Jesus Weeps

Introduction

Years ago I was privileged to travel to the Holy Land and to walk where Jesus walked and see some of the very things he saw. The Mount of Olives overlooks a valley and on the other side of the valley on a hill sits Jerusalem. We spent several days traveling around Israel before we went to Jerusalem. The day we arrived we were promised to see a spectacular sight. There is a regulation and I don’t know the details but the whole city, or at least anything near the old city, is built with the same kind of stone that matches the walls and building of the old city. We were told that it looked like gold in the sunlight. We stared out the windows of the bus waiting to catch a glimpse of the shining city on a hill. Truthfully it was a lot of build up and not much reward. When we caught sight of the city it was a bunch of sand coloured buildings surrounding the temple mount upon which sits a beautiful but simultaneously grotesque golden dome. It is beautiful in appearance but it is a Mosque sitting where the temple once stood or in its courtyard and therefore also grotesque. It was a disappointing picture.

I don’t know if it was the next day or that same evening but we toured the wailing wall and the Eastern Gate. We saw the foundations of the retaining wall upon which the temple once sat and where the outer walls of the city still stand. We saw the gate that has blocked up by foolish men who believe filling a gate with concrete will keep the King of Kings from entering through its portals. We saw the stones that the Romans had cast down from the temple mount and the evidence of the destruction of the temple and the fire that they burned it with. It was still all a bit disappointing for we had been promised a city of Gold set upon a hill and instead we got some sandy ruins surrounded by modern civilization built in the same hue. As the sun began to set and we began to climb the hill away from the temple mount toward where the bus was going to pick us up someone looked back and gasped. We turned to look and the sunset had turned the city gold. Even down in the city we could see the golden hue. Sadly we had not seen it from the top of the mount of Olives and we never did end up on the Mount with the sun at the right angle.

I imagine Jesus on that Palm Sunday cresting the hill and looking over the city with the crowd cheering around him. I imagine the city lit up and golden. The modern city that is now all around the old city was not there. Across a green valley was the shining city on hill, colored in gold by the sunlight, shining for all to see. Instead of the Dome of the Rock, Herods temple stood in its place, a tribute to the one true God build by a corrupt man, but built by divine ordinance. The crowd saw Jesus coming to set them free and the golden city. But Jesus saw something else entirely.

Scripture

Luke 19:41 KJV 1900

And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,

Jesus saw instead of the glory of that day the coming destruction. His eyes filled with tears as he saw the soldiers that would be there in 40 odd years burning the temple and tearing apart every stone and flattening it all to get the gold that had melted into the crevices of the walls. He saw the destruction of the the city, and the scattering of His people. And He wept.

Jesus is often preached about and portrayed as this meek and mild and rock solid and steady man of peace. His very presence emanating peace. His great knowledge and far seeing eye allowing Him to pass over the moment and see what really mattered. There is truth in all of that but I wonder if that is a bit overblown, that in picturing Him this way, we lose some who He really is. In this story there two outburst of emotion that shatter this illusion! I prefer the second. If you look at where Jesus went when he got the city you see him cleansing the temple, overturning the money changers tables and driving out the greedy and dishonest merchants with a whip. Now if that picture doesn’t fit your theology I will soften it a bit. Some have suggested that the whip was for the animals being sold and not the people so if you prefer that I have no qualms with that understanding either. But clearly Jesus was upset at the desecration of the temple, of His father’s house. I like that story! But just as important on the other side of that is our text for this evening. He beheld the city and wept over it. Here is Jesus, who knows what will come, not just in 40 years, not just in 2000, His vision is not limited to the destruction of the temple and scattering of the people, or to their return to their rightful and promised homeland, but to the new Jerusalem which is yet to come. Why should he weep when He already sees how He will restore?

Jesus Weeps Over our Circumstances

I believe that we can learn from this moment in this story that Jesus weeps over our circumstances. He wept for the pain that would come to His chosen people. He knew the big picture and how He would restore, but He still wept for the circumstance that they would endure. The shining city on a hill that God had chosen to be a light to the Gentiles would soon be snuffed out and Jesus wept over their circumstances. Jesus looks at us to. Each one of God’s Children is one of God’s chosen people. He sees the plans He has for us, good planes, perfect plans. But He also sees the decisions we or others around us will make, or the circumstances thrown at us by the Enemy. And He weeps with us. He knows we will be made whole, He knows the strength that He has for us and yet He weeps. God rejoices in the good that comes, but in the trial and the circumstance God weeps with us!

Jesus Weeps Over our Pain

This moment reminds me of another story from the life of Jesus. Sometime before this triumphal entry Jesus was abiding in a place and teaching. A message was sent to Him that His friend Lazarus was sick. Jesus seemed to disregard the message and stay where He was. Two days later He surprised His disciples by saying “Let us go into Judaea again.” That was where was Lazarus was, but it was also where the Jews had already tried to stone Him. Jesus headed that way and as he neared the town Martha met him with a bit of an accusation and quite a bit of faith. “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Yet she seemed to be able to dry her tears with the further faith that her brother would rise again in the last day. The Bible does not say she was weeping. Yet when we arrive at Mary the same accusation out of Faith was made. Jesus did not reason with her as He did with Martha, He did ask for her faith and trust. He did not point to the future, but rather, seeing Mary weeping, Jesus wept.

Jesus was only moments from raising Lazarus from the dead and He did not ask Mary to dry her tears and believe in this or that but he took the moment to join with her in her pain and Jesus wept over her sorrow. He would not have been sorrowful. He knew He just about to perform one His greatest miracles and that he was about to bring joy to her. Yet He did not pass over her broken heart but joined her in her pain and wept with her.

Jesus weeps over our circumstances, weeps over and with us in our pain. I don’t know particularly why He does, but He does. It seems to me that perfect knowledge coupled with perfect logic would see the end of all things and skip the weeping and go straight to the joy, but God, in His perfect knowledge, and His perfect logic, pauses on the way to joy to sit for a moment with us in our pain and in our circumstances and weep with and over us. Maybe it is that He sees that we cannot see what He can see and knows that we cannot know what He knows so He chooses rather to feel what we feel, to hurt when we hurt and to weep when we weep.

Jesus Weeps Over Our Sin

I stopped in the middle of the triumphal entry to meditate a moment on Jesus weeping over the destruction of Jerusalem. I took a look back perhaps just few months or even less at Jesus weeping with Mary over the death of her brother, and Him giving each sister exactly what she needed in her grief. Lets move forward a few days.

Luke 22:44 KJV 1900

And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Hebrews 5:7 KJV 1900

Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;

Jesus wept once more in His life. I commented on this the other week as I understood for the first time what the song “My Saviors Love” meant. He had no tears for His own griefs, but sweat drops of blood for mine. I would again contend that this is not strictly correct, for that grief that he wept over had become His. It was not His, He did not deserve it, yet He took that grief on willingly. That grief, those tears were mine, it was yours and it was for our sins.

Jesus weeps over our sins. He wept in the garden of Gethsemane supposedly kneeling over a rock that is still there, in a grove of trees of which several are still there. It is a solemn place. There is now a church built over the rock, but long before the church was built that place became a sanctuary for our saviour as He wept over our sins being laid upon Him. He suffered so much there that an angel came and strengthened Him in His prayers and with renewed strength he wept in such agony over our sin that He began to mingle blood with His sweat and tears.

Jesus weeps over our circumstances. Often, we do too. Jesus weeps over our pain. So do we. Jesus weeps over our sin. What about us? Oh don’t misunderstand me! God brings victory. That was talked about already and will be talked about next week I am sure! Yet Not everyone has victory. Do you weep over your sin? God does! He weeps with you in your pain, can you weep with Him in sorrow over your sin? We are called to turn from it, but that begins by weeping over it. Must Jesus weep alone for your sin?

Next Sunday is Easter but between now and then, Jesus suffered much, and He suffered it for you.

When we preach we are supposed to have some great actionable point for you to take home with you. Tonight, I don’t really have that. I mean, if you have not yet turned from your sin, if you do not at least sorrow over it start there. But for those that have joined in the fight with Christ and have let Him win the victory for them I don’t have some great application. But I did want you to know that Jesus weeps. He weeps over our circumstances. He sees, even if we don’t! He knows what we do not know, the good and the bad, and he weeps over our circumstances. Jesus does not pass by our pain either. Just like he paused on the mountain looking over Jerusalem and He paused to weep with Mary, He pauses to weep with us. Because we cannot know all that He knows He chooses to feel what we feel and sometimes He knows that what we need is not answers, not logic, not even hope, but we just need Him to take a moment and weep with us over our pain. He weeps also over sin. Over your sin, and over their sin. Jesus weeps over it. He sees, He cares, it hurts Him too and though He knows that the end will be good, He enters into time with us and and weeps with us.