Luke 19:1-10 (ESV) [Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. 3 And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. 4 So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. 5 And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. 7 And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” 8 And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” 9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
I’ve been reading this for the past couple of weeks in preparation for a devotional I gave today. A few things hit me about Zacchaeus. The first, was that Zacchaeus “received him joyfully.” Zacchaeus was almost certainly a crook. Tax collectors made most of their money by overcharging the people. Zacchaeus was both the chief tax collector and rich. This would imply he had not only overcharged the people but also those tax collectors under his authority. In addition, he was a pretty shrewd investor as he was able not to just return the money he had gotten through defrauding the people but four times that amount and to give half his wealth to the poor.
Jesus brought a drastic change in this man. As I thought about this, I looked through Scripture to see how many times the word changed appears concerning a person Jesus had effected. There are none. However there are a couple of verses which say when we are in Christ, we are a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15)
This week I spent some time with a couple of friends of mine from California. The three of us saw the Grand Canyon one day and sat around drinking coffee the following morning and talked, laughed, and wept for four hours straight about how God had worked in our lives, how He had brought us to Him, and how He had used us to work in the lives of others. It was clear the three of us were not the people we were before we found Christ. We weren’t even close.
In our twenties, we were three young men trying to figure out the world around us. Our lives certainly were not where we were very usable. God hadn’t even reached a couple of us, but when He did, when He entered our lives and began the recreation, we saw fruit. We saw lives and situations around us change. God had made some major adjustments in those lives. We were now new creatures in Christ.
The three of us were very different in so many ways: a carpenter, a mortgage broker, and a photographer. We now lived in different places from one another, our family situations were different as were our interests, but we were brothers in Christ, friends due to our common purpose, common service, and common Lord. God had recreated us to make us interlock like three puzzle pieces.
Why is this important?
Through this time together, I realized this recreation had taken decades and was still going on. God took seven days to create the universe. We could expect it would take time to recreate us into the people He wanted us to be – especially with the material He had to work with. Along that path, He used what He had already created to touch the lives of many. It was a glorious morning of fellowship.
We all are being recreated. Some of us are like Zacchaeus, and recreation comes fast and easy. Others are recreated slowly, methodically, to achieve what God wants to accomplish in us. So, if you’re feeling your recreation is taking time, maybe God us using this time to teach you things. I don’t think we will ever be fully recreated until be stand before God. We can just keep our minds on the finish line and enjoy the journey.
Jesus doesn’t merely change lives, He recreates us for new life in Him.
Eph. 2:10 (ESV) For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Believers Armed and Dangerous 