Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2755
“And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for today I must stay at your house.” Luke 19:5.
I THINK this is the only instance in which our Lord invited Himself to anybody’s house. He often went when He was invited, but this time, if I may use the expression, He did the inviting Himself! Usually we must seek the Lord if we want to find Him. To the eye, at any rate, the apparent work of Grace goes on in this way—a man begins to cry for mercy, as the blind man who heard that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, cried to Him, “You Son of David, have mercy on me.” But God is so rich in Grace that He does not restrict Himself to this usual method! Generally, He is found of them that seek Him, but, sometimes, He is found of them that seek Him not. Yes, if I tell the whole Truth of God—if you go down to the bedrock of actual fact—it is always God who seeks sinners. He always calls them a people who are not a people and the first movement between God and the sinner is never on the sinner’s part, but on God’s part. Still, apparently, men begin to pray to God and begin to seek the Lord—and this is the usual order in which salvation comes to them. The prodigal said, “I will arise and go to my father,” and he arose and came to his father.” The blind man cried, “Jesus, you Son of David, have mercy on me.”
Our text, however, describes a case which shows the freeness of Divine Mercy, for, although Zacchaeus did not invite Christ to his house, Christ invited Himself. Though there was no asking Him to be a guest, much less any pressing entreaty on the part of Zacchaeus, Christ pressed Himself upon him and said to him, “Make haste, and come down; for today I must stay at your house.” I reckon that there are some here who are on an errand something like that of Zacchaeus. They want, perhaps, to see the preacher—which is not nearly as good a thing as wanting to see the preacher’s Master. Still, that curiosity has brought them into the place where Jesus of Nazareth is known to come and I do pray that He may find many to whom He will say, “Make haste, and come and receive Me; for I must stay, this very night, with you and dwell in your house and heart at this time and forever.”
I. The first thing I am going to talk about is THE DIVINE NECESSITY WHICH PRESSED UPON THE SAVIOR. He says, “I must.” “Today I must stay at your house.”
I do not think of this so much as a necessity upon Zacchaeus as upon Christ. You know that He felt this “must” at other times. In John 4:4, we read, “He must needs go through Samaria.” There was a sacred necessity that He should go that way. The most notable instance of all was when “Jesus began to show unto His disciples how that He must go unto Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.” In this case, the “must” was of another kind—He must stay in the house of Zacchaeus. What necessity was this which pressed so urgently upon our blessed Master? There were many other houses in Jericho beside that of the tax gatherer. I daresay there were other persons who would, apparently, have been more suitable hosts for the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet it was not really so. There was a mighty pressure upon Him, who is the Omnipotent Lord of all! Necessity was laid upon Him who is “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords.” He was His own Master, yet He must do something to which He was constrained by an urgent necessity—He must go and lodge that night nowhere else but at the house of Zacchaeus. What did this “must” mean?
I answer, first, it was a necessity of love. Our Lord Jesus needed to bless somebody. He had seen Zacchaeus and He knew what his occupation was and what his sin was—and He felt that He must bless him. As He looked at him, He felt as a mother does concerning her child when it is ill and she must nurse it. Or as you might feel concerning a starving man, whom you saw to be ready to expire with hunger, and you felt that you must feed him. Or as some men have felt when
they have seen a fellow creature drowning, and they have plunged in to save him. They did not stop to think. They dared to do the brave deed without a thought, for they felt that they “must” do it. The compulsions of charity, the necessities of benevolence—these urgent things laid violent hands upon them, so they must do it. Thus Jesus felt—only in a much higher sense—that He must bless Zacchaeus. He must go to his house, that He might enter his heart, to stay there and to make Zacchaeus holy and happy henceforth and forever! And He is the same Christ, now, that He was then—He is not less loving, He is the same gracious Savior and He feels the same necessity, the same hunger after souls, the same thirst of love to bless the sons of men and I, therefore, hopefully expect that there will be, even in this place and, I hope, in many other parts of the world, some of whom it will be true that the Lord Jesus Christ must come to their house and heart! So, this was a necessity arising out of our Savior’s Divine benevolence and love.