April 12, 2000
Reading
“You will find a colt
tied there, which no one has ever ridden” (2)
From the very beginning God has taught His people both by command and example that He is pure, without sin, fault or weakness. Of everything He created it is said that “it was good”, flawless as is the Creator Himself. Adam and Eve were created in like manner, for only if they were truly pure could the Sovereign of the Universe enjoy fellowship with them. It was for this reason that, when the sacrificial system was set up, only those animals that were “without blemish” were acceptable to God.
It should therefore be no surprise
that when God was made man and lived among men only the pure and previously
unused would be good enough for Him. There are several wonderful examples of
this in the gospels, one of which is found in our text. Mark is careful to
record the words of Jesus when He qualified the colt they were to bring Him. It
was one “which no man has ever ridden”.
Jesus was about to enter
When the time came for Jesus to
become a member of the human race, it was not only appropriate but essential
that He be conceived in the womb of a virgin. "This is how the birth of
Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph,
but before they came together, she
was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit," Matthew
The very cross on which Jesus was crucified was made
just for Him. Crucifixion was a very common form of execution of the Roman
government and thousands of men and women were put to death in this manner. The
structure used for this means of death was not normally in the shape of a cross
but of a ‘T’. The victim was tied by leather straps with his arms stretched out
over the horizontal bar, this forced his chest forward
so he would slowly die from suffocation. The reason the cross was made for Jesus was so the sign ordered by Pilate
could be nailed above the head of Jesus. “Pilate had a notice prepared and
fastened to the cross. It read, ‘JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS’.” I
have never seen a painting of the crucifixion where Jesus was nailed to His
cross and the two thieves strapped to the traditional ‘T’. When
After Jesus had died His disciples
took him down from the cross and placed Him in the
tomb that Joseph of Arimathea had made for himself. “At the place where Jesus
was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid.
Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby,
they laid Jesus there,” John
Jesus entered the world in a womb that had never before conceived and He ended His life in a tomb wherein no man had previously been laid.
The New Testament writers pick up this theme when they write “Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure,” 1 John 3:3. When we are ‘born again’ by the Holy Spirit we become spiritually pure, even as Adam before he sinned, and once again God can have fellowship with His creation.