Jesus as the Coming King

Introduction: Behold Your King

I want you guys to picture the scene with me. It’s around 2000 years ago and you are a Jewish person living in Israel. For hundreds of years your people have been living under the oppressive rule of dictator after dictator. You are constantly being reminded that your people aren’t free when you have to pay tax after tax to caesar. Not only that, but you know from your scriptures that the rightful King of Israel is a descendent of David, and yet the man who calls himself the King of Judea isn’t even descended from Israel. He also taxes you, and on top of that the temple is asking for your money. You know that it’s been 400 years since God last spoke to your people through the prophets. Maybe you’re beginning to question if He ever spoke at all. Yet every week in synagogue you’re reminded of the promise that God made to send a deliverer, who your people call the “Messiah.” One of your rabbi’s favourite passages about Messiah is found in Zechariah 9:9-13

Zechariah 9:9–13 (ESV)

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.

For I have bent Judah as my bow; I have made Ephraim its arrow. I will stir up your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece, and wield you like a warrior’s sword.

So you are heading to Jerusalem to celebrate the passover, thinking as you naturally would about that first passover. About how God brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt and gave them their promised land and how long it’s been since your people have ever really owned that land.

Suddenly a man approaches the road seated on the back of a donkey. They start crying out to Him “save us! Save us!” while they lay down branches. There’s shouting from all sides, the pharisees are trying to silence the people. What would be going through your mind?

Perhaps the most clear thing would be the all important question, could this man really be the Messiah? Does this mean Israel will finally be made free?

Well let’s talk about that shall we. For the Burtt’s Corner folks at FCC I’ve been preaching a series called “Finding Jesus in the Old Testament,” where we take a look at the Hebrew Scriptures looking for types of Jesus that foreshadow His identity and ministry, christophanies, the pre-incarnate appearances of Jesus in the Old Testament, and prophecies where God reveals to His prophets knowledge about who the Messiah would be.

Zechariah was one of those prophets, and many of his prophecies are about the future Messiah. In the time that Zechariah was writing the Israelites were living in captivity. They hadn’t kept their half of their covenant with God, so they lost their Kingdom and were living oppressed lives. God didn’t just leave them there however. Through Zechariah, writing more than 700 years before the time of Jesus, along with other prophets He announced that there would be an annointed king that would come and save His people once and for all. They may be prisoners, but in the words of verse 12 they were “prisoners of hope”

This isn’t the only prediction that Zechariah makes about the Messiah. He also predicts that “he would be sold for thiry pieces of silver (Zec. 11:12), that his blood would open up a “fountain” in the House of David “for sin and for uncleanness” (Zec. 13:1), that his wounds would be inflicted in the house of his friends (Zec. 13:6) (“He came unto his own, and his own received him not,”Jn. 1:11).” according to the Thompson-Chain Reference Bible Companion.

Here though we get a glimpse into the way that the Messiah would make Himself publically known. We see the fulfillment of this passage in all four Gospels, Matthew 21:1-11, Luke 19:28-40, John 12:12-19 and we’ll read together Mark 11:1-11

Mark 11:1–11 ESV

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.’ ” And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. And some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go. And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!” And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

This is of course where Palm Sunday comes from. On this Sunday we celebrate Jesus’ entrance into the city of Jerusalem and His proclamation through this act that left no more doubt. He said loud and clear “I am the Messiah that Zechariah predicted.” And those gathered definitely picked up that message.

So when Jesus does this, when He gets a colt and rides into Jerusalem to fulfill this prophecy, what is He saying about who He is, besides saying that He’s the Messiah? If we look back at the prophecy that He’s fulfilling on Palm Sunday what does it teach us about Jesus’ character and what He came to accomplish for us?

I believe that we can learn three things from our passage in Zechariah about who Jesus is:

Jesus is the Righteous King

Jesus is the Humble King

Jesus is the Saving King

1. Jesus is the Righteous King

So right off the bat we see in Zechariah 9:9

Zechariah 9:9 (ESV)

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

The very first word used to describe this coming King? Righteous. Well what does that mean exactly? We have a helpful definition supplied by “The Lexham Bible Dictionary” here:

The Lexham Bible Dictionary Righteousness

RIGHTEOUSNESS (Hebrew צדק, tsdq;, צְדָקָה, tsedaqah;, צַדִּיק, tsaddiq; Greek δικαιοσύνη, dikaiosynē, δίκαιος, dikaios). The quality, state, and characteristic of being in the right.

The English word “righteousness” refers to the quality of being righteous or in the right and is cognate to “just,” “justness,” and “justice.”

In other words, this coming King will be “in the right.” I believe that this is functioning on two levels: First that the king will be the “rightful” king, and that the king will be right with God.

Now first we see the importance of the Messiah being rightful King. Perhaps the most prominent recurring prophecy about the Messiah is that He would be “the son of David,” so much so that the phrase “son of David” becamse synonymous with the Messiah. Only a descendent of David could rightfully rule Israel because of the promise that God made to David that one of His children would sit on the throne for eternity. This is why both Matthew and Luke in the New Testament go to such pains to show us that Jesus is a descendant of David, actually showing that He’s the rightful heir of David from both His mother’s genetic descent and His adoptive father’s legal descent.

Jesus is the rightful King.

Not only would the Messiah be the rightful King but also would be right with God. This is a significant prediction given that we know from Psalm 14:1-3

Psalm 14:1–3 (ESV)

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.

So we know that no human being is truly righteous. Now to be sure there were probably many who had more relaxed definitions of righteousness. Who would have called David righteous, or Abraham, or Moses. Yet all these men failed in major ways and committed grievous sins in the record of Scripture. This Messiah would be different. And we see in Jesus the only truly righteous King. Who in the words of Hebrews 4:15

Hebrews 4:15 ESV

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Without sin. Now I find it very interesting that if you look back over the history of objections to Christianity and Christian beliefs there is one argument that is sorely lacking. No one accuses Jesus of being a morally corrupt person. Over the course of His 33 years on earth He lived what eventually became an incredibly public life, and when His followers went around claiming that He was God and that He’d come back from the dead we don’t have anyone speaking up to say “but I saw Him sin.”

In fact in the gospels we see that in the sham trials they can’t come up with any witnessess against Him to accuse Him of a crime. In the end it was His claim to be God and rightful King of Israel that led to His crucifixion not any actual sin.

Speaking of which it’s very interesting that the Hebrew in this passage is actually in the passive voice. Meaning that the Messiah is in some way receiving righteousness and salvation. In the words of G. Michael Butterworth:

This king has been declared righteous and saved by God. This suggests a situation in which the king is both accused and attacked by his enemies but is vindicated and saved by the Lord. Clearly this fits Jesus very well! (Cf. Ps. 118, especially vs 22–23, also applied to the Lord Jesus).

So we know that if we’re following Jesus we are following the right King, in multiple senses of the word.

2. Jesus is the Humble King

It’s interesting sometimes when you start studying the Bible and reading commentaries about it the debates you can find beneath the surface. Issues that you had no idea about that people get passionate about their positions on. Sometimes you look at these debates and wonder why are these people so worked up about this?

Zechariah 9:9 has one of these fun little debates in it. We see in this passage that our coming Messiah will arrive in Jerusalm “on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” This is an interesting image, and one you’ve probably been told is an image of humility. Some would say that Jesus coming on a donkey instead of a more refined mount like a horse shows just how humble He is as opposed to all the other kings out there. But wait! What if that’s not what the donkey means at all?

This is where scholars come in to inform you that actually it wasn’t all that uncommon for rulers to ride into cities on donkeys, and it was actually just a symbol of peace. They came on a warhorse if they were conquering, on a donkey if they were coming in piece.

The reason this seems a little silly to me is that it could easily be both. Maybe the reason that riding a donkey became a symbol of entering the city peacefully was because it was an act of humility, maybe it’s functioning on two levels. Both apply equally well to Jesus. Plus even if the donkey doesn’t symbolize humility just back up a few words, it says he will be “humble and mounted on a donkey.”

Now this is not the king that people were hoping for in the days of Jesus. They were hoping for the king on the warhorse. But good Jewish boys and girls were raised on the promises of prophecy about the coming Messiah, so when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey they reacted with joy and shouting because they knew the King had finally come. Yet their expectations of a conquering king were so strong that even in the midst of Jesus acting out the part of a humble and peaceful king they missed that significance.

But Jesus came for something so much bigger than that. The significance of Jesus’ humility and coming in peace is that He didn’t come to conquer nations and set up an earthly Kingdom. He came to conquer sin and death.

Babylon, Rome, and any number of conquerors have ruled people sometimes for generations, but none of them compare to the reign and rule of sin and death that had a stranglehold on all of humanity since the first couple sinned. That’s the Kingdom that Jesus came to conquer, and the fight that He won on that cross, so that we could be in the words of Romans 8:37

Romans 8:37 ESV

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

They wanted freedom from Rome and long and happy lives, Jesus gave them freedom from their sins and eternal life, which brings us to the third thing this prophecy teaches us about Jesus.

3. Jesus is the Saving King

This is the part that excited the Israelites, and for good reason. They had been hoping for more than 400 years for someone to come and to save them. So when Jesus came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey He knew what He was doing, and so did the crowds. We read in Mark 11:1-11

Mark 11:1–11 ESV

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.’ ” And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. And some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go. And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!” And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

Hosanna they cried out, which is a combination of two hebrew words that means “please save us.” They are aware of their need for salvation and that Jesus is fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah and therefore claiming to be Messiah. So they cry out to Him for salvation.

And Jesus did what they asked. Many of these people probably thought after the crucifixion that Jesus had failed. That He had been proven to be just another failed Messiah. Yet He succeeded at saving them from more than they wanted to be saved from!

In the words of Zechariah 9:11

Zechariah 9:11 ESV

As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.

They were stuck in a waterless pit. This image is perhaps an intentional callback to the persecution of Joseph by his brothers. You’ll recall in Genesis 37 when Joseph’s brothers out of anger at him for prophecying that he’d rule over them gang up on him and throw him into a pit. Eventually God uses their betrayal to save them from starvation. It’s quite an interesting parallel to Jesus when you think about it.

Many people when they think about their lives and their problems they get the solution all wrong. The Israelites were like this just like we often are. They just wanted to be free from Rome. But ask yourself the question, why were they oppressed by Rome in the first place? Well according to the prophets of the Old Testament they lost their freedom and their kingdom because of their own sin.

So having a Messiah come and free them from an earthly ruler wouldn’t solve their problem, would it? They needed something more. They needed to be freed from their sinful nature that got them into that situation in the first place.

We are the same. Often its easy to think, “well if I just had enough money I’d be happy,” or “if people weren’t so mean to me,” or “if I just found the right person to marry,” or “If I just found a church that feeds me,” but that’s not the problem. In the words of Taylor Swift, “I’m the problem it’s me.”

That’s what Jesus came to do. To save us from our sinful messed up selves. To save us from the Kingdom of Sin and Death that we built with our own two hands and bring us into His Kingdom, a Kingdom of Righteousness and Peace and Humility that we could never build with all the time and money in the world.

Zechariah calls the Isrealites “prisoners of hope.” That’s because while they were enslaved both physically and metaphorically they had hope on the horizon. The story of the crucifixion is an interesting inversion of expectations. In the triumphal entry which Zechariah predicts in this passage we see rejoicing and hope when the real victory was in the moment that seemed to be the most despairing, the cruel torture and death of Jesus Christ. Yet in that death is even more hope in the coming resurrection.

We too are prisoners of hope. We live from birth in the kingdom of sin and death but we have hope through the salvation that Jesus brings to us. That means that we don’t have to stay in the waterless pit. We can be lifted out and set free indeed.

Conclusion: Rejoice greatly

So what are we to do then with this information? After we read Zechariah 9:9-13 how should we live differently? Well Zechariah includes our application pretty clearly when he says in Zechariah 9:9

Zechariah 9:9 (ESV)

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

The correct response to the good news is to rejoice! Not only to rejoice but to shout aloud. In other words to say it so that other people can hear it. We are freed people, so we should live as if we have been set free! We should be known in the world for our joy.

Not only should we rejoice, but we should also seek to be like our teacher. We should seek to imitate the kind of King that we follow. In the words of Ephesians 5:1-2

Ephesians 5:1–2 ESV

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

So if Jesus was indeed a righteous King, we should as His followers seek to be righteous. Which means maintaining a right relationship with God and living to the best of our ability by the commands that He has given us. If Jesus was indeed a humble and peaceful King than we should be certain not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to but walk in humility and put other people first, and should do everything in our power to remain at peace with others. If Jesus brought salvation for the sake of others than we should to. We should be stepping forth in boldness for the gospel to reach the lost and in prison.

There are still lots of people out there who are stuck in a waterless pit. We have been given the free gift of grace, and we have an infinite supply to give to others. Jesus went first so that we could follow Him in bringing hope to lost and broken people.