Luke 19:5

‘And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry up and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” '

We can imagine his horror, therefore, when Jesus stopped below the tree and looked up. He was totally exposed to public view. There can be little doubt that some sharp eyed person would have spotted him a little earlier, and the moment that he did so the word would have spread around the crowd, so that Jesus would already have gathered who and what he was, and what his name was. But this was not what he had been hoping for, or expecting. He knew what a Jewish prophet would think of him.

But the horror turned to joy when he heard what Jesus had to say. For Jesus, Who knew his heart, informed him that He wished to eat with him in his house. All would know the house. It was a place that no good man would enter except under duress. But Jesus was not just a good man. He was the One Who had come to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10). And this day He was seeking a particularly wayward sheep, and was willing to go ‘into the wilderness' in order to do so.