The sermon titled 'The Irresistible Summons' by Peter Allison focuses on the story of Zacchaeus as told in Luke 19, highlighting the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem. Zacchaeus, a wealthy and despised tax collector in Jericho, climbs a sycamore tree to see Jesus. Jesus calls Zacchaeus down, inviting Himself to Zacchaeus's home, which demonstrates the concept of an 'irresistible summons'—a divine call that cannot be ignored. Zacchaeus's transformation is marked by repentance and restitution, offering half of his goods to the poor and restoring anything taken through false accusation. The sermon draws parallels between this narrative and the Gospel, emphasizing that the Gospel's offer is not just an invitation but an imperative command from God. This call to salvation is sovereign and irresistible, yet it does not violate human will, as God transforms the heart to willingly respond. The sermon concludes with a call to evangelism, stressing that the power of conversion lies not in human persuasion but in God's irresistible grace.

Luke chapter 19, beginning at verse 1, hear God's word. Then Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. Now behold there was a man named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not, because of the crowd, for he was of short stature. So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Him, for He was going to pass that way.

And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and saw Him, and said to Him, Zacchaeus, make haste and come down today, for today I must stay at your house.' So he made haste and came down and received him joyfully. But when they saw it, they all complained, saying, He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner. 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 false accusation, I restore for full. And Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." The entrance of His Word gives light and understanding to the simple.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word. We ask that You would give us understanding by it. I ask that You would sanctify my sinful lips, that they might proclaim your truth, that you would keep me from error, and that Lord may you use your word to teach and instruct and to convict us this morning in Jesus' name. Amen. Jesus is on a journey to Jerusalem.

We've been away from our study of Luke for a few weeks, a couple months. We come back to it this morning and pick up this account, this Gospel account, as Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem. This is a journey that began back in Luke 9, the end of the chapter. Luke records that it came to pass when the time had come for him to be received up. That's his ascension.

So when the time for his ascension, Luke is looking right past the crucifixion, the trial, the crucifixion, his death, burial, and resurrection to the ascension that followed that. When it came time for him to be received up, that he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem. In Matthew's account of the Gospel, the history is grouped around the discourses of the teaching of Christ. And it's primarily discourses that are addressed to the Jews to demonstrate that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God. And Mark's Gospel deals mainly with Christ's Galilean ministry.

And John's Gospel, which presents Christ as the eternal Son, the Word, deals almost exclusively with Jesus' Jerusalem ministry. Remember that this whole second half of the book is dealing with the week leading up to the crucifixion. And so Luke complements the narratives in these other two synoptic gospels, Matthew and Mark, by tracing Jesus' ministry in Perua. And that's this area east of the Jordan River, where there was wilderness, going up to Decapolis. And Luke spends quite a bit of time from Luke 9 all the way into chapter 18, giving an account of things that happened primarily in this area, and most of that, almost exclusively, none of that is found in any of the other gospels, this whole chapter.

So in this trip, this that began in chapter 9, and there could possibly be three trips that Luke has kind of merged together into one. Let me say that because there are some other gospel accounts that speak of Jesus being in Jerusalem on different occasions. So whether this is recounting the final trip or whether Luke has merged together three trips that involved journeys through this region. I'm not sure, but that's whatever the case, Jesus is journeying to Jerusalem in this whole section, in this account. And this is where, this is the time which he sent the seventy out, he sent the seventy out to go to the cities that he was planning to visit and that he would be planning to preach there.

This is the section in which he gave the instruction on the Lord's Prayer, how to pray. And there have been a number in this time, there have been a number of encounters with people and several parables about salvation. There was the rich man who went to hell and faced eternal torment there. And there was the poor man, Lazarus, who went to heaven and was resting in the bosom of Abraham. There was the rich young ruler who came to Jesus asking, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said, you know the commandments, you keep them. And he said, well, I've done all that. And then Jesus said, well, then give all your goods to the poor. Half your goods to the poor. Or all your goods to the poor, he told them.

And the man went away sorrowful because he was very wealthy, and that wasn't something he was willing to do. He was really looking to, how do I add eternal life to all the other things I have, not how do I... That Jesus made that well-known comment about it being easier for a rich man, for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to be saved. Of course, the disciples realized what he was saying, it's impossible for anyone to be saved. And Jesus' answer was, yes, but with God, all things are possible.

The impossible is possible. And so now Jesus saves a rich man. Lazarus, or Zacchaeus was a very rich man. And Jesus was going up to Jerusalem on this journey. He came to Jericho.

And he was going up, it was a rather public trip. It wasn't like the other times where he went up privately and nobody knew that he was going up. But this is a very prominent trip. There are many people following him on this trip. This is the trip where a little later when he gets to Jerusalem, where the people line the street with their coats and the palm branches and so on.

They're singing his praises. Well, This is something of this trip to Jerusalem as he's coming to Jericho. Jericho was known as a city of palms. It was about a distance of six hours from Jerusalem. And it lay near a spring, a so-called Elisha spring.

And there was another spring an hour farther north of that. And together, these two springs, through aqueducts and so forth, gave this city a tropical nature, a tropical climate, and unsurpassed fertility in the soil, rich soil, all along this plain of Jericho, which is about, I understand, I haven't been to the Plain of Jericho, but I understand it's about 12 to 14 miles wide. But a very fertile strip of well-watered land in a very warm climate. In fact, Josephus says that even in the winter, people didn't have to wear a notch because this was a very mild and warm climate. So it was a bit of an oasis.

This is a well-known city, Jericho. It was here that King Zedekiah was fleeing, and it's in Jericho that he was seized by the Chaldean king. It was here that the people, the army, the group that returned under Zerubbabel. There were other instances under the Maccabeans where the Syrians had attempted to fortify Jericho. And all those fortifications were then destroyed by the Romans, by Pompey, Josephus tells us.

But it had been rebuilt by Herod and his son, Herod the Great and Archelaus. So they built a palace there because this was somewhat of a resort area. It was also a very wealthy area. Josephus describes it as the richest part of the country, a paradise, a little paradise. Beautiful climate, mild all year round, wealthy, fertile soil, and just wealthy because they produced a lot of valuable things.

One of the things they produced was the product of the balsam tree, a balm. They could score the tree with it, and out would come this little liquid, this balm. And it was very fragrant and highly regarded for its healing properties. And Joseph describes this balsam as an ointment of all the most precious, which upon any incision made in the wood with a sharp stone distills out vents like a juice. Out vents like a juice.

And so this is just a wealthy area. It's a nice area. And Zacchaeus is the chief tax collector here. So their taxes were a little different than ours in one way, and that is that they were collected by private people. People would pay Rome a certain fee for the right to tax an area, And so they had to pay that in advance, and they had to go out and get enough taxes to pay off their expense and then make enough for them to live on as well.

And it's somewhat like bounty hunters today, or the tow truck companies that have these contracts with shopping malls to police their parking lots and tow away any vehicle that shouldn't be there. They probably pay or have some contract to be able to do that. That's the way taxes were collected. The people pay to fix some to Rome and then they went out and collected the taxes. The taxes in Israel under the Roman occupation were much like our taxes today.

All property was subject to a land tax. That's one of the planks of the Communist Manifesto. That's how you destroy private ownership of property is you tax the property. And it's how you destroy inheritance, I meant to say, by taxing property. Many times people have to sell their inheritance in order to pay the property taxes on it.

So that's the way it was in Israel under the Roman occupation. Every individual had to pay a poll tax, and then Agriculture and commerce were also hampered by excise taxes and customs and so on. And of course Jericho being a very wealthy area that produced valuable things, it was a very lucrative place to be a tax collector, collecting customs and excise taxes on these things. So Zacchaeus was a the chief tax collector. There were three taxing regions in the area, Caesarea, Caperna, and Jericho.

And so Jericho was Zacchaeus' domain. He was the head, you might say, of the Jericho cartel. And as a result, he was a very rich, wealthy, and powerful man. He would also have been hated because many of these people that were working for collecting these taxes were perceived as traitors by the Jews. These were people that were collaborating with the occupying nation, with the Romans.

And so they were not well liked by ordinary people. They were looked down on as traders, much like people would have looked on Nazi collaborators in occupied European countries, people that had sold out. This was Zacchaeus, wealthy, rich, despised by his own people, powerful, and very corrupt. So you wouldn't get to be chief tax collector of this region without being quite ruthless and devious yourself. Only the most devious and the most fierce people that get to be the heads of the mafia families.

So this is who Zacchaeus is. When Jesus, when this big entourage came through Jericho, Zacchaeus was not seeking God. He wasn't seeking salvation. He didn't seek Jesus because he wanted to know what must I do to be saved like the Philippian jailer. He didn't even come like the rich young ruler asking, what do I need so I can add eternal life to all the other things I already have?

He was simply curious to see a popular person who was passing through his district. Maybe he was hoping for a taxing opportunity. I don't know. But he was a short man, and so he couldn't see Jesus through all the crowd. Being resourceful, he found a tree by the side of the road, a sycamore tree, and climbed up into it.

It's a shady tree, has low branches, something that he could have climbed into. And then he watched as this procession came down the road. Or was it the irresistible draw of the Holy Spirit that brought him to that point as Jesus was going through. When Jesus got to where Zacchaeus was in this tree, Zacchaeus did not initiate contact with Jesus. He didn't start a conversation.

He didn't cry out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me like other helpless people did who wanted Jesus' salvation. He was just looking from His perch in the tree. But Jesus knew He was there, and when Jesus got there, He looked up and said, Zacchaeus, hurry up and come down. Zacchaeus did not invite Jesus into his heart. He didn't invite Jesus into his life.

He didn't invite Jesus into his home. He wasn't even seeking Jesus. But he responded. He obeyed the irresistible command of Jesus. He responded to Jesus' offer to come to his house.

Now we use that word offer, the free offer of the Gospel, but we need to understand what we mean by that. And Yes, there are many places in the scripture where that invitation is conditional. It's said, if you will. But we need to remember what this offer really is. It's often misunderstood as being analogous to receiving an offer from your neighbor to buy some property or an invitation to dinner at their place.

Something that you can accept or reject without further consequences. Somebody offers for you to buy some land they have and you say, no, I'm not interested, that's fine. There's no further consequences. If somebody invites you to dinner and you're like, I can't make it, I'm busy, take a rain check, there's no consequences. It's your right to do.

But that isn't the case with the gospel offer. Those who do not obey the gospel are destroyed. It's really like the offer of kings and ambassadors cannot be rejected without significant ramifications. Deuteronomy 20, verse 10 and following, provide an example of the use of the word offer in this sense. Deuteronomy 20 says, When you come near unto a city to fight against it, and this is dealing with the conquest of Canaan by Joshua.

When you come near to fight it, you shall offer it peace. And if it answer you peaceably and open to you, then let all the people that found therein be tributaries unto you and serve you. But if it will make no peace with you, make war against it. Then you shall besiege it, and the Lord your God shall deliver it into your hands, and you shall smite all the mills thereof with the edge of the sword." See, that wasn't an offer that these cities were free to accept or not with no further consequences. It was an offer, But it wasn't one that could be rejected without consequences.

They rejected the offer of... And this is the sense in which The Gospel is offered. It's a gracious and sincere offer. Confession of faith describes it this way, Man by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, referring to the covenant of works that God made with Adam. Adam was the federal head, and God promised Adam life.

God promised Adam life on the condition of obedience. But if he did not obey, there were consequences. He would die. In the day that he broke that covenant, he would die. So the Lord was pleased, a man by his fall having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace wherein He freely offers to sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ.

Wherein He freely offers, It is a genuine offer. It is a sincere and gracious offer. When He freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in Him that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto life His Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe." See, part of the confusion is that many of the quote-unquote offers of salvation in the scripture are in the third person imperative in the Greek. We don't have a third person imperative in English. We can't translate an imperative that way.

Our imperatives are all second person. You, you know, we say go, that's you go. It's the person we're addressing. We only have a second person imperative. And so what happens then, since English has no third person imperative, sometimes the force of the command and the fact that it's an imperative is lost in the translation.

And it's usually worded as let everyone. And that doesn't come across in English as an imperative. It comes across as a permissive. And so actually what's a command in Greek sometimes comes across like a not a command, a permissive in English. And so maybe instead of the free offer of the Gospel, we might talk about the imperative of the Gospel.

I'll just give you a couple of examples. There are numerous places in scripture that give this offer. And notice how it is a command. Matthew 11, 27 and 28. You have this doctrine of God's sovereignty.

All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knows the Son, but the Father, neither knows any man the Father, save the Son, and to he, and he to whomever the Son will reveal him. No one knows the Father except the Son, and He to whom the Son will reveal Him. And then immediately after that is the offer. Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.

And you will find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light." You see, these are commands. Those are imperatives. Come, take. Or in Acts 17, when Paul is addressing the Greeks on Mars Hill, the men of Athens, he said, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious, for as I pass by and beheld your devotion, I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God, whom therefore you ignorantly worship Him. I declare to you that they should seek the Lord, and happily they might feel after Him and find Him, though He is not far from every one of us." God in verse 30, God now commands all men everywhere to repent.

Or Peter in his sermon at Pentecost in Acts 2. Or Peter Where they are pricked in their conscience, and Peter responds, and they cry out, what shall we do? And Peter says, repent and be baptized, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Those are commands, to repent and to be baptized. And in one more example in Revelation 22, Verse 16, I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you of those things in the churches.

I am the root and offspring of David and the bright and morning star. And then immediately following that, the declaration is, and the Spirit and the Bride say, Come, and let him that hears say, Come, and let him that is a thirst, come, and whoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." You see The sovereignty of God in irresistibly calling and commanding people to come is put together and perfectly consistent with man's responsibility to obey that command to come. I'll just read a few more quickly. Romans 10.9, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised you from the dead, you will be saved. There it's a conditional, it's an if, it's a requirement.

Or Isaiah 45.22, look unto me and be saved. Look unto me and be saved. Look unto me and be saved. Or in John 7, 37, in that last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying if any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. Now that's an example of a third person imperative.

If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. Now that's an example of a third person imperative. If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. That's a command. It's a third person command.

Come to Me and drink. But it's given in the third person. Meaning it's not specific to the people that were in front of Him, but it is to all of us, to all who are in hearing of that word, including us today. Isaiah 55, Incline your ear and come to Me here, and your soul shall live. And so on throughout these scriptures.

You see, sinners throughout the scriptures are repeatedly commanded to incline our ear to hear, to look to Christ to be saved, to come and drink, to repent. They are asked, yes, if they desired to be made whole and if they would depart from Christ. They are invited with words like whoever will, and if you will repent and believe, you are saved. But behind all of these is a command, a command that we reject to our peril. And so we have in this passage a beautiful account of the imperative of the Gospel.

Jesus came to Zacchaeus. He looked up at him and said, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I'm going to your house today. No invitation came from Zacchaeus. It wasn't Zacchaeus that was seeking Jesus. It was Jesus that sought and found Zacchaeus.

That's why Jesus said, He's come, I have come, to seek and to save those that are lost. I've come to seek and to save those that are lost. This ought to be just an incredible encouragement to our evangelism. Because it's not dependent on how good we are at talking, or it's not dependent on how persuasive and eloquent we can be, and how hard we can gulp them into coming. It's God's power.

It's God's irresistible summons. We're simply His mouthpiece. Zacchaeus responds like every sinner who comes to Christ. He obeyed. He came down immediately.

He made haste and came down. He wasn't dallying up there pondering. He obeyed immediately. He made haste and came down, it says in verse 6, and he received him joyfully. Of course, everybody else complained that Christ was going to the house of the sinner and to be a guest of the sinner, But Zacchaeus turns around and demonstrates the marks of true repentance.

He gives a voluntary confession And a voluntary offer to make restitution for what he has stolen. Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, Lord, look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor, and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore it for a full." Jesus never asked him to give anything to anyone. Jesus didn't ask him to give his goods away. He volunteered that because the Holy Spirit was working in him. And the Holy Spirit was producing the fruits of repentance, the fruits of his conversion, which means that he was beginning to want to obey the Lord.

He obeyed the Lord when he came down, and then he wanted to continue to obey the Lord. And if he had sinned in the past, and I take that not to be saying, well, I don't think I've sinned in the past, or I don't think I've taken anything from anyone by false accusation, but rather where I have done this. If in any case I have done this, then he's saying I will restore it. You see the the tax collectors were known for extortion. That's how they collected their tax and they would tend to get as much tax as they could get from people.

It was a balance between the pain of collecting it and how much more they could get with a little more force and extortion at getting it. And when John the Baptist was preaching, you remember that the soldiers and the tax collectors asked him what they should do. And to the soldiers, he told them, well, don't misuse your authority, but to the tax collectors, he said, only don't collect more than what you're due, more than what's due to you. Because that was a very common occurrence, and that was why they were disliked and hated. It was also why they were so extraordinarily wealthy, because they got their wealth by extortion.

And so Zacchaeus is saying, where I have done that, In all those cases I have done that. I restore fourfold. He was offering restitution. That's what the Bible commands. Where we have stolen something, when part of our repentance, or the fruit of repentance I should say, is a willingness to restore what we have stolen, make restitution for it.

And how much restitution depends upon the circumstances. If somebody acknowledges that they stole something and they voluntarily bring it back, then the penalty was only, I believe, a 20% added to it. In other cases where means of production were being stolen, the restitution was much higher, threefold or more. In this case, he's voluntarily offering to restore fourfold restitution. I believe that in most cases would probably be more, possibly more than what the law would require.

But that's a mark of true repentance, a willingness to go above and beyond what the minimum requirement is, the desire to make things right with people, the desire of recognition of the harm and the injury and the tragedy that you've brought into other people's lives, and a desire to do your best that can be done, to fix that. You see, that's a logically different step than the mere confession of a sin. It's a necessary follow-on to the confession of sin, that we are willing to make a restitution for it. But also I would point out the voluntary nature of his confession. This wasn't a case where somebody brought his sins to him.

This wasn't Jesus pointing out his sins that he had done. The Holy Spirit brought that conviction and he voluntarily, voluntarily acknowledged his guilt in this, and made a promise to make it right. And Jesus says, today, today salvation has come to this house because He also is a son of Abraham. Today, that day, what happened there was salvation. The irresistible drawing of the Holy Spirit that brought Zacchaeus to that point and changed his heart to make him willing to obey this command of the Gospel.

See, it is an irresistible call, because God is sovereign and He's the one who does the seeking and He's the one who does the saving. But Zacchaeus was not brought against his will. That's a key point. Zacchaeus was not brought against his will. He voluntarily climbed down from that tree with haste.

And he of his own received Jesus joyfully, it says, because his very nature, his very will, his emotions were changed. And he now desired to do what he didn't want to do before. Zacchaeus knew about the law. He would have known all the things that are required. But he wasn't willing to obey them before.

He wasn't willing to live honestly and uprightly until God called him and commanded him to come down, commanding him to repent. So then God changed His very will. And when God saves us, that's what He does. He doesn't drag us to Him against His will, against our will. He changes us so that we are willing, we are made willing in the day that He calls us.

And that's a beautiful thing, that when we are subdued to Christ, we are subdued in our entirety, in our will, in our affections, our emotions, our desires, it's all changed. So that we, of our own desire, we desire now to come to Him and to do what we didn't want to do before. And That's an ongoing mark of being in Christ, is that His commandments, John says, if we love Him, then His commandments are not burdensome to us. And they're not burdensome to us because they're what we want to do. They're what we desire to do.

I think this is just amazing grace of God. When Satan seeks to conquer people, he does so by terror, And he does so by extortion. He does so against their will. Every other ruler, every other tyrant, every other king has to make people comply against their will. And so therefore if they had an opportunity, they wouldn't do otherwise.

But to Christ when He conquers and when He subdues us to Himself, He makes us willing in that day. So do not, brothers and sisters, do not despise the command of God to come, to make haste, to repent, to take His yoke upon you and learn of Him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You that you are gracious and long-suffering, and that you give many opportunities and many occasions for us to obey. We thank you Lord that you are long suffering, for we know that that day of grace will not last forever, but that day will come to an end.

That day when you will judge the living and the dead, and all will receive according to your justice. Those who are in Christ, that your wrath has been satisfied by his death, and those who are not, you will punish for all eternity. O Father, we ask that you might, by your grace, by your sovereign omnipotent power, draw all here, and any who you have not yet so drawn, Lord, may You draw them today. And all who are within the sound of this voice, may You call them irresistibly. Father, we thank You that Your grace is irresistible.

We thank you that it is you that has loved us and sought us, for else we know that we would never have come. And we ask that you would give us a burden for those that have yet resisted your call, your command. For you now command all men everywhere to repent. We pray through Jesus Christ who has loved us and given Himself for us. Amen.