 All right, Luke 19, a beautiful encounter. We're gonna parachute into for a few moments here between Jesus and this individual called Zacchaeus. He said, Jesus was passing through Jericho and a man was there by the name of Zacchaeus and he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was but being a short man he could not because of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore fig tree to see him since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached, when Jesus reached that spot he looked up and said, Zacchaeus come down immediately I must stay at your house today. So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter. He has gone to be the guest of a sinner but Zacchaeus stood up and said to Jesus look here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor. And if I've cheated anybody out of anything and he had 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 that which was lost. There's an awful lot going on here that's very, very profound. I know we have really consigned this story often to Sunday school because a short man climbing a tall tree to see Jesus I suppose is quite amusing and playful but something much more profound is going on here. Never think that this story and simple stories like this because they seem so simple are not profound. Something very, very essential is going on here that was to do with the core of the gospel and it still is. So here's a guy called Zacchaeus in the Bible as you know there were two categories of low life people sinners and beneath them tax collectors. And this guy is not just a tax collector he is the chief tax collector. So he's super hated in the community. Tax collectors were hated by the Romans above them to whom they paid the taxes they collected from their own people the Jews. So Zacchaeus is a Jew collecting taxes from his own people to pay the Romans and pocketing his own share of that by charging more taxes than people should be paying and putting some money in his own pocket before he passed it onto the Romans. So the Romans hated him and the Jews hated him and so this was a high profile despised individual in the community who would never darken the door of a church who would never believe or dream they would be welcomed in a church. In other words he was like some of you before you came to this church or before you went to the first church you went to. Zacchaeus is like millions of people of stones throw from this building who maybe know that church exists and maybe know that we're doing church in here tonight but would never dream of risking coming in here for fear or rejection. Zacchaeus is the kind of person you wouldn't want to be seen having coffee within town. You would not mind having a coffee with him if it could be secret but you wouldn't want to be seen with him because to be seen with him would to be risking your reputation and would be to let people loose in their imagination of what you must be thinking or not thinking by hanging out with someone that's as corrupt and as wicked and as evil as this man Zacchaeus. Despite Zacchaeus's apparent reputation and despite him being hated and despised by the religious people in the church and there's still far too many of those in the church in our country which is like 98% of people in our country are not in church. Amongst the 2% they do go to church but are far too many religious people in that crowd still that despise and hate Zacchaeus's and forget that they came from the same world that he came from. So Zacchaeus is fascinating because clearly despite this reputation he has and despite the reputation some of you had and some people have that are on your minds tonight that you wish were here and you should invite at Christmas because people in this country once a year, once a year Christmas is a time in this country when unsafe people who would never dream of going to church can go to church and it doesn't seem weird to their friends. You should cash in on that. You ask them in January they'll say no, I couldn't get away with it, my family will say, you're doing what? It is an anti-cultural thing to do to go to church in this country but not at Christmas. This is why we have to go crazy with inviting people to church at Christmas. So Zacchaeus goes online figures out where Jesus is, realizes he's coming by his town in the next few days, goes and finds a sycamore fig tree. Apparently there's different kinds of fig trees. The sycamore one was the one with the largest leaves on the biggest foliage. I guess he thought I can hide better inside that tree as well as have a good vantage point to look down as Jesus and his entourage pass by. So he goes ahead of Jesus arriving, gets in the tree, climbs up there. So here's a guy that wants to be looking at Jesus. He's interested in Jesus but he doesn't want to be seen to be looking. This is true for many of us, millions in this country. They want to know what goes on inside this room but they don't feel that they can risk coming into this room. Thank God for the internet and for podcasts because I suppose Zacchaeus' tree was the equivalent of today's internet. People that want to go somewhere and hide that want to be anonymous whilst they look at what God's doing around the world. The internet is a gift to people around the world that want to do that and that's how some of you first stepped into the beginnings of your interest in the things of God and this is Zacchaeus. Jesus comes along, stops at the foot of the tree, looks up. Now this must be shocking for Zacchaeus because not only does Jesus know he's in the tree, he knows his name. We have no idea how Jesus knew either of those things. Looks up and calls him by name. He must have nearly fallen out the tree. Zacchaeus, come down from the tree because today I must come and hang out with you at your house. Now remember, Jesus has got with him his apostolic team, his leaders that he chose, his team, his staff. Then he's got these entourage of people that kind of hung around in case there was a chance that they get a free meal today because he does feed the 5,000 now and then so that room is around and hungry people gathered around to see they could get a free meal. Then he also always has with him those fake news people. The Donald Trump hates and we all should hate those fake news people that invent stories and make things mean what they were never intended to mean. It takes too far to context. So those people are always with Jesus. So the moment he stops and shouts the name Zacchaeus and uses that name Zacchaeus to the man in the tree, the moment he said Zacchaeus that they went straight on their phones and it began to trend instantly. You won't believe who Jesus just invited himself to his house. Jesus just said in front of us all to this high profile despised person, I'm gonna come and hang out with you and they got to work on putting their spin on that. If this guy knew who he was, he wouldn't be hanging out with him because you're not gonna build a church, you're not gonna get followers if you make friends with people as hated as Zacchaeus is what religious people felt. So Jesus goes to Zacchaeus's house and I want you to know this is all staged. Every encounter Jesus had of this nature was high profile on purpose. Jesus intentionally wanted this to be done openly and in public. He could have gone past the tree knowing he was there, sent one of his team back later to say there's a guy in that tree called Zacchaeus, tell him I know about him, I'm gonna meet him tonight at 10 o'clock at such and such a point Jesus could have done that. Instead he creates a very high profile, controversial, confrontational, very unpopular scenario because God could not care less what we think about who he reaches out to. So Jesus just reaches out to him and you need to know something, every time you include someone in your circle of love, every time you're kind and gracious and forgiving and merciful to someone that the world and the church hate, you will suffer and your church will suffer. Believe me, I know this from experience because I reinvented our church, started a new church inside the old church after 20 years and I started to reach into our community and reach to the poor. When I started bringing in hundreds of Zacchaeuses, all hell broke loose in our church because of how much we despised the idea of coming and sitting next to people whose lifestyles we had done this to for years. And Jesus goes to this man's house. Now, what's upsetting the people that are muttering and that are gossiping and that are posting and that are trolling him, what's going on is that they are freaking out because going to this man's house, breaking bread with him in that culture and still many cultures around the world today, breaking bread with him was a huge act of this. Wasn't casual, it wasn't just food and hospitality, wasn't a bite to eat, it wasn't popping in. Going to this man's house and spending hours with him was a massive act of this. This was upsetting enough to the people that were criticizing him, but what made it worse, what really stuck in their religious throats, what really made them struggle to criticize him and be threatened by it was this. That before Jesus extended this to Zacchaeus, he never asked him first to do any of this. And the title of this message and this idea is that acceptance precedes change. Acceptance, acceptance always, as far as God's concerned, not the church now, we're not good at this. This is a massive weakness and blind spot to us, which is why we need to talk about it. Acceptance, as far as God's concerned, always is extended to us before he asks any of you to do any of this. Now, what we have done in the church is we've done this. We've changed these round and now we say to people, you can have some of this in exchange for more of this. We ask people to earn this by paying for it with this. This happens in marriages, in friendships, in parenting, in teams, in churches, in bosses to employees, in those that lead and those that follow, we start to trade in these things. We start to make this something that you earn as if this belongs to us, as if this is something we own and because I own it, I can make you jump through hoops to get some of this from me. And what happens is this whole thing becomes our currency of coercion and manipulation. We start to use them as a way of trading and now to get invited to get included to be spoken well of, to be invited to the party, to be included in the WhatsApp channel, to be one of our group, to be in with the crowd, to be accepted if it looks like any of those things, then you have to be willing to fix some things in your life because we can't be around you and give you this without you changing some stuff about you is what we do to each other. I've got to tell you, if God did that to you, you would not have been happy about getting up this morning because you'd have lived all day wondering, do I still have this from God? Because I don't think I've done enough of this for God lately. And you would be here today not knowing whether or not this was strong, was it weak, was it something that you could earn and get more acceptance from him? And some of you, by the way, struggle with this internally, some of you don't accept yourselves. You don't like yourself, you hate yourself because you don't feel you deserve accepting of you because you don't feel you've done enough of this lately. And so many people stay away from church when they feel that our acceptance of them is conditional upon this and so they go walk about for weeks or months on end because they don't feel they've changed enough in that area where they know they're weak and so they stay away until they feel they've beaten something and often they don't, it beats them without the company and the warmth and the strength of the church around them, it beats them so they never come back. And what they feel and never articulate to us and so we must is they feel that this is what we expected from them in exchange for being kind of included and accepted. And I want you to know tonight that this issue of acceptance and change was always at the very core of the early church's issues. And I think to me around the world still is. This was the defining issue for the church and I could have taken other examples, I could have taken to the thief on the cross. Do you want an example of acceptance and no change? This guy's in his dying breath and he cries to Jesus, will you keep me in your heart? Will you keep me in your mind today? Will you include me today? What happens next for you? Can I be part of that? And Jesus did not say to him, well you would reach to me now, wouldn't you? You think I'm stupid, you think I don't know you've nothing else left to lose that you reached to me now, this is costing you nothing, you've got nothing to give up. The least you should do from the cross is say sorry to people stood around here, many of whom you no doubt stole from that came especially to see you get what you deserved. Jesus didn't lecture him, Jesus didn't say I can't do that because you've not repented and put your hand up in a service and got saved. You're not baptizing water, you've never tithed, never volunteered, never been to a small group. Not one of our type. Jesus just said to him, you're in. You're in and I've got to tell you when that thief on the cross got to heaven that day, he didn't go to economy class. In case that makes you feel better because you earned your salvation. So religious people do, religious people get upset when God includes people that they punish and exclude and keep at a distance and say we would accept you but first you have to do this, this and this and God just goes get out of the way and just accepts them. And the thief on the cross received that from him and when he got to heaven that day, he went to the same heaven as Moses and Elijah and the apostle Paul and the apostle Peter. He's in the same space as all they are and he just is a last minute, John he come lately, didn't earn it and God couldn't care less what we think about that. That's why people freaked out when they said, this parable, when he said, the last shall be first. Like what, what hang on a minute? Well, I worked all day for that money. What do you mean? What do you mean the people that came for five minutes get the same as me? They don't like it because newsflash grace is not fair and God doesn't care. This grace thing is totally out of control. It is utterly unreasonable. It makes no sense and God doesn't care. I think God loves it when he sees how we freak out at how loose he is with his grace. So this is the essence of the gospel because in Acts 15 it finished up in a massive showdown called the Council of Jerusalem because the Jewish believers, some of them were going around into Gentile territory where the apostle Paul was working in non-Jewish which is most of the world, in non-Jewish territories in the Mediterranean and Paul's going into these countries preaching and non-Jews are getting saved and so from Jerusalem they sent out these specialists called Judaizers and their job was to go to Gentile commons and say to them, no, no, no, you can't be a proper Christian. You can't have the acceptance of Christ until you do some of this. You have to get circumcised. You have to keep certain Jewish rituals and observe certain Jewish observances and if you do that then you will be accepted by God is what they went around teaching. They had a theology for it. Paul said, I'm not having this and so Paul insisted on a council, on a debate, on a discussion, on an argument. In Jerusalem and in Acts chapter 15 in your Bible read it sometime, all the elders, the apostles, the great apostle Peter who himself was a massive part of the problem. The apostle Peter spent three years 24 seven with Jesus reaching the world and he hated Gentiles. Go figure. Peter even preached on Pentecost, this outpouring that's in fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies of the prophet Joel. This outpouring he said is for all people, it's for the world, for all flesh. I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. He preaches that at Pentecost but he doesn't believe it because only a few chapters later in the book of Acts in the city of Antioch where Paul started a Gentile church. Peter comes down from Jerusalem and hangs out with the Gentile converts and he's having dinner with them and cracking jokes with them and hanging out and then suddenly some of Peter's peer leadership team come down from Jerusalem and the apostle Peter stops hanging out with them. You don't wanna be seen to be hanging out with Gentiles in front of his Jewish colleagues. And so the apostle Paul sees this and confronts him publicly. He says Peter, this is totally hypocritical. Even it's even causing people like Timothy, his young disciple. It's causing him even to be led astray because he's thinking, this is the great apostle Peter so if it's him that's doing it, it must be right. Is what Timothy's thinking. So Paul's protecting his own team from Peter's hypocrisy and confronts him. So this is the great apostle Peter, you all with me? This guy walked on water, raised the dead, opened the eyes of the blind. This is Peter 24, 7 with Jesus three years. This is the same guy that said, you're the Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus said, people didn't show you that. You got that straight from God. This is the same guy who hates Gentiles. I tell you that for this reason. Don't assume because you're in a good church that you're immune from this being a problem for you. Don't think because we have great preaching and great worship, because this was true of our church. And every single Sunday we sang songs and the lyrics of the songs were all to do with loving and reaching the ceases. Our preaching was all about reaching the world for Jesus. We shabbat-abbadood over the tragedy of the lost world. We prophesied, we called them from the North, South, Eastern, West. We did all of that stuff. We cried over the lost. We shed tears. The intercessors interceded for the lost. But when I started busing in the lost, all hell broke loose. Because we say, don't we? It's a trendy thing around the world now. We say, don't we? Come as you are. Well, God help you if you do come as you are in a lot of churches. What we mean is come as we are. Though don't you come as you are, and I was busing in 500 come as you are people a week, 500 from some of the worst council estates in our country that are in our city. 500 a week I was busing in. Scoundrels was my corporate name for them. I teased them about it. I said, use scoundrels because it'd be so much trouble. Stop stealing things. And the F word was wall to wall on our campus with these scoundrels, and I don't mean faith. As they told us where to get off and where to go and I won't sit there and I'll do what I want and I'll smoke if I want and don't tell me what to do. It was out of control as these people came in and there were hundreds and then later thousands of Zacchaeuses and thieves on the cross and women at the well and the prostitutes and the pimps and the drug dealers. And I was busing them in and I could understand how that's uncomfortable for white middle class people. I understood that sociologically, they would never normally mix together. I understand that. And I understand wanting to be with people like you are and like I am, I get that. But when it becomes cliquish and inward looking and when we make this stuff, when we make this ours, acceptance is not a gift. It's a baton. It's a baton. Love is not a gift. Love is not a gift. It's a baton. Grace is not a gift. Kindness is not a gift. Mercy is not a gift. It doesn't belong to you. It doesn't end with you. Everything that God gives you is to be passed on. Everything God gives must move through us. And our church was like this. Our church was like this with acceptance, you know, like, like Gollum, my precious. So my acceptance, I'm accepted. God accepts me. I am loved and all the scriptures, all the theologies and what we did was this. We decided who was worthy of this. So we became selective with the baton passing. Selective baton passing is as bad as no baton passing. I think I can, I think I'll accept you. So I just thought, let's just put the cat among the religious pigeons and bus in these scoundrels and all hell broke loose. And it was the best thing that happened to our church in my opinion. Not in 300 people's opinion who left our church inside two years. As if we'd lost our mind and yet I think we'd found our mind. We'd re-found the essence of all that we preached and sang about suddenly become a reality and no one liked it. I think we thought when the unchurch people showed up, they'd look like Mormons. I think we think when the fish, that you know, your fishes of men, you know, when fish get caught, they don't show up like a fillet in a Michelin star restaurant. They come snapping and biting and smelly and slippery and awkward and resistant. That's how they arrive. And that's how hundreds of them arrived and the church was so upset because this is what people don't understand and we must. Listen to me. Acceptance is not endorsement. Accepting people doesn't mean we agree with their life. We're soft on sin. This is what Jesus risked people believing but he didn't tidy it up. This is why you suffer. You will suffer because to accept people means that you will be judged as being soft on sin because you will accept them without asking them to change. People think you're into cheap grace that you just accept it. You shouldn't do that. You should at first make clear this and this and this needs to change but God didn't do that with you. God accepted you before you were even born. And by the way, while that's on my mind, let me say this. Jesus did not die on the cross for the church. The cross does not belong to us. He died on the cross for the world. The difference between before you saved and after saved is an acceptance. You know more accepted by God after you saved than before. God accepted humanity through the cross. He shed his blood for the world. The difference between saved and unsaved is an acceptance is that after you saved now you are aware of his acceptance. Now you can live as an accepted person. Now you can flourish as a child of God knowing he accepted you. You didn't know that before you got saved but you were still as accepted before you got saved as you were after you got saved. God accepts all of humanity. It's a done deal. Salvation is the awakening to that and the consciousness of that and the joy of that. But we've made it ours. We've made it like we've made acceptance ours like we get the right to charge people for it now which is what the Judaizers were doing. And the apostle Peter had a massive awakening at the house of Cornelius because he has these sheets come down and these unclean animals and you don't realize it's not about animals it's about people when the voice said rice killin' eatin' he said I won't do that and he's not getting the message it's still the same issue he's had for years. He goes to Cornelius's house and hundreds are gathered there because Cornelius had an angel appear and the angel said Cornelius we know you're not a Christian and stuff but we don't really care because we love you you're pretty cool, you're helping people and we like you. So God sent me down to tell you go on to this address here's the GPS for Peter's house go find him, tell him to come here he's gonna tell you some stuff and so he sets in motion this massive symphony it's like a symphony. Over here Peter's getting set up over here Cornelius is having a visitation then the guys are on the way to Peter's house then as he finishes these visions that knock at the door comes from three unclean people from Cornelius's house then he goes to his house and takes friends with him and then in Acts 15 at the Council of Jerusalem Peter tells the story and he said I was just preaching saying now I realize how true it is that God accepts anyone and you think what do you mean you now realize? You're three years with Jesus we would die for a day with Jesus we'd kill for a day with Jesus you are three years how do you mean you now realize? Because realization and revelation are two different things it was revelation that showed him he's the son of God realization does not come from God realization is something dawning on you you come into a realization an awakening of something you always knew but didn't know you knew it until you bumped into it enough and now he's at Cornelius's house and the reality is dawning finally the penny's dropping that God accepts all I have not he knows but God accepts all it begins to preach and God says okay I'm done with you now boom then they all get filled with the spirit start jabbering in tongues and Peter said in Acts 15 those that came with me were astonished that God baptized him in the spirit just like he did us at Pentecost why are they astonished? Because baptism in the spirit is simply a massive act of this from heaven it's a fast track boom you're in no one's lifted a hand Peter hasn't made his appeal yet no one's baptized in water no one's gone by the book no one's gone through the system it's just God says okay Peter you can shut up now this is more for your benefit than theirs see now put that away you realize that I love everyone not just Jews okay that's helped you now let me and God goes boom they get filled with the spirit and God didn't ask any of them to do this and that's why the people that came with Peter it says were astonished and I have been astonished at the smallness of our hearts in the church, in this country for Zacchaeuses for millions and millions of people that want to be in church but believe that they can't and many of them don't want to be in church because they've already been to church it was a terrible experience for them and there are people on your minds and on my mind that we wished would be here tonight and wish would be walking with God like you've discovered and this is a massive issue to them and our job is to fill our communities with this message that acceptance precedes change that we are not we are not in the business of charging people for what God gave you freely what you freely receive, freely give away is how this gospel thing works and I know we don't like it I know we like to think we control it but we don't and I'm glad that we don't because if we did some of you wouldn't be here I remember a few months into our journey on this issue couple of years, two or three years in one Sunday night three transvestites came to the service I think three transvestites is a bit overwhelming for a church I think one is probably enough to freak us out but three kids and I could hear the gossip and the elbows flying on the texting about these three guys that had come in to talk me more about our church than them I'm gonna go up to preach, I turn around and there they were to my left sat there these three guys when I finished preaching I called them over and I said it's great to see you guys and by the way, I called them over here and I'm stood here talking to them in front of the church it was staged I want people to see who feel they deserve my time that I'm talking to these people who they maybe don't feel deserve my time and shouldn't be here tonight I wanted to be seen to be giving them my time like Jesus wants to be seen to giving Zacchaeus his time and you his time and I said to these guys great to see you where are you from I wonder who said to be a pastor we're not trying to cause any trouble tonight I never said you were they said we come to this church often I said okay but we've never come dressed as women I said well why have you come dressed as women tonight they said well we are homeless and you feed us in your homeless program two or three times a week but even your homeless team don't know that we also dress as women but we came dressed as women tonight because today was the best dressed transvestite competition in town listen to this and it finished too late for us to get changed before church so while they're talking to me I'm talking to me about what they're saying to me and I'm thinking okay so you would rather come to church and risk the gauntlet of disapproval and if looks could kill you'll be dead in the car park you'd rather risk that than miss church I've got people who live up the road who drive a Mercedes who won't come if it's raining and they won't come especially don't be clapping at no time and they won't come especially if last week someone looked at them awkward and they're offended and miss church for three weeks I got that crowd I got you guys who know it's going to be a rough night if you come like that's going to be rough and they came anyway and I'm thinking which would I rather have hello I said well I want to say three things to you guys I said number one you're the worst looking women I've ever seen because they were terrible I mean some transvestites do it so well you can't tell that wasn't these guys these guys had hairy legs like hadn't shaved terrible makeup I said look guys if this is shocking I said if you want some help some of our girls in makeup will give you some coaching I was dead serious so he said to me no no no he said you don't understand you don't understand he said I won I won today I am the best dressed transvestite in town and showed me his medal and his friend said and I was the runner up and showed me his medal I'm like are you guys kidding me are you telling me you're the best transvestites in town this is wrong you need to lift your game God help us if we go into county or into country we're gonna fail if you're the best that we've got I said pastor that's hilarious what's the second thing you want to say to us I said the second thing is this you lock him in this church anytime dressed as men or women I don't care God doesn't care just lost some of you there but thirdly there are people in this church that do care and I can't protect you from what they may say to you but on behalf of the management come as you are this is what's the third thing I said the third thing is if you come dressed as women please for my sake don't use the women's toilets or there'll be a riot use the men's toilets there'll still be a riot but perhaps less of a riot that I can manage they went high five pastor we can do that you know they came back every week ever since then never once dressed as women and didn't ask them not to do you know why they never came back dressed as women because you know how God gets people to change like you did with Zacchaeus do you know what God does to get you to change he overwhelms you with this when God wants people to change he doesn't do this because that makes you not want to change God doesn't do that with us or with the world so when God wants people to change he's absolutely overwhelms them with this until they start volunteering this Zacchaeus said I want to pay people back want to give half of my wealth to the poor I want to pay back four times I want to stole from people we have no knowledge that Jesus ever asked him to do any of that I think he was so overwhelmed that Jesus risked his own reputation to include this man that Jesus came to his house despite all the criticism and the venom and the poison he got for that he came to this man's house I think Zacchaeus was so overwhelmed by God's love and acceptance of him he starts volunteering making things right fixing things and I think these guys said to themselves when they left our church that night let's not cause this man any trouble let's go and let's not make an issue for him he said come as you are and we believe he meant it but I think the people that he said will not approve of it will give him a hard time not us they'll give him a worse time I think they had a discussion that's what acceptance does acceptance is disarming acceptance melts people's hearts acceptance makes people want to give something back to those that accepted them let's stand here then come on time's gone