Claiming His Kingship
“Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass” (Matthew 21:5).
Why did Jesus ride into Jerusalem as King? Certainly, this had to be a confusing signal to the disciples. After seeing him ride in as king they may have thought that maybe all that talk about him coming to Jerusalem to die was some kind of parable. Like so many of the dark sayings of Jesus, maybe becoming King was the reality, maybe this was the beginning of his kingdom.
But no, after this mountaintop experience which probably created great expectations in the minds of the disciples, only a few days later their hearts lay crushed as Jesus hung on the cross. Why did Jesus do something that would cause such confusion in the minds of his followers?
Perhaps there are a number of reasons. He was certainly creating an event that would see a parallel at the end of the age. The parallel dispensations are a wonderful picture for us and they tell us a lot about what the Lord is doing now. But something else comes to mind from the book of Jeremiah, chapter 32.
This episode was at a time when Nebuchadnezzar’s army was coming against Jerusalem. Jeremiah had warned Israel over and over again about its idolatry and wicked ways, but only a small remnant repented. So Babylon was sent by God to punish Israel and take the tribes of Judah and Benjamin into captivity. But there was an interesting thing that the Lord wanted Jeremiah to do. If you read Jeremiah 32:6-10 you will see a wonderful picture.
There you will see that God told Jeremiah to buy some land that his cousin was going to offer him. The interesting question here is why would God want Jeremiah to purchase a piece of land just before the land was to be desolated and the people taken into captivity? It would seem like a lost cause and one from which Jeremiah would never profit. Well, God gives us the answer in verse 15. “Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land.”1
Jeremiah’s purchase of the land was God’s way of saying that this captivity was only temporary, that Israel would once again inhabit this land. In other words, it was a promise of restitution.
Now you might ask, “What has this got to do with Jesus riding into Jerusalem and being proclaimed King?” Perhaps Jesus was doing the same thing. Riding into Jerusalem as a king did not have much impact on society at the first advent. After all, he would be dead in a few days so what kind of king could he have been back then?
But Jesus was doing what Jeremiah did when he purchased land for the future time that Israel would return from captivity. Jesus was pointing forward to the time that he would be king of a kingdom far greater than Israel. He was expressing confidence that the future prospect of his kingship was a certainty. We might say that this was his reach into the future.
We are so grateful for his work of paying the price of redemption, and someday soon, of beginning the work of removing the effects of the curse from all hearts as he stands as the legitimate king of the earth. May we live our lives in such a way that expresses our unshakeable confidence in the coming kingdom.
(1) Editor’s observation — The price Jeremiah paid was 17 shekels of silver. This value further connects what Jeremiah did, with what Jesus did. The 17 shekels paid by Jeremiah was the price to redeem the land. The land of Israel elsewhere symbolizes the hope of life from the dead. For example, in Jeremiah 31:15,16, Rachel weeping for her children “because they were not” is literally about the Israelites being removed from their land into captivity, but applied by Matthew to refer to the death of the infants soon after the birth of Jesus (Matthew 2:18). Being taken away from the land in Jeremiah’s day pictures the captivity of death in Jesus’ day. Thus land in one case is parallel to life in the other.
The same is indicated in the Jubilee type. When the Israelites returned to their lost land in the year of Jubilee, this represents mankind returning to life during the Millennium.
Thus the 17 shekels Jeremiah paid to redeem the land indicates the price of ransom paid by Jesus to provide life for mankind. Seventeen is a reasonable picture for the price of redemption. Jesus, the perfect one, represented by the number seven, redeemed the earth, represented by the number 10. In Jeremiah 32:9, the price of seventeen shekels is expressed in the margin as “seven shekels and 10 pieces of silver,” so the breakdown of 17 into 7 and 10 is inherent in the text, and accords with the thought that the symbolic meaning of “seventeen” pertains to the breakdown into seven (the perfect one) and 10 (earthly).
The age of Joseph when he was rejected by his brethren, picturing the time Jesus was killed by his fellow countrymen, thus providing the ransom on calvary’s cross, was also seventeen (Genesis 37:22), supporting the thought that this number pertains to the ransom. The 153 fish of John 21:11, representing those redeemed from the earth with the gospel “net” during the Gospel Age, is consistent with this, as 153 is the sum of all whole numbers from 1 up to 17. (Genesis 7:11, 8:4 are also consistent with this, as the number appears there marking events that represent the beginning of the Gospel Age, and the harvest of the Gospel Age, the first age of redemption).
Jesus riding in Jerusalem as King