Wednesday, May 18, 2022 PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Begin reading in verse 31. Luke chapter 18, beginning in verse 31, let's pray.

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Father, I thank you for the day. Thank you for the meal, the provision that you have made in our lives.

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I pray that you would help us to now be nourished by the truths of your word.

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I pray that you would give us understanding of the text, an appreciation for your truth, and help us to worship and give praise to your

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Son Jesus Christ as he teaches us and reveals your word to us through your

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Holy Spirit. We pray these things for the sake of Christ. Amen. All right,

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Luke chapter 18, beginning in verse 31. Then he took the twelve aside and said to them,

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Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the

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Son of Man will be accomplished. For he will be delivered to the

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Gentiles, and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon.

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They will scourge him and kill him, and the third day he will rise again.

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But they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken.

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Then it happened, as he was coming near Jericho, that a certain blind man sat by the road begging, and hearing a multitude passing by, he asked what it meant.

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So they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, and he cried out, saying,

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Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. Then those who went before warned him that he should be quiet, but he cried out all the more,

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Son of David, have mercy on me. So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought to him.

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And when he had come near, he asked him, saying, What do you want me to do for you?

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He said, Lord, that I may receive my sight. Then Jesus said to him,

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Receive your sight. Your faith has made you well. And immediately he received his sight, and followed him, glorifying

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God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.

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Then Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. Now behold, there was a man named

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Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich.

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And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not because of the crowd, for he was of short stature.

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So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was going to pass that way.

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And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him, and said to him, Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today

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I must stay at your house. So he made haste and came down, and received him joyfully.

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But when they saw it, they all complained, saying, He has gone to be a guest with a man who was a sinner.

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Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor, and if I have taken anything from anyone by a false accusation,

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I restore fourfold. And Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham.

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For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

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So I thought it'd be helpful to, in our reading of this passage, to note, first of all, the ways that Jesus is described.

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His names, his titles, and so on. So, beginning back in verse 31 and reading through, how is

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Jesus described? What are his titles, his names, descriptions, and so on?

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So we have the title, Son of Man, okay?

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Now what else? Yes, as they were explaining to the blind man who it was that garnered such a crowd, okay?

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Interesting that he hears that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by, and the blind man identifies him as Son of David.

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Yes, Lord. Remember, that was the title that David used of his son,

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Jesus quipped. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

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And then Jesus asked the Sadducees, if David then being his, if then the

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Lord is, how does he put it, if then if it's his son, then how does he reference him as Lord? And they stopped asking him questions after that.

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Okay, so what else do we have? Any new descriptions or maybe a repeat?

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Yes. Say it again?

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And he calls Zacchaeus a son of Abraham, doesn't he? Yeah, a lot of names and titles running around.

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There's one description that we're missing. No, we've got that twice, and that's a very important one.

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That's okay, that's the important one. But I don't know if we can see that.

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Yes, guest of sinners, right?

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And this is what you call a bit of a chiasm in the story.

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And we're to learn something about the parallels, aren't we? On the outer portions of these three passages, the first being shorter, and Jesus describing to his disciples what they're up to and traveling to Jerusalem, that all the things that were said by the prophets concerning the

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Son of Man must be fulfilled. Namely, that he must suffer and die and be raised from the dead.

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And they didn't get what he was saying. But Jesus is describing what must take place according to the scriptures concerning the

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Son of Man. And we'll come back to that in a moment. But given that the title shows up again at the end of this series, what does he say there?

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For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

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So how does the Son of Man seek and save that which was lost? Well, he's already explained what the

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Son of Man came to do. To suffer and die and be raised again. So we are meant to connect those together.

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That in Christ's death and resurrection, he seeks and saves those who are lost.

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So we're to understand that. Now, Jesus is doing a lot of interpretation of the

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Old Testament all at once when he's talking to his disciples and he says, you know, all the things that were written by the prophets.

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Well, that's a lot. I don't know if you've ever listened to a sermon that surveyed some of those prophecies, or perhaps read a book that listed out the prophecies about Christ in the

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Old Testament and how they were fulfilled. Or maybe listened to someone in a debate or an apologist speak about the hundreds and low even more than a thousand different prophecies that were fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.

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But when Jesus says all that was written in the prophets concerning the

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Son of Man, we got a in the

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Old Testament that says that the Messiah is the Son of Man.

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And Jesus isn't saying, you know, here, well, precisely Daniel 7 must be fulfilled.

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He's identifying the Son of Man with those other names of Messiah, right?

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So when there was a prophecy about Immanuel, or there was a there was a prophet about the branch from the, you know, there was a there was a shoot coming off of Jesse and there was a branch called the

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Lord is our righteousness. And, you know, all of these different prophecies in the

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Old Testament, Jesus is saying all those are pertaining to the Son of Man. The Son of Man, particularly, he was prophesied of in Daniel chapter 7 as inheriting an everlasting dominion.

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He's saying, and we go to Jerusalem so that all those prophecies will be fulfilled concerning the

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Son of Man. Meaning, Jesus is expecting that through his suffering and his death and his resurrection, that he will receive that everlasting dominion.

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And indeed, he says that is exactly what happened after he rose from the dead. He said, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. That's exactly what happened.

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And by his work, he seeks and saves those who are lost. Now, we see a lot of about the grace of God.

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We see a lot about the the power and the authority of who Christ is as Savior.

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We also see the grace of God at work in Jesus being our Savior. Jesus of Nazareth is a name, a description of Christ that completely roots him in our world.

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Not only is he divine, but he is man of very man. Jesus, born of Mary, who was providentially delivered by warning given to Joseph, who took

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Mary and the child down to Egypt to escape the murderous wrath of Herod.

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And returning from Egypt after the death of Herod the Great, they hear that Herod's son is reigning, and so they flee to Nazareth, where Joseph had originally traveled down with Mary from.

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They go back to Nazareth, a one -well town, very small.

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It was called a one -well town, and it was off the main path, meaning that if you took the road, if you took the road off the main path towards Nazareth, that was your only destination.

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There wasn't anything past it. Okay, it was a dead -end town out in Galilee.

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Jesus of Nazareth, that's where he grew up. That's where he grew up, the son of Joseph the Carpenter. And notice how it sits in parallel with this guest of sinners.

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We are reminded of Jesus's lowliness, his humility, his bearing with the the frame of those who came to seek and to save.

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And Zacchaeus is a great, notorious sinner, and he goes and eats with them.

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At the heart of it, we have the story of the blind man who, upon hearing about Jesus of Nazareth walking past him, and all the crowd was the giveaway for the blind man to know that something big was happening, he hears that Jesus of Nazareth is coming by.

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And obviously, he has heard the stories, and he is convinced that this

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Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the Messiah, and so he calls upon Jesus with this messianic name,

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Son of David. Now, this too,

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Jesus would have this in mind when he says the Son of Man. He would have all in mind, all those prophecies, when he says that all the prophets must be fulfilled, all the prophecies must be fulfilled concerning the

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Son of Man. He would also be thinking about all the prophecies about Son of David. The Son of David, who was promised to come and sit upon David's throne, establishing a new covenant in which the law of God would be written upon the hearts of the people, rather than external tablets of stone, that in the new covenant no longer would every member say to one another, you know, fear the

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Lord, know the Lord, but the law of God would be written internally upon their hearts. As Jesus said in Nicodemus, you must be born again.

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You must be born again if you're going to see the kingdom of God. If you're gonna be a part of the new covenant, you must be born again.

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So these are the identified, and we see how it fits within the context of what is going on around it.

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Now recall that just prior to Jesus telling his disciples what they were up to going to Jerusalem, prior to this encounter with the blind man, and prior to Jesus dealing with Zacchaeus, there was a story, there was a story in which we heard that a rich man would have trouble going to heaven, right?

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Jesus said how difficult it would be for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

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Easier for a camel to go for the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven. And the disciples are all in up in arms in despair.

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Oh, well then who can be saved? Yeah, only by the power of God. Only by the power of God.

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Well, now all of a sudden we're reading about Zacchaeus, a rich man who enters the kingdom of heaven. You see, with God all things possible.

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So you consider those kind of on the outskirts, and they're in relationship to one another, those two stories.

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But so also when you move a little bit further in to the heart of it, after Jesus tells his disciples, look, the

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Son of Man has to go and be suffer, it has to suffer, and he must die, and must be raised again. And this is all according to what the

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Prophet said. It says in verse 34 that his disciples understood none of these things. Watch this, it says, this saying was hidden from them.

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Do you see how they were passive in that? Were they distracting one another with useless debates?

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Were they just being stubborn? No, the saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken.

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Well, are they ever going to figure it out? Yes, of course they will. God will reveal that to them.

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Remember that when Peter finally hit the bullseye and all the things that he ever said, he just said stuff all the time, all the time, just spouting off.

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And he finally hit bullseye and said the exact right thing at the exact right moment. I mean, eventually it's going to work, right?

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You just keep talking, eventually you'll get apples of gold and settings of silver. If you just keep on talking, eventually it'll be just right.

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Saturation, right? And he said of Jesus, you are the

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Christ, the Son of the Living God. Jesus said to him, this was revealed to you by your

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Father in heaven. Yeah, how in the world do you even know that, Peter? How did you even get that right?

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It was because God revealed it to you. So, we see the importance of, they're not going to see and understand unless God, by his power, reveals it to them.

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Which, again, parallels very nicely with the story about a blind man who can't see.

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But it's kind of in reverse, because the disciples have eyesight, physical eyesight, and they can see

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Jesus just fine traveling on the road from Damascus to Jerusalem.

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But they can't see, at this moment, exactly who he is as the one being promised by the prophets.

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The blind man, however, he can't see the crowd and Jesus.

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He just hears. But he does see, by faith, who this is.

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And then Jesus says, your faith, your faith has made you well.

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It wasn't this man's stalwart dependability, staying by the side of the road, his persistence and annoyances to the crowd, being able to stand up against those who were trying to shame him into being quiet.

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It wasn't simply the evidence of his faith. It was his faith that made him well.

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He believed that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Son of David. And Christ heals him and says, your faith has made you well.

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Does anybody else find it curious that when the blind man makes his big old ruckus, and obviously he's blind, how many people are trying to tell him to be quiet, and he's not even looking at them, and how you're going to have to get him and bring him over to Jesus.

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Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought to him. Jesus knows he's blind. And then he asks, what do you want me to do for you?

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Isn't that funny? He requests that the man make his request.

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This, in contrast to Zacchaeus, who also wanted to see

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Jesus, was excited about Jesus, just like the blind man was excited. And like the blind man couldn't see him,

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Zacchaeus couldn't see him either because Zacchaeus was short. But he climbs a tree. Yes, laying hold of the sycamore branch.

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Very good. So he could see Jesus. Now Jesus does not make a request of Zacchaeus to make a request.

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Zacchaeus would not have said anything. Zacchaeus wouldn't have asked for anything. He would have certainly not invited

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Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of David, into his own home. He knows better than that.

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So he's not going to be able to bring Jesus of Nazareth into his home.

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So Jesus simply just commands him. Do you see how Jesus handles the blind man, and how he handles

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Zacchaeus? You see how he handles them differently? But in those cases, what is he doing but seeking and saving the lost?

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And so he says, I must stay at your house. So he made haste and came down and received him joyfully.

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The blind man had the faith he had in Jesus of Nazareth.

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He was not quiet. He knew that he lived based on the generosity of others, and so he had better stay in their good favor and not annoy them, or else he wouldn't be able to get any bread for a while.

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That didn't bother him. He was going to cry out no matter what. We see his faith in action, and we see

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Zacchaeus' faith in action. It's like,

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I'm going to be generous. Notice he did not pull some sort of hypocrisy trying to look good.

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He doesn't virtue signal here, Ananias and Sapphira. I'm going to give all this portion to the poor, and then only give some.

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Zacchaeus is free in his faith to give half. That's what he wanted to give in his joy in the

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Lord, so he did. And he wanted to make things right if he had cheated anybody. And so you see his faith at work as well, and Jesus rejoices.

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Today salvation has come to this house because he also is a son of Abraham. He would not identify everybody that way.

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He would have identified some people as the spawn of Satan. They would claim of themselves that they were children of Abraham, and Jesus called them

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Satan. Later on he called him a synagogue of Satan. But he says this one, this one's a true son of Abraham.

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Why? Because he's a man of faith. It's like Galatians says. You're of faith and you're of the seed of Abraham.

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For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

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So in our reflection about the way that these stories hang together, we certainly see that in the light of who

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Christ is, that there is an impact that happens upon those who are saved, those who rejoice in these names and titles of Christ and believe upon him, that there is an impact and evidence of that faith in their lives.

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And we also see that that comes by the grace of God. It's hidden from us unless it's revealed to us, and when it's revealed to us there's an impact in our lives.

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Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost, especially in light of who was just featured, the likes of Zacchaeus and a blind man.

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Any thoughts or questions about the text tonight? You know, who knows how precise he's being.

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You know, obviously he's rejoicing, giving credit to, giving credit to God.

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He believes that Jesus is the Son of David. He believes that he has the authority to heal him.

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He believes that Jesus is his Savior. Having been healed, he glorifies

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God, gives the praise and glory to God. Others would claim that Jesus did his healing work by the power of Beelzebul.

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This man gives glory to God for the healing. Notice that all the people are pretty impressed when

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Jesus heals the blind man. That's cool. But when Jesus goes to hang out with Zacchaeus, they all put up a big fuss.

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Yes sir? Spurgeon and the short preacher? Please do.