Inside-Out Change

Well, good morning everybody and my name is René, one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. It is super great to have you here on a real special weekend. I also want to add my voice to Adrian's and yours and say happy Veterans Day.

And specifically I want to point out something that you might have seen yesterday. One of our own TLCers, Bob Bowman, a 96 year old World War II Veteran was on the front page of the newspaper yesterday. I love this guy. Every single 9am service, Bob sits right there front row center and he is one of the most encouraging guys that I know. And so to Bob and to all the Veterans one more time, let's just thank them for their service. Phenomenal. We appreciate you guys. Thank you so much.

Hey, grab the message notes that look like this in your bulletins as we continue our richer life series. This is a series on living generously and all through this series, people have been doing generosity projects, such cool stuff, helping the homeless, inviting their neighbors over, figuring out ways to get to know people better, doing service projects around the community.

And you know what I'd love to do in two weeks, that's the weekend after Thanksgiving, that's the weekend we wrap up this whole series. I would love to share some of your stories. So please send them to me. Pictures, videos, stuff you've learned through this series, how it's impacted your life and your neighborhood. You can email them to my email, which is R E N E René at TLC dot O R G René at TLC dot org.

Whether you're here live joining us, watching us on Facebook live, watching us on the website, on our app. We would love to hear wherever you're at, how this has impacted your life. Also that same weekend in just two weeks, we are going to reveal the total pledges received for 2020 vision phase two. We have just one week to go in our pledge period.

And I want to say something. I'm very well aware that there's basically two extremes represented in this room right now. Our teenage son, David, he's 19 and he told me, dad, every single weekend for a month you have been talking about this. We get it. We know all about it. Right. On the other hand, one of my own staff members who is here every single weekend told me just this week, you know, I don't really know what's going on with 2020 at all. What are the dates again? I'm not going to say his name, but his initials are Paul Spurlock. Oops.

And so just in case you missed it, let me just fill in some blanks. Here's what this is all about. We hope to raise enough in pledges by next weekend for one million pounds of food for second harvest food bank and enough to refurbish a building into a church in a very tough neighborhood in Naples, Italy, gang infested, and to refurbish our camp, Camp Hammer.

And the biggest component will be our first ever college ministry building. You see details on the back of your message notes. It'll be right next to Cabrillo College on the far part of the parking lot, visible from all over campus. And here's why we want to do this. The millennial and the young professional generation is the first generation in United States history where the majority have no church background.

And of those with church background, half will leave the faith by the time they finish college. So we'd like to create what we call a front porch ministry, a coffee house, a counter for sandwiches, with a beautiful big space for college ministry right in our parking lot, as close as we can get to Cabrillo College, a place to hang out to say, "Let's grab a cup of coffee, get to know one another."

And we're not pioneering the idea that a coffee house and a place to get some food would be a great outreach to young people. Another church in town that we love, Vintage Faith, has a great coffee shop, the Abbey, that does this very thing. It brings in young people, our friends at Bayside Church up near Sacramento, they've got coffee shops in three locations, three churches with coffee shops, and they say they bring in so many young families with young children.

Even the Museum of Art and History in downtown Santa Cruz, they were facing a similar problem. They were only getting senior citizens and little kids on field trips into the museum, no millennials. Well, they recently opened Abbott Square, which is a spot with coffee, with food, downtown, and the director Nina Simon told me, "In just the first few months since it opened, we've seen significant increases in millennial and young professionals visiting the museum." And I really believe that same dynamic will happen here. Really, it's happening already.

The Hub, which is our weekly Thursday night gathering for college age and young professional adults, it is bursting. And here is just a sample. Here's what one of the young adults there said when we interviewed her this past week about the new building. Watch this. I was a college student very recently, and I can remember so many occasions where I was in between classes, looking for somewhere someplace quiet to sit down, read a book, get ready for an exam, or just have a little bit of coffee and some quiet space between classes.

And a coffee shop is the perfect place for that, and it's a perfect place for people to get their fit in the door at Twin Lakes, just to... That can be their first point of contact with the church. The Hub has biblical hospitality nailed. I don't feel like I have to do anything or be anything different to fit in there. I can come however I am, enjoying really good fellowship. I've met really great friends there. One of my favorite things to look forward to at the end of the week.

In the book of Luke, it's basically a series of meals that Jesus has with people. It's like Jesus eating dinner, Jesus eating dinner. And I feel like if those things were happening in like 2017, it'd be like Jesus having coffee and talking about, I don't know, telling a parable, or just, I don't know, that's where the conversations about life seem to happen these days.

We're making an effort to step into that need and do whatever we can to give them that space. And I think if we do that prayerfully, then we'll see a lot of young people coming to Christ. I really, really agree with her. And here's what I'd like to suggest that you do in this last week. Flip your sermon notes over to page three, where it says 2020 Vision, phase two.

Before next weekend, please first learn about these projects if you haven't done it already. Pick up a brochure. If you don't have one yet, there are these orange brochures. You can read these things in 10 minutes. Doesn't take long. You can pick one up in the lobby, study it, or you can go online to TLC.org, and you can watch a video that Mark and I filmed about this.

Second, pray about how you can participate. And then bring your completed pledge card with you next weekend. Now, what do I mean, excuse me, by pledge card? Well, take out this pledge card. There's one in the bulletins that's in this envelope that looks like this, and you can just slip it out. There's also some of these in the pews in front of you. And just take a look at it. Open it up.

If you decide you want to be a part of this, you can just fill this part out, put your name and contact info, and then the total amount that you're pledging over the next four years. Now, some people have asked me, what about phase one pledges? Those went from Thanksgiving four years ago to Thanksgiving weekend, this coming weekend, four years later. And so phase two pledges would start the weekend after Thanksgiving and continue for the next four years.

So if you'd like to continue a pledge from phase one, just check that box where it says that, but then right in the space below the total amount of the pledge that you will be giving over the next four years. In fact, flip your cards over. You can see how on the back there's a breakdown to help you figure out what a four-year pledge commitment would look like. And you can see how it adds up.

Just giving a 4.95 latte a day adds up to about five grand over four years. It's absolutely amazing how when we all give sacrificially what we can, stuff gets done. Now, getting these pledge cards here by next weekend is super important because we can't read your minds. We don't know what people are willing to do. And the only way we can decide two days later, Tuesday following next weekend when we have our next church board meeting, whether or not to go ahead with these projects is by seeing the total amount pledged.

So please bring those in by next weekend. And then in two weeks, the total is revealed the weekend after Thanksgiving. Come and find out what God did through you. This is going to be historic. So thank you for listening. Please pray. You know, we don't talk about money a lot here at Twin Lakes Church, but every once in a while, a dozen times maybe in our 127-year history, they have been these historic moments that we've been at as a church.

So I really appreciate your attention. And please, please pray about this. All right, let's dive into the message. Christmas is coming soon. We're almost to Thanksgiving, kind of the unofficial kickoff of the Christmas season. And I got to tell you, one of my favorite Christmas stories is Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Quick show of hands, how many of you love A Christmas Carol, at least one version of it? It just, it's so captivating. And you might recall that as the story opens, Ebenezer Scrooge is just a miser. And you may have seen it in a variety of forms, maybe as a play or maybe as a movie, but that means you may have missed the literary description of Scrooge. This is the way Charles Dickens describes Ebenezer Scrooge at the beginning of the story.

He was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. Isn't that great? That's writing right there. But then, a supernatural visit happens one night that changes everything. And we'll get there. But first, I want to look at a character in the Bible very much like Scrooge, a wrenching, clutching, covetous old sinner. The big difference is he's not scared into change, he's loved into change.

This is a great story. I call today's message Inside Out Change, and we're in one of my favorite parts of all the gospels today, Luke 19:1–10. Now, as we get ready to dig into this, to help you apply this to your own life, check this out. Somebody has said there are five typical ways that we tend to judge our value in American society. Which one of these five do you tend toward?

Number one, some of us, if we're honest, it's our appearance, right? How do I look today? Do I look sharp? Am I dressed okay? Do I look contemporary? Here's the problem. Our appearance doesn't last, right? No matter how good you started out in your prime, it inevitably goes downhill, right? Let's just be honest, how many of you feel like you are living examples of this right now? Just raise your hand. How many of you are sitting next to somebody who is a living example of this? Don't raise your hand.

Then second, some people judge their worth by the approval of others, right? How well am I liked? And the problem is you're always going to be going around thinking what will other people think? What will they think of the way I look? What will they think of the way I say? How I act? That's just exhausting and you're going to get devastated every single time you get criticized. It's just a recipe for misery.

And then third, there's achievements. And if I'm honest, I try to be when I preach, this is the one that I tend toward. It really is. If I get a lot of things done in a day, I feel like it's been a good day. And if I don't get a lot of things on my to-do list checked off, I'm upset. The problem is judging your worth based on your achievement leads to workaholism and all kinds of other bad stressful stuff.

Then fourth, there's affluence, right? When my net worth equals my self-worth, again, problem, it can all vanish so quickly. Now, in places like Santa Cruz, some people would say, "Oh, I don't judge myself on these superficial values. I judge myself based on my artistry," right? If I have made an artistic contribution, but again, so elusive, right? Tastes change, you know, recognition is hard to get, your abilities change.

In fact, look at every single one of these. They are all so elusive, so ephemeral, so hard to grasp and keep. So the question is really, how can I build my self-worth on something that lasts, something that's solid, right? Because if you build your self-worth, if you're really honest on one or more of these things, it's just you're going to feel up and down and up and down and up and down all the time. Can you build your sense of worth on something more stable?

No, let's close in a word of prayer. No, yes, you can. And I want to recommend a solution to that problem. And that's what the Bible story we're going to look at today is all about. If you get what we are going to look at today, it's going to set you free from being a slave to these things. There's nothing bad about these things, of course, that's not what I'm saying. But if you're a slave to them, you're going to go through life being unstable and unsatisfied.

And if you understand what we're saying today, you're not going to be a slave to these things any longer, and you are going to find that you have a truly rich life. So let me tell you the story as it's told us in the Bible with a little commentary so you can picture it, all right? And then we're going to apply it to our own lives starting in verse 1 of Luke 19. It says, "Jesus entered Jericho and he was passing through."

Now, just stop there for a second so you can actually picture Jericho. Here's a picture of modern Jericho on the screen. It actually looks a lot like Palm Springs. It's known for its date orchard industry today, and it was in the ancient world as well. It actually has a gondola that takes you up to a steep mountain behind it, just like Palm Springs does. And in Jesus' day, it was a resort for the super rich in the Roman province of Judea. King Herod had one of his lavish winter palaces there. You can go see the ruins.

So the wealthy people lived in Jericho like the man we're about to meet. Verse 2, "A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and he was wealthy." Now, these words used to describe him would have just been pregnant with meaning back in those days, but we need to explore them just a little bit. It says, "He's a tax collector." Now, probably this is not a super popular gig even today, but do you remember this list of the most despised jobs in ancient Judea that we looked at back in the Jesus Journey series?

Tied for number five was physicians and butchers, because they were basically seen as the same thing in those days. Number four was dung collector. I can kind of see that. Number three was money lender. The number two worst job in ancient Judea was pigeon trainer. Why? Well, in those days, the cheapest way to gamble was pigeon races. People would bet on pigeon races and pigeon trainers were widely considered to be corrupt. They'd throw races and so on for a bribe.

And the number one most despised occupation in those days was, guess what? Tax collector. Absolutely the worst of the worst. Why? Well, the way tax collection worked in those days was this. The Roman government would always hire local collaborators in whatever province they had taken over to collect the taxes. And all the Roman government cared about was, you give us our cut, our share, the base tax, and the way you got paid as a tax collector was you added a margin on top of that.

Kind of like adding the retail margin to wholesale. And that was your profit. That was your salary. And they didn't care how much you could ask for whatever you thought you needed to cover your expenses and to feather your own nest. So tax collectors charged these exorbitant rates and they had the power of the Roman soldiers marching with them when they went to collect taxes. They could confiscate your house. They could throw you in prison. They could kick you out of a house. They could take all your possessions if they thought they needed to sell them to get what they had coming to them.

So tax collection was, they were just loathed. They were seen as thieves and they were seen as traitors to the Roman government. Now, it says Zacchaeus was, what kind of a tax collector? A chief tax collector. That means he was the top of this scam. He was the top of the pyramid scheme. He was the worst of the worst. He was one of the organizers of this universally loathed system. All right. You got that?

Then Luke adds a funny little detail. He says his name was Zacchaeus. And that's from a Hebrew root. The name means, are you ready for this? Righteous or pure one? I doubt that anybody in years had ever called Zacchaeus his name without it just dripping with heavy sarcasm. They probably called him a lot of other things. And it says he was short. Now, watch this. The Greek phrase that's actually used to describe him here is "Helichia Mikros." Now, Mikros is the Greek word from which we get our English word. What would you guess? Micro.

He was a micro man. That's what it's saying here. And he probably really was. That same, it could mean he was just short, but that same phrase is the way in Greek literature of the time that genetically small people were referred to. Do you see what I'm saying? He was what we would call today a little person, very likely. Can you imagine the names he was called as a child? In those days, there was a lot, a lot of prejudice against people who were small. They were seen as being cursed by the gods and the pagan world and very, very marginalized even in the Roman province of Judea.

And this is just conjecture, but I think this may have been one of the reasons that he even becomes a tax collector. Kind of like, "I'll show those people." I mean, think back in all those five ways that we often seek approval. Appearance. Well, people made fun of his appearance. Approval. Everybody hates him. His achievement is seen as treason. His work is certainly not artistic. He's striking out on everything, so he is totally focused on the only one left, which is what? Affluence. And he is doing super well. It says he is wealthy, but apparently unhappy, because he hears that Jesus is coming through town and he's a celebrity, so it's a parade.

And he goes to see Jesus Christ, but Zacchaeus is unable to see over the crowds being short. And so verse 4, "So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore fig tree to see him since Jesus was coming that way." Not a fig tree, not a sycamore tree, a sycamore fig tree. And let me show you what this species looks like. We saw one of these in Africa. The branches spread out horizontally over the road. Do you see that? So in this story, Zacchaeus is probably not just higher than the crowd. He's very likely on a branch that spreads out over the road.

So picture that when you see the rest of verse 4. When Jesus reached the spot where Zacchaeus was, he looked up. Jesus makes eye contact and stops the parade. And everybody's going, "Whoa, he's looking at that guy. Look at it. Zacchaeus hanging from a branch like a little kid. Is Jesus gonna laugh at him? Is Jesus gonna call him out? For how he has really ruined our lives?"

Let me ask you a question. How many of you, just a quick show of hands, have ever had that weird electric moment when you made eye contact with a celebrity? Have any of you ever experienced that? Eye contact with somebody that you saw like in the news or in the movies or something. Let me tell you about our little story. Many years ago, Lori and I were backpacking through Europe. And in London, we were right next to a theater one night when the police put up barricades. So we thought, "Oh, probably something's gonna happen." And we stood with our arms right over the barricade to see what was going to happen. It's right next to the door to the theater.

And a few minutes later, out walks Princess Diana. And she stops. I'm, you know, as close to her as I am to that music stand right there. She walks past me, then she stops and looks over her shoulder and makes eye contact with me. Me. That was a little weird, I gotta tell you. And we didn't have a camera with us, but the next morning, the London papers caught that moment on film. We bought the paper. This is it. In this picture, the person she's looking at is me. I kid you not. My brush with fame right there.

Now, what if Diana had stopped and said, "René, René Schlepfer, cheerio," or whatever it is British royalty says, "I'm coming to your youth hostel room right now. Let's hang out." You know, can you imagine? Well, that's what happens to Zacchaeus. The moment is electric. Jesus stops, looks up, "Zacchaeus." And remember what his name means? Pure one. Righteous one. My guess is this is the first time in a long time he has heard his own name, not with irony or sarcasm, but pronounced with love. Right?

And watch this. Jesus says to Zacchaeus, "Come down immediately. I'm gonna stay at your house today." What? Now, going over to somebody's house, hanging out, staying overnight, having dinner with them, in that culture that was even more of a sign of friendship, right, than it was in our culture. By doing this, Jesus is telling everyone who's watching, who adores him but hates Zacchaeus, "Hey everyone, Zacchaeus is my friend. Yeah, we're gonna hang out together right now. Hey Zacchaeus, come on down. I love you, man." Can you imagine that? And Zacchaeus is just, "Wow, this is amazing."

Verse 6, "So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly." But check this out. Do the people, do the crowds go, "Yay, Jesus. He's so nice to sinners." No, all the people saw this and began to mutter. He has gone to be the guest of a sinner. And I love the word that the writer of this Luke uses for mutter because in the Greek it's an onomatopoetic word. Do you remember what that means from English? Onomatopoetic? That's a word that sounds like what it signifies. In this case, for example, the word is diago guzzo. Diago guzzo. You know, the root actually is go guzzo, go guzzo. That's Greek for grumbling or murmuring. And that's what it sounded like. Go guzzo, go guzzo.

In fact, let's try an experiment. Everybody here say go guzzo five times in a row here. Let's go, go. See, that's what it sounded like right there. And why are they mumbling like this? They do not like this. Why? Don't be too hard on these people. Zacchaeus had ripped them off. Probably all of these people either knew somebody or had experienced this themselves. Zacchaeus had confiscated their property, had repossessed homes, had kicked them out, had put themselves or somebody they knew in a debtor's prison to pay their taxes. He was a bad guy.

And now without calling himself out, what they were hoping probably was Jesus says, "Whoa, stop the parade." Zacchaeus, you're the worst man in town. Do you know what you have done? Do you realize how you have made these people feel? And Jesus doesn't do that. He says, "Hey, let's hang out." And they're, "What?" Imagine this. Who in your life, if you heard that they're going to some church and they're saved and they love the Lord and they're just all, "Yeah, I love Jesus." Who would you go, "Uh-uh. Who has ripped you off? Who has hurt you? Who has betrayed you? Who divorced you? Who fired you? Who stabbed you in the back?"

And if you looked over and saw them just like worshiping the Lord, you'd go, "Uh, I'm pretty uncomfortable with that." Especially since I haven't witnessed anybody calling them out for their bad behavior. Because notice, Jesus does not call Zacchaeus out, not in front of this crowd at least. I can understand why they would feel that way, can't you? But now watch this. Between verses seven and eight, there's probably several hours later at dinner and Jesus has been talking with Zacchaeus in private.

And we don't know what transpired, but clearly Zacchaeus' imagination has been captured because look at what happens at the end of dinner. Verse eight, "But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, 'Look, Lord.'" Press pause, he says, "Lord," and that's big. You know, the shortest doctrinal statement in the Bible is this three-word sentence, "Jesus is Lord." Christians were thrown to the lions for saying, "Jesus is Lord." Because in those days, Caesar wanted everybody to say, "Caesar is Lord." And when Christians said, "No, Caesar, Caesar, but Jesus is Lord," that means above all kings, above all Caesars, above all people, above all kingdoms, above all influences, Jesus Christ above all.

And I think Zacchaeus here has made that switch. He had served Caesar, he had loved money, now he serves Jesus, and he loves Jesus, and he belongs to Jesus above all. Why? Because Jesus had publicly berated and browbeaten him to the point of repentance. No, because of his love. And everything changes. He says, "Look, Lord, look, Lord." You see that? Almost a childlike, "Check this out. Here and now, I give half my possessions to the poor, and if I've cheated anybody out of anything, I'll pay back four times the amount."

We're going to look at this in detail in just a second, but can you sense the childlike joy? And then Jesus said to him, "Today, salvation has come to this house." Because this man too is a son of Abraham. Salvation has come, not salvation has begun. It's done. Zacchaeus has made the turn. There's been a change in him like an Ebenezer scrooge because of Jesus' love. Zacchaeus loves because he sees how Jesus sees him. It's a wonderful story, and before we get to the last verse, which reveals the point of this story, page two, three points for you and me to take home today.

Number one is this. No matter how small I feel, Jesus sees me. Zacchaeus was small, literally, but Jesus doesn't overlook him. And listen, you may feel like everybody looks down on you. Nobody notices you, but Jesus sees you. In fact, listen, this morning, if you're out on a limb, Jesus sees you and says, "Hey, let's spend some time together."

Second point, no matter what others say, Jesus values me. The crowd hated Zacchaeus, but Jesus stops and says, "Hey, pure one," and then calls Zacchaeus a true son of Abraham. That means a man of faith. And you see, this is what Jesus does still today. Listen, like Zacchaeus, you may have heard something like, "You'll never amount to anything," or "I hate you," or "I reject you." The murmurings, maybe from a parent, maybe from a boss, maybe from a teacher, maybe from the crowd around you, but that doesn't matter. What matters is not the names they call you, but the names God calls you.

And he says, "In his sight, he sees you as holy and blameless and righteous and pure and as a true son or daughter of Abraham, and he invites us to friendship based on faith in him and his grace." In John 15:15, Jesus says, "I have called you friends." Now, just think about that just for a second. He is our friend. Wow. He is Alpha and Omega. He's the beginning and the end. He's the creator. He's the mighty God. He's the prince of peace. He's the wonderful counselor. He's the Lord. He's the Christ. He's the Messiah and your friend. And it's not presumptuous to say that because he says that to us.

This is so important. Somebody said, "Jesus is not just a theological position we learn. He's a person we learn to know, our friend. And when we do that, beauty captures our heart and we're transformed." And that leads right to point three, no matter what my struggle, Jesus transforms me. No matter my struggle, Jesus transforms me. Do you remember back in verse eight where Jesus says, "If I cheated anybody out of anything, I'll pay back four times the amount." Did he just pick that number out of thin air? Where does he come up with four times?

This is very revealing. Watch this. In the Bible, there was an ancient Jewish formula for restitution in the law of Moses. For example, for simple fraud, you had to pay back somebody whatever you defrauded them of plus 20 percent. But for robbery with assault, you had to pay back four times what you stole. And what's happening here is Zacchaeus is apparently saying, "I choose to see that what I have done, that I've been defending, it was as bad as bad can be. It was assault. I've been assaulting people." In other words, he's going through true repentance.

Somebody said, "True repentance is realizing our sin is worse than we ever admitted, and God is better than we ever hoped." I love that. Realizing my sin is worse than I ever admitted, and God is better than I ever hoped. Now again, Zacchaeus wasn't saved because he gave the money back. He gave the money back because he was saved. This is not the penance of a troubled heart. It's the evidence of a transformed heart. Do you see that? It's not the penance of a troubled heart. Maybe if I do this, God will love me. No, it's the evidence of a transformed heart. I'm going to love others because he already loves me. I'm not going to do that so that he'll forgive me, but because he already has. I'm not doing this so that he'll maybe be my friend, but because he already is.

When we started, I compared Zacchaeus to Ebenezer Scrooge, right? A lot of parallels. He starts miserly and miserable in a cheat, but after Scrooge is visited by the spirits of Christmas, he wakes up on Christmas morning a changed man. And you remember he gives Cratchit a raise, and he buys a family a turkey, and he donates to the poor. And here's how Charles Dickens describes the new Scrooge. Listen to this. He went to church. Yay. And he walked about the streets, and he patted children on their heads, and he questioned beggars, and he looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He'd never dreamed that any walk, that any thing could give him as much happiness.

And on the story's final page, Dickens writes, "Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heated them. His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him. And it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge." Honestly, it kind of chokes me up, because what a great description of a conversion. See, that's what happens when we realize the Alpha and the Omega calls me friend. And this is what happens to Zacchaeus when he meets not a spirit of Christmas, but the Savior of Christmas.

You see, here's the point. Why is the story of Zacchaeus even in the Bible? Well, Jesus tells us why in the last verse of the story, verse 10, he says, "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." Just meditate on this for just a minute, because so often we act like the Bible says something like, "The Son of Man came to judge and condemn the lost." Or, "The Son of Man came to reluctantly save if the lost performed well." But when Jesus says this, he means he, the Savior of Christmas, came down to be one of us. And still to this day, he is seeking and seeking and seeking and seeking and seeking you.

Not to berate you or put a burden on you, but to completely save you. It's powerful stuff. Now, let me tell you what's really amazing. In that moment when Jesus stopped the parade and looked up and made eye contact with Zacchaeus, he had to endure the good soul of the crowd, right? Crowd starts to turn on him. He's going to have dinner with a sinner. And think of the impression that must have made on Zacchaeus. Jesus is enduring the jeers of the crowd because he's seeking me.

Now, here's something awesome. To seek you, Jesus endured the grumbling and the mockery and the spitting of the crowd at the cross. And this is how badly he came to seek and to save you, how much he loves you. He came to seek and to save you and he calls you by name. One in whose sight by the blood of Christ is holy and blameless. He calls you and says, "Let's dine together. I want you to get to know me and transformation is going to happen then."

See, the big idea here is no matter how far I've gone, Jesus seeks me. So the only question is, how will you respond? Remember it says Zacchaeus came down at once and welcomed him gladly. And I want to suggest you do the same. Welcome him into your heart, even right now. Would you pray together with me? Let's bow our heads and our hearts.

You know, with our heads bowed, I want to speak to you for a moment. You may have been coming to Twin Lakes for weeks or maybe even years, yet you're not sure if you've really opened your life to Christ. You know about him, but maybe you've never said, "Welcome into my life. Be my Lord. Be my friend." Well, today's your day. And if you'd like to welcome him gladly, would you just pray this prayer silently in your heart? "Dear Lord, thank you that no matter how small I feel, Jesus, you see me. And no matter what other people say, Jesus, you value me. So I hear your voice and I welcome you gladly into my life. Now please transform me, my Lord. And it's in your name I pray. Amen.