'... Say ye that the Lord hath need of him; and straightway he will
send him hither.'--Mark xi. 3.
You will remember that Jesus Christ sent two of His disciples into the
village that looked down on the road from Bethany to Jerusalem, with
minute instructions and information as to what they were to do and
find there. The instructions may have one of two explanations--they
suggest either superhuman knowledge or a previous arrangement.
Perhaps, although it is less familiar to our thoughts, the latter is
the explanation. There is a remarkable resemblance, in that respect,
to another incident which lies close beside this one in time, when our
Lord again sent two disciples to make preparation for the Passover,
and, with similar minuteness, told them that they would find, at a
certain point, a man bearing a pitcher of water. Him they were to
accost, and he would take them to the room that had been prepared. Now
the old explanation of both these incidents is that Jesus Christ knew
what was going to happen. Another possible explanation, and in my view
more probable and quite as instructive, is, that Jesus Christ had
settled with the two owners what was to happen. Clearly, the owner of
the colt was a disciple, because at once he gave up his property when
the message was repeated, 'the _Lord_ hath need of him.' Probably he
had been one of the guests at the modest festival that had been held
the night before, in the village close by, in Simon's house, and had
seen how Mary had expended her most precious possession on the Lord,
and, under the influence of the resurrection of Lazarus, he, too,
perhaps, was touched, and was glad to arrange with Jesus Christ to
have his colt waiting there at the cross-road for his Master's
convenience. But, be that as it may, it seems to me that this
incident, and especially these words that I have read for a text,
carry very striking and important lessons for us, whether we look at
them in connection with the incident itself, or whether we venture to
give them a somewhat wider application. Let me take these two points
in turn.
I. Now, what strikes one about our Lord's requisitioning the colt is
this, that here is a piece of conduct on His part singularly unlike
all the rest of His life. All through it, up to this last moment, His
one care was to damp down popular enthusiasm, to put on the drag
whenever there came to be the least symptom of it, to discourage any
reference to Him as the Messiah-King of Israel, to shrink back from
the coarse adulation of the crowd, and to glide quietly through the
world, blessing and doing good. But now, at the end, He flings off all
disguise. He deliberately sets Himself, at a time when popular
enthusiasm ran highest and was most turbid and difficult to manage, at
the gathering of the nation for the Passover in Jerusalem, to cast an
effervescing element into the caldron. If He had planned to create a
popular rising, He could not have done anything more certain to bring
it about than what He did that morning when He made arrangements for a
triumphal procession into the city, amidst the excited crowds gathered
from every quarter of the land. Why did He do that? What was the
meaning of it?
Then there is another point in this requisitioning of the colt. He not
only deliberately set Himself to stir up popular excitement, but He
consciously did what would be an outward fulfilment of a great
Messianic prophecy. I hope you are wiser than to fancy that
Zechariah's prophecy of the peaceful monarch who was to come to Zion,
meek and victorious, and riding upon a 'colt the foal of an ass,' was
fulfilled by the outward fact of Christ being mounted on this colt
'whereon never man sat.' That is only the shell, and if there had been
no such triumphal entry, our Lord would as completely have fulfilled
Zechariah's prophecy. The fulfilment of it did not depend on the petty
detail of the animal upon which He sat when He entered the city, nor
even on that entrance. The meaning of the prophecy was that to Zion,
wherever and whatever it is, there should come that Messianic King,
whose reign owed nothing to chariots and horses and weapons of war for
its establishment, but who, meek and patient, pacing upon the humble
animal used only for peaceful services, and not mounted on the
prancing steed of the warrior, should inaugurate the reign of majesty
and of meekness. Our Lord uses the external fact just as the prophet
had used it, as of no value in itself, but as a picturesque emblem of
the very spirit of His kingdom. The literal fulfilment was a kind of
finger-post for inattentive onlookers, which might induce them to look
more closely, and so see that He was indeed the King Messiah, because
of more important correspondences with prophecy than His once riding
on an ass. Do not so degrade these Old Testament prophecies as to
fancy that their literal fulfilment is of chief importance. That is
the shell: the kernel is the all-important thing, and Jesus Christ
would have fulfilled the _rôle,_ that was sketched for Him by the
prophets of old, just as completely if there never had been this
entrance into Jerusalem.
But, further, the fact that He had to borrow the colt was as
significant as the choice of it. For so we see blended two things, the
blending of which makes the unique peculiarity and sublimity of
Christ's life: absolute authority, and meekness of poverty and
lowliness. A King, and yet a pauper-King! A King claiming His
dominion, and yet obliged to borrow another man's colt in order that
He might do it! A strange kind of monarch!--and yet that remarkable
combination runs through all His life. He had to be obliged to a
couple of fishermen for a boat, but He sat in it, to speak words of
divine wisdom. He had to be obliged to a lad in the crowd for barley
loaves and fishes, but when He took them into His hands they were
multiplied. He had to be obliged for a grave, and yet He rose from the
borrowed grave the Lord of life and death. And so when He would pose
as a King, He has to borrow the regalia, and to be obliged to this
anonymous friend for the colt which made the emphasis of His claim.
'Who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we
through His poverty might be rich.'