Luke 19:1-28

International Children’s Bible

Zacchaeus

19 Jesus was going through the city of Jericho. ²In Jericho there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a wealthy, very important tax collector. ³He wanted to see who Jesus was, but he was too short to see above the crowd. ⁴He ran ahead to a place where he knew Jesus would come. He climbed a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus. ⁵When Jesus came to that place, he looked up and saw Zacchaeus in the tree. He said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down! I must stay at your house today.”

⁶Zacchaeus came down quickly. He was pleased to have Jesus in his house. ⁷All the people saw this and began to complain, “Look at the kind of man Jesus stays with. Zacchaeus is a sinner!”

⁸But Zacchaeus said to the Lord, “I will give half of my money to the poor. If I have cheated anyone, I will pay that person back four times more!”

⁹Jesus said, “Salvation has come to this house today. This man truly belongs to the family of Abraham. ¹⁰The Son of Man came to find lost people and save them.”

A Story About Three Servants

¹¹Jesus traveled closer to Jerusalem. Some of the people thought that God’s kingdom would appear soon. ¹²Jesus knew that the people thought this, so he told them this story: “A very important man was preparing to go to a country far away to be made a king. Then he planned to return home and rule his people. ¹³So the man called ten of his servants together. He gave a bag of money^[a] to each servant. He said, ‘Do business with this money till I get back.’ ¹⁴But the people in the kingdom hated the man. So they sent a group to follow him and say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king!’

¹⁵“But the man became king. When he came home, he said, ‘Call those servants who have my money. I want to know how much they earned with it.’

¹⁶“The first servant came and said, ‘Sir, I earned ten bags of money with the one bag you gave me!’ ¹⁷The king said to the servant, ‘Fine! You are a good servant. I see that I can trust you with small things. So now I will let you rule over ten of my cities.’

¹⁸“The second servant said, ‘Sir, with your one bag of money I earned five bags!’ ¹⁹The king said to this servant, ‘You can rule over five cities.’

²⁰“Then another servant came in. The servant said to the king, ‘Sir, here is your bag of money. I wrapped it in a piece of cloth and hid it. ²¹I was afraid of you because you are a hard man. You even take money that you didn’t earn and gather food that you didn’t plant.’ ²²Then the king said to the servant, ‘You evil servant! I will use your own words to condemn you. You said that I am a hard man. You said that I even take money that I didn’t earn and gather food that I didn’t plant. ²³If that is true, then you should have put my money in the bank. Then, when I came back, my money would have earned some interest.’

²⁴“Then the king said to the men who were watching, ‘Take the bag of money away from this servant and give it to the servant who earned ten bags of money.’ ²⁵They said to the king, ‘But sir, that servant already has ten bags of money!’ ²⁶The king said, ‘The one who uses what he has will get more. But the one who does not use what he has will have everything taken away from him. ²⁷Now where are my enemies who didn’t want me to be king? Bring them here and kill them before me.’”