not my treasure. It’s not my time. It’s not my talent. I’m the trustee of it. I steward everything, I own nothing. Verse 20, here we get the third servants response, “Then another came, saying, ‘Lord, here is your mina, which I kept laid away in a handkerchief;’” how pathetic is that? I would have been like, “Really? Couldn’t you have gone to Walmart and spend a few dollars to get one of those Sentry Safes, at least? Couldn’t you have hidden it under a mattress somewhere?” Think about that for a minute. He’s like, “Lord, here’s your mina. I kept it in the rag that I blow my nose in.” Not very secure. Not very respectful. Here it is. Then he gives his reason in verse 21, “‘…for I was afraid of you, because you are a severe man. You take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.’” Do you believe the gall of this guy? Listening to his response sounds like watching a train wreck in slow motion, “No, no, no, no, no, no—oh he did it, he did it, yeah he did it.”



I’ve heard the exact same thing. Some of the exact same things have come out of my mouth, just in a different way. “Lord, I don’t know that You will provide for me. I don’t know. If I do release that will I actually be treated like a doormat?” It’s this idea that we don’t have enough trust in our King. See, the third servant didn’t invest his time, treasure, and talents because he feared losing what he thought was his and it led to a distorted view of Jesus. Listen to me. It always will. If you think your time, treasure, and talents are yours not only will you use if for your own needs, but it will lead to a distorted view of Jesus. So, listen to how Jesus finishes the parable. He said to him in verse 22, “‘I will condemn you with your own words,’” in other words, you have already condemned yourself by what you said, “‘…you wicked servant! You knew that I was a severe man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Why then did you not put my money in the bank, and at my coming I might have collected it with interest?’” You know the whole whopping 0.007 percent or whatever it is, alright? “And he said to those who stood by, ‘Take the mina from him, and give it to the one who has the ten minas.’ And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten minas!’ ‘I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.’” Listen, Jesus is using hyperbolic language which is extreme language to make a dramatic point to say this is serious business. That’s what He is saying. Some of us might say, “This sounds kind of severe and it doesn’t even sound fair.” But just think about it for a minute. If you divided up your estate in three equal parts and you gave it to three financial advisors and one came back and said, “I made you 1,000 percent.” And another came back and said, “I made you 500 percent.” And the other came back and said, “Here, I kept it in a snotty handkerchief.” Who are you going with? That’s all He’s saying. He’s saying, “Look, the gospel of grace is too good to sit on. And, in ultimate reality, it’s not just for this world, which we are briefly passing through, but it should be seen through grid of all of eternity. And when you are the recipient of the gospel of grace what that does is that it motivates you to entrust your time, treasure, and talents to the King who gave them to you to begin with so that the paralytics, the Ethiopian eunuchs, and the Zacchaeuses of this world might have an unfiltered view of who Jesus really is. Listen, that’s living. That’s where joy comes from and what we as a church are called to do. So, today as we wrap up this series we’re going to worship together and we’re going to return our financial commitment cards. We’ve been talking about this over the last several weeks. I want you to take a look at this video that will clarify some information. I’m going to pray and then we’re going to worship together. Take a look at the video. Jake Barker We are encouraging each individual and family to take the next step in their generosity. Our generosity is a response to the gift of grace from Jesus. It’s a step of faith and growth. We’ve provided a commitment card as a tool to help you make your two-‐year generosity commitment. First you will see the generosity ladder. Each of us can take one more step in the way we give. If you have never given or if you sporadically give, we’d like for you to consider becoming an intentional giver



and on a regular basis budget generosity into your finances. You may not be ready for a tithe but you can intentionally give a percentage of your income back to God. Some of you are ready to begin tithing. It will stretch and challenge you yet God promises to honor that step of faith. Take the next step and commit to give back 10 percent of your income. Some of you currently tithe and it’s time to take a step further. God has honored your commitment, He has provided for you and now it’s time to trust Him by stretching to a new level of generosity. No matter where you are today you can take one more step in your journey. This mission requires all of us to contribute. Below the ladder is an equation which is just one more tool to help you arrive at your commitment. The first number is what you normally give in one year. The next number is how much more you plan on giving per year. Then we want you to multiply that by two. This new number will be what you plan on giving from June 2015 to May 2017. The final slot is for any stored assets you want to include in your commitment. If you want the cash in a stock, or to sell a property to contribute to the mission you can write that number in the last slot. The number at the bottom will be your two-‐year total commitment. This is the one big number that you or your family will give to the mission at Traders Point. The left side of the card is for you. That is to help you make your commitment. You can take that home. You do not need to turn that in. On the right side of the card we only need one number. We need your total, two-‐year commitment to the mission at Traders Point. This is the side you turn in. If you would like for us to know the commitment you are free to fill out your information below. We can help you keep track of your commitment and provide any updates you request. If providing your information makes you uncomfortable for any reason, feel free to leave it off. You can simply turn in your commitment amount without providing your personal information. We would not want providing that information to be a barrier to your participation in the mission. On your way out of the worship center today, there will be bins for you to drop off your commitments. We want this to be an act of worship. We want this to be a prayerful decision. We are so excited for those of you who are taking your next step in generosity and we cannot wait to see what God does in and through this church. To recap, the ladder is there to help you take your next step in generosity. The equation is a tool to help you calculate your total two-‐year commitment to the mission at Traders Point. On the right side of the card is where you will fill out your commitment and turn it in at the bins today. Aaron Brockett Let’s pray together. Father we come to You right now and I thank you for passages like this that convict my heart and yet at the same time encourage me to be a faithful servant. And we long to hear those words from You, “Well done. Well done good and faithful servant. You not only trusted Me with your life you trusted Me with your time, treasure, and your talent to make much of My Name so that those who are disconnected might have a relationship with Me.”



God I pray that You would honor our desire to make much of Your Name in our city of Indianapolis and around the world. I pray today that as we worship and as we return our financial commitment cards that this truly would be an act of worship and that Your Spirit would do something deep within the life of our church. We ask this right now in the Name of Jesus. And the church says together, Amen.

humble & hungry: grace is … what you do with...

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