Luke 19:1

Then Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. Now behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector and he was rich. And he sought to see Jesus, but he could not because of the crowd, for he was of short stature. So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for Jesus was going to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him and said, "Zacchaeus, make haste, come down, for today I must stay at your house." So Zacchaeus made haste and came down and received him joyfully. But when they saw it, they all complained, saying, "He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner."

If we grasp why Jesus came, we will discover why God has placed us exactly where we are.

Starting the Year With Purpose

Happy new year. As we begin a new year, we're starting a new short series on an important topic: purpose. I believe that knowing and having a purpose is essential if we are to live this life in a meaningful way. I'm not sure we can truly experience life as God intended without knowing the answers to a number of very important questions.

Everyone you interact with—at work, at school, in your neighborhood—has a worldview, a framework by which they see the world. And every philosophy needs to answer a series of important questions if it is going to hold up one's life. There are about five: identity, purpose, origin, destiny, and morality. We need to answer who we are, where we came from, where we're going after this, what we're here for, and how we should live. Strong answers to those questions are how we gain a transcendent meaning in this life. And those answers are found in the Scriptures.

A Collective Existential Crisis

People today are seemingly confused about meaning and purpose, and I think we see the evidence in our culture—an increase in prescription drug use and an increase in suicide. Our culture is having what some have called a collective existential crisis. Existentialism has to do with why we exist. It's almost like a collective midlife crisis, where people look at all they've done and all the time that's passed and ask, "What is it all about?"

There are many voices naming the cause. Some point to September 11th, 2001. Some say it was the election or re-election of George W. Bush, or the economic collapse of 2008 and 2009, or the elections of Barack Obama, or global warming, or the election of 2016. I read an article just yesterday claiming the world's leaders have been told climate change is the major crisis that will destroy everything. But I think deeper than all of those things are the issues of meaning and purpose.

I was listening to one person, not a Christian, who put it this way: life is very difficult, rife with suffering, contaminated by malevolence, and you need a sustaining meaning to avoid bitterness in this world. Without a sustaining purpose you enter what some call existential depression. So even people who have no framework for the existence of God are asking what life is about. And they wonder where to turn for this sustaining purpose.

The answers vary wildly. Sam Harris, an outspoken atheist many follow today, is convinced the best way to attain meaning is through meditation and perhaps even psychedelics—which is why you're seeing a cultural push to legalize and declassify those substances. People are starving for meaning, and the same voices identifying the problem tell us we must create our own purpose and manufacture our own meaning. That's extremely difficult, and a lot of people don't seem to be doing it very well.

The Purpose of Jesus

I'm convinced the Bible has answers, which leads to my proposition for this series. The purpose of Jesus helps us frame and understand our purpose more meaningfully. Jesus is revealed in the Scriptures as God—that is the great declaration of the Christian faith. And as God, he speaks about his purpose for coming into the world, what we call the incarnation. If that is God's purpose for Jesus, it has implications for our lives.

Why Jesus came begins to answer the questions we wrestle with: Why do I live where I live? Why am I in the job I'm in? Why am I at this school, in this neighborhood, in this family? Understanding why Jesus came gives a more meaningful answer to those questions.

So we are looking at the purpose statements of Jesus in the Gospels—I've found about thirteen so far where Jesus says, "I have come for this purpose." We're considering three of them in this three-week series. Last week we saw the first, the theme verse of Mark's gospel, chapter 10, verse 45:

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.

In typically Jewish, rabbinic fashion, Jesus states it both negatively and positively: he did not come to be served, but to serve—and that service is manifested in giving his life as a ransom, a payment, for many.

Jesus Purposed to Serve Sacrificially

How does that help me frame my purpose? It shows that whatever situation we find ourselves in—the place we live, the place we work, the family we belong to, the trial we're going through—we should do as Jesus did and adopt his purpose to live in a self-sacrificial way.

Here's the problem. Someone is going to ask, "Why should I serve others sacrificially? Why should I not serve myself?" It is our natural tendency to be self-focused. If you've ever had a two-year-old, you know this. Children aren't born unselfish—go spend some time in the children's ministry, you'll see it. And when we're honest, we see it in ourselves, too. We just mask it in more socially acceptable ways.

So Jesus comes, gives an example of self-sacrifice, and calls us to it. That's exactly what he told his disciples in Mark 10: the world is self-focused, "but it shall not be so for you." Yet to be self-sacrificial is contrary to virtually every innate impulse we have. We're oriented toward gratifying all our desires, and our culture says, "Yes, you should do that. Have it your way." The basic ethos of America—indeed most of the Western world—in 2019 is that it's all about you. And because there's so much money and power in the West, we are constantly exporting that thought to the rest of the world.

Climbing the Hierarchy

Generally, people use whatever gifts, talents, training, and education they have to gain ascendancy and get to the top of their field. Our culture solidifies into silos with hierarchical structures shaped like pyramids—wide at the base, thinner and thinner toward the top. There's disagreement about how people get there. Nietzsche said it's all about power and domination. In a meritocracy like ours, people rise through competence. But either way, we're told that if you reach the top you'll be in a place of power and greatness, and there is a desire in the human heart for power and greatness—as we saw with the disciples in Mark 10. Maybe Nietzsche was right that the human race is geared toward a will to power.

Here's the interesting thing. Wherever we find ourselves in that stack, we have a tendency, because of our nature, to look at those higher than us with disdain, jealousy, and envy. And we assume they got there by some corrupt, immoral means—they did something wrong to reach the top. Isn't that how we think? Some of you are tracking with me.

Zacchaeus the Tax Collector

That's exactly what we have in the story before us. You may already have a song in your head: "Zacchaeus was a wee little man." Here is a 2,000-year-old picture of culture that isn't much different from ours—a man higher up, despised and disliked, assumed to have gotten there by immoral means.

Then Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. Now behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich.

This story follows immediately after the conversation about greatness we studied last week in Mark 10. Jesus is traveling from Galilee in the north down to Jerusalem for the last time before his crucifixion, to observe the Passover, with multitudes walking alongside him. The last major stop before climbing into Judea was Jericho, and he's just passing through.

In American terms, Zacchaeus is at the top of the hierarchy—rich, the chief, the boss. We think of a name like Dan McAllister, the tax collector whose colorful letter with the big red number arrives twice a year; you've probably never met him, but you assume he's rich. But in first-century Jewish culture, Zacchaeus would have been the most despised. They lumped tax collectors in with sinners and harlots. They viewed them as treacherous, because they collected for the occupying Roman Empire. Zacchaeus was a Jew collecting for Rome, who paid Rome its set amount and kept the difference. So people assumed: if you're a rich tax collector, you're not doing it right.

So he sought to see who Jesus was, but he could not because of the crowd, for he was of short stature.

Researchers say the average man in that region at that time was about five foot six—so Jesus himself was probably about five foot six, not the tall, long-haired figure of our paintings, but a Middle Eastern Jewish man. Zacchaeus was even shorter, a small, industrious man determined to see Jesus. So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree.

When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him.

This was probably the first time in Zacchaeus's life that someone looked up and saw him. Jesus knew him by name: "Zacchaeus, make haste, come down, for today I must stay at your house." He hurried down and received Jesus joyfully. But the multitudes were indignant and complained, "He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner." They assumed Zacchaeus was immoral, corrupt, and wicked.

Jesus Saw Those Overlooked and Looked Down Upon

Jesus saw those overlooked and looked down upon—because he purposed to do so. He saw Zacchaeus because he was looking for him. Everyone else looked down on Zacchaeus, not just because of his short stature but because they despised this little man.

Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore it fourfold."

The common interpretation is that this is Zacchaeus's repentance—a vow to begin giving and restoring. But that is the wrong interpretation, and I know it because the Greek is clear. "I give half my goods to the poor" is in the present active indicative, indicating an action that has been continuous for a long time. I called my friend Justin Alford, a Greek scholar, this week, and he confirmed it exactly.

So when Zacchaeus stands, he stands in a self-justifying pose: "Listen, all of you who don't like me—I give half my goods to the poor. Set your giving record against mine; mine is better. You think I'm wicked just because I'm rich, but I restore anything I've wrongly taken fourfold, more than the law requires." By his own accounting, Zacchaeus was a good man. And yet Jesus says:

Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

Jesus Came to Seek and Save the Lost and Despised

There's much between the lines here. First, the people lower than Zacchaeus in power viewed him as corrupt and unrighteous—our nature is to look at anyone higher than us and assume they got there dishonestly. We make ourselves feel better by saying, "They may be higher than me on the privilege hierarchy, but I'm higher than them on the moral hierarchy." We do that all the time.

Second, Zacchaeus considered himself a pretty good guy by his good works. We do that too: "I'm better than that person because I do this and this." But in spite of all his goodness, Jesus said salvation came to his house not because of his giving or his ethics, but because the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. There are a lot of lost people in this story. The crowd despising Zacchaeus was lost. Zacchaeus, with all his good works and moral character, was lost. But Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost.

When we get right down to it, humanity hasn't changed much in thousands of years. We have iPhones, vehicles, running water, and good sanitation, but at our core we are the same, and we view hierarchies the same way. We deconstruct those higher than us to feel better—yet we're still lost, and so are they. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have pledged billions to relieve suffering and hunger—amazing, good things—but none of those billions will make them any less lost before God. And the wonderful thing is that Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost.

Placed on Purpose to Be a Light

So how does this help us frame our purpose more meaningfully? There are despised, overlooked, lost people all around us—at work, at school, in your neighborhood, on the basketball court, the softball field, the golf course.

A couple of times a year I have a conversation with someone wrestling with their place in life: "I'm just a stay-at-home mom. I'm just a teacher. I'm just a cop. I wish my job had more meaning. I wish I were serving Jesus." Back up and understand: God has placed you where you are on purpose, to seek and save the lost. The purpose of Jesus will change the way you see what you're doing, and that place that didn't feel meaningful will become much more meaningful.

How do you do that? Jesus tells us in his other purpose statements. In John 12:46 he said, "I have come to be a light to those who are in darkness." Do you think the place you work or study is a dark place? God placed you there to fulfill the very purpose Jesus came to fulfill. In John 18:37 he said, "I have come to bear witness of the truth." Are there people in your office or classroom believing and espousing lies? Jesus came to bear witness to the truth, and he's placed you in that dark place to do the same. And in Mark 1:38 he said he must go to the other towns to preach the gospel, "for this purpose I have come." He's placed you where you are to be a bringer of truth and light.

Purpose to seek out those who are lost and despised. That's what Jesus did, and that's what he's called you to do where you are. I've dedicated my life to bearing the truth and preaching the good news, and I love it—but I only get to do that because you are a light in a dark place, since I'm mostly around church people. God has placed you throughout this county to be a light, to bear witness to the truth, to proclaim the good news.

Is it easy? No, it's hard. John the Baptist was killed for it. Jesus was killed for it. You probably won't be killed, but it is challenging—and that's what God has called us to. I'll embarrass my wife: she works in the ICU at Scripps Encinitas and regularly comes home saying, "I was able to share with this doctor, with this group." She's ministering to patients, to families, to coworkers. Sometimes she says, "I don't think I said it the right way." And I tell her, "Yeah, but you said it. You were a light. You were a bearer of truth." That makes her work meaningful.

There is nothing more meaningful than bringing people who are far from God back into connection with him—an endeavor with eternal consequence. So much of what we do feels unmeaningful because it feels temporary. Even saving for retirement is temporary; if your entire life is geared toward a nice big 401(k), it won't be very meaningful. But if you invest your life into eternity—the Bank of Eternal Securities—it will yield eternal dividends. That is where true and great meaning is found.

Closing Prayer

Jesus, we see very clearly your purpose articulated by you. You came not to be served but to serve, and to give your life sacrificially as a ransom, a payment, for many. You came to seek and to save that which is lost. You came as a light into the dark place, to bear witness to the truth, to preach the gospel. And God, I pray that in whatever place you've placed any of us here today, we would begin to see that we are actually placed there on purpose by you—for your purpose—that we would be a light to those in darkness, whether darkness from corruption and ethical problems, or darkness from trials and difficulty and malevolence. Lord, we have the truth, and we get to bear witness of it. Give us the boldness to say it, even when we feel fearful and anxious. Give us the words. And let us find true meaning in your purpose, living life on purpose. We ask this in Jesus' name, and all those who agree said, amen.