A Sinner Meets the Seeking Savior
Notes
Transcript
Jesus came into the world not, as some suggest, to be a good teacher, or a moral leader.
He did not come to espouse ideas that would raise people’s spiritual consciousness.
Nor did He come into the world to provide a human example of noble, religious life.
The divine Lord Christ came into the world to rescue doomed sinners, because God is a saving God (cf. Ps. 106:21; Isa. 43:11; 45:15, 17, 21, 22).
That is the biblical message and the foundation of the gospel.
Everything in the Old Testament points to that truth; everything in the New Testament explains it. Isa. 43:11
11 I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior.
15 Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.
17 But Israel is saved by the Lord with everlasting salvation; you shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity.
21 They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt,
21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.
The Sinner (vv 1-4)
The Sinner (vv 1-4)
Although tax collectors were the most hated and despised outcasts in Israel, it was not a crime to be one, since taxation is a divine institution.
The theocratic kingdom of Israel in the Old Testament was funded by a detailed taxation system in which every Jewish person paid essentially 23.3 percent of their income to support the government.
Zaccheus was no low-level tax collector.
Architelōnēs (chief tax collector), used only here in the New Testament, means that he was the commissioner of taxes; the head of the region’s tax collectors.
Zaccheus was at the top of the pyramid; the common tax collectors had to pay him a percentage of what they collected.
As a result, he was rich.
Like many in the crowd, Zaccheus was continually trying to see who Jesus was.
He, too, was curious about Him, but more than that, he had a dissatisfied heart.
Zaccheus knew that he was alienated from God, and lacked eternal life.
He was feeling guilty over his sin.
Zaccheus’s effort to see Jesus faced two obstacles, however: the crowd was large, and he was small in stature.
With determination and desperation, Zaccheus ran on ahead on the path he knew Jesus would take and climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way.
A sycamore (or mulberry) tree had a relatively short trunk with low branches that Zaccheus reached.
Having climbed into the tree, he waited for Jesus to become visible.
The Savior (vv 5-7)
The Savior (vv 5-7)
When Jesus came to the place where Zaccheus sat in the tree waiting, He made some moves that must have shocked him.
First, the Lord stopped, then looked up and made eye contact with Zaccheus, and called him by name, though they had never met.
Nothing more clearly illustrates the difference between the heart of God and apostate first-century Judaism than the reaction of outrage by the crowd.
When they saw that Jesus was going to stay with Zaccheus, they all began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”
The onomatopoeic verb diagonguzō (grumble) is a strong word, indicating the crowd’s intense disapproval of the Lord’s action, not only of speaking with Zaccheus, but also of staying the night (the verb translated gone to be the guest means to loosen one’s clothing in preparation for staying overnight).
No self-respecting Jew would ever pollute himself by staying at the house of the chief administrator of Roman taxation.
That, however, meant nothing to Jesus, who was on a divine mission, established by divine sovereign electing grace and operating on the divine timetable, to bring this lost sinner to salvation.
The Salvation (vv 8-10)
The Salvation (vv 8-10)
Luke does not describe the Lord’s presentation of the gospel to Zaccheus, or his response.
But the salvation of the man is evident from the transformation of his life, which revealed itself in that part of his life where his sin was most openly manifested. (Collecting taxes)
The genuineness of Zaccheus’s salvation was made evident by the complete transformation of his behavior.
So complete was Zaccheus’s transformation that he instantaneously went from being a thief to being a benefactor; from being selfish to being unselfish, from being a taker to being a giver.
