Sword & Trowel 2018: Issue 2
believed rightly that Jesus of Naza- reth was the Messiah, but wrongly that he would be a political deliverer from Rome. They had not been listening to him. Though amazed at his preaching (‘Never man spake like this man’), they failed to take in his calling of them to repentance and spiritual change, and his description of himself as their spiritual Messiah. Now he is entering Jerusalem
against all expectation. The authori- ties thought he would never return, and spread that opinion around. But now he returns, having determined the timing of his voluntary death and atonement for all who would be saved. So now they take branches of palm trees and proclaim him, crying out, ‘This is surely our Messiah.’ It is a vast throng, people having come from towns and cities near and far, joined by the permanent residents of Jerusalem. They are sure that Christ honours all the signs of their Mes- siah. He has the character, he heals
thousands, never fails and no heal- ing ever reverts. He receives their unqualifi ed attestation as One sent by God to be their deliverer. Despite all this, their understanding of what he would do was earthly, carnal, wrong, and out of line with all they should have known. But their recognition of him was right and powerful. (More of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem may be read in Matthew 21 and the other Gospels also.)
2 THE VOICE OF PROPHECY The second voice in the passage is
God’s Rules for Holiness, and Faith, Doubts, Trials and Assurance by Dr Masters have been translated into Arabic. (Available in the UK from Tabernacle Bookshop.)
page 4 Seven Voices of Calvary
in verses 14-15 – ‘And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass’s colt.’ The second voice is the voice of prophecy, the quotation coming from Zechariah 9.9. Christ rides along the road from Bethany not on a warhorse, a noble charger, but on an ani- mal of peacetime and peace, a lowly beast, a donkey. He rides in as one who will suffer humiliation and make an atoning death for the sins of the redeemed. Zechariah went on to say, ‘In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David…for sin and for uncleanness’ (Zechariah 13.1).
If the disciples had
known or remem- bered these Zechariah
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