At the Corner of Life and God

At the Corner of Life and God

7/14/14  Allen Snapp

I can still remember where I was when I decided that I didn’t believe in God anymore. I was twelve years old, standing in a museum in Paris, France with my dad and stepmother, and I came upon a painting of angels and demons kind of hovering over some people, and as I looked at the painting, the thought hit me, I don’t believe this anymore. Suddenly it all seemed so unreal to me. God seemed so unreal to me. So far removed from my life. We had gone to church when I was younger, but we very rarely went to church anymore, and quite honestly I hated it when we did go. I realized in that moment in that museum that God just wasn’t a part of my life, didn’t seem connected to my life or relevant to my life, and it just didn’t seem important to believe in Him anymore.

Thankfully four years later we started attending a small Methodist church where there was life and joy and it was clear that people had a real relationship with God, and it wasn’t long before I was growing in my relationship with God and the connection between Jesus and the Bible and my life became very real.

But I think many people are in the same place that I was in. They just don’t see God as being connected to their lives in any real way. Maybe they go to church, but it’s like a separate compartment from the rest of their lives. They have their “religious life” – which takes up one hour a week – and they have their “real life” – which takes up the rest. And there’s little or no connection between the two.  Maybe some here are in that place. God  just doesn’t seem relevant to your life. It’s hard to even imagine how God could connect with your life outside of church. What would that even look like? What would God want from you? How would God feel about you? If you were to meet God on the street, what would He say to you, how would He act towards you? 

That’s what I want to talk about this morning and for the next several weeks in a message series I’m calling At the Corner of Life and God. What we find when we read the Bible is that it isn’t a textbook of theological statements about God; it’s a story: a very personal story about a God who loves us and wants to have a relationship with us. And nowhere is that love more beautifully displayed than in the four gospels, the account of Jesus’ life and ministry. 

Jesus made some amazing claims about himself, but by far the most controversial was that he claimed to be equal to God. That was the claim that angered the religious leaders so much they decided to kill him because the only way someone could be equal to God is to be God. Jesus was claiming to be God the Son. One day one of his disciples came to him and said, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough.” Show us God, Jesus, and we’ll be satisfied. But Jesus answered him, “Philip, have I been with you so long and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

When we see Jesus, we see the Father. When we see Jesus’ heart towards people, we see God the Father’s heart towards people. No difference. As we read the gospels we find over and over again ordinary people encountering Jesus, and in those encounters we see them encounter God. The Samaritan woman at the well, the man with the withered hand, the woman caught in adultery, the father with the daughter who was dying, the prostitute, the man with leprosy, the blind beggar, the self-righteous Pharisee. When their lives intersected with Jesus, their lives intersected with God. They found themselves at the corner of life and God. And it’s at that corner that we learn about what God is like, how God views us, and how God connects with our lives. This morning please turn with me to Luke 19. It’s a story familiar to many of us, the story of Zacchaeus and Jesus. Read Luke 19:1-10

1. Jesus invites himself into Zacchaeus’ life

Zacchaeus wasn’t looking to have a relationship or even an interaction with Jesus; he just wanted to see a good show. He had heard about this miracle-working teacher and he wanted a good seat for the performance. But to everyone’s surprise, Jesus looked up at Zacchaeus, called him by name, and invited himself over to his house. 

By doing that, Jesus was entering into Zacchaeus’ life, which, like most of our lives, was pretty messy. Zacchaeus was a professional success and a relational failure. He was the chief tax collector and he was rich so professionally he was on top of his game, but in order to get there he had burned a lot of bridges with his townsmen. Tax collectors in Jesus’ day prospered to the degree that they charged people exorbitantly high taxes and then skimmed the extra off the top. Zacchaeus had overcharged his own people a lot and in so doing had destroyed both his relationships and his integrity. He was not a good man, he was a cheat and a fraud and he made a living by stealing from his own people and that’s why the crowd hated him, and why they were upset and grumbled, “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” Jesus hadn’t even insisted that Zacchaeus clean his life up before he befriended him.

Where does God want to intersect with our lives? Right where we live. Right where our lives are the real-est, which often means right where our lives are the messiest. Some people just want God to be in the cleaned up rooms of their lives. I remember when I was a little kid there was a room in our house that I wasn’t allowed to go into except on rare occasions and only when my parents were present. It had this beautiful white shag carpet and the sofas were all covered with plastic to protect them from spills. This was the “special room” where mom and dad entertained guests. It was probably called the “living room” but not much living took place in it. It was only used for guests, which meant they didn’t really see where my mom and dad lived most of their life, they only saw the “special guest room” where they sat on plastic covered couches. 

Let me put it very simply: Jesus doesn’t want to sit in your plastic-covered couch room! He enters Zacchaeus’ life at its messiest and that’s where he wants to enter our lives as well. When I say life is messy, I don’t mean at all that it’s all bad. A lot of the mess is very good! Life is often wonderful, and exhilarating and breathtaking. But it also can be heart-breaking, and hard, and confusing, and sad, and lonely. It’s a mix. In this series, At the Corner of Life and God, I don’t want to just talk about the hard stuff. One message I want to do is a message called At the Corner of Success and God because there is a God-given drive in us to succeed – so we’ll look at what God says about that. Life is a mix. Often we can have good things and bad things going on at the same time. Like Zacchaeus we can be a professional success but a failure at home. Or we can be a great success with our family but be floundering with our career. I met some guys for the first time the other night and after a while I learned that several of them had recently been divorced. And I realized that, no matter how put together they might have looked, each of them had some painful rooms in their lives – and not just theirs, but their ex-wives too. And if there are children, they are deeply affected too and are dealing with pain. Real life has noble, God given desires – desires to have purpose, desires to help others, desires to make a difference in this world. But you can’t get very far down the road without also having some hard and painful rooms as well – rooms we often don’t want anyone else going into. We shut them up and board them up so no one sees. My point is, Jesus wants to be a part of your life. All your life. God wants a relationship with you, including the messy rooms, not just the plastic covered couch rooms. 

1. Jesus transforms Zacchaeus’ life by offering acceptance and friendship 

Zacchaeus just intended to see a good show. Instead he got a new life. Look at what happens: Jesus says “Zacchaeus, get down here because I need to stay at your house today” and Zacchaeus the thief, the cheat, the exploiter, the crook stands up and says, “Lord, I am going to give half my riches to the poor and I am going to make fourfold restitution to everyone I’ve ever defrauded.” What in the world happened? All Jesus said was, I’m coming for lunch. He didn’t even offer to treat. And yet Zacchaeus is transformed! What happened?

Zacchaeus knew – everyone knew – that Jesus was no ordinary person. God was with him like no one who ever lived before. He taught like no one ever taught. He did miracles like no one ever did. God was with him, and some whispered that he was God. Zacchaeus could only imagine that anyone who was that much more holy than everyone else, would also despise him that much more. But Jesus doesn’t reject Zacchaeus, or scold Zacchaeus, or avoid Zacchaeus. He does the opposite: he initiated friendship. He communicated acceptance. It’s as if God were accepting Zacchaeus and offering friendship. At the corner of Zacchaeus and Jesus, Zacchaeus found God. 

This acceptance of sinners blew the minds of the religious leaders. They tried so hard to live very religious lives and they thought that meant holding their noses when they were around sinful people like Zacchaeus. They wanted nothing to do with low life losers and assumed that God wanted nothing to do with them either. To see Jesus hanging out comfortably with sinners offended every religious bone in their bodies. They even coined a derisive title for Jesus: they called him the friend of sinners. 

Jesus said, when you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. God is perfect and holy and just, and yet, He reaches out in love to sinful people who have really messed up, and He doesn’t try to motivate us to change by scolding and rejecting us until we change. He motivates us to change by accepting and loving us as we are.

Zacchaeus changed for the best possible reasons. Not because he felt guilty. Not because he felt he could earn Jesus’ acceptance if he changed. But because he was accepted and befriended by Jesus exactly as he was. Being accepted by Jesus, by God, made him want to follow Jesus with his life. And as Zacchaeus turned towards Jesus, towards his love and life and light, at the same time, Zacchaeus was turning away from the darkness of cheating and hating and selfish living. That’s what repentance is. Sometimes people talk about repentance as if it’s only turning away from sin. Repentance isn’t just turning away from sin – it’s turning towards God. See, if I’m facing in that direction, and I turn to face this direction, it’s all one movement. As I’m turning to face this direction I am at the same time and by the same movement turning away from that direction. If I turn towards love, I turn away from hate. If I turn towards forgiveness I turn away from bitterness. If I turn towards caring for others, I turn away from selfish living. If I turn towards God, I turn away from sin. It’s all one direction, and for Zacchaeus (and for us) it was motivated by the joy of God’s love and acceptance, not by guilt or some legalistic attempt to earn God’s favor. 

That’s why Jesus could say that salvation had come to Zacchaeus’ house. Not because he was willing to make restoration for those he cheated but because he had turned in joy and faith towards God. And that’s why Jesus came. To turn low life losers and sinners like me towards God. That’s what Jesus means when he says the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. That brings us to another corner.

1. At the corner of lost and saved

I asked earlier, if you ran into God on the street, what would He say to you? How would He feel about you? Here are some common answers. See if any match with what you would say. 

• [If I ran into God] He would despise and reject me because I’ve messed up so badly or…
• He would accept me because I’m basically a good person
• He would accept me because I am very religious and live a better life than most people
• He would accept me because even though I’ve messed up, God forgives those mess ups, it’s what He does
• God would accept me because He loves me and wants a relationship with me

All of those answers, according to the Bible, would be wrong. That might seem a little confusing, especially that last answer because isn’t that what I’ve been saying all along this morning – God loves us and wants a relationship with us? Yes, but there’s one more thing you need to know.

Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. We really are lost apart from Christ, but he loved us (God loved us) so much that he came to save us from being lost forever. To understand how he did that, we need to go to one more intersection. It’s an intersection that happened at the cross. The intersection we find…

At the corner of justice and mercy

God is perfectly holy and perfectly just. What that means is God can’t ignore sin and He can’t not punish sin. That’s bad news because the Bible tells us that we are all sinners and we all fall far short of God’s standards, and deserve eternal death. But the amazing good news is that God so loved the world, He refused to leave us there. He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 

The Bible tells us that at the cross, justice and mercy met. God’s justice met God’s mercy, and neither was comprised. At the cross, God’s justice was perfectly satisfied because Jesus, who never sinned, took our sin on himself and received the punishment that was rightly ours for that sin. He paid the full price for our sin on the cross so that God’s justice could be completely satisfied. And because God’s justice for our sin was perfectly satisfied by Jesus, God could offer mercy freely to anyone who would see their need for it and receive it as a free gift. We can’t earn God’s acceptance by our own efforts, but we can receive it as a gift purchased by Christ. Wages are earned, gifts are received. Romans 6:23 says, For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Grace can never be deserved, it must always be undeserved or it isn’t grace.

God does love you and wants to have a relationship with you. He proved it by giving His Son. However, the Bible tells us that the only way to that relationship though is by putting our faith and trust in Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross. By turning away from our sin and towards God – it’s all one movement. Will you believe in him this morning and trust him as your Lord and Savior? 

I am going to pray a simple prayer, and if you feel that want to receive Christ as your Savior, I ask you to quietly pray along. If you mean it sincerely, God will hear and answer.