HeartFelt Kids Bible

Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector in Jericho, and he was rich. He collected money for the Romans, and he took extra for himself, and everybody knew it. So nobody would sit with him and nobody would eat with him. He had a fine big house and not one single friend in it.

Then one day the news went round that Jesus was coming through Jericho, and the whole town poured out into the narrow street. Zacchaeus wanted to see him too. But the crowd was packed shoulder to shoulder, and Zacchaeus was a very short man, and nobody was going to let him through.

So Zacchaeus did something no important man would ever do. He picked up the front of his expensive robe and he ran, right up the road ahead of the crowd, and he climbed a sycamore tree and sat on a branch over the street. He must have looked ridiculous, and he did not care one bit.

The crowd came along the street with Jesus in the middle of it. And when he got to the sycamore tree, Jesus stopped. The whole procession stopped with him. And he looked straight up into the branches, at the little man sitting there hoping nobody would notice him.

Zacchaeus, he said. Nobody had told him. He just knew. Come down, quickly, because I am coming to your house today. And Zacchaeus scrambled down out of that tree so fast he nearly fell, and he was grinning all over his face. The crowd could not believe it. Of all the houses in Jericho, he has chosen that one.

And something happened in Zacchaeus that afternoon that nobody made happen. He stood up in his own house and said, I am giving half of everything I own to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody, I will pay them back four times over. Jesus had not asked him for any of it. Being welcomed was enough.