As Jesus prepared to enter Jerusalem, the city was likely abuzz with Messianic excitement, as that day marked the fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy predicting the Messiah's arrival:
37When 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!" 39Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!" 40"I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out" (Luke 19:37-40).
More than five hundred years earlier, the prophet Daniel received a visit from an angel who revealed to him the exact date when the Messiah would come to Jerusalem.
Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven “sevens,” and sixty-two “sevens.” It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble (Daniel 9:25).
Seven and sixty-two make sixty-nine weeks of years. Scholars have calculated that from the decree of Artaxerxes, the Persian king (Nehemiah 2:1-8), in 444 B.C., to the day Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey's foal, the sixty-nine weeks of years were completed. The sixty-nine weeks of years amount to 483 years, with 360 days in a year. (Jews reckoned time according to a lunar calendar, that is, thirty days to a month and twelve months to a year.) In his excellent work, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell has detailed Christ's entrance into Jerusalem. We don’t know how many people were aware that Daniel’s timeline for the Messiah's appearance was imminent. There was an expectation among the Jews that the time had arrived when the Messiah would destroy the Romans and free the Jewish people from Roman occupation. Of course, as believers in Christ, we believe that He will come as a conquering warrior, but that is for a future time. First, God’s plan was for Christ to come as a suffering servant and a sacrificial lamb to pay for our sins.
God planned the arrival of Jesus on this day of fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy down to the last detail. Jesus would not enter the city riding a white horse, a symbol of war, but on a humble donkey. Consider the humility of our Savior: the Bible states that everything was made through Christ —"Through him, all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made" (John 1:3) —yet he had to borrow someone else's donkey. The password to borrow the donkey from the owner was, “The Lord needs it.” The owners required no further explanation once they understood that the Lord needed it. That settled it. They were happy to see their resources used by the Lord. What a lesson this is for us. Is everything we have available for the Lord to use? The donkey had never been ridden before (Luke 19:30), yet it carried our Lord without protest.
Three years into His ministry, Jesus now had a price on His head —an amount Judas cashed in on —but we don't see Jesus sneaking into the city in secret. Instead, He boldly approached Jerusalem on the very day the prophet Daniel had written about. Rapturous applause from crowds greeted Jesus as He began descending from the Mount of Olives, with the beautiful city of Jerusalem spread out before and below Him. It was a glorious act of defiance against the religious rulers who had repeatedly tried to intimidate Him. He came to Jerusalem as the promised King spoken of by Zechariah the prophet, fulfilling the exact prophetic Scripture that He would arrive bringing salvation and riding on a donkey. On the basis of that thought, don’t you think that He will also fulfill all of the end-time scriptures exactly too? He will come exactly as the Scriptures tell us.
Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey (Zechariah 9:9). Keith Thomas.
Taken from the series on the Book of Luke. Click on Study 52. Luke 19:28-48, The King Comes to His Temple.