Coming around to that time again

So what does a wee little man in a tree have to do with preparing for the coming of the Lord?

We are coming around to that time again.

We begin to hear it in the word of the Lord through the prophet, “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:16-18).

We begin to hear it in the words of Paul to the believers in Corinth, encouraging them to use their gifts for the mutual edification of the one Body of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:1-11).

We are coming around again to that time, that season in which we long for, thirst for, cry out for the coming of our Lord, Emmanuel, God with us.

For all our longing, thirsting, and crying out, however, the coming of the Lord—as both Isaiah and Paul remind us—is something for which we must be, first and foremost, prepared.

Zacchaeus, that wee little man whom most of us probably first met in a Sunday School lesson years ago, a comical figure in most our minds, seems an odd character to insert into the story at this point. We read his story in Luke 19:1-10. What has a man climbing up a sycamore tree to do with preparing ourselves for the coming of the Lord?

In a word, everything!

What Isaiah foretold, what Paul declared, Zacchaeus got a glimpse of on that day when Jesus called out, “Zacchaeus, hurry up and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”

Who was Zacchaeus?

He was a resident of Jericho, though certainly not its most popular resident.

One of the great ironies of salvation history is that the two names most associated with Jericho are the prostitute Rahab, who helped the Hebrew spies in preparation for the conquest of the Promised Land (cf. Joshua 2) and the notorious tax collector, Zacchaeus.

Tax Collectors were collaborators with the Roman occupiers. They were seen as despicable traitors and scoundrels. They not only went out of their way to make sure you paid every last penny of the tribute you owed to Caesar, but to make matters worse, they added an additional little fee that they conveniently kept for themselves.

Zacchaeus was not just any tax collector. He was a chief tax collector. That means, in all likelihood, he was also skimming a little more money off the top from all the other tax collectors.

To top it all off and cast this little fellow in the worst possible light, Luke throws in the additional fact that “he was rich.”

“Rich” in Luke’s Gospel means attached to wealth, defined by riches, holding on to things of this world as though they were all that mattered.

Yet, Zacchaeus “was seeking to see who Jesus was.”

Somewhere, deep down inside, Zacchaeus knew there was more to life than the enormous wealth he had accumulated through dubious means. In the midst of a forest of meaningless riches, God was still trying to get this little man’s attention.

A. W. Tozer observes in The Pursuit of God:

Before a sinful man can think a right thought of God, there must have been a work of enlightenment done within him. Imperfect it may be, but a true work nonetheless, and the secret cause of all desiring and seeking and praying which may follow.

We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit.

Who was Zacchaeus?

He was very much the typical Jew of Jesus’ day. He was a hopeless sellout who desperately wanted to buy in to something that would give him hope. He was longing for renewal, hungering for restoration, crying out for deliverance; but he was clinging tenaciously to a way of life that kept that renewal, that restoration, that deliverance at arm’s length.

He was a child of Abraham, yet he was lost.

Such a situation was nothing new in Israel. Isaiah, generations earlier, confronted the same mindset among God’s people.

Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. “When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations—I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. (Isaiah 1:10-15)

God is not impressed with empty ritual.

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 1:16-20)

“Come now, let us reason together,” seems an odd thing for God to say. After hashing out a litany of misdeeds that deserve condemnation, it is utterly unreasonable, one would think, to say, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”

The same God who has rejected empty rituals and meaningless sacrifices now makes an offer himself. All will be forgiven if his people simply turn their hearts back to him.

A God who would have every right to pour out his wrath instead offers mercy and pardon if his people will repent.

Thanks be to God for mercy that defies reason!

Such repentance, however, must be genuine. The people must “cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.” In other words, they must do exactly the opposite of what their fallen nature tells them to do. They must forsake self-interest and look, instead, to the interests of others, especially the weakest among them.

How did Zacchaeus respond when Jesus visited his house?

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.” (Luke 19:8)

He ceased to do evil, learned to do good; sought justice, corrected oppression; even, we can surmise from that day forward, brought justice to the fatherless and pleaded the widow’s cause.

“Today,” Jesus declared, “salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:9).

Does all this seem to defy reason? In our limited human capacity, perhaps it does. But that is the whole point. God wants us to realize that we are nothing without him. Our rituals, our assemblies, even our prayers can never be ends in themselves. God sent his Son to seek us out and save us, no matter how lost we may be. He calls us by name and invites us to turn to him with our whole heart, relying not on ourselves, but on him alone to make everything right.

We are coming around to that time again. We are beginning to hear those voices that, in a few short weeks, will rise to a crescendo of songs and litanies and prayers. We will long for, thirst for, cry out for the coming of our Lord. But for all our longing, all our thirsting, all our crying out, will we be prepared? Will you be prepared?

How will you respond when this Jesus, the Son of Man who came to seek and save the lost, calls you by name and says, “hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today . . . ?”