Sunday, 29th May 2016
Pastor Bruce McDonald
Today Pastor Bruce shared with us the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10. Zacchaeus was the chief of the tax collectors, in another words, he was very rich and influential among the tax collectors. Many places in the Bible talk about how a lot of tax collectors followed Jesus and their lives changed. Therefore it is very likely that Zacchaeus, the boss of all tax collectors, saw the changes of his employees after believing in Jesus, that when Jesus came to his town, he was so looking forward to meeting Him and willing to climb a tree just to see Jesus!
As Christians, have we made an impact in our work? Have we performed extraordinarily that our boss will recognise the changes in us?
Furthermore, Pastor Bruce gave us some background of tax collectors. The Jewish people disliked tax collectors because they worked for the Roman government to collect tax from people. And very much likely they would collect more than they should so some money went into their own pockets. But when Jesus went to Zacchaeus’ house, he said to Jesus that he would give half of his wealth to the poor, and for those he illegally took money from, he would return four times the amount he took!
For the Jewish people and the Pharisees, tax collectors might be sinners in their eyes, but for Jesus, he saw something different – He saw people who were willing to have their lives changed and to have an influence in this world!! From the story of Zacchaeus, Pastor Bruce shared two important points:
- Who are we good at winning? Jesus was good at winning the hearts of the tax collectors, so whose hearts do God call us to win for Him? As a church we should continue to pray for the direction God wants us to go, and discover the calling from God for us!
- The salvation comes TODAY! In Luke 19:9, Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “Today salvation has come to this house”, Jesus did not look at what he did yesterday, or what he would do tomorrow, but TODAY!
There is nothing we can do to change yesterday, and we don’t know if we will have tomorrow, but there is one thing we can be certain – Jesus wants to meet with us TODAY!