Turn with me this morning in
your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke, Luke chapter 19. This may well be one of the earliest
so-called Bible stories that I remember hearing. Luke chapter 19, And Jesus entered and passed
through Jericho. And behold, there was a man named
Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans and he was
rich. And he sought to see Jesus, whom
he was, and could not for the press, because he was little
of stature. And he ran before and climbed
up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was to pass that
way. And when Jesus came to the place,
he looked up and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make
haste, and come down, for to-day I must abide at thy house. And he made haste, and came down,
and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, They all
murmured, saying that he was gone to be a guest with a man
that is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood and said
unto 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
accusation, I restore him fourfold.' And Jesus said unto him, This
day is salvation come to this house, for so much as he also
is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man is come to
seek and to save that which was lost." Now, I want to read again that
last verse. For the Son of Man is come to
seek and to save that which was lost. Was this one who is called the
truth telling the truth? You see, we find a verse that
is very similar also in Matthew's Gospel, where in Matthew 18 and
verse 11, it says, For the Son of Man is come to save that which
was lost. And that brings me to the title
of this message, which is a question. And it is a question for every
one of us. Did he or didn't he? Did he or didn't he? You see, it is upon this statement
of Scripture that Jesus Christ is determined either a success
or a failure. And not only that, but it is
also upon it that it is determined whether you believe God. or not. And likewise also it is upon
this statement that it is determined whether you know Christ or not. He says, the Son of Man is come
to seek and to save that which was loss. And this is a very plain statement, and it would be really hard for
any of us to misunderstand what Christ was saying. You see, the problem is not in
our understanding at least mentally what he's saying, but rather
our problem lies in our unbelief and our unwillingness to believe
that which he says. Zacchaeus, in a miracle of God's
grace, did. He absolutely did. And not only that, all of the
lost sheep, when they are found, they are brought not only to
believe it, but also to rejoice in it. But the problem always lies in
this, and that is that most all people regardless of their particular
brand of religion, believe virtually the opposite of this. They believe things like this. They believe that the Son of
Man came and tried to save men. They believe that He came and
He did His absolute best to save men. They believe that He came
and in His coming He made all men savable in some way or other. Or they believe that He came
And by that which he did, he enabled them to somehow help
save themselves. And they believe that he is still
trying to save men if they will let him. And they believe that he did
something, that he actually even maybe accomplished a work which
along with something that they do will save them. But all those things are far
from what this verse says. They are far from what Christ
Himself said, and they are far from what all of the Scriptures
say. And it really boils down to this. If we're not going to believe
what the Scriptures say, there is no need to believe in a God. There is no need to believe in
someone called Jesus Christ. There's no need to believe in
salvation or heaven or hell or the devil or anything else if
we're not going to believe the Scriptures. You see, if you think about this,
One way that we can know the gravity of these words is to
think about the One who spoke them. He describes Himself here,
as He often did, as the Son of Man. And this is amazing because
the Lord Jesus Christ is as this one who speaks, not just simply
a man, but he is God and man in a unique person. He is the Son of God, and he
is the Son of Man. And he is described in this book
as God manifests in the flesh. And long before He came into
this world, and that's what it says here, it says that He came,
but long before He came into this world, He was spoken of
by a name that would be unique to Him. He is Emmanuel. And Immanuel, according to the
Scriptures, is simply being interpreted God with us. And not only that, it is as Immanuel,
or God with us, that the Apostle Paul says that there is but one
Mediator. There isn't a lot of mediators. There are not a lot of priests,
or a lot of saviors, or a lot of go-betweens between men and
God. There is one mediator between
God and men, the man Christ Jesus. And when John begins in his gospel,
led by the Spirit of God, he begins in that gospel by describing
this unique person in this way. He's called the Word, capital
letter. And he says, the Word that was
in the beginning, That Word that was with God and was God, that
Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld Him as
the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. He goes on to say, the law came
by Moses, but grace and truth came by or in Jesus Christ. And He came as one in our nature,
sin excluded, He came as one in our nature in order to save
His people. There was no other way. And if we ever find out what
we are as sinners, one of the ways that the Spirit of God will
use to show how desperately we need to be saved and our desperate
condition in ourselves is to show us that it was necessary
for God Himself to take on human flesh and come into this world
so that He might die in our place in order to save us. That's what this is all about. And it says that he came into
this world, that he came into this world to save somebody. Who is it that he says he came
into this world to save? Well, it says that he came to
seek and to save the lost. The lost. What is it to be lost? What is it to be lost? Well,
there was an old preacher a long time ago. I believe he was the
one that preceded Mr. Spurgeon when he was at the new
Park Street Church there in London. His name was Benjamin Keats. And he gave this kind of summary
of what it is to be lost. And he said this, it is to have
strayed away from that place we were set in by God. In Adam, We were all originally
in the true foe, but in Adam subsequently we all strayed away
from God. You see, this has got something
to do in relationship to God. He goes on to say this, to be
lost is not only to have strayed away from the true foe, but to
have lost all knowledge of God and all liking for God." Everybody says, oh, I love God. No, you love a God of your own
imagination. You love a God of your own design,
of your own making. But when confronted with the
true God of the Bible, when confronted with God as He reveals Himself
to be in the Scriptures, we find out that God is not who we thought
He was, and God, as He's declared in the Bible, the Bible says
that men and women as natural men, Receive not the things of
God. You say that means they don't
have the capacity to. That's absolutely right. And
one of the problems in the matter of capacity is they don't have
the willingness to. Why? Because they're lost. He
goes on. He says to be lost, is to have
lost the image of God in which we were originally created and
to have contracted the image of Satan. I can assure you this, as sinners
in and of ourselves, We are, in comparison to God who is infinitely
holy and righteous, we are much more in the image of Satan than
we are in the image of God. Do we lie? Satan, he says, is
the father of it. Are we jealous? Are we full of
pride? Are we those who in ourselves
are everything that is contrary to what God commands in His Word? Then we are much more like devils
than we are like God. He goes on. He says to be lost. is not only to have lost the
image and the true knowledge of the true God, but to have
lost all knowledge of ourselves. I'll tell you this, if we had
a real knowledge of ourselves, you'd never hear another person
say, well, I'm a good person. And not only that, we never say
it about somebody else. We never defend ourselves in
anything. We never rise up to tell somebody
what we've done or what we are or anything like that. If we
were not lost, we'd know something more about ourselves. He came to seek and to save the
lost. And we only find out what we
are. We only find out about what we
are as sinners. We only find out about this desperate
and dangerous eternal situation of condemnation that we're in. We only find it out when the
Spirit of God enables us to believe what God says about us. You know what we say? We say
that you are what you think you are. And if we will instill in
all these young people and children, if we will instill in them this
real sense of value and worth, they will be what we will tell
them that they will be. That is a lie. I'm sad to say that is a lie. And that is why we ought to encourage
them, and we ought to instruct them, and we ought to lead them
in that way in which they should go. They will, if left to themselves,
be just as we are and we were. They will be just what they are. sinners. That's not a very pretty picture,
is it? And the reason we not only don't know this, and the
reason that we don't like this, and the reason we don't like
to be told about how we are, is because we're lost. We're lost. You'll never find
in this book a description about how we are in Adam and how we
are by nature, you'll never find in this book a description that
will be pleasing to us. How does he describe us in Isaiah
1? He describes us as a leprous
man. He says that we are from our
head to our toe and everything in between, nothing but wounds
and putrefying sores that have not been bound up, that have
not been mollified with ointment. We're just an open running sore
of sin. He says, not only in the psalm,
but repeats it again in Romans 3, he says, there is none that
understandeth, there is none that doeth good, none, not one,
there is none righteous, there is none that seeketh after God, not one. He says, man, at his best state. Now, I'm not talking about on
those bad days, you know. He says on your best day, in
your best behavior, in your best dress. He said man at his best
state is altogether vanity. That's you. That's me. That's
especially me. But that's you. That's every
person. Every family member, every person
we work with, every person we know, every religious person
that's ever lived on this earth, every person outside of Christ. I had a family member who said
one time, and it was told to me just exactly what she said,
she said, I just can't believe that we all are as he says that
we are. That's not the problem. If I
were to stand up here and read these awful descriptions of those
who are lost, And those who are sinners in themselves over and
over again, I could never convince you of. I could never portray
to you the awfulness of a sinner in himself. But that's not the
problem. The problem's not in disbelieving
me. The problem's in disbelieving
God. You won't find out what you are. by virtue of what you think you
are after a self-examination. You won't find out what you are
before God by virtue of what someone else says that you are
or thinks that you are. You see, we never really find
out how we are until the Spirit of God enables us to believe
God in what He says that we are. I am, whether I can see it or
not, and whether I can believe it or not, I am what He says
that I am. And I can't ever know until He
reveals it to me, because I'm lost. That's the way we are. He describes us as poor, as wretched,
as blind, as lame, as having our understanding darkened, as
our very mind being enmity against God, as our thoughts being only
evil continually. That's what every one of us are
in ourselves. We're lost. You know, I found out that I
myself have been a great example of that while traveling. I'm
sure my wife, probably my children would give you a real testimony
to this, but you know how men are by nature. We're out there
going on a vacation and on a trip, and we lose our way sometimes. What's the first problem? We
don't want to admit that. Not only are we too proud to
admit that, we're too proud to ask for directions. I can find
my way. No, you can't. You're lost. I remember one time I was hunting.
I can remember just exactly the place I walked off into the woods
to go after some dogs that were barking at a bear and I got off
in there by myself and I got pretty far off in there by myself. I started getting a sneaky feeling
that I was lost. I didn't know which way to go.
I really didn't. And you know, when I first began
to feel like I was maybe lost, that was an awful fearful feeling. And you know what? I'd have been
lost probably a long time, but all of a sudden, way off in a
particular direction, I heard somebody's voice. Way off. And I started listening. And I heard again, I thought
I heard somebody talking maybe. And then a little bit later I
heard somebody's voice calling out to a dog. And I started going in that direction. My friend, if you hear the voice
of God, if He puts your heart into looking at this book, if
you can just hear the whisper of truth from His gospel, turn
your ear toward that direction and listen. Faith comes by hearing,
and hearing by the Word of God. But you know we're so heartened
to this. My wife gave me a GPS for my
birthday. And I'm thinking after I got
that thing, this is a wonderful thing. All these years of traveling,
if I could have just had this GPS, I could have saved myself
lots of hours of trying to wander around streets and roads and
look for this, that and the other. And here I am, I'm headed down
to Georgia. I forget the name of that interstate
that goes across about mid-Georgia. And I'm on that interstate, and
it starts giving me some directions that I'm thinking to myself,
you know, I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I think
maybe I could, if I hadn't forgotten my math at home, I could find
a better way than that. There it is. It's right there
in front of me. I said, well, I guess I'll just
follow it. You know where it took me? It
took me to just the place I needed to be. Drove me right up to the
motel door. But I didn't think it would. And I'll tell you what, there's
a Word that has come from far higher than a GPS satellite that
instructs us in the way, tells us what we are, tells us that
we're lost. And as long as we're able to
fight that and rebel against it, if God doesn't come to where
we are and enable us to believe it, We'll stay lost. We'll stay lost. And I'll tell you this. It isn't just all these who are
in themselves lost here. Because evidently, evidently
these that are described as lost are a particular group among
the lost that he says they'll be saved. Who is that? The lost sheep. There's a sense in which all
men are lost. But these lost ones, because
Christ is their shepherd, they're going to be saved. They're going
to be saved. You see, these are lost and they'll
be brought to confess themselves as such. That is, they'll be
brought to confess and to find out that they're so lost that
they can do nothing to save themselves. That is, no decision on their
part will save them. No ritual or ceremony of man. No work or acts of their will. None of these things will save
them. They're so lost. They're brought to confess that
if God doesn't come where they are and rescue them. You think all this language of
Scripture that speaks of Christ as a Savior, as the Deliverer,
as the Rescuer. When we read that psalm, it says,
who's the one who's going to enter into these gates? The Lord
mighty in battle? What in the world is all this
about? You see, Christ is pictured there as the one who's in the
vanguard of all His people. He's the one who has engaged
Himself in the conflict in order to save them, and their salvation
is all in Him. And thank God, He's the Lord
mighty in battle. Who did He defeat? Death, hell,
the grave, sin, the devil, and every enemy of God and His people. This is not a game. This has
to do with eternal life. It has to do with our sins. And somebody says, whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord, the Bible says, shall be
saved. Yes, but there's none that seeketh
after God. There's none that call on the
Lord, that is, worship Him in the way that one must worship
Him through that one sacrifice of sin. And they do not even
in their hearts call upon Him until the Spirit of God puts
that call. in their heart. See, if He leaves you to yourself,
you'll never call upon Him. I know that. I know if He left
me to myself, I was so satisfied in myself morally, and I was
so satisfied in my religion, I'd done what everybody told
me to do and more, I was so satisfied as a preacher. I'm a preacher
now. I know. I don't need to call upon the
Lord, do I? Do you ever find yourself in
the state that you really are as a sinner? You hear old David? He says like
him, sinking in this miry clay. Lord, have mercy on me. Here's
old Peter who steps out, goes sinking down in that water. Lord,
save me or I'll perish. You need Christ. You'll never call on Him until
you need Him. You'll never know you need Him
until God shows it to you. I mean need Him. Well, I need
to keep up a good image. That's not it. I need to go to
heaven. That's not it. I need Him. I need Him to do something for
me. Save me. You see, all the lost sheep will
be saved. Why? Because he says, my sheep
hear my voice. Why do they hear? Because he
gives them the ear. He gives them the ear. They find
out that they're totally helpless. Are you totally helpless? If God, right this minute, left
you to yourself, what will happen? I know what happened to me. I'd
not only go to hell, I'd self-destruct just like that. One way or another. You say we're helpless, but the
seeker isn't. And I don't know the secret.
He's God the Savior. And He's described as mighty
to save. Before Christ ever came into
this world, God had one of His prophets write this down. He's not only the mighty God,
but He's mighty to save. Mighty to save. Thou shalt call
His name Jesus. What does that mean? Equivocally,
I mean, essentially the same thing as the name Joshua means. What did Joshua mean? It means
deliverer, Savior. Thou shalt call His name Jesus.
Why? For He shall save His people
from their sin. Evidently, his people must be
in themselves lost sinners. He'll save his people from their
sins. Look over in 1 Timothy chapter
1. 1 Timothy chapter 1. And verse
15, Paul, writing here, says this by the Spirit of God, this
is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Did He? Or didn't He? Then Paul confesses this. He
says, of whom I'm the chief. Now, I've got news for you. Though
that was truly what he felt in his heart, it was truly what
he confessed in his heart. I am the very chief of sinners. That's the very same thing that
every sinner that Christ saves confesses and believes in their
heart. I am the chief of sinners. Turn over and look at the book
of Titus in chapter 3. You see, this is the good news
and the glad tidings of the gospel. It is to them that are lost.
And if you're not lost, if you're not a sinner, I really don't
have anything to say to you. Listen to Paul writing to Titus
in verse 4, chapter 3. But after that the kindness and
love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of
righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He
saved us." Somebody says, now I know Christ
did it all, but we have to do this. Did we not hear what that
said? Not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but by that one work of righteousness
that He did, He saved us. By His righteous obedience, which
is His obedience unto death, He saved us. Not offers us salvation,
but He saved us from our sins. He saved us from the curse of
the law. He saves us from the bondage
of Satan. He saves us from ourselves. Every person in hell can sing
with Elvis. I did it my way. I saw at a grocery counter this
week a tabloid had a picture of Patrick Swayze. At least they're
not, they're putting a few pictures of him up now that he at least
looks like he did before he got sick of Pancreatic cancer. But this is what they wanted
to quote by. I'm not afraid to die. I'm not afraid to die. Well, you should have been. A man who's paralyzed is not afraid
of pain, you see. A blind man is not afraid of
an oncoming car, is he? Because he can't see it. A deaf
man is not afraid when somebody shouts out a loud warning. The Apostle says in Hebrews 7, of Christ, he is able also to
save them to the uttermost that comes unto God by him. How? Well, he says in Matthew
20, the same Son of Man didn't come to be ministered unto. but
to minister, to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. How does the shepherd save his
lost sheep? He said, I lay down my life for
the sheep. Peter said when he stood there
in Pentecost and thereafter, he said there isn't salvation
in any other. For there is none other name
under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. Let me read you this out of Isaiah
53. Surely He hath borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten
of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed, all we like sheep
have gone astray. We have turned every one to his
own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."
What do we do? We are all like sheep gone astray.
How does he save us? By the Lord laying on him. our
iniquity, make him to meet on his head all that was due our
sin. You see, it says, by that one
man's obedience we'll be saved from wrath. Saved by his life. He said, the Son of Man has come
to seek and save that which was lost. His eye is the eye of omniscience. He's always known them, always
known where they were, always known what they were. And His
hand is the hand of omnipotence. None can stay His hand or say
unto Him, What doest Thou? If He came to save them, He saves
them. If He can't, He lied. If He didn't, He's a failure. If He doesn't, He doesn't get
the glory. Turn over to Luke 15 quickly. Listen in Luke chapter 15 and
verse 3. When Zacchaeus was called by
Christ, When our Lord went to that tree where He was, stopped
dead in His tracks, looked up, and called Him by name, and said,
I'm going to your house today. Not only did He say that, but
He followed that with this, today salvation's come to your house.
Why? Because He is salvation. They said, well, this man's going
to be a guest of a man that's a sinner. That's who he came to save. You see, poor people sometimes
have a notion that they're less proud than rich people. Not so. Anything, they may be more proud.
They're proud they're not rich. But it says that Zacchaeus was
rich. Doesn't it say that? They said he's a sinner. He's
a sinner because he's rich. No. He's rich just because God's
the one who's able to make rich and make poor. That's what this
book says. There's a lot of people I'd love
to be able to convince them of that. It's God who makes rich. and makes poor. You can try your
hardest to make yourself rich. You won't be rich if he makes
you poor. It says, "...then drew near unto
him all the publicans and sinners for to hear." And the Pharisees,
and the scribes, they murmured. They said, this man receives
sinners and he eats with them. Same thing, isn't it? And he
spake this parable unto them, saying, What man of you, having
a hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety
and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost,
until he finds it? And when he hath found it, he
lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls
together his friends and his neighbors, saying unto them,
Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost. And our Lord says, I say unto
you, that likewise Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner
that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons
which need no repentance." You go on to the next part of this
parable, and there's a woman who's got a lost coin. What does
she do? She sweeps this house until she
finds it. You read a little bit further,
the third part of that parable, and you find there's a man who's
got a lost son. What happens to that lost son?
He's brought back to the father's house. You see, there's no room for
such notions as a sufficiency, efficiency kind of a notion of
salvation here. The Christ says, I came to seek
and to save that which was lost. This has to do with his will,
his purpose, his design, and his glory. And Peter says he
suffered the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God.
And there's not one who can thwart the will and the work of him
who works all things after the counsel of his own will. He said,
I'll do all my pleasure. So, you see, the real question is not who Christ came to save. The real question is, are you
lost? Are you lost? Are you one of those lost sheep,
helpless and hopeless in yourself? No justifying righteousness?
Nothing to atone for your sins? No way to deliver yourself from
divine justice? Can you hear the shepherd's voice? He says, Come unto me, all ye
that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. You see, one of those lost sheep
is found saying in Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not walk. I'll not be in want or need for
righteousness, for salvation, for peace, for joy, for heaven,
for anything. Why? Because the Lord's my shepherd. Isaiah said he'll feed his flock
like a shepherd, and he'll gather the lambs with his arm, and he'll
carry them in his bosom. Look back at our text, at Luke
19. He came into this world to save
this sinner, Zacchaeus. But not only does he come into
this world seeking those lost sheep and save them in that sense,
but he seeks them all out individually in time. He'll send His Spirit, He'll
send His Gospel, He'll bring them in some way into contact with the Gospel. They might be born into a family
where there are those who believe the Gospel. I wasn't. overcome unbelievable odds in their lives, bring them through
the most perilous situations, allow them to fall to the greatest
depths. But he'll seek them and save
them. Might bring them from another
country to a place where the gospel preaches. I might bring him through one
strange means or another, but all the time he's seeking those
sheep. And he finds them. He walked to that tree. He came
to the place where Zacchaeus was. He called him by his name. He
said, he's never called me by my name. Oh, no? Sinner. Ungodly. That's me. See, in truth, if he had come
to me and I'd heard a voice that said, Gary Shepherd, he might have been talking about
another Gary Shepherd. As a matter of fact, I remember thinking
when I was growing up, For a long time, I was thinking about it.
There's one thing about it. My name's not John Brown. My
name's kind of unique. Just punch Gary Shepherd in the
computer and see how many you get. But when he said sinner, when
he said in due time Christ died for the ungodly, when he said
he came to seek and to save the lost, That's better than a calling
of my actual literal name in this world. That's a describing
me right down to the teeth. That's why Paul said, of whom
I'm chief. He can't be talking about anybody
else but me. And when he calls Zacchaeus,
he came down. When he calls you and me, we'll
come down. We'll get off our high horse. we'll find ourself
in the dust." And he said this, he said, I'm come to his house
today, salvation's come to his house, inasmuch as he too is
a son of Abraham. What do you mean by that? Are
you a son of Abraham? Are you a daughter of Abraham?
Paul says this, Know ye therefore that they which are of faith
the same are the children of Abraham. For the Son of Man is come to
seek and to save that which was lost." Did He? Or didn't He? Our Father, this day we give
You thanks and praise. And we look to the Lord Jesus
Christ alone. as the Savior, as our Savior. We sing like the hymn writer
of old. I was lost, but Jesus found me,
found the sheep that went astray. Amazing grace, how sweet the
sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now
am found. Was blind, but now I see. Save us, Lord. Save us, keep saving us, seeking
us. saving us, because we have no other hope
and no other help but You. Save our children. Save our family
members. Save our friends. Save these,
Lord, all around us, this great multitude of humanity all around
us. Call out your sheep and get glory to yourself. For
we pray in Christ's name, Amen.