My Favorite Story, July 12th, 2026

Good morning. If you think I've done this before, uh, hey, good morning to fellowship. Good morning to those in the chapel. Good morning to those joining us online. If we haven't met yet, or my face doesn't look familiar. I am Matt Morgan. I get to serve as our campus pastor at the Maumelle campus ever since we launched that back in 2022. Uh, but before that, um, I was here on the West Little Rock campus, got to serve, uh, for many years as the preteen pastor and then the kids pastor. And so, uh, it is a blessing and kind of a surprise that they invited me back, um, uh, to be honest, but it is good to see so many familiar faces, but also so many new faces. It really is a blessing to be here. Uh, I got a picture of my family. I want to introduce you to them. They were here at first service. Uh, this is my wife, Dana, my daughters, Maggie and Macy. Uh, when we came to fellowship back in 2011, uh, my oldest daughter, Maggie was just four months old. And then a couple of years later, our daughter Macy was born here. And so this really the only church they've ever known and they love it here. But for my wife and I, we can say without reservation, uh, we love fellowship and we really are blessed to get to be a part of what God's doing in and through this church. So thank you church for letting us be a part of it. Thanks for letting me be here. Uh, if you have your Bible or the Bible app, I encourage you to go to Luke chapter 19, Luke chapter 19 is where we're going to be this morning. Um, and I'm excited to kind of share my favorite story, the story of Jesus

and a man named Zacchaeus. Now, if you're familiar with this story and you're looking at me, you understand why I chose this, right? If you don't know what this story is about, maybe you didn't grow up in church. You're going to find out in a minute because we're going to help you. Because those of you that grew up in church, your first recollection of Zacchaeus was probably not the Bible story, but a song, right? You remember this song? Uh, so sing it with me. If you know it, Zacchaeus was a wee little man. So wee little man was he? Yeah. So Zacchaeus is a short guy. And as a vertically challenged pastor, I identify with Zacchaeus, right? I, I chose this story because short guys got to stick together. I'm never more aware of my shortness than when I'm around Mark Henry. You guys know Mark Henry? Yeah. Uh, Mark Henry is a six foot, eight foot. I don't know how tall he is. Uh, but Mark loves to put his arm around me and I hate it because when he puts his arm around me, my head smells like his deodorant. Uh, I come up to about right here with him. And so, uh, I, I try to remind him often what Psalm 115 says. Verse 13 says that God will bless all those who fear the Lord, both the small and the great. It mentions both, but just to be clear, it mentions the small first. Okay. Um, no, I, listen, this is a fun story. As a kid's pastor for many years, the story of Zacchaeus was just a

fun one to tell the kids. And it is something that, you know, is memorable because of the shortness of Zacchaeus and the story that we're going to read, but really the reason I chose this story, the reason I love this story is for just 10 verses, this is one of the most beautiful and clear pictures of who Jesus is, of why he came and of what his grace has the power to do in us that we get in all of scripture. And so I'm excited to kind of share it this morning. And so Luke chapter 19, I want to encourage you to read it with me. We're going to read verse one through 10. Here's what the word says. It says, he being Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through and behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd, he could not because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down for I must stay at your house today. And so he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled. He has gone in to be the guest of a man who's a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold. And Jesus said to him today, salvation has come to this house since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." What a beautiful and powerful story. We're probably familiar with the story,

certainly familiar with verse 10, but as we read it in context, it really has three movements, and each movement kind of teaches us something important. So I wanna break those movements down. So the first movement of this story, the first act, if you will, is when we're introduced to Zacchaeus. I'm labeling that a searching sinner. The first act is all about a searching sinner. Luke is very detailed, and he gives us a couple of things to know about Zacchaeus. First, he says he was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. Now, to most of us, that sounds like a pretty impressive resume, doesn't it? Like he's a successful businessman, he is financially comfortable, that's not a bad life at all. But this is actually a shocking introduction, because to be a tax collector, you weren't just unpopular, you were a traitor. You see, what tax collectors did was they collected taxes for Rome, for the conquering, oppressive government of Rome. They put these burdensome taxes on their fellow Jewish people, and so people like Zacchaeus were the ones to go and take that money.

And not only that, but tax collectors worked on commission, meaning they would collect the required tax for Rome, but anything that they could squeeze out of the people above and beyond that tax, they got to keep themselves. It was extortion, it was betraying your own people for personal gain, it was a vile practice. And Luke says Zacchaeus wasn't just a tax collector, he was the chief tax collector. He was the head of this operation. So when it says that he was rich, that's not a compliment, that's an indictment. See, the very thing that defines him was the thing that made him despised by other people. To be rich meant he was exorbitantly taxing his own people for his personal gain. So I don't know if Zacchaeus felt some level of guilt, he probably should. I don't know if there was some sense of, for everything he had accumulated and all the wealth, he still felt empty, but something was going on, because verse three tells us that he was seeking to see who Jesus was. Something was missing. Something was restless inside of this man. So when word came that Jesus of Nazareth

was gonna be passing through, Zacchaeus thought, I've got to put my eyes on this people. I got to put my eyes on the man that everyone's talking about. The miracles and the teachings have been spread about. Zacchaeus wants to see him, but the problem is everyone else had the same idea. The people wanted to see Jesus, and so they formed these large crowds along the path, and Zacchaeus is too short to see him. But you know, most short guys were pretty smart guys. And so Zacchaeus runs on ahead, and what does he do? He climbs up into a sycamore tree, and he waits for Jesus to pass by. Now, we're gonna get to that part of the story in just a moment. We're gonna get to Jesus, because he's the hero. He's the point of this whole story. But I wanna pause for a moment, and let's just consider the restlessness that we see in Zacchaeus. Here's a man who has climbed every ladder the world has given him, and he still finds himself looking for something more. Luke makes this very distinctive point to tell us he's rich, he's powerful. Even if he came to that power by evil and wicked means, he still has influence. And yet, like a child, he's climbing up in a tree just to get a glimpse of another man coming that way.

I think the tension here is the point. I think Luke wants us to feel the tension, because everything that Zacchaeus already has, it's not enough to quiet the restlessness of his heart. Everything he's accumulated, something is still missing. Something needs to satisfy his soul, and so Zacchaeus is looking, he's searching. He knows that there's something else, or maybe someone else who can satisfy. See, I bring that up because the restlessness that we see Zacchaeus experiencing, it's something that every human being experiences. Every one of us feel a dissatisfaction at some point with what the world has to offer us, why? Because it's not created to fill the hole and the need in our hearts that only Christ can fill. Here's the point that I see in this first movement. It's that the restlessness of the human heart, because we all have it, it's meant to reveal a need that only Jesus can meet. You see, the common experience of restlessness is based on a common need. For every single one of us, our sin has separated us from God, our creator. And without the relationship that we were created to have with him as a designer and creator, we will never experience real and true satisfaction. or rest. So the restlessness that we all feel, it's a reminder of our need for Jesus. I don't have time to really fully unpack this, but John 1.1 is so important for us when we think about this. You may be familiar with that passage where John

opens his gospel with a very familiar account from Genesis 1.1, but he changes it up a little bit. He says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And you may know that he's specifically talking there about Jesus. He is the living Word. The actual Greek word there is the word logos. The word logos has a definition of purpose, or reason, or meaning. It's where we get our word logic. The Greek philosophers would use that word to describe the thing that gives order and coherence to the whole universe. It was the answer to the question, what makes everything hold together? It's what's necessary for life. It's what is meant to make sense of everything and give us a peace. And what does the Bible say? The Bible says it's Jesus. He is the logos. So in order for our hearts to truly find rest, to truly be satisfied, it is not going to be found any other place than in him. The fourth century theologian Augustine famously prayed, you have made us for yourself, O Lord. And our hearts are restless until they find rest in you. See, we got to understand the restlessness of our hearts, it's not an accident. It's not a flaw in the human experience. It is part of God's design, especially since the fall, that is meant to point us and lead us back to Jesus as the only one who satisfies. Ecclesiastes says that God has set eternity in the human heart. What he's saying is the restlessness that we feel, it's this built-in reminder that we're not meant to be self-satisfied. We're not meant to be self-sufficient. So when we feel restlessness, we shouldn't ignore it. We shouldn't take it as a sign that we try harder and press on more. It should be a siren going off inside of us, telling us that we were made for a relationship with our creator, and the only way back is through Jesus. Listen, if you're here this morning and for one reason or another you've never put faith in Jesus, you never trusted him as Lord, I just need to talk to you for a moment because I know that you're experiencing restlessness. I've been there. And I need you to know that that restlessness is not because you need another job. That restlessness is not because you need another relationship. That restlessness is not because you just need a better version of yourself. That restlessness you feel is your soul longing to be

reconnected to its creator, and the only way is through Jesus. Listen, if you're a believer in the room, you're probably going, what about me? I struggle with restlessness. You bet we do. Even as believers, we still often struggle with restlessness. It's not because we need Jesus to save us again. No, his work is a once-for-all work. It is sufficient to forgive and reconcile and secure us in Christ, but the problem is we drift away from that truth. The world just starts bombarding us with worries. Worries for today, worries for tomorrow, and before too long, we start to live as if our peace, our satisfaction, really depends on us holding everything together. I was reminded of this very vividly a couple of weeks ago as I was riding around in the backseat of the car while my 76-year-old father was driving. Never was I more terrified. As I sat in the backseat, I wanted so badly for my hands to be on the steering wheel. I wanted to be in control of how fast we were going. I wanted to be in control of looking out for other cars that were coming our way. I wanted to be in control of when and where we turned. It felt unsafe, honestly, to put my trust in him, so I wanted to be in control, and I thought, isn't that exactly what we do with God? Man, he has secured our future through Christ. He has promised that he will never leave us. He's assured us in Romans that nothing can separate us from his love, and yet, when we start getting anxious and worried, we sit in the backseat of God's providence, and we're just trying to grab the steering wheel. That's why we feel, as believers, anxious and restless. It's because we're trying to hold on to peace that keeps slipping through our hands, instead of trusting the one who holds all things in his hands. When restlessness shows up, I just need you to trust me. you to know, believer, it's often a sign that we have drifted from trusting in Christ and started trusting in ourselves. Instead of letting those worries just drive you further and further into self-reliance, realize that the restlessness you feel

is meant to drive you back to Christ, to find your hope, to find your peace, to find your assurance and satisfaction in Him and in Him alone. The answer isn't to grip tighter, it's to trust deeper. And this is one of the reasons why God gives us spiritual disciplines. We talk about this a lot here, right, that that is our grace-driven effort to move towards Him through prayer and reading the Bible and time in the Word and time in a fellowship with other believers. Those disciplines, they're not ways to earn God's favor. They're not ways to get His attention. They are His gracious means of directing our hearts back to Him. Much like Zacchaeus climbing up the tree so that he could see Jesus, the disciplines are our way to position ourselves to see more of Jesus. Because through them, the Holy Spirit begins to remind us of the gospel and what it says about us. It deepens our dependence on Christ and it helps us, again, to find our satisfaction in Him and Him alone. Restlessness is meant to drive us straight to Jesus. What I love about this story is that's what Zacchaeus is beginning to discover. I don't think he understands who Jesus is yet.

I don't think he's experienced salvation at this moment. And yet, the restlessness of his heart is leading him straight toward the only one who can satisfy it. That's the second movement of the story. This is the moment when we get introduced to Jesus. I've labeled this one the seeking Savior. Because Luke doesn't make this a story about Zacchaeus trying to see Jesus. He shows us that this is a story about Jesus seeking out Zacchaeus. This is the Savior who seeks and saves the lost. Verse five through seven says, when he came to the place, he looked up. And get this, Jesus says, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today. And Zacchaeus hurries down and he receives Him joyfully. It's really amazing to me to realize that there's a crowd full of people. I don't know, hundreds, thousands of people gathered on the streets. And yet, Jesus stops, he looks up into a tree, and he calls Zacchaeus by name. Everyone else knew Zacchaeus by his occupation. Some people knew him by his physical stature. Most everybody knew him by his sin. But Jesus knew him by his name. And he calls him out. He invites him to come be with him. He says, hurry and come down,

for I must stay at your house today. Listen, we skip over some things in the Bible, but they're important. Words are important. The word must there is a really important word. Jesus doesn't say, I want to, I should. He says, I must. That word there is a word that Luke uses throughout his gospel to describe divine necessity. When that word is used, it's something that is part of God's plan, and so it has to happen. It's the same word that is used when Jesus says he must suffer many things, that he must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, must be crucified, and must rise again. Do you see what's happening here? Jesus is not saying, hey, can I come over for dinner? Jesus is saying, this is the reason I came. This man, at this moment, it's the whole reason I came to Jericho. This is not a distraction. It's not a detour. This is God accomplishing the very mission that Jesus proclaims in verse 10, that Jesus, the Son of Man, has come to seek and to save the lost. Like, it blows my mind to think about this. He calls him by name. He stops at this procession.

Even the location that this happens shows us that it's part of God's plan because his providence is all over it. The city of Jericho, if you're not familiar with it, it sits in the middle of the Judean desert. It's an arid, harsh environment where nothing grows. And yet, the city of Jericho, it sits atop underground springs that have a constant flow of water, that make it this unexpected oasis where plants can grow, where plants like this sycamore tree can grow. And it amazes me to think that long before Zacchaeus climbed that tree, God had prepared the place where grace was gonna meet him. He's the one. He provided water and produced the tree so that on this very day, Jesus would stop under its branches and he would call Zacchaeus by name. The crowds didn't like it. Like, they're shook by this. They thought Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was too corrupt, too sinful, too far gone. Listen, if he's ever gonna be made right with God, Zacchaeus has to make himself worthy, right? He has to pay back what he stole. He has to repair what he broke, clean up his reputation. Do that first, and then maybe you can work your way back into the margins of mercy. Isn't that how religion thinks?

Like make yourself right, and then maybe God will accept you. But what I love about this story is Jesus flips it all upside down. He does not give Zacchaeus a list of things to do. He doesn't give him a list and say, Zacchaeus, come down and fix these behaviors before I'll come to your house. No, he calls Zacchaeus by name. He invites him to come and to be with him. And where this falls in the timeline of events, Luke casually says he's passing through Jericho. No, he wasn't. This is the last stop. This is the last city on his way to Jerusalem. Jesus is on his way to the cross, but even now the cross is already casting its shadow backward into Jericho. You see, Jesus stops here under this tree to point forward to another tree. He's saying, this is what I'm going to accomplish. I'm going to the cross to save sinners, but I'm gonna stop here, and I'm gonna show you salvation for one of them. Romans 5.8 says, but God demonstrates his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. This is the scandal of grace. See, Zacchaeus didn't deserve to be called by name. He didn't deserve for Jesus to stop the whole procession

and to go to his house. But grace is not about what you deserve. Grace is about what God is willing to give and what he is willing to do. And what he's willing to give is his one and only son. And what he's willing to do is to send him to the cross to be a sacrifice for your sin so that you can be reconciled to him and have new life in him. Listen, this is the heart of the story. This is the heart of the gospel, the heart of the whole scriptures. It is the mission of Jesus to graciously move toward sinners and to restore relationship with those who are lost. It is him and his initiative to move in his grace toward sinners to restore relationship. Listen, that is good news for everyone in this room. For everyone in this room, if you're here and you're not a follower of Jesus, this is good news because the same Jesus in this story is still seeking to save the lost. And the fact that you're in this room is no accident. Like, I know that. The same Jesus who looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name, he knows exactly who you are. And he invites you to come to him by faith. Just as God was working long before Zacchaeus climbed the tree, I'm pretty sure he's been working in your life.

Maybe through your circumstances. Maybe he's been working through the people who invited you here today. Maybe he's just been working through your own restlessness. But he's using those things to draw you to himself. He's inviting you to receive him by faith. Listen, you don't have to clean yourself up before coming to him. You don't have to make all the things right and fix your past before coming to him. You don't have to make yourself worthy. Just as he did with Zacchaeus, he just invites you to receive him joyfully by faith. To put your trust in who he is and what he's done to save you. And listen, if you do that, he will do for you what you could never do for yourself. He will provide forgiveness. He will remove condemnation and guilt of your sin. He will restore the relationship that your heart is longing to have with your heavenly father. He will make you new. He will give you true rest in him. So if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, you feel him calling your name. So let me encourage you, whoever you came with, talk with them. Stop by the Connection Center, come find me. We would love to tell you more about Jesus. The rest and satisfaction in him is worth us

sharing that with you. So don't leave without talking with someone today. But this is also good news for believers in the room. See, we kind of move on past this, but first it's just good to be reminded of how we were saved, right? This is our story that we weren't saved by any merit of our own, but as Ephesians 2.8 says, for by grace you have been saved, through faith. This is not your own doing, it's the gift of God. This is also good news, because not only is God gracious towards us in Christ at the moment of our salvation, but he continues to be gracious towards us every step of the journey. The mission of Jesus is not merely to find the lost, but Luke says, it is to save the lost. That means if Jesus has set his grace upon you, he's not the kind of savior who's gonna abandon his work halfway through. He saved you by his grace, and he's gonna continue to hold you by his grace. As we said earlier, this is important because even after we've trusted in Christ, we can drift from the truth that he is enough, that he is all we need. And we can start looking for satisfaction and peace and rest and other things besides him. And when we do that, I know what happens is,

you start to feel a distance between you and God. You drift away from him, and that distance just widens further and further. And when it happens, it's easy to begin living the lie that says the distance you feel is because God is done with you, that he has stepped away. And so what happens is you pull back. You stop pursuing him and you assume he's just disappointed in you. You keep your distance from him because you feel shame. And over time, you just continue to drift believing that his grace has run out. Can I just say from a personal testimony, that is not the case. His grace is inexhaustible. It is always, always enough, and it is always for you. We talked about the spiritual disciplines. We gotta understand that before we ever draw near to Christ, the reason we go to him through those disciplines, the reason we go and try to put ourselves in a position to see him, we gotta realize that before we open our Bibles, before we bow our heads to pray, before we show up for worship, we need to realize he's already come near to us. He has already pursued us and welcomed us and made us his own in Christ. And so our pursuit of him,

it's always a response to his pursuit of us. That's why I love Paul Tripp. If you've ever read any of his devotionals, it's just always kind of centers us back on this idea that God's grace is inexhaustible. He says this in one of his devotionals. He says, no sin will make your savior turn away in disgust. No weakness will make him want to give up. No struggle will make him feel his grace has been given in vain. No, he will not give up, will not forsake you. He will complete what he has begun. That is who Jesus is. He is a savior who seeks. He's a savior who saves. He's a savior who stays and he finishes what he starts. What I love is when we get to the end of the story, we've seen the message of grace, but now we get to see the power of grace. Because the moment Jesus stepped into Zacchaeus' house, that work of grace began. And nothing about this man stays the same. This is the third movement. This is the part of the story I call a stunning salvation. Verse seven ends with the people grumbling because Jesus is going to be the guest of a sinner. Now, personally, I think there's a good amount of time that passes between verse seven and verse eight. I don't know how long.

I don't know if it was minutes, hours, overnight. I'm not real sure. We don't know how long Jesus stayed or what conversation happened in the home of Zacchaeus. But what we do know is that when we get to verse eight, Zacchaeus comes out again and he's a new man. He is changed by grace. Verse eight says, he stood and said to the Lord, behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. If I've defrauded anyone of anything, newsflash, that was his whole job, I'll restore it fourfold. And Jesus said, today salvation has come to this house since he also is a son of Abraham. This is what God's grace does to us. Don't misunderstand or get the order out of whack here. This is not, oh, Zacchaeus, you did those things, therefore salvation has come. No, salvation has already come. And so what we see is a heart that has been changed by grace and it's declaring it through these actions. The first thing is Zacchaeus is now standing before Jesus and in front of the whole crowd and he declares he is Lord. He's the master. He's no longer merely curious about Jesus. He's not just trying to catch a glimpse of Jesus. The man who climbed the tree is now bowing his life before Jesus and saying, you are Lord. That is what happens when we come in contact with Jesus. And now everything that follows is the result of a heart that has been transformed by grace.

And it's nothing short of stunning. The man who built his entire life around accumulation of wealth says, I'm gonna give away half of everything I own to the poor. He made that fortune by being a thief and a professional extortioner. What does he say? He says, I'm gonna repay anyone I defrauded four times the amount. Now, I'm not a mathematician, but if you do the math, giving away half of what you have, which all came from defrauding anybody, and then paying it back fourfold, Zacchaeus is about to be broke. But he doesn't care because he's found a greater treasure. And that is really shocking when we see it in the context of Luke's gospel. Because if we go back just one chapter, we see a story of the rich young ruler. This is a man who comes to Jesus and says, what must I do to inherit eternal life? It's such a contrast to this story, but the rich young ruler, he couldn't let go of his wealth because it was his God. And yet we see Zacchaeus gladly let go of his wealth because Christ was now his treasure. They're everything that one another is. They're both rich, they're both known for their money, yet the outcomes are completely different, why? It's not because Zacchaeus was a better man.

He's arguably a much worse man. The reason is grace has reached him in a way that leaves him unable to cling to the things he treasured before. Back in Luke 18, after this encounter with the rich young ruler, Jesus says to his disciples, it's easier for a camel to slip through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. In other words, money and other idols have such a grip on our hearts. We hold them so tightly and we won't let go, not even to reach for Jesus. And the disciples, I think, felt that in their own hearts. I think they felt that to be true. And they say, well, then who can be saved? Like if sin is so captive and so enticing that we can't let go of it, then who could ever enter the kingdom of God? And you know how Jesus answers that question? He says, what is impossible with man is possible with God. It blows my mind that we just go one chapter over in scripture and we get to see what is possible with God. Zacchaeus is what is possible with God. This is a rich man saved. This is an idol shattered, a greedy heart made generous, a thief turned into a restorer. It's a sinner saved and transformed by grace. Here's what the story is showing us. It's that when Jesus saves someone, listen, they don't stay the same.

No, his grace transforms who they are and how they live. I love that this is only 10 verses, but we get to see the moment of salvation, but we get to see the results. We get to see the power of God's grace to transform us from the inside out. Let me just quickly give you a few ways that God's grace changes us. Number one, it changes who we are. It changes who we are. In Christ, your identity is no longer the person who fails. Your identity is no longer the person who can't seem to get it all together. No, in Christ, your identity is child of God who has been bought by the blood of Jesus. When Jesus says that Zacchaeus is a son of Abraham, he's not just saying he was a Jewish man. No, he is declaring that Zacchaeus, by faith, is now a part of the covenant family of God, that he is now part of God's family, and the same for us. By his grace, when we accept Christ, he saves us into his family. He makes us co-heirs with Christ to all the riches of heaven. Changes who we are. Grace changes the way we relate to one another. Grace is not a free pass to just keep sinning against one another. No, it's the freedom to confess sin

and to make it right with one another. You see, we want grace to say, well, God forgives me, so therefore, I don't have to worry about the damage I cause. I don't have to worry about who I hurt or what that does to their life. That's not real grace. Real grace says, God forgives me, so therefore, now, I don't have the fear of condemnation. I don't have the fear of judgment, but I am free now to go to that person and seek forgiveness and to make it right. Just as Zacchaeus did, we wanna be quick to repent of our sin and take steps towards reconciliation with one another whenever it's possible, and it's grace that gives us the freedom and courage to do that. In real life, this means that grace produces people who don't run from conversations, but they move towards them. If you've hurt someone, grace should give you the courage to say, I was wrong. Be quick to confess and ask forgiveness without fear of condemnation. And on the other side, if you're the person who's been hurt, it's grace that removes the burden of having to carry that hurt or try to control it or try to avenge it. Because in Christ, God has received you

and defended you and justified you. And so you don't have to live in bitterness or try to fight for your own justice. Grace says you can forgive. Why? Because you've been forgiven. And you can seek reconciliation when it's possible. And when it's not, you can still hand that over to God and let him be the judge. Because guess what? He's a better judge than we are anyway. I need to remember that if everything's sinful about me, both past, present, and future, has been completely covered by the redemptive blood of Christ, then there should never be any sin or anything in my life that I don't feel the freedom to confess and ask for forgiveness. And in the same way, if everything's sinful, past, present, and future about me has been covered by the redemptive blood of Christ, then how in the world could I not extend forgiveness to others? Listen, grace is what allows us to become a people who say, I sinned, but also a people who say, I forgive. Because both of those are rooted in the freeing truth that Jesus has paid it all at the cross. And if you don't have, sidebar here, sorry, getting preaching here. If you don't have the type of community

where you can actually experience that, where you can live out grace in that real way, where you can seek forgiveness and extend forgiveness to one another, that's why we talk about D groups. That's why we encourage you to be in a small group fellowship, because that's what we want, is we want you to have a community of other believers where you can practice living by God's grace in that way. Get in a D group. Here's the last thing, grace changes the things we treasure. Without Christ, we start naturally looking to other things to give us security and worth. Our money feels like safety to us. Our success feels like our identity. Our control feels like peace. Approval is happiness. And all of those things, we start to depend on them to hold our world together, but they're gonna fail. And so by His grace, Jesus breaks that illusion. We start to see those other things as what they truly are. They're good gifts, but they're terrible gods. They cannot carry the weight that we put on them to be our satisfaction, to be our peace. It's only meant to be Him. And so by His grace, what He does is Jesus begins to turn our hearts to see Him as our greatest treasure. What we have in Him becomes more satisfying

than anything money can buy, becomes more secure than power or success. I love the way Sinclair Ferguson puts this in his book, The Whole Christ. Here's what he says. He says, when we behold the glory of Christ in the gospel, that's what we've seen this morning, it reorders the loves of our hearts. So we delight in Him supremely. And the other things that we have ruled our lives, they lose their enslaving power over us. Church, here's what I love. God, in His grace, He doesn't just say, hey, stop loving those things. No, He gives us something better to love. He gives us someone better to love. He gives us Jesus, the one who holds all things together, the one who sought us and bought us by His blood, the one who forgives us fully, secures us completely, satisfies us deeply. I love this story because it is such a beautiful picture of Jesus. Zacchaeus' story is my story. Because when I think about what it is to look for things in the world that give me satisfaction or rest and how disappointing that is, I know what that is. But I also know what it is to find peace and rest in Christ. When they said, and they're planning out this series and said, hey, pick your favorite story,

how could it not be this one? Like if I've got one bullet, this is the shot I'm taking, this is the shot I'm taking, it's all about Jesus. I said, I want you to see Jesus this morning. I do not want you to hear this story and remember a short man, not Zacchaeus and not me. I want you to remember Jesus. He is the very embodiment of God's love towards us. He is the Son of God who came into our world to seek and to save the lost. He's the one who's not surprised or repelled by your sin, but in His grace, He moves towards you and He calls you by name and says, receive me joyfully. He is the one who gave Himself as a sacrifice on the cross to pay the debt of sin, the one who was resurrected and now sits on the throne ruling over all things. He is Jesus. Church, can we just be amazed by Jesus? Can we be in awe of His grace? If you've never done so, believe in Him. Back in my mail on my desk, there's a little note card and it's a prayer that is centuries old. And it says, Lord, I wanna see you more clearly. I wanna love you more dearly. And I want to follow you more nearly day by day. Church, would you pray that with me this morning? Let's pray together. Lord, as we come to your word, we get to see such a beautiful picture of your son, Jesus,

the son of God who came to seek and to save the lost. And Lord, all we can do is just sit in awe of you and say, thank you for your grace. Thank you for this picture of Jesus, of who he is and what he has done, what he can do to save. Lord, we want to see him more clearly. Because when we see him, Lord, we can't help but love him. We can't help but be thankful for his grace. And Lord, may that love well up inside of us in a way that produces obedience and joy to follow you. We want to see you more clearly. We want to love you more dearly. Lord, we want to follow you more nearly day by day. We pray that in the name of Jesus, amen. Have a great week.