‘THE TIME OF YOUR VISITATION’

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on September 8, 2021 under AM Bible Study |

AM Bible Study Group: September 8, 2021 from Luke 19:41-44

Theme: When it comes to receiving Jesus, an opportunity rejected is a cause for great sorrow.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

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Much of the later chapters of the Gospel of Luke have been occupied with our Lord’s journey to the city of Jerusalem. He was coming to present Himself to the Jewish people as their long-awaited King. And when we come to Chapter 19, we find that He has finally arrived. In that chapter, we read the wondrous story of His triumphant ride to the city—humbly upon the colt of a donkey and amidst the happy shouts and cheers of the crowds.

We would expect that our Lord’s face would have been beaming with joy as He made this ride. But no! We find to our utter surprise that He was not smiling. Rather, He was weeping over the city. Before He ever entered Jerusalem, as He drew closer to it, we discover that His approach became—to Him—a time of sorrow and grief. In Luke 19:41-44, we read these words:

Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation” (Luke 41-44).

All along His long journey to the city of Jerusalem, He had made it clear to His disciples that His arrival would not be the great victory celebration that everyone thought it would be. He made it clear to them that—not long after coming to Jerusalem—He would be betrayed, and then arrested, and then tried and condemned, and then handed over to cruel men who would beat Him and crucify Him. And then—three days later—He would be raised from the dead.

Eventually, our Lord will return in glory to Jerusalem and take up His reign. But that’s not what happened in that first visit. He had come to present Himself to His people as their true King—promised long before in the Scriptures; but it had already been determined beforehand that He would be rejected by them. He would come to His own, and His own would not receive Him.

The Jewish people’s rejection of Him back then has meant the salvation of the Gentile world in the age of grace And the Scriptures promise that—one day; at His glorious return—the Jewish people would indeed receive Him as their long-awaited King. In Zechariah 12:10, the pre-incarnate Son of God Himself prophetically promises;

“And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn (Zechariah 12:10).

What a happy day that will be—not only for the Jewish people, but for all the world! As Paul the apostle put it;

For if their being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? (Romans 11:15).

Our Lord Himself looks forward to that glorious day. But this passage tells us about our Lord’s sorrow over the many centuries that would come before that time—the long time of Jerusalem’s hardship because they had rejected Him at His first coming. This was because, as our Lord put it, they did not ‘know the time’ of their ‘visitation’.

And though the passage before us speaks specifically of the nation of Israel, there are lessons for us to learn—even in this age of grace. What a terrible thing it is for us to not know the day of our visitation of God’s grace through Jesus Christ—and to fail to receive Him as we should! Truly, when it comes to receiving Jesus, an opportunity rejected is a cause for great sorrow.

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Let’s look closer at this passage; and see what it tells us of our Lord in this first coming to Jerusalem. First, we see …

1. HIS SORROW OVER HIS CITY (vv. 41-42).

Luke wrote in verse 41, “Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it …” Just imagine what a surprising sight that must have been. All around Him were people shouting His praises, waving palm branches, and singing praises to God. How utterly out of place His tears must have seemed as He rode closer and gazed upon the city.

But this was because of what He knew would happen. Or perhaps better, it was because of what the Jewish people could not know. In verse 42, Jesus said to the city, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” He called it their “day”. It was the day that had been promised to them in the Scriptures. It was the day prophesied in Zechariah 9:9; where it says,

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9).

But they were expecting a conquering hero who would cast out all their enemies and reign in might and power right then and there. What they didn’t understand was that His coming was to establish “the things that make for your peace”. He came to give His life for sinners as Savior before He would take up His reign as King. But they didn’t grasp this. In fact, as Jesus Himself said, it was hidden from their eyes.

Later on, the apostle Peter preached a sermon to many of those who shouted for Jesus’ crucifixion. He told them;

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go. But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses (Acts 3:13-15).

And now, as the Lord Jesus said, the things that would make for their peace would be hidden from them. Perhaps this is very much like what the apostle Paul spoke of in 2 Corinthians 3, with regard to the Jewish people, when he wrote;

Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech—unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away (2 Corinthians 3:12-17).

So; Luke tells us that Jesus wept over this as He drew near the city. And notice too what Luke tells us about …

2. HIS PROMISE OF IMPENDING DESTRUCTION (vv. 43-44a).

He wept because of what would come. The rejection of the King would have dire consequences. He went on to say, “For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another” (vv. 43-44a).

For the enemies of Jerusalem to come upon them was bad enough. But they would even build an embankment around them in order for their enemies to trap them in and attack them. They would be ‘surrounded’ and ‘closed in on every side’; which was a way of saying that there would be no escape. The city would be ‘leveled’, which means that it would be destroyed. And there would be much death—even to the children within the city’s walls. There would be no mercy shown. And Jesus said, “they will not leave in you one stone upon another”. This reminds us of the thing that He would say later; as He and His disciples looked upon the temple within the city. His disciples admired the beautiful stones that adorned the temple. And they truly were amazing. King Herod, who built the temple of that time, had created a wondrous work. But Jesus shocked them when He said;

“These things which you see—the days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down” (Luke 21:6).

And those words proved true. Even today, you can see the rubble of the broken and shattered stones. When did this happen? It occurred about forty years after Jesus spoke those words. The Roman general Titus marched with his forces into the city in 70 AD and destroyed it. This seems to be what Jesus spoke to His disciples about in Luke 21:20-24; when He said,

“But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let not those who are in the country enter her. For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! For there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people. And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Luke 20:21-24).

Jesus went on to speak after that of the events far into the future that would surround His second coming. But these words speak of the destruction that would come after His rejection at His first coming. They would result in the city trampled by the Gentiles in all of the nearly twenty centuries that followed—up to the time when “the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled”.

And that leads us—finally—to notice …

3 HIS DECLARATION OF THE CAUSE (v. 44b).

He spoke at the end of verse 44 to the city of Jerusalem—destined for horrible judgment at that time—and said that it was “because you did not know the time of your visitation.” The word that He used for “visitation” is an interesting one. Its basic meaning—in the original language—is “the act of looking upon” something. It’s a similar word to that which is used to describe the office of a ‘bishop’ or ‘overseer’ in a church. It speaks of someone with authority coming to have a look at things—to make an investigative inspection, as it were.

When Jesus came, He had the right to be welcomed. Instead, He was rejected and crucified by His people. Later on, He would declare to the city;

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (Matthew 23:37-39).

And so it has been—for nearly twenty centuries—until the people of Israel returned to their land only a few decades ago. Perhaps the time is very soon when they will—indeed—say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

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These words that our Lord spoke with weeping, as He drew near the city, were meant for the Jewish people specifically. But there is an application of them to you and me today.

The ‘day of visitation’ for us—in this age of grace—is when we hear the good news of the gospel, and have the opportunity to receive Jesus as our Savior. Now is our time; because He will one day come again as the King of kings and Lord of lords and take up His glorious reign. What a dreadful thing it would be to know all that He had done after He entered the city long ago—and then still reject Him!

As the writer of Hebrews put it;

For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:26-31).

An opportunity to receive Jesus that is then rejected is truly a cause for great sorrow! May it be, then, that the Lord Jesus would never have cause to weep over us!

EA