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To Seek and to Save
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, mentone, California, USA
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2005-07-02 14:52Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kir-toseek.php
To seek and to save the lost—this was the mission of Jesus. It is also our own. We find our text in the story of Zacchaeus in Luke chapter 19. Perhaps you recall.
Zacchaeus was a fraudulant, cheating tax collector. He and Matthew may well have known each other, or even exchanged tips on technique. Zacchaeus, as most such, was dispised by the people. But when Jesus came to town, he longed to see and hear more. Being small of stature, and subject to a large crowd blocking the view, Zacchaeus actually climbed a tree to get it.
Almost certainly, it was not Zacchaeus’ intention to be seen and pointed out up there in the tree, but just to see and hear the words of the Savior. But Jesus had come “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). When He came to the tree, He stopped. The crowd flowing continuously along with Him, stopped too.
When Jesus looked up into the tree, others doubtless followed His gaze. Upon seeing Zacchaeus, hearts were filled with loathing and contempt and the corrupt joy some have when one despised is seen in an embarrassing situation. Were there hoots of laughter and catcalls directed at Zacchaeus as he perched there in the tree, object of the crowd’s attention and dislike?
But then, something wonderful. And shocking. Jesus announced that He would eat at Zacchaeus’ home. Surely in that moment, much of the ill-feeling that had been directed toward Zacchaeus was redirected.
What? This holy man would eat at the home of this tax collector? But in order for Jesus to seek and to save that which was lost, He must endure the wrath of those who think that they are found, yet have not themselves truly entered into the spirit of His kingdom. Jesus knew there would be a price to pay for His friendly appeal to Zacchaeus. But He did it anyway. He had come to seek and to save the lost.
Who Actually is the Seeker?
When we seek to copy Jesus, we find that we too have a price to pay; perhaps even in the church or among other religious people.
To seek one must be a seeker. Jesus was a Seeker. The religious language of our day says that a seeker is one who is looking for Jesus and open to Him, but who perhaps is put off by the trappings of “conventional” religion. But the language of the Bible says that it is the representative of Heaven’s kingdom who is the seeker.
Notice also that Zacchaeus was not the hardened, uninterested sort. He ran ahead of the crowd and climbed up into the tree to a purpose*mdash;to see and hear Jesus. He didn’t say, “This is a bad seating arrangement,” or, “The sound system here is too poor,” or “I would go to church today but I don’t like the people there.” And Jesus met him and respected him and to do the work of heaven for that soul He suffered the bad feeling in consequence directed at Him.
Causes of the Lost and Lost Causes
This is a generation that is lost. For every 100 people there are 1000 causes. Save the whales, save the chipmunks, save the spotted owl, save the snail darter, protest nuclear waste, protest nuclear war, protest fur coats, prevent global warming, declare your city a nuclear-free zone, protest against the exploitation of circus animals. These are just the beginning. Along with the more absurd are many worthy and worthwhile causes too. I do not disagree with or agree with every cause just listed. Yet, the multiplicity of causes, most of them screaming for first place in our attention, testify not only to the idea that there may be many, many, many things wrong in our world, but that humankind has not even begun to reach a consensus about which things are wrong and which things are right and which are the most grievous where we must have a solution right now. Humankind has not reached any clarity about magnitude.
This summer promises a political fight such as we have rarely before seen to fill the slot or slots that open up for Supreme Court Justices here in the United States. An incredible amount of energy will be directed to determining who fills those important slots; but what if that energy were directed to cooperation with God in order to make ourselves better? Why not invite God to fashion our own character in the fashion of His own character? Can we spend our energies in such a way to more profit?
To seek and to save the lost is going to cost us something. You see, we tend to want enough religion to be spiritual but not enough to be made whole. To be made whole will mean giving up everything that is not in God’s order. It means that every plant that our heavenly Father has not planted (Matthew 15:13), not just in doctrine in general, but in my life and in yours in the specific, must be rooted up. Not many are clear about that. And there are so many snake-oil religionists out there in contemporary garb, so that if you want your religion as a self-congratulation and self-deception, as a testimony that that you supposedly are spiritual, you can find it on any street corner, and keep your idols too. The churches have out-done Baskin and Robbins. Thirty-one flavors? Try 1100. If you aren’t into denominations, there are always networks, or independent churches, or parachurch movements like Promise-Keepers, or, any number of mega-churches.
Truth is sold on a cheap market. Or, more accurately, truth is mixed with error, packaged in gloss and platitude, and then presented with attitude. And they are buying the CDs.
Salvation or Painted Lies
To seek and to save the lost means to embrace Matthew 1:21: Jesus’ mission was to “save His people from their sins.” So when we go seeking, we must be armed with “the word of the truth of the gospel” (Colossians 1:50). The gospel that does not save from sin is not any good news, but only a painted lie.
We are called as Christians in these last days to seek and to save the lost. Our message is, Come to Jesus and be healed, come to Jesus and be made whole, come to Jesus and receive salvation from sin, come to Jesus and be transformed.
I so appreciate these three lines found in Ellen White’s The Desire o]f Ages, p. 555 where she is commenting on Jesus and Zaccaeus:
No repentance is genuine that does not work reformation. The righteousness of Christ is not a cloak to cover unconfessed and unforsaken sin; it is a principle of life that transforms the character and controls the conduct. Holiness is wholeness for God; it is the entire surrender of heart and life to the indwelling of the principles of heaven.
If that is false religion, I want more of it. Cultic? How about biblical.
We are called to give this very message. It is an unpopular one, for it requires the removal of sin, fully, before our Lord’s return, before His pronouncement (so generally ignored in all popular lines of “faith,”), that those who are filthy have at last passed by the opportunity to change, and those who are righteous have accepted it (Revelation 22:11, 12).
Too Slow to Adopt Fads? Then Legalistic
Yes, God has charged us with living and giving the Third Angel’s Message of Revelation 14 precisely so that sin will not have dominion over us, but so that we can be made whole. This is our hardness. This is our legalism. The removal of all sin is our legalism. The becoming as like Christ as possible, is our legalism.
When we come presenting the message of the gospel, urging “behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2), and we share our understanding of the judgment presently passing in the heavenly sanctuary above, we are attacked, as often as not by fellow believers. They ascribe to us the dark motive of legalism and the unforgivable crime of being too speedy to uphold doctrine and too slow with the intake and uptake of the currently popular trends. We have been too slow to jettison the prophetic insights and replace them with the accepted wave of current fads baptized by popular Christendom.
We are accused, for our attempt to be faithful, with hardness and narrowness, and labeled as troublers of the more enlightened workers. But what is that to us? For here is found our imperative in John 3:17:
For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved (John 3:17).
Our purpose is the salvation of others, not their condemnation. We go about our Father’s work, we teach the good news of the gospel of Christ that transforms even as we uphold the biblical teaching of the judgment, the biblical teaching of transformation.
Conclusion
Shall we be deterred? Shall we suddenly bend and trade the truth of God for the fads of men? Sure; we can sit around the table and emphasize truths we hold in common with other Christian groups. Prayer, and missions, and baptism, and communion, belief in the resurrection, unity and diversity, and quality of life. But we live in an hour for present truth. For us, as for Jesus, doing the work of God is going to mean presenting an unpopular message. It was unpopular for Jesus to treat Zacchaeus well. It is unpopular for us to treat present truth seriously.
True Christianity will cost us something. It will exact its price. True Adventism will cost us something. It will exact its price.
How is it with your own soul? Let me ask you, would you be willing, for the cause of Christ, to climb up in a tree to see Jesus, and be laughed at? Would you be willing to climb up into a tree and present the message of Revelation 14 undiluted, and be laughed at? Would you be willing to format your life by God’s truth, and be laughed at?
It all depends. Have we come to seek and to save the lost? Or are we but Christian in part? May God help us to be faithful in an hour of dilution, popularity, and that which looks like seeker-sensitivity, but which actually is unwillingness to present the message that has been delivered unto us, the message of Christ as complete Savior, the message that stands between spiritual life and death. GCO
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