Luke 19:1-10

Sermon Notes

Luke 19:1-10

To Seek And To Save

Pastor Matt Pierson

“For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”
Luke 19:10

1. A Divine Appointment

“What we begin to see at this point in the story is that Zacchaeus’ seeking of Jesus and Jesus’ seeking of Zacchaeus were both sovereign works of God. The crossing of their lives at the sycamore was a work of divine providence. This meeting was ordained before the foundation of the world. The camel was about to go through the eye of a needle!”
R. Kent Hughes, Luke: That You May Know the Truth

“God does not make junk, and he does not junk what he made.”
Al Wolters, Creation Regained

“You can never take God by surprise. You can never anticipate Him. He always makes the first move. He is always there ‘in the beginning’. Before man existed, God acted. Before man stirs himself to seek God, God has sought man. In the Bible we do not see man groping after God; we see God reaching after man.”
John Stott, Basic Christianity

2. A Holy Restlessness

“When we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of God.”
Billy Graham

“We have hundreds of substitute gods-idols that promise us freedom but, in reality, demean and enslave. Worship sex and it will corrode your ability to love or be loved. Worship alcohol and it will ensnare you. Worship money and it will consume you. Worship your family and you (or they) will collapse under the burden of unfulfilled expectations. Worship any substitute god, and you will find that it cannot satisfy.”
Alistair Begg, Truth for Life

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Augustine

3. Fully Known, Fully Loved

“Human beings are inherently social and…we know who we are in relation to others and by being known by others…if one of the universal desires of the self is to be acknowledged and known by others, then being known by God as his children meets our deepest and lifelong need for recognition and gives us a secure identity.”
Brian S. Rosner, Known by God

“I feel like new sunglasses
Like a brand new pair of jeans
I feel like taking chances
I feel a lot like seventeen…
Like a heartbeat skip
Like an open page
Like a one-way trip on an aeroplane
It’s the way that I feel when I’m with you
Brand new”
“Brand New” by David Hodges, Abe Stokeless & Benjamin Rector

“What matters supremely is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it—the fact that He knows me. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is not a moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when His care falters.”
J.I. Packer, Knowing God

4. The Ultimate Mission of Jesus

“For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”
Luke 19:10

“Our Christian life began not with our decision to follow Christ but with God’s call to us to do so. He took the initiative in his grace while we were still in rebellion and sin. In that state we neither wanted to turn from sin to Christ, nor were we able to. But he came to us and called us to freedom.”
John Stott

“Jesus sought Zacchaeus, a man who was certainly among the lost. But Jesus did not leave him there. He saved him.”
Leon Morris, Luke

“Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.”
Isaiah 45:22

“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever! Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands. He satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul He fills with good things.”
Psalm 107:1-2, 9