March 25, 2024

March 25th, 2024

“It’s All About Jesus!”
Mark 11:1-11 (The Triumphant Entry)
The two disciples left and found the colt standing in the street, tied outside the front door. As they were untying it, some bystanders demanded, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” They said what Jesus had told them to say, and they were permitted to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their garments over it, and he sat on it. – Mark 11:4-7 (NLT)
“It Makes Sense to God”

This story is one of the funniest to me in the New Testament. Jesus sends these two disciples on a random errand to get this donkey—one that had never been ridden on before. But what didn’t make sense to them (or us) made perfect sense to Jesus.
First, I don’t believe Jesus was sending the two disciples to just steal some donkey. I don’t think the guy who wrote the 10 Commandments would ask his disciples to break one of them! Luke’s gospel tells us that the people who questioned the disciples when they were untying it were actually the owners of the donkey. My guess is that Jesus had a conversation with the owners prior to this visit, asking them if he could use the donkey and letting them know that He would be sending a couple of His men to get it. That’s why when they told the owners, “The Lord has need of it," the owners let them take it.
The second thing that Jesus knew was that this ride into Jerusalem was not just a historic moment; it was a prophetic moment. An unridden donkey or colt had both a royal and a sacred connotation. Jesus would be fulfilling a prophecy about the Messiah from Zechariah 9:9: “Rejoice, O people of Zion! Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey—riding on a donkey’s colt.” It wasn’t until later that the disciples put the pieces together of what Jesus was up to.
It’s the same with us. We sometimes get confused when God asks us to take a certain path or perform a certain task. We don’t understand why, and we don’t know what God is up to. It doesn’t make sense because we don’t see things from God’s perspective. We don’t see the enormously big picture that God is looking at. That’s why when God says, “Go,” we can just go. Our job is not to understand it. Our job is not to figure it all out. Divine doings won’t always make sense to us. But that’s okay. They make sense to God. That’s God’s Word for you today.