Sermon Archive

During his time on earth, Jesus shared many meals, with a wide variety of dinner guests-tax collectors, religious leaders, skeptics, prostitutes, fishermen... Just as Jesus reveals his character through the words he spoke and the miracles he performed, he shows himself through the meals he shared and the people he sat across from. _____________________________________________________________________________________________

Hey church family, great to welcome everybody who's watching online as well as everyone joining us here on campus in person at 11:00 AM live service. Wherever you are, or however you might be watching, it’s great to have you with us today. I also want to invite you to grab your message notes that look like this in the middle of your bulletins. You can also download them on the ERBCLA app, or on our website if you're watching online.

 

Today we continue our series Meals With Jesus, and this weekend's message, let me just start with a statement. Research shows that one of your deepest needs is the need to feel valuable, the need to feel significant, the need to feel as though your life matters to someone, that you have value. And so it follows that a huge question is, How Do You Judge Your Value? How do you judge your worth? How do you know if you really do matter?

 

It’s an important question because your answer to this question will absolutely end up driving your whole entire life. Let me show you what I mean, we typically judge in one of four ways. Some of us tend to judge our worth. . .

 

By Appearance

 

How do I look? Do I look good? If I look good, I must be good. That’s one way to judge value. Another way that we typically judge our worth is . . .

 

By Achievement

 

What have I accomplished? I don’t know if you’re one of those people who like to make “To-Do” lists. I’ll come up with a list of 18 or 20 things that I need to get done, and if I get all of those checked off that list I feel good about myself. If I don’t then not so much. Another way that we can measure our worth is by. . .  

 

By Approval

 

How well am I liked? If a lot of people like me, I must be okay. If not, then I’m not. Approval has become a lot easier to measure in the era of social media because you can just post stuff and then keep count as to how many people LIKE it. If I get a lot of likes, I’m worth more, than if I don’t.

 

By the way, I don’t know if we have any baseball fans with us, but if you’re a Dodger fan, did you see that your team hit a new milestone this week? No, I’m not talking about the series against the giants where the Dodgers climbed back into first place - - that’s not really news since the Dodgers are in the middle of a streak of 8-consecutive NL West titles and 3 trips to the World Series in the last 4 years. What I’m talking about is that for the first time ever in their history, the Dodgers have been officially named “The Most Hated Baseball Team in America”.

 

The folks who measure this stuff, did this scientifically, or at least as scientifically as anything can be that involves social media, and they looked at 100,000 different Tweets, broken down on a state-by-state basis and what they found is that the Dodgers just narrowly beat out the New York Yankees and the Houston Astros for the title of “Most Hated Baseball Team In America”.

 

Now some of the things on that map I understand, but I’m hard pressed to figure out the problem that Alaska might have with the Dodgers, but be that as it may… If you build your worth on what other people think about you, then it’s easy to get devastated.

 

Every single time you get criticized. It brings you down. You're going to go through life thinking what do they think? What do they think? And you become a slave to the approval of other people. It’s sad to see people live like this. Sadder still is to see some people spending their entire life trying to gain the approval of somebody who is never going to give it to them.

 

If you're an adult, and you do not have the approval of mom or dad by now, more than like you are never going to get it ever. So stop looking for it there. We can judge our worth based on Appearance or Achievement or Approval, but we can also judge it based on . . .       

 

By Affluence

 

And this is what happens when I make my net worth my self-worth, but the problem was, it can all vanish so quickly. In fact, look at every one of these four: Appearance, Achievement, Approval, Affluence. What do they all have in common? What they all have in common is that they are all temporary. They can all change. 

 

For instance, can your appearance change?  If you’re sitting next to someone right now, who is living proof of the fact that “beauty fades,” would you raise your… None of these things on which we normally judge ourselves are good judges of our self-worth. Because our successes are going to ultimately be surpassed by other people, our records are going to be broken, our beauty is going to fade, and our possessions wear out, and people we think love us, die, or leave or abandon us or sometimes even reject us.

 

So, if you build your self-worth on those things, how good are you going to feel about yourself when you're old, ugly, and broke? Not very good. Psychological studies have shown that. You tend to base your self-worth on what you think the most important person in your life thinks about you. Think about that for a moment. You tend to base your self-worth on what you believe, the most important person in your life thinks about you.

 

If the most important person in your life measures you on the basis of your appearance, or the approval that you're getting from others, or your achievements or your affluence, then you're going to measure yourself that way too. So, the smartest thing you can do is to make the most important person in your life the L.J.C.

 

Because today we’re looking at a Meal With Jesus that is going to show you How Much You And I Matter To God, and we’re going to see that revealed through a MEAL that Jesus had with a man named Zacchaeus. If ever there was a man who needed a greater sense of self-worth, if ever there was a man who needed to have his self-esteem built up, it was Zacchaeus. Because when you look at Those 4 Ways We Evaluate Our Self-Worth, Zacchaeus struck out on the first three. Or at least two of the first three. . .

           

When it came to APPEARANCE, if you grew up going to Sunday School as a child, maybe you learned the Zacchaeus song. “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he…”

           

When it comes to your APPEARANCE probably not the thing that most of us want to remember for that we were a WEE LITTLE MAN. When it came to ACHIEVEMENT, you could say that as “the chief tax collector” he had climbed the ladder of success and risen to the highest rank among. But all that that meant was that when it came to approval among his own people, he had none – he was despised. But as we’ll see, he was rich.

           

In this story, we’re going to see four things that Jesus shows us about how much we matter to God. Number one . . .

 

1. No Matter How Small I Feel Jesus SEES Me

 

No matter how low, or how lonely, or how insignificant, I feel, even if nobody else sees me, Jesus Christ sees me. Take a look at Luke 19, beginning at verse 1. . . .

 

“Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town. There was a man there named Zacchaeus. He was the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich. He tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd.”  Luke 19:1-3

We learn a couple of things about Zacchaeus from these three verses. First, we learn that he was WEALTHY. Verse 2 tells us that Zacchaeus was not just rich, but he was “VERY RICH”. Another thing we learn is that he was LONELY. Where do I see that? I see that in his chosen profession. Zacchaeus was “THE CHIEF TAX COLLECTOR in the region”. Zacchaeus may well have been the most hated man in the city of Jericho. He was a tax collector, and tax collectors are never popular but in Roman days it was even worse.

 

The Roman system of collecting taxes was absolutely corrupt. In the FIRST PLACE, to become a tax collector you had to BRIBE AN OFFICIAL for the privilege of becoming a tax collector. SECOND, as a tax collector, you could COLLECT AND KEEP as much taxes as you wanted to keep, as long as you paid Rome its due. For instance, maybe a family owed Rome one dollar and you could say, “YOU OWE ROME TEN DOLLARS.” They would pay you ten. You’d give Rome one, and you pocket the nine. So, it was a very corrupt system. 

 

For a Jewish person to become a Roman tax collector was absolutely unthinkable. If you became a Roman tax collector as a Jew it meant three things.

 

ONE, your family would disown you. 

 

TWO, you would never be allowed to worship in the synagogue,

 

And THREE, you would be put in a class of people that were worse than murderers. 

 

So, Zacchaeus was hated by everybody because not only was he a tax collector but he was the CHIEF TAX COLLECTOR which means this was the guy on top who runs the whole scam. And yet, something was stirring in the heart of Zacchaeus and he wanted to see Jesus. So verse 4 tells us that…

 

 “So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was going to pass that way.”

 

I don’t think that Zacchaeus had any expectation of being able to TALK to Jesus. He was just HOPING FOR A GLIMPSE - - - because Jesus was a celebrity - - - and Zacchaeus maybe figured he’d gain some status if he could say “You know I saw Jesus when he came through town”. But we’re told that . . . not only did he see Jesus, but Jesus saw him.

 

“When Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. ‘Zacchaeus!’ he said. ‘Quick, come down! I must be a guest in your home today.’” - Luke 19:4-5

 

Why did Jesus do that? Why did Jesus stop right at that tree and look up? Because He knew that was exactly where Zacchaeus was, and God knows exactly where you are today. 

 

You may be up a tree. You may be out on a limb. You may think God has forgotten you and that He is a thousand miles away. But He is not. He’s got His eyes on you. There’s never been a moment when God took His eyes off you.

 

Never. 

 

We have a hard time imagining that God pays that much attention to us because we don’t pay that much attention to God. We don’t notice God twenty-four hours a day. But every moment of every day God has His eye on you. He’s never taken them off you. He's seen every hurt you've ever felt, every sadness you've ever suffered, every tear you've ever cried. He knows it all. Look at what Jesus said earlier in Luke 12…

 

"God never overlooks a single sparrow.  And He pays even greater attention to you, down to the last detail even numbering the hairs on your head!"  Luke 12:6 7 (Msg)

 

This truth isn’t just for people who have never heard about Jesus. I believe most of us, even if you’ve been a Christian for 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50 years, I believe it’s not possible to have even the vaguest idea of how deep the love of God is for you. Because our brains aren't big enough to grasp out how much God loves us and to comprehend how much attention God gives to you.  

 

EVEN WHEN YOU AND I FEEL SMALL, JESUS SEES US. And then number two. . .

 

No Matter What Others Say, Jesus VALUES Me

           

When Jesus stopped, and looked up at that tree, and called Zacchaeus by name, not everyone was pleased. Verse 6 tells us . . . 

 

"Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy…

           

But sadly, that excitement and joy that Zacchaeus felt, wasn’t shared by everyone. We’re told that the people who were watching all this had a very different reaction. We’re told that they were displeased and that they grumbled. They said. . .

 

"‘He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,’”

           

And although that was who Zacchaeus was. He was in fact a “notorious sinner”. THAT WAS NOT ALL THAT JESUS SAW when he looked at him. Looking at his heart, Jesus saw a man who was seeking after God. And if you skip ahead in the story, you’ll see that speaking about Zacchaeus, Jesus will say…

 

"‘this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham.’”

           

When Jesus looks at us, he doesn’t just see our PAST, he sees our POTENTIAL. He sees what’s on the inside, in our heart, and he SEES WHAT WE CAN BE IN HIM. Read through the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and you’ll see that as he writes that letter, in Ephesians 2 –

doesn’t gloss over the fact that we’re all sinners. He even goes so far as to say

 

“Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins.”  Ephesians 2:1

           

But he writes on and says that as new creations in Christ…

 

 “For we are God’s masterpiece. ..

 

That’s what God says about you. Not that you’re an embarrassment, or a failure, or a loser. “You’re a masterpiece”

 

“He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” - Ephesians 2:10

 

Masterpieces are not mass-produced. Masterpieces are not produced on an assembly line. Masterpieces are custom creations and you are God's custom creation. They are made by a master craftsman who lovingly takes a lot of time choosing all the details of that statue, of that piece of art. And God lovingly chose every detail in your life. You may not like them. You may not understand them until much later on in life and you go, "Oh, that's why that happened!" Or some of the details you may not understand until you get to heaven. 

 

But God had a plan and it's a good plan and you need to trust Him on it. You are a masterpiece, which means you are uniquely customized. Made to be you. There's no one like you anywhere else.

 

No matter how small I feel, Jesus SEES me

           

No matter what others say, Jesus VALUES me

 

And no matter what I’ve done, Jesus TRANSFORMS me

           

And we see evidence of the transformation in Zacchaeus' life revealed in his words to Jesus at that dinner. Verse 8 tells us . . .

 

“Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, ‘I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!’” - Luke 19:8 

           

Notice, two times Zacchaeus says . . .

 

“I Will Give”

 

The most selfish man in the city all of a sudden became the most generous man in the city. A taker becomes a giver. What happened? Jesus changed his heart.

           

Two things that you and I should understand as we look at what Zacchaeus said here. Number one: The Bible does not ask everybody to give half their possessions to the poor when they become believers. This wasn’t something that was REQUIRED of Zacchaeus, but rather something he chose to do VOLUNTARILY.

 

Number two: This is not telling us that ZACCHAEUS WAS SAVED because he gave away his money. It is telling us that he gave away his money BECAUSE HE WAS SAVED. His actions are the evidence of a transformed heart, and then the final point of the story.

 

No matter how far I’ve gone, Jesus SEEKS me

           

Take a look at the end of this story and our MEMORY VERSE for this week. It’s Luke 19:10 and it says . . .

 

“For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”  Luke 19:10 

           

This was the whole reason that Jesus left heaven and came to earth.

 

“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” - John 3:17

           

That’s why Jesus came, and the only thing he asks us to do is to respond. How Do You Do That? You do it the same way that Zacchaeus did. Luke 19:6 says . . .

 

“Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy.” - Luke 19:6

           

The Message Paraphrase says . . .

 

“Zacchaeus scrambled out of the tree. . .”

 

You see you’ve only got to do one thing; Jesus does all the rest. He SEES you. He VALUES you. He TRANSFORMS you. He SEEKS you. All you’ve got to do is to run into the arms of the Jesus who will do all of this for you.

 

Zacchaeus takes Jesus up on his offer and is changed instantly, and as a result, Jesus tells him…

 

“‘Salvation has come to this home today,’”

           

My prayer for each of you is that Jesus is able to say for you, the same thing that He said for Zacchaeus. Would you pray with me. . .

More Messages from Dr. Rick Mandl

From Series: "Meals With Jesus"

During his time on earth, Jesus shared many meals, with a wide variety of dinner guests-tax collectors, religious leaders, skeptics, prostitutes, fishermen... Just as Jesus reveals his character through the words he spoke and the miracles he performed, he shows himself through the meals he shared and the people he sat across from.

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