When the King Wept

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Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 19. Luke chapter 19, and when you get there, you might also put your thumb or your bulletin or something at Luke chapter 13, because we may look at that as well. I need to confess something to you.

I lied to my wife this week, and I shouldn’t have done it. Yeah, uh-oh. She’s not in here, is she?

Oh, she knows about it. I told her later on. Brother James asked everybody what day this was, and I heard somebody in the choir say it was April Fool’s Day.

Well, my wife was talking about it being April Fool’s Day, and if you haven’t figured it out yet, my wife is ornery. She’s a practical joker. She likes to play April Fool’s pranks even when it’s not April Fool’s Day.

And I thought, there’s no telling what she’s going to do to me at church. So I said, no, no, it’s not on Sunday. It’s on Monday.

She said, no, it’s always on the first. I said, no, it’s like President’s Day. It can never fall on the weekend. So I thought, at least if she gets me, she won’t get me in front of everybody.

But I’ve apologized to her, and I shouldn’t have lied, even if I thought it was for a good reason. And I’m sorry for lying. More important than April Fool’s Day, today is Palm Sunday.

That one kind of sneaks up on us, too, especially if we didn’t remember that next week is Easter. Today is Palm Sunday. And today is, in the Bible, the week before Easter, the week before the resurrection, that Sunday morning, is the day that Jesus Christ came triumphantly into the city of Jerusalem, and they were ready to sweep him into power as king.

We’ve talked about this before. I’m not going to talk so much about the triumphal entry this morning, because we talked about it a few months ago when we talked about prophecies regarding the triumphal entry. But I want to talk about what came just after that.

I want to talk about when the king left. See, Jesus was. .

. Folks, if we’ve let the world give us the impression that Jesus Christ was a weak man, or what the world would call a sissy or a wimp, then we’ve gotten the wrong impression of who Jesus is. The world likes to portray Him, even people who are trying to respectfully portray Him, and the world portray Him as some kind of hippie flower child.

I just don’t know what better way to say it. that he was just peace and love all the time. And don’t get me wrong, Jesus was about peace and love.

But there was so much more to the story than that that we miss out on who Jesus is if we overlook that. Jesus was not just a wimp. Jesus, because he was God in the flesh and also fully man, Jesus Christ was the strongest man who’s ever lived.

And when I say that, I don’t mean strong necessarily like Samson, that he could pull down the temple just by grabbing the columns. I mean the strength of his character. Folks, it takes a strong man to stand trial for something you didn’t do, be falsely accused, be accused of things that are not just that you didn’t do, but things that are completely antithetical, for lack of a better word, completely opposite to everything you believe and stand for.

To say that he blasphemed God when no man that has ever walked the face of the earth has ever loved God the Father more than Jesus Christ did. And to say that he blasphemed God. And folks, it takes a strong man to stand there and say nothing.

Folks, he was not a weak man that just stood there and cowered in the corner. He stood there and took everything that they said about him. It takes a strong man to be beaten to within an inch of his life.

When he has the power to do something about it, He could have destroyed the world with a snap of His fingers if He’d chosen to, to stand there and be beaten because that’s what He came for, and to take what the world had to give Him. It takes a strong man to go through what He did. It takes a strong man as He did not to take revenge for what was done to Him, and not to be angry over what was done to Him, but to have righteous indignation and righteous anger over people who treated God wrong, treated God the Father wrong.

Because Jesus is not only the Jesus that said, turn the other cheek. He’s also the Jesus that cleared the temple, that turned over the tables and ran the money changers out. Folks, Jesus was not a weak man.

The Bible says, in him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. We get the wrong picture, the wrong impression of Jesus as the world leads us to think he was only this meek, mild man and nothing more. He was meek and mild and gentle, but he was also strong.

And I want to point that out to you because when we talked this morning about when the king wept, I don’t want to ever give you the impression that he’s coming from a place of weakness, that he’s coming from a place where he’s just, again, what the world would call a sissy, crying his eyes out in the corner because things aren’t going his way. What we see here when Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, when Jesus laments over Jerusalem, What we see here is Jesus’ compassion, and Jesus’ passion for the people of Jerusalem, but it does not mean that he is a weak man. He was strong enough that he could weep over Jerusalem, and it not mean that he was weak.

It’s like the saying I’ve heard, I wasn’t alive when it happened, but I’ve read that when Richard Nixon went over to China, to open China up to the United States, open China up to the West, Nixon had been such a rabid anti-communist. And I say that as a compliment. The word rabid there, I mean in a good sense. He had been so anti-communist. I mean, ever since the 40s and 50s, he’d been in Congress, and he had fought against communism.

Some people thought to the extreme that when he went over and met with the Premier of China, it was said only Nixon could go to China. Does anybody remember them saying that? Only Nixon could have gone to China.

If anybody else had gone over there and talked with the Chinese, had talked with the leaders of the Communist Party, they would have said that they were communist sympathizers. But see, everybody knew where Nixon stood on communism, and so only Nixon could go over to China and open the country up and open talks between the U. S.

and China and not be accused of being a communist. And no, I’m not comparing Jesus to Richard Nixon. Let’s make that clear. Make this perfectly clear.

Isn’t that what he used to say? Somebody help me out. I wouldn’t lie when it happened.

You’ve got to tell me if I’m right or wrong. Okay. Okay.

Thank you. Now, I’m not saying Nixon was like Jesus. What I’m saying is just like they said, only Nixon could go to China.

Only Jesus Christ had the strength to both weep over Jerusalem and to suffer for it. Only Jesus Christ. Anybody else that we would see weeping over Jerusalem? Just a man.

that Jesus Christ had all the strength that God had in Him bodily. Let’s look at Luke chapter 19, verse 41. Actually, we’re going to start back in verse 28.

And when He had thus spoken, He went before ascending up to Jerusalem. And it came to pass, when He was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the Mount of Olives, He sent two of His disciples, saying, Go ye into the village over against you, in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat. loose him and bring him hither.

And if any man asks you why do you loose him thus shall you say unto him because the Lord hath need of him. So as he’s gone up to Jerusalem he sends two of his disciples ahead and says go and find a donkey that no one has ever ridden on and bring him to me. And if anybody asks you why you’re doing it tell him because the king needs him.

The Lord needs him. I’m sorry. This is Lord.

And they that were sent went their way and found even as he had said unto them. They found exactly as he described it, a donkey tied up just as he described. And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt?

And they said, The Lord hath need of him. And folks, that tells you right there, that tells me right there, that the opinion that the people had of Jesus at this point. We see in just a minute, they’re ready to sweep him into power.

These people, it’s not just somebody, some bystander, asking, Why are you letting that donkey loose? It’s the actual owner saying, what are you doing with my donkey? And they said, oh no, the Lord needs him.

We don’t see any further discussion. They just take off with the donkey. Folks, the people at that point were just in love with Jesus, or at least their idea of Jesus.

Because we don’t see, at least in this passage, any further discussion from the owner of the donkey. He just lets them leave with the donkey. Verse 35, and they brought him to Jesus, and they cast their garments upon the colt, and they set Jesus thereon.

and as he went they spread their clothes in the way and when he was come nigh even now at the descent of the Mount of Olives the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen saying blessed be the king that cometh in the name of the Lord peace in heaven and glory in the highest and some of the Pharisees we’ve been talking about them lately they show up yet again and some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him master rebuke thy disciples Here they’re calling Jesus Master And yet they’re upset that people are Serving him and praising him as Master We see the hypocrisy of the Pharisees yet again Master, rebuke thy disciples Get on to them And he answered and said unto them I tell you that if these stones should hold their peace I’m sorry, if these should hold their peace The stones would immediately cry out Now I’ve heard that taught before As something that happens all the time That it’s just a general Bible principle That if God’s people don’t praise him even the stones would cry out.

And you know, I think there may be some truth to that. The Bible says that even nature and these things testify to who God is. But when Jesus said the stones would cry out, I believe He literally meant the stones would cry out.

And folks, there’s a lot of times, there are a lot of times when we as Christians don’t praise Him as we ought to, and yet I don’t see the mountains out here in the Ozarks breaking into song, crying out in praise. What He’s talking about here, I believe, is the fulfillment of prophecy that it was said that Jesus would come in triumphantly and be praised as a king, be hailed as a king. And what he’s saying here is that in this instance, prophecy would be fulfilled one way or another if his disciples kept their mouths shut.

If the people who were there to praise him kept their mouths shut, then at that moment the stones would cry out and praise him and fulfill the prophecy as he deserved because one way or another that prophecy was going to be fulfilled and he was going to be praised and glorified as a coming king. It had to be. And so I don’t know that this is a general statement, But I believe it’s talking about right at that point, we’re talking about the fulfillment of prophecy and God’s plans were going to come to pass one way or another.

And when He was come near, He beheld the city and wept over it. Most of the time on Palm Sunday, when we talk about what happened, we leave off at that point at verse 40, or whatever passage from whichever of the Gospels we’re looking at, we leave off at that point. I want us to go a little further because we’ve talked so much, not only in the prophecy series, but I can’t tell you the number of messages I’ve heard in my life, and probably y’all have heard more than I have, about the triumphal entry.

And not that it’s not important, but I want us to go a little deeper and look at what happened right after this triumphal entry. And when he was come near, he beheld the city and wept over it. As he’s headed up to Jerusalem, he sees the city as he’s coming down off the mountain, he seized the city right there in front of him, and as he beheld it, he wept over it.

He began to cry. That’s why I prefaced with saying, Jesus is not the weak, flower-wearing hippie that we seem to have the idea of from popular culture. Jesus was peace and love, but he was also a strong man.

And so overcome was he with compassion for the people of Jerusalem that this strong man began to weep for them, saying, If thou hadst known even thou, at least in this thy day the things which belong unto thy peace. But now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee and compass thee round and keep thee in on every side and shall lay thee even with the ground and thy children within thee and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.

And if we read on from verse 45, it talks about how then he, I’m assuming, dries his eyes and goes on into the city and proceeds to whoop up on the wicked people in the temple. Begin to turn over the tables and cast them out. But we don’t talk about very much this passage where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem.

He comes down off the mountain and at the very side of the city, knowing what he’s come there for, that he’s come there to suffer and to die, and he’s come to do these things for the people there. He sees the city and his weeping, even though a week off, he knows what he’s going to be going through. His weeping is not for himself at this point.

His weeping is for the people of Jerusalem. He sees the city and is overcome and weeps. And one of the most striking things to me about this passage at second glance is the fact that he’s looking at the city as a whole and the way he addresses them.

Folks, if you’re looking, you don’t even have to go to the Greek to see this. If you’ve got your King James where they still use ye and you and thee and thou, there is a difference. And we tend to think, because it sounds more formal, that when people say thou, when they say thee, it sounds formal, it sounds affected, it sounds like somebody’s trying to keep distance.

But many times in languages, especially in European languages, even in early modern English, which they used in the King James, when they used two different forms of address for people in the second person. I’m sorry, I’ll try not to be too much of a grammar nerd here. But when they used two forms of address, sometimes, therefore, whether they’re talking about plural or they’re talking about individual people, they would have said thou for the individual, or they would have said you for the plural if they’re talking to several people.

At the same time, they would also employ a distinction between whether they were being formal and informal. And they would say thou for the informal. And they would say you for the formal. So even if we’re talking to one person, if we wanted to be very formal, we would say you. And yet we’ve picked up on the idea that we think thou, when the Bible says thou, when somebody even now, a Quaker or Amish person or somebody, says thou, that they’re being formal because the Bible uses thou to address God. But it’s actually employed for familiarity.

and for Jesus to address the city, even if he’s not being formal, if he’s addressing all the people of the city because it’s a plural group, because there’s many people, he would say normally you. And so what strikes me as odd here is that speaking to the entire city, there’s such an informality. There’s such a closeness that I believe he feels toward Jerusalem, toward the people in it, that he addresses Jerusalem and the people in it as thou.

You understand that? that he should be calling them you. And yet he feels, that tells that he feels very close.

You know, they use the same distinction today in Spanish and French. They’ve got, in Spanish, they’ve got tu and usted. In French, they’ve got vous and tu.

And you use, in French, I know better than Spanish, they use vous for just about everything until you’ve been told otherwise that you can use tu, the informal. That’s reserved for your parents, for your children. for God. Anybody else, you keep at arm’s length until you’re told otherwise, and you use boo.

In a group, you use boo. And yet, he’s broken the rules here. Not God’s rules, but he’s broken the grammar rules here.

And that tells us the depth of feeling that he had for Jerusalem. That he addresses the whole city as though it were his brother or his father or his best friend. It’s important that we see that.

Our Lord is moved with compassion over man’s desperate spiritual condition. He looks at Jerusalem and is moved with such compassion. He doesn’t weep for them because they’re about to go through hard times and they’ve been so good to him and they’re going to be so good to him.

Even knowing what he’s going to suffer at their hands, he still weeps for them over what’s going to happen to them. He says, if thou hadst known, even thou. Jerusalem, if only you had known.

And so because they didn’t know, when he comes near to the city, he weeps for them. Folks, we see that even once before in Luke chapter 13 where he weeps over Jerusalem. He says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killeth the prophets, Luke 13, 34.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee. He calls them out as a city that time after time they professed that they were looking for God and God sends them a messenger and they’d killed them, they’d stoned them, they’d attacked them. He says, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not.

Jerusalem, I came to be your Messiah. I would have gathered you together as a hen gathers her chicks under the safety of my wings, and yet you wouldn’t have it. You wouldn’t allow it.

And we see Jesus speaking with compassion, even though he’s telling them about what’s to befall them. He still speaks to them with compassion and says, I would have come to you. I would have gathered you under my wings.

And again, a few weeks ago I said I believe in a literal interpretation of Scripture unless the wording makes it apparent that God meant something else. That’s one of the, you know, I’m not saying I doubt the Genesis interpretation. I believe that’s literal as well.

Jesus did not have wings, literal wings. He’s not saying he’s part chicken. That’s one of these instances I’m talking about.

He’s talking about figuratively. Like a mother hen, I would have gathered you to myself. I would have cared for you.

I would have protected you. I would have nurtured you, and yet you chose not to. And he tells them that because of that, their house will be left desolate.

It’s not the first time that Jesus wept or lamented over the desperate spiritual condition of his people. And folks, just as our Lord was moved with compassion over their spiritual condition, our Lord is moved with compassion over the desperate spiritual condition of men today. There is a sense in which God one day, I believe, his compassion will run out.

Things will come to an end and He will judge men where they are. And whatever choices, whatever faith or lack of faith they’ve had in this life, they’ll be actualized in those choices. They’ll realize the fruits of those choices.

But folks, for the time being, God in concert with His justice and His holiness is a God of mercy. And when He looks on us, even though we don’t deserve His mercy or His compassion, He looks on mankind as a whole with compassion. Compassion enough that the Father sent the Son.

The Father was willing to sacrifice His Son for undeserving sinners. And compassion enough that the Son willingly went to the cross to be the sacrifice for unworthy sinners. And compassion enough that God the Holy Spirit actually came to this earth to dwell among us in spite of our fallenness.

Folks, we see from this passage in His weeping over Jerusalem that our Lord is moved with compassion over man’s desperate spiritual condition. That’s the entire reason that Jesus came. I’ve told you before, I’ve heard people say that Jesus only came so that He would receive the glory that He was due.

Folks, if He never died for us, if He left us in our sins and left us bound for hell and never did anything beneficial for us just because of who He is, He would still be deserving of all the glory that we could give Him. He didn’t have to die to receive glory. He was owed that glory anyway.

And even people who don’t benefit from his death. One day we’ll bow and one day we’ll confess him as Lord. Folks, he’ll have the glory one way or the other.

Instead of what somebody told me one time, I prefer to believe what Jesus said in Luke 19, for the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which is lost. He was moved with compassion and that’s why he came to die because our spiritual condition is desperate and without him we’re hopeless and we’re bound for hell. He’s the only one who could do anything about it. Verse 42 says, saying, if thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, that now are hid from thine eyes.

If you’d known the things which belong to you and your peace, if you’d known the things that I came here to do for you, if you’d known what I came for, if you knew what I was trying to accomplish, if only you knew Jerusalem. We talked last week about how so many people missed it. Even His own disciples missed what we can see clearly through hindsight, that He was saying He was going to die, He was going to be buried, He was going to rise again on the third day, and even they missed it.

And they’d listened to His teaching for three years, at least. How much more ignorant were the general population of Jerusalem? Yet they’d heard Him teach, and nobody seemed to get it that He was coming for their eternal joy, their eternal life, not just to make Israel a perfect state, a perfect nation, not just to create this wonderful kingdom that they thought He was going to come to. But that’s what they wanted.

That’s what they were concerned about. That’s really the only thing they were interested in at this point. When they swept Jesus, when they waved Him with the palm fronds, when they threw their clothes out on the ground so that His colt could walk on them, when they hailed Him as the King, They weren’t talking about him in the sense that we call him the king.

They thought he was there to set up a government, and that’s what they were interested in. That’s what they cared about. And they missed something so much better than just an earthly government.

We see from this passage that men routinely choose their schemes over God’s design. They had it in their minds, the idea of an earthly kingdom, and that’s what they wanted. They couldn’t see that God had something so much better prepared That if a regular man had come in and set up a wonderful kingdom, as great as it would be, if Jesus as a regular man came in and set it up like they wanted, eventually that too would pass away.

Eventually they would achieve their dreams, but eventually those dreams would be dust. And they would die, and they would go to their punishment, lost in their sins, and their earthly kingdom would fall apart just as they all do at some point. And God prepared something so much better for them. God’s design was not that Jesus would come and set up an earthly kingdom at that time.

God’s design was that Jesus would come and be the Messiah, be the sacrifice, that would pay for their sins, that would do what they could not do for themselves. And they missed it. Because even though He told them, even though Jesus had laid it out, at times in parables He had laid it out, and at times very clearly, even among His own disciples.

He had laid out what He was there to do. And how much better what He had come to do was, they still were only interested in their ideas. And folks, today, even as we preach the gospel from pulpits in Bible-believing churches, even as we go and tell our friends and our neighbors about Christ who died for them and the fact that they can’t earn their salvation, they can’t earn God’s approval, they can’t be at peace with God on their own, there are still people who reject the gospel and say, I’m only interested in what I want to do.

If I can just be good enough, if I can do a little bit of good, I can live however I want to and just do a little bit of good and surely God will let me into heaven. Folks, that’s not God’s design. That’s one of our schemes where we think, well, we’ll just be good enough.

I’ll try to earn my way. There’s something about grace that doesn’t make sense because there’s nothing else like it in the universe. That you receive something so valuable that you can’t earn.

And so we think, surely that’s got to be wrong. surely there’s got to be something I can do to earn it. And we think, I don’t care about that gospel.

Those people are religious fanatics. If I just keep going on and being a good person and taking care of my family and giving to charity, all of those things are good things. But when it comes to trying to use that as a means to get into heaven, that’s one of man’s schemes and not God’s design.

And here these people had chosen the temporary pleasure of an earthly kingdom when they could have had the eternal life provided by a heavenly sacrifice. Folks, we still see it today. And when he was moved with compassion over their condition, it was even when he knew this, he already knew that they were in trouble because they had chosen time and time again their way over God’s.

Finally, this morning, rejection of God’s offered mercy has consequences. Do you believe that? Rejection of God’s offered mercy has consequences.

He says in verse 43 and verse 44, for the days shall come, he tells them in verse 42, if you had only known the things that I came to do for you, but they’re hidden from your eyes, not because God had blinded them, not because God chose that they shouldn’t know, but because they in their own willingness to only see what they wanted, saw only what they wanted, they couldn’t see God’s design. And as a result, for the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee on every side. Eventually your enemies are going to come around you, Jerusalem.

They’re going to surround you and there’s going to be no escape. And they shall lay thee even with the ground. Wipe the slate clean.

And thy children within thee. And they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. The time of their visitation by what?

The Messiah that God had promised that they professed to have been looking for all these 4,000 years up to this point. And they missed it because they were more interested in their own schemes than God’s design. And as a result, because when God finally gave His gift, when God finally offered mercy, it didn’t look like what they expected.

It didn’t look like what they wanted. And so they ignored it and they rejected God’s mercy. And He says, because you knew not the time of your visitation, these things were going to happen.

Now, was that God’s punishment for them rejecting Christ? Or was that just a natural consequence of their rejecting Christ? I’ll leave that for you to study and decide.

However, one did follow the other. Because in the year 60 AD, I’m sorry, in the year 66 AD, about 30 years after this fact, the Jews decided we still want our earthly kingdom. And they rebelled against the Romans in what’s called the first Jewish-Roman War.

They rebelled against the Romans and for about four years they controlled Jerusalem apart from Rome. And in the year 70 AD, the general Titus had enough of it, not the same Titus from the Bible, but the Roman general Titus had enough of it, and he was sent in to crush the revolt, and in the year 70 A. D.

, Jerusalem was all but wiped off the map. Some estimates say that upwards of a million people were killed. Now, different accounts say different things about how many there were.

I don’t know whose account is right, but the number has been told as high as a million. The temple was destroyed, has not been rebuilt to this day. A mosque sits on its place.

In many parts of the city, No stone was left on another. And folks, again, I don’t know if it was God’s punishment that he said you rejected Christ and so the city is going to suffer this way. I personally tend to think that God, instead of this being a punishment, I think God just knew what was going to happen.

They were going to reject Christ because they wanted an earthly kingdom, and they were still going to be so focused on that earthly kingdom, the thing that caused them to reject God’s mercy, that eventually they were going to hack off the Romans when they shouldn’t have. And that’s exactly what happened. The point is, because of their blindness and their desire, that the only thing they wanted from God was this earthly kingdom, they rejected God’s offer of mercy.

People of Jerusalem rejected God’s offer of mercy, and there were consequences as a result.