THE COMING KING

"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey." (Zechariah 9:9) Jesus came to a Messiah-expecting world; there was a high level of messianic hope in His day. Yet many or most missed the Messiah when He came, including many of those who earnestly expected Him. This strange and sad situation happened because people looked for the wrong kind of Messiah. They looked for a political power Messiah, not for a humble and lowly savior from sin. This passage from Zechariah reminds us of the kind of Messiah Jesus is, and warns us against hoping or looking for the wrong kind of Savior. The verse begins, "Behold your King is coming to you . . . lowly and riding on a donkey." This Messiah-King is lowly, and in part the animal He rode showed this. He didn't ride the triumphant stallion of a conquering general, but the customary mount for royalty, coming in peace. This was quite a contrast to the warhorse of a conqueror, and it challenges us to take the lowly place instead of the place of self-exaltation. As you might expect, the great English preacher Charles Spurgeon expressed the thought well: "Brethren, let us be lowly. Did I hear one say, 'Well, I will try to be lowly'? You cannot do it in that way. We must not try to act the lowly part; we must be lowly, and then we shall naturally act in a humble manner. It is astonishing how much of pride there is in the most modest." It's easy to recognize pride – in others. It can be very hard to recognize it in myself. We can even begin to take a perverse pride in our own humility. We boast that we hate boasting. We flatter ourselves that we hate flattery. When someone tells us that we are really humble, we feel as proud as Lucifer himself may have felt. We think of ourselves as so wise, so experienced, so mature, so discerning, and so free from self-confidence that we are the first to be caught in the trap of self-satisfaction. It is actually a wonderful, deep, and continual work of God to make us genuinely humble. Look back at how the prophet Zechariah described the animal Jesus would ride upon: "A donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey." Taken together, these words seem to form a Hebrew expression of speech emphasizing that the animal is purebred - a truly magnificent, royal mount. He didn't need to ride a horse; this worked against the spirit of Deuteronomy 17:16. Jesus came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it. So He did not come upon a majestic horse, but instead upon a humble – yet fine – donkey. More importantly, look at how the Messiah would be revealed at his arrival: "Rejoice greatly . . . Shout . . . Behold, your King is coming." This clearly prophesied what is known as the triumphal entry of Jesus (Matthew 21:5), when He presented Himself as the Messiah to Jerusalem and the people of Israel. It was a joyous occasion, so happy that Jesus said that if the people did not cry out in praise, then the rocks themselves would be forced to worship their Creator. Though the triumphal entry was a joyful celebration, a Roman spectator would wonder what was so "triumphal" about it. It didn't compare at all to the kind of parade Julius Caesar had when he came back to Rome from Gaul. That was a parade lasting three days as he displayed all the captives and booty he brought back. In contrast to this, the procession of Jesus must have seemed pretty humble, and showed that Jesus was a different kind of King. Are you expecting the wrong kind of Messiah? Are you looking for a Savior from a Hollywood image, or from the humble servant nature of Jesus? Put your hope and expectation on the right kind of Messiah. By David Guzik