Jesus Can Re-Family the Very Lost | This Is What We Do

In this message from This Is What We Do, we look at the story of Zacchaeus—a tax collector, an outsider, and someone nobody thought deserved a second chance.

But Jesus saw something different.
Instead of avoiding him…
Jesus called him by name.
Went to his house.
And brought him into the family. 🏡✨

This is the heart of God:
He doesn’t just forgive the lost—He re-families them.
And if that’s what Jesus does…
That’s what we do too.

✨ In this message you’ll discover:
Why Jesus pursues the people others reject
What Zacchaeus teaches us about childlike faith
How to stop judging and start inviting
What it looks like to help people belong before they believe

🙏 Ask yourself: Who have I counted out?
💬 Comment “No one is too far gone” if you believe this
🔔 Subscribe for more from Fierce Church
👉 Watch more here: https://www.youtube.com/@FierceChurch

The people you’ve given up on…
Jesus is still pursuing. ❤️

Transcript

Jesus Pursues The Written Off

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I want to talk to you today about the fact that Jesus pursues people that we would write off. Jesus pursues people that we would write off. So I'm going to show you a video of real quick of Jonathan talking to Pastor Fury. Many of you remember Pastor Fury, and some of you know Jonathan here. But Jonathan, here's the deal, man. He was trying to score some weed. He was trying to get a hold of some drugs. And he's looking around. Now, what you don't know under the surface is God has been moving in his life. He's been asking God questions, not telling anybody, but he's been having conversations with God in his heart. Let's go ahead and watch that video.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

So nobody's in that gas station. I get up to the counter and I ask for a blunt. I said, Hey, can I get a stall very clean? And as soon as I said that, I kid you not. A lady was behind me and she goes, Do you believe in God? Bro, when I tell you my heart and everything inside of me dropped, that's that's not an exact exaggeration. Everything inside of me just dropped. And I turned around and she looked scared because I looked like a dumb. You know, and at that time, my pants were probably hanging all the way off my butt. Um I've had a hoodie on, you know. So I turned around, um, and she looked scared. And she apologized to me. She said, I'm so sorry. I don't know why, but when I heard your voice, God told me to ask you if you believed in him.

Jonathan’s Gas Station Wake-Up Call

Why Jesus Detours To Zacchaeus

Undignified Faith And Real Restitution

Acceptance Before Change

Stop Being The Grace Gatekeeper

Seeking The Lost With Jesus

Inviting Your Zacchaeus To Easter

Prayer And Closing Challenges

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Now, what you don't know is that he's been for months during that time just asking God questions. God, are you real? Putting God to the test a little bit in a good way. And some gal, I'm so glad she did it. She didn't know him. He was a little bit intimidating to her, but she went ahead and spoke up. Sometimes we're ready to give up on somebody, or we're ready to say, I don't know if that's worth the trouble. Jesus goes after people. For us, it might be that somebody, think about some people in your life right now. They're they're too far gone. But Jesus goes after them. Jesus wants them. And when we stop thinking that people, certain ones, are worth pursuing, a couple things go wrong with us. Our heart begins to shrink. Grace, the whole concept of grace begins to get messy in our minds because at least we're acting like there's certain folks, grace can't reach them. They're too far gone. God's power is limited. Normal people Jesus can reach, but those folks he can't reach. We embrace a very safe face. Oh, Lord Jesus, deliver us from safe faith. Are we hearing it? And something, we lose something on the inside of us that is supposed to care about those that are far from God. So it's Palm Sunday, and we're gonna go back in time to Palm Sunday, and then we're gonna go two days earlier in the calendar. That is the Friday before Palm Sunday. And Jesus, he's on his way. He's gonna go to Jerusalem, he's gonna do his triumphal entry, just like many of you know about. But on Friday, he goes out of his way to go to Jericho. It's not on the way, but he wants to make one more stop. He's gonna make a stop with a man named Zacchaeus. He doesn't need to, but he's going to, and he's gonna spend the night at Zacchaeus's. He's gonna spend Sabbath with Zacchaeus, and then he's gonna go on to Jerusalem. You might know some Zacchaeus's, and I'm praying that Jesus would bring to mind while we while we're talking right now, some folks that you would just you think about them and you think, ah, not them, not them. They're too mean looking, they're too sour. Here we go. Verse one. And he entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man called by the name of Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. When we see chief tax collector, we've got to understand this guy isn't good at accounting necessarily. This is a lot more in this time, it's like the leader of a cartel. Okay? He's the chief tax collector, which means there's ones under him that also collect taxes. Rome said, Hey, you guys got to collect a certain amount of taxes from the Jews, but they totally had liberty. They can take as much more as they want to. So they were seen as traitors to the people of God. And Jesus is stopping off to see him. Now you gotta know this is a crowded space. Jesus is coming through. But for Zacchaeus, this dude's probably pretty used to a socially isolated life. He's probably pretty alone most of the time. Oh, he can talk to his fellow tax collectors, but he can't participate in community life because he's he's considered a rejected traitor. He can't participate in any kind of religious life because he's someone that people honestly, they probably can't even stand to say his name because he's the one who rips them all off. And he really does do it. Think about somebody that when you think of them, you're like, uh think about maybe it's an online personality. And and they're they're a they're some kind of person. When they weigh in, you're like, oh my gosh, shut up. Think about that person. Think about the person who maybe they were supposed to be a leader, but they fell from grace, and it was a really bad mess. And you think about them like, how could they even do that? It's that kind of person. Think of the people that you're like, ah, I don't have anything to do with that kind of a person. And something in in our hearts, real quietly, is we're not saying it out loud and we're not even thinking it out loud, but our heart is saying, not worse. The emotional, the spiritual, the relational effort. And Zacchaeus was trying to see who Jesus was, and was unable because of the crowd, for he was small in stature, so he ran on before and climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see him. For he, Jesus, was about to pass through that way. So Zacchaeus, he's short, but the point of the text is not to tell us that he's not a tall man, but that he climbs this tree. And what that means is he's doing something very undignified in front of everybody. Okay, so Zacchaeus, first men don't do anything that's gonna like lift up their robes in any way. So he's he's kind of like a little kid, even though he's got a lot of power, even though he doesn't answer to anybody except the Roman prefect that comes through and demands his stuff, even so, he's willing to be undignified. He's willing to swallow his pride and say, I gotta get a look at this Jesus that I've heard so much about. It's almost like a little child wanting to see and doesn't care what anybody thinks about it. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house. And he hurried and came down and received him gladly. Now here's how you know something real happened. We're gonna we're gonna skip over verse 7 for a second. So it says, and he received him gladly. John 1 12 says, as many as received him, he gave the right to become children of God. Zacchaeus, whatever you think about him, he receives Jesus. He's like, Yes, I'm down with this guy. Verse 8, but Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, to the Lord, Behold, half my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor. And if I extorted anyone of anything, I'll give back four times as much. Now Zacchaeus is not earning his salvation, but the year he said, he said, Lord, that means master. Bro doesn't call anybody master, but he calls Jesus master. And he says, think this through, think, think through his story. He's left the town uh damaged by the fact that he's a thief and sends other little thieves to steal from the townspeople. He says, you know what? I'm convicted. I've got to repair the damage that I've done. And so he does restitution. And it's kind of weird. He says he's gonna give away 50% of everything he has to the poor, and then he's going to voluntarily pay back four times as much to anybody that he ripped off. Now it's not clear he might have had other sources of income, but it sure seems like bro is self-bankrupting. He's giving away everything he's got because he knows, and this is what people know, people who've met Jesus, here's what really happens. When they think about their former life, even when they're celebrating that they're forgiven, they're like, dang. How could I have done that? I can't believe that was me. And so he wants to somehow do what he can to make up for it. He's not buying his salvation, he's just giving evidence that he truly did receive Jesus and was transformed by him. That's what he's doing. Now watch how Jesus responds to someone that everyone else had written off. Jesus desires to refamily the very lost. When we say lost, here's what we mean. We mean somebody who is at odds morally with God, doesn't know where to go, doesn't know what to do, they're maybe even defiant against God or other rules. And the Bible called them lost. They're little sheep that are off on their own somewhere and they're just going in circles. And even though we might think they're just the worst person in the world, Jesus says, I see them and I want them and I'm gonna go after them. In fact, I'm gonna go down into Jericho. Don't even need to go there, but I want to get to this guy. It's the last little mission I'm gonna do before I go to the cross. I could go to the cross without it, but I want to make sure I've been thinking about Zacchaeus. Nobody else likes him, but I like him. And I'm gonna go and talk to him and spend the night at his place and all Sabbath with him. Even though the other people would think this dude is a pariah. Jesus says, I know his name. He says, Zacchaeus. He's not coming for anybody random, he's coming for Zacchaeus. I must stay at your house. It's a divine appointment, it is a necessity. He has been sent by the Father to retrieve Zacchaeus. Does anyone remember what it's like to realize Jesus was sent to retrieve you? That you were that little sheep going in circles. And Jesus could have just left you alone. Just like, no, I'm gonna go get him. I'm gonna soften their heart, I'm gonna open their heart, I'm gonna open their eyes, and I'm gonna bring them back to the Father. Jesus says preemptively, I accept you. He says before anybody else. We even see this by the fact that he's eating a meal with him. He says right out loud, I need to come have a meal with you. I'm gonna stay with you tonight, Zacchaeus. That saying that publicly is saying, I approve of this guy. Whatever y'all think, I'm willing to say out loud, I'm going with this guy tonight. That's ginormous. Some of you may know about John Newton. He was a slave trader. One night he got into a bad storm and began to cry out to God, and God began to soften his heart. And as time went by, he began to see what a wretch he was to participate in the human trafficking slave trade. And so he turns away from it, he becomes an abolitionist, he becomes a pastor, and he writes words that are one of the most famous worship songs in the history of the world. Amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Now, we probably would have looked at John Newton and been like, nope, there's no way, dude. Look at how look how bad this guy is. Look how much he's hurting the world by participating in this. And yet he was turnable. Jesus got a hold of his heart and how much good this dude has done for the planet just through that song. Here's what we gotta understand about Jesus. See, we're tempted to write people off. But Jesus sees all the little Zacchaeus's and he says, I see their potential and the potential that grace can bring about in their life. Jesus, now, now hear this. You gotta hear this, church people. Drop your theology for a second. Drop it. Hear this, just hear it from God's word, okay? Jesus accepts people before they change. Jesus accepts people before they change. Now here's what all these people would want to happen. They would have wanted, all right, well, you know, Zacchaeus, get your act together, okay? So first and foremost, apologize to everybody, give everybody their stuff back, and then spend about 20 years showing us that you've really changed. That's how they would have been. But Jesus accepts him first. So have you got anybody that you're you're hesitant to accept? Maybe there's a student. They're like, girl shows up drunk every Wednesday. I don't know what to do with her. She's your Zacchaeus. Or maybe there's one of the parents that is occasionally there at the soccer game because the truth is they're an absentee parent, and you look at them, you're like, what he what are you doing? And you can't imagine that really they're gonna ever have any kind of a turnaround. Or you've got a family member that's truth is, dude, they're just cynical, they're cynical about faith. And every time it comes up, they're tearing it down. And you can't imagine that Zacchaeus ever doing anything different than that. But is it possible that in their hearts they're not telling anybody? Maybe they're like Jonathan or maybe they're like Zacchaeus, they're having little conversations with God because they realize there's something in my life that is not working, this isn't happening. And so they're they're looking at their life and they look at Jesus. And they're looking at their life. Now they're not gonna say anything, but then they look at Jesus. And they're taking little baby steps. I'm just gonna take one little baby step. I remember when I took one little baby step and I went to a campus meeting that was just a ministry meeting, it was like the local campus ministry, and they were gonna talk about God's stuff. I was like, all right, I've seen the flyer, maybe I'll just go. And I took my very first little baby step. Now, the truth is, dude, you could have jacked me up right there. If I would have walked in and they would have like, who are you? And they would have given me a whole bunch of like, you better check all these boxes if you're gonna come to our meeting. Um, I might have probably seen that anyway. I was like, You guys are psychopaths, I'm gonna try another ministry or whatever. But it might be that I was just like, forget this, dude. Oh, here I was trying to take a step, and here you guys are turning me away, treating me like I gotta earn something first. Which leads us to verse seven. And when they saw it, these are the grumblers, they all began to grumble. Whoo! There's always grumblers, baby. There's always grumblers. And they began to grumble, saying, He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner. Now, one on one level, they're definitely implying something about Jesus. Okay, maybe this guy is who isn't who we thought he was because he's going with Zacchaeus. But they're also saying something about Zacchaeus. They're saying, there's no hope for this dude. They are they're not careful, like we need to decide to be careful. They're not careful to avoid being the gatekeeper of who God, whose life God can work in and whose he can't. See, they would probably say to Jesus, um, sorry, excuse me, uh, Jesus, you're doing things a little bit out of order. If you could just reverse the order for us, please. Let's see this dude become one of your disciples and like, you know, do some kind of miracle or something. Let's see something happen and then maybe we can trust him, but we can't because we can't see that maybe there's there's ways. Listen to this, Christians, please, please, please, listen. There are ways that people are not, they're not doing everything you think they need to do. But in their hearts, they're already drawing near to Christ. Okay? They don't know the things yet. They don't know how they don't know the language, they don't know the, you know, how to how to behave like this. I gotta tell you, man, when when my my now wife, then girlfriend, and I got together, we had several iterations of like, oh, this isn't quite as pure as God wants us to be, because we just didn't know any better, man. We didn't even know. And but we would spend time in God's word. Oh, I can't believe it even says that. Wow, what does that mean? I gotta think about that. And you know, we had we had some mentors. They didn't call themselves mentors, but they were mentors to some of the students. And they would have us over for lunch after church, and they wouldn't tell us, hell, well, here, let's just get you guys in order, okay? Let's get right what's wrong. They would just listen and they would smile. I'm sure I said a bunch of stupid stuff, and they're like, oh, okay. Yeah. But that wasn't their purpose. Their purpose was let's just love them and watch God slowly grow them up. Are we hearing that? Now it's different. If I if if you're with somebody and they're looking to you for mentoring and they're looking, yeah, give me spiritual direction, please help me. That's that's a different thing. But when they're just taking their first steps and they show up here on Easter Sunday, and you have a little checklist of, like, well, let's see. Oh. Please don't bring a checklist of fears. Please don't bring a checklist of fears. They don't need it. We don't need it. We've got someone named the Holy Ghost, and we preach from God's word every doggone week, okay? It'll happen. Let them alone. Let them take their baby steps, okay? Let them just in their heart be like, Jesus, maybe. I don't know. Let's let's just see. What do they need? They need a whole lot of love. They need a whole lot of applause because it wasn't easy. It was hard to get out here, it was hard to tune in. What we definitely need is we can't be the gatekeepers, peeps. We cannot be the gatekeepers. Jesus doesn't need anybody's permission to move in somebody's life. That's what these guys didn't understand, and that's what we've got to understand. Jesus doesn't need anybody's permission. Jesus, here's here's the second one. Jesus has authority to refamily the very lost. He has authority. What does that mean? That means Jesus is in charge. He doesn't ask for permission. He didn't take a vote on the way over to Zacchaeus' house and be like, What do you guys think of this guy? You think there's any hope here? He didn't ask anybody. He said, I'm Jesus. I decide. I'm drawing near to this dude. I'm doing a work of grace in his life, and I'm going to refamily him. Verse 9. And Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to this house because he too is a son of Abraham. They would have said, No, he is not. A son of Abraham, that means he's one of us. He's one of the Jews. No, he left that. He gave that up. And Jesus says, If I say he's back in the family, he's back in the family because I'm the one who's going to spill all my blood for him. I get to decide. Jesus gets to decide. We don't get to decide. We got to leave our opinion out of a lot of stuff. Today's salvation has come to this house. I want you to imagine, okay? You and I and a couple others, we're gonna go out to eat, and we've got a friend. We've got this mutual friend, and this friend, dude, truth is, they're loaded. They got a lot of money. So they take us out to the swankiest restaurant you've ever been to. And they're sitting around all of us at the table, and he says, Hey, by the way, guys, just get whatever you want. Okay, it's all on me. You don't have to worry about nothing. Let's just have a fantastic meal. It's gonna go so great. And everyone's like, Yeah, they pull out the menu. I'm gonna give something great. And then there's one person at the table that starts to weigh in on everybody's choices. And they say, Maybe that's a little too much. Are you sure you need all that? I don't know. Maybe you'll back off a little bit. If they keep saying that, if they keep poking their nose in all these people's business, someone hopefully at some point is gonna say, Wait, are you paying for this? Because I thought he was paying for this. If you're paying for this, tell me. But if he's paying for it, why don't you stay out of policing my decisions, please? Why don't you stay out of it? Here, my friends, see, sometimes there's people Jesus is trying to show generosity and grace to. He's like, just leave it alone. Let me show grace. And we're weighing in. Well, let me tell you what I think about it, Jesus. No, baby, shut your mouth and enjoy the meal. Okay. You ain't paying for it. You didn't spill any blood for them. Shut your mouth and enjoy the meal. And enjoy the fellowship. Just let them go. Why are we deciding who Jesus gets to be generous to? No, he gets to be generous to whoever he wants. And we don't know. Yes, they're not transformed yet entirely for sure. But they're turning to Jesus in ways that are hidden and secret, and they're not going to clear it with you. And you just gotta love them. And so let's not confuse not finished yet with not real. Because baby, it was real for me. It was real for me the first day, and my life was not together. But it's like this is Jesus, man. He's in For me. I like this guy. I'm sticking with him. So let's just decide. They don't have to be finished for it to be super real. And if Jesus has the authority and Jesus has the power to seek these people and change them, what should our role be? It should be to seek them right along with him. That's what we should do. See, grace doesn't wait for anybody to prove it. If we're really going to be gracious to people, we don't say, okay, prove it. Let's see. Let's see the transformed life, Zacchaeus. No, we say my job is to keep helping as many as possible, so I'm going to keep on seeking. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost. Now, Jesus alone is the one who gets to save. He's the only one who can save. Jesus pays the penalty for every one of our sin. And he says, You can just go ahead and apply my payment to their debt, Father, and they're going to take all my payment. I'm going to take all their sin. I'm going to be cursed on the cross. I'm going to be brutally murdered. And I'm going to do it because I alone can save. Jesus is the only one who can save, and it's a free gift. No one earns it. It's just a free gift for everyone who would trust and believe that Jesus is not lying to them. But then Jesus not only seeks, he asks us to seek as well. See, the life of a disciple should be characterized by, I'm always seeking. Is there a Zacchaeus around here somewhere? Is there a Zacchaeus at your job? Is there a Zacchaeus at your school? Is there a Zacchaeus in one of the weird online chats you're in? Is there a Zacchaeus somewhere? And and you don't even necessarily like them, but open our eyes spiritually. I don't need to like them. I don't need them to prove anything. What if God, would you just open my eyes to see where are you already writing a story? See, this is what we gotta get. God was already writing something in Zacchaeus's heart. Everyone else thought of him as like a mob boss. And yet God was doing something on the inside, something secret. And there might be something God was doing secretly. And if this is who Jesus is, fears, this is what we do. We seek those who are far from God, every Zacchaeus we can find. And so what I want to challenge you to do, whether you're here right now or you're watching online, next weekend is Easter. And people are very open spiritually around Easter. And we have every year there's statistics that say if someone would just invite people, most will go to an Easter worship experience. So I want to encourage you, just think of now. I'm not talking about a cold invite. I'm not talking about talking walking up some stranger being like, Wanna go to my church? Because that's a little weird. That should be scary because it's weird. But what about the people that the truth is you have a relationship with them. And the truth is you're close enough that it wouldn't be very weird. And it might be just the very thing, they might be the Zacchaeus, and you just need to boost them into the tree, dude. You just need to point them where it is. Here comes Jesus, let me help you find him. Say, Carter, but I'm afraid. I get it. I'm so glad that woman who was standing in line behind Jonathan, she was afraid, but she still let God use her. And she said, Do you believe in God? That was like just what she was led to do. It takes a little bit of courage, but dude, what if? What if you or I are the link, the one link in the chain that Jesus is gonna use to pull them toward himself? What if they're at a turning point that we don't know about? I want to show you a text. This is the very kind of text that I send to people, okay? This is what it says. Hey, I'm going to first church on Easter Sunday, and it's actually gonna be super chill, not real long, and there'll even be food. No pressure at all. But if you would decide to go, if if if if you would, it would be dope to go together if you want to come along. See, there's even a typo, and it doesn't matter. Because the effort is there, the heart is there, it's clear what I'm asking them to do. Now you don't have to say that in my voice, you can say that in your voice. But whatever's simple, whatever's easy, and whatever's, you know, I do have a relationship with this person. It would be totally appropriate for me to invite them because I don't know what they're going through. I don't know the hard times they've been in lately, I don't know that they haven't been thinking about this very thing. I don't know if they're not actually pretty close to God right now, they just need someone to boost them up the tree. See, Zacchaeus, he looked far away. But are we hearing this, dude? He was moments away from God. He looked far away, but he was moments away. So what do we do? Fierce church, we gotta decide not just on Easter, but on all the Sundays. We, as for us, other churches, I don't I can't answer for what they do. We don't write people off. We don't finish people's story for them. We don't say, Jesus, that's a cold case, put it down. We say, Lord Jesus, come and save. And as for me, help me be part of that seeking because they might not be as far as I think. They might be moments away. Let's pray. God, I'm praying right now for everybody that is trying to see Jesus. They're jumping up and down, trying to see you. Lord, I pray you'd boost them into the tree right now. I pray for a crystal clear line of sight to Jesus. I pray they'd see your beauty. I pray they'd see your glory. I pray that they'd see your strength. I say, pray that they'd see your grace. And any way that maybe they were turned off because of someone's lack of grace. Oh, Lord Jesus, in your mercy, would you cleanse that? Would you pull that out of them? Help them to experience your incredible love as they grow towards you. God has for us, would you lay on our hearts this week, bring it to mind right now, bring it to mind in the moment, bring it to mind while we're sleeping, but show us somebody who might even be a Zacchaeus that you want us to be a part of your grand mission to seek them out and be an extension of your heart. God, we can't do it without you, but with you we can do all things. In Jesus' name.

unknown 28:37

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

All right, folks, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much for listening to this sermon. If you got a lot out of this, feel free to share this with somebody who might need it. Also, there's a ton more content on our website, on our YouTube channel, on our Instagram channel, on our TikTok channel. Feel free to check all that kind of a thing out. Also, if you're interested in leadership type stuff, go ahead and check out another podcast or any other blogs or videos or anything over at BibleLeadership.com. And whatever else you do, make sure that you believe God for something big today.