I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 19. Luke chapter 19. We'll be looking at the first 10 verses of this chapter, Luke's Gospel. That would be page 966 in your pew Bibles if you choose to use them. As we all probably still vividly recall from several weeks ago, on Wednesday, February 14th, 19-year-old Nicholas Cruz walked into his old high school and summarily slaughtered 17 of his former fellow classmates at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. unlike his homicidal jihadi cousins who seek glory in martyrdom. Cruz apparently was not interested in dying. He was interested in escaping and as the fire alarm was ringing and his fellow students were running for cover trying to escape from him, he joined in the crowd and made a short escape. He did not plan to die. He did not want to die. Even though there was no moral restraint in his heart against the evil that had been boiling in there like a cauldron in the sin of his heart, he did not plan to die. There was no fear in him of the evil of murder, but there certainly appears to have been in him a fear of death. So he dropped his weapon and escaped in the sea of students running away from him. Today, the community in which he lives looks upon him as one of the worst wretches of their experience in life. Now he is despised like no one else. In Jesus' day, in the region of Palestine, a whole area was under the dominion of the Empire of Rome. And that meant that Rome maintained control over the governance of the whole area of Palestine. And this control was basically accomplished by the delegation of civil affairs to the political officials who were indigenous or who were natural citizens of that area. And in the case of Jerusalem, the political leadership was pretty much in the hands of the high priesthood who ruled the whole temple area. And they had their own police force there in Jerusalem. And then there was also Herod Antipas who was the governor of the regions of Galilee and Perea, Jesus' home region, Galilee. His cousin Herod Agrippa was also king in Judea. And the descendants, these descendants, these Herods, Agrippa and Antipas, were descendants of Herod the Great, who had been regarded by most of the citizens of his time as being a renegade. He was not really qualified to be their king. He wasn't truly of a royal bloodline. And so even though they were the aristocracy of Palestine, they weren't really accepted by the common people, the common Jews. And they had little influence over the Jews. They were regarded as illegitimate. So Rome ruled over Palestine with fairly much of a loose grip as long as the people underneath them did their job. Pretty much what Rome was looking for was that there would be a peace maintained at all costs. And if anyone had any ideas in their mind of inciting some kind of a uprising, It was well known that the legions of Rome were never too far away to make a quick overnight march to crush any uprising, and they were very effective at it. The most offensive part of being under this Roman rule was, of course, an economic oppression. Conquerors always felt that they were justified in having their victories funded by the vanquished, And so the Romans had no hesitation to impose upon Palestine and particularly the citizens of Palestine, the Jews, very onerous and overbearing taxes. The taxes were many and varied. You can go through a whole litany of them in the history books of how they impressed upon the Jews this funding of their enterprises there in that region as well as in other surrounding regions. And there were Jews who served the Romans as collectors of this revenue, the tax collectors, considered by their fellow Jews as bad as political traitors. That's the way they saw them. They sold their services to the Romans at the expense of their own countrymen, and sometimes their methods were forceful. At all times, their methods were confiscatory. In other words, they basically took more than they really needed and they filled their own pockets, made themselves rich with the overage beyond what the Romans required of revenue. Rabbis associated the tax collectors with the robbers of the land. The attitude of the common people towards the Jewish tax collectors was, Or you could hear it in an echo of what was commonly heard about them as they were categorized so commonly with the sinners. You remember? The tax collectors and the what? And the sinners. The tax collectors and the sinners. It was like a refrain all through the land. The tax collectors and the sinners. But as much as the Jews hated them, they were the agents of the Romans. The thing was, you didn't mess with them, especially if they could find out who you were, and they knew who you were. Well, a central character of the passage we'll be addressing today is a man named Zacchaeus, and he's recognized as, according to the text, the chief enforcement agent of the Roman IRS. of the time. So you can imagine, you can just feel, right? You feel that kind of love for this guy, huh? Not. And it's interesting that Jesus, as we'll see in just a moment, he is on his way toward the city of Jericho. And Jericho is a very likely place for a, get this, a manager of tax collectors. Because that is what a chief tax collector essentially was. I mean, he had a collection of agents underneath him. He was a manager of tax agents. So you can understand that in Jericho, there must have been an awful lot of revenue collection being done. And of course, you can be sure that Zacchaeus was scraping off parts of all of that from all of his subordinates as they were collecting taxes. And Jericho would be a very excellent city to be a revenue collector in because It was at a major crossroads. You would go down the ascent from Jerusalem, 10 miles, into the valley of the Jordan River, and you'd be on one of the major trade routes, and guess where you'd go by? Jericho, absolutely. And so at this Passover, Jesus, as I said, is marching with his entourage of disciples and a collection of other pilgrims who are on their way to Passover. And they're marching, they're walking south along the Jordan River because Jews did not walk through Samaria, which would have been on the western side of the Jordan River. They're walking on the eastern side of the Jordan River to avoid putting their feet on corrupted soil, Samaritan soil. And so there they are on their way to Jericho. And we know that ultimately, Jesus' goal is to reach Jerusalem And as we'll see in a couple of weeks, his knowledge is that he must reach Jerusalem on a very significant day, on a particular day that has been established since Daniel prophesied about it some 600 years earlier. So he is on his way to Jerusalem, and he's on his way to Passover, And at that Passover, Jesus knows full well that he is going to become the ideal fulfillment of all that Passover symbolized. The death of a lamb to cover with atoning sacrifice the sins of his people. He will do that for them at the cross. He would die to pay the righteous penalty for the sins of all who would believe in him as their Passover lamb, their Redeemer. Now like Luke introduced this episode telling us in verse one, he tells us in verse one that he or Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. And you don't wanna miss or pass by the words passing through because they're very significant. It's particularly culturally speaking. because what it's telling us that unlike most occasions when a dignitary coming through a city like Jericho would be met by a welcoming committee from the fathers of the city to invite this visiting dignitary to hospitality, probably some kind of a banquet, surely staying overnight in the largest home of the city of Jericho in order to simply give this dignitary the hospitality of the city, the key to the city. But this was not going to happen because in some fashion Jesus had signaled that I am not here to enjoy your hospitality. I am on my way to Jerusalem. And so he's passing through. He would not be stopping to accept hospitality. And then we go on to learn in verse two that this major character, Zacchaeus, is active. Look with me at verse two. There was a man named Zacchaeus, who, as we've seen, was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. Yeah, uh, they were all rich. But in particular, this was a way of describing Zacchaeus that all the other people who were his neighbors would have had hands on hips saying, yeah, with our money, our hard-earned, sweated money. And that's the way it was. And Zacchaeus being described here as a chief tax collector, you have to understand that this would have meant that he lived an isolated life. Zacchaeus, with all of his wealth, He could not buy friends who were of any kind of respectable class. They didn't want anything to do with him, especially the Jews. And the Romans, because he was a Jew, they wouldn't fraternize with him. So the common people hated him. The aristocracy or the wealthy class, they wanted nothing to do with him. They knew his money was corrupt. And the Romans, he was just one of their pawns. This man lives an isolated life, folks. His wealth can't even buy him any friends. He's a lonely man. Let me just stop for a minute. There are a lot of lonely people in your world. Sometimes they fake it until they try to make it. There are a lot of fractured relationships, and there are a lot of people who you may not realize it because they're wearing a very well-designed or well-painted mask, but they're in situations where they are very lonely. There are other kinds of situations that people are living through, of course. And the thing is that God uses situations to weary people with their lives, to break people with their lives by their choices. And the thing is, He works through these situations to begin to cause them to turn away from themselves and ask questions like, is this all there is? And as believers in Jesus Christ, we know, no, this is not all there is. And we need to be prayerfully looking to see if we can notice whether God may be working in someone's life to begin the drawing process, as we will see is going on in Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector of Jericho. A man isolated, a man hated by most of his neighbors, And now, next, Luke tells us in verse 3 that Zacchaeus was trying to see Jesus. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but he was not able because of the crowd, since he was a short man. He wants to see Jesus. Interesting. But there are hindrances to that. He's short, and there's a crowd. Now understand, if he had been a respected member of the Jericho community, you know what would have happened. Oh, he would have been taken by the greeting entourage right through the middle of the crowd and they would have all divided on the street to let Zacchaeus come through because he's one of our rich. Only he could not have been a tax collector to have any kind of status like that. But if he had had status, he would have been given front and center. to walk next to Jesus through Jericho. But in this case, unfortunately for Zacchaeus, he is short of stature, so, you know, jumping up and down in the middle of a crowd might work, but he's smart enough to know he doesn't want to be in crowds. Because you understand, in crowds, you might get a shot in the ribs, or you might get a knife in the gut. Because in crowds, those kinds of assaults could never be found out. That person would just drain out, and the chief tax collector would be left behind on the ground. Zacchaeus was smart enough to know you don't get into big crowds like that. Not as a chief tax collector. But he wanted to see Jesus. Look at verse four. So what does he do? So running ahead, he climbed up a sycamore tree to see Jesus, since he was about to pass that way. Here, if you read this from the eyes of a Middle Easterner, particularly I get help from Kenneth Bailey, who is a Middle Eastern, who was a writer about Middle Eastern culture, you're seeing Zacchaeus violate two major rules of decorum for a Middle Eastern man with any self-respect. So he's running ahead of the crowd to be away from the crowd. Middle Eastern men don't run because when you do that, you have to pick up your robes and then your ankles are exposed. Beloved, consider the modesty of the time. I mean, is that amazing? I had a friend from India once visited us We were going to go out to Berkshire Mall. I had my shorts on and my golf shirt. And he said, Brother Dean, are we leaving now? I said, yeah, let's go. He said, Brother Dean, we can't leave now. Why not? Well, your arms are exposed and your legs are exposed. You can't do that. Ah, OK. So in deference to him, I went and put on long sleeves and long pants. Because that is the modesty standard of the Christians of India. I don't know if that's true today, but I think it may still be. So anyhow, he goes and he runs ahead with the idea that along the path moving outside of Jericho, there are these sycamore fig trees. And they have low-hanging branches, which are fairly easy to climb. And the neat thing about sycamore trees is the leaves are very large and they're very dense. So if you can climb up in them, you are fairly obscured from people actually looking up and being able to see what's in the tree. And that's his plan. But the other thing is, climbing trees for men in that time was also not fashionable. So he's running and he's climbing. There was an interesting article, I won't give all the details to you from Dr. Bailey about In the recent times in Egypt, there was a dignitary who was said to have climbed a tree in his backyard to hang a swing for his child. And this got to the ears of the president of Egypt who, in the next meeting with him, said, I heard that you climbed a tree. Really? Yeah. Uh, we don't do that. So it's not just back in those times. So both of these are considered undignified behaviors. So it's clear, is it not, that Zacchaeus had a very strong interest in seeing Jesus. And obviously had a greater need for this than any preservation of whatever self-respect he might have. And that was because Beloved, that was because God was moving in his heart. Now, I look at Zacchaeus as feeling a need to have contact with someone he could talk to about this stirring of God in his soul, someone that he could trust. Understanding, here's a man living an isolated life. Who can he talk to who is not utterly prejudiced against him? And he's going to go and talk to somebody in his community about these stirrings in his soul about his sin and his guilt before God. And how do I find a remedy for this? Where is he going to go? And then he hears the rabbi from Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth, the friend of what? tax collectors and sinners is coming to Jericho and he's close by. Zacchaeus is motivated. Maybe Jesus is somebody who he could get even an opportunity for a face-to-face with. Who knows? Here's my question to you. Can people who God is convicting of their lifestyle, maybe their hidden sins, maybe behaviors that are so obvious to you, but they have no idea that they're living in defiance of God's law. Can they come to you without that sense that you've already judged them? Do they see in you a lifestyle of grace, a lifestyle of truth, no doubt, We're not excusing sin here, but can they see in you someone approachable who they could go to with maybe a stirring in their heart of a need to know, is there a remedy for, honestly, I have some serious problems? Zacchaeus probably had heard that Jesus had this reputation of dealing with community outcasts. So he figured, I might have a shot here. And so this day he's inspired to seek, at this point, just a look at the rabbi. Maybe what it is that he wants to, he wants to look at this guy. And you know, and sometimes people in the business like Zacchaeus, They get experience at looking at people. They're prejudging people for sure, but they're looking to see, could I do business with this guy? And he just wants a look. But he's got to get in a place where he's safe from the crowd, but he can see close enough to Jesus. So he's up in the tree, positioned himself in a branch, probably hanging close enough to the road that when Jesus goes by, he's going to give him a good look. All right. See that? And then the moment comes. Look at verse five. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down because today I must stay at your house. Now let's go over that again, because I think I have the tone right. Zacchaeus! It's like, what are you doing up there? Get down here. Because, and hurry, because today I must stay at your house. Must? He must? Yes. This is foreordained. Jesus didn't walk into Jericho and say, huh, I wonder if I'll meet any interesting people. No, he was on his way to that place where he knew Zacchaeus was gonna be hanging out, literally hanging out. Thank you for laughing. I didn't know if that would go across. So Jesus is passing directly under the branch where Zacchaeus is standing. And I can imagine, just listen. Do you hear the crowd? Jesus stops. You know, the crowd is there. He looks up. And the crowd looks up. And then there's a connection that's made. Eyes to eyes, Zacchaeus to Jesus. And everything is quiet. Everybody sees, there he is. There he is. Let's kill him. No, there he is. And Jesus is talking to him. Oops. What's this about? And so at that moment, there's just Jesus and Zacchaeus, their eyes lock, and in that frozen moment, Zacchaeus, feel it now, come on. He feels a connection with the Lord of the universe. And there is a thing that happens inside of him, a spring of hope that maybe because Jesus stopped, looked up at him, connected with him, that maybe, just maybe, there would be a welcome to him, the chief tax collector, the chief of all the local centers. Maybe there was hope for him. And then when Zacchaeus says, and when Jesus says, Zacchaeus, get down here, I must have your hospitality today. Well, that's really kind of bold because in the Middle East, you never invite yourself to hospitality because that is an offense against the person who would be asking you to come and receive your hospitality. You don't do that. But this is a different situation and Jesus needs to take control of the situation. And this invitation from Jesus meant the possibility of acceptance with God. Feel it now. The possibility of acceptance with God. Do you remember when you wondered if you could be accepted by God? Did you really catalog your sins and violations and offenses against God? Some of you may have been too young for that. The day may come, though, when you're going to have the Holy Spirit increasing your sensitivity to sin. And you'll say, oh, I feel worse than when I became a Christian. No, you're growing. You're growing because you're growing more sensitive to your sin. And you're also going to be learning that that is to be taken to the cross where it was forgiven. You see? So Jesus says, I got to have a meal with you today. Here's the invitation. Here's Zacchaeus's invitation to the fraternity of accepted outcasts. Jesus fraternity of accepted outcasts. Wow. And it is a glorious house. And so here is Zacchaeus getting what he had perhaps fleeting moments dreamed of, but had normally despaired of, the possibility of something buried deep within his consciousness of a hope, but almost always dashed, of reconciliation with God until this day and the arrival of Christ, of Jesus. And at the moment that he heard Jesus call his name, I must spend time with you. I think Zacchaeus's sensation of reconciliation is beginning to grow. Instantaneously at this moment of outreach, from the Lord Jesus, he is feeling the connection tighten with his soul. And so Zacchaeus bolts down from the tree and he says, let's go to my house. Of course, he probably had a really nice place, probably had a pool out back. But, you know, sunny Jericho would be a great place for a pool. As Jesus and Zacchaeus are now going to his house, the sunshine starts to fade. A cloud begins to form over the glorious brightness of the moment that had just taken place with this connection between the Lord of glory, the Savior of sinners, and one who had just been invited into the fraternity of outcasts. You feel the shadow? Well, let's look at where it's coming from. In verse 7, All who saw it began to complain. He's gone to lodge with a sinful man. Oh, there it goes. And just as suddenly as Jesus had called Zacchaeus and just as suddenly as Zacchaeus had come down and said, come on, let's go. We're going to have a feast at my house. The spectators in the crowd strike up the chorus of complaint. There goes Jesus. the confederator with sinners and tax collectors. How can he be a man of God if he's going to go and have hospitality with a character like Zacchaeus? Oh, drat. And so Jesus was suddenly becoming... Now, don't miss this. Jesus is suddenly becoming the object of the scorn of the community. Do you see it? What is Jesus doing here, beloved? He is allowing the scorn of the community against Zacchaeus, the hatred of the community against Zacchaeus to be transferred to himself. This is what a Savior does. This is what the Redeemer is all about. The transfer of your sin, your unrighteousness, your odiousness to God and your sin to the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is only just a small example of the transmission of our sin to his cross. But it's very real here. And in this gesture, Jesus turns the social hostility of the community from his host to himself, the guest. And it didn't take long for Zacchaeus to get what's going on here. Oh no, now, My guest, Jesus, his reputation is going to get sullied because he's with me. And then the Holy Spirit, who has quickened his heart with new life, begins to have that new life become evident. Beloved, when there is new life in Jesus Christ, that new life will be evidenced in responses to the Lord's callings in how we live. And here we see it. He suddenly understands that there needs to be something done here quickly. And whatever might be the crowd's estimate of justice or righteousness, Zacchaeus is going to top it. And so he declares that he is going to oversatisfy whatever there might be as righteous anger against him and you can see in verse 8 what he says. But Zacchaeus stood up there and said to the Lord, look, I'll give half my possessions to the poor, Lord, and if I have extorted anything from anyone, I'll pay back four times as much. Now this was far over what was expected by the rabbis in terms of restitution payments. But Zacchaeus was going to make it clear to everybody who could hear listening into the windows of his house. Oh, did you hear what Zacchaeus just said? He's going to pay us all back. Oh, wow. Oh. evidence of heart change. Now understand, Zacchaeus is not paying for forgiveness here. This is an evidence that he is experiencing forgiveness. And Jesus' declaration to the chief priests and the elders of all the people is validated again. I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. This is not in our Luke text, I'm reading from Matthew. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him. But the tax collectors and the prostitutes did, and even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe in him. So this whole deal is not new in Jesus' experience, nor in the Observation of the disciples. And then Jesus confirmed the evidence. He says in verse nine, today, salvation has come to this house. So Jesus is now pronouncing what we've just seen the evidence of. Don't you see that he has been saved, salvation has come, and there's clear evidence of it. The very idol that controlled this man's whole life, money. He doesn't care about it anymore. Give it away because relationship with Jesus, acceptance with him means more than anything in all of the world. Even my idol, kill that idol quickly. Remember the rich young ruler? Couldn't do that. He wasn't ready. So Jesus then concludes, or it may be that Luke is summarizing this whole event, verse 10, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost. So it's as though Jesus is saying Zacchaeus too, even though regarded by all of you as a vile sinner, is still an Israelite, still a son of Abraham. He's one of the lost sheep of Israel that I, the good shepherd of Israel, I, the good shepherd who come to seek and to save the lost, I'm seeking him. You hate him for his unrighteousness, but he's not so lost that I cannot reach him and save him. Not so lost, not for the good shepherd, I am the Good Shepherd, and I have come to seek and to save lost people. Now, congregation, for some of you, this may contradict everything that you understand about what the Bible says about salvation, because you may still be in that class of unreformed Protestants who still have this idea that Salvation is a joint work between God and myself. And this passage is to reinforce the fact that you have nothing to do with your salvation. It is a work of Almighty God by the sovereign invasion of His Holy Spirit into your heart to give you new life. And that new heart then gives you a capacity of your mind to hear the gospel with understanding, to sense the love of God for you personally, and then to turn your desires, your will, to turn your will, your self-will toward God, and you become a child of God. But then the collaboration begins between the working of the Spirit in you which is a promise from God, and your new heart to grow in conformity to who Christ calls us to be. But some people are still confused by that principle that salvation is the work of God. Salvation is of the Lord. You go all the way back, you hear Jonas saying, salvation is of the Lord, of the Lord, sourced in God, initiated by God, caused by Almighty God. But we cannot separate salvation from sanctification. There is always a functioning response to the new heart. And that is in a new life. And we see it evidenced here almost instantaneously in the life of this once hated man. But as long as God loved him, it really didn't matter what everybody else thought. Because he was now in the fraternity of the forgiven. What could be more important? The only people who qualify for Jesus' salvation, hear me now, the only people who qualify for Jesus' salvation are those who recognize that they are unworthy of heaven. And on their own, they're not going to make it. They got nothing to contribute to getting in the door. God brings you through the door. And then the marvel of new life begins. We can never measure up to the righteousness that God expects. And we need to be clear on what this episode is teaching. The Jews of Jericho hated Zacchaeus. They hated him as much as the people of Parkland, Florida could justifiably hate Nicholas Cruz. But Jesus extended to Zacchaeus costly grace. Jesus was looking for Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus saw Jesus receive the hate of his community from him. Take it upon himself. And that became a picture to him of what Jesus could do with his sins. Take his sins off of him. Receive them to himself and take them away as the sacrificial lamb that would be sacrificed for the whole nation within about seven days up the hill in Jerusalem. He got it. It's marvelous. People who have experienced the costly grace of Jesus' welcome, I'm telling you, they become changed people. Are you changing? If the change that you're pursuing is something that's not in your heart, Go back to the beginning, go back to the basics, go back to Jesus and tell him you realize you have a problem and he's the only one who can remedy that problem. You need to transfer all of your confidence, all of your hope in being accepted by God to him and receive free the grace that comes as a credit to you of his righteousness. And when you accept that, then and only then will you be able to hear the Good Shepherd call your name. And you will hear it. And then you will become not just a churchgoer, not just a churchgoing kid, but you'll become a genuine Christian. Now there are two lessons that I want to just bring to your attention in the few minutes that I have left out of what I see here besides some of the things that we've talked about in terms of salvation. No one you know is ever going to, no one you know or meet, from this passage it strikes me that no one you will ever meet is beyond the reach of Jesus Christ. Do you see that? I'm thinking about Nicholas Cruz. I mean, really, the justice system should be terminating him in a short while. It won't, but that's how these people felt about Zacchaeus. The thing is, we have to be very careful as disciples of Christ with the ease in which we can develop prejudices against people who are out there who are not on the road to salvation. They're on the broad road, the same road that you and I were walking on before Jesus changed our hearts, called our name. And because of our changed heart, we could hear him call our name. And then he told us you need to get over here on the narrow road because it leads to life. Get off of that wide road that leads to destruction. It's so easy, beloved, to once we have begun to walk the narrow road, once we've begun to cultivate change as a result of the new heart, to be looking over there and saying, oh, how immoral, oh, how unethical, oh, how unacceptable to God. But do you realize in the moment you say that, it's like, oh, how eligible for the Savior. Think rightly here. What we need to do is ask God to cultivate within us not a tolerance for sin and immorality and lack of ethics, but a heart of compassion for people who are locked down in the prison of sin and the chains of sin and its dominion over life and the blinding power of Satan. His willing slaves, if there was ever a slavery in history, That is what it is. And because of sin, everybody dies. What a legacy for Satan. Everybody dies. Except for those who have new life, who are raised from the dead. So that's the first thing I want to admonish us about is be very careful with our inclination to cast judgment on people who are locked in the death throes of sin and Satan. We were all there. Maybe as young people we became followers of Jesus and really never experienced the power of it. But if you're growing in Christ, you will be in this battle back and forth between the pull of temptation and the drawing of the spirit to fight against that temptation. As you grow, more and more, you'll feel it. And if you didn't feel it that much before you became a follower of Jesus, I guarantee you, you're gonna be feeling it as a follower of Jesus. Let me just close with this second thought. Today, Jesus doesn't come along in person like he did for Zacchaeus. How does he come along? How does he call the names of people in need of salvation? Us. Us. He uses us, and this is the thing. We can't be like the crowd. We've got to be the voice of clarity, helping people who in an age when people aren't going to church, they're not going to Sunday school. I mean, they have an utter deficit of spiritual knowledge. We come along and we want to say to them in the most gentle possible way, what do you understand about spiritual things? You keep it very generic and then If you get an openness, you dial in deeper. What do you think about Jesus? What do you know about him? And you keep probing as far as they will let you probe. You see, we're the only voice for Jesus in the land, in your town, in your company, in your neighborhood. If they don't hear from Jesus through you, I'm telling you, it's gonna be some kind of a mystic experience, which they may prescribe drugs for today. All kidding aside, people are gonna hear through you and I. And so every day when we get up, we need to say, okay, Lord Jesus, Is my life such that if I'm coming along next to my colleague at work, their thought is, I've seen in this person's lifestyle, in their witness, in their way with people, in their language, in their sincerity, something that looks like God? Maybe she, maybe he, can help me with what's bothering me now. What they don't know is God's stirring up life. And they don't know what to do with this thing. But could they come to you? Would they feel that you're unprejudiced against them because, you know, they're this creepy, wild, sinner, jerk, whatever? Only they don't think that you would treat them that way. And so you are approachable. Are you approachable on that? We got to be. And that's why evangelism, witnessing, talking about Christ when it's appropriate, is a is a great way to have yourself accountable for how you live and how you talk and how you conduct yourself. If you want to have a witness, you got to be approachable. You got to be real and you got to be consistent. It's a sanctifying influence on your life. Not saying it's easy, but I think that's what we see here. That's what I see for myself here in this illustration of Zacchaeus. So let's take that to heart and would you join me as I close this in prayer. Father, we're grateful for the illustrations, the events. We're grateful again for the example of our Lord Jesus who challenges us, who breaks the rules of cultural appropriateness in times because spiritual things are so much higher than sociable issues. when it comes to eternal salvation. And all we pray, Lord God, that you would help us to be your conduits of grace in the lives of people that we're surrounded by. In Jesus' name, amen.