Read: Luke 19:1-27

By: Pastor Jarren Rogers

Burning my heart just like a fire / Come and take me over / Jesus, draw me closer – Closer, Lifepoint Worship

Meet Zacchaeus – chief tax collector and chief of sinners. Zacchaeus has a problem. He is too short to see Jesus over the crowd that had gathered around Him.

As I thought about this familiar story, I began to think that each of us has our own crowd that begins to gather around us. A crowd that keeps us from seeing Jesus.

A crowd that frequently gathers around my heart is time. I’m guilty of not spending time with God because I get too busy.

Maybe you can relate. Sometimes we feel that there is no time or there are things more important than our time with God in prayer and the reading of His Word. Busyness can be the crowd that gets in the way of us and God.

Other things can keep us from God as well: sin, addiction, selfishness. All of them are another person in the crowd that separates us from being able to see Jesus for who He really is.

The good news is that we don’t have to be separated from Christ. Look at what Zacchaeus does:

“So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.’ So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly” (Luke 19:4-6).

Zacchaeus broke through the crowd and climbed a tree just to get a glimpse of the Messiah.

Too often I feel that we allow the crowd to gather around our heart, blocking our view of Jesus, and we accept it. We shrug our shoulders and just live with it. Or maybe we “try hard” to break through the crowd, but if we really reflected on our attempts to see Jesus, we would see that they are half-hearted and feeble.

We need to stop letting the crowds surround our hearts. Instead, we should be breaking through the crowds that block our view of Jesus and clambering up the nearest tree in desperation.

The beautiful thing is that when Zacchaeus climbed the tree to get a look at Jesus, he wasn’t left there. Jesus did not walk by Zacchaeus and ignore him. When Zacchaeus climbed the tree in desperation Jesus came to him, and ask to visit his house.

You see, when we break through the crowds that surround our hearts and search for Jesus, He searches us out. Whenever we draw near to Christ, He draws near to us. Jesus will never leave you hovering above the crowd clutching the tree branch. Rather, He will help you down, cast the crowd away, and come into your heart to stay.