FHBC Sermon Notes

Preview Sunday at City Church Tharpe Street

Preaching: Jim Lowe

The story of Zacchaeus, ends where he begins.  Luke in telling this story by bookending it.  It is using it to tell emphasize what he is trying to say.

That emphasis is this.  Jesus came to seek and save the lost. You see, Zacchaeus was concerned with seeing Jesus.  He was afraid that he would miss the opportunity.  This is interesting, because Jesus had come to seek and save Zacchaeus.  Zacchaeus may have been a wee little man, but he had the power and authority of the Roman Empire behind him.  He was not just a tax collector, he was a chief tax collector.  This was no sweet little man.  He extorted people.  Stole from them, defrauded them.  It was the role and the kind of the tax collector of that time.  A tax collector in that time was terrible, and Zacchaeus is their chief. The chief of sinners.

No Zacchaeus had heard the rumors of Jesus.  Perhaps he had heard that he was a friend of tax collectors and sinners.  Perhaps he had heard of Matthew, the tax collector that had become one of the core 12 disciples of Jesus.  He wanted to see Jesus!

This brings us to Luke's second point.  Jesus came to save the lost.  And so Jesus does something strange to Zacchaeus, he calls to him and with emphasis says that he "must" come to Zacchaeus' house. This encounter with started with a faith like desire to meet Jesus leads after the encounter with Jesus to repentance.  This leads to must unlikely of responses and Zacchaeus demonstrates what repentance looks like.  Zacchaeus was saved as his life turned.

But that is not the end of it. The other part of this story is that Jesus was on his was to Jerusalem.   As part of securing the very thing that would save the man, Zacchaeus, who he had purposefully sought out.

Consider this strange picture.  The sinner, Zacchaeus, was in a tree.  Church leaders may have recognized the irony of this, because the scriptures said, "Cursed is the man, hung on a tree." But Jesus called that sinner down from his place of curse, and in just a few days Jesus was to be nailed to a tree himself.  He was to die on that tree to …. save the lost.  Jesus only had this moment to seek Zacchaeus, and would go to a cross just days after to save him.

There is another part of this story.  For Jesus when he arose to heaven left us with this task he had begun.  He is asking us to "seek the lost", and with the good news of Jesus, the work that he has done can save them. 

It is interesting that just preceding this moment, Jesus had just shared a parable that

As we go to seek out sinners, let us remember these two truths..

- Don't grumble. 

- Let them grumble.  There will always be others that complain as we share. We inevitably will break someone's "rules" for how we share.  How can we save the lost, if we never go to them. This is what the parable about the Pharisee and the Tax Collectors in chapter 18 is about.  Now Jesus was in the midst of sinners, but he also was not one of them.  Sharing the good news of Jesus, doesn't mean we conform to the world is such as way that it changes the truth of that good news. 

Perhaps none of these applies to you, because you don't know Jesus at all.  But know this great truth then.  Jesus is calling you by name.  He has come to seek and save each of us. 

Amen.