14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.
23 Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”
24 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”
28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
Luke 4
28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”
32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”
34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.”
35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.
37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
Luke 19
There is a harmony of reasoning behind these two events, as unlikely as that might seem upon first glance.
In the first instance Jesus is entering into his official ministry, having just been tried and tempted in the desert. In Nazareth where he is rejected the Lord Jesus calls attention especially to His office of “Prophet,” though even here there are hints in the Isaiah passage that Jesus reads to His office of King as the King was associated with healing (“recovery of sight for the blind”). However the emphasis seems to be that Jesus is saying that he is the long expected great Prophet promised in the OT.
Detu. 18:15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear…
There in Luke 4 with His reading of the Isaiahanic passage Jesus creates the turmoil with His declaration that He is the great Prophet long ago promised. At the conclusion of Jesus speaking the inhabitants gathered from His hometown sought to put Him to death, for they doubtless believed, that Jesus had blasphemed in claiming to be God’s promised great prophet. Quickly a mob mentality developed and as a result Jesus was stampeded to the edge of a cliff. Remember, none of this happens by coincidence. Jesus created the crisis and tumult he desired. The question must be asked … “Why create this scenario? … Why did Jesus let it go as far as it did before the miraculous exit?” I mean, He could have gone all miraculous before the Jewish mob reached a fever pitch.
I believe the answer is found in the intent of the Lord Christ to impress unmistakably on the minds of His hometown the truth that He is the Messiah who fills the needed office of the great prophet. By the reading of the Scripture and by the application of the Isaiah text to Himself Jesus is drilling into the minds of the Jews that He is who He is. His hometown would never forget either His claim nor their response. Their response, in seeking to throw Him off a cliff, would forever be a testimony against them as to the truthfulness of His claim when considered in light of His whole ministry. It was a fulfillment that He was indeed “despised and rejected of men.”
Now near the end of His ministry Jesus does something similar but instead of purposefully creating a scenario where a Jewish mob wants to kill Him because of His rightful claim to be the promised great prophet, Jesus now creates a scenario where a Jewish mob hails Him as the long promised King from the OT prophecies.
There is thus seen a harmony between the opening of Jesus career where Jesus is claiming to be the great prophet required in He who was the Messiah and the end of His career where Jesus creates a scenario again where there is a claim to be the Messiah. The only difference is the office under consideration. In the opening passage from Luke 4, occurring at the beginning of His Messianic ministry, Jesus lets hostility to His claims ripen to the point of the mob killing Him before He miraculously walks away. In the passage from Luke 19, occurring at the end of His Messianic ministry, Jesus lets His claim to Kingship ripen to the point of fevered pitch exaltation by the mob. In each case His Messianic credentials are being established in the mind of the Jews as a people.
Klass Schilder put it this way in his, “Christ In His Sufferings;”
Now at Bethany, His kingly, not His prophetic claims, are the important issue. He is to enter Jerusalem today, and Jerusalem is peculiarly His city. He wants to make His debut as a King to as many people as He can possibly attract to one place. At Nazareth He had called a mass meeting to witness the beginning of His official career. Now He assembles the multitudes again, this time appearing in His official calling as a King. And He does this in order that at that last stage, His priestly “decease,” at once the height and depth of His official life, the whole world may, through the Word, witness the fulfillment of His calling.
Jesus creates and encourages the fevered pitch cries of “Hosanna, blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord” that He hears as descending into Jerusalem, just as He created and encouraged the push to toss Him from a cliff when He said at the beginning of His ministry; ““Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” In each case He is in control of what is happening. He is creating each scenario in service to His Messianic claims of Prophet and King.
In the latter case Jesus fulfills the royal requirement that the beast He enters into Jerusalem upon is one “whereon yet never a man sat.” The fact that He has His disciples fetch such an animal is not accidental. He was aware that by entering into Jerusalem in just such a fashion He was entering as King.
All of this was a demonstration of Jesus fulfilling prophecy;
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!Behold, your king is coming to you;righteous and having salvation is he,humble and mounted on a donkey,on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem;and the battle bow shall be cut off,and he shall speak peace to the nations;his rule shall be from sea to sea,and from the River to the ends of the earth.
Zechariah 9:9-10
The mention of a donkey in the Zechariah text fits the description of a king who would be “righteous and having salvation, gentle.” Rather than riding to conquer, this king would enter in peace. And so Jesus rides into Jerusalem in such a manner and in doing so the people understand the claim that Jesus is making.
In the ancient Middle Eastern world, leaders rode horses if they rode to war, but donkeys if they came in peace. We see this in I Kings 1:33 where it is said that Solomon is upon a donkey when he was recognized as the new King of Israel. We see other instances of leaders in the OT riding Donkeys as well as in Judges 5:10, 10:4, 12:14, and II Sam. 16:2.
Now add to this the way that Jesus impresses the animal for service — as King exercising His right of confiscation — and one has underscored that Jesus is purposefully making a claim to Kingship. This privilege of confiscation had been heard from the mouth of Samuel as he designated Saul as the first King of Israel.
So there is divine harmony in the replies of the mob participants that are heard surrounding the claims of Jesus to His three offices of “Prophet,” “Priest,” and “King,” at the different points of His ministry. There in Luke 4 the reply of the Jewish mob to Jesus’ claim to be God’s mouthpiece (prophet) is to kill Jesus by tossing Him off a cliff. There in Luke 19 the reply of the Jewish mob to Jesus claim to be God’s great Saviour-King is “Hosanna, blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord,” and finally in Luke we find;
18 But the whole crowd shouted, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!” 19 (Barabbas had been thrown into prison for an insurrection in the city, and for murder.)
20 Wanting to release Jesus, Pilate appealed to them again. 21 But they kept shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
22 For the third time he spoke to them: “Why? What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty. Therefore I will have him punished and then release him.”
23 But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. 24 So Pilate decided to grant their demand. 25 He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for, and surrendered Jesus to their will.
Luke 23:18-25
Again, Jesus the Christ is in control of the situation. We know from Scripture that He could have called an Angelic host to deliver Him from the intent of His enemies and yet Jesus goes as a lamb to the slaughter to the Cross in order to fulfill His Messianic office of our Great High Priest.
So, at every key point of the work of Christ in respect to His offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, we see the Lord Christ as seemingly a victim of circumstances but behind it all we know that He is choreographing every mob response and all of it is serving the end of glorifying His Father, fulfilling the eternal covenant of Redemption, and of saving a particular people and peoples throughout time. There is in all of these events a divine artistic architecture that can only be seen when seeing these events in total and when seen in relation to one another.
Quoting Schilder again;
The first time Jesus took a roundabout way He did so in order to catch the people in their own nets. Nazareth had countenanced Him for thirty years. That long they had accorded Him “grace and favor.” Then He made His first public sermon and attached a pure application to it. Thereupon the hosannas of the citizenry were metamorphosed into the bitterest of curses: crucify Him, crucify Him! And this time He invites the masses to choke the roads so that the whole world may be witness to the fact that the people first shout hosanna, and then, a few days later, when He refuses to become what flesh would have Him be, raise the other cry: crucify Him!
We might say in conclusion that just as there was not one parcel in the life of Christ that was not providentially orchestrated and therefore purposeful so in our own lives as those united to Jesus Christ there is not one iota in our life that is not providentially orchestrated. It is true that we are not the master of our situations as the Lord Jesus Christ was the master of each of His situations but it remains the case that as we are united to Jesus Christ in His death, resurrection, and ascension so our lives are orchestrated under His providence as we serve as prophets, priests, and kings under sovereign God.
There is great encouragement in that truth.