INTRODUCTION: For every good thing that God gives us, Satan attempts to create a counterfeit. God gave us his word and Satan tries to produce a counterfeit. God gives revelation and Satan created false revelation. God gives, and Satan attempts to counterfeit. What is one thing we think about when we hear the word counterfeit? It’s our topic for this morning… Money!
BACKGROUND: Do you know how bank tellers are able to identify counterfeit money? There are so many good counterfeit bills around today. It is impossible to keep up with the ways crooks are operating. It would not be productive, nor would it be efficient to study all the ways people counterfeit bills. The “best” way and in fact the “only” way to train tellers to identify counterfeits is to make them familiar with the real thing. The more they handle real money, the less likely a counterfeit will be accepted. It’s the same with our worship, the more that we worship the “true” and “living” God, the more we’re able to not only identify, but avoid the counterfeit ones!
ZACCHAEUS – THE SEDUCTIVE POWER OF MONEY
• Innumerable writers and thinkers since the beginning of time have pointed out the “culture” of greed that permeates our world, eating away at our souls and collapsing our cultures (1st Timothy 6:9-10) notice it said “love of money” not “money,” for an inanimate object cannot be evil!
• Yet no one ever really thinks that change can happen… Why?
• There are a couple of reasons (1) we call that which is “sin” holy, and that which is “holy” sin, buying into the idea propagated by Gordon Gecko in the movie “Wallstreet” – “Greed is Good!”
• (2) this idol, this counterfeit god is perhaps the one that is the most hard to recognize, it’s there, and we know it’s there but it’s so common that we of the “miss the forest for the trees”
• As a minister I’ve counseled countless people who were struggling with various sins, various counterfeit gods, yet in all the years “greed,” or the “love of money” has never been brought to me
• The god of money hides itself from its victim, that is it’s “modus operandi,” it tells us that if there is someone out there with more money than us, then we’re not greedy at all!
• Jesus warns people about the downfalls of loving money, speaking more about it than He does about sex, anger, or pretty much any other thing that we can elevate to "god” status
• The seduction by the counterfeit god of money is a story that plays out numerous times in Scripture, but no story epitomizes it more than the story of a vertically challenged man who climbed a tree!
• His name was Zacchaeus, and Luke straightforward tells us about this man (Luke 19:1-2)
• He was a tax collector who was shunned by his community; even today those who work for the IRS don’t typically go around telling everyone about it… IRS agents are often placed in the same category as lawyers and dentists
• To understand this story and its implications we must understand the world in which it took place. Rome, for all intents and purposes ruled the world, and wanted the vast majority of the wealth of the empire to reside in the capital; leaving the rest of the empire impoverished and subjugated
• To do this Rome had two armies (1) military (2) the Roman version of the IRS, of which Zacchaeus was and employ – “The power to tax is the power to destroy” – Daniel Webster
• When we read further along in the story we see that his people thought of him as a “sinner” (vs. 7)
• This meant that he was an “apostate,” and “outcast,” for him it would have been better to have been born a “leper”
• Why would anyone take such a job? The incentives offered by the imperial bank were almost irresistible. Basically get what you can get out of them, send us a portion and keep the rest!
• Today we call this “extortion” and it will land you in jail, in the 1st century it was accepted practice
• One of the reasons that Luke brings Zacchaeus to our attention is that he wasn’t just any old tax collector he was “architelones” (vs. 2) the “arch-tax collector,” he was the best of the best, or the worst of the worst depending on your point of view! Money was the master of his life!
• What Zacchaeus obsessed over, became his god, and he became a slave to it – but consider Jesus’ teaching on the matter (Luke 16:13-15)
• Money isn’t a “bad” thing, in fact it can be a very “good” thing, and it all depends on how we interact with it. If we control our use of it, great, if it controls us… not so great!
ZACCHAEUS – THE FREEING POWER OF GRACE
• Zacchaeus had it all, or at least by the standards of his world he had it all, and by all accounts he was miserable! Which explains his actions when Jesus shows up in his hometown of Jericho
• He wanted to see Jesus but he ran into a problem.. he was “too short” (Luke 19:3-7)
• Being short as he was, we wonder why he didn’t just move to the front so he could see, chances were as disliked, or should we say “hated” as he was, no one was in any mood to let him through!
• In response Zacchaeus did a surprising thing… he climbed a tree, a much “undignified” thing to do!
• Already despised, why would he do something that would bring more ridicule upon himself?
• The simple answer is that He wanted to see Jesus, but “want” is bit of an understatement, he was “desperate” to see Jesus! And Jesus noticed!
• In a crowd of Pharisees and righteous me Jesus focuses in on the least righteous of them all, this arch-tax-collector, Jesus’ always identifying with the outcast, shunned, and disenfranchised
• Zacchaeus approached Jesus not out of pride but out of humility, not in light of his great wealth but in spite of it!
• When Zacchaeus saw that Jesus chose not the most virtuous person in the crowd but the least virtuous – himself, for a personal relationship his whole spiritual understanding began to change
• He began to realize that God’s salvation was through grace, not through things that he did, it wasn’t through wealth, it wasn’t through prestige, it was through relationship! And that knowledge rocked his world! (Luke 19:8-10)
• He wanted to follow Jesus immediately, and in doing so made two “extreme” commitments
• To give away 50% of his wealth, far beyond the 10% required by the Law of Moses
• He would give bock 4-fold anything that he had stolen from others, that’s a 300% restitution
• In response Jesus said “today salvation has come to this house!” Notice Jesus didn’t say, “If you like this, salvation will come to this house today” He said “today salvation has come to this house”
• Salvation doesn’t come in response to a changed life, a changed life come in response to salvation!
CONCLUSION: A good counterfeit bill will look like a genuine note and it will feel like a genuine note to most people. But to those who are familiar with real currency, they can “see” the difference and they can “feel” the difference. What about our worship, can we “see” and “feel” the difference? Idols can’t be “removed,” they can only be “replaced.” And there’s only “one” who is qualified to take that place – Jesus!
