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T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
December 1924
Introduction: An appeal to the eye and ear and heart may awaken sentiment and prepare the way for the sur render of the will. There is today a proper place for music,
goes abroad. The story of His preaching and miracle-work ing is on every lip. The little company is joined by many pilgrims on their way to the great annual feast. Other pil grims encamped in leafy booths on the hill-sides see the caravan approaching and hasten forth to meet it. They tear off branches from the palm trees and fling them, with their outer garments, on the highway. As these two companies meet they shout “ Hosanna to the Son of David“ , and escort Jesus over the ford of the Kedron and through the city gates. The entire city was stirred. Who is this man who comes with no heralds to trumpet His fame, and with no retinue of captives at His chariot wheels? It is only a wayfaring man, with the dust of travel on His homespun garb. It is the Carpenter of Nazareth, who claims to be the Messiah of God and the King of the Jews. The road slopes up the Mount of Olives and sweeps round to the north when, suddenly, Jerusalem bursts into full view. Rising from the midst of shaded and surrounding valleys, the city of ten thousand memories stood clear before Him, with the morning sunlight blazing on its marble tow ers and gilded pinnacles. As the Savior gazed upon that splendid spectacle, there was no pride or exultation in His heart. A sudden and mighty rush of Divine compassion filled His soul. At the grave of Lazarus He shed silent tears. A few days later, all the shame and agony of His torture was powerless to wet His cheeks with a single tear. Now He wept aloud. His emotion overmastered Him. He broke into a passion of lamentation over the city, which it was too late to save, as He prophesied the overthrow of the na tion which He came to rule. Within fifty years the prophecy was fulfilled. Titus did not desire to destroy either city or temple, but the obstinacy and fanaticism of the Jews left him! no alternative. He was forced to leave both in ruins and ashes. Josephus says that after the siege and capture of Jerusalem, no one in that desert waste would have recog-', nized the beauty of Judea, and that if any Jew had suddenly come upon the place where the city stood, however well he had known it before, he would have inquired what place ib was. The prophecy of Zechariah still awaits a future and ulti mate fulfilment. The King is coming again to Zion, not to be rejected, but to be received and crowned. The Divine plan for each human life includes the smallest detail and least circumstance, even that of the taking a pitcher of water upstairs. (Luke 22:10): “ And He said unto them, Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he entereth in.” A man in Bethphage tethered his ass in the early morning before his home. Two men came and led it away. Another man held it while Jesus mounted, another man joined the procession and cried, “ Hosanna!” Another man joined in and it became a chorus. All these persons were nameless, but each one had his part to play. The whole world knows how Sir Walter Raleigh threw his cloak down at the crossing for Queen Elizabeth to walk on, but no one knows anything about these men who cast their garments before the King of Israel and the world. God knows, He will remember and recompense. Their names are written on the palms of His hands and in the Book of Life. God knows the ones who cried, “ Crucify Him,” as well as those who shouted, “ Hosanna.” All things are written down in the Book of Remembrance. Our only suc cess comes from conforming to the Divine plan, and the highest glory o f our lives is that we are workers together with God.
eloquence as aids to devotion. In the case of the triumphal entry, Jesus planned every detail. He sent two dis ciples to secure the colt on which He was to ride; He allowed the disciples to place on the colt their garments, and as He rode toward the city He accepted the
architecture and COMMENTS FROM THE COMMENTARIES Thos. L. Colwell
acclamations of the crowd. When the Pharisees criticized Jesus for permitting such praise and arousing such excite ment, He declared that such homage to Himself was not only proper but necessary, and that if the multitudes were i..__ t ____ J n iln n /irw i f n O AnnrAllIn honor Him. Jesus was offering Himself as King for the last time, and therefore His offer was to be made in the most impressive way. He appealed to the imagination. He stirred the emotions. He did not mean that H b was to be such a king as the people supposed; the borrowed colt, the garments of peasants, the banners of leafy branches were not to be the permanent furnishings of a court. He wished to secure the submission of their wills, the complete sur render of their lives, and therefore He made this "stirring, dramatic, emotional appeal to the multitudes. He knew that religious feeling is an aid to religious faith. However, religious feeling is not to be confused with religious faith. Emotion is no substitute for conviction. Jesus was not deceived.-—Erdman. Bethphage— “ the house of figs”— a village which, with Bethany, lay along the further side of Mount Olivet, east of Jerusalem.-—J. F. & B. At the entry into the Passion week, it becomes possible to us to follow our Lord from day to day, and at last almost hour by hour. , . According to John 12:1, He came six days before the Passover to Bethany. Since this began with the 14th Nisan, our Lord must already on the 8 th have come into the circle of His friends in Bethany, and, therefore on the Friday or Saturday before His death. If we consider, however, that our Lord on His last Sabbath certainly made no extended journey, that we read nothing of any village before or in the neighborhood of Bethany where He could have spent the day of rest, that on the other hand the last named vil lage appears to have been also the last stopping place of the journey, it then becomes extremely probable that He en tered before the Sabbath, and therefore on Friday, into the village of Lazarus. After the ending of the weekly Divine service, the feast was held at which Mary anointed the Lord, but which Luke passes over in silence. And if the entry into Jerusalem (John 12:12) took place on the day after this feast, there is then no ground to transfer this day to any other than Palm-Sunday. The view of those who, on ac count of some little difference in the four Evangelists, main tain that two entries took place, may well be regarded as already antiquated.—Von Baur. < V. 30. A creatively fresh new time, a new prince, a new beast.—Lange. “Whereon yet never man sat”— and there fore adapted for a sacred use. (See Num. 19:2; Deut. 21:3; 1 Sam. 6 :7).—Cambridge Bible. V. 35. The ass in the East is not a despised animal, and it is only because it was despised by Gentiles; that Josephus substitutes for it “ horse” or “ beast of burden” , and the Seventy (LXX) soften it down into “ foal” , etc. The Gentile world abounded in sneers against this narrative, and had all sorts of absurd stories about the Jews and the ass, or ass’s head, which they were supposed to worship. The Chris- (Continued on page 838)
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