Luke 19:1-10
Please remain standing and turning
your copy of God’s word to Luke chapter 19. Our reading today
is from verses one through 10. This is the story of Jesus and
Zacchaeus. We’re nearing the end of the
life and ministry of Jesus through his work among the ordinary folks.
He’s about to head into Jerusalem where he will suffer and die,
rise again, and then be ascended into heaven. And then the rest
is history, as we might say. So this is a great high point
in the life and in the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus. Let’s
hear God’s word together. Luke chapter 19, beginning at
verse one. Speaking of the Lord Jesus, he
entered Jericho and he was passing through and 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 was small of stature. So he ran on
ahead. He 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 he 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 he 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. Jesus said to him today, salvation
has come to this house since he also is a son of Abraham.
For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. Pray with
me. Lord, we ask that you would give
us a desire to see the Lord Jesus this day. And we pray that you,
Lord Jesus, would desire to see us, to meet with us, and to show
us your loving heart of saving sinners, and reclaiming the lost,
and bringing hope and salvation to those who are in darkness.
We pray that you would also build up and encourage your saints.
And we ask all this in the name of Jesus, our great savior. Amen. You may be seated. Well, y’all I’m sure know the
little ditty we learn at a vacation Bible school. You know, Zacchaeus
was a wee little man. A wee little man was he. He climbed
up in a sycamore tree for the Lord. He wanted to see, and then
the little refrain, Zacchaeus, you come down, for I’m coming
to your house to stay. We have these little ditties,
these little children’s songs that are helpful in remembering
the stories of the Bible. But I think I would reword the
song a little bit differently. I would say something about Zacchaeus
was a wee little man. Zacchaeus was a wee little rich
man. But Zacchaeus was also a wee
little rich unsaved man who needed Jesus more desperately than a
little children’s song can tell us. And so we want to look at
this story that’s probably very familiar to many of us, including
the children in the room. And we want to see a couple of
things that take place in this passage. There is a lost man. There is a sought man. And then
there is a changed man. Let’s think about Zacchaeus first. He is a lost man. Zacchaeus is
a tax collector. And he’s not just a average tax
collector. He’s a chief tax collector. He’s a supervisor. He’s the one
in the pyramid scheme that when others make money, he gets all
the richer. And he serves as chief tax collector
over a very lucrative district. I mean, this is one of, I think,
three tax districts in the land of Palestine. Remember, Palestine
is that wonderful piece of land where people who are going to
Africa have to pass through on their way from Asia. And so it
is a very lucrative land route, the whole nation of Israel, but
Jericho would be the last stop on the way in to Egypt. Now, remember also Jesus is outside
Jericho where last week we met blind Bartimaeus. And so just
as for Bartimaeus, Jericho was good pickings for a beggar, Jericho
is also good pickings for a tax collector, for a tariff man,
for a G man or whatever we might want to call him. You see, this
was a trade route. This was not only a trade route,
but it was a metropolitan city. Jericho was a summer palace for
one of the Roman officials. It had a theater. It had a velodrome
or hippodrome. It was a metropolitan place where
things happened. Business was conducted. And so
we have this lost man, Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector,
and he was the chief tariff man for what was a pretty lucrative
area, but also was a big area of balsam salve trade. The balsam tree grew and produced
well. It was a good salve for skin
that would have been dry or injured. And so the tariffs and the customs,
in addition to the regular taxes, which Zacchaeus would have collected
for the Roman authorities, brought him great wealth. Our passage
says of him, he was chief tax collector and he was rich. He was exceedingly wealthy. And so he was able to collect
on top of the taxes due the Roman authorities a little bit extra
for himself. He was able to raise the tariffs
to increase the taxes, also to increase his pocketbook. We’re going to see in a moment
in the passage, he offers to return or make restitution to
those he defrauded. But you can imagine this man
and his rotten heart This man and his lost soul, this man and
his desire to be richer and richer and richer and richer, even at
the expense of those who worked an honest trade for an honest
wage. He exploited them. He was unjust. In him, there was no fear of
God and love of neighbor. And we think back to the other
places in Luke’s gospel where we’ve been in recent weeks and
we say, isn’t it impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom
of heaven? Didn’t Jesus say in order for
a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, it was easier for
a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Then we remember
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing is impossible with God.
In fact, all things are possible with God. And so we see this
lost man, Zacchaeus, eager to catch a glimpse of the Lord Jesus. There must be some rumblings
in his heart. There must be some turning in
his mind to say, I’ve had it all. I’ve got every dollar one
could imagine. I’ve got every bit of brick and
mortar that one would like to live in. I have every iPod and
iPad and Apple product. Well, not back in those days,
but you get the picture. He’s got it all. He’s got it
all. But there’s this increasing unsettling
unsettledness in his mind and heart, that he is a man who will
someday stand before God almighty. And this movement in his life,
it points to the reality that we all must face, that God made
the world and everything in it. He made it good. And he put man
and woman in the garden to work the garden, to keep it, to produce,
to be honest, to be kind, to be gracious, to be just. And
to reflect the image of God to other image bearers in this world,
but quickly in the book of Genesis, we see mankind’s fall into sin. We see Satan’s temptation. And
we see very soon after Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, we see Cain
kill his brother Abel. We see Lamech speak of revenge. If the revenge on Cain is sevenfold
and the revenge on Lamech. The revenge on himself will be
70 fold. And then we see very quickly
the rapid decline into evil with the generation of Noah. Only
Noah, only Noah was found righteous in God’s sight. And God determined
in his heart to flood the earth and to destroy it and to wipe
away wicked men and women and boys and girls who did not obey
Jesus, who did not obey God and follow his ways. And so we see
this lost man in the passage. He’s just following the pattern
of history of creation and fall and being a natural man full
of original sin, actual sins, and an increase of wickedness.
You could put Zacchaeus right in the middle of the Old Testament,
couldn’t you? Right smack in the middle of other wicked people
who do wicked things for their own wicked gain, exploiting others. And so we have here a great,
portrait of a lost man. But we also have a picture here
of a salt man. Jesus was seeking after Zacchaeus. The last person you would expect
to find in a tree outside of Jericho, a cosmopolitan metropolitan
city, would probably be a middle-aged tax collector. I’m sure in the
sycamore trees you would find lots of children, lots of young
ones clamoring up or climbing up for a glimpse. Maybe some
of you as a kid climbed up a magnolia tree. The branches tend to go
all the way to the ground and they’re easy to get into. You
don’t have to jump to catch the first branch. You just make your
way up. Well, that’s a lot of what a sycamore tree would have
been. Branches all the way to the ground, easy to climb. And
so Zacchaeus, the last man we’d expect to find in a tree. But why was he in a tree? Well,
he was seeking to see Jesus. He was seeking to see Jesus who
was passing through Jericho and all the crowds were following
and clamoring to see and to hear. And even the blind man had sought
his touch and his healing hand. Well, he was seeking to see who
Jesus was. He was lost. He was without hope. He was empty. He was looking
for more. And maybe he began to think that
more can be found in Jesus. More can be found in the hands
and the teachings of the master. This was a despised man. He was
not only a chief tax collector, a despised man, he was a publican.
He was a sellout to the Roman government. The Jewish people
wanted their own state. They wanted Israel, the theocracy
they had enjoyed for so many centuries under David and Solomon
and Kings, which followed after. Here was Zacchaeus, a sellout,
a despised man who probably cannot sleep at night. He’s a social
outcast and no doubt is weary in his evil doing. And the moment
of all moments comes in Luke chapter 19. Jesus looks up at
Zacchaeus and he calls him by name. And he says, Zacchaeus,
you come down for I must come to your house this day to stay. And this passage is loaded with
spiritual realities. Jesus seeks Zacchaeus. And where does he find him? He
finds him up in a tree. He finds him seeking Jesus himself. And the one who is the great
seeker, Jesus finds him, calls him by name and commands him
to come down and invite me into your home. You begin to see the
spiritual realities that are in play here, but also I want
you to zero out for a moment in the whole book of Luke. but
also include the book of Acts. Remember that Theophilus is writing
an orderly account of the life and ministry of Jesus to Theophilus,
his benefactor, so that he can see Jesus himself and become
saved. And then we’re going to see an
orderly account of the acts of the apostles, the beginning of
the church. And you put Luke-Acts together and you have a mighty
historical record of all that God is doing in Christ. And so
you fast forward Genesis through the Old Testament to the book
of Luke and Acts. And you will see that this is
the moment of all moments. Jesus has come to save sinners.
And don’t you see Zacchaeus, the man that Jesus seeks, is
the prime example of one who should not be saved, one who
cannot be saved, and one who probably is not looking to be
saved. But what does Jesus do? He moves
by his spirit in the heart, in the life of Zacchaeus. And so
that at the very moment Jesus is passing through Jericho, there’s
Zacchaeus and Jesus meets him eyeball to eyeball and face to
face. He calls him by name, hurry,
come down. I must go to your house to stay
today. And what do we read of Zacchaeus?
He comes scrambling down from that tree and he receives Jesus
joyfully. Now all the while the crowd is
grumbling. He’s going to eat with sinners again. He’s going
to meet with one that we do not approve of. One that could never
be a righteous one. One that could never be one of
Israel. And we can only imagine the dinner
conversation. But don’t you imagine Jesus didn’t discuss the night
before his Duke Carolina game or the evening before us Superbowl. Now, when Jesus comes to table
with us, it’s not about pleasantries. It’s not about Superbowls and
Duke Carolina ball games. It’s not about the weather. He
begins to talk Turkey, Zacchaeus. This is you, brother. This is
your heart. This is your sinfulness. This
is your lost estate. This is your radical corruption
from sin. You know, Zacchaeus was a good
Jewish boy. He knew his Old Testament. He
knew what was good, right and true. But he just found this
lucrative life. And in his lost estate, he continued
until it grew into this massive enterprise where he was the most
hated man in the region. but he was the richest man in
the region. And so over dinner, the one who
knows the heart, the one who knows how to cut to the chase,
the one who knows how to ask the right question, he gets at
Zacchaeus’ lost condition. And so we see a lost man, a sought
man, but now we see in our passage a changed man. No one can ever
bump into the Lord Jesus Christ and not be changed. No one can
ever come into the reality and the glory of the gospel and walk
away without walking away differently. And what do we see in the life
of Zacchaeus? Right from the bat, I’m going
to give away half of what I have. That’s couched right there in
Luke, where just weeks ago in our study, just verses back in
the pages of scripture, there was a rich man who went away
from Jesus very sad. Very sad because Jesus told him
one more thing you must do, sell all that you have and give it
to the poor. The man was exceedingly rich and he went away from Jesus,
sad. That was an unchanged man. But here we have Zacchaeus, a
changed man. I’m gonna give away half of all
that I have to the poor. And then every man whom I’ve
defrauded, and I’m sure the list was mighty long and I’m sure
the line is the story might continue on was very long. I will give
everyone whom I have wronged fourfold what has been taken
from them. This was a man serious about
his changed life. This was a man serious and committed
to repentance. Remember the word repentance
is a, it’s a change of mind. It’s a change of heart. It’s
a change of life. I was going this way and I realized it was
wrong. And now I will go this way because
it is the right way. And the gospel is very messy,
isn’t it? When it enters into our sin filled lives, there is
so much that needs changing, so much that needs fixing. And
when we come to faith in Jesus, God, at the very moment we are
saved, he justifies us, right? He sees us as if we’ve never
sinned. He sees us as if we’ve always obeyed. He declares us
not only just in his sight, but he also declares us holy. That’s
why the scripture calls us saints. That’s why every time the apostle
Paul or Peter or whoever in the New Testament writes a letter,
it is generally, if not always addressed to the saints of God
at Corinth, the saints of God at Colossae, the saints of God
at Ephesus. You, by virtue of being saved
through faith in Jesus, are declared holy. Now you continue in your
own life needing sanctification, or you need to become holier,
right? We need to grow in grace. We
need to put away our childishness. We need to put away our immaturity,
our sin, the things that entangle us, and we need to grow in grace
and in holiness. But here is an example, a wonderful
example of a changed man. who was sought by Jesus and he
is no longer living in the arts of a lost man’s ways. How do
you tell if a person is a Christian? You can ordinarily tell it through
the fruit in their lives. And here’s a man that’s sorry
for his sin. Here’s a man that changes his
ways and he wants to make right the things that he has done wrong
in this life. He cannot any longer live contrary
to God’s law. He’s come to face to face with
Jesus. He’s come face to face with the
master. And this man has called him by
name. And it’s very interesting, I
think, if you look at the word Zacchaeus, it’s in the righteousness
words family. I think in the Old Testament,
the word is, oh, I can’t remember. Got our Hebrew scholar back here,
but it’s Zacchaeus is in the righteous word family. And so
his name literally means a righteous one, which is sort of oxymoronic,
isn’t it? Remember Abraham? Hey, Abraham,
how many kids you got? Well, none yet. But what did
his name mean? Father of many. So here we have
Zacharias, the righteous one who is now after a life of unrighteousness
made righteous. He’s the changed one. He’s going
to walk in the ways of God’s commandments. His repentance
is not a general repentance. You know how it goes this day.
Somebody does something wrong and what do they say? Well, I’m
sorry that that happened. That’s my favorite. What is the
that? The thing you did to me, right?
Or they say, I’m sorry if I offended you. And a real apology, a real
repentance, a real restitution is I did this and it’s contrary
to God’s law. I did this and it offended you
and I want to apologize. I seek your forgiveness and I
would like to have our relationship restored. And sometimes there’s
restitution needed. That’s the sign of a new life,
a changed man here. He doesn’t give a general repentance,
but he realizes the big one. I have lived my life as a cheat. I have defrauded people. And
as I confess my sins, particularly, I want to make restitution, particularly,
not only to God, but to those who have been scandalized, those
who have been dealt a sorrowful hand from my life. Isn’t this
the litmus test of our faith? Do we bear fruit, as John the
Baptist said, in keeping with repentance? And so in this wonderful
passage, we see Jesus on the way to the cross at Jerusalem
to do mighty work, to save his people from their sins, to put
an end to all the sacrifices in the temple. But on the way,
he gives a wonderful example. God can save even the worst of
sinners. We have our categories, don’t
we? We have our grumblings. Oh, you can’t save him. They
don’t need salvation. They don’t deserve salvation. What is God
saying to us here through Zacchaeus? We all are cheaters. We all have
defrauded. We all are in need of having
our fingers pried off our idols and Jesus coming into our house.
and into our hearts to stay. That is the very last thing in
this passage, such a wonderful statement. Jesus pardons Zacchaeus. It’s almost like our assurance
of pardon after our confession of sin and the service. Jesus
says to Zacchaeus, today salvation has come to this house. This
man is a son of Abraham by birth, but now he’s a true son of Abraham
by faith. May this wonderful story be an
example to us. God can save the worst of people. Some years ago, we all watched
in horror the Gulf Wars and Saddam Hussein, and we just hoped that
George W. would drop a big one over there
and just get rid of all the evil people. But I remember a Christian
man saying, you know, we ought to pray for Saddam Hussein’s
heart. We ought to pray for his salvation. And that’s over there,
isn’t it? We have people in our neighborhood.
We can’t stand them. We have people in our lives,
we hate their guts. We have people that we work with,
people that we live with, maybe people we go to church with,
people that are next door to us. And we would really grumble
if Jesus saved them. But maybe we need a change of
heart today so we’re not like the crowd. And we don’t grumble
when salvation comes to one we think doesn’t deserve it. Remember
the mission of the Lord Jesus. The son of man comes. He came. He is here today seeking and
saving the lost. Pray with me. Lord, we do ask
that you would change our hearts and our minds towards others
who have the blessing of God come in their lives. We do pray
that you would save sinners this day. Sinners whose hands are
wrapped tightly around the idols of their heart. the systems which
they have created to enrich themselves and to get ahead in life. Lord,
save us all from these wicked things, these wicked ways through
Jesus, the son of man who seeks and saves the lost. Help us.
We pray in the name of Christ. Amen.