Zaccheus

Here's a favorite. This is a great one to use with kids but is also great with adults. It's a good opportunity to talk about how Jesus accepted and even sought out those who are different or who have never felt that they could belong.

Zacchaeus lived in a town called Jericho a long time ago. Nobody liked Zacchaeus very much mostly because he got rich taking money from other people and giving it to the Romans. Some of the money he gave to the Romans - but lots of it he kept for himself.

One bright, sunny day, Zacchaeus looked down the dirt road that came into Jericho and he saw a crowd of people coming his way. Everywhere Jesus went, people who were sick got better, people who couldn’t walk could walk again, people who were blind could see again. Everybody wanted to see Jesus, including Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus ran up to the edge of the crowd and stood on his tiptoes to see what was happening. But he could not see anything. He tried to push his way through the crowd, but everyone wanted to see Jesus, and they wouldn’t let him through.

Then Zacchaeus turned around and saw a sycamore tree growing right beside the road Jesus was walking along. He ran on ahead and climbed up the Sycamore tree. Jesus stopped right under the sycamore tree and looked up, and there was Zacchaeus. “Zacchaeus!” Jesus said to him, “Hurry down from there! I must stay at your house today!”

But the people in the crowd were not so happy. They had spent all day in the hot sun following Jesus, and now he was going to stay at the house of Zacchaeus, a rich, cheating tax collector. “This man is a sinner!” one woman said. “He cheats and steals from his own people!” said an old man. “He isn’t good enough for Jesus to come and stay at his house!”

Zacchaeus heard what the people were saying about him, and he must have known that they were right. He wanted to make things right for Jesus and change. He no longer wanted to cheat people. So he said, “Listen! I will give half of everything I have to the poor! And if I cheated anyone, I will pay them back four times as much!”

Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “Today salvation has come to this house! Your life was all wrong, but now it is all right. You were lost, but now you have been saved!

That is why I am here. I came to find and save the lost!”

Vocabulary:

1. Romans –

2. Jericho –

3. crowd –

4. tiptoes –

5. Sycamore –

6. to cheat -

7. Tax collector –

8. salvation -

With kids, this is a good one to act out.