Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
This verse is essential reading when it comes to Holy Week, because this is a prophecy that is made about the coming Christ. When Jesus makes His triumphal entry, this is what it's going to look like. All of the people, when this started to happen over in the book of Matthew, started to get really excited because they remembered what was referenced here in Zechariah. There's something really beautiful about this verse that we need to stop and consider. Of course, it's the representation of the salvation of the world that is to come.
Righteous and Victorious, Yet Humble
I want you to see how what's happening here is explained. It says that He is righteous and victorious. In another version, it says that He carries salvation. Yet He is humble. Now, I don't know if we've really stopped to consider how those two ideas are sort of like an oxymoron, right? You got somebody who has all power and authority to even save people's lives, and yet He carries this weight of glory with humility.
He is a champion on a donkey. He is victorious, yet enters with a lowly posture. This doesn't make any human sense. It's important to point this out because even the receiver of Jesus during this time would have been stuck in this conundrum as well. The idea of the one who would come victorious over the oppressor, the one who would bring salvation, would bring power and authority. The thought was he would do so with regalia and trumpets. It would be a big show. Yet the one who comes with salvation comes in a way that is so humble, so lowly, that if you blinked, you'd miss it. If you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't see it.
The True Power of Jesus
Isn't that powerful? The fact that the one who carries salvation, Jesus Christ, would yet value humility beyond regalia and performance and pronouncement. The true power of Jesus is that He came to lay down His life, to make Himself less so that others would know the freedom of salvation.
I would be remiss if I didn't turn to another passage in Scripture to connect the dots for us, because this is in the Old Testament, and it's referring to what is coming in the future.
We see when Jesus makes His triumphal entry that it's true. There's a man named Paul who writes about this in the book of Philippians. In chapter 2, he says something that I think is important for us to hold on to. He says, "Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as a thing to be grasped, but He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death."
Here is the King of glory, emptying Himself out, taking on the form of the servant, so that we might find freedom. This is what we celebrate in the glory of Easter, that in His death, burial, and resurrection, He has defeated sin and death. In Him taking on the form of humanity, He did the one thing no other human could do on our behalf.
Let's celebrate this King of glory who came in humility this week.