When Jesus came the Jewish people were on a slippery slope to the greatest disaster of their history up to that point. They were obsessed with fulfilling their own nationalistic ambitions and they were a generation away from staking everything on this ambition and losing everything as a result. They were preparing themselves to rise up and seize what they wanted by force. They used Scripture to support this ambition, but they had misinterpreted it. God had promised that he would send a Messiah who would lead his people to establish his Kingdom on earth. Jesus’ countrymen wanted this to happen in a political and military sense, but that is not what God intended. God had made it clear through the prophets that the Messiah would lead them to overcome the world, not through force and violence, but through self-sacrifice and love (Isaiah 53). The Messiah would be a man of peace. The prophet Zechariah pictured the Messiah coming, not on a great warhorse, but gentle and lowly, riding on a donkey (see Zechariah 9:9-10). Those who advance in life by force and violence find a violent demise. This is what was about to happen to the Jews in the doomed rebellion that lead to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD. Jesus was warning them and the warning is relevant to us. We are not to go into situations riding on a warhorse. We are a people of peace. We mustn’t force ourselves. We gain through self-sacrifice and love. We advance by prayer, not by worldly wealth and power. We are to be donkey riders like Jesus; gentle and lowly.
Reflect on where you need to make peace through gentleness and love.
Read Luke 19:28-48
