Today Matters
Your mileage may vary, but personally, I love the stories in the Bible. You should read them. They’re fascinating! Every one of the stories you find there is part of a bigger story – the story of God’s love and His endless pursuit of each one of us. Whether it’s an Old Testament story or a New Testament story, each one is filled with deep truths that both encourage us and challenge us.
Call me crazy, but I happen to believe that each one of those stories is true. It actually happened. God created everything in 6 days and then rested on the 7th? Yep. God flooded the world? Yeah…..what a sad time. Everyone spoke the same language until God confused it? I wasn’t there, but there’s no better explanation of why there are so many different languages out there. The walls of Jericho? Yep. David, Goliath, a slingshot and a stone? Why not? Stranger things have happened.
I especially love the stories involving Jesus. Maybe I’m just biased (okay, I’m definitely biased), but in the stories about Jesus we find passion and compassion, and He is always pointing us toward a relationship with God the Father. One such story is the story of Zacchaeus. What a name, right?
One day while Jesus was passing through Jericho, a man named Zacchaeus came to see him. If you grew up in Sunday School, you know that “Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he”. You may also know that he wasn’t a particularly good man; he was a tax-collector and a dishonest business man. Since he wasn’t very tall and couldn’t see in the crowd, he climbed a sycamore tree to get a better view of Jesus. The Bible says…
When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately, I must stay at your house today.” (Luke 19:5)
I love the urgency in Jesus’ words: “Come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” Jesus was saying, “Zacchaeus, don’t wait. Don’t put this off. Something important is about to happen.”
No doubt Zacchaeus was caught off guard. After all, who goes around looking for people in trees? But this was more than Jesus noticing someone in a tree. This was a divine appointment. The response of Zacchaeus?
So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. (Luke 19:6)
He invited Jesus into his house. He didn’t say, “I’m not ready. My house isn’t prepared. I don’t have enough food. I don’t have any party favors on hand. The place is a mess…Can we do this a week from Friday when I’ve had time to get things in order?”
Instead, he seized the opportunity to have Jesus come to his home. What happened next? This spur-of-the-moment meeting led to a life-change for Zacchaeus. He said, “Jesus, I want to start doing things right. I’ll give half of my money to the poor, and I’ll pay four times the amount to anyone I’ve cheated.” And Jesus said…
“Today salvation has come to this house.” (Luke 19:9)
Salvation came that day, not because Zacchaeus decided to “come clean”. The was the by-product. Salvation came because Zacchaeus trusted in Jesus for forgiveness. Once he’d been forgiven, then he decided to “clean up his act”. It all happened because Zacchaeus responded to the invitation of Jesus. He might not have felt completely prepared to have the Son of God enter his home, but he didn’t put it off. And his life changed as a result. So let me ask you:
What life-changing invitation have you put off?
Maybe something important is ready to happen………maybe even today.