“41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” ”
Love will tear you up inside. Love is the reason parents tell their children, “this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.” Consider a father who decides to let his adult daughter suffer the profound error of her ways so that she might finally learn responsibility. He didn’t come to that decision lightly. It tore him up inside, but he made that decision because he loves her. If he didn’t love her, he would have no problem watching her suffer. If he didn’t love her, he wouldn’t care if she learned responsibility. He is torn up inside because he loves.
Now God loves. In fact, Scripture goes so far as to say that, “God is love.” Does love tear God up inside? The author of this gospel would say, “it most certainly does.” Luke would say that Jesus reveals God. Luke makes clear that Jesus was quite torn up as he rode into Jerusalem. He was torn up because of love.
Here’s another way to think come at it: with each family member I’ve added, I’ve multiplied my opportunities for genuine heartbreak. I’ve certainly multiplied my opportunities for joy, delight, laughter, and tenderness, but I’ve also multiplied my opportunities for crushing heartbreak. The kids you don’t have will never break your heart. It’s the kids you do have that can and will because when you love you give your heart away.
To love is to welcome heartbreak. To love is to welcome sorrow. Nicholas Wolterstorff has one of the sharpest minds in the Christian Reformed Church. For thirty years, he was a philosophy professor at Calvin. My mom had him for one class and said, “I never understand a word that man said.” Now while his philosophy is abstract, his book entitled Lament for a Son is terribly concrete. Wolterstorff wrote it after his 25-year-old son Eric died in a mountain climbing accident. The book is gut wrenching, as you would expect and as it should be considering its subject matter. In it Wolterstorff writes, “It is said of God that no one can behold His face and live. I always thought this meant that no one could see His splendor and live. A friend said perhaps it meant that no one could see His sorrow and live. Or perhaps His sorrow is splendor.”
God is certainly more joyful than we can begin to comprehend, but there is also great sorrow in His great heart. His love tears Him up inside and we see a glimpse of that in the tears of Jesus as he neared Jerusalem. Love will tear you up inside we have a God who loves. That is the claim of this sermon: love will tear you up inside we have a God who loves.
We will study this in two points. First: if only you had known. Second: the days will come upon you. We see Jesus crying out to Jerusalem, “if only you had known,” in verses 41-42. We see Jesus promising that the days would come upon Jerusalem in verses 43-44.
First: if only you had known. Jesus was still on parade. On Sunday, we studied the meaning and importance of this Palm Sunday parade down the Mount of Olives. We studied the ways in which it declared that Jesus was king. We studied the majesty and humility of it all. Now as the parade neared Jerusalem, Jesus broke into tears. Verse 41, ‘As [Jesus] approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.”’
Jesus didn’t hide his tears. When King Hezekiah found out that he was going to die, he turned his face to cry so that none of his servants would see him. King Jesus didn’t do that. He bawled in the middle of his own parade. Picture this moment. The disciples and much of the crowd were still waving palm branches and cheering, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” The Pharisees were still looking on in disgust at this mob. These people and more see and hear Jesus sobbing during his own parade.
The Son of Man was not ashamed of his emotions. As Chesterton put it, “[Jesus’ passion] was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed his tears; he showed them plainly on his open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of his native city.”
We, and especially we men, tend to hide our emotions. We seem to think that it is some great achievement to appear unaffected by what’s happening around us. We seem to think there is something somehow wrong with sobbing at a funeral. When men break into tears in public, or even in small groups, they tend to apologize. You’ll never hear such an apology from Jesus. He didn’t seem to feel any shame in showing his emotions. He didn’t seem to think that he was letting his supporters down when he sobbed as they celebrated. He didn’t seem to worry about what the Pharisees, who already hated him, might have thought about this tearful display. Now if it is a choice between my shame at crying in public and Jesus’ crying openly in public, I think we would be wise to go with Jesus on this one. It’s wise to go with Jesus on everything. He is the template of what humanity should be.
Jesus wept because he was fully human. He was what humans ought to be. He also wept because he was the Christ. He was the king of his people, but they would not receive him. This rejection brought him to tears—not for himself but for them, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.”’
Jesus knew that Jerusalem would suffer for rejecting him as king. He loved these people who were rejecting him and so he cried for them. “Much like a parent watching a child make a foolish decision, Jesus mourns a city sealing its fate,” wrote Darrel Bock.
I imagine that you’ve wept over a loved one’s foolishness. You’ve said what you can to your husband, but he is who he is, and he is going to do what he’s decided to do. You know it is going to blow up in his face. You can’t change his mind. You can’t shield him from the consequences. All that’s left for you to do is love him and let him suffer what he is choosing to suffer. There is no shame in crying in that situation.
Jesus felt this not to a lesser degree but to a greater degree. Our experiences with love are windows into God’s. He doesn’t love us less than we love our children; He loves us more than we love our children. We can’t comprehend that because our hearts are not nearly as big as God’s. The word that Luke uses here for Jesus’ tears refers to wailing or full sobbing. The degree of this sorrow was excruciating.
Jesus wasn’t crying less than a mother cries for her daughter who is ruining her own life. He didn’t feel it any less. He felt it more. He felt it to a greater degree and to a greater extent.
We shed our tears for our loved ones. Jesus shed his tears over a city because they were all his loved ones. Now we tend to say that we’re more affected by the sorrows of others than we really are. We talk about how bad we feel for acquaintances in difficulties when, in reality, we don’t give them much thought beyond a brief prayer. Jesus didn’t do that. He cried over a whole city because they genuinely were his loved ones. His love tore him up inside.
Jesus was torn up because these people wouldn’t come to him for peace. As he said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.” Jesus had come to make all things new, but the people didn’t want it. They said they wanted it, but in a few short days they would yell, “crucify him,” and choose a murderer over the one who makes all things new. They would choose death rather than life. “When [Jesus] saw the people who had been adopted to the hope of eternal life, perish miserably through their ingratitude and wickedness, we need not wonder if he could not refrain from tears,” wrote Calvin.
The wrath of God would soon fall on Jerusalem and so the Son of God wept. Here you see the great mystery of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Jesus longed for the people to believe. He wailed over the wrath of God to come. He wept over this situation even though he is the God who executes the judgment and who can change hearts.
If you stress only divine sovereignty, you are left with a God who damns people for His own glory without ever once being torn up about it. If you stress only human responsibility, you are left with a God who would love to save everyone but, for some strange reason, His hands are tied. When you stress both divine sovereignty and human responsibility you are left with the God of the Bible. You are left with Jesus weeping on the way into Jerusalem. It is God’s wrath that will fall upon Jerusalem. It is God who is weeping over this wrath to come.
Now, please don’t try to force a wedge here between Jesus and the Father. Jesus wasn’t weeping over Jerusalem’s fate because he thought his Father was wrong to bring wrath upon the city. You don’t see that sort of division in the Trinity. As you read the gospels, you never once see Jesus throwing his Father under the bus to preserve his own reputation. It is we who tend to do that. We tend to distance ourselves from God when His actions seem disagreeable to us or to others. We tend to be ashamed of God’s wrath and hell as if we were somehow morally superior to God. Or we fall off the ditch on the other side and affirm God’s wrath and hell without sharing Jesus’ tears over these realities. Jesus at once affirmed God’s glory and cried over those who chose God’s wrath. That is the call for the Christian. It is a call to love and love for this world will tear you up. That is assumed in John 3:16, “God loved the world in this way: He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.” There is no way to read that verse without recognizing the love and grief of God.
We’ve considered the tears of Jesus. Now we consider this wrath to come. We do so in our second point: the days will come upon you.
Jesus paraded into Jerusalem as king and it was as king that he wept over his people. That was and is what good kings do when disaster is immanent. They weep because they love their people. After the first night of the Blitz, Churchill surveyed the damage to London and broke into tears. As he surveyed the damage that was done, he considered the disaster that was coming. A woman saw him crying and yelled, “You see, he really cares; he’s crying.”
Jesus wept when he saw Jerusalem because he knew the disaster that was coming. “You see, he really cares; he’s crying.” He cries over what is to come. Verse 43, “The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another.”
This began in 66 AD, about thirty years after Jesus spoke these words. The Jews revolted against Rome over issues of taxation. The Roman governor of Judea, same position as Pilate but different man by then, responded by plundering the temple. Matters, as you would expect, escalated from there. There was a revolt. In April of 70 AD, Rome laid siege to Jerusalem. By May, they had broken through the first wall. By July, they broke into the fortress of the city and slaughtered the rebels. Of course, they also slaughtered the people of the city. Jewish historian Josephus who served as a Roman negotiator in the midst of the battle wrote, “everywhere was slaughter and flight. Most of the victims were peaceful citizens, weak and unarmed, butchered wherever they were caught. Round the altar the heaps of corpses grew higher and higher, while down the sanctuary steps poured a river of blood and the bodies of those killed at the top slithered to the bottom.” Now that was written by a man who was loyal to Rome.
The Romans burned the temple to the ground and tore the walls of the temple mount down. You can still the giant stones today and what Jesus said of them in the gospel of Matthew came to pass, “I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
Now if you asked Josephus why that carnage occurred, he would have pointed to matters of taxation. He would have pointed to the zealots and their desire to throw off oppression and live as a nation under God. If you asked Rome why that carnage occurred, they would have said that the Jews didn’t know their place. If you asked Jesus, which is another way of saying, if you asked God, why that destruction took place, he might have agreed with some of Josephus said, but he would have certainly added the words of verse 44, “you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
Jesus would have said, “Jerusalem would not come to me, so Rome came to them.” Jesus thought that what Jerusalem chose to do on this week we call “holy week” would have ramifications thirty years later involving Rome. Jesus thought that rejecting him had real life consequences. I don’t see any other way to read our passage for this evening, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
Rejecting Jesus carried serious consequences and that makes total sense because to reject Jesus is to reject God. The Jews preferred their brick and stone temple to the true temple, the meeting place of humanity and God which is Jesus, and so their temple was torn to the ground. The Jews preferred their brick and stone walls to God who is their refuge and their strength and so their walls were torn to the ground. Rome was simply God’s instrument of wrath in that day as Babylon was when the first temple was destroyed. The people had preferred anything and everything to God and so God let them have what anything and everything other than Him could get them, which is destruction.
If this seems to harsh, remember the situation of our passage. God was parading into Jerusalem as king. The God who broke the arm of Pharaoh and brought his people through the Red Sea was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. He had made his identity obvious through miracle after miracle and teaching after teaching and interaction after interaction. All of this was on the public record. As Paul told Agrippa and Festus, “none of this was done in a corner.”
The people of God had the opportunity to welcome God into Jerusalem that holy week. They chose to crucify Him. Now what was a just God to do in that situation? What was a loving God to do in that situation? Here’s what He did. He was merciful by giving these people an opportunity to repent of what they did. That is the climax of Peter’s speech in Jerusalem on Pentecost, “let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” ‘He came to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, and you crucified him. You crucified your king. You crucified the God in the flesh.’ This is why ‘when the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”’ God mercifully extended opportunities to repent.
He also justly brought destruction on this city that preferred everything and anything to Him. These were God’s people. They had rejected God. He had placed before them the way of life and the way of death. That holy week, they choose death. Pilate told the crowd, “I am innocent of this man’s blood. It is your responsibility!” The people said, “His blood is on us and on our children!” They chose death. Jesus knew it and so Jesus wept.
Now that is not the end of Israel’s story. We could and someday hopefully will study Romans 9-11 and God’s continued plan for these children of Abraham. Also, this rejection of Jesus is no excuse for anti-Semitism, as if there were any excuse for such an egregious denial of loving our neighbors. What this is, is a recognition of the wrath of God as a consequence for rejecting God; “you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you,” as Jesus put it.
I wonder if you have recognized the time of God’s coming to you. This isn’t merely a history of Palm Sunday and holy week. Neither is this a mere study of 70 AD. This is a history involving you. God has come near us all in Jesus. If you will not recognize that, please recognize that Jesus is weeping about you. He is speaking your name and saying, “if you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.” He is weeping over the wrath to come upon you and he says that it will come, “because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
You obviously don’t want to wind up like Jerusalem in 70 AD, so don’t do what they did. Don’t reject Jesus. Now your rejection of him might look different in specifics from their cries of “crucify him, crucify him,” but it isn’t different in general. They cried out, “crucify him,” because they wanted to be done with him. They didn’t want to have to deal with him anymore. They didn’t want to accept his teaching. They didn’t want to accept him a king over them. They didn’t want to accept him as the God to whom they owed everything. Aren’t you really doing the same? If so, you can expect what they received. Repent.
God will receive you. He received those who repented when Peter convinced them of the error of their ways. Confess the errors of your ways and receive Jesus. Accept his teaching. Accept him as your king. Accept him as the God to whom you owe everything. You can still move from the position of Jerusalem over which Jesus wept to the position of disciples who paraded with Jesus. That option is still open for you. It’s too late for Jerusalem in 70 AD. It’s not too late for you. Treat the king as king.
Jesus was torn up by love on his way into Jerusalem. God’s love is very real. His wrath is very real. Your choice is very real just as theirs was. Amen.