Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1319
“And when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, He was gone to be a guest with a man that is a sinner.” Luke 19:7.
PUBLICANS, or tax-gatherers, among the Jews were objects of intense aversion. The nation was always restless under the Roman yoke, for the Israelite’s pride of lineage made him boast that he was born free and was never in bondage unto any man. Moreover, they had hopes of a great future under a Messiah who would lead them on to conquest and, therefore, the Roman yoke galled their shoulders exceedingly and the payment of taxes to a foreign power was a heavy grievance. That the people of God should pay tribute to a heathen power was a bone of continual contention and the persons of the tax-gatherers were held in bitter hatred. While they abhorred the collectors of customs as a class, they reserved their most intense contempt for any of their own countrymen who lent themselves to this obnoxious business.
They regarded such as almost renouncing their relationship to Israel and sharing the guilt of the oppressor. As a usual rule it would only be the lowest class of people among the Jews who would become collectors of tribute from their own countrymen. The outcasts and scapegoats of society would sometimes take to this detested business, but very rarely would a man of wealth and position, such as Zacchaeus evidently was, encounter the scorn which such an office brought upon him. Zacchaeus was not, perhaps, the actual tax collector who called upon individuals, but he was the superintendent of the custom house officers of the district, for, “he was the chief of the publicans, and he was rich.”
He came, perhaps, under even greater contempt than others because he occupied a more prominent position and carried on the unsavory business on a larger scale. Jewish society drew a cordon around the publicans and set them aside as moral lepers, with whom respectable people must not associate if they studied their souls’ health. And so Zacchaeus, with all his wealth, was regarded as a pariah by his fellow countrymen. He may have been a thoroughly honest and upright man, but that mattered little to those who had taken a prejudice against all publicans. He was regarded by the Pharisaic party as one of the offscouring of society—a man not to be acknowledged in the street and into whose house no one would enter. He was a man to be shunned if he had the impertinence to enter the synagogue or the temple, and only to be tolerated because it was not possible to rid the world of him.
From the very first, our Lord had broken through this hard and fast rule. He disregarded all the traditional and fashionable rules of caste. Constantly did He address publicans as if they had the same feelings as other men. He talked with them and went into their houses, so that He came to be commonly called by those who wished to show their contempt of Him, “the friend of publicans and sinners.” A man who could be a friend to publicans was reckoned to be as evil as publicans, themselves, and further than that, a man could not go! If the Jew mentioned publicans and sinners, he always gave publicans the first place, as being decidedly the worse of the two! “Friend of publicans and sinners”—who can tell what a mass of contempt was condensed into that title!
Our Lord did not at all deviate from His course because of this scoffing, but He went on befriending sinners, even open sinners, sinners of the most avowed and undoubted degree of sin! He almost commenced His ministry by talking to an unchaste woman at the well of Sychar. And He finished it by dispensing pardon to a thief while hanging on the Cross—and between that calling of the woman of Samaria who had had five husbands and was living unlawfully at the time—right along to the thief who died upon the gallows tree for his crime, the Savior had been receiving sinners and eating with them! He had been seeking and saving that which was lost!
The old contempt of the sinner’s Savior still lingers in the world among the self-righteous. Taking different shapes and speaking with other voices, it is still among us and still, in one way or the other, the old charge is repeated that Christianity is too lenient on the sinner. They say it tends to discourage the naturally amiable and virtuous, and looks
too favorably upon the vicious and disreputable. They say that it is always talking about pardon without merit and speaking slightingly of human goodness. And therefore some even say they regard Christianity as a foe to society and an enemy to good morals. How easily could we turn the tables upon these slanderers, for usually those who talk thus have but a scant supply of morals and virtues themselves.
First, Brothers and Sisters, it was said that Jesus had gone to be a guest of a man that was a sinner, and we shall admit the truth of the charge. Secondly, we shall deny the insinuation which that charge is meant to cover. And thirdly, we shall rejoice in the fact which has been the subject of the objection.