THE WEEPING RIDER
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on April 10, 2022 under 2022 |
Bethany Bible Church Palm Sunday message; April 10, 2022 from Luke 19:41-44
Theme: When it comes to receiving Jesus, a rejected opportunity is a cause for great sorrow.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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In my life as a follower of Jesus, I have never felt particularly bound to a ‘Christian calendar’. But I’ll admit that there are certain days in the calendar year that I very much want to recognize and observe. And this day—Palm Sunday—is certainly one of them.
This is the day that we celebrate a great act of sacrificial love. It’s the day on which our Lord Jesus—the Son of God in human flesh—intentionally made His way into the city of Jerusalem to present Himself as the promised King of the Jews. He did this knowing that He would be rejected, betrayed, arrested, and crucified on what we call ‘Good Friday’. He did this in order to serve as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. And to prove that His sacrifice for us was received by the heavenly Father, He was raised from the dead on the third day. How could we not remember the day that marked the commencement of all those things?
And so, to help us remember that important event, please look with me at Luke 19. That’s where we find a Palm Sunday story that’s told to us only in Luke’s Gospel.
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Luke tells us that the crowds were celebrating and shouting as Jesus rode into the city in what we’ve come to call His ‘triumphal entry’. They were laying their garments out before Him. They were waving palm branches. They were singing praises to God. And we would have naturally expected that our Lord’s face would have been beaming with joy as He made this triumphant ride.
But no. We find to our surprise that He was not smiling. We discover that this ride was—to Him—a time of deep mourning. He was actually weeping over the city. In fact, the word that’s used in the original language meant that He wasn’t just merely shedding tears, but was crying and sobbing in the way that the people around Him could hear.
In Luke 19:41-44, we read these very serious 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 the way of His journey to the city of Jerusalem, He had repeatedly made it clear to His disciples that His arrival would not be the great victory celebration that everyone thought it would be. It may be that everyone celebrated as He entered the city. But He had already made it abundantly clear to His disciples 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.
But as this passage shows us, it wasn’t the prospect of His own suffering that caused Him to weep. He knew that the resurrection would follow afterward. Rather, He wept over the prospect of the suffering of His own people for having rejected Him.
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Now; it’s very important that we put this story in the context of the whole plan of God for the Jewish people. The Scriptures promise that—one day; at His glorious second coming—Jesus will return to the city of Jerusalem and take up His glorious reign. And when that happens, the Jewish people will then indeed receive Him as their long-awaited King. In Zechariah 12:10, the pre-incarnate Son of God Himself spoke prophetically, and made this promise:
“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).
They will not be cheering at that time, however. Rather, they will be mourning—not out of fear, but out of humble regret and sorrow that they had rejected Him the first time. But that sorrow will give way to joy. And what a happy day that will be—not only for the Jewish people, but for the whole world! This is because their rejection of Jesus for a time resulted in His salvation being offered to the Gentile people. And when the Jewish people finally welcome Him as they should, then the whole world will be blessed. As Paul put it in Romans 11:15;
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).
In verse 26 of Romans 11, the apostle Paul assures us of this promise at our Lord’s second coming:
And so all Israel will be saved … (v. 26).
So our Lord looks forward to that glorious day. But that’s not what happened in the first visit—which we’re remembering today. He came first to present Himself to His people as their true King—the Son of David that was promised to them long before in the Scriptures; but then only to be rejected by them. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. And this passage tells us about our Lord’s weeping and sorrow over the many centuries that would follow afterward—the long time of Israel’s hardship because they had rejected Him at His first coming. This, as our Lord Himself tells us, was because they did not ‘know the time’ of their ‘visitation’.
And though the passage before us speaks specifically of the nation of Israel at His first coming, there are lessons for us to learn—even in this age of grace. We are living right now in the time when the grace of God through Jesus Christ has been presented to the Gentile world. The Savior has died, has been buried, has been raised, and has ascended to the Father. He has already been proclaimed to you and me as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And we, to whom He has now been offered, must give everything we have to receive Him as we should. We must not lose our opportunity. We must not refuse Him. As the apostle Paul put it to the Corinthian believers—to Gentiles;
We then, as workers together with Him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For He says:
“In an acceptable time I have heard you,
And in the day of salvation I have helped you.”
Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:1-2).
What a terrible thing it would be for us to ‘not know the day of our visitation’ of God’s grace through Jesus Christ; to fail to receive Him as we should; to not trust Him completely for our salvation; to refuse to make Him our Lord and Master while we have life and breath to do so!
Truly, when it comes to receiving Jesus, a rejected opportunity is a cause for great sorrow.
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So then; let’s look closer at this passage; and see what it tells us of our Lord in His triumphant ride into Jerusalem. First, we see …
1. HIS SORROW OVER HIS CITY.
Luke wrote in verse 41, “Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it …”
For those of us who have had the privilege of going to the holy land, this place always remains vivid in our minds. We can imagine the path that Jesus descended down the Mount of Olives—a path you can still travel down just east of the old city of Jerusalem. As you come down the slope in a westerly direction—at a certain point—the glorious city suddenly spreads out before your eyes. It’s a beautiful view. But just imagine that you were with the crowds following Jesus down the path on that day. What a surprising thing it would have been to have turned your eyes from the city and to then look upon Jesus and see Him crying in sadness. Just imagine how strange it would have been to hear—amidst all the shouts and cheers—the sound of Jesus sobbing. All around Him were people singing His praises, waving palm branches, and singing praises to God. Amid all of the celebration, how utterly strange His tears must have seemed as He rode closer to gaze upon the city over which He was the rightful King.
But this was because of what He knew would happen. Or perhaps it would be better to say that it was because of what He knew—but that the Jewish people were now not permitted to know. In verse 42, Jesus began to speak directly to the city of Jerusalem as if it were a person that He loved, and said, “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 had misinterpreted their day. They were rejoicing in the wrong thing. They were anticipating Jesus to be 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 had been among the crowd that 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. How tragic! They could have seen. They could have known. But now it would be hidden from them; so that they could not see, and could not know. 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).
Praise God that the veil is taken away whenever any of the children of Israel believe. But at the time of their ‘visitation’, they were not permitted to see it. It’s no wonder our Lord wept.
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And what a great reason He had for weeping! Notice next what Luke tells us about …
2. HIS PROMISE OF IMPENDING DESTRUCTION.
He wept because of what would come. Jesus loved this city. It’s the holy place that His heavenly Father chose to put His name. It’s the city from which Jesus is destined to rule over all the earth. But this sacred city’s rejection of King Jesus at His first coming 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).
What a horrible list of events! For the enemies of Jerusalem to come upon it was bad enough. But those enemies would even build an embankment around the city in order to trap the people inside and attack them. The city would be ‘surrounded’ and ‘closed in on every side’; which was a way of saying that there would be no escape for the people within. The city would be ‘leveled’, which meant that it would be destroyed and rendered uninhabitable. And there would be much death—even to the children within the city’s walls. Even they would be ‘leveled’ with the city. There would be no mercy shown by the enemies who came upon it. 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 were completely fulfilled. When were they fulfilled? It occurred about forty years after Jesus spoke them. The Roman general Titus marched with his forces into the city in 70 AD and destroyed it. It’s a matter of historical record. The first-century historian Josephus wrote about this terrible event in horrifying and gruesome detail. Even today, you can go to that place and see the rubble of stones that the Romans had broken down and shattered. 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 21:21-24).
Jesus went on after that to describe the events that would occur, far into the future, at His second coming. But these particular words speak first of the destruction that occurred within one generation’s time after His rejection at His first coming. It would result in the city being trampled by the Gentiles throughout all of the nearly twenty centuries that followed—up to the time when “the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled”.
Praise God that the time of rejection has an end—and that Israel is destined to welcome its King once again. But just think of how much the people of Israel have suffered until that time at long last comes!
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And that leads us—finally—to notice …
3. HIS DECLARATION OF THE CAUSE.
He spoke at the end of verse 44 to the city of Jerusalem—destined for horrible judgment shortly after His rejection—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. In the original language, its basic meaning 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 of the situation.
When Jesus came, He had the right to be welcomed. He had a right to enter the temple and inspect things. He had a right to find out whether or not His Father’s will was being fulfilled, and His commandments were being obeyed, and His Son’s kingdom was being honored. Instead, Jesus—the rightful Overseer—was rejected and crucified by His people. On another occasion, He spoke these words to His beloved 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 brood under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; and assuredly, I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (Luke 13:34-35).
And so it has been—for nearly twenty centuries—until the people of Israel returned to the land only a few decades ago. Though it is still ‘the time of the Gentiles’, the Jewish people are nevertheless in their land once again. 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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Now; these words that our Lord spoke with weeping, as He rode into the city, were meant for the Jewish people specifically. But there’s a legitimate application of these words that’s intended for you and me today.
The ‘day of visitation’ for us in this age of grace—whether we are Jew or Gentile—is when we hear the good news of the gospel, and have the opportunity to receive Jesus as our Savior by faith. This is the day for us to believe on Him, and receive Him, and trust Him, and obey Him, and live for Him. Now is our time—our opportunity to bow the knee to the King. But that day will come to an end; because Jesus will one day return and take up His reign in Jerusalem as King of kings and Lord of lords over the governments of this earth.
What a dreadful thing it would be for us to know all that happened after He was rejected that first time long ago—and to then still reject Him today! 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).
As this passage clearly shows us, an opportunity to receive Jesus that is then rejected is truly a cause for great sorrow! But now is our time—now is our opportunity—to welcome Him with all our hearts by a wholehearted devotion of faith! This is the day of your visitation and mine.
Let’s do all that we can to make sure that the Lord Jesus will never have cause to weep over us!
AE
