The Dumb Donkey
Meditation for the week of April 5, 2009
Luke 19:30 "Go into the village opposite you, where as you enter you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Loose it and bring it here.
What is the difference between this dumb donkey and the intelligent religious leaders of Israel of that day? The donkey submitted to the will of God and the religious leaders rejected and crucified the Lord. The donkey was used of the Lord to make his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The religious Pharisees rejected their Messiah and destroyed their nation. Because of them, Titus destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. They were more worried about their own political careers than they were about doing right.
The Pharisees who knew their Bibles missed the fact that when the Lord made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, He was fulfilling the prophesy of Daniel 9:26 to the day. In Luke 19:42, the Lord said as he wept over Jerusalem, "If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.†And on that very day, the end of the 69 weeks of Daniel 9 were being fulfilled and after that the Messiah was crucified or cut off.
Stones cry out when the truth is suppressed (Luke 19:40). Chickens are smart enough to provide safety for their brood (Luke 13:40), but people who have religion instead of Christ are absolutely blind and useless. The Pharisees didn’t care that the Lord was innocent, that He did nothing but good, and that He fulfilled the prophetic Scriptures. They just wanted Him out of the way. They were envious of his popularity (Matthew 27:18). Most of creation seems to be more responsive to the will of God than humans who should have been God’s crowning achievement in creation.
The little colt was tied outside a door at a crossroads according to Mark 11:4. Some translations say that the colt was tied in an open place but the KJV says it was where two ways met. The greek word seems to imply that there was a fork in the road where that little colt was tied. I believe that we all come to that fork in the road when we have to decide whether we are going to be smart like a dumb donkey or dumb like a smart Pharisee. Are we going to be simple enough to submit to the will of God or so smart that we are going to tell God how to do His work? We meet that fork when we are confronted with our sin and with the truth that the only way to have our sin put away and to be cleansed is through faith in the blood of Christ. Then after we are saved we often come to that fork again and again as we are confronted with the need to be obedient to the will of God. We often have to decide whether to submit like the colt or whether to be self-willed like the religious Jews.
I suspect that when all is said and done, we all act more like Pharisees at times than we do like a submissive donkey. Wouldn’t it be nice if we were a little less smart like the Pharisees and a little more dumb like the donkey so that we could be a little more submissive to the Lord? Maybe then we could be used to glorify the Lord in some way.
Bruce Collins