I invite you to turn in your Bibles to the book of Luke, Luke chapter 19. If you're using the Pew Bible in front of you, that can be found on page 1043, 1043, Luke chapter 19. We'll be reading and considering tonight verses 1 to 10. I thought we would take a break from James tonight, given that tonight is not my regular scheduled opportunity to preach, and so we look tonight, as I said, to Luke chapter 19, beginning at verse 1. He, being Jesus, 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 of stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for 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 in 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 fourfold. And Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. here ends the reading of God's holy and inspired word may he bless it to us if you recall I referenced this story a few weeks ago in our study of the book of James and at that time I contrasted the response of Zacchaeus with the response of the man the rich young ruler both men being exceedingly rich and yet responding differently to their wealth when confronted with Jesus. Well, this past week I was doing some work for my RYS lessons that are coming up in in July, and I worked in the passage on the rich young ruler. Maybe you know, you can look down if you have your Bible there before you, it just comes a few sections before this section in chapter 8, I believe, verse 18, if I'm correct. It's on the same page that you would be, that you would have open. And so when I heard that I had the opportunity to preach tonight, I thought to myself, what should I preach on? And considering that I was working in the rich young ruler and had mentioned both the rich young ruler as well as Zacchaeus, I thought, I'll preach on Luke 19, Zacchaeus. Now, this story, as I believe I mentioned a couple of weeks ago when referencing this text, is one of the most well-known texts in all of Scripture, right? Children know this text well. We're probably all familiar with the story of the man Zacchaeus because of the song that we learned as children. I wasn't a Sunday school kid, but I too knew that song, right? It goes something like this. Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he. He climbed up into a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see. And as the Savior passed that way, he looked up in the tree and he said, Zacchaeus, you come down for I am coming to your house today. I am coming to your house today. My daughters were singing that song throughout this week as I was working through that passage because I couldn't help but hum that song. It's kind of a catchy little tune that sticks in your mind. It's a children's song. It's a simple song. As many children's songs are simple. But the story of Zacchaeus as presented in the Bible here, although it reads as a simple story, when you dig a little deeper is anything but simple. It's a profound story. It's a story full of exceptions to the rules. Rules that we as people like to think the world is governed by. And when we see the exceptions that are communicated here, what we find is that this story is really a story of the grace of God, the profound grace of God, the amazing grace of God, especially when read against the wider context of Luke chapter 18. You see, just look one chapter over with me to chapter 18, verse 9, where the reader is confronted with the story of a Pharisee and a tax collector. One man, the Pharisee, was an expected member of God's people. people. The other man, a tax collector, a very unlikely candidate for God's people. Well, lo and behold, shortly after that, in our text here, we have the story of a tax collector. A tax collector named Zacchaeus. And just a few verses prior, in verse 18 of chapter 18, you have the story of a rich, young ruler, another expected member of God's people in the eyes of the people of that day. Now, the rich, young ruler isn't a Pharisee like what's captured in the Pharisee in the tax collector parable, but he was a ruler of the synagogue nevertheless. And as such, he would have been the perfect example of an upright and outstanding man in the eyes of the Jewish people. See, the idea that we have today of the Pharisees and the religious leaders of that day being self-righteous, whitewashed tombs didn't really exist so much in the first century. In the first century Judaism, the religious rulers didn't have the bad rap that they have today. These people were held in high esteem by the Jewish public. They were thought of as being highly righteous, favored by God, blessed, privileged. We can get a sense of how the people thought of the Pharisees and the religious rulers when Jesus says to the people, I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. These people were thought to possess a high degree of righteousness. And yet, when Jesus encounters them, he's severe with them. He exposes their self-righteousness and their hypocrisy on multiple occasions. And in doing that, Jesus really turns the Jewish people's perception of righteousness, salvation, and the kingdom of God upside down. And that upside down perspective and perception is something that we still deal with today. You see, it was back in Luke chapter 5 that Jesus said, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. That truth is on display throughout this section beginning with the Pharisee and the tax collector and then on to the rich young ruler and ultimately in the most unlikely candidate for God's grace, a man by the name of Zacchaeus, the quintessential tax collector. And so it's no accident that these stories are all set together in the book of Luke. Through them, Luke is illustrating that Jesus has indeed not come into the world for the righteous, but for sinners. He has come to seek and to save that which is lost in short he has come to do for man what is impossible for man to do for himself that's why i titled this sermon the impossible possible it's interesting as i was sitting in the pew this morning and hearing reverend gordon preach on some similar themes that i'm going to preach on tonight, he spoke of the impossible that only God can do. I want to say tonight that Zacchaeus is an example of God doing the impossible. Now, I titled this sermon tonight, The Impossible Possible, because that kind of comes from chapter 18 with the rich young ruler, where Jesus says in verse 24, how difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Now, Jesus didn't say that in order to give a bad rap to the rich. The rich are no less likely to enter the kingdom of God on their own than any other sinner. You see, Jesus could have said that very thing about any category of people. The poor are no more closer to God on their own than the rich, because the truth is, on our own, we all, we all stand before God as sinners, condemned before a holy, righteous God. And no amount of wealth, no amount of poverty, no amount of human righteousness, No amount of human suffering or anything else could ever change or grant us a place before God Almighty. We come to God only by his grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And that's not just a theological statement. That's a fact of reality. That's a fact of reality. A sinner can only come to faith in Jesus Christ after God has opened the eyes of his heart. Just as we heard this morning in John 3, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. How is one born again? By God, graciously working faith in that individual's heart. You see, don't misunderstand this story tonight. This is no simple children's story of a sinner coming to Jesus on his own. Zacchaeus was not a seeker. The text simply says he wanted to see who Jesus was. He didn't call out, Jesus, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, as the blind man did in just one section above this text. Nor did Zacchaeus come to Jesus asking, what must I do to inherit eternal life like the rich young ruler asked? In fact, given the question that the rich young ruler asked, I would consider the rich young ruler more of a seeker than Zacchaeus. But you see, the story of Zacchaeus is a story of the regenerating work of God's grace in the heart of a sinful man, opening that heart to faith in Christ apart from anything that that man has done and why but to put the grace of god on display to highlight that jesus came to seek and to save that which is lost this story is indeed a story of the impossible being made possible and in seeing this tonight we all need to be thankful to God for his grace working in each of our hearts, whether we think of ourselves as the worst or the chief of sinners, as the apostle Paul did, or as we think of ourselves as run-of-the-mill sinners, as we probably more likely often do. In each case, we've come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ only by God's gracious work in our hearts. And so we owe him everything. We owe him everything just like we'll see Zacchaeus owes him everything. And so tonight we really have two things that we want to see and highlight in this story before us tonight. First, a sinner. Second, a Savior. A sinner and a Savior. First, the sinner. The text presents us with a sinner. A quintessential sinner. The text begins with telling us that Jesus had entered Jericho. Jesus was ultimately on his way to Jerusalem. That journey to Jerusalem began back in chapter 9 of this book and Jericho would have been on the way to Jerusalem and of course Jesus with all the miracles and works that he had done had his travels were always accompanied by a large crowd and so Jesus enters Jericho and as you know the area was a desert area but Jericho was built on something of an oasis. And so there were trees there, trees to even climb. And so Jesus enters Jericho, this lush spot in the midst of the desert. Jesus is traveling with this large crowd, and verse two says, now behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector. Now if we're reading this in the first century, this would have stood out to us like a sore thumb. You see, tax collectors were known to be the most infamous people in all of Israel. Tax collectors would come along, people on the roadside, as those people were traveling, they would stop those people, pull them aside, assess the value of their goods and then tax them on that value. Now, because the tax collector was the one who assessed the value upon the goods, they often overestimated the value of their goods so that they could take more taxes from them. They not only did this because they had the power to do this, but they did this because anything that a tax collector was able to take above and beyond the normal Roman tax upon a person was the tax collector's pay for being a tax collector. And so the whole Roman system of taxes encouraged corruption, dishonesty, legal extortion, and everybody knew this and so tax collectors were hated they were despised above anyone else tax collectors were so despised for the corruption that the religious leaders taught in that day that one was justified in lying to a tax collector in order to protect themselves their goods and their finances. With all of this corruption, the term tax collector itself became synonymous with the word sinner. People were taught that the word sinner was another way or tax collector was another way of saying sinner. The two words were synonymous. That's why we hear so often throughout the Gospels that Jesus was a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Those two categories were the same. Luke 7, the son of man has come eating and drinking and you say, look at him a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Now the people in our story who hear Jesus say to Nicodemus, or I'm sorry, Zacchaeus, I must go to your house today, respond in an appropriate way based on what they knew and thought in that day. He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner. But you see, not only were tax collectors despised because they were viewed as dishonest, but they were also despised because they were viewed and acknowledged as traitors. They were traitors. Jews hated the Roman Empire. They hated the fact that they didn't have their own country. They hated the fact that they didn't have their own freedoms. They hated the fact that they had to submit to Roman law and Roman rule. And along with soldiers who would walk around the countryside as a display of Roman power, tax collectors were also a direct representation and extension of Roman rule. But what made tax collectors worse is that these representations of Roman rule were themselves Jewish born. These were Israelites. And so Jews hated tax collectors because they were liars. They were cheats. They were traitors. Traitors of their own people. They stole from their own people to give money to a foreign enemy, Rome. And then on top of that they would extort from their own people in order to gain their own riches to enrich themselves this is what Zacchaeus is he's a tax collector but notice a further point that Luke makes here Zacchaeus isn't just any tax collector is he there are tax collectors and then there are chief tax collectors. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector. He would have been the head of a whole ring of corruption and Jewish betrayal. And so Luke is really impressing upon his readers the kind of man that Zacchaeus is. He's a sinner. Now, if it couldn't be any worse, to add insult to injury for this wee little man, Zacchaeus, being a tax collector was only half of the problem in this story. Luke further records for us at the end of verse 2, he makes a further note, and he was rich. He was rich. Now, if we were in the crowd of people that day who were following jesus and we had heard what jesus had already taught and said in chapter 8 verse 24 how difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of god for it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of god we would have remembered that at least in application to zacchaeus right now when jesus said this after encountering the rich young ruler the people were shocked at that statement if you may look down at verse 26 of chapter 18 the people respond by saying then who can be saved if the rich can't be saved then who can be saved you see the people thought that the rich were especially favored by god that's why they were rich there was a kind of karma principle that existed in Judaism at the time. The people thought that good things happened only to good people and bad things happened to only bad people and the two never crossed. This whole principle would have gone back to the time of Job and his friends. If you've read the book of Job, remember how Job's friends responded to his suffering? They told Job something like, Job, you must have done something evil because bad things don't happen to good people. You must have some kind of hidden sin in your life. Sadly, that perspective still exists even in some Christian circles today. But you see, the rich young ruler would have been a positive example of this principle. The rich young ruler was rich, but he was also young, meaning his wealth was inherited. he got his money the old-fashioned way it was inherited and so in the eyes of the people when someone inherited wealth they were especially blessed by God why well it was God who was in control of who was born into whose family and so he must have deserved this somehow or his family must be blessed his parents must have done some kind of good to give and earn this man special favor contrast that with someone who was born into poverty or with some disability a bad thing for sure but because bad things only happen to bad people the bad the the people thought that the poor and the disabled and the lame themselves were evil and bad they must have done something evil to deserve what they got we hear these thoughts worked out in the mind of the disciples when they encountered the man who was blind from birth remember what they asked jesus who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind so given all of this the people would have thought highly of the rich young ruler but the man Zacchaeus the rich man Zacchaeus no way no one would have thought that he was highly favored this was a scandalous guy Zacchaeus was the kind of rich person that the people could understand Jesus saying how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. It's impossible. You see, Zacchaeus was not rich by inheritance, right? He got rich at the expense of others. He became rich by lying, stealing, cheating, extorting. So Luke presents us with not only a sinner here, but someone who in the eyes of the people should never be a candidate for God's kingdom this man might as well have been a Babylonian an Assyrian a Ninevite and yet with all of this against Zacchaeus Jesus does the unthinkable the unimaginable in the eyes of a people he pursues him Jesus pursues Zacchaeus I think today we have something of a romanticized view of the man Zacchaeus maybe because of that children's song that we that we've all learned it's easy to feel bad for this little man right he was short he couldn't see he was a wee little man you might imagine him trying to climb up into a tree to see jesus he couldn't see him this poor guy but even though we might be inclined to feel bad for zacchaeus the people of that day no way they would have never felt bad for him he would have been an outcast a social reject and rightly so he deserved it people in that day were even forbidden to associate with such tax collectors they could have been kicked out of the synagogue for doing so but there's jesus turning things upside down pursuing this scandalous man and turning everyone's view of grace, mercy, salvation, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, upside down. And maybe that's you here tonight. Maybe you can't begin to imagine how God's grace could extend to such sinners. Maybe you've grown up in the church your entire life and you struggle to understand the depth of God's love and grace and mercy towards sinners. Maybe you struggle to imagine how God's grace could be extended to you. But hold on, brothers and sisters, because set over and against this quintessential sinner, We see the love, the grace, the mercy of God extended to this sinner when he encounters the Savior. The Savior. And that takes us to our second point tonight. There is Zacchaeus, the most unlikely candidate for God's grace, mercy, and love, up in a tree. And the text tells us, Jesus looks up into the tree and says to him, Zacchaeus, hurry up and come down. for today i must stay at your house the term must here is an interesting term it's a term that implies absolute necessity just as it was used in luke 13 when jesus responds to the pharisees telling him to to leave the region because herod wants to kill him in response to that jesus says I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem. Must means it was absolutely necessary for Jesus to continue his ministry in that area. It was a divinely appointed work, just as it was absolutely necessary for Jesus to stay at the house of Zacchaeus. Jesus's encounter was a divinely appointed encounter with Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus had no way of knowing this, but this appointment was ordained before the foundations of the world. Do you think anything could have prevented this encounter? Absolutely not. The same is true for us here tonight. If we are Christians, if we claim the name of Christ, then God has divinely appointed a time and place to have begun His work in our lives, in our hearts. We may only know the fruit of that work. Maybe we've grown up in the church our entire lives. We don't know a day when we haven't believed in Christ. And yet the Lord has ordained a time where He has worked in our hearts. And nothing could stand in the way of that work. Not sin. Not people's ideas about us. Not the way the world thinks things should work and operate and be governed. Nothing. and this should be so comforting for us brothers and sisters should be so comforting to us because it reminds us that god's will in our lives will come to complete fruition nothing will stop it we can be fully assured of that while we see what the people say about jesus's encounter with Zacchaeus in verse 7. He's gone to be the guest of a sinner. Now given what I've said tonight, given what the people thought of tax collectors in that day, it's no surprise that they responded that way, right? It's no surprise here of the response of the people. The response or the surprise is really found in the way that Zacchaeus responds to Jesus. Verse 6 says, he hurried down and received Jesus joyfully. Joyfully. Zacchaeus received Jesus joyfully. This hardened, corrupt sinner receives Jesus joyfully. Are you here tonight joyfully? having had your own encounter with Jesus Christ are you joyful Zacchaeus certainly was wasn't he and we see how joyful he was in his response after Christ has come into his house look at what he says what it says in verse 8 then Zacchaeus stood up 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 fourfold. That's a remarkable statement when you think of it, when you think about it. Zacchaeus, an exceedingly rich man, is now willing to depart with his wealth. Contrast that with the response of the rich young ruler who walked away when Jesus called him to sell all of his goods, give to the poor, and follow him. Now we can get into the details here of why Zacchaeus was willing to give half of his wealth to the poor and repay those that he has defrauded four times, but I really don't think we need to. The simple question here at this point is, what happened? What happened? What happened in the heart and mind of this man, Zacchaeus? What drastically changed in this man to take him from a hardened criminal a thief a cheat a traitor and make him at that moment into maybe possibly the most charitable man in the region think about that for a moment imagine you were a friend of Zacchaeus you know you knew him before his encounter with jesus christ and then you see him afterwards you knew him before as this hardened man who only cared about his riches only cared about how much he could cheat people out of their money and then after the encounter with jesus christ he's another man altogether can't even imagine how the two are one in the same what happened maybe your friends have asked that question about you given the work of the holy spirit in your life maybe your friends have asked that what happened to them how could they know unless they were christians how could they understand right we heard that too this morning, didn't we? You'd have to be a Christian to understand the work of the Spirit and the life of someone. The way the Spirit produces a heart of gratitude where you're willing to depart with your riches. What you previously clinged to, you're willing to give up nearly in its entirety. What happened to this man Zacchaeus? The text doesn't really even say exactly, does it? There's no mention of Jesus sharing the gospel with him here. There's no mention of Zacchaeus praying a prayer of repentance. I think it's safe to say that Zacchaeus probably had a general idea of who this man Jesus was. The whole region would have been beaming with stories of this man Jesus who gives sight to the blind, heals the lame, brings people back from the dead. But this story here before us tonight, I think it assumes all of that. And I think it can. I think it can given what the text has already said back in chapter 18, 27. What is impossible with men is possible with god it's as if jesus the savior after saying that to the reader the reader of the text says do you want to see that impossible happen reader do you want to see an example of god doing the impossible here i give you the perfect case or depending on your perspective the worst example of God giving his grace to somebody. The quintessential sinner, Zacchaeus. What happened to him? Simple. Zacchaeus encountered a divine appointment with the Savior of the world. The Savior of the world. That's what happened. He had a divine appointment with the savior of mankind he encountered a divine appointment with the god man jesus christ what would happen to anyone who encounters a divine appointment with the savior jesus christ the same result maybe different circumstances a different person but the results would be the same regeneration conversion sanctification and eventually glorification you see nothing is impossible for God he can do all of his holy will and we need to stop just saying things like that and begin to live as if that is true because it is God can do all of his holy will he can save the worst sinner he can save that person that you have been praying for for years and years. He can deliver your loved one who has turned to a rebellious heart gripped by sin and misery. God can pull them out of that. He can save them. He is the God of the impossible. He is the God who can do far more abundantly than all that we can ever ask or imagine. Jesus says as Zacchaeus in verse 9, today salvation has come to this house since he too is a child of Abraham for the son of man came to seek and to save that which is lost. Those are some powerful words. These last two verses here are so profound they I would say deserve a sermon in and of themselves. Jesus says to Zacchaeus, today salvation has come to this house. That's what happened to Zacchaeus. Salvation came to his house. He encountered salvation itself. Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus, the bread of life. Jesus, the resurrection. When someone encounters a divine appointment with Christ, there's no denying the effectual work of Jesus Christ, the grace of God in that moment. It's irresistible as we confess. Jesus' statement here, salvation has come to this house, is more of a declaration, more of a proclamation than an indication of what has occurred. It's like when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane And the soldiers come up to Jesus and they say, Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus says, I am he. And the men fall back to the ground. That was more of a declaration than a simple indication of who they were in the presence of. He is the great I am. God. The Savior. and so the result in the life of Zacchaeus was salvation salvation Zacchaeus encountered Christ and with Christ all the power and force of the Holy Spirit bearing upon the heart of Zacchaeus it's like what Jesus said I am he no one can resist Christ his grace is irresistible when salvation comes into your life into your home it's irresistible there's no denying it for the son of man has come to seek and to save that which is lost what a beautiful statement in the ears of sinners are you lost tonight are you lost tonight this savior is still seeking and saving that which is lost this wonderful savior is still seeking and saving the lost it doesn't matter who you are it doesn't matter what you've been into it doesn't matter where you are from turn to Him. Look to Him. Deny yourself. Trust in Jesus Christ. Zacchaeus is an example to us tonight of God's grace extended to the most unlikely candidate, the quintessential sinner. An example of God doing what is impossible for man, making that possible by His grace. If God willed to save Zacchaeus, He can save anyone. Let's pray. Lord, what a marvelous story we have here in Luke 19. a wonderful reminder of the power of your grace, Lord. It is irresistible. It accomplishes that which it sets out to accomplish. We see that in the life of Zacchaeus in this text, Lord. And we know that in our own hearts. Father, continue that work, that sanctifying work, that work which you begun, continue it in each of our lives. We thank you for Christ, our Lord. We thank you that he came to turn our ideas of what is right and what is wrong, who deserves to be in your kingdom. He turned those ideas upside down. We praise you for that, and we pray this all in his name. Amen. Thank you.