What Are You Assuming?

And when He had said these things, He went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When He drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, He sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.’” So those who were sent went away and found it just as He had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. And as He rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As He was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of His disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

And when He drew near and saw the city, He wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

Luke 19:28-44

My garden is in full, extravagant, overwhelming bloom. I did not cause these plants to grow. I only planted them. I see the majesty of their Maker in their coming to life. I am stunned at His generosity and overwhelmed by God’s grace. The Maker and Sustainer of Heaven and Earth has condescended to me in this bounty as He also did for those living in Palestine more than 2,000 years ago. This is the One the throngs should have seen as He rode into Jerusalem.

They should have recognized their Maker is the only One who can raise people from the dead, calm storms, and give sight to the blind (Luke 7:15, 8:24, 8:54, 18:42). Yet, as if to conceal Himself further, Jesus allows the ridiculous to unfold. His supporters think He is coming to take Jerusalem by force (Luke 22:3, 38), but the conquering King lumbers in on a baby donkey! We do not know how tall Jesus was, but I think we can say with near certainty that His feet were close to the ground. Did He do this only to fulfill prophecy (Zechariah 9:9)? Perhaps He was enacting another parable -- another word picture to say, “My Kingdom is an upside-down Kingdom. Do you understand yet?”

Though Jesus allowed Himself to be carried along by the throng, He knew their hearts were only hungry for a reversal of power over the Romans. His signs had proved to them that He was the One who could take back their land, but they were missing Him for who He really was and what He had come to do. The Lord of all came to rescue, by His own death, those who recognize they are sinners and put their faith in Him. Jesus came to save humanity from something far worse than Roman occupation --  He came to save us from eternity in hell.

Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem begins in chapter 9, and for ten chapters, we observe Him healing the sick, admonishing the Pharisees, and turning the world’s values on their heads. Using parable after parable, Jesus illustrated for His disciples that His is a Kingdom where the first is last and the last first, where one must leave everything to gain so much more, where what is inside a person matters more than what is on the outside, and where trusting in what they cannot see holds more weight than what they can. He warned them THREE times what would happen to Him in Jerusalem. Still, Luke 18:34 tells us, “They understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.” They were making assumptions, just as we do.

Jesus is coming again. Many of us think we know how it is going to happen, or we’ve read someone else who is certain they know how it will happen. Jesus gives inklings of what the day of His coming will be like (Luke 17, 21, Matthew 24, Mark 13). The Jews, especially those who had studied the Scriptures, thought they knew what Messiah’s coming would look like even after Jesus told them, “The Kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed (Luke 17:20).”

We can pull the self-righteous card that 2,000 years of hindsight affords us and pretend we would have seen Jesus at the Triumphal Entry for who He was, or we can humbly approach the second coming with a reverence that says we would have been as blind as the disciples. We can admit that we don’t know for sure what Christ’s second coming will actually look like. We certainly don’t know when it will occur. But no matter what your assumptions and expectations are, will you be ready? If He comes today, are you ready to leave it all behind to go with Him? Do you trust the One who left Heaven to save you?