Zacchaeus   Luke 19:1-10

This post concerns Jesus’ comments to Zacchaeus.

This writing discusses Jesus interacting with a sinner.

Jesus was traveling with other worshippers to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, Luke 19:1-3. “He entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature.”

Thus, short chief tax collector (‘chief’ meant he supervised other tax collectors) climbed a tree in order to see Jesus better. Then, Jesus saw him and invited Himself to stay at his house. Zacchaeus received Him joyfully. But the crowd grumbled that Jesus had gone to the house of a sinner.

So, having Jesus in his house prompted Zacchaeus to tell Jesus that he would give “Half of my good…”  to low income people, and if he had cheated anyone, he’d make it right.

Jesus accepted this statement as repentance and told Zacchaeus that salvation had come to his house that day. Jesus then added that Zacchaeus was a son of Abraham. This may have meant that Zacchaeus was a Jew. (Gal. 3:7 defines believers as sons of Abraham.) Jesus is saying that salvation had come to a repentant believer, no matter whether he was a Jew or a Gentile. This would have been an example of Jesus’ concern for salvation for both Jews and Gentiles.

By the same token, Jesus called Himself the Son of Man. His audience would have understood that designation to mean the Messiah. (Daniel had used the Son of Man to describe the Messiah.) In Ezekiel 34:11-16, Ezekiel had stressed that Jesus would come to find and save the lost. Thus, Jesus was making it clear just before His triumphal entry into Jerusalem that His mission as the Messiah was to save souls, not form an earthly kingdom.

Therefore, this designation by Jesus of himself as the Son of Man in a public setting shows Jesus beginning to publicly declare Himself to be the Messiah.

What did we learn?

1.People can come to Jesus by repenting of their sins.

2.The kingdom of the Messiah is a spiritual one, not a physical one.

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