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Your King on a Colt
I don’t know how the Holy Spirit operates. Jesus gave an indication of the difficulty describing this when he spoke to Nicodemus. He said that the wind blows from the east to the west, and you don’t know where it comes from, but you can feel its presence. So it is with the Spirit.
Thinking about the lives of the gospel authors, I am intrigued by the daily ruminating that must have happened as they pondered the 3 year encounter they had with Jesus the Christ. I can imagine that one day as John was working on what he would write, the Spirit suggests to him Jesus’ triumphal entry just prior to his crucifixion. How bittersweet it would have been for the author, self-styled as the one Jesus loved, to think back over that day.
It seemed as though everyone was rejoicing. The King had come home and was ready to take power and fulfill the millennia long hope of the Jewish people. Years of power struggles, imprisonments, prophecy and promises, not to mention the 400 years of unbearable silence as God prepared the crescendo of his work. The creator becoming the created.
As John opens in ch12:12 “The next day”, he shares with us an ancient context that sets us up to understand the prophecy as it applied to Jesus. In 12:15 he refers us to Zechariah 9 as he recalls Jesus riding on the colt as he entered Jerusalem. Oh, what an amazing and glorious day it must have been. Can you imagine being overwhelmed by joy as the disciples and all of Jerusalem (or so it seemed) made the Earth shake with the refrain “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”. John volunteers that none of Jesus’ disciples understood what was happening in light of prophecy. Indeed, even the religious scholars of the day were completely unprepared for how the writings of Zechariah would be fulfilled over the next several days.
The events in Zechariah are said to have been written around 520 BC. By this time Israel would have passed from Babylonian captivity to Persian captivity. The content of Zechariah is filled with promises of the return of the glory that Israel once enjoyed. Chapter 8 tells of the peace and prosperity that Zion would once again come to know. The entirety of chapter 9 is an apt description of the hope of the people of Israel. Specifically, we have the judgement on Tyre (the rich and wealthy city) and the Philistines. There is a notable mention of Philistia being taken as a remnant like a “clan of Judah”, found in vs 7. This seems to be God’s way of hinting toward the salvation of Gentile and Jew alike. The specific context of which John speaks is in Zechariah 9:9 where he speaks of the triumphal entry of the king coming on a colt. The king immediately resolves the centuries old conflict between the northern and southern tribes of Israel to unite them. Under the image of Judah as the bow and Ephraim as the arrow, the wrath of the Lord would be unleashed on those who stood against his chosen. The final passages of chapter 9, end with the decisive victory of the Lord, the salvation granted to his people and the bounty of his provision as young men and women flourish.
This is the context that John expects you to know as he comments on Jesus’ entry that day.
Since the garden, the creation (man) has always underestimated the grandeur of God and the wonder and amazement of all he has planned for his creation. Since the first subjugation in the partaking of the forbidden, we have constantly been at a loss to experience the unfiltered goodness of God. As John prepares us for the battle foretold in Zechariah, Jesus employs common everyday symbols to set our thinking. The King is coming. Amid all this rejoicing Jesus prays for the Father to bring glory to his name. God’s immediate response was that he had and would do so again. Then, out of nowhere, all our hopes and dreams are up ended and reset. The expected delivery is lost, to make way for the delivery of the unexpected.
Considering the context of Zechariah and the eventual trial, death, and burial of Jesus, what is it exactly that John wants us to understand?
Our views of how God resolves the mess in which we find ourselves are at best myopic and short sighted. At worst egregiously wrong and misleading. I believe that some of this myopia exists today.
God has a plan, a vision that will completely reset everything you have ever understood, no matter what testament era you live in. The glimpses that God affords us are completely terrifying at times. However, God also reminds us time and again of his great love for his creation. The question is … Do you trust God when he brings it about, no matter what he brings about?
The thing about God doing the unexpected is that he both expresses and illustrates his love for us. This is no ordinary thing. People that have my best interests at heart can make huge mistakes, but we are speaking about the creator God that knows me better than I know myself. God allows us to experience, through the millennia, the encounters where his “best interest” was not only successful, but it was also better, and IT WAS AMAZING.
When Jesus as the King entered Jerusalem, it was not to start yet another world empire like all that had passed on before. It was to transform the very citizenry into the glory God had always intended. From the least to the greatest, servants … of each other.
- Steve Turquette
Which Form?
God formed us in His own image.
Satan has deformed each of us by sin.
We are tempted to be conformed to the world.
Education tells us we simply need to be informed.
Society seeks to reform us to fit its standards.
But if we will allow Him, Christ will transform us.
