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Feb 05, 2023

Wisdom from Zacchaeus

Wisdom from Zacchaeus

Passage: Luke 19:1-5

Speaker: Matt Petty

Series: The Transformed Life

Category: Sunday Sermons

Keywords: church, worship, faith, jesus, god, evidence, christian, bible, christ, gospel, hope, holy spirit, doubt, believe, jesus christ, messiah, the bible, lord, christianity, jericho, transform, bible study, invitation, sinner, inspirational, overcome, tax, collector, face to face, transformed life, bible stories, believe in god, change your life, burnt hickory worship, burnt hickory baptist church live stream, zacchaeus bible story, encounter jesus christ

As we continue our sermon series on the transformed life, we study Zacchaeus, and we learn some big lessons from this little character as he came face-to-face with Jesus. As we study scripture, we learn that no one is beyond the goodness of Jesus, and it’s a God-breathed, soul-level curiosity that positions us to actually meet Him. When Jesus looks up at Zacchaeus, he calls out to him in the tree, and gives him a personal invitation. We see that every invitation from Jesus demands a personal response, and this invitation was more than just a visit at his house. Zacchaeus was invited to abide with Jesus, and he accepts. His life is completely changed because of his encounter with Jesus. We need to inspect our own lives for the evidence of the invitation and encounter with Jesus. The good news is that Jesus truly comes to seek and save the lost! What evidence is present in your life of the change that has happened after encountering Jesus? Have you received His invitation and responded? If not, take the next step today. We’d love to pray with you and answer any questions you have, so reach out today. You can always take the next step here – burnthickory.com/next.

Hey. Well, good morning, Church. We are incredibly glad that you are here today. Before I jump into the message today, I want to pause and give a little bit of an update on where we are on our building project that we came to in August and announced to you. In August of this year, we came with a vision that we really believe that God has put on our heart for this church to begin the process of expansion on the front side of our building to do a couple of things for us. Number one, we really want to open a counseling center here to begin to take care of as many of the spiritual and physical, emotional needs of the community, whether that be clinically or pastorally in the counseling world. Number two, we realize that there is a little bit of a space problem in the front side of our building, knowing that we have one little entryway right there. And so we know that in order to kind of continue to grow, we've got some work to do on that front side. We also are really big in being able to host our community, have events here, have open times where people can gather here and we know that God wants us to continue that as well as we need to have an entrance on the back-side of our building on this side to begin to allow our senior saints amen, to have a place to come in and out of the building without being in the rain. Because I don't know if you've noticed or not, but evidently God loves it to rain on Sundays. It's just kind of how it works in our world. Well, let me give you a little update of where we are in the process. We've been walking over the last six months to have the building designed. To have the architectural plans drawn, to have the builder begin the process of receiving all the bids for all the different areas. And they come back to us and so that we can begin the build process and find out kind of what that's going to look like.

And in that six months, I don't know if you've been paying attention to what's been going on in the economy. There has been a lot of craziness in the supply world, in the building world, in the labor world. And so where we are in our process now is we have some numbers back and now we're kind of in what you would call the value engineering stage if you've ever built a house. You know what I'm talking about in this, right? You have 100% dreamed up what you want. And now it's like, okay, God, what do we need? So now we're in that process of figuring out how we can stay within the budget, within where we're committed to have no debt for this project and to find out kind of where God is going to lead us in this over these next years. I'm extremely excited where we are. We know what we've got to do now and where we've got to kind of settle some things out and how God is going to walk us through this project. We're just praying for clarity in that. So let me give you two things that we're asking out of you. Number one, I am just asking you to pray that God would continue to show us the right way to walk this out, just so that we could be completely in the know, and walking this process with builders, with architects, with all this stuff and continue the process. Number two, I'm just going to ask you to pray how you can be involved with this process. Six months ago, we came and asked the church to pledge towards this over and beyond your normal giving, and you pledged a little over $2 million towards this whole building vision. But we also know that some of you just A, you weren't here those weeks that we talked about it. B, you just weren't at a season of life maybe six months ago. Or C, there's literally hundreds of you that are new to the Burnt Hickory family that we want to ask you to be involved with this process. So here's the ask this morning. Would you just consider praying to see where God wants you and your family to come behind this process? Look, if you're visiting here, this is not for you, all right? This is for the family right now. But we're just asking you how you can get behind this because things are expensive. We know that. But we also know that God has a plan in this as we walk it out. So we're walking in the process. Just wanted to let you know where we are in this.

In fact, let's just pause just for a second and we'll pray that God continues to be in the middle of it. Lord today, walk with us, Jesus, as we continually prepare for how this church can reach this community through this project. God, we know you're right in the middle of it. God, we know the potential that we have in this. And God, we know that you are going to show us how and where and when to walk this out. Lord Jesus, thank you, God. We're trusting you in this moment for these next steps. It's in your name. Amen. Amen. If you're wondering how you can jump on that, there's a place on the app. There's a place on the website. Just look at it. It's got all of the explanations on there.

Well, let's jump into the message. We're in week five of our Transformed Life series, where what we're doing is we're walking into the lives of some people that come face to face with Jesus. What we're doing is we're pulling some truths from these stories, not just for knowledge's sake, but to ask God, God, how is it that you want to move in me? What do you want to do in my life? And God it is great for me to kind of learn Scripture. But God, how is it that you want to transform my life? We've looked so far at this man that was born blind, that God gave him a new vision physically and a new heart. And we said that that's what God's design for our life is, is to set us free. We look secondly at one of my favorite characters of John the Baptist in this moment of doubt, and we said that that is where God brings us in this moment of doubt. Our role is to call out to Jesus and Jesus will heal our hearts. He will hear us and He will come to us. Three weeks in, we saw the woman at the well and we got to see where Jesus pursued this lady that nobody else cared about. And he not only healed her heart, but he sent her to be a voice for his kingdom. And church, that's God's heart for all of us, is that He meets us right where we are to give us a life of dignity, honor and mission. Last week, we got to check in with all of the disciples around the table, around the Passover table, and we got to see Jesus turn the Passover into the Lord's Supper, this remembrance feast for our Redeemer, King Jesus. Well, this week's story, I can't wait to jump into it. It shows us a truth that we have walked through in every other story that we have walked in so far. This week, we get to see the pursuing, the loving and the graceful nature of who Jesus is. But I want to remind you just one more time as we read these stories all we're doing is we're reading the verses. We're asking God, God, what do you want to do in me? We're reading the verses and we're saying, God, how is it that you want to transform my heart? And here's my prayer every single day of the series and I'm committing to it in this, is that I'm praying that when you come to the word on your own during the week, that all we're doing is setting up a model for you of how when you read the word, you can say, God, what do you want to do in me?

Listen, Sundays are just, it's just a complete picture of what God can do every day of your life. All right. If you've got a copy of scripture this morning, we're going to be in Luke chapter 19. Luke Chapter 19. We're going to see this incredibly amazing short account of this we little man. All right. That's what we're going to see this morning. You like that? That's how it is. And we're going to see how God saves Zacchaeus this morning. All right. That's what we're going to see this morning. If you credit in fact, if you were to look at Zacchaeus' life, you would probably have voted him least likely to save of his entire town. But that is exactly what God does. Now, when I say the word Zacchaeus, I know if you're a church person your whole life, you're already like, I know the story, heard the story, could sing the song, know the lyrics, right? Don't do that. All right? A, don't sing. But B, don't write the song off or write the message off because this story can meet all of us where we are, no matter if you're young, old, short, old, fat, skinny, well, all of that you're going to see in this story, it makes a huge impact on us, whoever we are, because here's what I know about all of us. At some point in all of our lives, we are going to come face to face with Jesus, and we're going to have to make a decision whether I'm coming down from the Tree of Life, Tree of Culture, tree of pride, tree of me being the Lord. Or I'm going to say yes to Jesus and I'm going to abide in him. We're going to see that this morning in this story of Zacchaeus. Now, Luke, chapter 19 is interesting because Luke is the only person that gives us this story of Zacchaeus' life. He's the only one last week when we look at the Passover, it's in every single gospel. Luke is the only one that wrote this to us. And you see in Luke's gospel that Jesus is in the last week of his life. This is the very beginning of the last week of Jesus's life. Now, the New Testament authors, when they wrote about the last week of Jesus's life, they knew that this was an incredibly significant moment that they needed to document through the Holy Spirit. In fact, let me just teach you a little bit about the Gospels. Did you know there's only four chapters in the whole writings of the Gospels that says anything about Jesus's first 30 years on this planet? There's only four of them. But catch this there's 85 chapters of the Gospels that describe his last week of or his last three years, three and a half years of his life. And inside that, you can kind of boil it down to 29 of those chapters that kind of describe the final week. And 13 of those chapters describe the last 24 hours.

Do you know what this shows us? This shows us the monumental, incredibly graceful, impactful moment that Jesus came to this earth, to do what he only could do. And that's to die for our sins, to be our redeemer. So Luke 19 verses one through 11. We're walking into the last week of Jesus's life, but we're also walking into a town called Jericho. Called Jericho. We'll see it in just a second. Jericho is kind of a little bit off the beaten path. It's below sea level, has incredible weather. It has a huge spring that runs right through the middle of it. That actually makes it the oldest city in the world. Josephus, our first century historian that wrote so much history, actually calls it the fattest city in the land. All right. He calls it prosperous. It is incredibly wealthy and it's under Roman control. And what's interesting about our story this morning about Jesus is there's really no no reason for Jesus to be where he is in Jericho, because he was heading to Jerusalem from where he was heading from. He had to go out of his way to get to Jericho. But isn't that just like Jesus? Jesus knew he had an appointment with this little man that was going to be in this tree. And thank goodness he did, because here's what we are going to do. We're going to walk through this funny but kind of inspiring account, and we're going to see some incredible object lessons. We're going to see some big gospel lessons from our little friend Zacchaeus this morning. All right. Now, in fact, write the first one down and then we're going to read some scripture. Here's the first lesson that Zacchaeus teaches us. He teaches us number one, that no one is beyond the goodness of Jesus. No one is beyond the goodness of Jesus. Or you could say it like this. No one is too far from God. No one is too far from God for God to reach into their lives, catch this, and to save them. Nobody's gone that far. And this is kind of a subtheme of all of the accounts that we're looking at in these transformations. And here's my heart is that it becomes a subtheme of our church, because I don't know about you, but I've fallen victim before many times in my life of looking at people's lives. I'm going to let you into my heart for a minute and go, Oh, man, I just think they're too far gone. I just think they're too far gone. And the story's about to show us that they're not. Luke, 19 verse one says, This watch says, Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. Now, obviously this is an account of a rich tax collector that gets saved. We know that. Right? Which, if you really think about scripture, is incredibly miraculous that this happened. You say well Matt, why is it such a big thing that a rich tax collector gave his heart to Jesus? It's a big thing because if you're reading chronologically or if you're reading sequentially through the Book of Luke, you will know that one chapter before Jesus saves Zacchaeus, what we're about to see not to let you in on a spoiler, right? One chapter before that we see Jesus having a conversation with this guy that's called the rich young ruler. The rich young ruler walks up to Jesus and says, Jesus, what do I need to do to be saved? What do I need to do to be yours? And Jesus and Him have this account. And the fact that Jesus looks at Him at the end after He doesn't walk away from His riches, and Jesus says this in Luke 18:24, Jesus looked at him and said, How hard is it for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God? Indeed, Jesus says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.

You've got to love the Bible. Here's why. One chapter before Jesus is looking at us going, Man, it is easier for a camel to go through this little bitty spot than it is for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God. Flip the page one page over. Jesus says miraculously, but watch this. I'm about to do it. I'm about to show you that while it may be hard, it's not impossible. While it may be strenuous, it is not out of my power. Because Jesus is showing us this point. I can save anybody and I can come into anybody's life and transform their heart. So in our event, what does Jesus do? Jesus is getting the camel through the eye in a place called Jericho, which is even more crazy. You say why is that crazy? Because Jericho was an evil city. It was an evil city. All right. Not to call out any names, but think in your mind. Las Vegas, right? That is if you're from there. Sorry. But that's what we're saying, right? If you're thinking of Jericho, think Las Vegas in your mind. A lot of people went there to enjoy a lot of things and I'll leave it at that. Right. A lot of people went there to do a lot of things that we're not going to talk about this morning. Right. That is what it was. It was incredibly wealthy. It was a huge center of wealth for the whole area. And because of that, there were a lot of tax collectors in the city. Now, tax collectors of the day are not like IRS agents today. They call themselves something else. No, that's what they were. Right. They were tax collectors and they were evil. They were kind of like the mafia of the day. That's how evil they were. And people hated them. They hated them. But they had good reason to hate them because if you look at history, you'll see that there was a donkey tax, there was a walking into a shop and buying something tax. There was a breathing tax just for being alive. There was an income tax, there was a poll tax and there was a temple tax. That's today. But, you know, that's what I'm saying, that that's where they were and they were evil people that taxed people so heavily. Matt, how did they tax them that heavily? Listen to what Rome did. Rome was so smart. Rome in this time ruled much of the known world. This is kind of where history is, if you read it. But Rome also knew that in ruling that they had to collect the taxes from these regions that were not necessarily kind of in the Roman culture. So what Rome would do is they would go into a town after they conquered it, they would find an influential person in that town. They would sit them down somewhere and say this, Hey, we want you to be our tax collector here. Well, of course, they would look at them and go, No, that's terrible. Why would I ever do that? But then Rome would say this, here's what we're going to do for you. We're going to send you a whole regiment of soldiers to enforce what you say needs to happen. But also, we're going to tell you that as long as we get our cut as Rome, you can tax the people all the money that you want to tax them. You can do whatever you want, and Rome would look at them and say that we don't care. So these evil people would rise into these levels of position, with Rome being at their back and they would tax people out of their houses. I mean, there's stories of widows being thrown out of their houses, their stories of children being in bondage and slavery to pay off people's taxes. And it was all legal, which brought up a point for me this week. It's not in your notes. But listen, it proves to me that just because something is legal doesn't make it godly.

And Rome actually promoted this, and these guys were evil at it, and Zacchaeus was one of them. That's the evil that we're seeing in the story has proven my first point. Right. But Zacchaeus wasn't just a tax collector. What did the Bible say about him? He was the chief tax collector. That means this. He was the Bernie Madoff of the whole scheme. Right? That is what we're seeing in scripture. He does a good job of what he did. He was evil on top of evil. Which is interesting because listen to this about Zacchaeus. When I saw this story this week, I bet JoAnn heard me laugh in my office. The word Zacchaeus, catch this. Do you know what the word Zacchaeus means? And it's original and Greek in this form. In this format, it means righteous and pure. That's what his name means. All right. I love the Bible. And here's what that means. And then let me kind of take you swing around this little point right here in our society today. You name your kids, whatever you want to. All right. I'm not going to say a name because it's probably one of them. But I mean, you'll pull out just weird words out of the sky and name your kids whatever you want to. And that's your prerogative. It's your kid. You can do whatever you want to. But in this time, parents would name their kids something that they hoped they grew up and would live that out in their lives. So you can imagine Zacchaeus Right. Chief tax collector Bernie Madoff, evil of evil. Right. And now he's walking down the street and his name means pure and righteous. So people are like, Oh, hey, pure, hey, righteous. And they're like, What in the world is this guy doing? They were so low that he couldn't enter the temple. He couldn't go to a religious feast. But do you know something about this? What Jesus is showing us right here is that Jesus specializes in reaching those people that are evil, that are far away from him, that think they cannot know him. That's what we're seeing in the story. Do you realize that Jesus touches the Untouchables? He touches those that have no idea how hopeless they are.

That's what we're about to see in his life. So listen to me. Don't give up on people. Don't give up on people. Praise God that he didn't give up on me. Praise God he didn't give up on you. Right. And listen, you may be here today. And possibly, you've been running from God for a very long time. And can I tell you something? Just because you think God has given up on you, he hasn't. He hasn't given up on you. And He wants a relationship with your. Number one, no one is beyond the goodness of Jesus. We're seeing it in Scripture. But number two, catch this one. It is God breathed. Here's the second big point, right? It is God breathed soul level curiosity. You can put the word Holy Spirit over that if you want. That positions us to meet Jesus. It is God breathed. That's from God. At our soul level, Holy Spirit curiosity. That positions us to meet Jesus. Watch what we see. Luke is giving us the medium or the means in which God used to reach Zacchaeus, and it's the tool that He reaches all of us with. What does God do? He begins to place something in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. That's something that begins to give us a curiosity to spiritual things, to see in who God is, to see that there's something else out there. And as a result of that, we began to move our lives in a direction to meet Jesus. Look at verse three. Watch what it says. He, that's Zacchaeus. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short. Amen? Can I get an Amen in the crowd? Right? Because he was short, he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead. He climbed up the sycamore fig tree to see Jesus since Jesus was coming that way.

Now, first of all, you kind of get kind of got to congratulate Zacchaeus just for a minute. Right. He is in the crowd, In a crowd of people that probably wanted to shank him. I might add. Right. Because he was that evil. He's in the crowd. But the problem is that he's short. All right? I'm a sanctified imagination, I can just see Danny DeVito right? I see that little rich Danny DeVito ball headed running down the road. You're not going to forget that one this afternoon. Running down the road right here. He's just wanting to see Jesus. He runs ahead and he climbs up in this tree. Kind of two reasons. To get away from the crowd, A. To see Jesus, B. It's kind of like the Thanksgiving Day parade. If you're short, you're out of luck. He gets up at a vantage point where he can see what's going on, but he breaks a total man rule of the day. Men, especially powerful men during this time, they didn't run. It was seen as uncouth, it was just kind of how it was. This posture they had. And he's running down the road. I mean, he can't even break some man rule of the day. You know, there's only three reasons you should be running men. Number one is that you stole something. Number two, you're getting in shape. Number three, there's a large animal chasing you. That is the only reason that any man should be running. But that's what we see, right? Danny DeVito is running down Wall Street. Right. Stuff is happening in his life. But why was he doing it? I never asked myself this question before until I really started studying this text. Why was Danny - Zach, right. It's stuck in there. Why? Why was he so curious? Let me tell you why. I think it's in the text. It's because he was wealthy. He was known. He had everything that this world could offer. But catch this. He was still aware that something in his life was missing. He was still aware that beyond the riches that he had something in his life catch this that he could not buy and he could not steal needed to be satisfied. Church, let me tell you this. He was aware that Jesus was the only person that could probably satisfy the emptiness of his soul. Isn't that where we are? See, Zacchaeus had heard of Jesus. He had seen what Jesus had done. He had heard the stories of Jesus. He would have been smart enough and up to date enough to what was happening in the greater Galilean area. And he was wondering and I'm just wondering how many of you are in the same spot this morning? He was wondering, could this Jesus be the thing that satisfies my soul? Could this Jesus be the thing that takes me from a spot of always thinking there's something else to being the one that says, I give you life. Listen to me.

Some of you are here today, and that is exactly where you are. You have everything. Life seems to be going okay right now, but your heart is just telling you there's still something missing. There's still something missing. No matter how much riches, no matter how much pain or how influential, no matter how many friends, no matter how much stuff is going on in your life, there's still something that's telling you. There's more, there's more, there's more. And until Jesus begins to walk into your life, this in church, there's always going to be more. Always. One author said this about this whole story. He said, This moment right here shows us that the greatest, wealthiest, most successful person in one of the richest resort towns in the world realizes there must be more. Is that you today? Have you chased the carrot long enough to where? Maybe, just maybe, today, the Holy Spirit curiosity in you is showing you that more is Jesus, that more is Jesus, that more is Jesus. Can I just tell you this? He's worth it. And you're in a good spot because keep going in the story. Watch this. Curious Zach runs around the road, verse five. It says this When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today. So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. You know what Luke is showing us right here? Luke has shown us that not only is nobody too far from Jesus to reach, not only is it the Holy Spirit that draws us into this Holy curiosity moment, he's shown us number three, and that is that every invitation of Jesus, watch this, demands a personal response. Every invitation of Jesus demands a personal response. What does that mean? That means that there is a moment in the invitation of Jesus to where the invitation is not enough. There has to be a response from us to say, Yes, Jesus, yes, Jesus. You see Zacchaeus right here. He has everything to gain. He has nothing else to lose.

So what does Zacchaeus do? He responds to the invitation and he moves. What does that do? He moves from being a mere observer of Jesus to what? To a participant in finding out what Jesus can do for Him and how Jesus can save him. Look at the invitation. It says, Jesus reaches the spot and Jesus stops, for all intents and purposes, for no reason. But there's a reason he looks up is Zacchaeus and I can just hear the tenderness in his voice, in my mind, looking up at Zacchaeus, in the crowd, in the noises of him going, Zach, come down. We're going to your house. We're about to have lunch together. You're about to go sit down with the Bread of life to have bread. And I'm going to show you what I'm going to do in your heart and your life. Jesus was offering Zacchaeus at this point in the process, a personal, intimate relationship with him. But look at verse five. Watch what he says. Jesus says, I must stay at your house. I must stay. What does that mean? That means I must settle down or I must abide, or I must remain. I must make myself at home. Church this is the same lesson, or the same message in this word abide as it is in John 15:5, where it says, I'm the vine and you are the branches. And he who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. That's the offer, Church. That's what Jesus wants to do in our hearts. He wants to abide in our hearts. And He wants us to abide in him. And as we abide, he moves in to our lives to give us life. He fills the hole. The question is, though, when you move from being an observer of Jesus to being an abiding lover of Jesus, let me stop there and say it again. Every week I've said, Bring this out of history into your life. Don't read this as a text of Danny DeVito running down the road. Read this in the light of Jesus, what are you calling me to do? Jesus, how are you calling me to abide in you? Are you calling me to get out of the tree of my pride? Get out of the tree of me being Lord, and me giving my life to you? Are you calling me out of the tree to say Yes, Jesus, I'm now walking in your presence. This is the Gospel. But the invitation is not enough. Everybody has a sycamore, but there has to be a response. Look at verse six. Watch what happens.

So he came down at once and he welcomed him gladly. But there's more. There's more to the story. I wish it kind of ended here, but there's more because there's problems in Jericho. There's always problems when God does something in people's lives. Right? Write this lesson down and we'll talk about it. It's long, I couldn't get it any shorter. Watch this. Lesson four, number four. Hypocrisy, self-righteousness and judgment from others should never hinder our desire for a life changing encounter with Jesus. Let me say it again: hypocrisy, self-righteousness or judgment from others should never hinder our desire for a life changing encounter with Jesus. You say Matt, what in the world does that mean? I'm glad you asked, because I want to tell you right here. You see? Unlikely. Zach, what does he do? He meets with Jesus. Jesus goes home with him. But there's people around. All right, I've said this before, but I want to point it out again. Have you ever noticed how the people are always present when God wants to do something in your heart? The people are always there, aren't they? Sometimes the people are your friends. Sometimes the people are your family. Sometimes the people are the people around you. Sometimes the people are the other people that rule in your mind and heart sometimes. But here's the thing. The people are there. Look at verse seven. I hear about these people all the time. Verse seven, look at it says All the people saw this and they began to mutter. I'm telling you, the people have been there since day one. He has gone to be a guest of a sinner. So the townspeople, these are the supposedly good people, they get together, probably with a few Pharisees, and they're all mad at Jesus for welcoming Zacchaeus. But what a difference in attitude that we're seeing right here. I can promise you this. What it's showing us is this: any time you decide to make a move for Jesus, the people are always going to be there to mutter. They're always going to be there. They're always going to be there to question. They're always going to be there around you. But can I plead with you? Please live a life that cares more about what our Savior thinks than what the people think. Teenagers. Let me just tell you this one lesson will save so much baggage in your life. Listen, young adults, this one lesson will save so much baggage when we decide to live our lives for King Jesus, rather than the people, the people will always try to drag us down. But Jesus gives us the invitation to follow him. I promise you, it's worth it. Keep reading the story. Verse eight says this. But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, Lord, look, look, Lord, here now I have give all half my possessions to the poor, and if I've cheated anyone out of anything, I will pay it back four times that amount. Jesus said to him today, Salvation has come to this house because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.

You know what this shows us right here? This shows us that every true encounter here's here's the next point, number five is that every true encounter with Jesus produces evidence. Every true encounter with Jesus produces evidence. Somewhere between four, seven and verse eight, there's a little bit of a lapse in time. And Jesus goes into Zach's house, right? He has lunch with Zacchaeus, and Zacchaeus comes out a transformed man. I mean, look at what he just said. He said, Hey, God, if I'm forgetting to take care of the poor, I'll make it right. If I've stolen from people, I will make it right. If I rip people off, I'll make it right. Zacchaeus doesn't just start his salvation, and I'm just going to enjoy this. I'm just going to be with you, Lord. No, he's like, I will move for you. And he goes out of his way to do what? To serve Jesus, to serve others. Church listen, your life, when it is changed by Jesus, will always result in you producing fruit if you're questioning whether your salvation was true or not, if you're questioning whether you really came down out of the tree and you gave your life to Jesus, you've got to look at the fruit that is in your life. You may have all the right answers, you may have all the right words. You may have perfect attendance in your life group. All of that is fabulous. But if you don't know that, you know that you know that I gave my life to Jesus. And as a result of that, my heart changed and my life pointed in a direction that produced fruit, then you might not be saved. And I know that's like, well, man, quit judging this, man. I'm not judging. You got to do the judging. That's not my job. But I'm saying that you cannot have an encounter with Jesus, and your heart does not change. Your heart does not produce fruit. That's what we're seeing in the story. But look at his evidence, right? He gives to the poor. Right. That he's kind of saying, man, I have not done this. I've got to start giving to the poor. I'm going to give half of what I own to the poor. Secondly, what does he do? He says, I will pay back what I've stolen from people, not just pay back 100% plus a little bit, 20%. That's what Moses said. I'm going to give him four times what I've stolen. Notice the generosity. Is Zacchaeus doing this so that he can be saved? No. He's doing this as a result of what Jesus has done in his life. Church that's why when we beg and we beg and we beg for people to serve God, sometimes you just begin to get frustrated. You're like, Do you know the Jesus that saved you? Do you know the one that has redeemed you? And as a result of that, what comes from our life is generosity and servanthood. You do realize that Jesus is not preaching a message on generosity right here? He's not preaching that tithing message that when visitors come, they say that's all our church talks about.

No, he's just preaching a life and saying, hey, when I come into your life, there's change. There's a new heart, there's a new life and Zacchaeus changed, His life changed. In fact, theologians will say that Zacchaeus was probably the most generous person in the whole New Testament. Why? Because he had stolen so much money beforehand. If he's given away half of everything he has and he's given away four times to those that he actually stole from. That is a lot of money. But listen, when Jesus comes into our lives, do you know what it does? It changes us. It changes how we live. It changes how we talk. It changes how we date. It changes what we watch. It changes how we deal with our relationships. It changes how we obey, changes our relationship with our parents. It changes our money. It changes how we give. It changes how we serve. It changes all of our relationships on this planet. Now, we're not saved by works, but if you are saved, there's evidence. I'm not saying you don't struggle, but there's evidence. James 2:26 says this as the body without the spirit is dead. So faith without deeds is dead.

Listen, not everybody that has a Bible is a believer. It's just where it is. But when Jesus comes into your heart, he sets you free.

Which leads me to the last point. Number six is that Jesus truly comes to seek and to save the lost. I get people all the time. So, Matt, why do we talk so much about reaching the lost? Why do we talk so much about reaching the community? Why do we do things like the building deal that we're doing? Why do we do things like trying to host people? Why do we always fill this place up with people like Men's Night and all the women's events and all the student and kids events? This is why right here, verse ten The model and thesis statement for Jesus' life. Watch this for the son of man came to seek and save the lost. Church, that's our mandate. It's to follow after him in that. But here's the good news in it. If he did it for Zacchaeus, he can do it for you. If he did it for this little man, he can do it for all of us. You say Matt, how do you know it really took? How do you know Zacchaeus just didn't kind of have one of these flash in the pan moments, so he gave it all away? But then he went right back to where he was after camp. Right. Here's how we know. In 175 AD. 175, Clement of Alexandria wrote a book called The Stromata Collection of Homilies. That's one for you, right? And in that book, he said, and I quote, Zacchaeus became a radical follower of Jesus. And catch this, he became the bishop of Caesarea. And he served the rest of his life with the hole that was in his heart, catch this, being filled by the only one that can fill it. Here's my question to you this morning. Does Jesus need to fill that hole in your heart? Maybe, just maybe, today you ran into this building with no idea of how much the Holy Spirit Curiosity was drawing you to this place. But maybe today you've realized that you were up the tree and Jesus is speaking into your heart. And today you need to respond to the invitation so that he can seek and save you that are lost. You say Matt, are you judging me? No, I'm giving you an offer today to trust the one that can save you. Lord Jesus. Today, God, we see that you radically save the lost. God, that's your heart. That's your heart. God, I know that there are people here that need to surrender their hearts to you today, but the question is, will they? Will they come down out of the tree? That they place themselves in and give you their lives? You say Matt, I'm not sure that I'm a follower of Jesus. I mean, I've gone to church and I kind of know the Bible a little bit. Here's what I would say to you. Give your heart to Jesus. He'll iron out the details later. Submit your life to Jesus. Invite Him into your life. Make Him Your Lord, and he'll radically save you like he did Zacchaeus. You know, maybe today, you walked in here with the mindset of, I'm just going because somebody made me, I'm just going because I haven't been there in a while.

But if there's something stirring in your heart today that is drawing you to Jesus, here's what I'd say to you today. Submit to him. He's worth it. He's worth it. If that's you today, why don't you just simply just say this to the Lord in your heart? Lord Jesus, I know I'm a sinner. And I need you. Come into my life. Be my Lord. Forgive me of my sins. Save me. Listen, with your heads bowed and your eyes closed, today I'm just going to tell you this. If that's you today, if you just in your heart, that is where you are. Here's what I know about our God. He just saved you. The Bible clearly says that if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, that you can be saved. That's exactly what you did today. You just made the best decision of your entire life to allow him to cover your sins and give you new life. You say, well, what next, Matt?

Well, number one, we just want to pray with you today. You say man, I've been here a whole long time. If I stand up, that's going to cause a lot of questions. Yeah, the people are always there. We already talked about that. Here's what I want you to do today, if that was you, in just a second. When I finish praying, I just want you to stand up from where you are. Walk to the front of the room and take a right. I'll be standing in the corner over here by the next steps banner. And I just want you to look at one of us in this corner and just say, Hey, I gave my heart to Jesus today I'm out of the tree. What do I do? And we just want to pray over you this morning and encourage you. But maybe today you are a believer. Maybe there's some other things in your life you've run up in the tree for. Maybe there's some things you need to submit to Jesus today. Maybe there's somebody today you need God to just call them to attention in your mind, to pray that He would show himself to them. They're not too far from God for him to save them. Lord Jesus, move in these next couple of minutes and God let us as we worship you today, see that you are the God that saves. Thank you, Lord Jesus. It's in your name.

Amen. Amen.

Let's stand together in worship. If that was you, come speak to us. We love to pray with you.

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Wisdom from Zaccheus

 

“Big” Gospel Lessons from “Little” Zaccheus

1. No one is the goodness of Jesus.

Luke 19:1–2
1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy.
Luke 18:24–25
24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

2. It’s God-breathed, soul-level curiosity that us to meet Jesus.

Luke 19:3–4
3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
Luke 19:5–6
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

3. Every of Jesus demands a personal response.

Luke 19:5
“…I must stay at your house.”
John 15:5
“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”
Luke 19:6
So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

4. Hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and judgment from others, should never hinder our desire for a life-changing with Jesus.

Luke 19:7
All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”
Luke 19:8–9
8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.”

5. Every true encounter with Jesus produces .

James 2:26
As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

6. Jesus truly to seek and save the lost.

Luke 19:10
“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

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Additional Notes

 

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