luke 19

If you are a parent, you cannot start this one without getting a little song stuck in your head……”and a wee little man was he”. By the time it is over, however, you may find yourself in a state of self examination. Thank God for struggle! Luke records some of the Lord’s hardest sayings, and ch19 captures at least one of them. The chapter accentuates something we find Jesus saying frequently; that our heart will be revealed in our actions. The heart of Zacchaeus is evident in a couple of things. First, the knowledge of his position in his community as a rich man and a “chief” in his occupation (which, mind you, was perceived as a crooked and evil one) allows us some insight into the public perception of him. This is valuable information into the person of Zacchaeus because we later see a successful grown man in a tree -childish, desperate or both. I’m not sure if people did that a lot back then, but I see a bit of desperation in it. He simply had to see the Lord, and that was evident in his actions. His actions later revealed a genuine repentance and faith in who Jesus was and is. (⁸But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.") James 2:24 says “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead”. This creates a struggle for many of us. Struggles are good and if we are not in an occasional struggle, we might do well to look for one. Hopefully, we all find ourselves struggling against wrong attitudes and vices. These things are not the determining factor in judging the heart of a person, but certainly, if there is no struggle with these matters, then we live according to the flesh and not according to the Spirit. No, rather, the heart is shown in a pattern of a changed life that is continually growing into more and more Christ-likeness. The faith of Zacchaeus became evident in his actions, and if his faith was of the real and enduring variety, these actions continued to define who he became on that day he came down out of that tree.

We also find that the chapter accentuates something the people say frequently in the gospels -“why is he in the company of these sinners?”(v7). I’ll stop with this: I’m very glad that he came to seek and save that which was lost. I was lost.

-Mike Newton, Facilities Director