[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast. Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Thank you, Andrew, for inviting me to speak tonight. I'm excited to be here, excited that you're here. If you're visiting with us, we're glad that you're here.
If this is new to you, then you're in the right place. All right?
Because if you want peace in your life, how many of you would like a little bit more peace in your life and maybe add a little joy to that?
Okay. If you want some peace and joy in your life, then Jesus Christ is the answer.
No matter where you are, no matter what's going on in your life, he's the one that can provide that. And so we're excited about this opportunity for this week of VBS and looking forward to this. We're going to be talking about Blueprint for the Broken. I'll be speaking tonight. We'll have the better speakers the next couple of two or three nights. The next two nights will be Patty Flanagan. He is the minister at Owens Crossroads Church of Christ. A lot of y' all know Patty and what a great, great family he has. And we're excited about him being with us as well. And then Mike Baker will be speaking to us on Wednesday night. So make your plans to come back and be a part. So let's start off with a prayer. If you would pray together with me, Father, we do thank you for this wonderful truth that you have provided to us, that you have come to us to save us, to sanctify us and to redeem us.
And we pray for our time this evening, Lord, that we will study your word, will open our hearts, that you'll speak to us and that we might learn, obviously, and respond in a way that's positive. And we know that you can do that in our lives. And we pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen.
We're going to be looking this even at a story that is called I Am Known by Joy, but a story From Luke, chapter 19 in the story of Zacchaeus that many of us know about. A familiar story that, strangely, I had this urge this week as I've been preparing for this lesson, I had this urge to pray for all the short people. Okay?
And you know what's interesting is, as we look at this, how many of y' all know this gentleman right here?
His name was Spud Webb, okay? And he actually, he is five foot seven. He's my kind of guy, okay? And he won the NBA dunk contest in 1986. That's pretty awesome, right? Five foot seven, beat out Dominic Wilkins in the championship. He was six, eight. Okay? So pretty cool. What about this guy on the right there? Y' all know Tom Cruise? Of course. All right. But did y' all realize that Tom Cruise is five foot seven?
Most of your Hollywood stars are not five foot seven. Right? And what about this guy?
Now, where is he?
I got his permission.
I got his. There you go, Scooter. Right there, baby. Okay?
I got his permission to put him and my picture up here tonight because I'm one of those short guys.
But isn't that an encourager right there?
Amen.
Somebody that smiles at you, somebody that's gonna. I don't care what mood you're in, you're gonna be smiling when you leave, Scooter. Right?
Okay. And it's not because it's short. It's because what's in here. Amen.
All right. And for us tonight, we're going to talk about this, and I'll just tell you all you tall people, sorry, we're going to be praying for you tonight. No, I'm just kidding.
Let's talk about this story because I think we can learn so much about ourselves and about Christ by just looking at these encounters that Jesus has in the Gospels, these stories, obviously, of so many different individuals that he comes in contact with. And we can see what it means to be saved by him, what it means to be transformed by him, what it means. And this story of Zacchaeus is a great example of that tonight. So let's read the story to start off with together from Luke, chapter 19. The Bible says in verse one, he entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich.
And he was seeking to see who Jesus was. But on account of the crowd, he could not, because he. He was small in stature.
So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.
So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled. He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.
And Jesus said to him, today, salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham.
Verse 10. For the son of man came to seek and to save the lost. You know, verse 10 here really serves as really the key interpretive verse of this entire story, because it says there in verse 10, it says, for the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost. And that's probably not a new thought to a lot of people in here tonight, to most of us here this evening, but hopefully the goal of this lesson is that, you know, we will come to see, obviously come and. And understand and see that this is.
This story can obviously be fresh to you in a lot of ways. We all grew up singing, you know, Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he, okay? He climbed up in a sycamore tree A savior far to see. Right? We sung that so much in our life that it's just like. It'll just flow off our tongues.
But I pray that you tonight and myself will see this in a new and a fresh way and understand and apply it to ourselves and. And maybe look at others a little bit differently, okay? Because the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost. And when I say the Son of man came to seek and save the lost. Let me ask you tonight, what does that. You know, what does that strike you? How does that strike you tonight when I say that for yourself, for your family, for the people around you, for your friends, wherever you are in your life right now. But before we talk about the story, I want to point back to another story that's in the previous chapter here in Luke, chapter 18. I just want to touch on it real quick. And it's the rich young ruler, because many of the commentators, as I was reading, stated, and it seems that the story of Zacchaeus and this story, obviously of the rich young ruler, they form something of a contrast with Each other, okay? Because if you recall the rich young ruler, he comes to Jesus with this sincere question, right? And he comes to Jesus and says, what must I do? And how many of y' all this question?
What must I do to inherit eternal life? How many of y' all want eternal life?
Okay, Two or three. How many of y' all want eternal life?
I want eternal life.
Okay? So the rich young ruler comes to Jesus, says, hey, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And what does Jesus say to him? He said, follow the commands. And what does the rich young ruler say?
Hey, I've followed all the commands since I was a little boy. I've done all of that.
He's kept all the commands. And Jesus says to the rich young ruler, he says, if you want to be made whole, he says, sell all that you have and give it to the poor and come and follow me. And then what does it say? The Scriptures say the rich man did.
He went away sad because he had much wealth. And it's really a sobering account and serves really as a warning to all of us about the deceitfulness of not only wealth, but also just our attachment to worldly things and how they can keep us from embracing Christ in our life.
But it gets even more sober in verse 24, y', all, because Jesus says. He says, how hard is it for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven? It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than. Than for a rich person to inherit eternal life.
That's a stunning statement, because I think everybody in here wants eternal life.
I want it.
And then he says, hey, this is hard.
And it begs the question that we all ask. And that question becomes, then who can be saved? Who then can be saved? If that's the.
And I mean, if that's your terms, you got to sell all your have, give it to the poor and follow me, and that's your. You know, then who can be saved?
Salvation seems not only difficult, but impossible for the rich, if not for everybody, right? When I read this verse.
But then, as usual, Jesus provides this.
He answers this perplexing, almost hopeless question with this statement in verse 27 of chapter 18. And he says, and I'm thankful for this so much because he says this. He says, what is impossible with man is possible with God. Amen.
Say it louder. Amen.
Okay, I'm excited about that, and I hope that you are as well. And I want you to think about this as we come to the story of Zacchaeus. Now, as we Think about the mission of Christ. The mission of Christ says, which makes the impossible possible not only to Zacchaeus, but for you and for me, for every one of us. So who is this Zacchaeus that we're talking about when we talk about Zacchaeus and he climbing that tree? Let's talk about a few of the important details of this story that we just read from Luke, chapter 19.
First off, we know that he was wealthy, and this is not a small detail.
We just talked about the rich young ruler. But Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector. And if you were the chief tax collector, then you supervised. You were over a region, okay, of that particular area, and this particular area was Jericho, and he supervised other tax collectors in the region. And he was essentially, you know, if you think about it, he was just a manager of those other tax collectors. And what it meant, if you think about it, if you oversaw that and you were the chief tax collector, you probably. And you did make more money, right, because of what you were doing.
Because Luke even says it in verse, you know, talks about in verse two there, he says that he was rich.
All right, so he was actually a wealthy individual.
But tax collection in that particular time, and I'm not going to go to the IRS today, some of you all may work for the irs. No, if you think about it, tax collection in that particular day was known to be corrupt, right?
And tax collectors, frequently they would collect more than what the Roman government actually was asking for. And whatever they got above that, they kept it to themselves for whatever it was, and they used that. And they had this reputation for greed and exploitation of the people around them. And as chief tax collector, Zacchaeus, he likely benefited from those practices of those people that were underneath him. And he wasn't just collecting for himself, because since he supervised those people, he did more. But he was socially and religiously rejected by the people that were around him.
And most Jews considered tax collectors to be sinners, and they avoided them. They didn't want to have anything to do. So he was wealthy from that. The second thing to know about this is they lived in Jericho. Why was that important? Because Jericho was really, both historically and theologically, it was a significant town. If we know about it, we think about it, it was really the place where Joshua, you know, a place of great victory, of what God obviously had done for his people. And now Jesus encounters Zacchaeus here in this town. But why Jericho? Well, Jericho was a wealthy city on this important trade route.
And what was interesting was that, you know, it was a beautiful city with sycamore trees. They had a grand theater. There was all kinds of things that were going on there. But a lot of the goods that were traveling in that region went through the Jordan Valley, and they went through Jericho and they were taxed there. So everything that was taxed there, that meant what? More taxes that were placed on those goods and services. And so what happens was, is that you can imagine, you could picture Zacchaeus there. He's living in Jericho now, and life is good, it seems, for him. So he's a rich man in a rich city. And finally, the last detail I put up here was he was a wee little man, okay?
And you knew that was coming. And a wee little man was he right. I've had that song stuck in my head now for several days. As you go around, Zacchaeus was short. And it seemed. You know, it may seem like a little incidental detail, but it's actually a pretty significant. Because here he is, this wealthy tax collector who wants to see Jesus, but he can't quite do it because he's too short.
So he's too short. And there's these obstacles in the way. And if you think about that situation where Jesus is coming and, you know, a little bit in this picture, you see it maybe a little bit of the way, maybe it was. And he goes and climbs this tree to be able to see him and as he's coming through.
And what's interesting is that he really could have gotten to a point. And I don't know about y', all, where you've been to a point. I know for us, we've been to the Walk of Champions at Alabama, right? What they do before the game. And you get down there, and if you get there, you know, 10 minutes before it starts, guess what?
And there's no sycamore trees down there, right? So you're not going to see much.
So what have we done before? We walked up to it and we couldn't see anything, and we just turn around, walk, and go do something else, right? Well, Zacchaeus could have done the same thing. He went to see Jesus, but he couldn't see him. He could have just said, hey, I can't see him. I'm going to go home, okay? And he could have forgotten about Jesus then, all right? But that's not what he did. Zacchaeus doesn't do that, y'.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: All.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: He sees that sycamore tree, and he climbs it, okay? And that sycamore tree is interesting because they called it. I'm not going to talk about it a lot, but they call it a poor man's tree because, you know, the culture then was, is that the poor man would eat the figs from the sycamore tree, and they were not really what they called the real figs. Okay? And so it's interesting that he chose a tree like that to go to. Now, I want you to picture that in your head, because Zacchaeus climbing up this tree, and I try to think of somebody here, but I'm not going to go. You know where one of us would go, climb a tree. Because you're thinking in that day, he's a wealthy rich man and he sees Jesus and he gets so excited that he runs to a sycamore tree and starts to climb it. And you know him, you're like going, there's Zacchaeus. What does he do? What is he doing climbing that tree?
I mean, it's sort of like, I don't think we can put ourselves a lot in that situation because you're like going, of anybody, you know, maybe, maybe a 10 year old boy or 12 year old or 15 year old, whatever. But why is Zacchaeus going to climb that tree? What is he doing?
But you know what's interesting? It's maybe a good lesson for all of us because there's so many times in our life maybe, that sometimes the road to faith and to Jesus requires taking very basic, simple, humble steps.
And you may view those steps as obstacles, but I will tell you that we can view them as a divine, ordained avenue to draw us closer to Jesus.
Okay? For what we need to do.
And everybody in here tonight has those steps and those challenges they have in their life to grow closer to Jesus.
And what are we doing to be able to do that? Are we climbing that tree?
Some of y' all have climbed the tree already. Some of you hadn't even started yet. But what was Zacchaeus looking for? Was he looking for a blueprint for salvation?
I'm not really for sure if that was the case. Did he know that or was he just searching? You know, something was driving Zacchaeus. What was it? What was driving him to do that? Of course, he had heard about Christ.
Okay, did he want just to get a glimpse of him? You know, I think it was a lot deeper than that.
I do believe he knows the reputation of Jesus. The reputation of Jesus was known in that area.
And he knew that he was a holy man. He knew that he was a righteous man and a man who not only performed miracles, but this is so important, he knew that Jesus was a man who ate with sin sinners, which leads me to believe this about Zacchaeus, that Zacchaeus seems to know that he is a sinner.
Okay. I believe that Zacchaeus knew that he was a sinner because he is trying to find Jesus and he wants to see him so bad that he's one of the wealthiest people there and he's running to climb this tree. That was probably ridiculous for him to do.
And he knows the sin that he has in his life.
And I would dare to say in a room this size tonight, that we have people here in this family that, hey, we know obviously the sin that we have in our life.
What are we doing about it?
So why would Zacchaeus make, really. And this is, you know, if you want to say, a fool of himself, that's probably not, maybe not a good word. But why would he make, you know, this spectacle of himself climbing this tree? And I'm thinking he was asking a question that many of us have asked in our life.
And I think the question was this. I think he was asking, does God care about me?
And for me, I know in my life there are times, and even today, there's times when you are struggling, whether it be physically, whether it be emotionally, whether it be financially, whatever is going on in your life, health wise, illnesses, whatever belief.
And you're saying to yourself, well, does God really care about me?
And I just, I don't know. I'm throwing that in there. The Bible doesn't say that. But I think that, you know, Zacchaeus was thinking, well, does this man Jesus care about me? Okay, well, I want to find out if he does or not.
How many of you have ever asked that question? Okay, when things are not going well, I think a lot of us have.
And so he's in this tree, okay? He's up there in the top of that tree and he's looking out over to see Jesus. And he's just up there looking. And all of a sudden Jesus is coming by. And so we have this intersection. We have Jesus walking by. We have Zacchaeus in the tree. All right? And he's up there in the tree.
And this encounter between Jesus, Zacchaeus and what you see next is very important. This is what the Bible says in verse five, he says, and when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, zacchaeus, hurry and, and come down for I must stay at your house today.
So who initiated this encounter?
Who initiates it?
Y' all can say It Jesus, okay? Jesus initiated this encounter. Jesus wanted to find Zacchaeus, okay? Because Zacchaeus was known by Jesus.
Jesus was the one that came to him and obviously looked at him and made this statement. And not only did he look up and call to him, he commanded to him, he said, hey, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down and come down out of that tree, all right?
And what becomes apparent as this story really unfolds, a lot of it is that we may think a lot of times, and even the song that we sing has that little bit of a message to it that Zacchaeus is looking for Jesus.
Okay? But actually what we've come to find out is that is Jesus is looking for Zacchaeus. It's just the opposite of what we think, because here we're going to see Jesus mission right here. And what is his mission? To seek and to save the lost. That's what he's doing.
And for each and every one of us to see the same thing. So do you think that Zacchaeus, after he made that statement to him to come down, okay, for I'm going to stay at your house today? Do you think Zacchaeus felt a little bit unworthy?
I mean, there are individuals.
Have you ever committed sin in your life to where at a point to your life to where you felt unworthy about somebody asking you to do something in the church?
For each of us, I think Zacchaeus was looking at this, and maybe he didn't feel good enough. But, you know, but guess what, y'. All.
Zacchaeus was unworthy.
It's not that you feel he was unworthy. I mean, he held back from the people he stole, from the people that he was his own people that he was supposed to love and care for.
He was committing sin, okay? But what's interesting is, and this is so, so much true, he just wanted to see Jesus. And guess what? Jesus didn't leave him in that tree.
He didn't leave him up there and go, hey, quit doing what you're doing, okay? He said, hey, come down here. I want to go to your house.
And I'll tell you tonight that you and I are also known by Jesus, and he does not want to leave us in the tree.
So what did Jesus do? Jesus calls Zacchaeus and then he says, hey, I'm entering in. I'm coming to your house. And Christ calls to him and he says, but he says, I'm coming. And how does Zacchaeus respond? This is a very interesting verse. Okay? I don't know if I've ever really noticed this as much about Zacchaeus as I studied this story. This is how Zacchaeus responds. He says, so he hurried and came down out of the tree and received him joyfully.
Now, here you've got a sinner. Here you've got somebody who has sin in his life, who feels unworthy, who has been cheating people, who's been stealing from people, and he's receiving Jesus, okay? The creator of the universe, the one who's going to save mankind. He's receiving him joyfully.
Would you think that he might be a little bit intimidated?
I think he knew that Jesus was a holy, righteous man, okay? And he knows that he's not only holy and righteous, he knows that he's not holy and righteous.
And we might think that he wouldn't receive him joyfully. How would he receive him joyfully? What's going to happen? How is it that Zacchaeus receives Jesus joyfully into his house?
Let me give you an example.
Let's say, for example, that you have an illness, and you've had an illness for, let's say, almost a year, and it's something that is really bothering you.
You're able to every day still go to work. You're able to do what you need to do. But this illness is like, you're frustrated with it because you've tried a lot of things and you can't find anything to take naturally, chemically, whatever that's taken care of it. But you're standing around and you're talking to your friends, and all of a sudden, now you've got this illness. You're telling them about this, and this. One of your friends looks and say, oh, you know, a couple of months ago, I went to Dr. So and so.
And I had the exact same thing that you're talking about. And he gave me things, and it helped me. And the second friend looked and said, yeah, you know, a couple years ago, I had that same illness, and that same doctor made me. Well, what do you think that you're saying, Hallelujah, or let me what's the name of this doctor? I want to get the name. So your friends give you the name of that doctor. You don't know him at all, but they give you the name of that doctor. You go home and you tell your wife or your husband and your kids, you know, like, I've been dealing with this for a year now, and now I've got this name of this doctor. And it's, you know, it's Sunday night, but tomorrow's Monday morning. And guess what I'm going to do.
What are you. He's going to call that doctor, right?
So he tells all his family. He's excited about it. Well, about an hour later, you're sitting on the couch watching TV and you get a phone call, and it's that doctor, and he's calling you and he says, this is Dr. So. And so I've heard that you've had this illness, said, listen, I'm going to be over at your house in one hour. Okay, we'll see you in a little bit. Bye.
Do you think that that guy received him joyfully?
Okay, now for us in our life, we've got a sickness in our life, and it's called sin.
And some of us need to understand and realize that.
Even the people that come here every week needs to realize that. Because for us to understand joy, we've got to understand who provides the joy.
For us to understand that, we've got to understand who provides the forgiveness, who provides the healing, who does that for us. And I believe, and I know that Zacchaeus knew that in his heart. He knew that this physician could do that and for each of us to be able to. So ultimately, what's interesting, when you get home, you tell, you know, you get off the phone and you tell your kids and your family, not just doctors coming, and you don't even know him, but you're okay, and you receive him joyfully because of that. And that's what so much I believe Zacchaeus are same way. And that's why he obviously. And so he joyfully welcomes him in because he's looking for that.
And I'll ask y', all, and I'm asking myself, are we joyfully welcoming Christ into our lives today because of our sin? I pray that we never take that for granted, what the Savior has done for each and every one of us, though.
Do you think Zacchaeus knew that he was sick? Maybe. I'm not really sure, but I think he did. He knew. I know he knew this. He knew Christ.
He knew Christ as someone who welcomed tax collectors and sinners into his life.
So here we see this other contrast that's going on that's important. Not just the contrast between Zacchaeus and the rich young ruler, but between Jesus and the crowd. Because we look at the crowd and we see the indignation of the crowd. In verse seven, they say this. He says, when they saw it, they all grumbled.
They said, he has gone in to be the guest of a man who is A sinner.
So you can see this crowd thing going on, that Jesus, you know, can you imagine? You think about what they're saying.
Jesus went to eat with whom he went to whose house he did what?
Why did he do that?
And that's what the crowd is saying. This man who obviously had stolen and taken from them were saying that. You see, this was the practice, and this is so important, y'. All. This was Jesus practice for his entire ministry. If you look, especially in Luke, okay, in Luke 15, think about this. His ministry was eating with sinners is repeated over and over again to the point where Luke actually writes. And chapter 15, verses 1 and 2, he says this. Now, the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to him.
This is Luke talking about Jesus. All the tax collectors were drawing near to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumble, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them.
And so what's happening on this occasion is that, you know, Christ was teaching them. He was preaching repentance and salvation, and they were responding to him, okay?
And these people were eager to hear what Christ had to say. And they were coming to Christ and Christ receiving him, obviously them to himself. And so a quick question I'll ask each of us tonight is, do people know you as someone who welcomes sinners?
Or I'll ask it a different way.
Or as someone who judges and outcasts those who are struggling with sin in their life.
It's important, y'. All. It's what Jesus did. It's how he lived.
And for us to think that we've got it all together, we need to understand why we do. Y' all understand? We do have it all together.
And I say that in a way that's not.
I say that we have it together because he has given his life for us to have eternal life.
But we need to understand and be humble and understand that, hey, it's because of that. It's what's driving me. So try to put yourself in Zacchaeus shoes. I mean, think about this. His life was. And I'm going to read this. His life was eaten up with sin. His life was eaten up with greed. His life was eaten up with deception. His life was eaten up with thievery and materialism.
He seems a lot like the rich young ruler, okay? Except that the rich young ruler came to Jesus seemingly as, you know, a righteous man, right?
Holding onto his riches. And those Achaea seems to be knowing that he is very poor spiritually. Okay? So there you have it. You've got this beautiful conversion story in the Bible, and it's more apparent in verses eight and nine, and we're going to get to those here in a couple of minutes. But I think you can see faith operating throughout this entire story. And this is interesting because faith in infancy and faith in action. Listen, he had the faith to climb the tree. He did that with probably people laughing at him and ridiculing, but he had the faith to go. And some of y' all today, you're like, hey, I don't even know why I'm here. Okay, but do you have the faith and do you have a trust to be able to say, hey, I'm gonna do this no matter what people say, what my family says, what the people around me say, because I know what I need to do.
At the very beginning, he had to take some of those basic humble steps that we talked about, but not just this. It's not just a faith to climb the tree, okay?
But faith to get out of the tree.
He didn't stay up in the tree, okay?
He doesn't get stuck up there, but he obeyed Christ's command and his covenant. Okay, I want you to think about this tonight because I want to ask you, are some of you stuck in the tree?
And you say, what do you mean by that, David? Well, maybe you're just looking on from the tree.
Maybe you're just showing up and you're looking at Christ and you're hoping, you know, that maybe you can just get a wave from him or maybe a two thumbs up or whatever. But Jesus is looking up at you and he's saying, hey, get out of the tree.
Get out of the tree. It's time to get out of the tree.
Because I want to come and be in your life. I want to come and eat at your table. I want to come and be with you. I want to have a relationship with you.
I want to be able to do that.
It's time to get out of that tree because he has more in store for us, that is to encounter him and his life changing salvation. So Zacchaeus had the faith to obey Christ's command. And he gets out of the tree and you see the faith in action, the faith to welcome him. And so he welcomes Christ, okay, as the Savior for sinners. He welcomes him into his home, into his life, to be taught by him, to be saved by him and changed, okay? And life is totally changed as a result of that encounter. And this is verse eight, says, it says, Zacchaeus stood and Said to the Lord, behold, Lord, the half of my goods I have give to the poor. And if I have defrauded any one of anything, I'll restore it fourfold. Y', all, this isn't Zacchaeus just getting a. You know, if you think about it, just getting a out of jail free card, right? That's not what he's getting, okay?
He's getting a little forgiveness. And then he just went on with his life.
It totally turned his life upside down.
It totally transformed him. He moves from a life of self to a life of generosity, and it's an awesome transition. And then what happens? In verse nine, he stands up and Jesus said to him, in the presence of everyone, he says, this tax collector, today, salvation has come to this house.
Since he is also a son of Abraham.
That probably was pretty shocking to the people that were in that room of who knew Zacchaeus, who was completely controlled by riches. And now he becomes a son of Abraham, not just physically, but a spiritually son.
Because Jesus says, salvation has come to this house. And once again, I want us to understand. I think we get the wrong idea here. I was going to mention this. We get the wrong idea a lot of times thinking that Zacchaeus somehow earned salvation by what he did here.
Okay?
It wasn't. I want to write this. It wasn't Zacchaeus repentance that brought Jesus into his house.
It is Jesus in his home that brought him to repentance.
And it's important for us to understand this because many times today we struggle thinking that what we are doing is what will bring our salvation. Just like the Pharisees, we focus on keeping the law to earn our salvation. When Jesus said, what is impossible with man is possible with God.
One comes before the other. And so I will tell you and challenge you tonight that Zacchaeus actions are the first fruit, not the root of his salvation, okay? It's the fruit of his salvation. The root of his salvation was Jesus Christ. It was Christ who sought him. It was Christ who saved him. And he saves today, okay? And he made that statement, salvation is in this house, and it's the same for us, okay? He seeks but our actions and our work, y'. All. That is the fruit salvation has provided to us through him.
So what's the message tonight? The message is that I am known by God, you are known by God.
And what does that mean?
It means so much because of the fact of what he does through his son Jesus to save us. But number one, and this is the, you know, as we Close. Tonight, it shows us God's power to save not what we do, but what he has done. You know, God's power to save.
God's power to say that in salvation, okay? That he makes the impossible possible.
And he wrote it this way. I thought this was pretty good. We might say it this way. Quote, he threads the needle, as it were, in and through Christ. And you watch this wee little man, this tax collector, this camel walk right through the eye of the needle when none of us could do that on our own.
With man, this is impossible. With God, all things are possible.
Number two. And before we close out tonight is God's mercy for sinners. It shows how much that he loves us. So if you're here this evening, you're a sinner. I've got good news for you. You see, God's mercy for sinners, it reminds us that it's not the well who need a doctor, okay? It's the sick. Alright? That Christ did not come to call the righteous, but he came to call sinners like you and me to repentance. And that's why he came. And we can know this, that whatever your sins are, he knows your sins and he knows them intimately. Well, and mine is mine as well.
And he does not push us away without mercy, but in great mercy he welcomes us to him. And then lastly is. This is God's mission.
God's mission to make his dwelling with us.
You know, I wanted to know if you caught that tonight, that Christ says to Zacchaeus, I must come and stay with you.
And you know, that's exactly what God's promise is, to make his dwelling with us, with his people. That's what he wants to do. He wants to be with us and I want to be with him.
And you see a little snapshot of that, okay, because he says I must come and stay with you and I must come to dine with you, to fellowship with you.
And if you really think about it, in essence, you know, he laid down his life for us, to save us, to transform us, to make you new and to make me new. So, brothers and sisters, the message. We must be in a lot of ways like Zacchaeus.
And so what do I mean by that? How do we be like Zacchaeus?
Well, maybe it goes like this.
We must learn to see ourselves rightly so that we might welcome him joyfully.
And you say, well, what does that mean?
You know, maybe that's the blueprint for the broken seeing ourselves rightly. How do we see ourselves rightly before we can genuinely appreciate and really celebrate God's and Christ's grace in our life, we must first humbly recognize our own flaws, our own limitations and our desperate need for salvation. I don't have it all together, okay? But Jesus is what makes me whole.
So seeing yourself rightly, this is what it means. It means understanding that you are imperfect and fallen, which removes any sense of that pride or self righteousness in our life.
And once you grasp that depth of that human frailty in your life, you can understand really the true magnitude of God's grace. And it goes like this. It says that realization transformed the act of welcoming God into an experience of profound unburdened gratitude. Gratitude and joy rather than a forced obligation.
Wow. That's what true peace looks like.
That's what true joy is all about.
And he's provided that to us tonight. And guess what?
That actually displays to everybody around you. They see that and they want a part of that.
And the truth is that Christ came to seek and save the lost. And the other beautiful picture is it displays the reality. And I want you to listen to this, that Christ obviously, even tonight, and it's so, so true for each and every one of us that he's still eating with sinners, just like you and me to be a part of that. Let's pray as we end tonight.
Father, thank you so much for this time together tonight to study from your word and the story of Zacchaeus. And please help each of us to respond in faith and in repentance to this message. Father, welcoming Jesus to relinquish and surrender all of our sins in our life that we're holding on to. Not thinking of what we might lose, Father, but thinking about all the things that we can gain in him. And if we've got questions, Father, help us ask those, help us challenge one another. But we want to surrender our cares and our possessions to you if they have a hold of us. And we want to relinquish our sins for the sake of obviously of Christ. And knowing him, we, we do thank you for the glorious message of the gospel and that Christ has come to seek and to save the lost.
And oh Lord, may we not just remember that, but may that truth penetrate our hearts even now. And may we all be changed forever in Jesus name that we pray. Amen.
Thank you for being here.
