Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town. There
was a man there named Zacchaeus. He was
the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich. He
tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd. So
he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was
going to pass that way. When
Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. “Zacchaeus!” he
said. “Quick, come down! I must be
a guest in your home today.” Zacchaeus
quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy. But
the people were displeased. “He has gone
to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled. Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the
Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have
cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!” Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to
this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. For
the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.” Luke 19:1-10
It is easy to get the wrong idea if you focus too closely on any
issue. Both James and Luke were Apostles
who knew Jesus firsthand. If you focus on
James’ text you could easily arrive at the conclusion any rich person is
evil. But your opinion will be tempered
if you understand Luke’s account of what Jesus said about Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, an extremely rich man. The chief difference between James’ harsh
view, and Jesus’ tempered view, was how the riches were used. In James the rich hoarded the wealth and
glutted on it. In Luke’s account, the rich
man, Zacchaeus, repented of his previous selfishness and seriously set on a
course of giving, rather than receiving.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the poorest of nations in the
world today, has a per capita median income of $1.09 per day. By comparison, the number in the United
States is $72.11. If we temper all the
reasons we know about how we will always have the poor with us,[1] by what we know about God’s
view of selfishness, for a beliver and follower of Jesus, the commitment to be
a giver will grow stronger, and hoarding will (eventually) disappear.
For You Today
This is a lesson,
not just for the most wealthy, but everyone.
We will be judged on what we do with what has been placed in our
hands. When it comes to wealth of any
kind, God measures our faithfulness to Him, and our worth in His Kingdom, not
on how much we give, but on how much we have in our hands after we give.
There
are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library. To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some
of these:
What's in Your Wallet? and Buying God and Basic Trust; Basic Fear
[1] Images: via Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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