This message was recorded August 21st, 2022. The speaker is David Simpson. Now please take your Bibles and look to the Gospel of Luke. Do you remember way back there that we've been talking about Zacchaeus? It's been so long that you have forgotten. You remember that in the 18th chapter and then just into the 19th chapter, Luke wrote with a purpose of showing human depravity, what we call human depravity. They didn't use that word. Depravity is a word that means to be twisted. It refers to man's corruption. But we saw in that chapter that he showed a spiritual inability a spiritual ignorance, a spiritual unresponsiveness, and then concerning Zacchaeus, a spiritual helplessness. So all of that is on purpose, is writing with a perspective about this. And then the last time we talked about this, we saw the effectual call of grace. What do I mean by the effectual call of grace? Listen to me. God chose before the foundation of the world a people that He would save, correct? We believe that. Then we believe that Jesus Christ came to the world and died for those people. He took their sins on Himself. and he bore their sins to exhaustion. And God declared them forgiven and declared them justified in connection with that work, the shedding of that blood. But still, it is God's will that all of those people would know about it in their life and experience. So in time and experience, the way I express it, just the way I say it, I say it like that, but it's the way I say it, In time and experience, He makes it known to us. He brings it to our heart through the preaching of the gospel. You have to hear the gospel. How can you be saved, meaning from darkness, without the preaching of the gospel? The gospel has to be preached to you. He gives understanding to your mind. He fires the affections, and your will is moved, and it's you who come. You who come, you don't come against your will, you come by your will, but your will is changed. Whereas before the gospel was made known to you, you were resistant to this and you loved your religion. But then once it's made known to your heart, then you come. And we don't look at a time and a date and experience as to when that happened, but we can look back and say, well, once I was an unbeliever and then I became believer. And that irresistible call of grace is what came to Zacchaeus. We don't know everything that was going on in his heart and mind before this, do we? We don't know that. That's called prevenient grace. So we don't know about that. That's secret. But then we do know something about this call of grace. So what I said to you were several things. First of all, the call of grace was particular because Jesus said Zacchaeus, calls his name. Second of all, it was imperative. Make haste and come down. The third thing was it was authoritative. For today, I must. The fourth thing, it was personal. Abide in thy house. Next, it was powerful. Zacchaeus made haste and came down and received Him joyfully. And it was life-changing. Zacchaeus said, I'll give away half of my goods to fix the problem that I have created. Well, this is a picture of the call of grace. You weren't up in a tree. Figuratively, you were up in a tree, but literally, he was up in a tree. You weren't up in a tree, but nevertheless, you were outside of grace, outside of the hearing of the gospel. But in time and experience, he brought it to your heart, and now you believe this gospel. And you can't stand to hear any other. So detestable to you to hear someone else talk about your Lord in such a compromising and hateful way. So that call of grace has come to your heart. Now, with that in mind, so he's talked about spiritual corruption and depravity. Then he's talked about and shown the effectual call of grace. And this is all from Luke's perspective to show this to us. It isn't just there. It's there on purpose. But then we come to something that is very important that Jesus says. So I'm gonna read from verse eight down through verse 11. Let's see what we can find here that I think is important. In verse eight, Zacchaeus stood and he said unto the Lord, behold, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I've taken anything from any man by false accusation, I'm pretty sure he knew he had, I restore him fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. I'm going to stop there. In verse number 8, we see that the heart of Zacchaeus was made tender. We also see that his conscience was looking for relief. and his mind did the only thing he knew, works. This is what I'll do, this is what I'll do. And we're all like that, hearts may tender, conscience is looking for relief, so what do we do? We go to works. He sought to fulfill the law, because the law said something about this type of thing. If he had taken from people more than he should have, then all that was required to repay the principal, but if it had been by theft, which tells us that's what he thought about at least some of what he had done, then he was required to pay the fourfold. So that was right for him to do. Repentance in his heart was real, just like that. Lord Jesus gave him repentance, but he had to learn something very important, and that was to look away from himself to what he could do and look to the Lord Jesus Christ and him alone. Now, on other occasions, such as the Rich Young Ruler, which is the incident just before this, what did Jesus do with him? Do you remember what he did? He pointed him to the law, pointed him to the law. But what did he do with Zacchaeus? He pointed him away from the law, and he said, salvation has come to your house today. But he didn't say that to the rich young ruler. All we can surmise is that the rich young ruler was not a chosen one, or at least at that moment, it was not not an extension of effectual grace to his heart and mind. But now we can see this effectual call of grace to him. So he says, this day salvation has come to your house. Didn't say anything about the law. He's talking about salvation, deliverance. But then you have this phrase, and it's easy to overlook it, for as much as he also is a son of Abraham, a son of Abraham. Now, when he says this day of salvation has come to this house, you remember that in Hebrews 12 and 2 that we are to look unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of, translated our faith, literally the faith, the author and the finisher of the faith. Salvation, therefore, is a settled body of truth. of which Jesus Christ is the author and the subject, the finisher of it. Salvation in bodily form stood before Zacchaeus, and he spoke the word to Zacchaeus. And how blessed he was that he went to his house, just like Paul went to the house of the Philippian jailer and preached the gospel to him. What a blessed thing that it would come not only to you, but to our households. And through time, that's pretty much what we see, is that God brings the gospel to a household. Not everyone in that household believes, but most of the time it's more than one. But there's one who comes, and then to the whole household. I want to talk with you a little bit about being a son of Abraham. This is far more than natural descent. For example, all around Jesus, all around Him, He's in town and He's walking through town and there are lots of people around Him, and they all had some relationship to being descendants of Abraham. Lots of them, all around him. But he singles this one out and says he is a son of Abraham. Didn't they have access to the law? Didn't they have access to the teaching in the synagogue? Didn't they, just like Zacchaeus, have Some bloodline connection to Abraham. Jesus is talking about something spiritual. It's physical, but he's talking about something spiritual. A son of Abraham. I'm going to tell you six things about what it means to be a son of Abraham. And these six things Abraham and Zacchaeus had in common, six things. Now, the first thing is, and I need you to look at a few places in the Bible, and I can't spend much time on any one, but I want you to look with me, please, back to Romans 9. Now, some of you are already ahead of me as soon as I say Romans 9, I know that, but be patient, please. The first thing that Zacchaeus and Abraham had in common was a common promise. Common promise. Verse number six, after telling us that the Jewish people, the nation, had scorned the Gospel. He said in verse 6, not as though the Word of God hath taken none effect. In other words, you might think that means that God's Word is not effectual, but that's not so. Then he goes on to explain how it's effectual. For they are not all Israel which are of Israel. What does that mean? There is a national Israel, larger number, And then there is a smaller number, spiritual Israel. And that spiritual Israel is composed of both Jews and Gentiles. So you would have a national Israel and a spiritual Israel. And this phrase is going to be a very important phrase all the way to the end of the discussion of this, which goes through chapter 11. But we're not talking about that. And the first thing you come to in verse number 7, neither because they are the seed of Abraham, Now Abraham was chosen, and he was chosen from out of the Chaldees. He was in a place called Ur. And the Lord came in and plucked him out of the Ur of the Chaldees. He and his family were idol makers. They were making a living out of selling idols to people. But the Lord came in and saved him, called him out, separated him out, His family came with Him to a certain point, and then they couldn't go any further. It was only Abraham. It was Abraham, not Ur of the Chaldees. Abraham, not his family. And Abraham was a man who was saved by promise. So I'm going to read on through verse 8. It involves a couple of other names here. So I'm in verse 7, the middle of it. But in Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, they which are the children of the flesh, These are not the children of God, but the children of the promise. What God gave to Abraham was a promise. If we were to go back into chapter 4, that word promise appears six times, if I remember correctly. And Abraham was saved on the basis of God making a promise and then keeping the promise. So this truth of a promise is very, very important. So Abraham and not his family and not the rest of the Chaldeans. And then you have a second person that is here, and that is Isaac. And Isaac shall thy seed be called. And that is Isaac and not Ishmael. You'd have to go back and read in Genesis about how all that happened. But he had a brother, but God didn't call Ishmael. He called Isaac. And then in verses 11 through 13, talks about the offspring of Isaac. Children not being not yet born, neither having done good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calls. As it is said unto her, the elder shall serve the younger, and as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. So you have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and this Jacob and Esau were spiritual descendants of this promise and then election. So they had a common promise and then a common election. And in verse 13, we come to one of the most feared and hated verses in the Bible. Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. It gets a visceral reaction to people in their gut. They hate that verse. try to explain some other way that it means. But the first thing it does, without question, is it obliterates the false doctrine of the universal love of God. I mean, there's no question about that. And the second thing it does, it establishes God as sovereign in salvation. Has to be at least those two things. And however you want to look at the word hated. I know what it says, and I know what the word means, and it means the same thing everywhere it's used. But it at least means this, God had a disposition toward Esau not to save him. And God had a disposition toward Jacob to save him. And God's disposition preceded their decisions and their deeds. That's what it says in verse 11. So the neither by works or indecision they made. It didn't have anything to do with it. So I can understand why people who don't like grace don't like that verse because it flies in the face of everything that is believed in natural religion. It establishes who God is and what God is like and what salvation is like. And it's not a minor detail that a preacher can afford to leave out of his gospel message if he's gonna preach the gospel. It's either salvation by man's will altogether, or it's by God's will altogether, but not a mixture, not a mixture. That's why it's very clear to tell us God's purpose according to election, before they made any deed or decision at all. And I know this is 180 degrees opposite from modern religion and what it teaches. But Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and yes, Zacharias, were children of promise and children of election. So they had a common promise, a common election. Now I want you to skip back. Look in chapter 3. They had a common propitiation. common propitiation. It tells us in verse 24, 324 at the end of that verse, Christ Jesus, whom God did hath set forth, but literally did set forth a propitiation. Just stop there. He set him forth to be a propitiation. So there was no propitiation. before God set forth Christ. And the propitiation means the blood sacrifice. Before the propitiation, there's no satisfaction. Before propitiation, there is no God being just and justifier. Before the propitiation, there is no righteousness to impute. But in connection with that propitiation, through the faith which is in connection with his blood to declare his righteousness for the sending away of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. As soon as he brought in forbearance, God's forbearance, he means God was forbearing towards sin until the propitiation came. Abraham, for Isaac, for Jacob, for Zacchaeus, for the rest of us. He was forbearing toward our sin. He put off dealing with it, what that means, and he dealt with it in the propitiation. Zacchaeus And Abraham had a common propitiation. Then if you'll move on over to the fourth chapter, verse 23 and 24, they had a common imputation. Common promise, common election, a common propitiation, a common imputation, 23. Let's talk about Abraham here, by the way. And 23 and 24 are telling us what Abraham thought. This is from Abraham's perspective. It was not written for his sake alone, so that's what Abraham thought, that it was imputed to him. And that takes you back to Genesis 15.6, which we don't have time to look at, but that's where it is. But for us also, that's what Abraham thought. to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. Okay, common imputation. The key word here is the little word shall, S-H-A-L-L. it shall be imputed. And that is the Greek word mellow. It is a present tense, it's active, which means it was the continuous, whatever that word means, which I'll tell you in a second, it was the continuous action of Abraham. And the word mellow means to expect. Abraham, in hearing the gospel, the gospel was preached to him, we're told that in Galatians. And in relationship to that, it was the continuous expectation of Abraham that righteousness would be imputed others just like to himself. Abraham lived and died expecting that God's representative would bring in a righteousness that God would impute. Now, some say there's no occasion for that. It doesn't matter what you believe about when it was. So it gives people all kinds of license. Some say it happened when God elected. Some say it happened when you believe. Some say it happens when you do works. Some say it happens every time you take the Lord's elements of the Lord's table. It's imputed to you every time. But it seems to me, and this is my position, is that Paul tells us when and where and gives us the occasion. And he explains that from verse 12 down through verse 19. And that's the whole movement of this passage to tell us how it was done, what was done, when it was done. Just like sin was imputed in connection with the first Adam's disobedience, righteousness was imputed in connection with the obedience of the last Adam. That's what he's telling us. Is there an occasion for it? Or does it make no difference? I say it does make a difference. It tells us what happened at the cross and the vitality of it to us. is that's when he declared his people righteous. Abraham and Zacchaeus had a common imputation. Paul was there, Elijah was there, Isaiah was there, and now through these 20 centuries for his people, we are there. We're there with Him and the common imputation, common promise, common election, common propitiation, common imputation, and a common grace. I don't have time to go through all the places where grace is shown, but eight times in this passage from 324 through 521, you see the word grace. So just look at 521. because he sums all of what he's been talking about up with this word, grace. So that sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace, grace. What a beautiful word. God's unmerited, undeserved, unsought, saving favor conditioned exclusively on Christ's obedience unto death. Grace, common grace, the same grace that saved Abraham saved Zacchaeus. One more thing, a common faith. By necessity, there is a unique relationship between grace and faith because the two of them exclude man's will and man's works. Faith is not the means to obtain grace. Faith is the gift of God to see justification, imputation, salvation by grace alone. You have to ask yourself, what was Abraham's faith? What did Abraham believe? We're not left in darkness, are we? So go back with me, please, to the place of our reading in John 8. And we're told what Abraham believed, John 8. This is a verse you ought to have underlined in your Bible. Very important for doctrinal truth. Verse 56, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad. Now there's a word there in the two phrases that's repeated. Do you see it? What is the word that's repeated there? I'm going to give you a second to look at it. Look at the two phrases. The first one is, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. That's the first phrase. The second one, he saw it and was glad. What's the word that's repeated? What about the word see? The word see. The first time, first time, it's C, but this time it's saw, but it's still the same word. It comes from the Greek word haraho, and it means to see. This is in a different tense, it's second aorist, if I remember correctly, and that's idon, but it doesn't matter, both of them are the same word. So whenever you see, I've told you this for all these many years, whenever you see a word repeated in a verse or a phrase, that means it's important, right? Very important. So what did Abraham do? What was his faith? He saw, Jesus said, my day, means he saw me. He saw my day, he saw me coming, saw what I was going to do. He saw it, and he was what? He was glad. He rejoiced, and he was glad about it. He saw my day, why was he glad about it? Well, his sin was going to be put away. He was going to be justified. There was going to be a righteousness to be imputed to him. And he continuously believed, we've already seen, that it would not only be for him, it would be for all those that believed, Jews or Gentiles. We have a common faith, just like Abraham. He looked forward to it, what do we do? We look back upon it, same thing, go. What is faith? It's not appropriating what Jesus did, it's seeing what Jesus did. That's what it is, it's seeing. But when you take faith and you make it a condition to have, you've turned it into a work. But when you understand that faith is what the Bible says it is, seeing, ah, there you have a different perspective altogether. That's what grace is. I'll read verse 10 and then I'll stop. So I'm in Luke 19 and verse 10. come from heaven to earth, come to Jericho, come for Zacchaeus, come to this house. The Son of Man has come to seek, not to wait to see who will come, not to make an opportunity for people to come, but He's come to seek, like the shepherd seeks the sheep. He's come to seek and to save. Now did he do it? Did he save? I say he did. He didn't just make an opportunity. He didn't just earn a ground. I read after sovereign grace men, they like to talk about a ground. Bible doesn't use such language as a ground. He came to seek and to save. What they think is a ground, I think of as salvation. That's where I begin. I begin right there with that justification, that salvation. that, not he who, but that which was lost. Why does he say that? That race, that elect people, that host that God placed his election upon, that elect multitude came to seek and to save that which was lost. And Zacchaeus was one of them. Now, here's what we've seen. Let me sum it up for you. We have seen the total and spiritual inability of man. If you've missed that, then you've missed chapter 18 and 19. And if you think it's just partial, you have missed it. It's total spiritual inability. We have also seen the effectual call of grace, and we have seen the common salvation that saved Abraham and Zacchaeus. And Luke, who's writing this, Luke knew about this, and Peter and Paul and the rest. God's sheep can rejoice in that kind of a salvation.