The Day King Jesus Went to War
In Zechariah 9:9-10 we have the prophecy of The Day King Jesus Went to War. April 5, 2009.
The donkey did it. The donkey was the signal and the line in the sand. Way back in eternity before anyone counted time, God set up a schedule, a timeline, for his plan to undo the damage Adam and Eve would do in Eden. It was a meticulous time line, planned to the second. And since it was God’s time line, nobody was going to mess with the schedule.
So when the time was right, God’s Son came to earth to get the job started. For thirty years nobody really paid much attention to him except his parents and a few others. But all that changed the day he walked into the Jordan River to be baptized. That’s when people started to notice. He had things to say, and people were amazed at what he said. He performed miracles, and people chased after him to see what he could do. But the skeptics noticed him, too, and they weren’t crazy about what they were hearing and seeing. At first Jesus simply irritated them, but soon enough he became a threat. There was talk in high places about what to do with him. So Jesus was careful. He didn’t stop preaching, he didn’t hesitant to confront people, he didn’t mince words. But he was on a schedule and the schedule was part of a plan and the plan was conceived in the mind of God. And he wasn’t going to come forward to finish the task until exactly the right time.
The donkey did it. The donkey was the signal and the line in the sand. The leaders of Israel were willing to put up with a lot from this Galilean prophet; they had seen prophets come and prophets go. But what they weren’t willing to put up with was any man who claimed to be Christ, the one God had promised to send to save the people. Up until now Jesus had shushed people who used the C word. When his disciples called him the Christ, he told them not to repeat it. But all that changed on Palm Sunday. When Jesus told two of his followers to go and find the donkey, actually a donkey colt, when he mounted that donkey colt and headed for the gates of Jerusalem, when he road into the city on that donkey, he was throwing down the gauntlet. That donkey awakened in every Jewish mind the words Zechariah the prophet had written 500 years before, and they were words that every Jew knew by heart: Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Now the Jews had a reason to go after him. Now they had the charges they could bring before the governor: He had made himself a king. Jesus was surely not smiling; the days ahead were going to be terrible. But everything was coming down exactly as planned. He was right on schedule. The holy week had arrived. This was The Day King Jesus Went to War.
Let’s turn back the pages a few hundred years and meet up with a different group of Jews. These Jews didn’t think like the Jews who plotted to kill Jesus. They had been born in exile, in the land of Babylon--Iraq today. But they didn’t stay in Babylon. They were part of a wave of Jews that streamed back to Israel to restore their nation and rebuild their temple. They got a good start, but then trouble came. The people who moved into Israel during the exile weren’t too happy about this influx of new neighbors. They made trouble. Temple construction stopped for more than a decade and a half. That’s when God sent two prophets to supply a little motivation. One prophet was named Haggai, the other Zechariah. Zechariah is the prophet who wrote about the donkey.
Here was the prophet’s point: You need to learn to rely on God. The Lord has you in his sights; he knows the trouble you’re in. Here’s what he tells you: I will defend my house against marauding forces. Never again will an oppressor overrun my people for now I am keeping watch. Zechariah wanted God’s people to believe that they didn’t have to be afraid of their enemies, not now and not ever. God had his eyes on them. And then the prophet issued a promise: Your king comes to you. That should have raised a few mighty cheers in Israel. But wait. This is not David or Solomon. This is no king from a palace who raises an army or rides on a warhorse. This is a king on a donkey. You put packages on donkeys, you don’t put kings on donkeys. This king is gentle and humble, and from the looks of things he has much to be humble about. This king’s claim to fame isn’t his military process or his battle tactics; this king is righteous: he is just and upright and noble and perfect in his character--how many kings ever had a reputation like that or ever ruled their people like that? And this king never loses, never suffers setbacks, never concedes defeat. Good for him and good for his subjects.
Zechariah’s prophesy got the people moving again; they finished their temple and dedicated it to the glory God. It didn’t have nearly the same effect on the Jews Jesus knew 500 years later. This was not the kind of king they wanted! This was not the kind of king they would accept! But this was the king they were getting the day King Jesus went to war!
The skeptics say that Barack Obama is no Jesus. They’re right, of course. But Jesus is no Barack Obama, either. Jesus doesn’t ride a white horse in live in a white house. He doesn’t kibitz with prime ministers or visit the queen. He doesn’t look like much, especially this week. You know what we’re going to see. By Thursday he’ll be washing dirty feet and hosting a banquet that offers nothing more than bread and wine. We’ll see him in agony, soaked in sweat, praying that there might be another way. One friend betrays him, another friend denies him, the other friends run away from him. A sham trial in the middle of the night, trumped up charges, a slap in the face. Then off to the governor, a reprieve of sorts at Herod’s palace (at least it was verbal abuse and not physical abuse), then back to Pilate for the most monstrous beating. A death sentence, a lonely walk to a hill outside the city…it’s too much to retell. You know how it goes and you’ll hear it again this week. Like it is every year, it will be hard to watch.
The king who goes to war today may not rebuild our 401Ks or keep our homes from foreclosure. He may decide not to protect us from a terrorist attack or a late night mugging. He may not create the wonder drug that cures our incurable illnesses or spare us from the drunken driver who crosses the center line. He may not end the moral degeneration of America or guide the Supreme Court to decisions that will save innocent babies. The King who goes to war today is not some knight in shining armor who hovers over us and wipes our noses and keeps us safe from problems we think are serious.
But here’s what he will do. He will look inside our hearts and find the sins there--not only the sins we show (although there are plenty of them) but also the sins we don’t show, the sins we don’t want to show, the sins we don’t want anyway to know about. He will look inside our hearts and find the sins that keep us awake at night, the sins that hang like lead weights on our consciences, the just yesterday sins or the long ago sins that make us cringe when we remember them and make us wonder if those sins could maybe land us in hell. He will look inside our hearts and find those sins there and then he will take them from us and he will carry them up to that bloody cross and he will suffer the punishment they deserve. And then this king will present his righteous, just, upright, noble, and perfect character to God and say: My life for theirs? And his Father and his God will say: Your life for theirs! And then the war will be done.
The donkey did it. The little donkey gave the signal to the nation of Israel that the Messiah God promised to send had arrived in town for the last battle. There would be no warrior king to take on the Roman legions, no philosopher king to restore the pride of Israel, no wealthy king to supply the people with bread. They hated this king and they saw to it that he was crucified. And so the gentle king mounted the cross and gained the victory right on schedule. And the king who rode the donkey has given us all exactly the victory we needed: A victory over very real sins we commit every day, over very real guilt we feel every day, over a very real devil who tempts us every day. Exactly the victory we wanted: a victory that gives us life with God while we live here and even after we die; a victory that enables us to see the troubles we face in perspective; a victory that gives us power to live lives that are worth living.
The Day King Jesus Went to War. This is the day. Follow him. Worship him. Proclaim him. Trust him. Amen.
Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (http://www.gracedowntown.org/) on April 5, 2009
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