Your name doesn’t define you

Last Sunday, you might remember that I said how Zacchaeus’ name literally meant ‘pure’ or ‘righteous’. Kind of funny really….when you think about what type of person he was.

Or is it?

Maybe that’s the twist right there….

…everybody else (and when I say ‘everybody’ I mean the ‘religious types’….the Jewish establishment) already had Zacchaeus written off. In their eyes he was a sinner, despised, a traitor, dishonest, a fraud, an outsider, unclean, worst-of-the-worst….without hope. He was who he was and nothing was going to change him.

Pure? Righteous?

Zacchaeus was anything but.

If you were playing the word association game, then those two words are not the words that would come to mind when you thought about Zacchaeus.

But by the end of the story, Zacchaeus has been transformed. He has had an encounter with Jesus…with grace…that has changed him from the inside out. By the end of the story, in God’s eyes, Zacchaeus is pure and righteous…he has been declared ‘saved’…part of God’s family…a child of Abraham…someone, who by faith, has trusted in God and His promises.

And that’s the beauty of the gospel.

That our past doesn’t have to define us.

We don’t have to be known by our name. Or our past.

Or what others think about us. Or declare us to be. Or condemn us to be.

She’ll never amount to much.

Once a trouble-maker, always a trouble-maker.

He’s rotten to the core that one is.

We don’t have to believe the lies that Satan wants us to believe.

Worthless.

Rubbish.

Ugly.

Waste of space.

Failure.

Not clever.

The gospel takes what once was, and transforms it into something new.

Death to life.

Darkness to light.

Despair to hope.

Lies to truth.

Listen to what God promised through Isaiah…

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release from darkness for the prisoners,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour

and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

and to provide for those who grieve in Zion –

to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise instead of despair.”

(Isaiah 61:1-3)

 

The God of the Bible….the God we meet in Jesus…is the God of reversals….the God of new things…the God of transformation…of renewal.

With Jesus there is always hope.

With Jesus, in the words of Paul, “the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).