He Came To Seek & Save The Lost Series

He Came To Seek & Save The Lost

I Am Jesus – part 7

1Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. 4So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. 5When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. 7All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a ‘sinner.’ ” 8But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” 9Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”

- Luke 19:1-10

We are in our 7th week of our year-long series, ‘I Am Jesus.’ A message series where we are taking a fresh look at the one who boldly walks on the crashing waves of our lives. A message series where we are taking Jesus out of the little box that we have for Him in our minds (you know that box where Jesus never asks us to do anything uncomfortable, where He always agrees with you)… A message series where we want Jesus to become all that He really is… SO THAT – we can become all that He desires us to be. AND UNDERSTAND – for us to eb all God created us to be we need more than a flannel board Jesus.

AND LAST WEEK – in our effort to see, understand and know Jesus better – we began looking at Jesus, His Purpose… (why he came)… AND – last Sunday we saw that the one of the reasons why, Jesus came was to demonstrate the unconditional, unfailing and enduring forever love of God. AND – we also met ‘sock baby’ who encouraged us to let God love and to then go out and love God’s rag dolls…

THIS MORNING - we are going to talk about how Jesus came to seek and save the lost… AS - Jesus himself said in the passage we read earlier… “…the Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost.” (19:10)

AND – what I want to do or at least attempt to do – as we take a look at Luke chapter 15 is to reveal the heart of the Father in regards to lost people; How does God feel about the lost – what is his desire for them?

NOW – most of us have heard the stories in this chapter many times before… I MEAN - the parables of the lost; sheep, coin & son are not new to us… BUT – as CS Lewis once said; “we don’t need new truths as much as we need to be reminded of old ones…”

Prayer…

OKAY – raise your hand if you have ever played the game hide & seek… NOW – hide and seek is a very simple game. One person seeks and everybody else runs off and hides. And, if you are playing hide and seek, the fun part is to be one of the hiders. BECAUSE - If you are one of the hiders, you get to be in control. You get to decide where you are going to go. You get to keep your eyes open. You get to call the shots.

YOU SEE - the hard job in hide and seek is to be the one who has to seek. I MEAN – after you get this job you have to let everyone run away from you – AND THEN, you have to keep looking for people who are trying to evade you, people who are laughing at your inability to find them (which usually makes them easier to find them). That’s why nobody wants that job, because if you take it, everybody is going to run from you and you’ll be on your own.

AND – have you noticed that in the game of hide and seek, that the one who gets stuck with the job of seeking doesn’t even get much of a title. I MEAN - in other games you at least get an exalted job description. TAKE – basketball for instance, you have a center and he is the one around whom the action flows. Then there is a forward, and at least that has a progressive kind of sound to it. The guard is somebody who is protecting something that matters. But in hide and seek, it is not that way.