What does it mean to be Lost?
Luke 19:1-10
I. A Seeking Soul
A. Zacchaeus was a seeking soul
Zacchaeus was a tax collector
Sinner among sinners
Rome handpicked the worse Jew to collect taxes from their own people, therefore, other Jews despised him.
Zacchaeus understood his lost ness. Therefore he was able to be found
B. There are no degrees of lost ness, no degrees of sin
Romans 3:9-18
Can’t compare your life to the person sitting next to you
God hates your sin just as much as he hates the person next to you
Being Lost is not a preacher word, or a church word
“Lost” is God’s word
C. What does it mean to be lost?
Jesus gave us three parable to help illustrate why “the Son of Man came to seek that which was lost”
Parable of Lost Sheep
What Jesus was saying is that there is no sacrifice or trouble to great in order to rescue lost sheep. Jesus has the same joy as the shepherd recovering lost sheep.
Parable of the Lost coin
Jesus was explaining his thoroughness in searching for lost sinners. Christianity emphasizes that Christ seeks to save lost souls, not people searching for Him.
Prodigal Son
Being lost means emptiness
Being lost means hopeless
Zacc’s life was hopeless, he had no direction
A lost person has no direction
He just exists with no purpose
Being lost is without Christ
The root word for lost means to be slaughtered or killed
Lost = devoted to destruction, cursed
Lost = judgment; living under condemnation
Robert Naylor puts it this simple. “If you have Jesus, you are safe. If you do not have Him, you are lost”
When a person is lost, they are an alien, stranger to the sovereignty of God
The promises of the Bible concerning our Savior are useless, they mean nothing to a lost person. All the wonderful words about Calvary and Jesus washing away our sins are gibberish to the lost. They are utterly useless
II. A Sovereign Savior
A. How lost is lost “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost”
Lost enough to:
Jesus loves the lost so much that he agreed and wanted to leave the angels with harps of gold, Heaven with streets of gold, to take His place among people like you and I
To be the Son of Man, He could have called himself any other name, but he chose Son of Man
That is a beautiful picture!
Philippians 2:6-8 “Who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross.”
We are lost enough, it didn’t matter that Zacc was the worst kind of Jew there was, Jesus gave up everything in Heaven for you, because we are lost, he wants to find us.
Illustration of Brad being lost in Hardware Store
This is just a glimpse of the feeling Jesus has trying to find a lost soul.
B. Lost enough to stay on the cross
Jesus told his disciples He had come to die
Listen to this scripture “He set his face steadfastly toward Jerusalem”
We are lost enough that the reality of the cross was evident to Jesus; he knew exactly what was in store.
Jesus came to die
We are lost enough that he stayed on the cross, he endured the beatings the humiliation.
With one word the Roman guards would have fallen at his feet.
With one word he could have put the cross aside
With one word he could have been back in Heaven surrounded by the harps of Angels, walking on the streets of Gold, next to his father
But, because of our lost ness, because of our sin, Jesus chose to die.
The mystery of the cross is that without the cross, without the suffering, without death itself, that which is lost could never be found
The ultimate hope of a lost person is knowing that the sacrifice has been made. Jesus on the cross, found you and I.
III. A Surrendered Servant
A. Zacc was found
He climbed that tree seeking the Lord
The Lord found Him.
Zacc was lost, cheating people, but Jesus found him and changed his heart.
Look at what Zacc immediately did “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”
When Jesus finds you, your whole life has changed.
When you understand the mission of the Son of Man, you no longer are the same.
The apostle John writes in 1 John 2:3-6 “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in Him. But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in Him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”
The seeking soul that is found by the sovereign savior is a surrendered servant.
John uses some pretty strong language here he says the person that does not obey the commands of the Lord is a liar and the truth is not in him.
Obedience means that we have as Christians an obligation to fulfill the Great Commission
The Great Commission says in Matthew 28:19-20 “Therefore Go and make disciples…to the very end.”
The verb, or action is not Go but make or tell the good news of Jesus Christ
We are God’s instruments; His surrendered servant
We are what he will used to evangelize the world
The world is one generation away from become agnostic or an atheist society
Personal evangelism, one on one, is what Christians must do.
It is our obedience to the Father who set us free.
I am going to put it bluntly “Are you a liar”
Have you become a surrendered servant
Do you strive to walk as Jesus did?
