Zechariah 9:9 “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.”

Jesus did not come to be a political king. “My kingdom is not of this world,” he told Pilate. Yet it almost sounds like the prophet Zechariah is trying to whip up the crowd at the political rally. When he wrote these words, Israel had been without a king for about 80 years. They weren’t going to get one for another 500 years. This was largely because the kings of the past had failed God and his people. They acted out of self-interest. They neglected their own faith and the faith of their people. They turned a blind eye to injustice. They promoted immorality. After about 400 years of this, the Lord was done. He took away Judah’s independence and let them be ruled by other world powers. He was not going to give them a king again until he could give them a king who would get it right.

Jesus is that king. The prophet wrote words to assure his people a king was coming, someone they could trust. Here is how they could be sure:

The king is righteous. He is just. This doesn’t apply merely to the way he governs publicly. It applies to his private, personal conduct as well. In this, he is an exception of history. Even by watered-down human standards this is exceedingly rare.

Look at Israel’s kings, for example. The king who set the standard by which every other king would be judged, and even the Lord himself called him a man after his own heart, was David. But was David “righteous”? His personal life became a mess. Sexual scandals surrounding people in power isn’t a modern problem. David had his famous affair with Bathsheba. His children were out of control, like so many royal families who make the news today. Later in his reign his conceit got him tangled up in a self-promotion campaign that cost 70,000 people their lives. It cost them their lives! Yet David was considered the model, the sentimental favorite of the nation. After him they really see no one better.

We complain about the people who govern us. Most people I know complain about it a lot. Do you know why we can’t find better leaders, and historically that has been a problem? It is because those who rule are a reflection of the people they govern. The sex, the scandals, the schemes, the deceit, the greed, the self-interest–that’s not just a Washington problem, or a government problem. It describes what the human race has become. We are all about ourselves.

In a democratic system you can’t tell people that and still hope to get elected. But the Lord can say it. There’s a passage in Isaiah in which the Lord says, “Israel’s watchmen (that is, their leaders) are blind…they are dogs with mighty appetites; they never have enough… ‘Come,’ each one cries, ‘let me get wine! Let us drink our fill of beer! And tomorrow will be like today, or even far better.” That was their leaders.

Then Micah, who wrote at the same time, says, “If a liar and deceiver comes and says, ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,’ he would be just the prophet for this people!” That’s the people (and their clergy). In other words, like ruler like people. It hurts to admit, but looking at the seedier side of those who govern is a lot like looking in a mirror.

So Zechariah gives us good news! We are getting a king, and he is righteous. He isn’t just relatively good, or better than most. “He was tempted in every way just as we are, yet was without sin,” the writer of Hebrew says. He is “the lamb without blemish or defect,” is the way the Apostle Peter put it. In John chapter 8 Jesus challenged his opponents, “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?” not because he was arrogant, but because he was actually pure. Right up to the day they condemned him to death, no one could answer his challenge, even when they paid false witnesses to lie about him, because the King we are getting is righteous.

Isn’t that the kind of king we need, the kind of leadership for which we have been looking?