24 September | Kids

The Story Of Zacchaeus

«And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house.”» Luke 19:9

There was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and lived in Jericho. Everybody hated Zacchaeus. Do you know why? He worked for the Roman enemies, collecting a fee from all the citizens. Not only that, but he collected more than he should and kept some for himself. He had become rich, but he had no friends and felt very unhappy!

Then he heard about Jesus. Zacchaeus was a Jew and knew the laws. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, and when he heard about the preaching of Jesus, he decided to stop doing wrong things.

One day, he learned that Jesus would pass through Jericho and ran to see Him. Ah, but Zacchaeus was very short! He would never be able to see Jesus!

Zacchaeus had an idea! He climbed a tree that was on the road where Jesus would walk by and got a surprise! When Jesus was passing by the tree, he didn’t walk away. He stopped, looked up and said: “Zacchaeus, come down from there because I want to go with you to your house for dinner!”

How happy was he! Zacchaeus came down quickly and took Jesus to his house. He felt sorry that he had stolen from the people and gave them their money back.

Let’s practice!

Draw Zacchaeus’ tree and glue little brown paper balls to the trunk and little green paper balls to the branches.