Luke 19:1-10

content/bible_journal/luke_19:1-10.md

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+title = "Luke 19:1–10"
+date = "2023-01-17"
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+
+### [Read the passage.](https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Lk19.1-10)
+
+You've likely heard how the song goes: "Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a
+wee little man was he." We can't know exactly how short he was, but it was
+enough that he couldn't see over the crowds who had gathered to see Jesus when
+He was going through Jericho. News had probably also spread about the healing
+of the blind man at the gate, so it would be even more difficult to get a good
+look at Jesus.
+
+One thing the song doesn't tell us is that Zacchaeus was a "chief tax
+collector" (_v. 2_), which is apparently not a phrase encountered anywhere
+else. But Jericho was a large city near a major trade route, so the Romans had
+almost certainly set up a hierarchy of tax collectors there to oversee the
+commerce. Zacchaeus was in charge of all of them, and had therefore grown quite
+rich because of it.
+
+And yet, Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus. "He was seeking" (_v. 3_), Luke says,
+which indicates that it wasn't just a passing curiosity. He needed to see
+Jesus, and he was willing look a bit foolish and climb a tree by the roadside
+in order to do it. Imagine a Wall Street investor climbing a tree to see a
+passing celebrity.
+
+But then Jesus does something amazing. He sees Zacchaeus up in the tree, and
+invites Himself to stay at his house. This is even better than Zacchaeus had
+hoped for, because he scrambles down and happily takes Jesus to his house. The
+crowd doesn't like this, because Zacchaeus might be the most hated man in
+Jericho. Not only is he working with the foreign invaders, he's managing all of
+the other guys who are fleecing them to line the Romans' pockets (as well as
+their own).
+
+Zacchaeus is no fool, so he does what he can to show Jesus the sincerity of his
+heart. He pledges half of all his wealth to give to the poor, and anything he
+has gotten unfairly he promises to repay it back four times. That makes me
+wonder how he could afford it, if all his gains were ill-gotten. But it might
+be that Zacchaeus hasn't been charging more taxes than he ought to have done,
+and the amount he just committed to pay back was 0 as far as he was aware. That
+would make this more of a boastful promise, in the sense that he's guaranteeing
+that he has done the right thing or he will take a more severe penalty if he is
+wrong. The Law of Moses only required fraudsters to pay back an extra fifth of
+what they had stolen, not four times as much.
+
+Whatever his accounts looked like, Jesus declares the impossible has happened:
+a rich man has been saved and entered the kingdom of God. Unlike the rich,
+young ruler from before, Zacchaeus recognized that there was something to
+treasure more highly than his treasures. God had been working in his heart long
+before Jesus arrived in Jericho.
+
+* * *
+
+May our treasure vaults be full in heaven because we have prioritized Your
+kingdom over our own.