The Savior now proceeds on His last journey to Jerusalem, His final presentation of Himself, as far as testimony went, as the Messiah. His prophetic task had been accomplished and refused; the great work of atonement lay yet before Him. Between the two comes His royal progress, we may call it, to the city of the Great King. Nevertheless, as He was the predicted Prophet like unto Moses, and yet never man spake like this man; as He was the antitype of all the sacrifices, and yet they were but the shadow, not the very image, of the coming good, so there was a character wholly diverse from the manner of kings, in the King of kings and Lord of lords, as He came to His own possession here below, His peculium, raising and settling the question whether His own people would receive Him.
“And when they came nigh to Jerusalem [unto Bethphage], and unto Bethany, to the Mount of Olives, he sendeth two of his disciples, and saith to them, Go into the village that is over against you; and immediately on entering into it, ye will find a colt tied, upon which none of men hath sat: loose and bring it. And if any one say to you, Why do ye this? say, The Lord hath need of it; and immediately he sends it here." (Ver. 1-3.)
It is preeminently a scene under the governing hand of God. He would and did control the feelings of such as witnessed the colt taken; even as He afterward directed the deeds and acclamations of the multitude by the way. “The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord.” Indeed this is so much the case that I suspect “the Lord” is here, as in Mark 5:1919Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. (Mark 5:19), left purposely vague. The Lord had need of the ass's colt, whether they referred the title to Jehovah or to the king who thus came in His name. If their faith really recognized the Messiah in Jehovah, it was most true, and so much the better for those who did; but I am not sure that it could be asserted as the intention of the Spirit to imply that so much was meant in either of these cases. It is only in the two closing verses of this gospel that we can certainly gather that He is designated “the Lord.” The suitableness of this reserve till the statement of His final triumph by our evangelist who devotes himself to His service here below is strikingly beautiful, and equally so in its absence before, and in its presence then.
“And they went away and found a colt tied to the door without at the crossway; and they loose it. And some of those standing there said to them, What do ye, loosing the colt? And they said to them even as Jesus said: and they suffered them. And they bring the colt to Jesus and cast their garments on it; and he sat upon it. And many strewed their garments on the way, and others beds of twigs, having cut them from the fields. And those that went before and those that followed cried out saying, Hosanna! blessed [be] be that cometh in the name of the Lord. Blessed [be] the coming kingdom of our father David. Hosanna in the highest.” (Ver. 4-10.)
It was a singularly bright testimony to the ways of God; and this not alone in the ever-adorable One who thus deigned to offer Himself to the acceptance of His people, but in the suited cries of the multitude, little as they realized the truth of their own words or the gravity of the situation for their nation and city from that day to this. God, I repeat, was moving in the midst. He would have a testimony, true but despised, to the King, humble Himself as He might. Matthew points out the fulfillment of the prophetic oracle in the strange sight of that day. Luke adds “peace in heaven and glory in the highest” in the praise to God which filled the mouths and hearts of the disciples, as well as the blessed Savior's lament and tears over Jerusalem. It fell more within the domain of Mark to say that He “entered into Jerusalem into the temple; and having looked round on all things, the hour being already late, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve.”
Matthew, as often, does not distinguish the stages of the transaction. From his account you could not gather that the Lord merely looked round on all, the first day of His visit, and that not till the following day did He cast out those who desecrated the temple with their buying and selling as he alone describes the approach to Him there of the blind and lame (Matt. 21:1414And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them. (Matthew 21:14)) to be healed. I am aware that some have tried to solve the difficulty by the assumption that Matthew gives us a purging of the temple on the first day, Mark on the second. But this appears to me definitely set aside by the precision of our evangelist's language about this second day, who tells us (ver. 15) that then, not on the first day, He began to cast out those who sold and bought in the temple.
John, on the other hand, entirely omits this cleansing of the temple, but records (chap. 2.) what no one else has done, an early act of similar character before our Lord entered on His public or Galilean ministry. But this is exquisitely in keeping with the whole scope of his gospel, which starts as it were with the point to which the other evangelists gradually conduct us—the utter rejection of the Lord by His people, who abhorred Him, as He could not but loathe them.
There is a similar merging of a twofold account in one view, if we compare Matthew's description of the cursed fig-tree with Mark's. “And on the morrow, when they came out from Bethany, he was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree from afar having leaves, he came, if perhaps he might find something on it; and having come up to it, he found nothing but leaves: for it was not the time of figs. And, answering, he said to it, Let none eat fruit of thee any more forever. And his disciples heard.” (Ver. 12-14.) Had it been fig-season, the fruit might have been already gathered; but as it was not, fruit ought to have been found there, unless the tree were barren. Thus it was, the emblem of the Jew, fruitless to God, however abounding in the semblance of life before men. Leaves the tree had, but no fruit. Hence the doom was pronounced, not more surely verified in the fig-tree then than ever since in the empty profession of the Jews.