devotional post # 2033

Luke 19:7-10

Luk 19:7 But when the people saw it, they all complained, “He has gone in to stay with a man who is a sinner.”

Luk 19:8 So Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, “Notice, Lord, half of my possessions I am now giving to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone of anything, I am going to be paying them back four times as much!”

Luk 19:9 Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this household, because he too is a son of Abraham!

Luk 19:10       Because the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost household.”

reaching those up a tree

Jesus had already told the Pharisees and the experts in the law that His mission required Him to sit at tables they would never approach. He came to call sinners to repentance, and repentance rarely begins in sanitized spaces. It begins in the mess, in the margins, in the homes and lives of people the religious world had written off. Luke 5:30–32 was not just a statement of purpose; it was a declaration of strategy. If sinners were going to be healed, Jesus would have to go where sinners actually were.

Zacchaeus becomes the vivid, unforgettable demonstration of that truth. He was not just another tax collector; he was a chief tax collector, a man who embodied everything the religious elite despised. He represented corruption, compromise, and collaboration with Rome. In their eyes, he was the kind of person a righteous teacher should avoid at all costs. He was the kind of man used as an example of what not to become.

So when Jesus looked up into that sycamore tree and called Zacchaeus by name, He was making a deliberate, strategic choice. He was choosing to associate with someone the religious establishment had already condemned. And that choice exposed the hearts of the Pharisees. They could not accept a Messiah who welcomed the wrong people. They could not imagine a holy man who would rather rescue a sinner than preserve His reputation.

We are not always placed in situations that require such bold, countercultural decisions. But sometimes we are. Sometimes the Lord puts someone in our path who is “up a tree”—someone who is searching, someone who is ready to repent, someone who is waiting for a voice of grace to call them down. And when that moment comes, obedience may cost us something. It may cost us approval. It may cost us comfort. It may even cost us the respect of those who do not understand the heart of Christ.

But reaching the lost has always required courage. It required courage for Jesus to walk into Zacchaeus’s house. It will require courage for us to walk toward the people others avoid. The ridicule of the ignorant is a small price to pay if it means someone finds their way back to God.

LORD, send us to those who are ready to turn to you, and give us the courage to follow your example.