Lost and Found, Saved and Changed

Well, I was thinking this morning about John Calvin and remembering a story that has been written!

John Calvin, you may not know, was very committed to what we call consecutive expository preaching, preaching through books of the Bible. In fact, he never deviated from that.

And so the story is told that when Calvin was exiled from Geneva and from his church for three full years, that he just had to stop his series of preaching through a particular book of the Bible.

And when he finally was able to come back to Geneva and back to his pulpit, and he climbed up into his pulpit a lot higher up than ours are, he started right where he had left off after three years.

And I haven't been gone three years. And I think it's been a long time. I feel like it's been a long time. But it has been actually over three weeks since we've been in the Gospel of Luke.

And so we want to get back to it. And so Luke chapter 19 is where we're going to be this morning. And if you'll find that, and I'm going to read here in just a moment, verses 1 through 10.

So Luke chapter 19, verses 1 through 10. And right off, you're going to recognize this story, very familiar story. Not just for us adults, but especially for our children.

We still have a few of the young people in here. So let me go ahead and read the passage. Luke 19, verses 1 through 10. Jesus entered and passed through Jericho, or literally was passing through.

Now, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector. And he was rich. And he sought to see who Jesus was.

He could not because of the crowd, for he was of short stature. So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was going to pass that way.

And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him. He said to him, Zacchaeus, make haste and come down.

For today, I must stay at your house. So he made haste and came down and received him joyfully. But when they saw it, it would be the other Jews, they all complained, saying he has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner.

And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor. And if I've taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold.

And Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

Let your story. Zacchaeus was a wee little man. Can you sing that with me? A wee little man was he.

Climbed up in a sycamore tree. For the Lord he wanted to. Yeah, he even got the hand motions, right? And as the Savior came that way, looked up in the tree, and he said, Zacchaeus, you come down from there.

For I'm going to your house today. For I'm going to your house today. I got to thinking that when I go back to the prison ministry, just like Betty a couple of times ago, led the prisoners to sing.

I forgot now what it was. It's a story. And did all the hand motions. I'm going to do that with the prisoners at Dick Connors. See if they know this song. It's very familiar, isn't it?

And if you've been in church all your life, especially you remember as a child singing this song. We would sing it in Sunday school, of course, and sometimes vacation Bible school, and children's ministries.

And it was a, you know, like all of these kinds of children's songs, Bible songs, they are designed to help reinforce, reinforce rather, the story.

Help the kids to understand the story of Zacchaeus, the wee little man. And so it's a children's song, right? And yet I assure you that the story of Zacchaeus is a grown-up story.

Very grown-up story because this story is a powerful story about what? About salvation. About salvation. It's an amazing story, really.

About redemption, regeneration, conversion. And it is an important story, I would also say, that reveals the saving, sovereign grace of God in salvation.

Amazing story. And it's the story, of course, about a sinner who was lost and found. Who was saved and then changed.

In fact, radically changed. Forever changed. So, I guess, in that sense, this is my story. I can say to you, this is my story.

Story about what has happened in my life. And, hopefully, it is your story. Is it? Is it?

And so, let's just connect this story with Luke's gospel account. I always want to kind of put it in its place in the overall story that Luke has been unfolding for us about the life of Jesus Christ.

So, let's kind of fit this in there. In fact, the story of Zacchaeus is unique to Luke. You'll not find it in any of the other three gospel accounts. Luke is the only one. And I would also say to you that it is Luke's final story story in his account of the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is it. This is the end of it. A little bit later in the chapter, Luke is going to begin to describe Jesus' final week, his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and his final week here on planet Earth.

And so, very shortly, we're going to be launching out into Luke's account of the Passion Week, the last week of Jesus Christ. In fact, Jericho is just about 15 miles from Jerusalem, and so very soon, he's going to be going to Jerusalem.

So, this is the last story, kind of the last or final picture that Luke wants to leave you of Jesus' earthly ministry. And what is the picture?

What is it that is pictured here? It's the picture of a sinner saved. That's the picture. A sinner is saved. A soul eternally saved.

A life that is radically and forever changed. And that is why, at the close of the story, Jesus says what? There in verse 10. He says, For the Son of Man has come to what?

Seek and to save that which was lost. So, the story concludes with that. And so, if you're looking for a one-sentence explanation of why Jesus came to this earth, here it is.

Here in verse 10. To seek and to save sinners. That is the summary of Jesus' entire ministry. The reason why he came.

To seek and to save that which was lost. See, Jesus did not come to merely teach good things. Now, he did do that, didn't he? In fact, we have the Bible, the Gospels, that record for us the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And he did teach good things. He didn't come to primarily teach us good things and good principles for living. Jesus did not come just to kind of stimulate a spiritual consciousness in people.

You know, some have defined Jesus' ministry just basically that way. That he came to stir up the consciousness. To make an awareness. To create an awareness of the one true God.

And that's the reason why Jesus was here on this earth. Jesus didn't come just to do that. Jesus did not come through his life simply to exemplify a righteous way of living.

A pure and moral way of living. In fact, Jesus did not come to just be a moral example. Some see only that in the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In fact, I would go a step further. The cross is not a moral example of piety and righteousness. The cross is atonement. It's the atonement for sin.

The only one that God would accept. So then we have a parable that follows this story. Which we'll get to next week, Lord willing. And it's just simply an extension of the teachings.

An extension of teaching on what Jesus has said here in verse 10. And so the story of Zacchaeus is a profound example of the truth declared here in verse 10.

The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. All right, so let's just look at the story. This familiar story.

The story of a man who was lost and then found. Saved and then changed. And for my outline of the passage, I thought a lot about this.

In fact, I struggled with it. How to kind of outline it. I always like to have an outline for the text and then build the sermon or flesh it out with the sermon. And the outline, of course, comes from the passage.

And so how would you outline this? At first, I kind of came up with a two-point outline. Lost and found. Saved and changed. Which would have been good because that does follow the kind of the course of the story.

I got to thinking about this last verse. Kind of the culmination. Really the summary of the entire story. verse 10. And really we find the outline for the whole passage right there in verse 10.

They have all the basic elements of the story right there in verse 10. It is, again, a summary of the entire story. In fact, again, a summary of the entire ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so just taking that verse, the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. We can find the four main points of the passage. Four main ideas and thoughts.

That are given to us. The truths that are given to us in this passage. And so therefore the four points of my sermon if you're writing down notes. And the first one is this. The Savior. The Savior.

The Son of Man. The Son of Man. And then second, the sinner. We go to the end of the passage and we have that which was lost. That's the sinner.

So we have the Savior. We have the sinner. And then third, the seeker. The seeker. The Son of Man has come to do what? The Seek. The Seek. And then finally, the Save.

The Save. To save that which was lost. All four of those can be found in the story of Zacchaeus and all four are summed up for us here in verse 10.

And so, here's the truth of this text in a nutshell. We can just kind of boil it down to one very full, very meaningful statement.

Here is the meaning of the text. The Savior is the seeker. The Savior is the seeker so that sinners can be saved.

It's all right there in the passage. So let's just look at this this morning. First of all, the Savior. The Savior. It all starts with the Savior, doesn't it?

I mean, the story does in the immediate sense in the sense of the text, the story that we just read and also sang a little bit about. It all starts with the Savior.

In fact, it starts and ends with the Savior. I mean, look at it. Verse 1, it begins this way, then Jesus entered. So it begins with Jesus. And then when you get to verse 10, for the Son of Man has come.

There it is on each end of the story like bookends that encapsulate the entire story, this marvelous story. Jesus entered and the Son of Man has come.

See, Jesus is the Son of Man. Don't make any mistake about that. Which is the same way as saying that He is the Christ. He is the Messiah. And because this Son of Man, this title of Son of Man comes from the Old Testament.

It comes from Daniel 7, verse 13, where Daniel the prophet said, I was watching in the night visions and behold, one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven.

Now, that is, of course, a messianic prophecy. And it's a prophecy that really concerns an event that is yet to take place out in the future, the second coming of Christ.

But Jesus preferred this particular title. You'll find Him using this title for Himself a number of times throughout the Gospel. The Son of Man. And Jesus preferred that title because it identified, really highlighted His incarnation.

It identified Him as the God-Man. God and man. His deity and His humanity. Both of those things are in the person of Christ. The God-Man.

His incarnation. He is the Son of Man. God the Son. Son of Man. And so, Jesus preferred that title for Himself, but He's speaking of Himself. And when He says the Son of Man has come, He's speaking of Himself.

He is the Son of Man. He is the Messiah. He is the Christ. And He is the Savior. And so, in the immediate sense of this particular text, this familiar story, it begins and ends with the Savior.

But I would also point out that in the spiritual sense, kind of the eternal sense, in the bigger picture sense, salvation itself begins and ends with the Savior.

Obviously. Begins and ends with Him. Now think about this. The story of Zacchaeus represents for us in a kind of miniature form the greater story of salvation.

of God's redemptive plan. The story of Zacchaeus is, we could call it, a thumbnail picture of the larger, representing the larger picture of God's redemptive plan.

And so, see, just as Jesus entered and was passing through the city of Jericho seeking and saving a lost man by the name of Zacchaeus, in that same way, He has, in the larger sense, entered into this world of man and He is passing through seeking and saving those who are lost.

So you see how this story represents the larger picture. In Jericho now, Jesus was working this through His flesh and blood actual body as He walked this earth.

He was walking through Jericho. But in that larger sense today, He is working this through His spiritual body. The church. Through you and me. And so, salvation begins and ends with the Savior.

Salvation depends upon the Savior. Salvation is the eternal work of the Lord Jesus Christ that He came to accomplish for all who would believe.

So we begin with the Savior. The story begins and ends. And then second, on the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the sinner.

First the Savior, but also the sinner. So again, look at verse 10. The Son of Man, that's Jesus, the Savior, has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

We have that word lost there. That's a term that we quite often use in reference to those who are without Christ. They're lost. So do we really know what that word lost means or the full meaning of it?

The word lost is an interesting word in the Greek language. It is the word apolumi, apolumi. And it doesn't mean the same as you and I think of the word lost in our day.

You know, lost to us means you can't find your way home. You're on the wrong street. You don't know where you are, which is something that quite often happens to me when I'm out driving. And my only salvation is when Sherry is with me because she always knows the way.

But I don't know. I have no sense of direction whatsoever. And I'm too proud to stop and ask for directions. And so lost kind of to most of us in the way that we use the word today means we don't know our way.

It means something much more than that. In fact, you can go back to the old English word lost. It primarily means someone who is hopeless, lost to us.

But even the Greek word even goes deeper than that. The word apolumi means literally to be destroyed. To be ruined.

Isn't that interesting? I don't think we would ever get that from our English word lost. That's what it means. Be ruined. And obviously that's man's condition apart from Christ.

It's ruined. Destroyed. And why? Because of sin. Because of sin. So because of sin man's condition is ruined.

Because of sin man's destiny is what? Destruction. And it's a hopeless condition, isn't it? Isaiah 6 it calls me to remember Isaiah when Isaiah came into the temple and he saw the Lord high and lifted up and he had that experience that vision of the Lord Yahweh God himself.

And at the close of that after seeing all of that he said what? What was me? Literally cursed.

Destroyed. For I'm undone or ruined or destroyed is the meaning of the word. See he came face to face with holy God and he was able to see himself.

And he said I'm ruined. I'm destroyed. I'm destroyed. And that's the idea behind this word lost. And so that has a whole lot more meaning when we use that word to describe someone who is without Christ.

Someone who's not believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Someone who's not saved. They're lost. I've just lost their way. They're doomed. Destroyed. Ruined.

And apart from Christ we are all lost sinners. sinners you see. And who in the story represents the sinner? Well Zacchaeus of course. Zacchaeus is representative of the sinner.

And what a sinner. Look at verse 2 again. Now behold and really want to stop there for a moment and point out Luke's choice of words before we get to his description of this sinner.

It's interesting. The word behold is a powerful word. in the New Testament by the way. Now the word itself just by itself is not particularly profound.

It just means look. See. Look here. See it. But it is profound in the way that it is typically used in the New Testament. And it is used to introduce something that is unusual.

Something profound. Something wonderful. And for the reader it is meant to be kind of heads up that something very profound is about to happen.

Something unusual. Something even wonderful is about to happen. And in this instance of course it is the salvation of a really bad sinner. What kind of sinner is he? Well look at verse 2 again.

And behold there was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector and he was rich. Now that is all we are told about.

I mean in describing who Zacchaeus was. We are given his name and we are given his occupation and we are given his economic his financial situation.

He is a chief tax collector and he was rich. And those are the basic facts about Zacchaeus. But there is more that we understand about him not based upon what is said but the implication of it.

And also from what we already have been able to glean from scripture in regard to tax collectors. Who they were. What kind of people they were.

And so forth. And so Zacchaeus was a tax collector. A tax collector. Matter of fact this is the sixth time in the gospel of Luke that we have Luke talking about tax collectors.

Sixth and final time. And so Zacchaeus is one of those. He's a tax collector. And we've covered this ground before because again Luke has mentioned tax collectors before.

So I've kind of described on other occasions just what a tax collector was and how they were viewed by their own people the Jews. And basically tax collectors were regarded as the scum of the earth.

That is from the viewpoint of the Jewish people of Jesus' day. And why would that be? Well because their job was collecting taxes for the Roman Empire.

That was their job. And not an enviable job. At least not for those who were not tax collectors. It was enviable by many because of the great wealth that they were able to accumulate for themselves.

But they worked for the Roman Empire. But they were not Romans. They were Jews. So they were regarded as traitors among their own people. And their method of tax collection was entirely up to them.

They could just set any tax code they wanted to. They could collect as many taxes as they wanted to. They could collect any amount and it didn't matter to the Roman Empire.

They didn't care about how many taxes they collected from their own people. I guess within some reasonable limit. so long as they collected the taxes that were required by Rome.

And they didn't care what method they used to collect the taxes. And the tax collectors had behind them and at their disposal the power and authority of the Roman Empire and the Roman military.

And so they were hated. And because they had this freedom, they were notoriously dishonored. They collected way more than what was required and they were padding their own pockets.

And they were serving because they were serving the occupying empire, the Roman Empire, they were hated and they were despised by their own countrymen, even hated more than the Romans were hated.

And consequently, tax collectors were barred from the temple, barred from corporate worship. They were kind of excluded from the commonwealth of the Jews and their worship of Yahweh God and the sacrifices and all of that.

Why? Because they were considered unclean. They were considered sinners by the Jews. And so to the Jews, all tax collectors were sinners.

Plain and simple. Not possible that a tax collector could be righteous in the eyes of God. Not possible that a tax collector could be saved in any sense of the word.

And that's why we have there in verse 7, the Jews murmuring when they saw Jesus going to Zacchaeus' town. They complained about it. That's what verse 7 says.

But when they saw it, they all complained, they murmured, saying, He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner. Right?

Now, there's a whole lot wrong with what's going on there with the Jews and their opinion of what's happening here, why Jesus is doing what he's doing, and we'll not delve into that here this morning, but we can say that they were right about one thing.

Zacchaeus was a sinner. He was a sinner. And so you see, in this story, Zacchaeus is the representative sinner.

If the story kind of represents the larger picture of God's redemptive plan, then Zacchaeus is a stand-in for all sinners. And there's a reason why the Holy Spirit selected this story, because he was a tax collector, and to the Jews it was inconceivable that there could be someone even further away from salvation.

He's a sinner, a quintessential sinner. And you might remember the tax collector in Jesus' parable back there in chapter 18 and verse 13.

Remember, we studied that months ago. I'm not sure how long ago. And you know, the tax collector went up to the temple to pray, remember? And Jesus said that he would not so much as look up.

He would raise his eyes to heaven. He wouldn't even do that. And he was beating on his breast and saying, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. A sinner.

Now, it was even worse for Zach Hughes, by the way, because you notice that the narration says that he was not only a tax collector, but he was a chief tax collector.

Chief tax collector. I mean, he was the head guy. He was the CEO of the tax collecting firm there in the region of Jericho.

And as the chief tax collector, he would then get a percentage of all of the taxes collected by his underlings, his kind of team of tax collectors.

And they would have to give a percentage to him. So, you can imagine, all of the underlings, all the lesser tax collectors, just the regular tax collectors, they were all collecting way more taxes than Rome required.

They were padding their own pockets. And they were working for Zacchaeus. And so, they had to give a percentage of all of that to Zacchaeus, and that's why the Bible says he was rich.

In fact, the word rich here is more than just your regular word rich. It means filthy. So, this is a description of Zacchaeus. Now, he is the sinner in the story.

And so, at this point, we really need to understand a couple of things. First of all, understand that Zacchaeus was not a sinner simply because he was a tax collector.

Now, think about that. It's not just because he was a tax collector, or even a chief tax collector. There's nothing inherently criminal or sinful about the collection or the occupation of a tax collector.

in fact, you might remember way back there in Luke 3, when Luke is telling us about John the Baptist.

And John the Baptist and his ministry, it was a ministry of baptism and repentance, a baptism of repentance, and he was baptizing people, calling upon Israel to repent, to turn back to the Lord, and to be baptized.

baptized, and many different kinds of people from different walks of life among the Jews were repenting. They were being baptized by John.

The Bible says even taxpayers were being baptized. You see, John had said, bear fruits worthy of repentance.

That is, that would prove repentance, true repentance. That is, you repent, and there must be the fruit of that repentance, a turning from sin, a reconciliation, all other kinds of acts.

And so he said, bear fruits of repentance, and so these tax collectors were coming to John, and they were asking him, teacher, what shall we do? We're tax collectors, and we're repenting.

What is the fruit of our repentance? What should we do? And you should notice that John did not say, stop your tax collection.

He didn't say that. Because that was not their sin. Rather, he said in verse 13 of chapter 3, collect no more than what is appointed for.

Don't collect more than Rome requires. Now, reading between the lines, I think it's understandable that it would be, they collect a reasonable amount of taxes, a reasonable amount of compensation for their work.

Be honest in their tax collecting. You see, tax collecting was not the sin. Collecting more than was required.

That was the sin. And so Zacchaeus was not a sinner because he was a tax person. His sin, the sin of his life, was collecting more taxes than was required, than offered.

Basically robbing from the people. Lining his own pockets with unfair tax collection. That was his sin.

His sin. or if we want to identify the overarching sin of Zacchaeus' life, it was idolatry. The love of money.

That was his sin. Let me point out something here. Zacchaeus was not a sinner because he robbed from the people and because he loved money more than he loved God.

he was not a sinner because he Rather, this is important to know, Zacchaeus robbed from the people. Zacchaeus loved money more than he loved God because he was a sinner.

That's something else. Do you understand that? A thief is not a sinner because he steals. A thief steals because he is a sinner.

That is very hard. A liar is not a sinner because he tells lies. A liar tells lies because he is a sinner. An adulterer is not a sinner because he cheats on his wife or she cheats on her husband.

An adulterer cheats because he is a sinner or she is a sinner. It is the condition of the heart. A matter of the heart. And so sinner is what we are before it is what we do.

Do you understand that? And so in that way, Zacchaeus represents everyone in the world. You can't say, well, I don't have the sin of Zacchaeus, so I'm not a sinner. No, it is his heart, his separation from God, his sinfulness that is the problem.

And sinners are in need of a Savior. The story then clearly reveals that apart from Christ, we're lost.

We're lost and doomed and ruined and deserving of destruction. we need to be found. Apart from Christ, we're sinners and need a Savior.

We need forgiveness. Now folks, in this room here today, there are only sinners in this room today.

There are sinners, of course, who have been forgiven, who were lost and now are found. I hope that's your testimony.

There are also, perhaps, sinners who need to be forgiven, who are lost and need to be forgiven. One or the other, but there are no non-sinnerers.

sinners. We're in this room here today. That leads us to the third part of verse 10, the third point of my sermon.

Savior, the sinner. And third, the seeker. The seeker. Who is the seeker in this story?

Well, you know, it's safe to say there are two seekers. two seekers. I mean, just taking the story at face value, what is said in the story, how it is described, there are two seekers.

One is, of course, Zacchaeus, right? I mean, that's what the Bible says, verse 3, he sought to see. He sought to see who Jesus was.

So, he's a seeker. And, you know, this is part of the story that is so familiar to us. We've heard it since we were children. He sought to see who Jesus was, but could not because of the crowd.

By the way, the crowd, they were seeking Jesus too. Yeah. And he could not for the crowd. Now, why did the crowd pose a problem?

Well, he was, the Bible says, of short stature. Some speculated about how short he was. five foot, maybe less than five foot, just from the language that you hear, but the idea is he was a short fellow.

He couldn't see, almost see him behind the crowd, jumping up trying to look over the top. He couldn't get in any place to be able to see Jesus. He was a short guy, a wee little man.

And so he climbed up in a sycamore tree. And that's what he did, right? Verse 4 says, so he ran ahead. So you can kind of picture the whole scene. Jesus is coming down the street.

He has his entourage with him, his apostles and other disciples and women who traveled with them all. And they're coming through the city, going through the city of Jericho. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem.

And he's coming through the city and the crowd is all around and Zacchaeus can't look over the crowd and so he looks up ahead and he runs up ahead to the nearest tree and he climbs up into that tree and he waits for Jesus to come.

So he could see him when he passed that way. I mean, it all comes down to this. Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus. He is a seeker.

Now, we're not told why, are we? Not told why. We can't get into the motivation, why Zacchaeus wanted to see him. Perhaps there's nothing more than curiosity.

It could be that he hoped that Jesus was the Messiah and wanted to see for himself. I mean, he had the same messianic hope that all Jews had of that day. So he wanted to see him for himself to see if he kind of measured up, see if he fit the bill and he wanted to see Jesus.

It could be that he felt a load of guilt because of his dishonesty and his lifestyle and he's under some kind of conviction over his dishonesty and defrauding his own people and perhaps Jesus was the answer for that and could do something about them.

Maybe he had searched in other directions as well. And so he's going to try out Jesus. I don't know the motivation for why Zacchaeus was a seeker, but he wasn't.

Perhaps even a serious, genuine seeker. And I've met people like that. Haven't you? You know, people perhaps guilt ridden over their sin.

Guilt. And they don't really know why, but they're wondering if well, perhaps Jesus has heard that he might be.

They're seeking. Seeking for some kind of answer. Some way to lift this burden of guilt that they're experiencing nearly every day.

Or people who are wrestling with the truths of the gospel. They've heard they've been presented those truths, the truths of the Bible about God and about Jesus and about all these things and they're searching, they're seeking.

A famous example would be Lee Strobel. About atheism. He said, I'm just going to seek this out for myself. Well, God saved him.

And the end product was Case for Crime. The other books that followed. I think we could say that Josh McDowell was another one.

And ultimately wrote Evidence that Demands a Verdict. Evidence for Christ. There are some genuine I've met them.

Genuine seekers. People who are groping and grasping in the darkness of their life for some tangible truth or light. They don't know what it is.

They don't know where it is. But they're seeking. They're seekers. Maybe they're going to try out Jesus. There are those who are struggling. People are genuinely struggling to evaluate all of the claims of Christ.

Gospel. All of them. They are yearning for something and looking for something and searching and seeking. And I've met people like that. And I don't know why Zacchaeus was seeking Jesus.

And I don't understand all the dynamics involved in the minds and hearts of those who appear at least to be seeking Jesus.

Seeking for him. I don't know. all. But I do know this. Underneath a person's seeking is always a deeper seeker.

a much more deliberate seek. Because you see Jesus is the real seeker. And this wee little man by the name of Zacchaeus, he was seeking for Jesus and all the while Jesus was seeking for him.

He didn't even know him. And listen, Jesus knew where to find him. I mean, he got to a place, looked up, and saw him. He knew right where he was.

He didn't escape his notice. I mean, there are crowds of people there. No telling how many. And Jesus looked up and he saw Zacchaeus. And he knew his name.

He knew his name. He said to him, Zacchaeus, I don't know if Zacchaeus might have said, how do you know my name? In fact, we have a similar story, kind of a similar kind of idea with Nathaniel.

Remember Nathaniel, one of the apostles of Jesus? In John 1.43, Jesus found Philip and said to him, follow me. And then in verse 45, Philip found Nathaniel and he said to him, we have found him.

We found the Messiah. Come and see. And so, Nathaniel's on his way to see Jesus. Seeking, seeking Jesus. And verse 47, Jesus saw Nathaniel coming before he had come all the way.

And as he's coming, he says, behold, an Israelite, indeed, in whom there is no deceit. Nathaniel said to Jesus, how do you know?

How do you know? And Jesus, remember, answered and he said to him, he said, before Philip even came, before Philip called you. when you were under the fig tree.

Amazing. And so, Jesus said to Zacchaeus, make haste and come down. It's an actual command. You come down from there. Kind of comes out in the psalm, doesn't it?

You come down. He said, I must stay. This is a divine appointment.

So, you see, behind the seeker is an eternal seeker. There's an old, old hymn written back in the late 1800s, author unknown, and the title of it is, I sought the Lord and afterward I knew.

And I here's the first stanza. I sought the Lord and afterward I knew. He moved my soul to seek him seeking me.

It was not I that found the Savior truth. No, I found you. Jesus said in verse 10, remember, the Son of Man has come to see that.

the Savior to seek to be the sinner to seek and then one more to save. To save.

The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. And that's what happened to Zacchaeus. And the first indication of this is found in verse 6.

So he made haste and came down as he obeyed the command of Jesus. By the way, basically, that's what the gospel is. It's a command. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is the demand of the gospel. And salvation comes through obedience to that demand. And Zacchaeus obeyed. He came down. And what?

What does it say? Receive him joy. that's the first indication of Zacchaeus' genuine salvation.

And so somewhere between verse 6, when Jesus called Zacchaeus by name and said come down from that tree, somewhere between verse 6 and verse 8, when Zacchaeus is promising to sell half of all he has and give it to the poor and to make a fourfold restitution of all those he had defrauded, somewhere between verse 6 and verse 8, Zacchaeus is saying.

And the simplicity of it is, it's staggering. Maybe even a little bewildering because nothing, there's nothing about any plan of salvation presented.

No Roman road or anything. We don't have any of that here. If we were writing the story, we would include that. In fact, if we were the one leading Zacchaeus to Christ and then telling the story about that, we would say what we said to him.

You know, our kind of gospel presentation. There's nothing about that. Nothing about a sinner's prayer here in the story. Just simply this.

Jesus was there and Zacchaeus was saved. That's it. Saved and radically changed. I mean, Jesus just shows up.

And this man's life is forever changed. And that is the way it works. I'm not saying there is no need for a presentation of the gospel.

We're not Jesus. I don't know a man's heart. Jesus does. And all Jesus had to do is just be there. But it does help us understand that it's all about the power of God.

All about the person's saved. And we know it's the real deal here. We know it based upon two things in the passage. First of all, a genuine repentance.

There's a genuine turning to the Lord here. This was no walk the aisle and fill out a form. And you're in.

Zacchaeus repented. And there was the fruit of his repentance. He repented of his idolatry, his love of money. And he repented of his dishonesty.

Look at it. He said to the Lord, look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor, and if I've taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold.

So Zacchaeus' repentance was real. Genuine. His salvation is real. And we know that because of his genuine repentance.

But we also know it because of the confirmation of Jesus. He confirmed it. Look at verse 9, and Jesus said to him, today salvation has come to this house.

Because you also, he also, is a son of Abraham. You couldn't get a more sure confirmation that this man was saved.

And by the way, when Jesus called Zacchaeus the son of Abraham, he was not just referring to his Jewishness. there is the descendants of Abraham and then there are the sons of Abraham.

And the sons of Abraham is something different than the descendants of Abraham. Jews. The sons of Abraham are those who put their faith in them.

Romans 2.28 says, he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but he is a Jew who is one in him. Galatians chapter 3 verse 6.

It is those who are of the faith who are sons of Abraham. What he's talking about is salvation. Well, here it is. I mean, here it is.

A profound picture of genuine salvation. The Savior of the sin. The Savior of the saved.

And with that salvation came a true conversion. Now, just compare the basic elements of the story to your own personal testimony of conversion.

Does it line up? Lost, found, saved, changed. True conversion of Christ. Someone has asked, is conversion the end of salvation?

conversion? Is conversion the end of salvation? And the answer is yes. It is the front.

The front. wrap it all up this morning, the Savior is the seeker, so that the sinner can be saved.

I heard an old old story, how Savior came for glory. How he gave his life on Calvary to save a wretch like you.

I heard about his groan, of his precious blood, blood that toned. I repented of my sin for victory, for victory in Jesus.

Do you love it? For victory in Jesus, my Savior forever. He sought me and fought with his redeeming blood.

He loved me ere I knew before I even knew that all my love is due and plunged me to victory beneath his cleansing blood.