May God be pleased to bless us
together this morning as we meditate in his word. Let us turn to the
Gospel of Luke, chapter 19, and we'll read verse 10. The Gospel
of Luke, chapter 19, and reading verse 10. For the Son of Man is come to
seek and to save that which was lost. This is a wonderful gospel truth. And the true Church of God are
very thankful that such a word is recorded in the Word of God.
And therefore that means that if you and I are part of the
Church of God, we will be very thankful for such a word as this. And the reason is really very
obvious. And it's because we are, by nature, lost. That means there's no hope for
us. That means we don't know the
way. We don't know really where we
are. We're just wandering around in this sinful world, in a lost
state. And we have no object. We don't
know where we're going. We're lost. Well, this morning, as we are
privileged to gather to hear the word of God, Are we lost
or are we saved? That's really the very stark
reality, isn't it? You and I are either amongst
those who are lost and wandering around aimlessly. You may think, well, I'm not
wandering around aimlessly. Well, you are, unless you have
set before you the gracious and glorious object of the true soul,
which is the Lord Jesus Christ, the object of the salvation of
all his people. It's a very simple truth. It's
a very necessary truth. It's a very important truth.
And therefore it should really direct us in our minds to try
and assess where we stand It's very easy, you know, to just
carry on in a fairly aimless way and not realise that we are
lost. I think we're just wandering
on day by day. We know true objective in life,
apart from making money, apart from making ourselves in this
life as comfortable as possible. That is what our old nature does,
because our old nature knows nothing else, nothing better. But if, and what a big if it
is, if we are amongst the true Church
of God, we will have the evidence that we are saved from being
lost. And the hymn writer really picks
this up so very beautifully in a well-known hymn, 199, which
starts off, Come thou fount of every blessing. And I'll just
read the first little bit because it's very personal really. It says, Tune my heart to sing
thy grace. Now if we are lost, there'll
be no heart to tune to sing the grace of God, because the grace
of God won't mean anything to us. And yet, the hymn writer
tells us here, streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs
of loudest praise. So if therefore the Lord God
has come and blessed us with his grace, his mercy, As the
hymn writer correctly says, it calls for songs of loudest praise. It doesn't mean to just mumble
along. It doesn't mean to keep our mouth
shut. It means what it says, loudest
praise. And then he goes on to say, teach
me. Some melodious on it, sung by
flaming tongues above. Praise the mount, oh fix me on
it. Mount of God's unchanging love. And really it comes down to this.
If you and I are blessed with the grace of God and the wonderful
favor of the knowledge of ourselves as unworthy and lost sinners,
it is because of the love of God, which is unchanging. In
the next verse, here I raise my Ebenezer. Hither by thy help
I am come, and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive
at home. He had an object in view, and
the object in view was eternal happiness in heaven. His object
in view was not time things, it was eternal things. And then he comes down to these
last four lines which really I want to draw your attention
to because it correlates so very well with the words we read this
morning. Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God, he to save my soul from danger
interposed his precious blood. Now that's what the hymn writer
was able to write and it's probably a hymn that we've all sung, we
may have sung many times. And perhaps we've sung it untruthfully. We may have sung it and the words
have not been true. But what a blessing it is for
us today if the words are true and we're able to say from our
heart the reality of these words. Yes, Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God, I was lost. I was lost, wandering
around. But Jesus knew where I was. And Jesus knows where we are
this morning. He knows whether you and I are still lost and
still wandering around, or if we're amongst those whom he has
saved. And recognize then the great
truth of these words, he to save my soul from danger, and that's
an eternal danger, that's an eternal state in hell which will
be no escape from. And what do we read then? This
great and glorious gospel truth. He interposed his precious blood. The truth is that the blood of
Jesus Christ means nothing to those who are still in a lost
condition. You may read about it, You may
understand what it means in your head, but when the Holy Spirit
works in our heart, then we realise the value of this blood. And then it is, it changes from
just being a mere statement to what the Apostle Peter comes
and tells us, redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. It suddenly has a value. It suddenly has a tremendous
value because without it we remain lost, but with it we are saved
and eternally so. And so Jesus said unto him, who
was he speaking to? Zacchaeus. What a blessing if
the Holy Spirit speaks to our heart in a powerful way to tell
us this truth. This day is salvation come to
this house for as much as he also is a son of Abraham. You see the appointed time had
come in the life of Zacchaeus and again the hymn writer has
it very succinctly when he says not to propose but call by grace. There are many propositions,
aren't there? And we can think of perhaps the
obvious proposing when a young couple are going together and
the man proposes to the woman of marriage. It's a proposition
that he makes to her. And he asks the question, will
you be my wife? Will you marry me? It's a proposition. And of course, The desire is
and the hope is that that proposition will be accepted and it will
be a good answer. It will be a good result. Well, here we have this word
here. This day is salvation come unto
this house for as much as he also is a son of Abraham. You
see, God doesn't propose. God calls. When a proposition
is made naturally, there may be a refusal. But you see, no
one will be able to refuse what God proposes. You and I will
not be able to. And we may want to, we may not
want to take up our cross and follow the glorious Saviour.
But when the Holy Spirit works, you and I will not be able to
bless God resist the call, the work of the Holy Spirit. And
so it was here in the life of Zacchaeus. It's only recorded
once in the Word of God, in the four Gospels, but it's a very
important little statement and it was obviously the truth. It
wasn't a parable. It was that which occurred and
it was in the life of Zacchaeus a certain day a day ordained
for him to receive the grace of God. What a mercy it is then
for us today, if we have had a day when we received the grace
of God, when we were saved, when we were delivered from the power
of Satan. Yes, the power of Satan is very
great and very powerful. And we sang it in that hymn just
now, hymn 764. And Isaac Watts says, stretch
out thy arm, victorious king. My reigning sins subdue. Drive the old dragon from his
seat with all his hellish crew. So the devil is there. with all his hellish crew to
try and deflect us from the truth of God. But what a mercy it is
that we have such a word as this. The Son of Man is come to seek
and to save that which was lost. It is very glorious to know that
we have a great God who is all-powerful, And a great God who does come
and call us, not to propose, but to call by grace. And oh,
what a mercy that is. And may you and I know the joy
of that in our hearts, because it had a wonderful effect upon
Zacchaeus. And you know the work of the
Spirit of God has a wonderful effect upon the people of God. And my friends, it will have
had a wonderful effect upon you and upon me if we are amongst
those. And what was the effect? We're
told, he received him joyfully. Joy, the Lord had looked upon
him. And it's very wonderful to read
this account because Zacchaeus was the person that we would
least expect to be saved. We can think naturally, well
surely he didn't deserve it. No, he didn't, neither did we. But you see, he wanted to see
Jesus, he was just inquisitive. And he was a little man, And
because of the crowd, he couldn't see, so he ran ahead and he climbed
up into a sycamore tree. It's quite amusing, really, to
think of this rich man, the chief among the tax collectors, running
ahead and climbing up into a tree. And if we saw that today, if
we saw some worthy person climbing up in a tree, we'd be quite surprised.
Well, here was this man, Zacchaeus, a little man. He wanted to see
Jesus. But what had come? The day in his life had come
when the Lord would look and see him. The Lord, of course,
knew where Zacchaeus was. And my friends, the Lord knows
where you and I are. He knows we're here this morning, sitting
in this chapel. He knows if we're listening to
his voice this morning or whether we're wandering around thinking
of everything that we did yesterday and the thing we're going to
do tomorrow. He knows everything about us. He knows where we are,
but what a wonderful blessing if it comes to us like this. Jesus came and stopped. He stopped where he was doing.
He came to the place and he looked up. He looked up. There was Zacchaeus. My friends, what a blessing.
The Lord has looked to us. Where we are, where we've been
perhaps. Perhaps there's been a time in our life when the Lord
has come and looked at us. We've known it's the Lord looking
at us. And so he came to the place,
he looked up and he saw him. He said, Zacchaeus, didn't make
any mistakes. Didn't say, well, who's this
person? Who's this person climbed up
the tree? He knew. And God knows all about everybody. He knows about you and me this
morning. And so he came and he said, Zacchaeus, make haste and come
down for today I must abide at thy house. What a word that was,
wasn't it? What a word. He didn't say to
Zacchaeus, now Zacchaeus, I want you to just think about this
and just consider it carefully. He didn't say that at all. He
said, make haste and come down. Make haste and come down. And
he received him joyfully. And as we read late this ninth
verse, when he said, This day is salvation come to this house. It was a day of salvation for
Zacchaeus. It was a day in the life of Zacchaeus
when his soul would be saved. When he would be delivered from
being lost. A changed person. A different
character. One who now was found serving
the Lord. Jesus said, for the Son of Man
is come to seek and to save that which was lost. Well, we are
in one of the two conditions this morning. We're either amongst
those who are lost or amongst those who were lost and got to save. Now, let us
be very clear. There is no exception. All of
us, every one of us, needs to be saved. We need to be saved. It's the greatest fact in your
life and my life. We need to be saved from ourselves. We need to be delivered From
the curse of the law of sin which says, the soul that sinneth it
shall die, we need to be freed from it, we need to be delivered. And so to think that we have
such a wonderful truth as this, such a great statement as this.
What a mercy it is then, if the Holy Spirit has convinced us
that it's only the work of the Holy Spirit. Nothing that you
and I could do. That's why we read that verse. Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God. We didn't want to be involved. No, we wanted to keep outside
of the fold of God. We were wandering about. But
to think that Jesus sought us. Now those of us have been blessed
with that knowledge that he has sought us out. I'm sure we have rejoiced joyfully
at the great wonderful mercy of Almighty God to think that
such a God has looked upon us utterly undeserving utterly unworthy. And again that hymn 764, the
last verse, explains the true condition of a converted soul
who recognizes before God a guilty, weak and helpless worm. We don't view ourselves as someone
worthier of any notice of God. We recognize that we are unworthy,
just like Isaac Watts did. But what did he say? He recognized
his condition. He tells us, on thy kind arms
I fall. And he says, be thou my strength
and righteousness, my Jesus and my all. You see, when the Holy
Spirit convicts us of our lost condition, he directs us to himself. and to the great grace of our
Saviour. Because the Lord had said, make
haste and come down, and he received them joyfully. And don't forget
the people, of course, they couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe
that Jesus would have come and asked to go and to die with such
a horrible person. And they all murmured saying,
He was gone to be a guest for the man that is a sinner. Well
isn't that a glorious truth, isn't that wonderful? The Lord
comes to be our guest, to dwell with us, to be with us. It's a very humbling but a very
wonderful truth and it's something that will make us truly thankful
and joyful to think that the Lord didn't look upon us because
of any merit, because he loved us. His loving kindness. Oh, how
great. How great to think the Lord should
love such an unworthy sinner as you and me. Thankful that
God should love such an unworthy person as Zacchaeus. It's good, isn't it? That we
have such an illustration as this. To realize that The Lord
comes and can take and can save the very worst of sinners. Zacchaeus
was one, Paul the Apostle was another, walking contrary to
God. But God came and God called. God sought them and there was
no possibility of resisting the wonderful effect of the work
of the Holy Spirit And how true that is, and how glorious it
is, and how wonderful it is to know by personal experience that
we could not resist, and eventually we did not want to resist, because
we knew the Lord had loved us with everlasting love. And so
Zacchaeus came and said to the Lord, Behold Lord, the half of
my goods I give to the poor, And if I have taken anything
from any man by false accusations, I restore him fourfold." It shows
the effect of what the Lord was doing in the heart of Zacchaeus
and how he wanted to do that which was right. And then of
course we have this wonderful statement, this day is salvation
come to this house for as much as he also is a son of Abraham. Well, all of us, of course, need
to be sons and daughters of Abraham in a spiritual sense, amongst
those who are as many as the stars in the universe or the
sand upon the seashore, and be one, very insignificant, but
loved by our God. And to realise this great truth
is a truth that we all must know, must know, that salvation has
come to us this day. His salvation comes to this house. What a blessing it would be for
any today who do not know the Lord, who are lost, if this is
the day, the appointed day in your life,
when the Holy Spirit comes and powerfully brings the good news
of the Gospel and brings you to that knowledge of salvation
and brings you to come to cry out to God, what must I do to
be saved? Oh yes, it's a very vital question,
isn't it? And to pray indeed that prayer
of the public of God, be merciful to a mere sinner. It won't be
just a mere theory, it'll come from your heart and there'll
be a true effectualness in that prayer. You'll be longing. The Holy Spirit will come and
have mercy upon you. Because all of us need mercy.
All of us need mercy. And if we are those who receive
this mercy, it is because there is salvation come into our hearts
this day. Is salvation come to this house
for as much as he also is a son of Abraham. Well, this 10th verse,
for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is
lost, it seems to really divide this truthful fact, and then
the parable that the Lord came and spake, because we're told,
and as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable. So these people had heard and
had seen that which had occurred to Zacchaeus, and the words that
Jesus had spoken and then he spoke to them this parable and
he said because he was night Jerusalem because they thought
the kingdom of God should immediately appear he said therefore and
he gave this illustration a certain nobleman went into a far country
to receive for himself a kingdom and to return and he called his
ten servants and delivered them ten pounds and said unto them,
occupy it till I come. But his citizens hated him and
sent a messenger after him saying, we will not have this man to
reign over us. Now that is in all of our hearts
by nature. What it means is this, we do
not want to be subservient to God. That means we do not want
to bow down to Almighty God. That means we are not willing
to hear His voice and do His will. We want to do our own and
therefore such a word is truthful. We will not have this man to
reign over us. Now I wonder whether you have
said that. You may have said, well I don't
think I've ever said that. Again, it's good to do this.
Examine yourself before God to see whether you have, inhonestly
and truthfully, rejected the words of the Lord Jesus. And you said in your heart, not
in the actual words, but by your actions, that you will not have
the Lord to reign over you. What does it mean? Very simply,
It means you are not willing to submit to the kingship of
the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not willing to submit ourselves
to be a subject of his kingdom. But we say, I will not have this
man to reign over us. Now you see, Zacchaeus, he heard
the glorious word of the Savior and he received it joyfully.
And there were those here who said, we wouldn't have this man
reign over us. You see, they rejected what they'd heard and
seen. Well, the Lord came to pass that
having received the kingdom, he commanded these servants to
be called unto him to whom he had given the money, that he
might know how much every man had gained by trading. We read
the account this morning, I won't go over it again, but there is
the very clear illustration that the Lord does give to his people
that which shall be profitable and that which shall, in their
life, expand to show forth the honour and glory of God. The
three people who were illustrated, one had £10, one had £5 and one
had £1. And it matters not, really, what
the Lord has given us. We should not hide it, we should
not bury it in the ground. But you see, we should, as it
were, trade with it. That it may expand for the honour
and glory of our God. We should always be on the stretch,
seeking for greater revelations of the Spirit's work in our soul
as he opens up the scriptures. We should not sit down and say,
well, of course, I know everything now and therefore I don't need
to go any further. The true believer desires this,
that they may grow in grace and in the knowledge of their Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ. And you see, the effect of the
answer to that prayer must bring honour and glory to God by their
words and by their speech and by their actions. Our life, in
all those aspects, should be for the honour and glory of God. And we should be concerned about
it. And we shouldn't therefore say, well I've got this this
pound and I'm just going to hide it away. You heard what the Lord
said, take that pound from him and cast him out of darkness.
We don't want to have that taken away which perhaps was given
us and there's been no trading with it. We need to be concerned
that our lives may show forth the honour and glory of God.
And that we may not therefore hide our light. In the fifth
chapter of Matthew, the Lord Jesus speaks about that very
clearly, doesn't it? That we are not to hide our light. He uses the word, the candle
under a bushel. That means that there's a candle,
the light, and it's covered up. It's not God glorifying. And
may you and I be wonderfully blessed with the The evidence
and the cost of our salvation. So the Lord says here, this day
of salvation come to thy house. Now if salvation has come to
our house, how has it come? How has it come? Do you know how it's come? Do you
understand how it's come? It's come through the death,
the sin atoning death. of the Lord Jesus Christ. The cost of that salvation, the
cost of your salvation and my salvation has been brought about
through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ because that death
took away our sin and took away our sin through the precious
blood that was shed upon Calvary. That's how salvation has come
to us. Ponder that, or may it sink deep
into our hearts, and may it have a tremendous effect upon us,
so that our lives are turned around. Instead of serving ourself,
we are found serving our God. What a privilege. There's no
greater blessing than to be found serving the Lord. And don't think
that's only the ministers. It's every person who is a child
of God is called to serve the Lord. They're not called to serve
themselves. And so may we be found truly
profiting from that which the Lord has given us. It's given
us, perhaps, if you look at it, a natural pound. Let's think
of it in the terms of a spiritual pound. Yes, that that may be
traded with, and it may grow, and it may bring forth praise
to our God, that many shall see it. But it may not be that which
is hidden. What a tragic scene it is today,
that many people seem to Hide their light, if it is a light.
We have to question it, don't we? Whether it is a light, because
the Word of God is very clear, isn't it? You can't pick and
choose a verse here and a verse there. We have the whole Word
of God which describes the whole path of the Church of God. And
the whole path of the Church of God is really summed up in
this. A perishing sinner and a precious
Christ and as the Holy Spirit works in our soul it will convince
us of the enormity of our sin and the tremendous price that
was paid to take away that sin and therefore the preciousness
of the Saviour who looked upon us and as we have it here the
Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Well, let's come back to the
very beginning. And to have the evidence, to
seek for the evidence in our soul's experience, in the work
which the Holy Spirit does within our hearts to redeem us, to make
us spiritually alive. And we realise the wonderful
favour, yes, once I was lost, but now I'm found. Oh, wonderful
blessing if the Saviour's found us. Wonderful, isn't it? And my friends, none of the ransomed
should ever be lost. And so to have that great concern,
great concern, great concern that you and I amongst those
who are saved and are not left to wander this world as a lost
sinner and fall into hell. My friends, plead earnestly for
the evidence of the life of God in your soul so that you may
have the glorious words spoken that were spoken to Zacchaeus
This day is salvation come to this house. This day is salvation
come to you. You can rejoice and praise God
that the light from heaven has shone into your hearts. Dispel
the darkness and you're able to say, yes, once I was lost,
But now I'm free. Now I'm saved. And I'm saved
through what Christ has done. And I owe a debt I shall never
be able to repay. And I desire to truly hear his
voice and obey his voice and to follow him. There's no greater
blessing. There's no greater favour than
being amongst a true disciple. We don't want to be found a hypocrite,
do we? You know what a hypocrite is,
you young people. A hypocrite is someone who pretends to be
what he's not. Let's not think it's only young
people, it's all of us. We don't want to pretend to be
what we're not. We want to have the evidence
of the life of God in our soul. And the evidence was very clearly
set forth in this parable of Zacchaeus. And may it be true
in our life, as we may be able to say, yes, the Lord has come,
and he has looked upon me, and he has said, perhaps, make haste
and come down. For today, I must abide at thy
house, and to react and to react in a positive way, and not say,
well, I'll think about it. Zacchaeus didn't think about
it. He did it. He came down, and the Lord abode
with him, and the Lord blessed him, and the Lord told him, this
day is salvation come to thy house. For as much as he always
says the son of Abraham, for the son of man is come, to seek
and to save that which was lost. Amen.