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Today's talk comes from Pastor Ben Stewart.

Well, to set up Luke chapter 19 here in verse one, it says he, meaning Jesus, was passing

through Jericho on the way to Jerusalem. This is incidentally his final journey into Jerusalem,

his triumphal entry, and ultimate death, burial, and resurrection is the next thing on

his calendar. But his journey there takes him through Jericho. And when he gets there, Luke introduces

a key character. And you see it in verse two, he says, and behold, that's the word, look out.

There was a man named Zechias. in lukept two we learned or verse two

luke looks us two things about him that zechias was a chief tax collector he worked for the government

and that he was rich now in that day in that context that combination would have made him

very well known and very disliked.

How does one become a chief tax collector in those days? Well, Zekees was a Jewish man,

and the Jewish nation in that day was under the dominion of the Roman Empire. And so he's

collecting taxes for the Romans. And the way you would get that job is you

would go to the Roman authorities and say, I will extract money from my people on your behalf.

So how does that person become rich? Well, you do what a lot of tax collectors did that day.

You could add a surcharge onto the tax of those people to pay your own salary,

and they would get a generous surcharge so they could become wealthy. And so what he's done here is,

I will become rich off the hardship of my people. So as we start the story here, you just got to know

who Zakias was. He is not a sympathetic character.

We're not rooting for him yet, right? His choices had made a statement to the community.

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