Short in stature, but long on repentance, Luke 19:1-10

If you have been with us very often during these last two years that we have been preaching through the book of Luke, then you will recall that the reoccurring theme of Jesus’ ministry was the preaching of the kingdom of God; what it means, what are the requirements and how to enter it.  And one of the major components of entering the kingdom of God is that a person must be desperate.  They must have reached the point of being sick of their sin, the point of mourning over their sin, and desperately hungering and thirsting for righteousness. They have to have come to the realization that they are absolutely lost and without hope in this world. These principles were clearly presented in one of Jesus first recorded messages; the Sermon on the Mount.

 Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount; blessed are the poor in  spirit; that is those that recognize that they are spiritually bankrupt, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are they that mourn over their sin, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the humble, for they shall inherit the earth.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.  All of those statements speak of the requirements of entering or being accepted in the kingdom of God.  You have to humble yourselves,  realize your spiritual bankruptcy, that you have no claim on the kingdom of God, mourn over your sin, that’s true repentance, and then hunger and thirst after the righteousness that only the grace of God can provide, by transference of your sins to Jesus, and His righteousness to you.  That is salvation in a nutshell.

For three years Jesus has been preaching this message of repentance, that the kingdom of God is at hand. For 3 years God’s invitation to enter the kingdom was extended to all who would come.  “Whosoever will may come.”  But now Jesus is reaching the end goal of His earthly ministry.  He is almost at Jerusalem.  It is the Passover season, and in the providence of God Jesus Himself will be offered as the Passover Lamb for the sins of the world.  The Passover symbolically represented that Jesus’ shed blood  each person must put on the doorposts of their house, so that they might escape death.  He is resolutely going to offer Himself at Calvary’s cross as a sacrifice for sins.  And this will happen in just a few days.

And so it is in that context that we come across this story today. One more story illustrating how to enter the kingdom of God before Jesus enters Jerusalem and submits Himself to the crucifixion.   Jesus takes a slight detour on his way to Jerusalem because He has a divine appointment with a sinner in the town of Jericho.  Actually, He had two appointments.  He had an appointment on the outskirts of Jericho with a blind beggar named Bartimaeus who exemplified the desperation necessary for salvation.  We looked at that story last week as Jesus healed Bartimaeus, who Jesus declared was saved because of his faith.

Now coming into Jericho, great crowds are pressing around Him. Jesus’ fame has reached it’s climax and thousands are following Him into Jerusalem where they will throw down palm branches and cheer Him as the Messiah King.  So it says in vs. 1 that Jesus was passing through Jericho.  At least that was how it would seem to the casual observer.  That this was all just chance, circumstance.  Jesus just happened to be passing by.  It says the same thing in the previous chapter about Jesus’ encounter with the blind beggar Bartimeaus.  It would seem as though Jesus was just passing by and Bartimeaus happened to be in the vicinity.  But Jesus doesn’t do anything haphazardly.  God knows what is going to happen before it happens.  He knows who is going to be there before they themselves know.  Some of you here today may think that it’s just happenstance that you happen to be here today.  You just happened to see a sign.  You didn’t really plan on being here.  But let me assure you, God knew you would be here today.   Today, Jesus is passing by.  The kingdom of God is coming near.  The question is how will you respond?

Well, there was a man in Jericho that responded in a dramatic way to the news that   Christ passing by.  The man’s name was Zaccheus.  He was a chief tax collector and was very rich according to vs. 2.  Now we should all be familiar with tax collectors by now.  They were hated by everyone as traitors to their country.  But they were also hated not only because of their politics but because they were unscrupulous.  They extracted more taxes than really were required because the system allowed them to charge a commission.  And so they would charge much more than they should and pocket the overage, and they could get away with this because the Roman government backed them up. But Zaccheus wasn’t just a normal tax collector, that was bad enough, but he was the chief tax collector.  That means he was the regional manager of the tax collectors that worked in that area.  So he was a very rich man, and everyone knew that he made his money by taking advantage of his own people.  He would have been well known, and hated by all.

But  though Zaccheus was very rich, yet implied in this account is the fact that he was very unsatisfied with his life.  His name Zaccheus meant “pure.”  And yet he knew that he was anything but pure. His name must have been the brunt of many a joke in the town as people would have said his name with derision.  It says in vs. 3 that he wanted to see who Jesus was.  Obviously, the fame of Jesus had reached this town.  He had probably already heard about many of Jesus’ miracles long before He healed the blind beggar outside of town.  Chances are he heard of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead just a few months before in Bethany which was just down the road a ways.   People were saying that never a man spoke like this Man spoke.  People were wondering aloud if Jesus was indeed the Messiah.

So the implication in this passage is that Zaccheus was miserable in his sin.  His riches had not made him happy.  He was the chief of sinners, and he knew it.  And he was miserable.  But somehow he understood that Jesus offered more than just physical healing, Jesus offered spiritual healing; hope of reconciliation with God.  And Zaccheus knew that he needed spiritual healing. Under the system of Judaism, tax collectors were not even allowed in the synagogue or the temple.  They basically were unredeemable people in the eyes of the religious establishment.  And so he had no recourse for his sinfulness.  But when he hears Jesus is passing through his town, he is desperate to see him.

Now there was one other characteristic of Zaccheus that we are all familiar with.  Zaccheus was very short in stature.  He was vertically impaired.  That probably was a point of considerable suffering for him.  The abuse that he must have suffered from being short may have contributed to him choosing a career path such as he had.  I heard somebody describe Zaccheus once as looking kind of like Danny Devito, the actor.  And I’ve had that image stuck inside my head ever since.  Now you have it too.  But I don’t know if he really looked like that.  But I’m sure that his stature only added to the derision that people felt towards him. But though he might have overcome his stature in the business field, yet amongst the crowd that day he was unable to see Jesus over the shoulders of the townspeople.

Vs. 4 “So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way.”  Now this reveals the desperation that Zaccheus felt.  He was a man that occupied a pretty exalted position in the community.  He was well known.  And he was already the object of derision.  But this man must have been so desperate to see Jesus that he could care less what people thought about him.  He could care less that climbing a tree would make him the laughing stock of the town.  He just wanted to see Jesus.

You know, I was thinking the other day about the world’s version of beauty.  There is more money spent by the average woman today on makeup and beauty products and treatments in one year than is probably spent on an entire family’s groceries in many third world countries.  My daughter was telling me the other day about a mascara that is very popular right now that costs $60.  And yet people will pay almost any price if something promises to help you achieve beauty.  But the standard of beauty that the media puts out there is so distorted and unrealistic.  Unfortunately a lot of us buy into it, and if we don’t see ourselves as measuring up to that standard, then we become disillusioned, we feel disenfranchised from society.

Thankfully, God doesn’t see us that way.  We are all precious in His sight.  As we have been studying Genesis on Wednesday nights we have heard repeatedly that God created us in His image, in His likeness.  David said in Psalm 139 that “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Listen, I have news for you.  None of us are perfect.  Not even the airbrushed models in the magazines are perfect.  But God is not concerned about our outward appearance.  God is concerned about our hearts.  And God loves us regardless of how we may appear to the world.  He loves us in spite of our deficiencies.  God made you for a purpose.  He knew you when you were still in your mother’s womb. He loved you even before you were born.  Jesus didn’t look at Zaccheus the way his neighbors did.  Jesus saw his heart, and he saw a heart that was mourning over his sin, and seeking after righteousness. Jesus saw a soul worth saving.  And Jesus says in vs. 10 that He came to earth to seek and to save those that are lost.  Jesus came to seek and to save those that are disillusioned, that are disenfranchised.

So Jesus comes directly under the tree that Zaccheus is sitting in and He looks up at him and says, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”  I think it is amazing that upon hearing Jesus call out his name, that Zaccheus didn’t fall right out of the tree.  Here’s this guy that is hated by everyone, despised, and literally looked down upon as a despicable human being, and yet Jesus not only stops and talks to him, but He knows his name.  And not only does He know his name, Jesus says He must come to stay at his house.

Listen, if you met a stranger walking down the street, and they came up to you and called you by name, wouldn’t you be amazed?  Wouldn’t you wonder what else they knew about you?  Zaccheus must have realized that if Jesus knew his name, then he knew everything else about him too.  For he had never met Jesus.  And yet Jesus knew his name.  I’m sure that when Jesus looked Zaccheus in the eye and called out his name, he knew that Jesus could see right through him and knew all about him.

Did you know that God knows your name?  Do you know that God knows where you live, what you do inside your house, what you do and say and think when you are alone?  Do you know that God knows your innermost thoughts?  And yet even though God knows you, He knows every sin that you have done, yet He still desires you to be reconciled to Him.  He still wants your company, your fellowship, your love.  What an amazing thing!  That the Holy, Righteous Creator of the Universe wants you, to love you, and to have your love be for Him.  Did you know that is why God created you?  God created mankind to be the bride of Christ.  To be like Him, in His likeness, made in His image, to be a helpmate to Him as Eve was to Adam.  And to make it possible for sinful man to be united with Him, God made Jesus a sacrifice for our sins, that we might be made righteous and holy too, so that we would be a suitable mate to His Son.

I don’t know about you, but if Jesus said to me that I was to come down from the tree because He was coming to stay at my house, I would want to make a quick phone call home and see if I couldn’t get the place straightened up real quick first.  I would want to run ahead and hide a few things in the closet before Jesus got there.  Wouldn’t you?  If Jesus were to follow you home from church today, would you be ashamed of what He might see there?  How about if He decided to spend the night?

Yet Vs. 6 says that Zaccheus climbed down from the tree and received Him gladly.  Listen, the difference for Zaccheus was that he wasn’t hiding anything.  He realized that Jesus already knew everything about him.  And Zaccheus was willing to have Jesus come home, he was glad to have Jesus come home with him, because Zaccheus was sick and tired of being sinful and wicked.  He knew that Jesus had already seen his sinfulness and wickedness.  He had nothing to hide.  He had already opened his heart to Jesus.  Now he gladly opened his house to Jesus.  He was ready to receive Jesus as Lord, and that meant that he was ready to clean house.

How about you?  Are you ready to clean house?  Are you ready to empty out the closets that are hiding your secret sins?  Have you ever really opened your heart, realizing that God sees the secrets of men’s hearts?  If you really believe that, if you are truly mourning over your sin and hungering for righteousness, then you should be glad to receive Jesus into your house.  Let Him cleanse you from every sin and stain, from every impure thing.  Listen, there is great joy in knowing forgiveness.  Of confessing and repenting of your sins and knowing God forgives you.  Zaccheus meant pure.  But up to now he had been impure, unholy, unrighteous.  But when Jesus came in to his heart, Zaccheus was finally pure.  And when a person really gets their heart right, then their house gets right too.

By the way, I came across an interesting historical note attributed to Clement of Alexandria, one of the church fathers.  Clement said that Zaccheus became a very prominent Christian leader and ended up a pastor of the church in Caesarea, later to be succeeded by none other than Cornelius, the centurion.  That may be the reason that Zaccheus is named by Luke.  By the time that Luke writes this gospel, Zaccheus may have already been well known as a church leader.

Now as an interesting side note  Luke reveals in vs. 7 the fickleness of the crowd. When they saw Jesus go off with Zaccheus, they all began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” Like I said, the same crowd that is fawning after Jesus in Jericho ends up throwing palm branches and calling out “Hosanna!” in Jerusalem a few days later.  But then a few days after that it’s the same crowd that calls out “crucify Him!”  Popular opinion is fickle, it’s temperamental.  Jesus doesn’t ever go out of His way to please a crowd or to attempt to draw a crowd.  In fact, He often seems to go out of His way to show that the crowd is drawn to the broad way that leads to destruction, but few are they that find the narrow way that leads to eternal life.  Popularity and great crowds are never a barometer of spiritual truth, ladies and gentlemen.

Now I’m sure you can’t help but notice that there seems to be a lot of information missing between vs. 6 and vs. 8.  Obviously, vs. 8 illustrates that Zaccheus was converted.  But the details are missing.  Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Luke seems to jump from Jesus announcing that He is coming to spend the night with Zaccheus to Zaccheus’s statement of how he will right the wrongs he has committed.

And yet I think that this is purposely written this way to provoke the reader to ask a very important question.  The question is this:  How do we validate salvation? I have been a pastor of this church now for 8 years, and I have been in Christian ministry many years before that.  But even though I spend my life trying to tell people what it means to be saved, sometimes I feel like I am completely inadequate to even lead someone to Christ.  I can tell them all the things that they need to understand, all the elements, all the doctrines, and yet I cannot ensure that they are really, truly saved.  Sometimes I don’t really know whether they have truly been transformed or not.

And so I ask myself this same question; how do we evaluate salvation?  Is it by some emotional response to the gospel?  If someone cries and has an emotional response, is that an indication that they are saved?  Or is it like the charismatics claim?  Does one tell a Christian by the fact that they had a charismatic, ecstatic experience?  How is real salvation to be evaluated?

 Well I think that the answer is found right here in the example of Zaccheus.  The validation of salvation is found in the evidence of true repentance.  I think the Holy Spirit deliberately leaves out all the details of what Jesus must have said to Zaccheus.  He deliberately leaves out the details of what kind of prayer that Zaccheus might have prayed, or what his emotional state might have been.  Instead, the Holy Spirit focuses our attention on Zaccheus’ contrition.  See repentance is so much more than simply saying I’m sorry, or even feeling sorry.  Repentance is doing a 180 degree turn and going the other direction.  Repentance is not just being forgiven for your sins, but turning from your sins, and as we see in the case of Zaccheus, even making restitution for your sins.  Now that is a novel concept in 21st century evangelical Christianity, I know.  But that is the result of salvation that we see in this passage, and I think it is at the heart of the gospel.  

You see, Jesus went into the house of a sinner, but He came out of the house of a saint.  That is the transformation of salvation.  Salvation is conversion, from the heart of a sinner, to the heart of a saint.  From a  son of the devil, to a son of God.  From a worker of evil, to a worker of righteousness.  That is the result of transformation and the mark or evidence of salvation.  That is what James 2 is talking about when he says, “I will show you my faith by my works.”

See, Zaccheus is presented here in stark contrast to the rich young ruler of the last chapter.  The rich young ruler thought he was righteous, he did good deeds, but Jesus revealed that his heart was evil because he had made money his idol.  But this man who knew he was a sinner, was desperate to be converted, Jesus reveals his heart is evil and he repents.  And then he shows his repentance by his works; he makes restitution for his sins to the point of becoming bankrupt.

Listen to vs. 8, “Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much."  I mean, I’m not very good at math, but I can figure out that if you give half of your money to the poor, and with the other half you give all the people that you defrauded in your life 4 times what you took from them, the end result is going to be bankruptcy. Especially in the case of the chief of tax collectors.  This guy made his money defrauding people.  And so the only reason he doesn’t do what Jesus told the rich young ruler to do in the last chapter – that is, sell everything and give it to the poor- the only reason he doesn’t do that is that he knows that he needs to make right the people that he defrauded first and that is going to take half of his money.  Then the other half he will give to the poor.  Then he  is going to be broke.  But though he may be broke, he is going to be right with God and right with his fellow man.  Listen, you can’t say you are right with God and yet hate your husband, or your neighbor, or cheat someone in business.  So the scripture indicates that Zaccheus gladly exchanged his sordid life for righteousness from God, even if it meant that he had to lose everything to gain it.  That’s a good definition of a citizen of the kingdom of God, by the way.  Someone who gladly gives up self rule to submission to the rule of Christ in their lives.

Some of you, if you are paying attention, are saying to yourself right about now, “boy, this is starting to sound just like all of Roy’s other sermons.  You have to give everything up to enter the kingdom.  You have to forsake everything to be a disciple of Christ.  Doesn’t Roy know any other sermon?  Isn’t there any other way to be a Christian?”  Well, if that is your attitude then I am afraid that I am going to disappoint you once more.  You can have no other god before our God.  Money can’t be your god.  Career can’t be your god.  Your wife or husband  or boyfriend can’t be your god. Anything that you put ahead of God is an idol. A false god.  And the first commandment is that you shall have no other gods before Me.

You may say, but wait a minute Roy, you just quoted the law.  And we’re under grace now, we’re not under the law.  Really?  Well I would like to point out to you the effect of grace.  Zaccheus was saved by grace through faith, the same way we all are, the same way Abraham was, by the way.  The same way Moses was and everyone that has been saved in human history.  All are saved by grace through faith.  But grace doesn’t eliminate the law, it satisfies it.  It even goes beyond it.  That’s illustrated by the fact that Zaccheus doesn’t just come up with this figure of repaying four times what he defrauded out of his imagination.  No, Zaccheus, sinner though he was, knew the law.  Zaccheus knew that in Exodus 22 the law required that if you robbed someone by a breach of trust, then double restitution was required.  Zaccheus doubles that.  Grace doesn’t permit him to forget about the law, but grace provokes him to go twice as far as the law required.  Grace doesn’t exempt you from doing what is right.  Grace just exempts you from the penalty for doing wrong.

The law not only convicted Zaccheus of his sin, but it revealed the requirement of repentance and restitution.  It revealed the attitude of a heart that desired to be right with God.  Paul said that the law was good, if one used it lawfully.  But the law was given to show us our sinfulness, and to show us our need for a Savior.  The law shows us the standard of God’s righteousness.  The difference under grace is that we now have the penalty of the law removed, so that we do not die for our sins, but we are forgiven our sins and cleansed of all unrighteousness.  The difference under grace is that having been credited with Christ’s righteousness, we are now given the Spirit of Christ to live in us that we might do the works of righteousness by the strength that He provides.  God describes that process of salvation in Ezek. 36:26-27 "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”

That is the power of a transformed life, by the way.  It is the power of the testimony that you who were a sinner, a dirty rotten scoundrel, have been made into a new creature, old things are passed away.  But your testimony to the world of God’s saving power is that you now give where you once took, share instead of being greedy, love instead of hate, do good instead of evil.  That’s the testimony of the saved.  That’s the evidence of a transformed heart.

Now Zaccheus’ statement of repentance elicits an amazing response from Jesus.  Vs. 9 And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham.”  Zaccheus is saved.  Why?  Because he is a son of Abraham.  What does that mean?  Well, I alluded to it just a minute ago.  Abraham is the father of faith.  Saving faith. Paul says in Gal. 3:6-7 “Even so Abraham BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS. 7 Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham.”

Listen, what does it mean to have faith, to believe?  What does it mean to have saving faith?  I will tell you.  It doesn’t mean that you merely believe that God exists, or even that Jesus exists.  The Bible says that the demons also believe and they are not saved.  Faith means trusting in Christ as your Lord.  As the Lord of your life.  Trusting Him enough to surrender everything to follow Him.  To discard every treasure for the sake of knowing the greatest treasure; to know that you are forgiven.  Trust Him enough to forsake your sins. Trusting that God has justified you by the blood of Jesus Christ shed as the Passover Lamb upon a cross as your substitute.  The kind of faith that will turn away from everything that the world says is valuable, for the sake of knowing Jesus as Lord.

Do you have that kind of faith?  If you do, then your conversion ought to resemble that of Zaccheus.  Your repentance should stir you to make things right with those you have wronged, and give up everything that hinders you from following Christ every day, with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your might.  No more idols.  No more hidden closets.  Everything laid out for His inspection.

Listen, today Jesus is passing by.  You happened to be here.  But it is not by chance.  Jesus wants you to come down off your ivory tower of respectability, and invite Him into your house, welcome Him to stay with you, not just for the night, but for the rest of your life.  Jesus said in Rev. 3:20 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.”  What is your response to Jesus?  He is passing by.  Do not let Him leave without seeing Him today, without surrendering to Him today.

Jesus said in vs. 10 in our text, "For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost."  Jesus is passing by today.  He came seeking you, the lost.  Will you invite Him to come home with you today?  He is here now. Don’t miss this opportunity. You don’t know when He might come this way again.  Today is the day of salvation.  Let’s pray.