Jesus: The Seeking Savior, Part 1
Luke 15
Some of you may know, most of you don't, but most of the time in my life I'm working on a special book project other than the commentaries. As you know, I'm always involved in writing these commentaries on the New Testament. People ask me why I always teach the New Testament and the answer is because I really feel in my heart that God wants me to teach the whole New Testament, get it all down on tape and then write commentaries on all of it. And some years ago I signed a contract with Moody Press to do that and I estimate that that's about thirty‑five volumes. And if I work fast, I'll finish when I'm 74. So, I have to keep doing that and I have to stay in the New Testament to keep working with that material.
But from time to time in my studies, there are also issues that come up and I really desire to write on those issues because I think they're important. For the last three years I've been working on putting together material for a book on the matter of the gospel according to Jesus. Years ago a Calvinist said to me one time, "Sometimes I don't think we present the gospel well enough for the non‑elect to reject it." And that's quite an interesting statement. In other words, there seems to be some confusion about what the heart of the gospel is. What saving faith is, and so forth. So I have really spent a lot of my time and a lot of my teaching time and preaching time, as you know, dealing with the true gospel and the matter of genuine saving faith. And we find that emphasis a lot in the last two or three years because it's been on my mind as I've been trying to put this book together.
But there's one section of Scripture, one theme of the gospel record that I have not dealt with that I must deal with and that is the account of the story of Zacchaeus and related accounts in Luke. And so I've decided that right now is a good time to do that since I have to finish this material to get all of it in the book and everything. And I always preach what I'm preparing for the book because if I get that material in me it's going to come out anyway so I might as well preach it. And so I've been doing a lot of study on Zacchaeus and the text around the story of Zacchaeus, the familiar text of Luke 19:10. And so this Sunday morning and next Sunday morning I want us to look together at Luke 19.
Let's open our Bibles then and we'll examine at least verse 10 for today. And then next time we'll look at the story that illustrates that verse, the story of that little man named Zacchaeus who is a very important piece within the framework of the gospel record in relating the Lord's evangelistic approach and message.
In Luke 19 verses 1 to 9 is the story of Zacchaeus. The story is concluded in verse 9 and then the point of the story is given in verse 10, or the message. The principle which is illustrated in the story of Zacchaeus is this, verse 10, "For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." That sums up the reason why Luke recorded under the Holy Spirit's inspiration the story of Zacchaeus. It is a story of the Lord seeking and saving a lost man. And, frankly, my...it's my own opinion, I guess, that there is no more wonderful, no more glorious, no more important truth in the Bible than this one in verse 10. That the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost is the single most important truth from the human viewpoint ever given in Scripture. That God came in human form to seek and save sinners is the heart of the Christian message and the heart of the hope of every believer. It sums up the whole purpose for the incarnation. God is a seeking God and Christ who reveals God is a seeking Savior who seeks lost men and women.
That's basic to the Christian faith from the fall of man in the garden. You remember that prior to the Fall, God walked and talked with man in the cool of the day and immediately after their sin it says in Genesis 3:8 and 9 that God came into the garden to talk with man and man and woman were hidden and God said, "Where are you?" And from that point to this and right on till Jesus comes, God will always be seeking lost men and women and asking "Where are you?"
In one of the most beautiful Old Testament texts, the prophet Ezekiel quoting God in chapter 34 verse 16 says, "I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick." It is the nature of God that He is a seeker of lost men and women. One familiar poet identifies God as the "Hound of Heaven," a bloodhound on the trail of lost souls. God incarnate then, Jesus Christ, will also be a seeker of lost men and women. Jesus Christ, you'll remember, came to reveal God. Jesus said, "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father." Not in physical essence but in character, in nature, in essential being, in attributes. And if God is a God who seeks lost men and women, then Christ is a Savior who seeks lost men and women for Christ reveals God, Christ is God.
So, He says the Son of Man, verse 10, that's the Lord's favorite name for Himself, it emphasizes His humanity, Son of God obviously emphasizes His deity, Son of Man emphasizes His humanness, His condescension, His humiliation, His coming to be the sacrifice in behalf of man. For the Son of Man, God in human flesh, has come...and that refers to His birth, His incarnation, His entry into the world...to seek. This is what we call an infinitive of purpose in the Greek with the purpose of pursuing. The word means to pursue, to look for, to watch for, to strive for, to search after, to seek. So He says God has become incarnate, born into this world for the purpose of pursuing. And then comes another infinitive of purpose, "and to save." That familiar term has become a byword in the Christian faith, saved, salvation. We understand what that means. But the root Greek word means to rescue, or to deliver from danger or to preserve safe from harm. And the purpose then of the incarnation was to pursue and to deliver from harm, the Greek says the having been lost one, the one who is lost. The term "having been lost" is a verb form. It can also mean having been ruined, having been devastated, having been destroyed.
So, Jesus Christ came into the world with the purpose of pursuing after lost, devastated, ruined destroyed men and women in order to deliver them from danger, to rescue them from harm. Harm being the harm of sin, death and hell. Sin has devastated all men and women. Sin has left them marred and ruined and lost to their created purpose and lost to fellowship with God and lost to hope now and forever and lost to heaven and lost to glory and cut off from promise. They are alienated from the life of God. They are strangers to God. They are hopelessly doomed and damned and they stand in imminent danger of eternal hell. And so the purpose of Christ coming into the world was not to be an example, the purpose of Christ coming into the world was not to be a teacher, He did those things but the purpose for which He came was to rescue men and women from sin and death and hell and despair and hoplessness and to preserve them safe and unharmed forever and ever in His presence and in His glory.
In fact, in Matthew 1:21, the message was given "You shall call His name Jesus for He shall...what?...save His people from their sins." His very name is the name of a Savior. He came to save. He came to call sinners to repentance. In fact, the Apostle Paul writing to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:15 says it is a trustworthy statement and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That's the heart of the gospel.
Now we know that's the heart of the gospel. But it's my personal conviction that Luke more than any other Bible writer seems bent on emphasizing that Jesus came to save the lost. It is a continual theme with him. It is at the heart of everything Luke has in mind in his gospel. And by the way, you might want to know Luke is the longest of the four gospels. It has fewer chapters than Matthew but more words. And the thrust of Matthew is to present Christ as King, but the thrust of Luke is to present Christ as the Son of Man who saves lost sinners. At the heart of what Luke is wanting us to understand is that Christ is a seeking Savior who seeks to redeem the lost. And so, when Luke 19:10, we have in a sense the summation of what Luke really wants to say. The Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost.
Nowhere is this more clear than in chapter 15 and for the rest of our morning, I want you to turn back to chapter 15 and there and in related scriptures we will illustrate chapter 19 verse 10. But here we have a magnificent set of parables to illustrate the Lord's yearning love for lost people.
Now I want you to understand the setting, and it is simply understood by noting verses 1 and 2. Luke 15:1, "Now all the tax gatherers and the sinners were coming near to Him to listen to Him." And it says in verse 2, almost without explanation this is apparent to us, this is a typical reaction, "And both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them."
Now notice back in verse 1, it says that all the tax gatherers and sinners were coming near to Him...all of them, not some of them, not a few of them, but all of them. Not only that, "they were coming near to Him" is an imperfect tense verb which means continual action, continually as a matter of common occurrence and habit, tax gatherers and sinners were collecting around Jesus. They are the riffraff of society. Sinners is a general category for people who are bad, they had bad reputations. They were a criminal element. They might be robbers and murderers, they might be harlots and prostitutes, they might be incestuous, there might be all kinds of sins that they were engaged in. But the bottom line on sinners is they were people who made no effort at all to live by the standard of Jewish law. For all intents and purposes, they had no regard for the ceremony, the ritual, the tradition or even the revelation that constituted defined Judaism. They were the bad people.
The tax gatherers, they were at the bottom of the list categorically among the bad people. Tax collectors were really seen as traitors.
The Romans, you remember, had dominated the world of the Jews. They had taken control as an occupying conqueror of the land of Palestine. And they had established in order to fund the Pax Romana and to fund that occupation, they had put into place a tax system. In order to exact those taxes and get them from the people, they sold tax franchises to Jews who were willing to become tax collectors among their own people. The Jews, you must understand, hated the Roman occupation. Their hatred is most volatile in group known as the Zealots. There were even some called the Sacari(?) who used swords and knives and went around as terrorists stabbing and killing Roman soldiers. The Jews despised that occupation and for a Jew to buy a tax franchise and then become employed by Rome to exact taxes from his own people was to be the ultimate traitor.
And, of course, the Roman government, the Roman custom system would in each district determine what taxes needed to be collected. And as long as the one who purchased the franchise, probably the highest bidder from Rome, paid Rome what Rome wanted, anything else he got he could keep. There would be a regional tax commissioner and under him some other tax collectors and under them some other tax collectors, all the way down to what we know in Jewish tradition as the little mokesh(?). The word mokesh referring to the actual collector himself who grabbed a guy by the tunic and got his money. And Matthew was one of those.
And so, here was this man who would buy a franchise and then he would hire underlings among his people who would collect the taxes. There were all kinds of taxes. There was a personal income tax, there was a poll tax just for existing to be paid by men fourteen to sixty‑five and women twelve to sixty‑five in those age groups. There was the tax on land that consisted of one tenth of all the grain grown and one fifth of the wine and oil that could be paid in kind or commuted into money. There was a tax on income, there was a tax on every conceivable kind of duty. There was a tax on your cart. A tax on each wheel on your cart and a tax on the number of animals pulling your cart. The tax on articles bought and articles sold, import tax, export tax. A tax collector could sit at a custom seat on the road somewhere, stop everybody, make them unload their burden and then begin to tax them somewhat discriminately or indiscriminately at his own behest. Robbers and murderers were lumped together with tax collectors. There was tremendous room not only to be traitor but to be an extortionist. Rome wasn't really looking closely at everybody and men could become filthy rich, in the true sense of the word, by exacting taxes that were exorbitant from people. Tax collectors were thereby barred from the synagogue. They could not enter into the festivals and feast days of the land of the people.
So therefore, when a person became a tax collector, in every sense they became an outcast. They were cut off from the life of their people socially, they were cut off from the life of their people religiously. And they were known in general as a very bad group of people. In fact, one Roman writer tells us surprisingly that he once saw a monument built to an honest tax collector. The very fact that there was such a man deserved a monument in the eyes of some people.
So, there was dishonesty. There was graft. There was extortion. There was robbery, to say nothing of being a traitor. They were the outcasts of the people, the sinners and the tax collectors.
To associate with those kinds of people was contaminating, to eat with them was absolutely unthinkable. You have to understand in the Middle East that to have a meal with someone was to treat them as an honored guest or an honored friend. And to have dinner or lunch or whatever with a tax collector and a sinner would be, in effect, to honor the absolutely dishonorable. And so the Pharisees and the scribes in their typical sanctimonious self‑righteousness said this man receives sinners and eats with them. And that's exactly why He came, to save those who were lost. He came for the sake of sinners.
Apparently these tax collectors and sinners felt Jesus accepted their presence. Obviously He did not accept their sin. Obviously He spoke boldly against their sin but they sensed in Him that seeking heart which marks the nature of God and marked the nature of Christ who sought sinners for the purpose not of condoning their sin but of saving them out of that sin. And no one knew their sinfulness better than tax gatherers and quote/unquote sinners.
In fact, this is such a great concern with Luke that by chapter 19 he has already mentioned tax collectors six times. And every time he mentions them, he mentions them in a favorable way. They're the kind of outcasts that Jesus found open to the message of the gospel.
Go back for a moment to chapter 5 of Luke and a very famous tax collector that I mentioned a moment ago by the name of Levi or Matthew. In verse 27 of Luke 5, Jesus noted a tax gatherer named Levi sitting in the tax office and said to him, "Follow Me." And here the Lord calls an outcast tax collector into His own personal service as one of the disciples. And he left everything behind, rose up and began to follow Him. And there was such a transformation in his life that he gave a big reception in verse 29 for the Lord in his house. And he brought his friends. And the only friends he had were tax collectors and sinners. And so the house was filled with a whole lot of outcasts. And the Pharisees and the scribes again predictably began grumbling and His disciples saying, "Why do you eat and drink with the tax gatherers and sinners?" And Jesus uses this occasion to teach the very basic principle of His ministry. "It is not those‑‑verse 31‑‑who are well, who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call righteous men but sinners to repentance."
In other words, I can't do anything with people who don't know they're sick. I can't do anything with people who don't know they're sinners. And as long as you think you're well, I cannot help you. And as long as you think you're righteous, I cannot help you. But those who are sick and know it and those who are sinful and acknowledge it, I have come to assist them, to offer them salvation. Jesus was particularly gracious in choosing this outcast Matthew to be a part of His own disciples and then using that opportunity of Matthew's joy in calling together all of his friends to articulate to the leaders of Israel His heart for those who were lost.
Luke again in chapter 7 verse 29 says, "And when all the people and the tax gatherers heard this, they acknowledged God's justice, having been baptized with the baptism of John." And again we see tax collectors again as the audience who are so responsive to the truth that our Lord brings to bear about salvation.
Chapter 18, do you remember this wonderful account? Verse 10, the parable our Lord taught them, a parable about trusting in self‑righteousness. "Two men went to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee, the other a tax gatherer. The Pharisee stood, was praying thus to himself, God, I thank Thee that I am not like other people, swindlers, unjust, adulterers," that's the kind of people that would be categorized as sinners, "or even like this‑‑ and here's the worst‑‑tax gatherer. I fast twice a week, I pay tithes of all that I get." In other words, he's telling God how good he is and he's telling God how thankful he is that he doesn't need God. "But the tax gatherer standing some distance away was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breasts saying, God, be merciful to me the sinner," as if he's the only one. "I tell you, Jesus said, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted." And so the Lord even in a parable uses another tax collector as an illustration of one who embraces true salvation because he embraces the reality of his sinfulness and the need for the mercy of God.
So, Jesus continually ministered to the outcast tax collectors and sinners. Now go back to chapter 15. On this occasion they were gathered around Him as they often did to listen to what He had to say. They were obviously aware of their sins socially and they identified with the seeking heart of Christ. In fact, Luke says in chapter 7 verse 34 that the common sort of epithet thrown at Jesus was that He was a friend of tax gatherers and sinners. He was a friend of tax gatherers and sinners.
See, all of this fits together in Luke's mind that He came to seek and save the lost. And while all men are lost, not all men knew that or not all men were willing to acknowledge that. But when they were, He became the friend, the seeking Savior with the heart for the lost. On the other side, verse 2, the Pharisees and the scribes grumbling saying, "This man receives sinners and eat with them." And they set themselves in contrast. They had no heart for the outcast, no heart for the sinner, no heart for the lost at all. They are in stark contrast to the character of Christ, stark contrast to the heart of God.
Now this is the audience. The Pharisees and the scribes on the one hand grumbling that He even eats with these sinners and tax gatherers. And the tax gatherers and sinners on the other hand. And He teaches them three parables...very simple, very straightforward, not to be misunderstood.
Parable number one, and they all have the same basic point. Number one, verse 3. "He told them this parable saying, What man among you if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them does not leave the ninety‑nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing. And when he comes home he calls together his friends and his neighbors saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost."
The idea of verse 4 is the phrase "what man among you if.." and so forth, the idea is that no one would do any other than this. You all know you would do this. If you were a shepherd and you had a hundred sheep but you lost one of them, you would leave the ninety and nine that were safe in the fold and you would go out to find that one lost sheep. Every shepherd would do that. It was not only a matter of duty, it was a matter of affection. Over a period of time, those sheep would be known to the shepherd, known by name. As each night he examined them when they came back into the fold he would come to know each and every one. And when one was lost, the shepherd would go to find that one.
And then in verse 5, after having found it, he lays it on his shoulders. And the shepherd would take the belly of the sheep and pull it against his neck, pull the forelegs in and tie them up in a little knot and off he would go carrying his sheep back to the fold. And it says in verse 6, "When he came home, he called together his friends and neighbors in order that they might have a celebration saying to them, Rejoice with me for I have found my sheep which was lost."
The parable only has one basic point, the joy of the shepherd who sought and found the lost sheep. That's as patently obvious as it can be. His friends are called into the picture in order that you and I might understand the tremendous breadth of joy and depth of emotion the shepherd is feeling. He can't celebrate alone. It's too thrilling, it's too wonderful. It's not something he can quietly say in his heart, "Isn't that nice, isn't that wonderful that that's happened." He has to call together a large group of people for a great celebration because his joy is so profound.
And so, the sum of it all comes in verse 7. Here's the application. "I tell you that in the same way there will be joy," and I think it's best not to say "more joy," it's best to translate it without the word "more" which was added, and if you're going to add a word, add the word "rather" at the end of the phrase, "I tell you that in the same way, there will be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents rather than over ninety‑ nine righteous persons who need no repentance."
In other words, there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents to the extent that God calls for a celebration. Now what does this tell us? This tells us that God is that seeking shepherd whose desire to find that sheep is fulfilled in the finding but the joy is so great that he can't contain it himself and it must be shared. And it becomes the joy of heaven. What a tremendous truth. The emphasis again is on the seeking heart of God who seeks until He finds that one that is lost and then whose rejoicing cannot even be contained until it is spread throughout the angels of heaven. What a tremendous thought.
It's not that God is up there in heaven working out the salvific transaction, if you want to put it in technical terms, and sort of writing down, "Well, there's another conversion, that's nice. And there's another conversion." It is the idea that God in the deepest part of His nature so longs for the soul of a lost man and a lost woman that He pursues that to the degree that having found that person the celebration, heaven itself, is barely big enough, we might say, to contain.
The seeking heart of God, that's the point. God goes after the sinners. God is not like Pharisees and scribes. He doesn't grumble about sinners. He doesn't despise sinners. He loves sinners. He doesn't seek to keep them away, He seeks to bring them in.
And then second parable starts in verse 8, the lost coin. The first parable, the lost sheep, the second is the lost coin. It's the same emphasis. "Or what woman," this is just an obvious thing, something that's axiomatic, "what woman, if she has ten silver coins," and that would be one day's wage, about equal in value to the Roman denarius. "If she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, doesn't light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?" I mean, the obvious idea of that question is no woman, I mean, every woman who lost a full day's wage somewhere would do all of that. Normally floors were made of dirt and that coin could easily find its way under some surface dirt. And she would be sweeping and moving that dust and dirt around until she found that coin. And it was such a wonderful thing to find it, it was so valuable, notice verse 9, when she has found it, she doesn't quietly stick it back in her purse, she calls together her friends and neighbors saying, "Rejoice with me for I have found the joy which I had lost."
In other words, she can't contain the celebration in her own heart, she has to pull her friends in because the joy is so unbounded. That's the same idea as the first one. The shepherd found the sheep because he sought the sheep and rejoiced with all who would rejoice with him. The woman found the coin because she sought the coin and rejoiced with all who would rejoice with her.
The application again comes in verse 10, "In the same way, I tell you," now follow this, "there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." Why? Because that touches most deeply the heart of God who seeks to save those who are lost.
Now what does it mean "joy in the presence of the angels of God?" It doesn't actually say "joy among the angels," it doesn't say that it's the "joy of the angels," it says there's joy in the presence of the angels of God. Whose joy is it? Well, it's my conviction that it's the joy of the triune God who exists in the presence of the holy angels. It's the joy of God, it's the joy of the seeking God who dwells in the presence of angels. And, of course, the angels share in the celebration. The emphasis in both of these parables is the joy of God, the joy of God shared by all who are in His presence, all who know His heart and rejoice with Him. But it's the joy of God over the salvation of a soul.
Beloved, you must understand this, that God does not deal with the salvation of a soul with the kind of indifference that we usually deal with it. It is not a matter of divine transaction and accounting and little more. It is not God just keeping books on who's in and who's out. It is God weeping over the lost and it is God exalting over the found. You and I are capable as human beings of knowing the wide‑range of emotion because we are created in the image of a God whose pain is profoundly deep over men's lostness and whose joy is infinitely high when they are redeemed.
In Isaiah 6