Don't Believe Your EyesSample

Zacchaeus was a tax collector. Tax collectors were usually Jewish citizens who went to work for the Roman government, who promised them that they would get rich. They had a certain amount of money that they had to take in the form of taxes, but there wasn’t any law that said they could only take that amount. Anything above Rome's portion could go straight into their own pocket. 

But one day, something changed for Zacchaeus. He heard whispers about a religious man who didn’t hang out with the rest of the religious people. Instead, He hung out with the people nobody wanted to be around. The lepers. The prostitutes. The tax collectors. What’s more, Zacchaeus heard about what this person did when He got around them. He healed them. He forgave them. He restored them. 

Zacchaeus knew all at once that he had to get close to this person. He had to see what He looked like, what He sounded like. He had to see if He was real. Being a short man, Zacchaeus decided to climb a tree to get a better view of Jesus. Then the strangest thing happened. The person he climbed up a tree to see knew his name and called out to him! 

Think about that for a second. Zacchaeus didn’t have a single friend. It was worse than that: everyone couldn’t stand him. They knew he was a disaster—he was too far gone and no one wanted anything to do with him.

And then Jesus called him by name. Looked at him up in the tree and said, “Hi, Zacchaeus. I’d like to come to your house for dinner. Why don’t you come down?” 

Some of you might feel like Zacchaeus. You might feel like you’ve done enough bad stuff that there is no way you can ever recover from it. Others might feel like the Israelites who got swindled by Zacchaeus: that some people are just too far gone. They’re mean and nasty and selfish and cruel. 

In this one encounter, Jesus changed multiple people. He changed Zacchaeus, who promised to repay the people he ripped off four times as much as he took. He changed the people looking on, who got to see firsthand that there’s no such thing as someone who is too much of a disaster to be shown kindness and love. 

He can change you, too, regardless of which person you are.