Jesus Wept for Jerusalem

It's so good to be with you all again today and I do want to give thanks to God for the tremendous spirit of praise and worship that is evident in the congregation this morning. I'm sure that Muriel and I express with you that our cup is already full and running over. It is always a wonderful time of worship to be among this congregation and especially since God has called Pastor Keith and Sam to work among you. It is very evident to us who come here only occasionally to see the great things that he is doing and of course we give him the praise and the glory for the outpouring of His Spirit and His blessing upon you all. Thank you again to Pastor Keith and Sam and the rest of the elders for the invitation to minister God's Word to you. I am having increasing problems with the sight in the only good eye that I have, my left It's not only the shingles, but now a cataract is growing over, so I have to use a music stand to bring my notes as high up as I possibly can. So, let's pray. Our Father, on behalf of the congregation, I do want to thank you for this time of worship. And thank you for what you are doing. And Father, I thank you for a pastor who prays for you to call missionaries out of the flock that you have given to him and the elders. And we thank you that already that prayer is being answered. Lord, it is a sign of God's blessing upon a church when people hear the call of Jesus Christ and go out to proclaim Him among the nations. For this we give you thanks from the bottom of our heart. And now, Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts bring glory and honour to your name. For Jesus' sake. Amen. It is Palm Sunday, five days before his crucifixion. Thousands of pilgrims are converging on Jerusalem for the Passover season, and Jesus has chosen this particular occasion to declare his right to be King. For the prophet Zechariah had predicted that God's King would enter the capital city riding on a donkey. And here is our Lord fulfilling this prophecy to the very letter. The air was filled with excitement as he came at last to the descent of the Mount of Olives. And Luke says, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice saying, Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, literally sobbed. Now, men don't normally cry easily. When a young man of 30 weeps, He must be deeply stirred. The only other occasion on which our Lord wept, of course, was at the graveside of Lazarus. What was the cause of his tears? Were these tears of frustration? Many a man has struggled long for a good cause, only to break down in the end in frustration. But that is surely not the case here. For Jesus was not a mere prophet like Elijah, who after his seemingly futile struggle against Baalism succumbed to frustration and just wanted to give up and die. No, this is God Almighty manifested in the flesh. His weeping has nothing to do with weakness. Were they then tears of joy? There are men who have persevered against persistent rejection, and when at last they are victorious, they break down in tears of joy. And at first sight we may think that this is the reason for the tears of Jesus. With the crowds acclaiming Him as the Messiah, there was cause for tears of joy. But once again, Luke makes it clear from what follows that our Lord's cheers had nothing to do with the enthusiastic acclaim he was receiving from his disciples. For our Lord wept, says Luke, not when he saw his disciples spreading their garments on the ground and waving their palm branches, but when he saw Jerusalem. Jesus wept over the city and its people because he saw the terrible destruction that was coming upon them for rejecting and crucifying their Messiah. These, I say, were tears of sorrow, the tears of God in Christ for those he loved and wanted to save, but were determined to self-destruct. And it is Luke alone who has preserved this picture of God on Palm Sunday. It is an amazing revelation of divine sorrow that is seldom seen elsewhere in the Bible. I say seldom because there are flashes of it here and there in the Scriptures. We see, for instance, in Hosea chapter 11 and verse 8, where after all the nation's idolatry and immorality, after sending them prophet after prophet in vain, God says, How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? And how can I treat you like Zerboam?" Admah and Zerboam, of course, were destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah in fire and brimstone. And yet, God goes on to say through the prophet Isaiah, my heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. It is an amazing revelation of God's love for sinners and how His heart recoils from punishing them when they fail to turn to Him in repentance. And in case we should be tempted to doubt God's tenderness, this truth is seen again in Luke 13 and verse 34 where Jesus says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you, how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you would not. Behold, your house is left to you desolate. Even as our Lord warns them of the desolation that is coming to them as a nation, He breaks and He speaks from a heart of sorrow. That is why when Jesus finally came within sight of Jerusalem, He wept over it. Friends, Aren't you glad you worship a loving God like this? We do not worship a God who saves some and damns the rest with unfeeling abandon. Rather we worship a God who weeps over every sinner who won't repent and is bent on going to hell. Someone has said that the gospel we preach is not only rooted in the blood of Christ, but wet with the tears of Christ. The gospel, therefore, must never be presented simply as a general offer of salvation that some can consider in a detached way and then choose whether to accept it or not. Rather, when it is preached, Sinners must hear Christ pleading with them to find refuge in the shedding of His blood and weeping over the destruction that awaits them if they reject Him. That's the message of this strange and awesome event. Poem Sunday tells us that though there are no tears in heaven, there are tears. in the heart of God. For the love of God is broader than the measures of man's mind, and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind." So let's look a bit more closely at why Jesus wept that day. He wept in the first place because of the blessing that might have been theirs. Verse 42, in the New International Version, which I think gets the feeling best, If you, even you, had only known in this your day the things that would bring you peace. If you had only known. There is nothing so tragic as the failure to seize a divine opportunity that we have been waiting for a long time. If you, even you, had only known in this your day the things that would bring you peace, In Psalm 122, God commands His people to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And the very name, Jerusalem, means peace, city of peace. And now at last, in answer to their prayers, God had sent His Son, the Prince of Peace. And yet they fail to see that in Jesus Christ alone Peace can be found first with God and then with our fellow human beings. Now, the Bible says that there is no peace for the wicked. The Bible says the wicked are like the tossing sea, casting up dirty mire, because they are tormented by the guilt of their sin. What then are the things that bring sinners peace? Well, according to scripture, they are repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. But the people of Jerusalem couldn't see their need of repentance because they were so intensely religious. The temple was in their city. and they were diligent in offering their animal sacrifices to God. In their estimation, they were far removed from the idolatrous nations around them. They couldn't see that sin is not just some failure or shortcoming. Sin is supremely our persistent, self-centered rebellion against God. Repentance is turning from loving self to loving God with all our heart and all our soul and all our might and strength. If you, even you, had only known But there was something else that was needed to bring them peace, and that was faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as their God-sent Messiah. The Jews refused to accept Jesus as the promised Messiah, and that in Him God, at last, was personally visiting His people, and through Him God was offering them peace. by the blood of His cross. Oh, it's true that hundreds believed in Him as their Messiah that day. And that is why they spread their garments on the road for Him to ride over. That is why they shouted their hosannas, Save us now! But they were from Galilee. The people of Jerusalem and their religious leaders didn't believe in Him. Rebuke your disciples, they said to him. Stop these people calling you Messiah. And Jesus answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out. They failed to see that God in Christ had come to save them from their sins. You did not know the time of your visitation, Jesus laments. And because they refused to accept Jesus as their Messiah, they felt no need to put their faith in Him. Now, what does it mean to believe in Jesus Christ as God's Messiah, as your Messiah? Well, the word Messiah simply means anointed. That is to say, the one specially anointed by God to be humankind's prophet, priest and king. And as God's supreme prophet, he is God's final word to humanity. So to believe in him is to receive his word as God's word and obey it implicitly. Again, as God's supreme priest, he makes his soul an offering for sin to pay the penalty it deserves. So to believe in Christ is to receive him as the only one through whom we can come to God, the only one who can be our mediator with God. And again, as God's supreme king, he has been given all authority and all power in heaven and on earth. So to believe in him is to acknowledge his absolute right over us. and to serve Him unconditionally. This was the tragedy that brought tears to the eyes of Jesus as the city came within view that first past Sunday. It was their failure to recognize the time for which they had waited and prayed so long. All through their history, this is what kept them going. The Messiah is coming, but they fail to see, as the NIV puts it, God's coming to them, bringing them everlasting peace and righteousness. If you, even you, had only known in this your day the things that would bring you peace, And then secondly, Jesus wept because of their spiritual blindness. If you, even you, had only known in this day the things that would bring you peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. You know, spiritual blindness is worse than physical blindness. Our Lord wept because the very things that were so vital to Jerusalem's peace were now hidden from their eyes. That is why she did not see them or know the time of her divine visitation. Now, this blindness comes chiefly from the devil himself. The God of this world, says Paul, has blinded the mind of those who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel should shine on them. And often the devil blinds us by methods that are not at all obvious. Take, for example, the desire of every parent to prepare their children for life and to provide for them materially. That is a very good desire. But parents can become so taken up with this duty that they fail to see that their and their children's greatest need is not for food and clothes and education, but to be prepared for the next life. For the Bible says, man shall not live by bread alone. but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. So I say the devil can use something that is good to blind us to our deepest spiritual need. Again, among these good things that the devil can use, there is nothing that he uses more successfully than religion. People imagine that if they have a smattering of Christianity, they can live like the rest of the world and still go to heaven. I think one of the sad things today, as one looks at great public occasions, is that people will sing. the hymn Amazing Grace. And if you had to stop them after the first line and say, do you really believe that you are a sinful wretch in need of salvation? Well, their eyes would probably pop out of their heads. They enjoy singing a wonderful gospel hymn. but its words have not yet penetrated their understanding and spoken to them of their need of Jesus Christ. The devil can use the praises of the church to blind us to our need of salvation. People choose a church simply because the choir is so good. And then again, The devil can blind us by a good thing, like trying to live a good life. For he can make us think that if we are trying to be respectable people and good neighbours, that these are the things that really matter. And of course they matter. God does require us to live in conformity to his holy law. He wants us to be good neighbours and to love our neighbour as ourselves. But you know, the devil is so subtle that he can take these things and use them as means of blinding our eyes to our need to be spiritually saved, to have our sins forgiven and our hearts changed. and transform so that we love God more than we love ourselves. He can make us think that by doing this or doing that in the name of religion, we are measuring up to God's standard. And Jesus is saying here, you people of Jerusalem, you religious Jews, You people who have the scriptures in your hands and throng the temple courts, if you, even you, had only known in this your day the things that would bring you peace, but now they are hidden from your arms. But we must not put all the blame on the devil. There is also a very strong element of human willfulness in this tragedy. There always is. For if we go back even to the Garden of Eden, where the devil was certainly very active and won a very notable victory, Adam and Eve had to be willing participants. They had to be willing to listen to the devil. and to do what God had commanded them not to do. So, even since then, and more so, the devil has a winning ally in every human being's heart, because we all tend to love self more than God. Thus on another occasion Jesus said to the Jews in Jerusalem, you search the scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life. Religiously this is what you want and yet willfully you will not come to me that you may have life. All of us, without exception, are willful. And when we persist in pleasing self above God, then it becomes a habit and blinds us to our spiritual duty. And you know, this is what happened to the people at Jerusalem. They had now reached a point almost of no return. They had turned a deaf ear to Jesus for so long that they were now incapable of perceiving the truth. And this, it seems to me, is one of the great dangers of going regularly to church for the wrong reason. Maybe because it has good educational facilities for our children, or because we like the music in the church. And so we hear the gospel week after week after week. And we keep on resisting the call of Jesus Christ to repentance and to faith. And as a result, we become gospel hardened and blind to the truth. That's the condition, you know, of people who are already in hell. They have reached a state where human willfulness is irreversible. And so when Jesus speaks about people weeping and gnashing their teeth in hell, he is not referring to people who are feeling pangs of remorse and sorrow in hell, who have any wish that they could have another chance to be saved. No. He is referring to people who are furious with God for sending them to such a place, and continually rebellious against the Almighty. Hell, I say, is a place where human willfulness is finally and eternally fixed. And that was the direction in which Jerusalem was heading. No wonder Jesus wept when He said, Even you had only known in this your day the things that would bring you peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. And then thirdly, Jesus wept because of God's judgment that was to fall upon them. Every visitor to Jerusalem knows that when you come to the brow of the Mount of Olives descending down into the valley of Kedron and then up sitting on top of a smaller hill, the hill or Mount Zion, you have a splendid view of the Holy City. But as Jesus beheld its splendour, he saw something else. He saw the storm of God's judgment coming upon them, for they were about to crucify God's King and their Saviour. He saw the judgment that was going to destroy this city, built on the sand of religious pride. And the terrible destruction he prophesied in verses 43 to 44 was literally fulfilled in AD 70 when the Roman armies under Titus stormed the city. It resulted in the terrible massacre of over one million people that could have been avoided if the Jews had only chosen to follow the path of peace that Jesus had laid out before them instead of their hot ideas of nationalism and political freedom. And you know, in Luke 1 verse 29, Zechariah had prophesied that in Jesus, quote, the sunrise or the day spring from on high shall visit us to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace. But as Jesus lamented on Palm Sunday, the people did not recognise the day of God's visitation. And when they rejected and crucified His Messiah and King, they forfeited God's peace and fell prey to destruction. Now remember, there were still 40 years to go. But Israel as a whole, the nation as a whole, continued to reject their Messiah in spite of his resurrection, in spite of the growth of the Christian church. And so Jesus says, the days will come when your enemies will build an embankment around you and hem you in on every side. You will be surrounded, he says, by Roman soldiers, and there will be no escape. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone upon another. And you know, for us too, Judgment Day is going to be like that, or that is a picture of what Judgment Day is going to be. It will be inescapable. We may feel young and strong and think that there is no need for us to take any action now to flee the judgment and the wrath of God. But when the day of judgment comes, it's going to be like Jerusalem in A.D. 70 to some extent. And by that I mean, we will be hemmed in on every side. There will be no way to escape. It's frightening, I know. But remember that when Jesus spoke these words, there were tears in His eyes. When He drew near and saw the city, He wept over it. He didn't gloat over their fate and say, well, you rejected me, the only one who could save you. You've only got yourselves to blame. Rather, he tearfully warns them of the terrible destruction that is yet a while off. And he weeps because it pains him to see where they are heading. and he longs for them to repent while there is still time. My friends, I say again, and I weigh my words carefully, the divine judge is not somebody who coldly, impassively, indifferently consigns the wicked to hell. On the contrary, he says in Ezekiel 33 and verse 11, As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why should you die? That is the God who wept over Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, who, as he pronounces the appalling judgment that is going to fall upon the people, weeps over their fate and says, if you, even you, had only known in this your day the things that would bring you peace, but you did not know the time of your visitation, And as I close, I wonder if God is speaking through these very words to somebody here today. He's called you to repentance many times, but like the people of Jerusalem, you have kept going your own way. He's called you to put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet still, You haven't received Him by faith as your Saviour. I can only thank God that the day of judgment has not yet come. The Lord Jesus graciously continues to speak to you and to me and to everybody in the world. And if the impassioned pleas of my poor tongue are unavailing, Will you not be moved by the tears of Jesus? Let us pray. O God, our Heavenly Father, have pity upon the frailty of your human messenger. We thank you for the presence of the Divine Helper, the Divine Speaker, who has used these feeble words as a means to speak to all of our hearts. And as has already been prayed, we pray again that for anyone who is a stranger to the forgiveness and the eternal life offered to us in Jesus Christ, if we will turn from our sins to Him in faith and receive Him as our Saviour, then we pray that you will give them grace by the Holy Spirit to do that. You will draw them, because Jesus said, If I be lifted up, will draw all men and women to myself. Oh, may that drawing power be felt in the heart of one here or there this morning. And grant, Lord, that in the hearts of all of us, this wonderful picture that only Luke gives us of our Incredible Saviour, our beautiful Saviour, our loving, tender Saviour, may fill the hearts of every one of His disciples this morning and send us on our way full of praise for Him and rejoicing that we are the beneficiaries of His salvation. We ask it, Father, for his glory and in his name. Amen.