Reaching a new height of faith part 1

Reaching a new height of faith- part one

Who was Zacchaeus? How is he important to our society today?

No doubt about it, Zacchaeus was a tax-collector. Dictionary.com states that a tax collector is someone who collects taxes for the government. A good example of a tax collector is the movie Robin Hood. The wolf who takes all the money out of their pockets, takes money from the birthday bunny, and he also took money out of a broken leg cast. Wow I watch Robin Hood too many times. (:

Zacchaeus was not Shaquille O-Neil. He was a little guy, who had lots of money. He had so much money I imagine him wearing some kind of designer clothing, hair cut at the right places, and nicely shaved. He probably had all of this and that, but the people did not like him.

Let’s think back to the Revolutionary War. You have probably either heard this lesson in history, or something or other. The British taxed the Americans…a lot. As a result, you can guarantee that they didn’t want to just sit back and let it all happen in front of them. They did not like it. Now let’s relate this to Zacchaeus. In a way, Zacchaeus is the British and the tax-payers are the Americans. He wasn’t much liked either among people.

Now let’s flash forward a bit in Luke 19. Jesus was in Jericho and was passing through. It was very crowded because people wanted to see Jesus. This is when it sucks to be short. Zacchaeus also wanted to see Jesus, but unfortunately he was too short because of all the people around him. Have you ever been at a baseball game but had very bad seats, so you couldn’t see what you wanted to see whether Angels or Dodgers or (insert baseball team here)? This was Zacchaeus problem also. He wanted to see Jesus, but the crowd was so big he couldn’t see him. Zacchaeus was so desperate, so yearning to see Jesus, that he climbed a sycamore-fig tree (“So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree since Jesus was coming that way.” Luke 19:4) You will see in the picture attached to this blog that a sycamore-fig tree is HUGE. You know, to me it reminds me of a giant broccoli for some reason. I don’t know why really. So why he is climbing that giant tree, Jesus tells him to get down and that He will stay the day at his house. Wow. Imagine your favorite person in your whole entire world wanting to spend the day at your house. Imagine JESUS at your house. Now, you remember how the people loathed Zacchaeus right? If not, please read above. I can imagine them flipping out about this though. Like hello, we were standing here and he climbed a tree? But Jesus didn’t care about His social status. He knew that if He reached out to Zacchaeus, He could show love to him and make an impact on him. You would so be surprised on how great an impact this made on Zacchaeus. He sold ALL his possessions to the poor and he offered to repay the people he cheated 4 times the amount back. But this verse in Luke 19 makes this all worth it. “Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man too, is a son of Abraham. For the son of man has came to seek and save what is lost.” I hope you liked the first part of the series and tomorrow (Saturday) I will write the second half: how we can apply this story to our life. I hope you enjoyed this and next session I assure you will be more in-depth because there are several ways we can put it in our own lives. I can’t wait to share this with you.