Have you ever been lost---really lost? It was an awful feeling, wasn’t it? Jesus says that a lot more people are lost than realize it. And many who are lost know how lost they are but don’t know what to do about it.
LUKE 19:1-10: WHEN JESUS INVITED HIMSELF TO ZACCHAEUS’S HOUSE
INTRODUCTION:
Have you ever been lost?
When you’re lost you don’t know where you are. You don’t know how to get to where you want to be. Sometimes you panic.
I remember when I was in basic training. I was walking guard one night in a woods in Arkansas and I got disoriented. It was dark and I couldn’t see anything familiar. I felt panicky for a while until I finally found my way.
Another time Charlotte and I were hiking in a mountain in Vermont. Somehow we got off the trail. We didn’t know where we were. If we had kept descending the mountain we might have ender up miles from where our car was parked. We re-traced our steps until luckily we came to the trail where we had left it. We were very relieved.
Being lost in the woods or on a mountainside can be distressing. But feeling lost in life is even more fearful.
In God’s view, we humans are lost.
We don’t know where we are. We don’t know where we are going. If we think we know where we want to go, we don’t know how to get there. We only know we need help.
This story is told of the great philosopher Schopenhauer. One day Schopenhauer was sitting on a park bench meditating on the issues of life. Maybe he was where he shouldn’t have been. A policeman came along and demanded, “What are you doing here!” The philosopher said wearily, “I wish I knew.”
Even great philosophers have trouble making sense out of life.
The Bible says that without God we humans are lost. We are drifting through life without a map, a guide, or without a compass.
And if we succeed in living a long life in which all our dreams come true—even that eventually ends.
But Jesus came to find us in our lostness and bring us home to God.
We read about the good shepherd left the 99 sheep to go out into the wilderness to find one lost sheep, and when he found it he put it on his shoulders and rejoiced. And when he came home he called together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep what was lost.”
And Jesus told that story to help us understand how Jesus as our Savior seeks us lost sinners and brings us home to God.
And so we like to repeat the words of the 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want…”
Today we will read a story about a person who was lost and who Jesus found.
Read Luke 19:1-10
I. Here’s what we know about Zacchaeus: He was short, curious, venturesome, willing to look foolish. He was also rich, despised by his neighbors, and lonely.
Why did Zacchaeus want so much to see Jesus?
He may have thought it was curiosity. But I think he knew he needed something more in his life—I think he knew he was “lost.”
II. Jesus has a special affection for people who were disliked…or troubled…or needy.
A. The people who loved Jesus most were not good church members like you and me but the drunkards, prostitutes, cripples, Samaritans, foreigners, and others that were considered riff-raff.
(Jesus had respectable friends like Peter, John, and Mary and Martha of Bethany.
And he had other friends like Matthew the tax collector and Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast 7 demons.)
Jesus’s enemies said, “Look, a friend of tax collectors and sinners…” (Luke 7.34).
Jesus had a sharp eye for people he sensed would respond to his invitation—like the woman at the well and Zacchaeus.
B. Notice how Jesus expressed his love for this lonely, rich man up in the tree. Many in that crowd would have felt honored to have to honor of providing hospitality to Jesus, but Jesus chose Zacchaeus, a person the crowd detested. (vv7-8):
“All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’”
III. Look how Zaccchaeus responded.
A. We can only imagine the conversation at Zacchaeus’s house that night. Surely time passed between vv7 and 8.
B. Then we see Zacchaeus’s change of heart.
v9: “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”
C. Zacchaeus showed the reality of his faith by his intention to make the wrong things in his life right.
We can only imagine all the decisions Zachaeus had to make:
How to make right the wrongs he had done—to repay whoever he had cheated.
Can he continue his work as a tax collector?
Should he, like Matthew, leave all and follow Jesus?
What did Zacchaeus’s wife and children think about all this?
D. Then Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.”
How was Zacchaeus a “son of Abraham”?
Not because he was a Jew but because had faith like Abraham.
The Bible says that all who come to Jesus in faith and obedience are children of Abraham—God’s special people.
IV. APPLICATION
Life really begins for us when Jesus finds us.
A woman told her pastor this story:
She told of a dark time in her life when she was seeking God without success.
She complained to a friend that she had prayed over and over, “God, help me find you,” but she had gotten nowhere.
Her friend suggested that she change her prayer to, “God, come and find me. After all, you are the Good Shepherd who goes looking for the lost sheep.”
She told her pastor, “I’m telling you this story because he did! He did! He found me.”
When we’re seeking Jesus and Jesus is seeking us, we soon find each other because he is the Good Shepherd. He came to seek and to save the lost.
And when Jesus finds us, it is for us to respond by obeying the good impulses he puts into us. He invites himself into our homes today—the home of your heart and mine.
And when we welcome him happily—as Zacchaeus did—he becomes our Friend and Companion and Savior.
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