Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Look here, you rich people:  Weep and groan with anguish because of all the terrible troubles ahead of you.  Your wealth is rotting away, and your fine clothes are moth-eaten rags.  Your gold and silver are corroded.  The very wealth you were counting on will eat away your flesh like fire.  This corroded treasure you have hoarded will testify against you on the day of judgment.  For listen!  Hear the cries of the field workers whom you have cheated of their pay.  The cries of those who harvest your fields have reached the ears of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.  James 5:1-4

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.  

Fast forward two millennia:

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.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

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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[1] Mark 4:7

Getting Zacchaeus Out of the Sycamore Tree

 ^[1]   

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

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 ^(NLT)

I’m always dumfounded when I read this passage.  The crowds following Jesus were displeased that he would go to the house of a despised tax collector.  That just didn’t make sense – not that Jesus went to the tax collector’s house – but that the crowd disapproved. 

For at least two reasons:

       1.      The crowd was made up of people – people with both memory and conscience.  For them to disapprove of Jesus associating with a tax collector was just a bit hypocritical; they were no better on the inside.  Perhaps they were a bit more “respectable” (whatever that is) but, deep down, they knew they only envied Zacchaeus’ wealth.  They were no more righteous than the tax crook.

       2.      If there was anybody on the planet or in the universe who could change things between 

           Zacchaeus and the people from whom he extorted taxes, it was the Lord Jesus. 

And, in fact, things did change with the little tax man – he gave back what he stole, and sweetened the pot with a four-fold return to his former victims. 

This stabs the point home about say-so Christianity and do so Christianity. 

It’s one thing to go to a revival, walk down the aisle, shake the preacher’s hand and tell him I’ve been touched by the Lord and now I’m born-again; where do I sign up for church membership.  You could go home and never miss a beat in your life; no harm, no foul!

It’s quite another thing to confess you’ve been the town cheat (in front of everyone you’ve been cheating) and then empty your bank account to give it back, because you really have been born-again!

The old saying goes something like

Don’t talk the talk if you have no intention of walking the walk!

For You Today

Is there a hole in your walk?

Is there something you promised to Christ, but somehow you never got around to the Zacchaeus-level of commitment?

Today might be a grand place to begin.

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[1] Title image: By Rosser1954 Roger Griffith (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons