Sunday, October 25 · Orchard Hill Church
Seek and Save the Lost: The Story of Zacchaeus
Jesus stops under a sycamore tree for the one man in Jericho nobody thought could be saved, and that encounter shows why he is on his way to the cross: to seek and save the lost, not to wait for the righteous to come to him.
The passages
He entered and was passing through Jericho. There was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, and couldn’t because of the crowd, because he was short. He ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him, and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” He hurried, came down, and received him joyfully. When they saw it, they all murmured, saying, “He has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. If I have wrongfully exacted anything of anyone, I restore four times as much.” Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Luke 19:1–10
Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” But he said, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”
Luke 18:26–27
Jesus answered them, “Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
Luke 5:31–32
Therefore produce fruits worthy of repentance, and don’t begin to say among yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father;’ for I tell you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones!
Luke 3:8
The saying is faithful and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.
1 Timothy 1:15
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts, yet so that man can’t find out the work that God has done from the beginning even to the end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
Go deeper
Does God's grace really stretch to someone everyone else has written off?
Zacchaeus was the man the whole town had decided was beyond the pale, rich off his own neighbors and working for Rome. Jesus stopped under his tree anyway and called him by name, and the crowd's muttering shows how hard that was to swallow.
He entered and was passing through Jericho. There was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, and couldn’t because of the crowd, because he was short. He ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him, and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” He hurried, came down, and received him joyfully. When they saw it, they all murmured, saying, “He has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. If I have wrongfully exacted anything of anyone, I restore four times as much.” Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Luke 19:1–10
When they saw it, they all murmured, saying, “He has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner.”
Luke 19:7
Jesus answered them, “Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
Luke 5:31–32
The saying is faithful and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.
1 Timothy 1:15
If God already knows everything about me, why would I still want to hide?
Zacchaeus wanted a look at Jesus from behind the leaves, and Jesus looked up and stopped. Luke never tells us what was said in that house, which suggests the presence of Jesus did the work. Sitting with someone who already knows the worst is the thing we spend our lives avoiding.
He was trying to see who Jesus was, and couldn’t because of the crowd, because he was short. He ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him, and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”
Luke 19:3–5
Yahweh, you have searched me, and you know me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, Yahweh, you know it altogether.
Psalms 139:1–4
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You said well, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
John 4:16–19
There is no creature that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.
Hebrews 4:13
What actually changed in Zacchaeus, and how would I know if it had changed in me?
Zacchaeus stands up in a house full of clutter and half his money goes to the poor and four times back to the people he cheated. It is the fruit John the Baptist demanded years before, and Jesus treats it as the evidence, not the price. The change shows up in where a person's money and loyalties end up.
Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. If I have wrongfully exacted anything of anyone, I restore four times as much.”
Luke 19:8
Therefore produce fruits worthy of repentance, and don’t begin to say among yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father;’ for I tell you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones!
Luke 3:8
Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham.
Luke 19:9
Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead in itself.
James 2:17
Why does listening to Jesus keep coming back to doing something about it?
The sermon kept returning to the word hear, Israel, the kind of hearing that ends in obedience and not just a good podcast on Sunday. Zacchaeus heard Jesus and then emptied his pockets, and the preachers around him kept separating what we say we believe from what our lives actually do.
Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God. Yahweh is one. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart;…
Deuteronomy 6:4–6
“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and don’t do the things which I say? Everyone who comes to me, and hears my words and does them, I will show you who he is like. He is like a man building a house, who dug and went deep and laid a foundation on the rock. When a flood arose, the stream broke against that house, and could not shake it, because it was founded on the rock. But he who hears and doesn’t do, is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream broke, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.”
Luke 6:46–49
But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror; for he sees himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of freedom and continues, not being a hearer who forgets but a doer of the work, this man will be blessed in what he does.
James 1:22–25
Those which were sown on the good ground are those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit, some thirty times, some sixty times, and some one hundred times.”
Mark 4:20