God, Greed, Grace

It's a pretty well-known story. If you grew up going to Sunday school, there's probably a little song that you know. I won't sing about it, but something to do with a wee little man.

You can probably remember it. We're going to read about the story of Zacchaeus from Luke 19, verse 1 to 10. Luke, the evangelist, writes these words. This is what he says, verse 1 of 19.

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was 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. And since Jesus was coming that way, when Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and he said to him, Zacchaeus, come down immediately.

I must stay at your house today. And so he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, he's 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.

And 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 the Lord. Let's pray. Let's ask for God's help as we study. Most of God, won't you teach us this morning from your word? Won't you help us to see the truth of scripture?

Won't you embed it upon our hearts and change us by what we see? Allow us to see your son clearly and to see the amazing news of the gospel that we will love you and serve you.

Work in us by your spirit, we pray. For Christ's sake. Amen. So as we mentioned in the announcements earlier today, we are doing another outreach in the evening in the hall on the side.

Five o'clock in the evening starts in two, two, three weeks time, looking particularly at the issue of evil and suffering, God in the darkness. But what we thought we would do over this entire quarter really, before we get to sort of our Christmas Advent sermon series, which is coming faster than you know it's coming, is we're going to basically have a quarter of outreach.

So besides those outreaches that are taking place in the evening, we're going to redo the outreaches we've done in the evening in the past two years in the Sunday morning services because a lot of you weren't there at those outreaches.

And so that gives you a chance not just to bring friends to the evening thing that's going on, but you can bring them to any old Sunday as well because we'll be talking through things that pertain specifically to understanding Jesus, coming to know the gospel and having a relationship with him.

But before we get on to that, I thought there was just one more thing I wanted to say on the faith in the work stuff, the series we had finished up before I went on leave last weekend.

So this is something of an addendum to our little series on work. One of the things that work often achieves is wealth, money.

And in a place like the city center of Cape Town and in an upwardly mobile congregation like ours, there are a lot of people here who have the potential to make quite a lot of money out of their professions.

And so I want us to talk about that. And particularly how we don't fall into the trap of greed, but rather become generous givers with what the Lord gives us.

And so while you might hear that and say, well, hang on, that has all sorts of special implications for those who are high earners or the potential to become high earners based on their profession, I do want to also say that everything that we're going to say today applies to those who would earn relatively little.

It just sort of scales down a little bit in terms of the application, but it applies accordingly. And the way we're going to tackle this topic is by talking about the idol of money. What we saw the whole way through our series on faith and work is that one of the things you can do with work is you can idolize work itself.

You can idolize career, but you can not only idolize work, you can actually also idolize the fruits of your work, whether that's status, a sense of achievement, or the money that you get from your work, the wealth that you accumulate.

Idolatry, we talk about this a lot, but let me just remind you again in terms of the sort of base definition I'm working off of when I say that word idolatry. Idolatry is really having any small g God in place of capital G God.

Anything that you take in your life and you put it on the top of the pyramid of, this is where I give my deepest attention and devotion to, that is your small g God. And if it's not capital G God, then you are slipping into some form of functional idolatry.

Now the idol of money is probably one of our culture's greatest idols. It's one that our very, very sophisticated culture has looked to, to sort of replace that gaping hole that we have in ourselves as a culture from dismissing God from the public life.

If we don't get transcendence from a relationship with God, if that's when we're getting a higher sense of meaning and purpose and value in life and that transcendence, well then we have to go and get that from somewhere else. We have to go find that transcendence somewhere else.

And so one of the ways we do it is through money. You see this in the architecture. During the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance period, the highest point of the town or the city marked its religion, its God.

So the church steeple is always the highest point of the town. You can still kind of see this today if you go out into rural South Africa and you go into any little town. You'll find the Dutch Reformed Church at the center of the town with the steeple being the highest point of the town.

Today, however, the tallest buildings in many cities around the world are what? The banking buildings. Think about Cape Town. The port side is the tallest building in Cape Town.

It's the one that has FNB and Rand Merchant Bank on the side. And that's in a city that's not even particularly known as being a banking city. If you look at the architecture, you can discern the gods of the city.

You can discern how we're trying to replace the transcendence of the infinite with finite things. You can see what's highest in our culture.

Friedrich Nietzsche saw this just at the time that the Western world was sort of beginning its journey into secularism. And he wrote this. He said, What induces one man to use false weights, another to set his house on fire after having insured it for more than its value, while three-fourths of our upper classes indulge in legalized fraud.

What gives rise to all of this? It's not real want, for their existence is by no means precarious, but they are urged on day and night by a terrible impatience at seeing their wealth pile up so slowly, and by equally terrible longing and love for these heaps of gold.

What once was done for the love of God is now done for the love of money, i.e. the highest love of that which at present affords us the highest feeling of power and good conscience.

So why do we behave the way that we behave in regards to money? Well, Nietzsche says it's because money has become our highest love. That's what's happened. It's the pinnacle of our new temple. It's the highest point in the city.

And that bad behavior that he mentions there, so using faulty scales, the legalized fraud, that's the byproduct of having money as your God.

What we would call greed. And so I want us to look at a character in the Bible who was wrapped up in greed and the idolatry of money, and that is Zacchaeus.

A lot of what I'm going to say today actually really helped by a chapter in a book called The Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller. There's a lot more in there, so if you ever read that book, go and read that. It's a great book on idolatry in and of itself.

But I want you to see three movements today in this passage. There's a movement in the story from God to greed. Then there's a second movement from greed to grace.

And then there's a third movement from grace to giving. So God to greed, greed to grace, and then grace to giving. Here's the first movement in the story from God to greed.

Have a look at verse 1. Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus. He was the 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. Now we're told some really interesting details here about this guy. He was a tax collector.

That's interesting because tax collectors in this society don't have a great reputation. They were generally regarded by the local population as being people who were in cahoots with the Roman government because you're collecting tax on behalf of an oppressive Roman government that we don't even want ruling over us.

So we really don't like you. And often tax collectors were involved in taking a little bit more as well off the top than they should have. So they're really not a respected profession or a liked group of people in the society.

But he's not just a tax collector. He's the chief tax collector. And as a result, he's pretty wealthy. So you've got this picture of an incredibly wealthy yet probably despised man.

And then there's another interesting detail that adds to the picture and that is he's short. So Luke very deliberately tells us this.

He's short enough for it to be a noticeable thing that if you had gone into a conversation and you were walking away with your wife afterwards, you would have gone, that guy was really short, wasn't he? So this is probably a sore spot for him.

Source of ridicule and derision maybe. That makes it quite an interesting fact that he'd want to be a tax collector in the first place. I mean, here's a guy who knows what it's like to be the brunt of societal ridicule because of his height and yet he actively pursues a career that's going to put him in an even worse light with the other people around him.

Now why would he do that? Why would he risk that sort of further emotional damage and social isolation? He's got to have something driving him to want to do that.

And it's pretty clear from the rest of the story that it's money that's driving him. The accumulation of wealth is his God. His God, small case G, moves him to greed.

Even at the risk of his social status. And friends, you need to remember that social status is a really, really big deal in this culture, this first century culture. It's interesting to me that Jesus warns us about greed way more than he does about sexual immorality, for example, in the Gospels.

And yet, very, very few of us think that we actually struggle with greed. We know who the greedy people are. We can point those people out. Like, oh, that person, he's a greedy person. But we don't see it in ourselves.

If I were to do a little experiment with you, if I got 10 pastors from Cape Town churches, pastors that I know, friends of mine, colleagues of mine, and I had them stand up here on a Sunday morning, and we had them all on the line, and I asked them, how often has a congregation member come up to you and said, Pastor, I'm really, really struggling with lust?

I bet you all 10 of the pastors will stick up their hand. If I say, how often has a congregation member come to you saying, hey, Pastor, I'm really, really struggling with anger? I reckon most of the pastors will put up their hand.

If I say, how often has a congregation member come to you saying, Pastor, I'm really struggling with pride? Again, I reckon most of the pastors will put up their hand. If I say, how often has a congregation member come to you and said, hey, Pastor, I'm really, really struggling with greed?

I doubt any of them are going to put up their hand. Which is bizarre. Because deep down, we know that money is one of, if not the biggest idol in our materialistic culture.

The culture that you and I all swim in, all day, every single day, and yet none of us struggle with greed? Why do we think that? It's because greed is very hard to see in yourself.

Mainly because we tend to live our lives in sort of economic strata, economic layers. And so we take our cue from the people who live around us in the same layer as us.

Now, I'm speculating a little bit here, but I suspect that when Zacchaeus did hang out socially, he hung out with other tax collectors. Sort of reinforces the narrative, like, I'm a good guy, I'm right.

And because we all sort of tend to do that, we tend to live in these socioeconomic brackets, we tend to determine then what the boundaries of excess and insufficiency are by that specific group.

And so it's entirely possible then to be very greedy and yet completely blind to that reality. It's hard to see greed in the God of money often.

Even if you think back about those cathedral spires and the church steeples that towered over western towns and cities in previous centuries, when organized religion got into bed with the state or with power, the finances often in those societies flowed through those buildings.

They were often not that different from the banking institutions that tower over our modern day cities. You see, the God of money is an expert at hiding. He knows how to hide. Which makes the God of money who then drives greed in us exceptionally dangerous.

to you and to me. And so we will do all sorts of destructive things in our lives like jeopardize our social status in the pursuit of greed without realizing it.

And we'll have ways of justifying it. Listen, Zacchaeus here, he jeopardizes his social status but we'll jeopardize all sorts of things.

We will jeopardize our values to feed our greed. We will jeopardize our family responsibilities to feed our greed. We will jeopardize our faith to feed our greed.

And all along the way we'll have very sophisticated ways of justifying it to others and even to our own hearts. And the God of money is exceptionally dangerous to you and to me.

Zacchaeus is wrapped up in a destructive way of life through greed that is driven by his lowercase g! God. So that's the first movement I want you to see here.

The second movement in the story is from greed to grace. So it starts in verse 3. Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was but because he was short he could not see over the crowd so he ran ahead and he climbed a sycamore fig tree to see him since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot he looked up and he said to him Zacchaeus come down immediately I must stay at your house today and so he came down at once and welcomed him gladly and all the people saw this and began to mutter he has gone to be the guest of a sinner.

Now it seems to me somehow in the course of this story Zacchaeus has become aware of his problem. Somehow he's had it bear down on him through his conscience because he does something quite extraordinary here and that is he climbs a tree.

He's short so he couldn't see Jesus probably because the people won't let him through to the front of the line to see Jesus they don't really like him in the first place so he does an incredibly undignified thing in that culture and he climbs up a tree.

Now remember like I said earlier honor and dignity are massive massive things in this first century culture and so to do things that would jeopardize your honor and your dignity is a big big deal.

Climbing a tree is like throwing your dignity out the window and so again you go well why is he doing this? Well he's desperate to see Jesus. He's absolutely desperate to see Jesus.

He knows he knows he probably doesn't have all the words for it but he knows deep down that he's enslaved to his wealth. He knows it has terrible consequences for him and for others and he wants to be free from that.

He wants to be free from his idol. He wants to see this man who's supposed to be able to bring redemption forgive sins and bring redemption and so he completely humbles himself he strips himself of any claimed worth before Jesus by going up that tree and Jesus looks up into the tree and he says come down I'm going to come to you for lunch.

Being a guest at somebody's house definitely involves eating this wasn't like a polite pastoral visit it's joining him for a meal and you can see the response that it gets from the people who are around watching this whole interaction oh he's gone to be the guest of a sinner they say Jesus has gone to eat with a sinner he's gone to share table fellowship with his greedy idolater because sharing table fellowship well it's a sign of acceptance it's a sign of affirmation to the person you're sitting down with see what's happening here is what what really happens time and time again throughout the gospel accounts when people have a life-changing encounter with Jesus and that is there's grace there's grace grace is undeserved favor and merit Zacchaeus he takes any merit that he might still possess there in that moment and he just tosses it he throws it out the window he humbles himself and at the point of that absolute humility

Jesus meets him and Jesus accepts him that's grace that's the gospel we do not bring our performance to Jesus we do not bring our morality our good deeds and say okay look look what a good person I am look what I've done look what I've achieved now Jesus you must accept me look at my religious performance you must accept me I go to church so many times I give so much money to the church I don't do these things I do all this stuff positively now Jesus you must accept me we don't do that the way you get into relationship with Jesus and this is all over the Bible it's in the Old Testament it's in the New Testament the way you get yourself into relationship with Jesus is by humbling yourself and saying as the words of the hymn go nothing in my hand I bring simply to thy cross I cling Jesus is the redeemer he brings us in by his grace he is the one who chooses to sit at the table with us and bring us into the family you are never going to get rid of your idols through the sheer exercise of your will don't do this don't don't trust in money you're not just going to will yourself into that why well because the worship of God itself is built upon grace a grace relationship with him through Jesus

Christ you can't will yourself into that relationship by definition you can't earn your way into his good books all you can do is repent humble yourself before him and ask him to come in invite him in as a guest Zacchaeus does a whole lot of really good stuff in the post script of the story and we'll get to that in a second but everything he does all of the good deeds that he does later on they flow from his first being accepted by Christ he moves from greed to grace before he moves to giving and that is how we all get to God in the end you don't get to God by giving you get to God by sheer grace it is God who does the giving he gives the grace and he welcomes us in so you need that grace to be free from your idol and that grace starts with humility it starts with you coming before

God and regardless of what is in your bank balance regardless of what profession you're in regardless of how well you think you're living your life it starts with you coming before God and saying I have nothing I have nothing to bring to this relationship so that's the second movement in the story here's the third movement from grace to giving verse 8 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 save the lost so Zacchaeus moved by grace now gives he says

I want to take of my wealth and I want to give 50% to the poor and then I want to pay back the different people that I've defrauded along the way I want to do some restitution see here's how you know here's your diagnostic if you like here's how you know that grace is taking root in your life and it is loosening the grip of the idol of money and that is you give and you give generously and you give freely there are actually two types of giving here in this passage there's generous giving and there's just giving so the generous giving the first one he says I'm going to give 50% of my wealth to the poor now the bible commands Christians to give to the poor in several places but nowhere can you find a verse that says you've got to give 50% of your wealth to the poor Zacchaeus wouldn't have been in sin or transgressing God's moral law if he was just giving 15% of his wealth to the poor there's no legalistic instruction that he's following here by giving 50% what he is doing is he is being incredibly generous his heart has now been disentangled from his wealth and it's been it's actually been disentangled in a very specific way that makes him generous so let me explain it this way

Jesus is clearly in at least at this point in Luke's gospel he is clearly somebody of stature the crowds are flocking to him to come and see him every time he goes into a town they want to come and see him they want to come and hear him so he's a man of stature hence Zacchaeus has to climb a tree to just get a look in Jesus has got followers he's got a level of temporary status he's got people hanging on to his every word he's got all of the things that Zacchaeus doesn't have Zacchaeus is hated by the people many people adore Jesus people run from Zacchaeus when they see him coming people run to Jesus when they see him coming Zacchaeus has nothing and Jesus has everything that he wants and at Zacchaeus' lowest point ironically when he's high up in a tree Jesus who has everything that Zacchaeus longs for in that moment people he gives it to him by sitting down at a table with him he generously includes him he generously reaches out and he accepts him he shares his status with him and it comes at a cost a cost to himself and his reputation because look at what the crowd say he's gone to be the guest of a sinner so he's losing status now to include the one who desperately needs the status and wants the status so the way that what's happened here is the way that Zacchaeus' heart has been disentangled from his money is really through the costly generosity of Jesus and it's changed him he's seen it he's seen it in action he's like you don't have to do this for me you really don't have to do this for me you've done this for me

I don't deserve you to do this for me you've done this for me and when he sees the cost of that when he sees those people mutter about Jesus sitting with him he realizes what's been done for him and it disentangles his heart from his money makes him generous now this is the gospel in microcosm form the infinitely rich son of God generously impoverishing himself to make us eternally rich the apostle Paul says basically the same thing in 2 Corinthians chapter 8 verse 9 he says for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich yet for your sake he became poor so that you through his poverty might become rich Zacchaeus is generous in his giving because he has been a recipient of a generous gospel that's how he got there that's where he got the 50% from it wasn't a verse somewhere that's where it came from now friends think about us how much more have we been recipients of

Christ's generous wealth through his sacrificial death on our behalf and what has that done to us when you've come to know that and come to understand what you have been a recipient of in the gospel what has it done to you what has it done to your wallet what has it done to your budget what has it done to your giving do you give and do you give generously if you don't it might be because you've failed to grasp the generous love that God poured out for you in the life death and resurrection of Jesus you can tell me that you believe the gospel with your head but without any sort of generous giving in your life it's pretty hard to tell if you actually believe that and this is really super super practical I mean in the New Testament Christians are called to give into two places mainly we mentioned this earlier give to the poor you saw that at work in our benevolence fund this morning especially fellow Christians who are struggling and we'll talk more about that in a second and then to give to the advance of gospel ministry through churches giving to your local church and giving to mission the

Bible calls on Christians to give to the ministry of the church deliberately and consistently you see these patterns in the way Paul talks about taking up offerings in the New Testament and what I mean by that is I'm guessing use some sort of a budgeting system to work out how much you're going to spend each month so you budget for food or you budget for rent or insurance or Netflix or gym or whatever it is that you're budgeting for I would put it to you that because of the way the New Testament speaks about being consistent and deliberate in your giving predetermining how much you're going to give and then putting it into your budget is probably a very very wise way to go about making your giving habitual in other words you don't give just sort of like the leftovers at the end of the month but plan to give beforehand plan to be generous beforehand discipline yourself into generous giving monthly just being spontaneous doesn't make you a generous person plan it without planned consistent giving you're a little bit like that person who used to click the maybe button on Facebook you remember when everybody used to arrange all their events on

Facebook some of you are very young and you're like I don't know what's going you're talking about who is on Facebook anymore but basically if you wanted to go to a fun social event then you had to put it on Facebook to make it legit and there would be three options yes no maybe and the worst person in the world the worst social media offender in the world was the person to click the maybe button to your social event because what they're saying is I'm going to hang on and see I probably want to go to your event but just in case something better comes along I'm going to click maybe the person who doesn't give but sort of predetermined consistent giving is a little bit like the person who clicks the maybe button on Facebook it's a clear sign sometimes if you're like that constantly that your money has a little bit too much of a hold of you that you're not able to just say no I'm going to give it I'm going to predetermine to give it then people also always want to know how much they give to the church is the

Old Testament tithe of 10% still a law for New Testament believers and friends I want to say the New Testament actually doesn't precisely tell you how much to give it doesn't sort of peg it at a percentage as directly as the Old Testament tends!

to do although I do think a pretty good case can in principial form it's a good rule of thumb as you're initially trying to figure out how much should I be giving but what the New Testament tends to do instead is it points to the cross it says the pattern for giving is the cross Christ graciously generously sacrificially giving up his glorious wealth to make you his treasure so how much should you give well how much did Jesus give if anything that the tithing might in some ways be like a minimum standard for believers today now that's quite a big truth to take on board and go okay it's more than I was thinking but here's what I want to tell you what I want to sort of provoke you on and push you on go out and do that go out and be reckless go out and apply this teaching be sacrificial be generous in your giving and do that consistently and do deliberately do that and I am pretty sure that you will begin to have less problems with money as an idol in your life so I ask are you giving generously has the gospel loosened your purse strings so there's generous giving giving but there's also just giving not only does

Zacchaeus generously give to the poor he also promises to make restitution did you see that he realizes that his participation in sort of the economic empire of Rome has actually hurt a lot of people and so he now uses his wealth to redress that the gospel of grace has so changed him that he now starts to become something of a champion of justice in the face of injustice that's going on in his society previously he oppressed the poor now he commits to undoing poverty previously he extorted wealth now he serves others with his wealth you see what's happened is that money is no longer his god money is no longer his savior and if it's not his savior it goes back to simply just being money a tool a tool that can be rightly used as an amazing force of good and so his whole attitude to his money is completely changed he's still got it but it doesn't rule him anymore and so if it doesn't rule him if it's not his savior if his entire life's purpose and goal and sense of acceptance and achievement and that is tied up with his money if it doesn't have that effect on him anymore then he asks the next logical question well how can I use it for good friends do you know that that is why God has given you material blessings the reason that you have what you have right now is because you need tools you need tools to serve God's good and just purposes in this world and he puts those tools in your hand and he says go and he used them he puts money in your bank account and he says go and use it use the tools that he gives you they are terrible terrible terrible masters but wonderfully life giving tools if they're used rightly maybe if I can just say a word and I'll kind of sort of close off with this but a word for those of you who are high earners or potential high earners because some of you are still students or you're early on in your career and you're en route to that some of you are sitting okay well am I a high earner you're thinking about that right now you're doing the sums this week status say released their quarterly employment survey in that they found that the average salary in South

Africa not the median but the average salary was 31,000 rand the median is actually a lot lower it's 16,000 rand but the average salary is 31,000 rand so if you're making above that well then you are above average in this country and you're way above the median but here's what I want to say to you high earners God has given you money to serve his purposes not to indulge yourself Romans 12 18 actually says that giving generously is a gift given by God the ability to give generously is a gift given by God to his people if in God's providence you've been placed in a position to exercise that gift then you had best do it a consistent pattern that we actually see in the New Testament is that of what we might call gospel patrons so sort of high wealth people who support the ministry of Jesus who support the ministry of the apostles the

Lord uses these sorts of people to plant churches to fund student ministry to give bursaries to theological education students to purchase and renovate church properties and buildings some of you I think and particularly maybe in a congregation like ours this might be a special calling on us as we continue to mature as a church but some of you need to be thinking very seriously about how you use your current and your future wealth to advance the kingdom some of you are incredibly good at making money and so you should be thinking about how to be incredibly good at making money for Jesus and I want to say you won't regret it you won't regret it our little denomination that our church is part of has gone from two churches to eleven churches in the last eight years much of that has been funded much of that initial growth has been funded by high worth individuals in the US who have been generous partners the

Presbyterian Church in America I get to know and meet several of those individuals personally I get to become friends with some of them as I go over and do fundraising and I was on a zoom call with one of them recently he actually serves as the treasurer for one of our funding organisations and he had a chance to be here on the ground in South Africa a couple of months ago and there were several of us on a zoom call with him about two or three weeks ago he said to us he's an older man much older man and he said you guys have no idea how incredibly encouraging and moving it is to me personally to be able to see all the ministry taking place through your churches and to have been privileged to play just a small part in that and he always got a little bit teary as he shared that with us and I've watched these guys give like this and I've been deeply moved by the generosity of some of our overseas friends and partners but you know what

I'm tired I'm tired of it only being people on the other side of the Atlantic who are being generous I want to see it here I want to see us South Africans moved by the gospel using our wealth for kingdom expansion more than ever we need Christians who view their wealth and their privilege as tools of the kingdom now we're fearful of that in our present economic climate we're fearful of that we're fearful of being left short right fearful that our wealth won't return to us if we dish it out generously and sacrificially but our level of fear is directly proportional to how much we value wealth as a personal saviour in our own lives the less that we view it as a personal saviour the more we will just see it as a tool to be used for God's purposes friends we have a saviour already his name is Jesus and to the extent that your heart is moved by his costly salvation you will stop seeing your own wealth as your personal saviour and you will start to use it in much much more healthy ways you need the salvation of Christ to come to your house is what you need

Jesus stands and he looks at this change in Zacchaeus he looks at the generous giving he looks at the just giving and he says today salvation has come to this house today the lost person has found really today the impoverished person has truly become rich that's what you need to happen through the gospel in your life