Freedom - Letting Go And Embracing ChristSampel

How Will This Change You?  

“Mama, which one’s the bad guy?” my son asks, every time we play with his action figures. I point out Thanos in his Avengers set and tell him, “That’s the bad guy!” Even at the age of three, he knows the difference between good and bad, as he runs off to have good fight evil. 

We spent the last couple of days looking at the way Jesus interacted with and treated women who likely had reputations for themselves. We saw Jesus honor them. 

Today we’re going to look at one of the least favorite people of the time, who happens to be a man: the tax collector. If first-century three-year-olds had had action figures, their “bad guys” might have been tax collectors. So, what exactly was a tax collector, and why were they disliked so much? 

The Roman Empire was oppressive to people, and the collection of taxes wasn’t exactly fair. To make matters worse, most tax collectors in the Bible were actually Jews working for this much-despised government—and they would cheat the people they were collecting from. 

So, now you can see why the Pharisees were so shocked (and annoyed) whenever Jesus was eating a meal “with tax collectors and sinners” (Mark 2:15–16). The Pharisees were all about following the rules. 

While most saw tax collectors as the lowest of the low—Jesus saw them as something more.

God knew what He was doing in this moment. Zacchaeus, being the chief tax collector, would have likely been well known—and well hated. 

Now, no matter who you are, it wasn’t common to invite yourself into someone’s home. And I doubt it was all that common to send invitations up a tree. And for Jesus the Messiah to even speak to and much less invite himself to stay with short, stingy, thieving Zacchaeus—the lowest of the low—this would have turned some heads for sure. 

What is freedom? Freedom is allowing the grace and gift of Jesus to change us completely. Freedom is dropping everything, dropping out of that tree, and saying yes to follow Him. Freedom is not even minding what it costs us to make things right, because we’re so overjoyed to be loved by Jesus. Freedom is breaking through society’s expectations to accept Jesus’ salvation.