Barbara, five, had disobeyed her mom and was sent to her room. After a few minutes, Mom went in to talk with her about what she had done. Teary-eyed, she asked, “Why do we do wrong things, Mommy?”
“Sometimes the Devil tells us to do something wrong, and we listen to him,” Mom said. “We need to listen to God instead.”
“But God doesn’t talk loud enough!” the five-year-old wailed.
Jesus actually talks quite loud enough; if we’ll just listen. He talks to us through His words and through His actions. We are looking at individual paragraphs or events from the last week of Jesus on earth and looking for lessons He wishes to teach us on His way to the cross.
JESUS WEPT OVER JERUSALEM – 19:41-44:
Walk with Luke as he presents Jesus’ movement toward Jerusalem: 9:30-31, 51-53; 13:22, 13:31-35; 17:11; 18:31-33; 19:11, 27-28. Isn’t this a prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem because they did not produce fruit for their Master? The fruit of repentance toward God and faith in the message of the Gospel: that salvation comes through Jesus Christ? Isn’t Jesus predicting here the destruction of Jerusalem?
Do you know how many times Jesus wept? How many times the Gospel writers tell us Jesus wept? The passage we are probably most familiar with is John 11:35: “Jesus wept.” Now that is the only verse that uses that Greek word. These are the only two passages which record Jesus weeping, looking up both Greek words and English words. So He cried because of the effect of death on humanity and Jesus cried because His people were about to be destroyed.
So Jesus cried over Jerusalem. What does Jesus cry over?
First (ver. 42), He cried that Jerusalem did not know the “things which make for peace!”
Second, because Jerusalem had turned its collective heart away from God, the things which make for peace had been hidden from their eyes. This statement is saying basically the same thing Jesus had said in quoting Isaiah 6:9-10.
Third (ver. 43), Jesus predicts the coming destruction on Jerusalem by the Roman armies. Look over at Jesus’ sermon in Luke 21:20.
Fourth, Jesus tells Jerusalem that the Roman army would level them to the ground and they would not spare the children. Look again at Luke 21:5-6.
Back to 19:44, Jesus finishes this statement by saying that the destruction of Israel, Jerusalem, and the temple are happening because they did not “recognize the time of their visitation.” This word, visitation, is only used 4 times in the NT: Acts 1:20; 1 Tim. 3:1; 1 Peter 2:12.
In the context of Luke 19, Jesus is saying, it seems to me, that the Jews did not recognize the coming of God’s power in Jesus Christ, whether for their benefit (of salvation) or judgment (of condemnation). In the 1 Peter 2 context, Peter is referring to the coming visitation of Jesus at the final coming.
What do we learn, living with Jesus in the shadow of the cross?
1) First, we don’t need to lose perspective on earthly affairs to the extent that we don’t cry for those who are lost in sin, even our enemies.
2) Second, Jesus is the Prince of Peace; He brings peace, if we will follow His word. It doesn’t matter whether we can see the end results of our decisions or not. We have to trust Jesus’ word and do what He says and there will be peace.
3) Third, it is possible for us to listen to a lie for so long that we start believing it is true. Paul warns about us searing our conscience with a hot iron in 1 Tim. 4:2. That’s why we need to continually go back to the Scriptures and humble our hearts and our wills to the teaching of Scripture. Even we can choose to believe something that’s not true simply because we’ve heard it for so long.
4) We have recognized the coming of Christ as the visitation of God. But Jesus is also coming back again and we need to prepare for it. And this point is related to the next point…
5) Jesus accurately predicted the destruction of Jerusalem which proves that Jesus can predict the future. He has also predicted the final destruction of the world. That’s why we need to trust Him and do what He says to do.
Paul Holland