I. Our Lord's words illustrate, first of all, the deliberateness with which He moved forward to His agony and death. When He sent the two disciples for the ass and the foal which were tied up in the street of Bethphage, He was, as He knew, taking the first step in a series which would end within a week upon Mount Calvary. Everything, accordingly, is measured, deliberate, calm. It is this deliberateness in His advance to die; it is this voluntariness in His sufferings which, next to the fact of His true Divinity, gives to the death of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ its character as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.
II. Our Lord's words illustrate, secondly, the exact nature of His claims. "If any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, "The Lord hath need of them." Now, what is the justification of this demand? It is a question which can only be answered in one way namely, that Christ was all along the true owner of the ass and the foal, and that the apparent owner was but His bailiff. He claims what He has lent for a while, He resumes that which has always been His own; we hear the voice of the Being to whom man owes all that he is, and all that he has "whose we are, and whom we serve."
III. Our Lord's words show how He can make use of all, even of the lowest and the least; nay how, in His condescension, He makes Himself dependent on them for the fulfilment of His high purposes. It was of the ass and of the colt at Bethphage that He Himself said, "The Lord hath need of them." The ass and colt, insignificant in themselves, had become necessary to our Lord at one of the great turning-points of His life; they were needed for a service unique and incomparable, which has given them a place in sacred history to the very end of time. They were to be conspicuous features in that great sacrificial procession for such it was in which He, the prime and flower of our race, moved forward deliberately to yield Himself to the wills of men who today can shout "Hosannah" and who tomorrow will cry "Crucify." The needs of God. It was surely too bold an expression if He had not authorized us to use it. And yet there they stand, the words "The Lord hath need of them." He needed that ass and that foal in the street of Bethphage.
H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxi., p. 209.
References: Matthew 21:3. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 241; J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year,vol. ii., p. 80. Matthew 21:4. C. Kingsley, Sermons on National Subjects,p. 1.Matthew 21:4; Matthew 21:5. G. Butler, Cheltenham College Sermons,p. 20.