Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Mar/69

Contributor - D. Thomas Stiel

Title - The Fears of Jesus

Topic - Jesus Christ

Text: Luke 19 : 41

"and when He (Jesus) drew near and saw the city He wept over it . . . "

On the Palm Sunday we think of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem; on the Good Friday we think of His Cross; and on Easter we think of Jesus' Resurrection from the dead. And we are so used to these pictures that we usually forget St Luke's addition, a jarring note in the symphony of God's saving activities,,,so to speak, namely the tears of Jesus. And the question immediately comes to our minds, 'Why did Jesus weep over Jerusalem?'

When we read the Gospels attentively, we find that Jesus had a reason to weep over the religious formalism which excelled in Jerusalem. Jesus was no Stranger to this city, and during His ministry there He had observed much show, much form, but very little content in the religious life of the people there. Their religion had become a routine religion, a skeleton-religion which lacked muscle, and flesh, and nerve, and life.

But He had also reason to weep over the religious scepticism proclaimed there. Sadducees generally denied the Resurrection, and Pharisees generally denied the spiritual truths which they taught by their worldly ambitions and their lack of practising what they preached.

And Jesus had also reason to weep over the ingratitude of God's people. Jerusalem was not a city of pagans, or of heathens who did not know God. No, it was the city of God's own people, the redeemed of the Lord who had received out of the Lord's hand numerous privileges and blessings. The Great Giver had been forgotten, however, and He had been replaced with the idol of success and wealth and the good life.

Finally, Jesus had reason to weep over the impurity of many in Jerusalem, over their intemperance, their sexual licentiousness, their despising of the poor and needy, their disregard for justice to the weak and poor, their revelling in vice such as was common in heathen nations.

Yes, these are all reasons why Jesus could weep over Jerusalem, yet there is another reason why He did weep, namely to reveal to us that God agonizes over the Judgment which must come when man flouts God's Laws and God Himself. Jerusalem is the city under judgment. Rejecting the time of God's Grace, rejecting God Himself, it soon would itself be rejected. Not one stone would be left upon the other, and its glory would be no more.

It seems a paradoxical thought that God agonizes over the Judgment, the self chosen doom of Jerusalem but it cannot be otherwise. God did not make robots, but men. He made people like you and me who can resist the grace of God, who can harden their hearts against God's call of love, who can turn away from God to pursue their own goals and ambitions. Therefore that God intensely suffers because of a Judgment that cannot be stayed. Like a father who suffers more than the child when he must punish this disobedient child, so God suffers more than men in the Judgment upon them.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem because human sin and evil, human apostasy and rejection of God were breaking God's heart of Love in the midst of a judgment that was unavoidable. NO, not because God did not want the judgment to pass by, but because men blinded by their own sins and follies rejected God when He came to them with His offer of Grace.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem when He saw its coming judgment, and what impresses us so much in this picture is the nearness of God in the midst of judgement. Who of us does not have the feeling sometimes that our prayers have lost their wings, or that God has shut the door of His heaven against us so that our prayers cannot enter His sanctuary? Where is God in all that happens in this world and in our own lives? And we are bewildered, depressed, and lonely in the midst of life that comes upon us like a violent storm, leaving in its wake the ruins and the wrecks and death and despair, and us, all alone, in the midst of this desolation. Where is God?

Jesus' tears bring God so close to us; He is no longer cold abstraction, a name without content, or a name for which we shudder . . . He is the Father Who holds our hands in His hands; the Father Who understands our loneliness and fears; the Father Who in infinite compassion suffers with His suffering children, and Who, in the midst of His Judgment upon sin, GAVE the Only Son of His Love that we might have Life, and have it in abundance; the Father to Whom we can entrust our own lives and those of our loved ones as well as our past our present, and our future.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem, the symbol of human sin and evil, the sum total of rebellion, and apostasy from God. And Jerusalem is still in this world, in our city, and in our own hearts. May the tears of Jesus then drive us to the Cross to be cleansed from our sins; may the tears of Jesus fill our hearts with gratitude for God's Love for us and move us to a life in His service; may they give us Paul's Good Friday and Easter experience:

"I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me." (Gal. 2 : 20)

When this happens Jesus did not weep in vain, nor died in vain.

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