#focr 68

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

There are two ways of looking at sin: One is the severe view: it makes no allowance for frailty—it will not hear of temptation, nor distinguish between circumstances. Men who judge in this way shut their eyes to all but two objects—a plain law, and a transgression of that law. There is no more to be said: let the law take its course. Now if this be the right view of sin, there is abundance of room left for admiring what is good and honorable and upright: there is positively no room provided for restoration. Happy if you have done well; but if ill, then nothing is before you but judgment and fiery indignation.

The other view is one of laxity and false liberalism. When such men speak, prepare yourself to hear liberal judgments and lenient ones: a great deal about human weakness, error in judgment, mistakes, an unfortunate constitution, on which the chief blame of sin is to rest—a good heart. All well if we wanted, in this mysterious struggle of a life, only consolation. But we want far beyond comfort—goodness; and to be merely made easy when we have done wrong will not help us to that!

Distinct from both of these was Christ's view of guilt. His standard of right was high—higher than ever man had placed it before. Not moral excellence, but heavenly, He demanded. "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." Read the Sermon on the Mount. It tells of a purity as of snow resting on an Alpine pinnacle, white in the blue holiness of heaven; and yet also, He the All-pure had tenderness for what was not pure. He who stood in Divine uprightness that never faltered, felt compassion for the ruined, and infinite gentleness for human fall. Broken, disappointed, doubting hearts, in dismay and bewilderment, never looked in vain to Him. Purity attracting evil: that was the wonder.

From the power of the grave.

From the power of sin.

From the curse of the law.

The Scripture has said, "No man comes to the Father but by Me."

The Scripture has said it, "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, He is none of His."

The Bible has said it, "We must be found in Him, not having our own righteousness which is of the law, but the righteousness which is of God by faith."

And none of these up to this moment had Zacchaeus the publican. A man of moral propriety, and a man of promising indications he may have been, but as yet outside of the field of conversion. We may, then, ask ourselves the question, how it is that this missing element was to be supplied. We answer, that his conversion went upon these two principles: that Christ sought him, and that Christ spake to him; and that those two things must be fulfilled in every man who is to be truly a believing child of Abraham—the Savior must come, and the Savior must speak to him.

Let the desire of all of you, in coming up to the house of God, be, like that of Zaccheus, to see Jesus. You may see Him, and should earnestly desire to see Him, by knowledge and faith, in the glories of His person, character, and redemption. If you obtain a sight of Him, and come to know who He is, in this way, you will be like Abraham, who "rejoiced," or "greatly desired," to see His day, and saw it, and was glad; and the words will then be applicable to you, in their best sense, "Blessed are your eyes, for they see."

Here is a man earnestly trying "to see Jesus," who is opposed and defeated by obstacles he had no hand in producing, and over which he had no control, (1) "The press," and (2) "Little of stature." He had no hand in producing either of these, and yet they defeated him. But, was that fair? Has Zacchaeus had a fair chance? Whether fair or not, he has had all the chance he will have, unless he makes another… When a man's conscious littleness compels him to "run" and "climb," he will master his obstacles and get a better knowledge of things than the men who think they can see all there is to be seen without climbing. In a world like this, where we are all "little" in so many places, no man will reach the highest success unless he feels his littleness and knows how to "climb." Learn from this narrative that all barriers give way before the man who has made up his mind to see Jesus Christ.

Mankind had lost its way utterly, its way from the home of God, from the fields of truth, from the path of holiness, from the fountains of joy; was wandering, blind and miserable, in forbidden ways; was stumbling on the dark mountains of error and sin. And the Son of man came to seek this erring and lost race, to lead it back again, to restore it to its heritage in wisdom, in righteousness, in God... For on what more fitting errand could the Savior be engaged than on that of saving another human soul from its sin and its shame, and lifting it up into the light and liberty of the truth?

W. Clarkson

Zacchaeus did not change jobs.

He was a tax collector before he met Christ, and he continued collecting taxes after he met Christ. His job was the same, but his destiny was different. He now used his job as an opportunity to give glory to God. You do not have to become a vocational minister to follow Jesus with you whole heart. The kingdom of God needs Christ-followers in the market place shining the light of the gospel.