THE LOWLY KING – Charles Spurgeon
THE LOWLY KING
Zechariah 9:9 – “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you. He is just and having salvation, lowly, and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
I do not intend to expound the whole text at any length, but simply to dwell upon the lowliness of Jesus. Yet this much I may say—whenever God would have His people especially glad, it is always in Himself. If it is written, “Rejoice greatly,” then the reason is, “Behold, your King comes unto you!” Our chief source of rejoicing is the Presence of King Jesus in the midst of us! Whether it is His first or His Second Advent, His very shadow is delight. His footstep is music to our ears. That delight springs much from the fact that He is ours. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion… Behold, your King is coming to you.” Whatever He may be to others, He is your King, and to whomever He may or may not come, He comes to you. He comes for your deliverance, your honor, your consummated bliss. He keeps your company—He makes your house His palace, your love His solace, your nature His home. He who is your King by hereditary right, by His choice of you, by His redemption of you, and by your willing choice of Him, is coming to you—therefore shout for joy!
The verse goes on to show why the Lord, our King, is such a source of gladness—“He is just and having salvation.” He blends righteousness and mercy—justice to the ungodly and favor to His saints. He has worked out the stern problem—how can God be just and yet save the sinful? He is just in His own personal Character, just as having borne the penalty of sin, and just as cleared from the sin which He voluntarily took upon Himself. Having endured the terrible ordeal, He is saved and His people are saved in Him. He is to be saluted with hosannas, which signify, “Save, Lord,” for where He comes, He brings victory and consequent salvation with Him! He routs the enemies of His people, breaks for them the serpent’s head, and leads their captivity captive. We admire the justice which marks His reign and the salvation which attends His sway—and in both respects we cry, “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord!
Moreover, it is written of Him that He is lowly, which cannot be said of many kings and princes of the earth. Nor would they care to have it said of them! Your King, O daughter of Jerusalem, loves to have His lowliness published by you with exceeding joy. His outward state betokens the humility and gentleness of His Character. He appears to be what He really is—He conceals nothing from His chosen. In the height of His grandeur, He is not like the proud monarchs of earth. The patient donkey He prefers to the noble charger, and He is more at home with the common people than with the great. In His grandest pageant, in His capital city, He was still consistent with His meek and lowly Character, for He came, “riding upon a donkey.” He rode through Jerusalem in state, but what lowliness marked the spectacle! It was an extemporized procession which owed nothing to Garter-king-at-arms, but everything to the spontaneous love of friends. A donkey was brought, and its foal, and His disciples sat Him on it. Instead of courtiers in their robes, He was surrounded by common peasants and fishermen and children of the streets of Jerusalem—the humblest of men and the youngest of the race shouted His praises! Boughs of trees and garments of friends strewed the road instead of choice flowers and costly tapestries—it was the pomp of spontaneous love, not the stereotyped pageantry which power exacts of fear. With half an eye, everyone can see that this King is of another sort from common princes and His dignity of another kind from that which tramples on the poor.
According to the narrative, as well as the prophecy, there would seem to have been two beasts in the procession. I conceive that our Lord rode on the foal, for it was essential that He should mount a beast which had never been used before. God is not a sharer with men—that which is consecrated to His peculiar service must not have been, before, devoted to lower uses. Jesus rides a colt where no man ever sat. But why was the mother there? Did not Jesus say of both donkey and foal, “Loose them, and bring them unto Me? This appears to me to be a token of His tenderness—He would not needlessly sever the mother from her foal. I like to see a farmer’s kindness when he allows the foal to follow when the mare is plowing or laboring—and I admire the same thoughtfulness in our Lord. He cares for cattle, yes, even for a donkey and her foal. He would not even cause a poor beast a needless pang by taking away its young! And so, in that procession, the beast of the field took its part joyfully, in token of a better age in which all creatures shall be delivered from bondage and shall share the blessings of His unsuffering reign.
Our Lord herein taught His disciples to cultivate delicacy, not only towards each other, but towards the whole creation. I like to see in Christian people a reverence towards life, a tenderness towards all God’s creatures. There is much of deep truth in those lines of, “The Ancient Mariner”—
“He prays best who loves best
All things both great and small.”
Under the old Law, this tenderness was inculcated by those precepts which forbade the taking of the mother bird with her young and the boiling of a kid in its mother’s milk. Why were these things forbidden? There would seem to be no harm in either of these practices, but God would have His people tender-hearted, sensitive and delicate in their handling of all things. A Christian should have nothing of the savage about him, but everything that is considerate and kind. Our Lord rode through the streets of Jerusalem with a donkey and the foal of the donkey—for He is lowly in heart and gentle to all. His is no mission of crushing power and selfish aggrandizement—He comes to bless all things that are and to make the world, once more, a Paradise where none shall be oppressed. Blessed Savior, when we think of the sufferings of Your creatures, both men and beasts, we pray You to hasten Your Second Advent and begin your gentle reign!
The Unique Lowliness of Christ’s Entry
Now, this riding of Christ upon a donkey is remarkable if you remember that no pretender to be a Prophet, or a Divine Messenger has imitated it. Ask the Jew whether he expects the Messiah to ride thus through the streets of Jerusalem! He will probably answer, “No.” If he does not, you may ask him the further question, whether there has appeared in his nation anyone who, professing to be the Messiah, has, at any time, come to the daughter of Jerusalem “riding upon a colt, the foal of a donkey.” It is rather singular that no false Messiah has copied this lowly style of the Son of David! When Sapor, the great Persian, jested with a Jew about his Messiah riding upon a donkey, he said to him, “I will send Him one of my horses,” to which the Rabbi replied, “You cannot send Him a horse that will be good enough, for that donkey is to be of a hundred colors.” By that idle tradition, the Rabbi showed that he had not caught the idea of the Prophet at all, since he could not believe in Messiah’s lowliness displayed by His riding upon a common donkey. The rabbinical mind must necessarily make simplicity mysterious and turn lowliness into another form of pomp.
The very pith of the matter is that our Lord gave Himself no grand airs, but was natural, unaffected and free from all vainglory. His greatest pomp went no further than riding through Jerusalem upon a colt, the foal of a donkey. The Muslim turns round with a sneer and says to the Christian, “Your Master was the rider on a donkey—our Mohammed was the rider on a camel and the camel is, by far, the superior beast.” Just so, and that is where the Muslim fails to grasp the prophetic thought—he looks for strength and honor—but Jesus triumphs by weakness and lowliness! How little real glory is to be found in the grandeur and display which princes of this world affect! There is far more true glory in condescension than in display.
The Greatness of Christ’s Lowliness
Our Lord’s riding on the foal of a donkey was meant to show us how lowly our Savior is and what tenderness there is in that lowliness. When He is proclaimed King in His great Father’s capital and rides in triumph through the streets, He sits upon no prancing charger, such as warriors choose for their triumphs—no, He sits upon a borrowed donkey, whose mother walks by its side! His poverty was seen, for of all the cattle on a thousand hills, He owned not one and yet we see His more than royal wealth, for He did but say, “The Lord has need of them,” and straightway their owner yielded them up. No forced contributions supply the revenue of this Prince—His people are willing in the day of His power.
He is your King, O Zion! Shout to think that you have such a Lord! Where the scepter is love and the crown is lowliness, the homage should be peculiarly bright with rejoicing. None shall groan beneath such a sway, but the people shall willingly offer themselves. They shall find their liberty in His service, their rest in obedience to Him, their honor in His Glory!
Now, my Brothers and Sisters, you may forget the hosannas of that Day of Palms, for I beg you to confine your thoughts to the consideration of the lowliness of our Divine Lord and Master. “Behold, your King comes unto you… lowly, and riding on a donkey.” Let us think for a few minutes upon the displays of the lowliness of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then upon the causes of that lowliness and, thirdly, upon certain lessons to be learned from that lowliness.
I. The Displays of Lowliness Made by Our Lord Jesus Christ
You do not need me to remind you how devoutly we worship Him as God over all, blessed forever. Yet while on earth He veiled His Godhead and laid bare His lowliness! His sojourn here below was full of the truest greatness, but it was a grandeur, not of loftiness, but of lowliness; not of glory, but of humiliation! Our Lord was never more glorious in the deepest sense than in His humiliation. Because of it, “He shall be exalted, and extolled, and shall be very high.” First, think of the lowliness of Christ in even undertaking the salvation of guilty men. Man without sin, as God first made him, is certainly a noble creature. It is written, “You have made him a little lower than the angels.” But, as a sinner, man is a base and dishonorable being only worthy to be destroyed! In that character, he has no claims to be regarded by God at all. If it had pleased the Divine Supremacy to blot this rebel race from existence, God might readily have repaired the loss by the creation of superior beings! And it was lowliness of the most tender kind which led our Lord, who took not up angels when they fell, to take up the seed of Abraham.
The Cause of His Lowliness
His supreme lowliness of Character grew out of the actual lowliness of His heart. He never aimed at humility, nor labored after it—it was natural to Him. Of all sickening things, the pride that mimics humility is the most loathsome! Not a particle of that nauseous vice was found in our Lord. He never puts on an air, nor strikes an attitude, nor plays the humble part. But He is meek and lowly and all can see it. He is never other than He seems to be and He always is and seems to be the meekest of mankind. His inmost heart was seen and seen to be all lowliness. Why was He so? I conceive that He was so lowly because He was so great. A little man feels the necessity of magnifying himself and, therefore, becomes proud. Pride is essentially meanness. It is the little man that cannot afford to be little.
Lessons to Be Learned from Christ’s Lowliness
Let us learn to say to the despondent and timorous, words of cheer. Since the Lord Jesus Christ is so meek and lowly—poor, trembling, guilty one, you may come to Him! You may come to Him now! I was sitting, the other night, among some excellent friends, who, I suppose, were none of them rich and some of them poor. I am sure it never entered into my head to think how much money they owned, for I felt myself very much at home with them until one of them remarked, “You do not mind mixing with us poor folk?” Then I felt quite ashamed for myself that they should think it necessary to make such a remark. I was so much one with them that I felt honored by having fellowship with them in the things of God—and it troubled me that they should think I was doing anything remarkable in conversing with them. Dear Friends, do not think harshly of any of us who are ministers of Christ! But you will think harshly of us if you conceive that we think it a coming down to associate with any of you! We are in heart and soul your Brothers—bone of your bone—your truest friends whether you are rich or poor. We desire your good, for we are your servants for Christ’s sake! Above all, do not think harshly of our Lord and Master by supposing that it will be a strange thing for Him to come to your house, or to your heart! It is His habit to forgive the guilty and renew the sinful. Come to Him at once and He will accept you on the spot, for He has said, “Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out.” God bless you by leading you all to love this lowly and loving Lord! Even at this present moment I pray that you may take that step which will secure our meeting in Heaven to adore eternally our King, so meek and lowly, who will then dwell in the midst of us and lead us to living fountains of water!