Luke 19:5 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Luke 19:5

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What a summary! How much more we could have been told! What we would give for an eyewitness account of the shock and dismay on the face of Zacchaeus! Can you imagine it? He was there with this need and with this fascination in the Lord Jesus Christ, who he heard was spoken of as the Son of God, the expected Messiah. And as he looks down at him, the Lord Jesus Christ turns up his head and looks him straight in the eyes. A few words, and Zacchaeus comes down to entertain him. We use our imagination to picture the expressions and the surprise and the amazement. That look must have been absolutely startling. I believe that when the Lord Jesus Christ looked at Zacchaeus and fixed him with that stare and spoke to him, Zacchaeus was completely overwhelmed by the realization of his majesty and his holiness and his power. None of you will ever seek the Lord until you begin to stop and realize that it is God we are dealing with. It is Almighty God who created us; it is Almighty God who stood over all the generations of men; it is Almighty God who sees into the heart, who knows all about us. It is God the Father and the Saviour at his right hand, full of love and full of affection. It is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the triune God who we are dealing with, the great searcher of hearts. None will ever seek the Lord until they begin to respect him. In the case of Zacchaeus, the Lord just fixed his glance upon him, and Zacchaeus who had heard about his power and his miracles and his majesty just froze in that tree. That is the starting point of any conversion. You have got to begin to be impressed at this: that you are a very little person and a sinner in the sight of a holy God. You are a creature of time, here today and gone tomorrow. One day you must face him, he is the eternal, ever-living God. Zachaeus instantly responded. As far as he knew he had never met Christ face to face before in his life, and yet the Lord knew him. This was not just superficial knowledge – his name only – as if someone had told Christ. This was deep knowledge. Christ spoke in terms of a plan and a purpose known in advance. ‘I must abide at thy house’ – it is necessary for me to abide at your house. ‘I am operating according to a timetable, and I cannot deviate from it.’ He worked according to a plan, the plan given him by his heavenly Father. This was not some chance event; it was predestined from eternity. Zacchaeus was surrounded by the knowledge of the Lord, and there was nothing he could do to hide.

Application

‘Make haste.’ Why make haste? It may be this speaks to us. Has there been concern in your heart, in your mind, about your soul? Have you begun to think, ‘I need to know about God, I need to know God, I need to know what life is for, where its destination will lead, what it's about’? I can't believe it's just one great accident, the entire cosmos with all its complexity and design, and we human beings, so unique, so vastly different from the animals, with our minds and our faculties and our emotions and our memories. I can't believe any longer that we're here just for a time and then gone, and one day everything will explode, and everything that's ever happened in everybody's life will be completely and utterly pointless. I want to find out.’ You hear and you read, and Christian friends explain it to you, and you're moved and you want to find the Lord. Come quickly. Don't linger. Don't delay on this decision to come and to seek Christ and pray to him. If you delay, there will be so many forces at work upon you to dissuade you and to tear you away, and you may lose everything.

When we come to the one who knows all about us. That may make us feel uncomfortable, but our needs are so great that we could not get help from anyone else. To forgive us, the Lord must know all that we have done. He must know our shame and our deceit, our pride and our envy, our uncleanness, our violence perhaps. In order to settle another person’s debt, that person has got to be transparent about how great the debt is. But the Lord does not just ask us what we know of our owns sins; he has his own infallible records, and the books are open.

Oh friends, if I could just give some time tonight to try to instil in you a deep and profound reverence for Almighty God. He is the one, says the scripture, all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Nobody can seek the Lord until they realize he is the Lord. I've never heard of a true conversion as the result of somebody tripping into the presence of God, likely seeking some God who they couldn't respect and they didn't realize who he was. No, it's the first thing. And when the Lord Jesus Christ spoke and he said to him, make haste and come down, I believe that Zacchaeus was not only overwhelmed by his power and glory and majesty, but he was aware more than ever of his own shoddiness and cheapness and shallowness, his own unworthiness.

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Luke 19:5 Commentary and Bible Study

Explain meaning of Luke 19:5