Luke: Why Would Jesus Weep? (19:28-48)

Hello friends, this is Pastor Creighton.

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At Newsong Church, we want to see Jesus lifted high in Port Perry, Ontario, as we worship, grow, and serve.

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This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

And when Jesus had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of his disciples, saying, Go into the village in front of you, whereon entering you will find a colt tied on which no one has ever yet sat.

Untie it and bring it here.

If any one asks you, Why are you untying it, you shall say this, the Lord has need of it.

So those who are sent away and sent away and found it just as he had told them, and as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, Why are you untying the colt?

And they said, The Lord has need of it.

And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it.

And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road.

As he was drawing near, already on the way down to the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.

And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples.

He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes.

For the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you.

They will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.

And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.

And as he was teaching daily in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Our Lord says, Would that you, even you, even me, even us gathered here at New Song, would know this day the things that make for peace.

So let's pray.

Lord Jesus, would you, by grace, teach us to apply our hearts to wisdom?

To hang on your every word.

Your word to us is truth, it's life.

It had power in the day that Luke wrote it.

It has power for us today as we gather under it.

Speak your word, O Lord.

Open the ears of your servants.

And may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be always pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

Please be seated.

It wants a password.

Of course it wants a password.

Okay, I can remember it.

That's good news.

That's what happens when you don't print out your notes.

Okay.

What brings us to tears?

That's probably a dangerous question to lead off with, isn't it?

What makes us weep?

I was uh talking with a few of my colleagues this last week.

I spent the last week in Vancouver at uh the Anglican Network's kind of national conference, national gathering uh that we call Synod.

And I was together with a few of my colleagues, and somehow we got on the topic of, you know, what what what is it that makes us come to tears?

And a few things got suggested.

Um one was uh the film Rudy.

Uh my contribution was uh the end of uh uh Gladiator.

I don't know why, always brings me to tears.

Lord of the Rings as well, but that's probably not a surprise to anyone.

And uh and then uh my my other buddy said uh it's the uh Fred Rogers documentary.

That has a way of bringing us to tears, doesn't it?

There's something about that sincerity.

There's something about those themes, perhaps, of uh just um courageously triumphing against odds that are stacked against you, or you know, and perhaps in the in the latter case, just that sincerity of heart, that true spirit, that that um that genuine love for others.

It's enough to make us sweep.

But of course, it's not just you know films or cat videos on YouTube or something that brings us to tears, right?

There are those moments in life that are marked with tears.

I can think about our wedding, for example.

I teared up to see Rachel coming down the aisle.

But I also have known tears at funerals.

I'm sure we've all known that as well, where we gather to commemorate and, well, express our grief for the ones who's past.

Tears say a lot of us, and I think what makes us weep says a lot about what is at the center of our hearts, whether it's resonating deeply with themes of life, or whether it's the love we have for others.

What makes us weep says a lot about our hearts, and we should pay attention to that.

And I wonder if we really know someone when we've wept together.

So we've been journeying through the Gospel of Luke with a mind to come and see who Jesus is, and to come and see who what his kingdom is is all about.

Jesus has given us something of his mission statement earlier on in the chapter.

You would have read it if you're reading our daily uh readings.

Earlier on in chapter 19, Jesus is speaking with Zacchaeus, uh, and he gives something of his mission statement, something of how he relates to the kingdom, and something about what he's purposed to do.

Chapter 19, verse 10, Jesus says of himself, the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

That's Jesus' mission statement.

That's why he's here.

That's the purpose for which he's come to seek and to save the lost.

And so here in our reading later on in chapter 19, we have a really pivotal moment, don't we?

We've got Palm Sunday, the first Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.

And this is a very significant event because Jesus, who's been proclaiming the kingdom and proclaiming himself as king, is now being hailed by God's people as the promised king entering into the royal city of Jerusalem, right?

That's where the throne of David is.

That's where God promised he would establish a king forever.

Jesus is entering into the city as the promised king, and that's exactly how he's being hailed.

We see that in verse 38.

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.

Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.

It's this interesting inversion of how the angels herald him at his birth, isn't it?

Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.

The people are hailing him as king.

He's entering into this city, this promised king.

But he's not the king we expect.

We've seen throughout our study in Luke that the kingdom has a way of subverting our expectations, doesn't it?

And the way that these people who gather receiving Jesus into the city are blessing him and expressing their celebration, they're ready to receive a very different kind of king than I think they see here.

The kind of king they receive is not a king full of revolutionary fervor, ready to throw off the shackles of the Roman Empire.

The king they receive is not one who expects to be served.

The king they receive is a weeping king.

What would you think to be there on that day, hailing the promised king, entering into the city finally, only to find him bawling his eyes out?

That's what we see in verse 41, isn't it?

When Jesus drew near and saw Jerusalem, he wept over it.

This king of ours is a weeping king.

And if we want to know Jesus, if we want to come and see who he really is, we need to pay attention to what it is that moves him to tears.

Because this is exactly what Jesus is in this moment.

He is moved to tears as he enters the city and he knows exactly what waits for him in Jerusalem.

We, the readers, of course, know what waits for him in Jerusalem.

The people don't know what waits for him in Jerusalem, but he knows he's being very purposeful in how he goes about this.

None of this holy week, first holy week, is going to catch him by surprise.

But when he enters into Jerusalem, he weeps not for himself, not for the pain he's about to endure.

What does he weep for?

He weeps for the lost.

He weeps for the lost to know the peace of the reconciler, and to be saved from ruin by the rescuer.

Jesus weeps for the lost to know the peace of the reconciler and to be saved from ruin by the rescuer.

That's Jesus' mission, to seek and to save the lost.

And if we want, if our question is, well, who's lost?

I think we've seen just this last Sunday from Luke chapter 15, Matt walked us through the parable of the prodigal son, this you know, greatest hits of Jesus' parables, right?

Luke 15 · chapter mention

What a vivid image of what it means to be lost.

Here you have the younger, kind of uh rule-breaking, immoral, self-centered brother going out to live life on his own terms.

He becomes estranged from his father.

This son is lost.

But by the end of the parable, he's found, isn't it?

And yet it's the older brother, this fastidious, rule-keeping, rigid, legalistic, moralistic brother who himself is left outside of the house in the celebration at the end of the parable, and we're left wondering what comes next.

See, whether it's by self-centered immorality or self-righteous, strict moralism and religiosity, both is a form of lostness, isn't it?

Both is a substitute for that loving, intimate relationship with God as Father through Christ.

Jesus' heart is for the lost, and he's surrounded by the lost as he enters into the royal city, and he weeps for them to know the peace of the reconciler and to be saved from ruin by the rescuer.

Friends, this is just the heart of the good news of the gospel, isn't it?

This is the heart of God.

And perhaps today this is a challenge to our own hearts.

So if you have your order of service, if you have your Bible, open up with me to John, or pardon me, to Luke chapter 19.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

We're going to zoom in particularly on verses 41 to 44.

I want us to catch Jesus' heart here.

So I want us to zoom in on these verses, these verses that come right between Jesus' entrance into the royal city as the promised king, and Jesus cleansing the temple, asserting his divine authority and his heart for his people's relationship with God.

Right here, smack in the middle, is Jesus' beating heart.

Jesus firstly weeps for the lost to know the peace of the reconciler.

Verse 41, we read, Jesus draws near to the city and weeps over it.

Let's stop there.

Anyone grow up in Sunday school?

Did anyone get um get candy for Bible memorization?

Was that just the thing my Sunday school did?

Did you do that?

What was the verse we all memorized to get that piece of candy?

Jesus wept.

John 11, 35, the two-word verse.

Jesus wept.

We all pulled that one.

We did.

But do we ever, I wonder if we ever pulled back and noticed the context of that verse.

Jesus wept in the Gospel of John.

Jesus is standing at the grave of his close friend Lazarus and weeping over the condition of death and estrangement that fallen humanity lives in apart from God and his grace.

Death is the final outworking of the fallenness of humanity, and Jesus weeps over a world that is not as he intended it to be.

And here in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus weeps because the world is not as it should be.

See, any idea we have that Jesus is some cold or disinterested schoolmaster, we kind of need to put that away, don't we?

Jesus is a heart that beats and breaks for a world that is not as it should be.

And don't we know a world that is not as it should be?

It moves Jesus to tears.

Why is Jesus weeping here?

We learn it in verse 42.

Jesus says, I don't know, to himself, to the crowd, I'm not sure, but he says out loud, Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace.

Jesus weps for the lost to know peace.

The Greek here is Irene, which is the translation of uh common translation of the Hebrew word shalom, and we're probably familiar with that word shalom.

It's more than just absence of conflict.

Shalom is restoring the world to the way God has always intended it to be, a world of justice and flourishing and fullness.

It's a rightly ordered world, and Jesus weeps that the lost would know this kind of peace, God's right order for all things in a world that's not as it should be.

Jesus doesn't weep so much for the personal peace that we might prefer, you know, the kind of absence of conflict, put my feet up, enjoy a, you know, a glass of lemonade or something.

That is peaceful, but that's not the heart of peace.

Nor does Jesus weep for a sort of political peace as though he's coming into Jerusalem as a conqueror to overthrow the Roman government.

We certainly weep for the political situation in Jerusalem today, don't we?

We weep to see the violence and devastation, and we ought to weep over that.

And Jesus certainly is moved to tears to see the violence and sin that so often characterize this fallen world of ours.

Jesus weeps here certainly for the kind of violent consequences that will ensue.

But Jesus weeps here more foundationally, more fundamentally, for a deeper kind of peace, a deeper kind of shalom than mere political peace.

Political peace is simply the outworking of God's rightly ordering the world, beginning with the human heart.

Scholar Michael Wilcock has this to say.

He says, Luke turns our attention away from the political transformation of society to the spiritual transformation of the soul, which must precede it.

The kingdom must first come to the human heart.

So what are we saying here?

We're saying if we're to know true peace, it doesn't begin on the outside and then travel into the heart.

True peace, God's right ordering of all things, begins in the human heart and then spills outward.

What begins with inner transformation, inner renewal, right ordered relationship with God spills out into the world and renews it and restores it to the way God has always intended it to be.

In other words, Jesus weeps for the lost to know the peace of reconciliation with God.

Reconciliation with God, the restoration of an otherwise broken, estranged relationship.

That's exactly what we saw in Luke 15, isn't it?

We saw a restoration of the younger brother, and we long for the restoration of the older brother, a return to that loving, intimate relationship.

Friends, if we're going to consider the good news of the gospel, we need to begin by considering the bad news, don't we?

Do we believe that we need to be reconciled with our God?

Do we believe that apart from grace we are estranged from Him?

We're at enmity with Him.

The good news of the Gospel is that God, God's heart breaks for the lost.

God's heart breaks and weeps for those to come to know the reconciliation He so generously and abundantly offers us in our Lord Jesus.

He enters into the world that's not as it should be to restore the world.

And that's why we read in Romans chapter 5 that we've been made, who've been justified, that is, we've been brought into a right relationship with God by faith.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

That's the heart of the gospel, friends, is peace.

Taking those who are otherwise estranged and in a broken relationship with God and bringing renewed peace and restoration and healing.

That's why Luke, later on in the in Acts, will describe the gospel as the gospel of peace.

This is the heart of what we believe, that God's heart beats and breaks, that we would know the peace of reconciliation, that we would not be estranged, but that we would know God's abundant, beating heart of love for us in Christ.

Jesus is the reconciler.

That's why he's going to Jerusalem, isn't it?

Jesus knows what's waiting for him in Jerusalem.

And he willingly goes.

Why?

Because he's the reconciler.

It's through his cross that he's going to bring an estranged and sinful humanity to peace with a holy and loving God.

See, Jesus enters into the world that's not as it should be to restore the peace he always intended.

And that's a challenge to us, isn't it?

It's a challenge to consider the heart of the gospel.

I love what C.S.

Lewis writes in Mere Christianity.

He says, he he describes our condition, he describes our predicament, if you will.

I love this.

C.

S.

Lewis says, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement.

He is a rebel who must lay down his arms.

Let me say that again.

Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement, right?

We're doing our best.

Maybe we're not, you know, up to snuff, but you know, a little bit of grace will top us up, and you know, we'll do better.

We'll do better next time.

We'll try harder next time.

That's a religion of striving.

That's religiosity, isn't it?

That's the older brother.

No, C.S.

Lewis understands, reflecting on the scripture, we understand our predicament is those who substitute either our self-centeredness or our self-righteousness for a loving relationship with God, and either way we rebel against him.

We're rebels.

We're rebels who need to lay down our arms to know the peace of God in Christ, the peace he longs for us to know.

And the tragedy here, as Jesus enters into Jerusalem, is that this peace is hidden from the eyes of those who greet him, those who hail him as peace with peace in heaven, those who meet him on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which literally means city of peace, he longs that they would know peace, but it's hidden from their eyes.

The peace they expect is a is only an outworking of the deeper peace that God intends for them through the reconciler.

But until they're willing to lay down their arms, until they're willing to lay down their self-centeredness, self-righteousness, they will not know the peace of God in Christ.

And it breaks his heart.

It breaks Jesus' heart because his reconciliation is so abundant and so freely given, and it remains unknown.

See, Jesus weeps for the lost to know the peace of the reconciler.

But Jesus also weeps for the lost to To be saved from ruin by the rescuer.

Let's look on to verse forty-three and forty-four here.

Jesus goes on to say, The days will come upon you, Jerusalem, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you.

They will not leave one stone upon another in you.

Jesus, in his divine foreknowledge, knows that there's going to be a day, and it's well, well documented in history, AD 70, the siege of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire under Titus.

Jerusalem's going to be leveled.

And why is Jerusalem going to be leveled?

Because its people have refused the peace so abundantly offered by God in Christ, the peace that begins in the heart, that goes out into society, and substituted in its stead self-centeredness or self-righteousness, and now have reaped the whirlwind, as it were, reaped destruction, reaped ruin.

And it breaks Jesus' heart because this is so avoidable.

Because this is not what he desires for his people.

Why this judgment?

Jesus says, verse 44, because you did not know the time of your visitation.

Remember back Luke chapter 10, Jesus sends out the 72 with a message.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

What's that message he sends them out with?

The kingdom of God is near.

It's drawing near.

It's right on the doorstep.

Here is the king arriving in the royal city, and the kingdom couldn't be nearer, and yet the people of God aren't ready to receive the kingdom.

They're not ready to receive the king.

And so he will be rejected and scorned and crucified.

See, Jesus is the rescuer who longs for his people not to be ruined but saved.

That was a heavy reading in Zechariah, wasn't it?

This only really landed on me as we were reading it earlier.

Like, holy smokes.

We read something like that and we go, oh my goodness.

All the uh images, perhaps, of a fiery Sunday school class we had when we were young that made God seem like just a brutal tyrant, ready to squash us at any given moment, come flooding back to mind.

It's true that God executes judgment, but it's not true that God delights in judgment.

Judgment might be God's way of addressing a world that's not as it should be, of addressing wrong and evil, of not leaving it be, because if God is truly love, if God truly loves us, God cannot be okay with the things that threaten to ruin us.

Right?

Don't we know that to be true of our own loved ones?

I mean, Rachel partners with the best of me against the worst in me all the time, because she knows that sometimes sometimes I don't make the best decisions for myself.

And when she does, she shows me not judgment, she shows me love.

We know love when we say I'm not okay with a thing that threatens to destroy you.

If you've ever loved an addict, you know what I'm talking about.

Jesus is the rescuer, longs for his people not to be ruined, but saved.

God is not destined us for wrath, we read in 1 Thessalonians, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

God responds to evil with wrath, but it is not wrath that moves God's heart and its depth.

Wrath is often described as God's strange work, his alien work.

It's how he responds to a fallen world.

It's his love burning white hot against the things that threaten to ruin us.

But God's true work, his abundant work, his true heart, is a heart of love that always reaches out in rescue and salvation.

The question is, do we really think we need to be rescued?

Do we really believe our predicament is such that apart from grace we have no hope?

Is our predicament as serious as seeing a house burned down but clinging to our furniture that we love so much we refuse to let the firemen pull us out?

Right?

Or a lifeboat gets sent out to us at sea, but we're confident that we can swim it, we'll be fine.

Or life-giving medication gets slid across the table by our doctor, and we're told, take this every day, and we think, well, medication is really for sick people.

I'm not that sick.

Jesus' heart breaks in a way that for those people who have salvation so freely available, readily there, so generously offered, and yet don't recognize the dire predicament that they're in.

This is true for Jerusalem.

This is true for a fallen humanity.

Paul writes earlier in 1 Thessalonians 1.10 that Jesus is the one who has rescued us from the terrors of the coming judgment.

Friends, when we talk about salvation, we are ultimately being, we're talking about being saved, rescued from the consequences of our own ruinous decisions, our own ruinous sin, our own ruinous self-centeredness and self-righteousness.

We need a rescuer to step into our situation and pull us out of there because we can't do it for ourselves.

Rescue is here, but the tragedy for the people of Jerusalem is that they don't see it.

Jesus weeps for the lost to know his peace and to be saved from ruin.

He is the reconciler and the rescuer, and his heart beats and breaks for a people he loves who do not recognize the reconciler and rescuer in their midst.

N.

T.

Wright has this to say about this passage.

He says that Jesus' tears are at the core of the Christian gospel.

This is not a moment of regrettable weakness, something that a real Messiah ought to have avoided.

The terrible judgment that he's pronounced will shortly be executed, but it proceeds not from a stern and cold justice, but from a heart of love that wants the best for and from the people, and so must oppose with sorrow and tears the rebellion that has set its own interests and agendas before those of God who has established them there in the first place.

See, through this passage, just like through Scripture, we start to glimpse the real problem, don't we?

We begin to glimpse the lostness of the lost.

And the Bible is unapologetic, it offends our Canadian sensibilities, I suspect, that there is a line going down the world that divides lost from found, that there is no third category, that God's heart beats and breaks for those people who He loves and has died for, and yet do not recognize the need for reconciliation and rescue.

Worse still, we Christians so often believe we live in verse 38.

Blessed is the king.

And yet so often we really live in verse 41 and 42, don't we?

We substitute our self-centeredness, our self-righteousness for a true, loving relationship with God our Father, and Jesus weeps.

Why?

Because we're such awful sinners?

No.

Because we're sinners who are being offered such abundant forgiveness and yet we refuse to take it.

Don't we notice that?

Jesus is not weeping at these awful sinners in Jerusalem.

Jesus is weeping for sinners who have the antidote slid across the table in his reconciliation and rescue when they don't take it.

Friends, what a comfort for us sinners to know that we when we go to God after having screwed up that thousandth time, we're met not with tears of judgment.

Jesus would cry to think we would not go to him for forgiveness.

Jesus would weep to think we would not go to him to know peace, reconciliation and rescue.

God in Christ weeps for us.

And it's this heart that weeps for us that means he goes to do the reconciling and rescuing.

Do you notice that?

It's not on our side of the street that we have to pull up our bootstraps, do the reconciling, do the hard work of rescuing.

No, Jesus enters into Jerusalem, he goes to the cross as reconciler, entering into the world, not as it should, a world that's not as it should be.

He enters into a city that will execute him.

Why?

Out of love to reconcile sinners with their God.

And as rescuer, he takes upon himself the ruinous consequences of God's judgment on himself on the cross.

If ever we are fearful of condemnation, we have to remember that there is no condemnation in Christ.

Why?

Because he has taken the consequences of our ruinous decisions upon himself.

He has taken God's full judgment on the cross.

That is grace.

It is found in God's unconditional love for us, his longing that we would know his reconciliation and his rescue, and it leaves no room for pride, does it?

Because we cannot say that the lost are somehow better than the found.

We are simply beggars who have found a generous donor.

And all we can do is point to other beggars to where they can find bread.

That is who we are as the church.

It's comfort.

It leaves us with a heart of gratitude.

And it leaves us with a burden for the lost, doesn't it?

Because Jesus weeps for them too.

Do I weep for as Jesus wept for the lost?

That was my challenge coming out of Synod.

This was one of the texts read at Synod, and I thought, hey, this is pretty good.

I can do my sermon prep by just taking some notes from the speaker.

I promise I didn't plagiarize too much.

But the challenge for me was do I weep in the same way that Jesus wept for the lost?

And I have to confess, church, I don't.

I'll weep at a cat video on YouTube.

And yet does my heart break for those for whom God's heart breaks?

Those who have yet to know the full reconciliation and rescue that we so freely know in God, in Christ.

What can we do, friends?

I think all we can do is begin to pray.

We've begun to pray for three names, haven't we?

If you were there a couple of weeks ago, we wrote down three names, three names we're committed to praying for every day, simply that they would know that the kingdom of God is near and that God will impress that upon their hearts.

Friends, maybe to that prayer I need to add, Lord, would you break my heart for the lost as your heart breaks?

It is not my responsibility to secure their eternal destiny, that is the Lord's alone.

But Lord, would you break my heart that those I love would come to know and love you, Lord, because you know and love them, and you long for them to have a restored relationship with you that will last for all eternity.

What brings us to tears, friends?

Gratitude and burden, gratitude for God's love for us and burden for the lost who God loves.

So, friends, may you, even you and I, know this day the things that make for peace, the King and His cross.

Let me pray a prayer that ought to be familiar at this point.

Almighty God, our Savior, you desire that none should perish, and you have taught us through your Son that there is great joy in heaven over every sinner who repents.

Grant that our hearts may ache for the lost, for a lost and broken world.

May your Holy Spirit work through our words, deeds, and prayers that the lost may be found, and the dead made alive, and that all your redeemed may rejoice around your throne through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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