Our Old Testament lesson is taken from the prophet Ezekiel, the 34th chapter. This is what the sovereign Lord says, I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As the shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so I will look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries. And I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel in the ravines and in all the settlements of the land. I will tend them in a good pasture. And the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. Where they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the sovereign Lord. I will search after the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice. Our New Testament lesson is taken from the gospel of Luke the 19th chapter, again, the passage upon which the sermon is based this morning. Speaking of Jesus, it says he entered Jericho and 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 a stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, where he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and 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 to be the guest of a man who is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood and 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 for full. And Jesus said to him, today salvation has come to this house since he also is a son of Abraham, where the son of man has come to seek and to save the lost. Amen. Praise his great name. When I was young, there was a comedian that I used to enjoy named Bob Newhart, who would introduce a telephone into an historic conversation. And I wanted, because I looked at this passage, and I said, well, what has been like if they had had phones? And Zacchaeus had to call his wife to explain what was happening. So it indulged me. Hello? Oh, Zacchaeus, you're coming home for lunch. Okay. What brought this on? You were up in a tree, and a rabbi invited himself to our house. Well, wait a minute. The rabbi's thinking you're a sinner. Why is he coming here? He's a different kind of a rabbi. Okay. And he's bringing 12 people with him. I mean, you know, in our society, nobody invites himself, but to invite himself and say, I need to feed 13 more people. Oh, and that's not the biggest news. We've given away what? Half? Well, at least it's community property. Oh, and you're going to go back over your books, and you're going to expose yourself to a criminal investigation by paying four to one or what you've stolen from people? This is going to be an interesting lunch. You know, when we look at Zacchaeus' story, I think sometimes we misunderstand or we're not willing to see how disruptive one it was in his family. But how challenging it would be to people today. I mean, we are a consumer society. We are a society that we train people from very early in their young age to identify with brands. To be raised up to be a consumer, to think it's all about the toys. In Zacchaeus' world, he was a wealthy tax collector he had, according to the records of the day, the most profitable tax collection place to be in the Jericho Road. Because that road coming to Jerusalem was a very fertile valley, a very rich area. So in terms of market share, he was at the top of the heat. He really was the 1%. He would have been rich by all accounts just on the normal take that a tax collector got to keep. Because the chief tax collector, which means he had money flowing up from him from other people, that he wouldn't have had to steal things and he would have been rich. And he had made some choices to tax his own people to work for the Gentile government. And remember, it is the Gentile government that Jesus has identified himself as he's going up this road to Jericho to go to Jerusalem. Remember, he told his disciples, I'm going to go according to scriptures and they're going to do all these horrible humiliating things to me and kill me and I'm going to be raised from the dead. And one of those things was to be handed over to the Gentiles. And here was a Jew who was working for the Gentiles. He was short. The word that's used in the original language lets us know that he was under five feet. So I'll just leave it at that. I've called this hide and seek part two because going back to the garden, we know that God is a God who seeks people out. And even though Adam and Eve camouflaged themselves, they hid themselves, they did not respond initially to his voice. God seeks them out. And it is that verb to seek that is at the book ends of this passage, these ten verses. That verb to seek is what drove Zacchaeus to climb up over the crowd because he couldn't see, to get in the tree because he was seeking to see Jesus. And then at the end, when Jesus is explaining his mission, he says, I have the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. So you need to see those, the same verb kind of as a book end on both sides, two very different people but the same verb. Now one of the things in this passage in these short ten verses is that you have woven together three themes in the Luke Acts story that come together. Now the Luke Acts story begins with, it's a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us as the way it begins is he writes the Theophilus. And then at the beginning of Acts, he writes the Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach. So if we think of Luke and Acts telling one story, two different volumes, and if we look at the themes, the things that Luke who was a doctor, who was an editor, who was a compiler because he was not a firsthand witness, he went and talked to people. And so if we think about Luke and Acts, we need to realize that under the influence of the Holy Spirit what is there, what he chooses to tell us, he weaves together because he wants us to understand the story, the narrative. Now the three themes that I think that we observe in here that we're going to look at as we look at the text is the relationship of households and grace. He says it applies to outsiders and strangers and then the generosity that is produced because of grace. And what I want to do, maybe more than normally what I do, is I want you to feel the weight of Scripture on these three themes. To see what happened to Zacchaeus and his family was something that then would be explained and exploded in Acts in other families because indeed Christ did come as the Son of Man to seek and to save that which was lost. And he said, I have to come to your household. But first and foremost I want to come to the end and that's where the whole text, if we could go to the next slide, that's where the whole thing ends up for the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. That's what Jesus says about himself. Remember, he's on the road. He's on the road to his death, to his atonement, to his substitutionary death that will be our salvation. He is on the road to his death and resurrection. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. You have the contrast between the story from last week where you had a poor blind man, almost like the poorest of the poor, now you have the riches of the rich that Luke has put their stories right next to each other in this road to Jericho. And I think about how deliberate Jesus was because remember, eventually he chooses to get a donkey from a stranger and create what we think of as the beginning of holy week of Palm Sunday of that grand entrance, that Jesus is doing these things on purpose, that he's hearing the blind man. And now he looks up and he initiates the conversation, the lunch, the relationship with Sikias, to demonstrate for this man that other people would just reject, overlook, not even see in the tree, probably not want to know that he's there. But Jesus says to his disciples and through Luke to us, the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. I want to reread part of what Pastor Mark read from Ezekiel 34, where thus says the Lord Behold, I myself was searched for my sheep and will seek them out, as a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so I will seek out my sheep. I myself will be their shepherd of my sheep and I myself will make them lie down and declares the Lord. I will seek the lost and I will bring back the stray, I will bind up the injury, I will strengthen the weak, the fat and the strong, I will destroy, I will feed them in justice, the seek to lost, the grace of the gospel from the garden, the cross, the second coming, but notice that within the context of God's covenant that he comes to the lost in households. Think about how when Peter is preaching on Pentecost, how he says the promises for you and your children, for all those who are far off, everyone whom are Lord our God calls to himself from Acts 2. When you read through the book of Acts, you stop at four households that are baptized, that God records through Luke. He chooses to say, look what happened, that households were changed, that what Jesus began with, Sequias in some ways continued on through these Gentile households, how God was changing not just individuals, but whole families. The Son of Man, Jesus's favorite description of himself, I told you this last week, he uses that to describe himself 25 times in Luke and 29 times in the gospel of Matthew, echoing that passage from Matthew and from rather from Daniel. Look, notice what he does, notice the verbs, he seeks, he doesn't sit it out. See when he sent his disciples to go out into all the world, he said, God came to seek, how many people in their testimony realize that the reason they are Christians today is because God would not let them go, because God sought them out, because God was the hound of heaven, that God sought them out.
Now sometimes it's easy to hide our homes, isn't it, we call it cocooning where people just want to protect themselves and they want to just enjoy themselves. But God sometimes reaches in and disrupts the family and changes it. Now as we move on to the next part, Jesus reaches out to those rejected by others to enter in their home. Notice what he says, I must stay at your house today, you see how he is jumping right into his life, he doesn't wait for him to invite him, he says, I've got to come to your house, and then when at the end of it, and the people who are muttering, grumbling, he's gone to be a guest of a man who is a sinner, notice what he says, today salvation has come to this house, Jesus begins, I have to come not just into your life, but into your household, because that's where we live it out, that's all of our life is in our household, in that relationship. You know that I have a sister who works with Wycliffe, and one of the things Wycliffe does is to put the heart language into the hearth language, so that what you are worshiping in is what you have those conversations around the kitchen table, around the hearth, the cooking stove, whatever it is that unites that family. And that language that they speak, that's the language that we need to worship in, and so when God again and again talks about houses and households, yet he realizes that oftentimes we want to separate ourselves, we say, that's a shameful, that's a sinful house that we put shame on them, and we never want to go to them. Now what I want to do is to run through very quickly, and give you examples how Luke has chosen the highlight to us, and Mark has done this before as well. How God reaches out through Jesus Christ to strangers. You think about the shepherds that is birth in chapter 2, the man with the demon in chapter 4, the leper in the paralytic in chapter 5 and chapter 6, you have a man with a withered hand, a centurion, sinful, servant rather, a sinful woman. Chapter 7, you have another demon possessed man, a woman who touches Jesus's robe that goes on in 9, 10, 11, 13, and 14 about Jesus, touching people on the margins. Chapter 15 is about the lost sheep, the coins and the sons. Chapter 17, you have the 10 lepers, and remember what did Jesus Christ do? He called Matthew a tax collector to be a disciple, so that those 12 that are coming to dinner, Jesus has already reached out to someone who was identified as a sinner and said, you're going to be part of my inner group. Not only are you going to be part of my inner group, but you are going to be a gospel teller, you're going to write a gospel. And so that person that was an outsider was someone that Jesus could say, salvation has come not just in this individual, but to their household. And how many of us again and again know that that is the greatest struggle, the greatest place that is so difficult at times to bear the gospel out and to have grace and forgiveness, because that is where life is lived, that is the hard place of relationships. But here's the part that I think would be scary for people today, the part about repentance. And notice how Jesus reminds the people of his day that this is a child of Abraham. But yet he spontaneously, at least in the story, he is the one who says, you know what, if I have robbed anybody, I'm going to give it back four to one. You go back to Exodus 22, that's the pattern. Unless it's an ox or a Cadillac, then it's five to one, proportional penalties, interesting idea.
But then he's going to give 50% to the poor as a free will love offering. Now what I want us to do is to realize that repentance deals with the crimes that we've committed. And I think you and I forget how powerful in some cultures this would be because what is the problem in so many cultures? Is it not government corruption, people lining their own pockets? People doing things for their own benefit to realize that the gospel reaches in, not just the justice that Ezekiel talked about, but it reaches in on how they do their jobs. Jesus doesn't say don't go back and be a tax collector. He sees it, he understands he has to do it honestly. How many people are poor because their government is rich because of self-service and corruption? And the gospel can reach in and change that and we need to realize. We need to realize that a passage like this is here for a reason to see a government official repent and say, I'm going to pay back, I'm going to make restitution and then out of generosity. Now let me just read a passage from Acts because I want you to see how Luke says this affected the people, the other side of Pentecost, the other side of the resurrection. And Acts 4 beginning to read in verse 32. And now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them. There was not a needy person among them, or as many as were owners of lands and houses sold them, brought the proceeds of what was sold, laid at the apostles' feet and was distributed as to each as any had need. Just as the key is the stories in there for a reason, this passage is in there for a reason for us to struggle. One more passage from 2 Corinthians chapter 8. We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been among the churches of Macedonia, born the severest of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme property have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. Remember how Luke says that he got down with joy and then it produced generosity, you look at this passage. The abundance of their joy in spite of their extreme poverty they weld up with the wealth of generosity, that where there is joy there is generosity. The Christianity is not about taxing people, it's about having joy in the Lord and I believe out of that joy in the Lord when we love the Lord when we realize everything that he has done to us, he has entered our households, he has saved us and our families. And out of that joy comes a spirit of generosity because God has given us so much and we are willing to live a simpler life. We go to think about being a child of Abraham, one last scripture passage, know then that it is those of faith who are the children of Abraham. As scripture foreseeing what God would do to justify the Gentiles by faith, preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, in you shall all nations be blessed. So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. Christ redeem us from the curse by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed as anyone who was hung on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised spirit from Galatians chapter 3. It is as if God reached out and put his hand on Zacchaeus in his household and said, you are a child of Abraham, you have received the blessing, you have received the Holy Spirit, he re-identifies him, he gets him to remember his heritage who he was and sometimes that's what God does to us as he reaches out and reminds us that yes I've put my spirit upon you I've put my name upon you because I have come to seek and to save the lost and so as we get ready to celebrate the Lord's supper, as we get ready to touch and taste what he has given to us, remember the reason we partake of this is because he has come to seek us out, because we really were lost until he found us. So it is by faith and we ask that if you have come to that point in your life where you trust Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, where you have become a part of the body of Christ that indeed this meal is for you, but if you do not trust Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, if you have not come to that place come and talk to us, but we ask you because the Lord has you to let the simple elements pass by, let us pray. Father we ask now, we ask now that you be present among us, that you would take these simple elements and use them for your grace. We might know that you are here among us and indeed Jesus you have given your body and your blood for our salvation because you came to seek and to save the lost, you pray this Jesus in your name, the elders will come forward.