Changing Your Perspective on the Promises of God
The Internet is overrun with amazing photos. I love the photos published daily by National Geographic. The images from nature just underscore what an amazing world God has given us. At the same time, we’ve grown accustomed to images that can be hard to believe thanks to the wonders of trick photography and Photoshop. We know the tricks; we are no longer amazed.
For example, do an image search for the Tower of Pisa, and the results will include a variety of silly photos just like this:
Har, har. By standing close to the camera but keeping the tower far in the background, you can give the impression that you’re tall, massive, and about to do serious damage to Italian tourism. By standing in just the right place, you can change the perspective.
Give me a moment to connect that to our understanding of the life and ministry of Jesus. We’re coming up on Palm Sunday, the moment when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a young donkey. This event has always intrigued me because of the juxtaposition of this event with what happened only a few days later.
On this particular Sunday, the crowds were going nuts with excitement because Jesus was entering Jerusalem. Jesus’s miraculous ministry had led more and more people to think Jesus might be the Messiah, and Jesus only fueled that expectation by coming into Jerusalem the way He did. On the back of a donkey.
Conquering warriors rode into a vanquished city on a horse. Horses represented war, but donkeys represented peace. David and Solomon both rode donkeys, showing their peaceful rule over the city (1 Kings 1:33), and now Jesus was riding in like a king.
Zechariah had prophesied this 600 years earlier, and I have no doubt this prophecy was resonating in the peoples’ minds as they laid down their palm branches:
“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout in triumph, Daughter Jerusalem! Look, your King is coming to you; he is righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zech. 9:9).
But here is where the issue of perspective comes into the picture. Every year as we observe Palm Sunday and praise Jesus the King, we read Zechariah 9:9—and only verse 9. But to the Jewish people did not have verse divisions in their Hebrew scrolls, and they saw this verse as simply part of a greater section. Read the rest of Zechariah 9 and you’ll see a clear description of a conquering warrior. That’s the kind of Messiah the first-century Jews were waiting for: a conquering warrior-king who would run the Romans out of town and restore Israel to the glory days of King David.
We know from the full revelation of Scripture that, even as Jesus came to us as an infant who lived and died to bring us to God, He will come again—but not as a small child. The second time He will come as the conquering king depicted in the rest of Zechariahs 9. From our New Testament perspective, we’ve learned to distinguish between the prophecies and events connected to Jesus’s first coming and His second coming. The first-century Jews did not have that advantage. It’s like the photo above. We know this is a skewed image and that man is a good distance away from the Tower of Pisa. Were the camera angle to change, that distance would be obvious.
The events in Zechariah 9 look like they go together, but when we change the angle, we discover that the events of the Messiah as a conquering warrior are quite distant from the moment when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.
That misunderstanding is what helped the Jews in Jerusalem change their tune from worshiping Jesus to calling for His death. Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of riding in as a king on a donkey, but as the week progressed, He “failed” to carry out the rest of the prophecy that followed.
Jesus failed to be the Messiah they expected, so they crucified Him.
We can get mad and even cynical because God doesn’t behave in the way we think He ought to, but the fault lies with us. Our perspective is skewed. Just as first-century Jews meshed promises about Jesus’s first coming with promises connected to His second coming, we can get confused about the timing between a promise and its fulfillment. We expect God to work right here and now, but we must trust that His timing is always best.
“The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you” (2 Pet. 3:9).
Jesus doesn’t always do what we expect on our timetable, but that’s OK. Hold on to His faithfulness and His incredible love for you. When God responds, it will be at just the right time and in the best way possible.
It’s all a matter of perspective.
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Banner photo by Anika Huizinga on Unsplash.
