This is an excerpt from my book “40 Moments From Christ’s Final Days.” Click here to get it from Amazon using my affiliate link.
Find this moment in: Lk. 19:41-44
Outside of Jerusalem, the crowd excitedly received Jesus as a prophet. However, Jesus was more than a prophet and even more than just a man. He was, and is, God. So as He approached Jerusalem, He reacted in a way that makes sense for a God who had spent thousands of years patiently calling the people of Israel to love and obedience.
And as He approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He cried over it, saying, “If you knew in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:41-44)
Despite all the buzz and excitement swirling around Him, Jesus is in tears. He doesn’t just weep for their hard-heartedness, but for the calamity coming upon them because of their current and future rejection of their God. This destruction would come forty years later at the hands of the Romans, and even more fully in the future during the Tribulation.
Jesus doesn’t spend the next five days hoping His people will turn to Him before His crucifixion. He knows, as only God could know, that their hearts would remain far from Him.
This moment sets the stage for many things Jesus would do in the days before His death. He enters Jerusalem to die, but also to continue calling them to faithfulness. He will teach those who truly listen, condemn the religious leaders who represented Israel’s rebellion, and cleanse the temple of wickedness.
But through all of this, we see God’s broken heart for His people. This is why, after Christ has a harsh encounter with the Pharisees, He leaves the temple in Jerusalem for the last time and weeps for the city:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you did not want it. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!’” (Matthew 23:37-39)
Notice that He wants Israel to say the very things the crowd around Him was saying when He first entered. But Jesus doesn’t just want Israel paying lip service. He wants their joy and excitement to erupt from a heart that really, truly loves their God who has always been faithful to them. Yet because their love for God isn’t genuine, Jesus weeps for what must happen before they’ll finally turn to Him.
Stop and think: Israel’s history is filled with hating and killing God’s messengers. In love, He sent men to call them to turn away from worldliness and toward their one, true God. Jesus, as God, has been there for all of it and knows they’ll do even worse to their God. How can we avoid Israel’s failures and treasure God’s truth, especially when it points out things we don’t want to see?
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