Luke 19:1-10

PDF Manuscript: Face to Face - The Man in the Tree

What hope is there for those who have everything but still lack something? Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth-century French philosopher and mathematician, said that people have a trace of happiness, but it's only a trace of the original happiness that the first human beings had. We've lost true and full happiness. No person is as happy as they were created to be. Pascal describes this as the "infinite abyss," a longing that only God can satisfy.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a man last November. I went to Pennsylvania to pick up a car I was buying. The salesman was kind enough to get me from the airport. During our ride to the dealership, we talked about a number of things, one of them being his health. He’s on dialysis, waiting and hoping for a kidney transplant. Come to find out that until he got sick, he owned several dealerships. Then he said this: “I made an incredible amount of money. But none of that matters anymore.” What hope is there for those who have everything but still lack something? That brings us to an encounter Jesus had with a man named Zaccheus, found in Luke 19.

One of the reasons we’ve been looking at various encounters Jesus had in the gospels is simply to see the diversity of people that Jesus touched and changed. Because whoever you are, whatever your background is, whatever baggage you carry, there is redemption for you in Christ Jesus. So, whether it’s a blind man ostracized for his impairment, a paralyzed man who didn’t realize his greatest need was to be forgiven, a religious man who needed just as much grace, or a woman whose life was characterized by broken relationships—everyone can have a new beginning in Christ.