Salvation Has Come To Your House

Luke 19:1-10 (NKJV):

19 Then Jesus entered and passed through Jericho.

² Now behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich.
³ And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not because of the crowd, for he was of short stature.
⁴ So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Him, for He was going to pass that way.
⁵ And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and saw him,^[a] and said to him, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”
⁶ So he made haste and came down, and received Him joyfully.
⁷ But when they saw it, they all complained, saying, “He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner.”
⁸ Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold.”
⁹ And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham;
¹⁰ for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

It just so happened to be that Zacchaeus became a favorite character for my little daughter, and she can sing Zacchaeus song day and night. Today reading his story, God showed me something else: Zacchaeus` precious heart that was so dear to Jesus when he saw Jesus walking by. You see, Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and he couldn`t reach to Jesus because of the compressing overwhelming crowd, but that didn`t stop him. He climbed up a sycamore tree to get to Jesus. Do we all understand how humiliating this looked to everyone who saw him do what he did? Zacchaeus didn`t care about what people thought of him or the fact that they accused him for being a cheat (since he was a chief tax collector), nor did he care that it took him so much effort to get to Jesus.

The Lord sees our hearts and He honors those who truly desire Him. I am humbled and amazed reading this story how lowly Zacchaeus chose to be in order to receive Jesus. He didn`t fully understand who Jesus was, as we read that in the verse 3, but He truly wanted to see Him and understand more of who He is.

God loves it when we come to Him and ask questions because that implies friendship and relationships. Now, I am not talking about this daring and disrespectful attitude as many people display by demanding answers from the Lord. I am talking about the honest and genuine cry of the heart that only can come from the longing for the Lord.

This is one more day to thank God for how good He is. About a year ago I made a list of prayer needs that were crucial to be resolved in order for me to have this major shift in circumstances. There were particularly few things that only God could resolve by His hand, and He surely did.

I think in today`s day and age we get so wrapped up in daily needs and actions that we forget to extol the Lord and give Him what belongs to Him- complete praise and glory. I take this day to praise His name and to thank Him for how good He is and how mighty He is for resolving my problems, for rebuilding my destroyed marriage, and for delivering me financially. He is the almighty God who deserves our time and our hearts, so let us remember to honor the Lord with what we have-our time and our hearts!

Zacchaeus was a very rich man because it says so in the verse 2: he was a chief tax collector and he was rich. In those days tax collectors were considered the scum and the worst trash in society because everyone knew how much they could rip people off of their taxation rates. People felt oppressed, just like many of us feel nowadays with the current tax rates we have to put up with, and the people felt justified blaming the tax collectors for their financial disparities and hardships.

To me, seeing Jesus extending His hand of mercy even to the “lowliest” of the society by looking into Zacchaeus` heart, gives me hope. I realize how loving and merciful our Lord is. This is why I choose to praise Him and to thank Him for all that He has done and continues to do in my life.

Another important point to note here, is that Zacchaeus wasn`t boasting of what he was doing. He was almost checking with Jesus if he was on the right track (verse 8). How much time do we check honestly coming to the Lord seeking to know if we are on the right track and seek direction? This is a reminder of how much the Lord appreciates when I seek His input and direction and how much He longs to direct me. I have learnt my lesson awhile back to make sure I seek His direction in even the smallest of the things that I do because I don`t want to do anything of myself. It`s not beneficial to me or to my circumstances. God`s ways are higher than our ways, and we should always ask His input on what we do. I promise you it will pay back with blessings and closer relationships with the Lord.

If you feel hopeless today, please know that Jesus is saying to you the same thing He told Zacchaeus: salvation has come to your house! You can either accept it or reject it, but please know that Jesus came to save the lost of this world. It all comes down to the heart- how much are you willing to humiliate yourself and change your lifestyle like Zacchaeus offered to do: “Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold” (verse 8).

Do you have a lot? So did Zacchaeus. Do you not really know who Jesus is? So did Zacchaeus. Are you losing the meaning in your life? So was Zacchaeus. All these stories in the Bible serve to us as an encouragement of our human predecessors who struggled the same way we did and in the same areas we are. The only thing that made them different is their choice to follow after the Lord and to live for Jesus. I would encourage you to make this same choice today to accept Jesus and to ask Him personally to point you to the right direction. Zacchaeus only had the Old Testament, but we have a fully written Bible-God`s word with thousands of promises that God keeps always.

Numbers 23:19 (NKJV)

¹⁹ “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? 

Isaiah 55:11 9NKJV)

¹¹ So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

I am grateful today that God didn`t give up on me, and He didn`t think of me as unworthy of His salvation, but He chose to knock on my heart and patiently wait until I answered. My life became content and complete with Him, and with Him only. The problems would always be part of our lives because we are living in a sinful fallen world, but with the Lord as our Savior, it makes a big difference as to how we walk through the journey and where we store our treasures.

I would really encourage you to think through what you really live for and if the gain worth the pain without the Lord. Looking at someone like Zacchaeus- a prosperous and rich man with Roman connections, you would think that he had it all made up really good for him, yet the major part of his life was missing. He was chasing after Jesus as soon as he found out that Jesus was going to pass by his way, and he chose to use whatever means he could find to reach out to Jesus. Since we were created in God`s image, there would always be this void without the Lord being present in our lives because He created us for relationships and communication with Him.