Luke 19:1-10

¹Jesus came to a town called Jericho. He went into that town and started to go through it.

²A man lived there whose name was Zacchaeus. He was a very rich man. He was a government boss, and his job was to get tax money from the people and give it to the government. Sometimes those tax men cheated people and kept some money for themselves, so nobody liked them.

³Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, but he was a short man and there were a lot of people around Jesus, and they got in his way and blocked him, so he couldn’t see Jesus.

⁴So he ran up the road ahead of Jesus and climbed up into a tree, and he saw Jesus from up high in that tree, as Jesus walked along the road.

⁵When Jesus came to that tree he looked up and saw Zacchaeus, and said to him, “Hey, Zacchaeus. You come down right now, and hurry. I want to go and stay at your house today.”

⁶Then Zacchaeus was very happy, and he came down quickly, and he took Jesus to his house.

⁷But when the other people saw this they got upset with Jesus. They said, “Look. He goes and stays with bad people. He shouldn’t do that.”

⁸But later, at his house, Zacchaeus stood up and said to Jesus, “Look, Sir, this is what I am going to do now. I am going to split up all the things I own into 2 heaps, and I will give one heap away to poor people. And I’m also going to give back to those people that I cheated. I am going to give them back 4 times as much as I took from them.”

⁹Then Jesus told everybody there, “God saved this man right now, today. And he saved everybody at his place, too. You see, this man is one of God’s people now, just like Abraham, because he believes in me just like Abraham believed in God.

¹⁰You see, I am God’s special man from heaven, and I came to earth to look for people who went wrong and got lost, so that I can save them.”