Show Me the Way.
Luke 19:1-10 (The Message)
Then Jesus entered and walked through Jericho. There was a man there, his name Zacchaeus, the head tax man and quite rich. He wanted desperately to see Jesus, but the crowd was in his way—he was a short man and couldn’t see over the crowd. So he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus when he came by.
When Jesus got to the tree, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down. Today is my day to be a guest in your home.” Zacchaeus scrambled out of the tree, hardly believing his good luck, delighted to take Jesus home with him. Everyone who saw the incident was indignant and grumped, “What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?”
Zacchaeus just stood there, a little stunned. He stammered apologetically, “Master, I give away half my income to the poor—and if I’m caught cheating, I pay four times the damages.”
Jesus said, “Today is salvation day in this home! Here he is: Zacchaeus, son of Abraham! For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.”
Jesus said that He came to find and restore the lost. It is an interesting and very clear teaching.
It is a theme that is repeated in the teachings of Jesus on a regular basis.
As far back as the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, we hear God speaking through the prophet with these words:
“For thus says the Lord God: Indeed I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away, bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick. . .” Ez. 34: 11,16
In the New Testament we see the reoccurring theme over and over:
“. . .go to the lost sheep of Israel.” Math. 10:6
“. . .I was not sent except to the lost house of Israel” Math. 15:24
“For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.” Math. 18:11
We have always been obsessed with stories about the lost.
Amelia Earhart and her missing plane.
Stories from the so-called Bermuda triangle.
Television and movies have been made around the theme of being lost.
The Lost World
Land of the Lost
Lost in Space
Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.
We live in a society where much attention is paid to missing and lost children. (Milk carton’s and missing children posters.)
What does it mean to be lost?
Lost: (Webster) Unable to find the way
No longer visible
Lacking assurance or self confidence
Ruined/destroyed physically or morally
Lost people may experience some of the following:
fear, hopelessness, hunger, or no sense of direction.
I remember when I was a little boy the feeling of being lost. More times than I like to remember I would become separated from my parents in stores and spend time frantically looking in aisle after aisle for them. Of course it didn’t help that every other sermon in the late sixties and early seventies was about the coming and impending return of Jesus. We were expecting to be raptured from this earth at any moment. The Christians would all be taken in a moment of time and everyone else would be left behind to face the evils of the tribulation. I of course knew that I probably wasn’t ready to go and so therefore would jump to the conclusion that my parents were gone and I was left. There is nothing worse than being lost or feeling that you are lost.
Zacchaeus was a tax collector. This was without doubt, the most hated position one could be in. The Jews were under the Roman Rule and the Romans were demanding taxes to be paid. In order to collect the taxes they hired Jewish men to become tax collectors. They were considered traitors. They were extremely dishonest. They often charged more than was necessary and kept the extra money for themselves.
The Romans had no respect for tax collectors because they were willing to sell out their own people.
The Jews hated the tax collectors for obvious reasons.
He was lonely. He was despised. He had no friends to speak of. He had money and wealth but no joy.
Being Lost is not a preacher word, or a church word.
“Lost” is God’s word.
Being lost means emptiness and being without Christ.
Robert Naylor said. “If you have Jesus, you are safe. If you do not have Him, you are lost”
When a person is lost, they are alienated and a stranger to the sovereignty of God.
Lost people matter to God. That’s why this story and other like it are all through the Bible. Lost people are why God challenged the church to exist.
Based on the scripture lesson I want to explain the process of being found.
1. Zacchaeus exhibited a desire to find and see Jesus.
“. . .he wanted desperately to see Jesus.”
He had heard about Jesus.
Jesus was the talk of the country.
A man doing miracles that were really real. People who were lame from birth were walking. People who were blind were now seeing. Even people who had died had been brought back to life.
Jesus was big news.
I have often wondered if Zacchaeus had heard the news of Blind Bartimaeus. You see in the last few verses of the previous chapter it says He was coming near Jericho when He healed Bartimaeus’s sight. Our chapter starts out by saying; He entered and passed through Jericho.
If you want to be found this morning.
If you want to be rescued from the darkness you must have a desire to see the Light.
Read any story of someone who is lost in the dark and they will all read the same. When the light came they knew they were saved.
Jesus is the Light of the world.
Math. 4:16, “The people who sat in darkness saw a great light and upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned.”
Luke 1:79, “To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.”
When Jesus was born there was a man who had sat around the temple waiting for coming of the Messiah. The Bible says it had been revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. When the baby Jesus was brought to temple, Simeon took him in his arms and uttered the now classic lines, “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, For my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles.”
The first chapter of John is pregnant with beautiful descriptions of Jesus being the light.
John 1:4, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
John 1:5, “. . . and the light shined in the darkness.”
John 1:9, “. . . the true Light which gives light to every man who comes into the world.”
John 3:19, “. . .the light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”
2 Cor. 4:4, “. . .whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.”
Ephesians 5: 14, “Wake up from your sleep, Climb out of your coffins; Christ will show you the light.” (The Message)
Down to the last chapter in the Bible we are still reading about the Light.
Rev. 22:5, “Never again will there be night. No one will need lamplight or sunlight. The shining of God, the Master, is all the light anyone needs.” (The Message)
The Bible is clear from the beginning to the end, Jesus is the Light. He is the way to find that light makes the lost found.
Do you have a desire to see the Light?
2. Zacchaeus experienced a life changing deliverance
“Today is salvation day in this home”
“When Jesus got to the tree, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down. Today is my day to be a guest in your home.” Zacchaeus scrambled out of the tree, hardly believing his good luck, delighted to take Jesus home with him. Everyone who saw the incident was indignant and grumped, “What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?”
Zacchaeus just stood there, a little stunned. He stammered apologetically, “Master, I give away half my income to the poor—and if I’m caught cheating, I pay four times the damages.”
Jesus said, “Today is salvation day in this home!”
Zacchaeus went from a person obsessed with wealth and money to a person who was willing to give away his resources.
He was so touched by the presence of Jesus that he began to try to correct the things that were wrong in his life.
The deliverance that comes to us in the form of Jesus Christ is truly life changing.
There is nothing you can do to deserve it. When He comes to the heart of a person they are changed.
The Bible says, old things are passed away and all things become new.
God is in the business of changing hearts and lives.
There is not a teen-ager in this town that God can’t deliver from the problems that surround their life.
There is not a young adult that God couldn’t radically change if they would surrender to Him.
There is not a middle-aged person within the sound of my voice that God couldn’t change completely and deliver from the misery of a sinful life.
There is not an older person that God would not change and deliver if given the chance.
Deliverance doesn’t come by just hanging around with Christians. It doesn’t come by church attendance or even working in the church. It doesn’t come by doing good deeds or giving away your earthly possessions.
Deliverance comes by coming out of the tree and accepting Christ. Zacchaeus could have stayed in the tree. He could have just waved Him off. He could have responded that the timing was bad. Maybe another day.
What are you saying to Jesus today? What is your response to the Light of the world?
I thought as I wrote this story of all the people whose lives have been changed by coming out of the tree, so to speak.
One of my closest friends is a pastor of a vibrant and living church. He has been pastor of that congregation for eight years. Before that, he pastored a couple of other churches. He has been in ministry for over twenty years.
Let me tell you his story. He comes from a broken family and a blended family. His father lives in another country and has been a nightclub owner. During his high school years he became friends with the sons of Protestant minister. He went to church. He came to know Christ. With little or no family support, with no one in his family ahead of him to show him the way he started following the Light. That Light led him to Bible College, marriage and a wonderful family of boys that are serving God.
He had no background. He had no spiritual pedigree or religious heritage to ride on. It was just him and the life-changing, Light-giving Jesus.
Yesterday, I filled out a reference for his oldest son to go to Bible College to answer the call of God in his life. What a great testimony of being found.
Every one of us has the same testimony:
“Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness.
We dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus name.
On Christ the solid rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.”
Philip Bliss penned words in response to Jesus saying He was the Light of the world. He wrote:
The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin;
The Light of the world is Jesus;
Like sunshine at noonday His glory shone in,
The Light of the world is Jesus.
Come to the Light, it’s shining thee;
Sweetly the Light has dawned upon me;
Once I was blind but now I can see; the Light of the world is Jesus.”
3. Jesus explains His destiny.
“For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.”
It is very interesting from a Biblical perspective to read the account of Jesus life found in Luke 15.
“Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him. And the Pharisees and the scribes murmured saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.’ What man of you, having a hundred sheep if he looses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.’”
Jesus came to this earth for one reason. He came to find lost people.
Every one of us was born lost. We are born without hope.
In this same chapter, He tells about a lost coin and a lost son. Jesus was trying desperately to send a message about what and who He was.
Sometimes the cry of the lost is very visible.
Kurt Cobain is making news again. In the October 28, 2002 addition of Newsweek, there is a review of the new book called, Journals. The article is appropriately entitled, Cries From the Heart.
Lorraine Ali writes in the article of the hopeless and lost feeling that surrounded Cobain.
His claim to fame according to Ali would be, “Much to Cobain’s chagrin, Nirvana would spawn a movement with a name, grunge. They were revolutionary. They made a mockery of the big hair bands of the eighties and often in the words of Ali, “hit the stage in the clothes they slept in.”
As I read the excerpts from the journals of this lost soul I wanted to weep. He was angry. He was addicted to Heroine. In his own words, “I’m an alcoholic, self-destructive, yet overtly sensitive frail, fragile, soft spoken, narcoleptic, neurotic, who at any minute is going to O.D. jump off a roof wig out blow my head off or all 3 at one once. Oh please GAWD I can’t handle the success!”
Everything about this pop icon was lost and in the end on April 5, 1994 he committed suicide after writing a long letter to his wife and daughter. He committed the ultimate act of selfishness. Suicide. “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. I’ll be there. I’ll protect you. I don’t know where I’m going. I just can’t be here anymore.”
It is the ultimate testimony of life without the hope of Jesus Christ.
A few years ago I went for a walk in the woods on my in-laws farm in West Virginia. Their home is nestled in the mountains of WV and their property includes wooded areas and they are connected to many hundreds of acres of woods. On this particular day I walked further then I had ever gone before away from their home. I had one my children with me and we did some exploring that included not walking in a straight line or direction.
I will never forget the moment that I realized I had no idea how to get back. Every direction I turned looked the same as the way I had come. The sun was not visible because of the dense forest. I was far enough away that I could hear no traffic or gain a bearing based on the sounds of civilization.
I was lost. I had four directions that I could have walked in. Only one of them would be right. The other directions would take me further from where I needed to go.
I remember thinking that I understand why people would walk in circles that are lost in the woods.
Do you know what that feels like?
Do you know what that feels like when you have someone else that you are responsible for and you don’t know how to get home?
Some of you are lost this morning. You came in here with no sense of direction in your life and no sense of peace in your heart. You are troubled and living under a cloud of doubt and discouragement.
Some of you are still up in the tree trying to see.
You have no idea how to be found. You have no idea how to get to the right path and find the right direction.
I’m going to invite you to pray this morning. In the spirit of Jesus who stopped underneath the tree of sinner one day a long time ago.
I’m asking you to come down. Come down and be found. Christ is showing you the way.
