Inferior life or superior life (Luke 19:1-10)

Inferior life or superior life (Luke 19:1-10)

 

Then Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. ² Now behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. ³ And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not because of the crowd, for he was of short stature. ⁴ So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Him, for He was going to pass that way. ⁵ And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and saw him,^[a] and said to him, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” ⁶ So he made haste and came down, and received Him joyfully. ⁷ But when they saw it, they all complained, saying, “He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner.”

⁸ 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 fourfold.”

⁹ And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; ¹⁰ for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

 

Intro)
1. Today’s bible verse is about Zacchaeus who is short in height. We can put this story to sermon title in many directions.

 

First is in salvation. Jesus’ love allowed Zacchaeus to meet Jesus and earning salvation.

 

Second is in faith, he was passionate to meet Jesus so he climbed mulberry tree.

 

Third is lesson, like how Zacchaeus met Jesus he decided to share half of his assets with poor, and said if he ever took something from someone he will pay them 4 times in price.

 

Fourth one is from human’s psychological way, because Zacchaeus was small and used to be bullied from people around him. After Zacchaeus met Jesus his inner side cured.

 

Body)

 

1. Zacchaeus who is tangled in inferiority

    

1. To understand Zacchaeus’s psychology there is important bible verse in Luke 19:3. It says he was short stature. He was so small he couldn’t see Jesus in crowd, so he went up to tree to see Jesus. Zacchaeus had lots of money, but people always looked down on him. Zacchaeus lived his life in inferiority. He also had a job that people hates, which is tax collector. He was always lived in people’s hatred.

 

 2. Living in inferiority is like a falling into swamp. Gets worse every time and at the end it will ruin the life.

3. In India they catch elephant and use them for their convenience. Method to catch elephant is set lassos in the path where elephant passes. When the lasso grabs elephant they tie the lasso into tree. Elephant tree to get out but can’t. People leave caught elephant for 2 days later on elephant gives up and think no matter what I do I can’t get out of it. so, no matter how small stick they tie the lasso elephant won’t run away, because it gave up. So now people can train elephant around.

  4. Inferiority is like little stick that can trap elephant into. It is something you can get over, but sometimes just let it be and allow it to ruin your life. Thing is we all live in it such as inferiority from physical, family, social class, and economical etc.

 

B) Way to get over it

 

Let’s talk about how we going to get over this inferiority that carves our soul with time.

1. We need to find ourselves. We need to evaluate ourselves and put value in it. There is no life that has no worth. Every one of us has duty and valuable life. 

God who created us never said we are worthless. He said we are all loving prince and princess.

He even sacrificed his son Jesus to give us salvation and that’s how much he considers us.

 2 Charles Emerson once said “Confidence is the first secret of success.” We need to restore our confidence first.

 There is a rich real estate man in California he said the secret to my success is from believing in myself and that was best gift from heaven.

Let’s take a look at today’s verse again.

Zacchaeus said “Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold.”

⁹ And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; ¹⁰ for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Through this he overcame his inferior life and stated to live superior life.

We all have good and bad in us, but it’s the matter of how we use it.

 

 

b) In order to live in superior life you need to learn how to use your value.

1. In fact we all born in different way and grew in different environment.

We have all different talent, but it’s really about how we use it.

 

2. There was a boy who got injury on his arm at age of 10. He didn’t take care of it well so doctor told him we need to cut the part to save the arm. After a surgery his left arm got 20 cm shorter than other arm. Looked hideous and started to live in inferior life. His personality got aggressive more and more. He became 20 years old. But one day he thought of himself why do I have to live like this? Isn’t there something only I can do? He researched and He got into golfing. In order to swing the ball with strength the back of golf stick has to receive force, but he had short arm so he didn’t have to bend the arm like others so he could swing with full strength. His name is Ed Furgol, a famous golfer. Now his weakness became his strength. We need to find what we can do and switch our weakness to strength!

 

2. Einstein great worldwide physicist was not good at speaking in public. When he goes to place where he has to speak front of lots of people he started sweating and didn’t make good impression. However, his talent was solving math problem, which does not require public speaking skills, so he became great physicist even now. There is no fate that chooses what kind of life you are going to be in as you born, but you to choose.

C)  Overcome your inferiority and depend on God.

 

1. Thirdly we need to live in life where God bless us and away from inferior life.

 

So let’s trust God and depend on him. There is nothing else will be worth and valuable than serving God. Think about how Zacchaeus fixed his problem and overcome his weakness through grace of Jesus.

 

 

con)

 

Let’s say we have president or celebrity came into our town it must be honor to take a picture or shake hand. But, if we have Jesus and God who created all come to our house. How great honor and grace will it be?!

 

Therefore, we need to accept Jesus in your heart, family, and your business.

Believe if you do so your life will change to superior in love of God. Hallelujah!

 

• 090317, by pastor Ik Sun Ahn