Luke 19:37-41 sits inside this longer paragraph.
32Those who were sent went away, and found things just as he had told them. 33As they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34They said, “The Lord needs it.” 35Then they brought it to Jesus. They threw their cloaks on the colt, and sat Jesus on them. 36As he went, they spread their cloaks on the road. 37As he was now getting near, at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works which they had seen, 38saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest!”
39Some of the Pharisees from the multitude said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”
40He answered them, “I tell you that if these were silent, the stones would cry out.”
41When he came near, he saw the city and wept over it, 42saying, “If you, even you, had known today the things which belong to your peace! But now, they are hidden from your eyes. 43For the days will come on you, when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, surround you, hem you in on every side, 44and will dash you and your children within you to the ground. They will not leave in you one stone on another, because you didn’t know the time of your visitation.”
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv39, 41 When they linger which ought to be the chiefest…
When they linger which ought to be the chiefest preachers and setters forth of the kingdom of God, he will raise up others extraordinarily, in despite of them.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On v41 33 And as they were loosing the colt, the…
33 And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt?
34 And they said, The Lord hath need of him.
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35 And they brought him to Jesus: and they cast their garments upon the colt, and they set Jesus thereon.
36 And as he went, they spread their clothes in the way.
37 And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen;
38 Saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.
39 And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.
40 And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.
41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,
Ver. 41. He beheld the city] That common slaughter house of the prophets. Our Lord is said to have been slain at Rome, Rev 11:8, because crucified at Jerusalem by the Roman authority.
And wept over it] Shall not we weep over the ruins of so many fair and flourishing churches, that now lie in the dirt? Christ wept in this day of his solemn inauguration. It shall be in our last triumph only that all tears shall be wiped from our eyes; till then our passions must be mixed, according to the occasions.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv39, 41 How peevish were these wretched Pharisees, to envy our…
How peevish were these wretched Pharisees, to envy our Saviour this little triumph, of coming into the city upon an ass’s colt, with garments under him instead of a saddle, or any stately furniture and trappings, and attended by a company of poor people throwing their garments and boughs of trees in the way! Yet these they would have silenced. Our Saviour’s reply,
If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out, seemeth to have been a proverbial speech used amongst them, to signify a thing which could not be. This day was accomplished God’s decree in that particular passage of providence, concerning our Saviour, which could not be defeated.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On v41 No sooner did our Saviour come within the sight…
No sooner did our Saviour come within the sight and view of the city of Jerusalem, but he burst out into tears, at the consideration of their obstinacy, and willful rejecting of the offers of grace and salvation made unto them; and also he wept to consider of the dreadful judgments that hung over their heads for those sins, even the utter ruin and destruction of their city and temple.
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1. That good men ever have been, and are men of tender and compassionate dispositions, sorrowing not only for their own sufferings, but for others’ calamities.
2. That Christ sheds tears as well as blood for the lost world; Christ wept over Jerusalem, as well as bled for her.
3. That Christ was infinitely more concerned for the salvation of poor sinners, than for his own death and sufferings: not the sight of his own cross, but Jerusalem’s calamities, made him weep.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v41 The great Ambassador from heaven is here making his…
The great Ambassador from heaven is here making his public entry into Jerusalem, not to be respected there, but to be rejected; he knew what a nest of vipers he was throwing himself into, and yet see here two instances of his love to that place and his concern for it.
I. The tears he shed for the approaching ruin of the city (Luk 19:41): When he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it. Probably, it was when he was coming down the descent of the hill from the mount of Olives, where he had a full view of the city, the large extent of it, and the many stately structures in it, and his eye affected his heart, and his heart his eye again. See here,
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1. What a tender spirit Christ was of; we never read that he laughed, but we often find him in tears. In this very place his father David wept, and those that were with him, though he and they were men of war. There are cases in which it is no disparagement to the stoutest of men to melt into tears.
2. That Jesus Christ wept in the midst of his triumphs, wept when all about him were rejoicing, to show how little he was elevated with the applause and acclamation of the people. Thus he would teach us to rejoice with trembling, and as though we rejoiced not. If Providence do not stain the beauty of our triumphs, we may ourselves see cause to sully it with our sorrows.
3. That he wept over Jerusalem. Note, There are cities to be wept over, and none to be more lamented than Jerusalem, that had been the holy city, and the joy of the whole earth, if it be degenerated. But why did Christ weep at the sight of Jerusalem? Was it because "Yonder is the city in which I must be betrayed and bound, scourged and spit upon, condemned and crucified?" No, he himself gives us the reason of his tears.
(1.) Jerusalem has not improved the day of her opportunities. He wept, and said, If thou hadst known, even thou at least in this thy day, if thou wouldst but yet know, while the gospel is preached to thee, and salvation offered thee by it; if thou wouldest at length bethink thyself, and understand the things that belong to thy peace, the making of thy peace with God, and the securing of thine own spiritual and eternal welfare - but thou dost not know the day of thy visitation, Luk 19:44. The manner of speaking is abrupt: If thou hadst known! O that thou hadst, so some take it; like that O that my people had hearkened unto me, Psa 81:13; Isa 48:18. Or, If thou hadst known, well; like that of the fig-tree, Luk 13:9. How happy had it been for thee! Or, "If thou hadst known, thou wouldest have wept for thyself, and I should have no occasion to weep for thee, but should have rejoiced rather." What he says lays all the blame of Jerusalem's impending ruin upon herself. Note, [1.] There are things which belong to our peace, which we are all concerned to know and understand; the way how peace is made, the offers made of peace, the terms on which we may have the benefit of peace. The things that belong to our peace are those things that relate to our present and future welfare; these we must know with application. [2.] There is a time of visitation when those things which belong to our peace may be known by us, and known to good purpose. When we enjoy the means of grace in great plenty, and have the word of God powerfully preached to us - when the Spirit strives with us, and our own consciences are startled and awakened - then is the time of visitation, which we are concerned to improve. [3.] With those that have long neglected the time of their visitation, if at length, if at last, in this their day, their eyes be opened, and they bethink themselves, all will be well yet. Those shall not be refused that come into the vineyard at the eleventh hour. [4.] It is the amazing folly of multitudes that enjoy the means of grace, and it will be of fatal consequence to them, that they do not improve the day of their opportunities. The things of their peace are revealed to them, but are not minded or regarded by them; they hide their eyes from them, as if they were not worth taking notice of. They are not aware of the accepted time and the day of salvation, and to let it slip and perish through mere carelessness. None are so blind as those that will not see; nor have any the things of their peace more certainly hidden from their eyes than those that turn their back upon them. [5.] The sin and folly of those that persist in a contempt of gospel grace are a great grief to the Lord Jesus, and should be so to us. He looks with weeping eyes upon lost souls, that continue impenitent, and run headlong upon their own ruin; he had rather that they would turn and live than go on and die, for he is not willing that any should perish.
(2.) Jerusalem cannot escape the day of her desolation. The things of her peace are now in a manner hidden from her eyes; they will be shortly. Not but that after this the gospel was preached to them by the apostles; all the house of Israel were called to know assuredly that Christ was their peace (Act 2:36), and multitudes were convinced and converted. But as to the body of the nation, and the leading part of it, they were sealed up under unbelief; God had given them the spirit of slumber, Rom 11:8. They were so prejudiced and enraged against the gospel, and those few that did embrace it then, that nothing less than a miracle of divine grace (like that which converted Paul) would work upon them; and it could not be expected that such a miracle should be wrought, and so they were justly given up to judicial blindness and hardness. The peaceful things are not hidden from the eyes of particular persons; but it is too late to think now of the nation of the Jews, as such, becoming a Christian nation, by embracing Christ. And therefore they are marked for ruin, which Christ here foresees and foretels, as the certain consequence of their rejecting Christ. Note, Neglecting the great salvation often brings temporal judgments upon a people; it did so upon Jerusalem in less than forty years after this, when all that Christ here foretold was exactly fulfilled. [1.] The Romans besieged the city, cast a trench about it, compassed it round, and kept their inhabitants in on every side. Josephus relates that Titus ran up a wall in a very short time, which surrounded the city, and cut off all hopes of escaping. [2.] They laid it even with the ground. Titus commanded his soldiers to dig up the city, and the whole compass of it was levelled, except three towers; see Josephus's history of the wars of the Jews, 5.356-360; 7.1. Not only the city, but the citizens were laid even with the ground (thy children within thee), by the cruel slaughters that were made of them: and there was scarcely one stone left upon another. This was for their crucifying Christ; this was because they knew not the day of their visitation. Let other cities and nations take warning.
II. The zeal he showed for the present purification of the temple. Though it must be destroyed ere long, it does not therefore follow that no care must be taken of it in the mean time.
1. Christ cleared it of those who profaned it. He went straight to the temple, and began to cast out the buyers and sellers, Luk 19:45. Hereby (though he was represented as an enemy to the temple, and that was the crime laid to his charge before the high priest) he made it to appear that he had a truer love for the temple than they had who had such a veneration for its corban, its treasury, as a sacred thing; for its purity was more its glory than its wealth was. Christ gave reason for his dislodging the temple-merchants, Luk 19:46. The temple is a house of prayer, set apart for communion with God: the buyers and sellers made it a den of thieves by the fraudulent bargains they made there, which was by no means to be suffered, for it would be a distraction to those who came there to pray.
2. He put it to the best use that ever it was put to, for he taught daily in the temple, Luk 19:47. Note, It is not enough that the corruptions of a church be purged out, but the preaching of the gospel must be encouraged. Now, when Christ preached in the temple, observe here, (1.) How spiteful the church-rulers were against him; how industrious to seek an opportunity, or pretence rather, to do him a mischief (Luk 19:47): The chief priests and scribes, and the chief of the people, the great sanhedrim, that should have attended him, and summoned the people too to attend him, sought to destroy him, and put him to death. (2.) How respectful the common people were to him. They were very attentive to hear him. He spent most of his time in the country, and did not then preach in the temple, but, when he did, the people paid him great respect, attended on his preaching with diligence, and let no opportunity slip of hearing him, attended to it with care, and would not lose a word. Some read it, All the people as they heard him, took his part; and so it comes in very properly as a reason why his enemies could not find what they might do against him; they saw the people ready to fly in their faces if they offered him any violence. Till his hour was come his interest in the common people protected him; but, when his hour was come, the chief priests' influence upon the common people delivered him up.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv37–41 And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude,....…
And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude,.... Who had placed themselves there, to watch and observe what was said, and done, that they might have something to reproach Christ with, expose him for, or bring as a charge against him:
said unto him, master, rebuke thy disciples: not being able to bear such high encomiums of Jesus, and such open and public declarations of his being the Messiah; and would insinuate, that it was blasphemy in them to say what they did, and pride and vanity in him to allow of it; and that the consequence might be sedition, and tumult; and therefore it became him to check such a disorderly, noisy, evil, and dangerous practice.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv37–40 The whole multitude began to praise God - Speaking…
The whole multitude began to praise God - Speaking at once, as it seems, from a Divine impulse, words which most of them did not understand.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv38, 40, 41 Verse 38. Glory in the highest.] Mayst thou receive…
Verse 38. Glory in the highest.] Mayst thou receive the uttermost degrees of glory! See Clarke on Mt 21:9.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On v41 Luk 19:41-44. He beheld the city and wept over…
Luk 19:41-44. He beheld the city and wept over it — As he drew nigh he looked on the city, and, notwithstanding he had already met with much ill usage from its inhabitants, and was at this very juncture to be put to death by them, yet, with a divine generosity and benevolence, which nothing can equal, he wept over it, in the view of the surrounding multitude, lifting up his voice and lamenting aloud the calamities which he foresaw were coming upon it. If thou hadst known, at least in this thy day — After thou hast neglected so many; thy day — The day wherein God still offers thee his blessings; the things which belong unto thy peace — And on which thy final happiness depends! but now they are hid from thine eyes — God will leave thee in his righteous judgment to this thy chosen ignorance and obstinate perverseness, till it end in thine utter ruin. For the days shall come — The time hastens on and will soon arrive; that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee — And thou shalt suffer all the hardships of the closest siege. The original phrase is, περιβαλουσιν χαρακα σοι, which Dr. Campbell renders, will surround thee with a rampart, observing, the word “χαραξ does not occur in any other place in the New Testament, but in some places wherein it occurs in the Septuagint, it has evidently the sense here given it. Indeed, a rampart or mound of earth was always accompanied with a trench or ditch, out of which was dug the earth necessary for raising the rampart. Some expositors have clearly shown that this is a common meaning of the word in Greek authors. Its perfect conformity to the account of that transaction given by the Jewish historian, is an additional argument in its favour.” And keep thee in on every side — So that, with all thy numerous inhabitants, thou neither shalt be able to resist nor to escape them. To the prophecy here uttered by Jesus, foretelling the principal circumstances of the siege of Jerusalem, the event corresponded most exactly. “For, when Titus attacked the city, the Jews defended themselves so obstinately, that he found there was no way to gain his purpose but to compass the city round with a trench and mound. By this means, he kept the besieged in on every side, cut off from them all hope of safety by flight, and consumed them by famine. The work which he undertook was indeed a matter of extreme difficulty, for the wall measured thirty-nine furlongs, or almost five miles, and the towers were thirteen in number, every one of them ten furlongs in compass. Nevertheless, the whole was finished in three days; for, to use the expression of Josephus, the soldiers in performing this work were animated by a divine impetus. Bell., Luk 6:13.” And shall lay thee even with the ground — Of this circumstance, see the notes on Mat 24:1-2; Mar 13:1-2. The description which Josephus has given of the taking of Jerusalem by Titus, may be considered as a comment upon these prophecies. Bell., Luk 7:18. “Thus was Jerusalem taken, in the second year of Vespasian’s reign, on the 8th day of September; and having been already five times surprised, it was again finally destroyed. Such was the end of the besieging of Jerusalem, when there was none left to kill, nor any thing remaining for the soldiers to get. Cesar commanded them to destroy the city and temple, only leaving certain towers standing, that were more beautiful than the rest, namely, Phaselus, Hippicos, and Mariamne, and the wall that was on the west side, meaning there to keep a garrison, and that they should be a monument of the prowess of the Romans, who had taken a city so well fortified, as by them it appeared to have been. All the rest of the city they so levelled,” answering to our Lord’s phrase, lay thee even with the ground, “that they who had not seen it before, would not believe that ever it had been inhabited.” And in the preceding chapter he says, “They destroyed the wall, and burned the outward part of the city.” Because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation — “Our Lord here assigns the cause of the destruction of Jerusalem and her children. It was because that, when God visited them by his Son, the seed of Abraham and David, the Messiah, they did not know it, but rejected and crucified him. The destruction of the city and of her inhabitants, clearly foreseen by our Lord in all the circumstances thereof, was a scene so affecting, that it moved his tender soul, and made him weep. It seems the miseries of bitterest enemies had more influence to afflict and melt his soul, than the admiration, the acclamations, and hosannas of his friends to elate him with joy. His weeping was a wonderful instance of his humanity, and is so far from lessening the dignity of his character, that it exalts it infinitely. Were it worthwhile, the reader might be put in mind that the historians of Greece and Rome, to aggrandize their heroes, have been at pains to relate occurrences at which they shed tears; but this would be to fall egregiously below the greatness of the subject. Is it possible to have the least relish for goodness, and not be ravished with the man who has such a quick feeling of the miseries of others, as to weep for their misfortunes in the height of his own prosperity, especially if the objects moving his compassion are enemies, and his courage is such as to enable him to look without perturbation on the greatest disasters ready to fall on himself? See Mat 20:18-19. Let wondering mortals, then, behold in this an example of compassion and generosity, infinitely superior to any thing that the heathen world can furnish! an example highly worthy of their admiration and imitation.” — Macknight.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv40–41 The stones would ...cry out - It is “proper”…
The stones would ...cry out - It is “proper” that they should celebrate my coming. Their acclamations “ought” not to be suppressed. So joyful is the event which they celebrate - the coming of the Messiah - that it is not fit that I should attempt to impose silence on them. The expression here seems to be “proverbial,” and is not to be taken literally. Proverbs are designed to express the truth “strongly,” but are not to be taken to signify as much as if they were to be interpreted literally. The sense is, that his coming was an event of so much importance that it “ought” to be celebrated in some way, and “would” be celebrated. It would be impossible to restrain the people, and improper to attempt it. The language here is strong proverbial language to denote that fact. We are not to suppose, therefore, that our Saviour meant to say that the stones were “conscious” of his coming, or that God would “make” them speak, but only that there was “great joy” among the people; that it was “proper” that they should express it in this manner, and that it was not fit that he should attempt to repress it.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv40–41 The stones. This is a proverb, as if he…
The stones. This is a proverb, as if he had said: God has resolved to glorify me this day, in order to fulfil the prophecies. Nothing can hinder the execution of his decrees; if men were silent, he would make even the stones to speak. (Calmet) --- At the crucifixion of our Redeemer, when his friends were silent through fear, the very stones and rocks spoke in his defence. Immediately after he expired, the earth was moved, the rocks split, and the monuments of the dead opened. (Ven. Bede) --- Nor is it any wonder if, contrary to nature, the rocks bespeak the praises of the Lord, since he was even praised by a multitude, much more insensible than the rocks themselves, in crucifying him only a few days after, whom they now salute with Hosannahs of joy. (St. Ambrose)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v41 2. The Manifestation of the Glory of the King…
2. The Manifestation of the Glory of the King in Word and Deed (Luk_19:41-48)
41And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, 42Saying, If thou [also] hadst known, even10 thou [om., even thou], at least in this thy day, the things 43which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the [om., the] days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench [embankment] about thee, and compass thee round and keep thee in on every side, 44And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. 45And he went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold [the sellers] therein, and them that bought [omit these 5 words11]; 46Saying unto them, It is written, [And12] My house is [shall be] the [a] house of prayer (Isa_56:7); but ye have made it a den of thieves 47[robbers]. And he taught [was teaching] daily in the temple. But the chief priests and the scribes and [also13] the chief of the people sought to destroy him, 48And could not find what they might do: for all the people were very attentive to hear him [hung, listening, upon him,14 ἐξεκρέματο αὐτοῦ ἀκούων].
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EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Luk_19:41. And wept.—Not only ἐδἁκρυσεν, as in Joh_11:35, but έ̓κλαυσεν, with loud voice and words of lamentation. What the cause of these tears is, appears from ἐπ̓ αὐτή and the immediately following words. Again, it is Luke alone who has preserved to us this affecting trait, and it scarcely needs to be mentioned how exactly such a trait fits into the gospel which teaches us in our Lord to know the true and holy Son of Man. And yet we cannot be surprised that precisely this genuinely and purely human trait, even from of old, has been to many a stumbling-block and scandal. In relation to this, it is noticeable (see Grotius, ad loc.) that the words έ̓κλαυσεν ἐπ̓ αὐτ. in individual ancient manuscripts do not appear; ἐν τοῖς ἀδιορθώτοις ἀντιγράφοις, says, however, Epiphanius, the words are read. “Mutarunt homines temerarii et delicati, quibus flere Christo indignum videbatur.”
Luk_19:42. If thou also hadst known.—“Pathetic aposiopesis, and thereby the expression of a fruitless wish.” Meyer. The thou also places the unbelieving inhabitants of Jerusalem in opposition to the disciples of our Lord, who had really considered τὰ πρὸς εἰρήνην, perhaps a delicate allusion to what the name of Jerusalem as City of Peace (Salem) signifies. The here-designated ημέρα can be no other than what our Lord, Luk_19:44, calls τὸν καιρὸν τῆς ἐπισκοπῆς. Comp. Luk_1:68. The whole time of the public activity of our Lord in Jerusalem was a respite of two years, which had been prepared for more than twenty centuries, and now, as it were, concentrated itself in the one day on which the Lord entered as King into Jerusalem. This Jerusalem would have known (έ̓ηως), if it had unanimously rendered homage to its Messiah; but although the Lord here also had found individual believing hearts, yet Jerusalem as a city rejected its King; the ̓Ιουδαῖοι recognized Him not. It was hidden from their eyes who He was, and what a salvation He would bestow. ̓Εκρὐβη according to the righteous counsel of God, Mat_11:25-26, but not without their own personal guilt.
Luk_19:43. Days shall come.—Luk_19:43-44 is the text of the powerful discourse respecting the destruction of Jerusalem which our Lord, Luk_21:5 seq., two days afterwards delivered before His disciples. The ἡμέραι which are now threatened are the terrible consequences of the fact that the ἡμέρα, Luk_19:43, has hastened by in vain. ̔́Οτι does not depend on ἐκρύβη, so that thereby the thing that is hidden is indicated (Theophylact), neither is it any strengthening word, in the sense of profecto utique (Starke), but the common signification “for” must be here retained, in the sense that the wish, Luk_19:42, has thereby a reason given for it, as if the Saviour would say, “I might indeed wish that, &c., for now the things that belong to thy peace remain hidden from thine eyes. Now impends,” &c.
An embankment, χάρακα, masculine.—It is remarkable how our Lord not only in general foretells the destruction of Jerusalem, but also in particular describes the way and method in which this judgment should be accomplished. He announces a formal siege, in which they should avail themselves of all the then usual auxiliaries and should permit themselves all the atrocities which victors have at any time exercised against the vanquished. First He mentions the χάρμξ, a camp strengthened with palisades and line of circumvallation, in short, a wall such as we actually read in Josephus (De Bell. Jdg_5:6; Jdg_5:2; Jdg_5:12; Jdg_5:2) was thrown up around Jerusalem, but burned by the Jews. Afterwards, in consequence of this structure, περικυκλώσουσίν σε καὶ συνέξουσίν σε πάντοθεν. We may here understand the wall thirty stadia long, which Titus in three days caused to be erected around the city, in place of the burnt χάραξ. In consequence of this measure the desolation now breaking in upon her and upon her children (ἐδαθιοῦσι) becomes general. This word occurs in a twofold signification: “to level with the earth” and “to dash to the ground” (Psa_137:9); the first prophesies the fate of the city, the other that of her inhabitants, both being here zeugmatically connected. Finally, the conclusion of all this, no stone remains upon another, so that now, Luk_19:40, the stones begin to cry out. This last part of the prophecy was first completely fulfilled after the insurrection of Bar-Cochba in the days of the Emperor Adrian, and this is the terrible result, continuing unto the present day, of this one blinding, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation! In this conclusion, and especially in this continually ascending καί, καί, καί lies a δεινότης orationis, which can be better felt than described.
Luk_19:45. And He went into the temple.—Comp. the parallels in Matthew and Mark. Luke, who entirely passes over the cursing of the fig-tree, relates also the temple-cleansing only briefly. In fact, he only states the beginning of this symbolical transaction (ή̓ρξατο), while Matthew also notices the successful end (εξέβαλεν). To him it is especially remarkable that the Saviour begins His last sojourn and converse in the sanctuary with so strong a measure. Respecting the manner of the expulsion also, and for the precise description of the persons expelled, compare Matthew and Mark. The citation from Isa_56:7, Luke has in common with them, while he with Matthew omits the πᾶσιν τοῖς έ̓θνεσιν, apparently only for the sake of brevity. As to the question whether the temple-cleansing took place once or twice, comp. Lange, Matthew, p. 376. We also decide for a repetition of the transaction, since the opposite opinion falls into far more difficulties, inasmuch as it must either impeach John or the Synoptics of the greatest inexactness. It agrees entirely with the typical and symbolical character of this transaction, that our Lord began as well as concluded His life therewith. Besides, the circumstances also are so very different that they make identity improbable. As respects now particularly this second temple-cleansing, those who find difficulty in supposing that our Lord, a few days before His death, should have repeated an act which might prepossess or embitter the secular power against Him, may for the same reason account the denunciatory discourse (Matthew 23) as entirely fictitious. That our Saviour did not perform this act at the second Passover, too, is simply to be ascribed to the circumstance that at that Passover He was not at Jerusalem, Joh_6:1-4. Who knows whether, perhaps, after the first temple-cleansing, the abuse thus animadverted upon did not diminish or entirely cease; and on the contrary, the priestly party, out of spite against our Lord and at the same time in order to elicit new opposition, restore it anew on the last feast? Then it would at the same time be explained why His words of rebuke at the second cleansing sound even sharper than at the first. In view of the brevity of the Synoptical relation, we cannot be surprised that neither in the language of our Lord nor in the conduct of those expelled, do we meet with a reminiscence of the previous temple-cleansing. Perhaps, however, the still recollection of the first contributed to weaken opposition at the second.
Luk_19:47. And He was teaching daily.—Striking and vivid representation of the state of things in this critical point of time. On the side of our Lord, unshaken courage, composure, and energy of spirit, with which He every day shows Himself publicly, joined with beseeming care for His own security, which moves Him not to pass the night in Jerusalem so long as His hour has not yet come. On the side of His enemies, irreconcilable hatred and thoughts of murder, especially on the part of the worldly aristocracy, which counts itself mortally endangered by Him. On the side of the people, undiminished delight in hearing Him, on which account His enemies, with their base designs, can as yet obtain no handle against the Saviour. The people hang on His lips. The more they hear the more they wish to hear (ἐξεκρέματο, cum gen.). “As bees on the flowers on which they seek honey, or as young birds on the mouth of the old ones from whom they would have food.” Meanwhile His enemies are visibly perplexed. They find not what they shall do to Him. The Saviour and the people alike are for the moment an obstacle to them. Thus is displayed on the one side the might of unarmed innocence, on the other the impotency of armed and resolved malice.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. “Never man spake like this man” (Joh_7:46). This word proved true not only in Jerusalem’s temple, but also at Jerusalem’s gate. The eloquence of the words of Jesus is great, that of His silence, perchance, yet greater, but that of His tears passes all description. The tears of the Lord at the grave of Lazarus and those at the entry into Jerusalem have so much analogy, and yet again so much diversity, that the consideration of these relations furnishes admirable contributions towards the knowledge of the person and the character of our Lord. The contrast between this jubilant multitude and the weeping Saviour, between the deepest blindness on the one and the most infallible knowledge on the other side, is so speaking, and moreover so taken from the life, that here also the declaration can be applied: “This trait could not have been invented.” With right says Augustine, Lacrymœ Domini, gaudia mundi.
2. Not without reason has there been found at all times in this prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, on the very place where afterwards the Romans pitched their first camp, one of the strongest proofs of the infallible and Divine foreknowledge of Jesus. The comparison of this declaration with the account of Josephus is the work of the apologist. Thereby, at the same time, must not be forgotten what an unhappy result the godless attempt for the rebuilding of Jerusalem under Julian the Apostate had. See Chrysost., Oratio 3 adv. Judœos. [Chrysostom says, in substance, that under the impious emperor the Jews were permitted to attempt the rebuilding of the temple, that it might not be said that they could have rebuilt it if they would; but that flames bursting out from the foundations drove them away; while yet the foundations which they had begun remained even in his day as witnesses at once of their purpose and of their impotency to accomplish it. The truth of this account of Chrysostom is, as we know, supported by the testimony of the impartial Ammianus Marcellinus; and all the sneers of Gibbon at this “specious and splendid miracle” do not render it less certain that Divine Providence, in a wonderful way, took care that the prophecy of the Son of God should not be frustrated. Whether this were a miracle in the sphere of nature or not is a matter of little moment; it is, at all events, an illustrious miracle of Providence.—C. C. S.]
3. “The holy tears of Jesus show how God’s heart is disposed towards men when they fall into sin and destruction. Even in God we may conceive a compassionate sorrow, only that it is ever at the same time removed again by His eternal love, wisdom, and holiness. In Jesus, these tears over Jerusalem are at the same time tears of high-priestly intercession and mediation, and belong, in so far, to all men. Comp. Heb_5:7.” Von Gerlach.
4. Our admiration of the majesty of our Lord increases yet more when we see how He, who certainly knows that He must give up Jerusalem for lost, continues yet, even in the last days of His life, with unwearied and holy zeal to be active in Jerusalem. Even when He knows that the mass will not let itself be saved, He continues to have compassion on the individuals. Precisely for this reason is His love so adorable, that it becomes at no moment weak; and while it weeps the fate of sinners, vehemently burns against sin, but this wrath seeks not itself, but the Father’s honor. At His entry Jesus weeps over the lot of Jerusalem. At His going out He says, Weep not, Luk_23:28.
5. The temple-cleansing is one of the acts of our Lord which have sometimes been elevated too high, sometimes depreciated too low. The former has been the case when men have believed themselves to see here a miracle in the ordinary sense of the word, nay, esteemed it as even greater than, for instance, the miracle of Cana. See Origen, ad h. l.; Jerome, ad Mat_21:15; Lampe in Comment. Against this we have to remember the moral predominance which a personality like that of the Saviour must have had over souls which were so mean and weak as these, and to remember the many examples of similar triumphs of truth and right over the servants of deceit and unrighteousness which we meet with even in profane history. On the other hand, some have in this act, without reason, found occasion to throw suspicion on the moral purity of our Lord, and as it were turned the scourge of small cords against Himself. We have here to call to mind not only the right of the Zealots, but very especially the right of the Son in the house of His Father, and especially to take note of the union of a holy wrath with compassionate love which beams through this act of the Saviour. Shortly after He has wielded the scourge, He stretches out the helping hand, which has but just expelled the rabble, towards cripples and wretched ones; these wretched ones, whom compassion had brought into the temple, the omnipotence of love has healed. Comp. Mat_21:14, and in reference to the first temple-cleansing the interesting section: The Banner on the Mountain, in Baumgarten’s Geschichte Jesu, Brunswick, 1859, pp. 99–111.
6. The temple-cleansing the symbol of the whole life of our Lord, as also of the purpose of His manifestation on earth. See Cyril. Alex. ii.1; Origen, tom. x. p. 16; Augustine, Tract, in Evangel. Joh., and others. Comp. Mal_3:1, and Luk_3:15. An admirable work of art representing the temple-cleansing by Jouvenet.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
“Behold thy King cometh to thee.”—How the Lord at His entry into Jerusalem reveals His kingly character: 1. By His tears; 2. by His word; 3. by His deed in the temple.—Jesus’ tears the most beautiful pearls in His crown of glory.—Jesus’ love to an unthankful people and to a native country destined to destruction.—Anger at sin and compassion for the sinners united in the Saviour.—The King of Israel at the same time the compassionate High-priest.—The acceptable time, the day of salvation (2Co_6:2).—Whoever despises the one day of salvation has many evil days to expect.—The Romans at the siege of Jerusalem the witnesses for the truth of the word of Jesus.—Great grace, great blindness, great retribution.—The contrast between the last entry of our Lord into Jerusalem and His last departure.—The Son in the desecrated house of His Father: 1. How vehement is His wrath; 2. with what dignity He speaks; 3. how graciously He blesses.—The Scripture the rule according to which everything in Divine service also must be guided.—Yet again will the Lord clear His temple: 1. In the heart; 2. in the house; 3. in the church; 4. in the whole creation.—“My house is a house of prayer,” how this word points us: 1. To inestimable privileges; 2. to holy obligations; 3. to high expectations.—The temple of the Lord: 1. Its original destination; 2. its later perversion; 3. its final perfection.—It is the best, which through human wickedness is most shamefully corrupted (Rom_7:13).—The Passion-week a striking proof of the faithfulness of our Lord to the once uttered principle (Joh_9:4).—The remarkable drama which the temple after the entry and the cleansing presents: 1. A throng of hearers eager for salvation; 2. an impotent throng of enemies; 3. over against both the Lord, immaculate, unwearied, fearless.—Jesus already triumphant even before His apparent overthrow; His enemies already defeated even before their seeming triumph.
Starke:—Langii Op.:—The nearer and greater the grace is, the nearer and greater the judgments if it is not received.—Zeisius:—Consider, O man, what the tears of Jesus have in them, and let them melt thy heart to repentance.—There is nothing more to be wept over than the spiritual blindness of man.—Hedinger:—Blindness comes before destruction.—Canstein:—Even the time or grace has with God its limitation.—Osiander: -When the wrath of God blazes forth, it rages very terribly against the impenitent.—Luther:—The contemning of the gospel brings lands and cities to destruction.—Holiness is the ornament of the house of God (Psa_93:5).—Against open abominations there suits a thorough earnestness.—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—How many in the temple who have murdered their souls by presumptuous sins.—Quesnel:—The Church is not only a house of prayer, but also a house of instruction.—Hardened men will rather inflict mischief on pious preachers than amend themselves.—Zeisius:—Without God’s will no harm can happen to His faithful servants.—Jesus has among the common people more friends than among the chief ones.—To hang on Jesus’ lips and hear Him is good, but not enough.
Heubner:—The diverse value of many tears.—To every blinded sinner we can exclaim, If thou hadst known!—To every one is his time of grace allotted.—The sinner has a bandage before his eyes.—The fate of our posterity should urge us to repentance.—The invincibleness of love.—Guard thee against everything which can disturb devotion in others and destroy the soul.—The churches the asylums of the truth.—Some friends the truth finds ever.
On the Pericope.—The sorrow of Jesus at the last view of Jerusalem: 1. Sources; 2. effects.—How the tears of Jesus yet speak to us.—Great cities as the seat of great corruption.—The value of the tears of the Christian.—Couard:—Jerusalem and the Jewish people: 1. Jerusalem’s time of grace; 2. Jerusalem’s hardening; 3. Jerusalem’s fall.—The tears of Christians here below: 1. Tears of joy; 2. tears of repentance; 3. tears of sorrow.—Souchon:—The knowing of the time of visitation.—Palmer:—Jerusalem’s blindness: 1. Near to it is destruction, but no one forebodes it; 2. near to it is salvation, but no one will recognize it.—The Saviour: 1. In His tears; 2. in His zeal of fire; 3. how He by both calls us to repentance.—Rautenberg:—Jesus’ tears over Jerusalem, tears to awaken: 1. Compassion; 2. terror; 3. affection; 4. consolation.—Tholuck:—1. These tears a shame to our cold hearts; 2. a rebuke to our light-mindedness; 3. a shaking of our security.—Von Kapff:—The judgments of the Lord: 1. The judgment of grace; 2. the judgment of wrath; 3. the judgment of cleansing; 4. the judgment of hardening; 5. the judgment of condemnation.—Arndt:—Jesus the Friend of His country.—Van Oosterzee:—Jesus’ tears over Jerusalem: 1. Jerusalem’s shame; 2. Jesus’ honor; 3. our joy.—The same:—The temple-cleansing a type of the Reformation of the sixteenth century; it reminds us: 1. Of the history of the Reformation; 2. of the glory of the Reformation; 3. of the admonitions of the Reformation.—On 1. The abuses which the Reformation assailed; the principle to which it did homage; the spirit which it revealed; the reception which it found. On 2. Like the temple-cleansing, so was also the Reformation a restoration of the spiritual worship of God, the revelation of the glory of Christ, the beginning of a new development in the kingdom of God on earth. On 3. the Reformation admonishes those who desecrate the temple to repentance, those who honor the temple to zeal, those who know the Lord of the temple to continual remembrance of His deeds. Comp. Joh_2:22.
Footnotes:
[10]Luk_19:42.—We consider ourselves as obliged to retain both καίγε and σου, held as doubtful by Lachmann.
[11]Luk_19:45.—The longer reading of the Recepta: τοὺς πωλοῦντας ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ τοὺς ἀγοράζοντας, appears to be borrowed from the parallels. [The briefer reading found in B., C, Cod. Sin., L.; accepted by Tischendorf, Meyer, Tregelles, Al-ford.—C. C. S.]
[12]Luk_19:46.—See Tischendorf, ad locum. [The reading, και εσται, κ.τ.λ., at the beginning of the citation, for εστιν, at the end, is found in B., L., R. Cod. Sin. omits both the copulative and the verb. The reading of Van Oosterzee is that of Tischendorf, Meyer, Tregelles, Alford.—C. C. S.]
[13][Luk_19:47.—I have inserted “also” as the briefest way of conveying the force of the separation of the third nominative from the first two.—C. C. S.]
[14][Luk_19:48.—Revised Version of the American Bible Union.—C. C. S.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv37, 38, 40, 41 whole multitude, &c.--The language here is very grand, intended…
whole multitude, &c.--The language here is very grand, intended to express a burst of admiration far wider and deeper than ever had been witnessed before.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv39–41 39. Pharisees from among the multitude—They seemed to be…
39. Pharisees from among the multitude—They seemed to be spectators of the procession, who called to Jesus as he passed to moderate the voices of the chanters.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv37–41 37. even now at the descent of the mount…
37. even now at the descent of the mount of Olives] at the spot where the main road from Bethany sweeps round the shoulder of the hill, and the city first bursts full on the view. At this point the palm-bearing procession from the city seems to have met the rejoicing crowd of the Galilaean pilgrims who had started with Jesus from Bethany.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv37–41 (37) The descent of the mount of Olives.—The Greek…
(37) The descent of the mount of Olives.—The Greek word for “descent” is not used by any other New Testament writer. As being a technical geographical word, it was one that might naturally be used by one who may have been a pupil of Strabo, or a student of his works. (See Introduction.)
To praise God.—The Greek verb is another instance of a word used by St. Luke (seven times) and St. Paul (twice), and by them only in the New Testament.
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All the mighty works . . .—Literally, powers, and so works of power. The words probably refer to the recent miracle at Jericho (Luk_18:35-43; Mat_20:29-34; Mar_10:46-52), and, as interpreted by St. John’s Gospel, the recent raising of Lazarus.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv37, 39, 41 At the descent of the mount of Olives, the…
At the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen. At this point on the Bethany road the city of Jerusalem comes into view. Here a crowd of pilgrims to the Passover Feast, many of whom were well acquainted with Jesus, came out to meet and welcome him with their branches of palm. These joined his friends who accompanied him from Bethany. This enthusiasm was excited among the Passover pilgrims in great measure owing to the report which by this time had got abroad of the raising of Lazarus. (see Joh_12:17, Joh_12:18) Many had already gone out from the city to Bethany to see Jesus and Lazarus. Of the Messianic shouts of welcome which sounded in the crowd, St. Luke does not mention the "Hosanna!" of St. Matthew, no doubt because this peculiar Hebrew cry would not have conveyed any meaning to the Gentile readers to whom his story was especially addressed. The two incidents which follow the crying out of the stones, and the weeping of the Master over his beautiful doomed city (vers. 39-44) occur only in St. Luke. His source of information here was evidently quite different to the other two synoptists or St. John.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v41 He beheld the city, and wept over it
Luk_19:41-44
He beheld the city, and wept over it
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Christ weeping over Jerusalem
I.
THE EXCLAMATION OF CHRIST, AND HIS TEARS IN THEIR REJECTION TO THE GUILTY CITY.
1. He remembered days of old. On these sinners the object of His mission seemed entirely lost.
2. But with the self-denying love of a patriot, and the grace of a Saviour, He looked beyond His own sufferings, and fixed His eye on theirs. What an appeal to His pity was there I The city was beleaguered and lost--the dwelling of Holiness was laid waste.
3. The sentence is broken and incomplete. It is eloquently completed by the tears, which are the natural language of compassion, and express its intentness beyond all words. What the present might have been!
II. THE BEARING OF THE RECORD ON OURSELVES.
1. There are things which pre-eminently belong to your peace.
2. The period allotted to you for attending to them is definite and brief.
3. Should your day close, and leave you unsaved, your guilt will be great, and your condition remediless.
4. This is a spectacle calling for the profoundest lamentation.
5. The tears of Jesus prow His unextinguished compassion for the guilty. (John Harris.)
The tears of Jesus
I. LOST PRIVILEGES.
Oh, that thou hadst known the things which belong unto thy peace.
II. LOST OPPORTUNITIES.--Even thou in this thy day. Nations and men have their day:
1. Youth.
2. Special occasions, as Confirmation.
3. Religious strivings within our own manifold opportunities, which may be prized and used, or neglected and abused.
III. LOST SOULS.--But now they are hid from thine eyes. (Clerical World.)
Jesus weeping over perishing sinners
I. THAT GOSPEL BLESSINGS ARE CONDUCIVE TO THE PEACE OF MANKIND, They are the things which belong unto our peace. Here let us more particularly observe--
1. What those things are to which our Lord refers. The blessings of grace in this world. Deliverance--from bondage, condemnation, and guilty fears Psa_116:16; Isa_12:1; Psa_34:4); and holiness--both of heart and life (Oba_1:17; Rom_6:22). The blessings of glory in the eternal state. An eternal life of rest, felicity, honour, and security (Rom_2:6-7).
2. How these things are conducive to our peace. They belong unto our peace as they produce sweet tranquillity of mind (Ecc_2:26). This arises from peace with God (Rom_5:1); peace of conscience 2Co_1:12); a peaceable disposition (Jam_3:18,); the joy of victory (Rom_8:37; 1Co_15:37); and the joy of hope Rom_5:2; Rom_14:17). Our text teaches us--
II. THAT THESE BLESSINGS MUST BE KNOWN TO BE ENJOYED. Oh that thou hadst known, etc. The knowledge thus necessary must be--
1. A speculative knowledge; that is, we must have a correct view of them as they are exhibited in Gods Word--For we are naturally without them Rom_3:16-18). We must seek them to obtain them (Job_22:21; Isa_27:5). And we must understand them in order that we may seek them aright: we must understand the nature of them; the necessity of them; and the way to obtain them (Pro_19:2). The knowledge here required must also be--
2. An experimental knowledge. This is evident--From the testimony of inspired apostles (2Co_5:1; 2Co_13:5; 1Jn_5:19). And from the nature of gospel blessings; spiritual sight, liberty, and health, must be experienced to be enjoyed. Our text teaches us--
III. THAT A SEASON IS AFFORDED US FOR ACQUIRING THE KNOWLEDGE OF THESE BLESSINGS.
1. This season is here called our day, because it is the time in which we are called to labour for the blessings of peace (Joh_6:27; Php_2:12-13; 2Pe_3:14).
2. This season is favourable for seeking the things here recommended; for they are set before us (Deu_30:19-20); we have strength promised to seek them with (Isa_40:31); and we have light to seek them in (Joh_12:36). Hence, we should also recollect--
3. This season is limited: it is only a day. Our text also teaches us, with respect to gospel blessings--
IV. THAT IT IS GODS WILL THEY SHOULD BE ENJOYED BY US. This is certain
1. From the wish of Christ--O that thou hadst known, etc. Such a wish we find often repeated by God in His Word, and expressed in the kindest manner; see Deu_5:29; Deu_32:29; Isa_48:18.
2. From the tears of Christ. These demonstrate the sincerity of His wish Deu_32:4); the great importance of godliness (1Ti_4:8); and the dreadful doom of impenitent sinners (Rom_2:8-9).
3. From the visitations of Christ. He visited us by His incarnation; and He still visits us by the strivings of His Spirit, the gifts of His providence, and the ministry of His Word.
V. THAT ALL WHO SEEK THESE BLESSINGS ARIGHT WILL OBTAIN THEM.
VI. THAT THE REJECTION OF THESE BLESSINGS IS PUNISHED WITH DESTRUCTION. (Theological Sketch-book.)
The tears of Jesus
We are told three times of Christ weeping: in this passage; in Joh_11:35; in Heb_5:7.
1. JESUS WEPT IN SYMPATHY WITH OTHERS. At Bethany.
1. It is not sinful to weep under affliction.
2. The mourner may always count on the sympathy of Jesus.
3. When our friends are mourning, we should weep with them.
II. THE TEAR OF JESUS COMPASSION. Text.
1. Observe the privileges which were granted the Jews, and neglected.
2. Observe the sorrow of Jesus for the lost.
III. THE TEARS OF PERSONAL SUFFERING. Probably the Agony in Gethsemane is alluded to in Heb_5:7.
1. Think not that because you suffer you are not chosen.
2. Nor that you are not a Christian because you feel weak. (W. Taylor, D. D.)
The tears of Jesus
I. Our Lord, by His tears over Jerusalem proclaims to us THE DUTY OF LOOKING AT THE THINGS OF THIS WORLD IN THEIR TRUE LIGHT, of estimating all that surrounds us, not as it appears to the hope, the fear, the enthusiasm, the pride of many, but as it is viewed in the sight of God, whose judgment shall alone stand, when the false standards and false excitements of the moment have passed for ever away. His tears speak to us the same lesson which He elsewhere taught in words, Judge not after the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. For there was apparently little to draw forth the tears of our Blessed Lord at that moment. And is it not so now, my brethren? Do we not exult and rejoice in things, and persons, and scenes which would call forth only tears from our Saviour? Oh that we may strive to see things in their true light--that is, in the light of the eternity in which we shall soon find ourselves I oh that we may estimate them, not by the standards of sense and time, but in the true balance of Gods unerring judgment
II. And, secondly, we see, as from other passages of Holy Scripture, THE EXCEEDING SINFULNESS OF SIN, in that sin has the power of calling forth tears from the Saviour in the midst of so much exultation and beauty. Ah! my brethren, nothing is so truly mournful as sin. It is the great evil of life; neither poverty, nor sickness, nor slanderous words, nor the contempt of the world, have any real sting in them apart from this. Take sin away, and the world becomes a Paradise. Take sin away, and the lives of the unfortunate are filled with happiness. It is sin which has cast a blight over existence on every side of us: trace each form of suffering and sorrow around you to its ultimate source, and you will find that source to be sin. Alas! brethren, there are many who come to Church, Sunday after Sunday, and even approach the Holy Communion, and yet know nothing of their own hearts, and the deadly poison of unrepented sin, which dwells within them, and the real peril in which their souls are placed. (S. W.Sheffington, M. A.)
Christ weeping ever Jerusalem
Tears, looked at materially, admit a very ready explanation; they are secreted by a gland, they are drawn from the fluids of the body, and are rounded and brought down by the law of gravitation. The poets give the spiritual meaning, when they call tears the blood of the wounds of the soul, the leaves of the plant of sorrow the hall and rain of lifes winter, the safety valves of the heart under pressure, the vent of anguish-showers blown up by the tempests of the soul. If God had a body He would weep. God does grieve, and ii He had a corporeal nature, tears would not be inconsistent with all the recognized attributes of Deity. There is an eloquence in tears which is irresistible. There is a sacredness in tears which almost forbids the discussion of weeping. There is a dignity in tears which makes them consistent with the utmost intelligence and strength and nobility of character. There are men with hard heads, cold hearts, good digestion, and full purses, who know nothing of tears; but he who values true manhood and spiritual riches will not envy such men. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
1. Jesus wept as a man, as the man Christ Jesus, as the perfect man Christ Jesus. Behold the man. To the utmost extent of human sadness was Jesus grieved, when He beheld the city, and wept over it.
2. Jesus wept as a Jew. The broadest love may be discriminating, and may include strong individual attachments. Jesus was interested in every land and in every race. No land or race was shut out from His heart. But there were special attachments to Palestine, and strong ties to the holy city.
3. Jesus wept as a teacher. Light had come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. And this was the condemnation. He was conscious of a pure heart in His teaching, and He saw the corruption of the human heart in the rejection and contempt of His instructions.
4. Jesus wept as a foreteller, as a prophet. He who was the brightness of the Fathers glory, and the express image of His person, declared the mind and will and heart of God, when, beholding this doomed city, He wept over it.
5. Jesus wept as the Messiah. He was the womans seed promised in Paradise. He was the Shiloh seen by Jacob. He was the prophet revealed to Moses. He was the Prince of peace spoken of by Isaiah. To Him gave all the prophets witness. The law was His shadow. Much was written in the Psalms and prophets concerning Him. His history and character, His words and works, fulfilled various scriptures written by inspired men. His claim to the Messiahship was distinct and full and clear. Yet He was despised and rejected of men. Yet when He came to His own, His own received Him not. This was a sorrow for His Fathers sake. He was the fufilment of His Fathers ancient and oft-repeated promise. He was His Fathers unspeakable gift. What a requital of infinite and eternal love! And this was a sorrow for the peoples sake. Instead of receiving Him they were looking for another. But Jesus knew that theft eyes would fail by looking in vain.
6. Jesus wept as a Saviour. He looked upon those who would not be saved, and wept over them. Measure His sorrow by His knowledge and by His hatred of sin; measure His sorrow by His own freedom from sin; measure His sorrow by the love of His great heart. To see evil, and to be unable to remedy it, is anguish; but to see evil, and to be able and willing to remove it, and to be baffled by the wilfulness and waywardness of the sufferer or of the evil-doer, is anguish keener and deeper still. Jesus knew all this when He beheld the city, and wept over it.
7. Jesus wept as God manifest in flesh. The God grieved and the man wept. The Divine nature does suffer, and these tears reveal the fact. The whole nature of the Christ, the Redeemer of men, was sad, when Jesus on this occasion wept. These tears, then, were the tears of a man, a patriot, a teacher, and a prophet. They were the tears of the Messiah and the Saviour and the God-man. They were both human and divine, tears of pity and patriotism, tears of sympathy and of displeasure, tears of a wounded spirit and of a loving soul. (S. Martin, D. D.)
The tears of Jesus
1. The tears of Jesus Christ are compassionate tears. Like His heavenly Father, He has no pleasure in the death of him that dieth. The office of the Judge is not His willing office. It made Him sorrowful to see men sin. It made Him sorrowful to see men reject the gospel. It made Him sorrowful to see men choose their own misery.
2. Again, the tears of Jesus are admonitory, warning--some have even called them terrible tears. He would not have wept, I think we may say with confidence, merely because a little pain, or a little suffering, or even a little anguish and misery, lay before us. He shrank not from pain: He endured suffering--yea, the death of the Cross. He faced anguish and misery, and flinched not. There was only one thing which Jesus Christ could not endure--or, if He endured it for an hour Himself, certainly could not advise others, nor bear others, to encounter without Him--and that was the real displeasure, the prolonged hiding of the countenance, the actual, terrible, punitive wrath of God. It was because He foresaw that for impenitent, obstinate, obdurate sinners, that He wept these bitter tears. I call them admonitory tears; I will even consent to call them terrific tears. They seem to say to us, Oh, presume not too far!
3. I will add another thing. The tears of Jesus were exemplary tears. As He wept, so ought we to weep. We ought to weep tears of sorrow over our sins. We ought to weep tears of repentance over our past lives, over our many short-comings and backslidings, omissions of good and commissions of evil, lingering rebelling obstinate sins, cold poor languishing dying graces. But more than this. We ought to weep more exactly as He wept. He wept not for Himself: so also, in our place, should we.
4. I will add, without comment, a fourth word--the tears of Jesus Christ are consolatory tears. Yes, this, in all their accents, is the sweet undersong--Jesus Christ cares for us. The tears of Jesus are, above all else,consolatory. They say to us, Provision is made for you. They say to us, It is not of Christ, it is not of God, if you perish. They say to us, Escape for your life--because a better, and a higher, and a happier life is here for you! (Dean Vaughan)
Christ weeping over sinners
I. WHAT OUR LORD DID: He beheld the city, and wept over it.
1. He wept for the sins they had committed, and the evil treatment which He Himself should receive at their hands.
2. He foresaw the calamities which were coming upon them, and desired not the woful day.
3. Spiritual judgments also awaited them, and this was matter of still greater lamentation.
4. The final consequence of all this also affected the compassionate Saviour; namely, their everlasting ruin in the world to come.
II. Consider WHAT OUR LORD SAID AS WELL AS DID, when He came near and beheld the city--If thou hadst known, etc. Here observe--
1. The whole of religion is expressed by knowledge. Not speculative, but such as sanctifies the heart and influences the conduct--the holy wisdom that cometh from above.
2. That which it chiefly concerns us to know is, the things which belong to our peace.
3. There is a limit to which this knowledge is confined. This thy day.
4. When this time is elapsed, our case will be for ever hopeless: Now the things which belong unto thy peace are hid from thine eyes! Improvement.
(1) did Christ weep for sinners; and shall they not weep for themselves? Does not God call us to weeping; and does not our case call for it?
(2) Let us beware of rejecting the gospel, and trifling with our privileges, lest we be given up to final impenitence. Insensibility is the forerunner of destruction:
(3) Let those who are truly acquainted with the things which belong to their peace be thankful, and adore the grace which has made them to differ. (B. Beddome, M. A.)
.
Christ weeping over Jerusalem
I. I observe, in the first place, that THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS, THE KNOWLEDGE OF WHICH IS ESSENTIAL TO YOUR ETERNAL PEACE.
1. It deeply concerns you to know, for example, in what situation you stand, with respect to God and the world to come.
2. Again, it deeply concerns us to know, whether God, by any means, may be reconciled, to those who have set themselves in opposition to His will.
3. Once more, it deeply concerns you to know, what state of mind is required in you, in order that you may profit by the grace and mercy of your dying Saviour.
II. I observe, secondly, that THE SON OF GOD IS MOST AFFECTIONATELY DESIROUS THAT WE SHOULD KNOW THESE THINGS.
III. NEVERTHELESS, THE COMPASSION OF CHRIST WILL NOT STOP THE COURSE OF HIS JUSTICE, IF THESE THINGS BE FINALLY DISREGARDED.
1. HOW inexcusable is the thoughtless sinner, who, after all, will not know the things which belong unto his peace!
2. But reflect, on the other hand, how welcome will every returning sinner be! (J. Jowett, M. A.)
The Saviours tears over Jerusalem
The sight of Jerusalem, then, as Jesus was about to enter it, suggested the thought of national misery and degradation. He looked on the Temple, the place where the adorations and sacrifices of successive generations had been offered; it was now profaned. He looked on the city, the metropolis of Judaea, and the scene of high solemnities, and it was peopled by transgressors; was soon to be reduced by the might of a conquering power, its streets to be drenched with blood, and its buildings to be razed. Our Lord might chiefly allude to outward calamity, but can we doubt that the moral state of Jerusalems inhabitants was what gave Him most concern? The doom spoken of descended as an act of vengeance, inflicted by God. But Jesus thought also of a still more pitiable wreck. He reflected on the consequences of unpardoned sin. It was not merely the overthrow of tower and palace, the destruction of what had been for so long a house of prayer; this called not forth an expression of such deep concern. It was principally an idea of the spiritual ruin coming upon such as had transgressed against so much light and warning, and who had resisted such earnest and oft-repeated pleadings.
I. In further speaking from these verses, we may consider, first of all, the words to imply, that the people of Jerusalem HAD ENJOYED A DAY--OF GRACE, NOW DRAWING TO A CLOSE--a time which had not been followed by suitable and adequate improvement.
II. Let us consider our Lords manifestation of feeling and His words on this occasion, as showing THE IMPORTANCE OF IN TIME ATTENDING TO THE THINGS THAT BELONG TO OUR PEACE.
III. It would appear that THERE IS A SET TIME ALLOWED FOR DOING THIS. Though it were true that the spirit of God ceases not to strive with man; though there were not danger of the sinner being wholly given up to his idols, yet to defer so great a work is hazardous and foolish. Is that the best time for turning to God when languor and decay are attacking the frame?
IV. Our Saviours declaration, when He bewailed Jerusalems impenitence, is A PLEDGE OF HIS CONCERN FOR THE STATE OF SINNERS GENERALLY. Observe how long-suffering He was, saying still, Turn ye at My reproof. They had slain His prophets; they were about to shed His blood; they had cast dishonour on the law and appointments of the Most High, provoking Him to anger; yet Jesus sorrow showed the grief that filled His soul. These were the words of One who knew no guile, and to whom iniquity was abhorrent. Be encouraged therefore, O sinner, however many thine iniquities and pungent thy sense of guilt, to seek His favour. (A. R.Bonar, D. D.)
Jesus weeping over sinners
I. SIN IS NO TRIFLE.
II. EVERY MAN HAS HIS DAY OF MERCIFUL VISITATION. But mercy has its limits. The day of grace will close.
III. THE SINNERS DOOM IS SEALED WHEN CHRIST GIVES HIM UP. The die cast salvation beyond reach. Hope gone.
IV. IT IS A LOST SEASON OF MERCY AND OPPORTUNITY THAT WILL SO EMBITTER THE ETERNITY OF THE LOST. (J. M. Sherwood, D. D.)
Tears on beholding a multitude of men
There is always something heart-moving in the sight of a multitude of men. The Persian Xerxes shed tears as he watched the interminable ranks march past him on the way to Greece. The iron Napoleon once melted as he reviewed the vast army which followed him to his Russian campaign. And when the proudest, sternest, and most unfeeling hearts have shown emotion, what should we expect from the pitiful Son of God? Whenever He saw the multitude, and especially the city multitude, He was moved with compassion. That mass of life, heaving and throbbing like a troubled sea; that ceaseless tramp of eager feet and confused roar of innumerable voices; that measureless volume of mingled hope and despair; that infinitely varied array of faces, old and young, careless and anxious, joyous and miserable,--of laughing girls and broken-hearted widows, of jocund joys and haggard old men, with hungry looks; that incongruous procession of wealth and poverty, of want and superfluity, of rags and velvet, of vulgarity and refinement, of respectability and vice, of plump and well-fed life and vagrant homelessness, of purity and shame, of sweet religious hope and dismal despair, of titled splendour and nameless vagabondism, of feet winged with hope climbing to ambitions goal and of feet hurrying to the dark river to end the tragedy of bitter memories in one last cold plunge; that myriad-headed life, with all its selfish isolations, its fierce loneliness amid the jostling crowd, its every heart knowing its own bitterness or gloating over its own joy, unknown and unsympathized with by its neighbours; that awful race of passion and frenzied quest in which the runners forget that they are immortal souls with Gods image stamped on every face. How was it possible for Him, to whom all souls were dear--all the children of the heavenly Father--how was it possible for Him to look upon that, or think of it, without emotion melting into tears? What man or woman of us can think of it without sharing in its pity and pathetic interest? (J. Greenhough, M. A.)
Christs compassion for the Jewish people
I. INQUIRE WHAT THERE WAS IN THE STATE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE, WHICH SO MOVED THE COMPASSION OF OUR LORD. The privileges of the Jewish people were above all lands. They were blessed with a divine theocracy; and to them belonged, amongst other most important privileges, the oracles of God. What could God have done which He had not done for them? The compassion of our Lord was moved, therefore--By their inflexible obstinacy. Theirs was the sin of men who hate the light, lest by it their deeds should be reproved!
2. Inveterate hostility. That greatness and power, when abused, should be hated, would not excite our surprise; but that goodness and mercy, when exercised, should be hated, might well excite our surprise, were it not abundantly proved in their history.
3. By their impending judgments.
II. CONSIDER WHAT THE PRESENT STATE OF THAT PEOPLE CALLS FOR FROM OUR HANDS. (W. Marsh, M. A.)
The tears and lamentations of Jesus
I. First, we are to contemplate OUR LORDS INWARD GRIEF.
1. We note concerning it that it was so intense that it could not be restrained by the occasion. The occasion was one entirely by itself: a brief gleam of sunlight in a cloudy day, a glimpse of summer amid a cruel winter. That must have been deep grief which ran counter to all the demands of the season, and violated, as it were, all the decorum of the occasion, turning a festival into a mourning, a triumph into a lament.
2. The greatness of His grief may be seen, again, by the fact that it overmastered other very natural feelings which might have been, and perhaps were, excited by the occasion. Our Lord stood on the brow of the hill where He could see Jerusalem before Him in all its beauty. What thoughts it awakened in Him! His memory was stronger and quicker than ours, for His mental powers were unimpaired by sin, and He could remember all the great and glorious things which had been spoken of Zion, the city of God. Yet, as He remembered them all, no joy came into His soul because of the victories of David or the pomp of Solomon; temple and tower had lost all charm for Him; the joy of the earth brought no joy to Him, but at the sight of the venerable city and its holy and beautiful house He wept.
3. This great sorrow of His reveals to us the nature of our Lord. How complex is the person of Christ! He foresaw that the city would be destroyed, and though He was divine He wept. While His nature on the one side of it sees the certainty of the doom, the same nature from another side laments the dread necessity.
4. In this our Lord reveals the very heart of God. Did He not say, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father? Here, then, you see the Father Himself, even he who said of old, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn, etc.
5. From a practical lesson, we may remark that this weeping of the Saviour should much encourage men to trust Him. Those who desire His salvation may approach Him without hesitation, for His tears prove His hearty desires for our good.
6. This, too, I think is an admonishment to Christian workers. Never let us speak of the doom of the wicked harshly, flippantly or without holy grief.
7. Let me add that I think the lament of Jesus should instruct all those who would now come to Him as to the manner of their approach. While I appealed to you just now were there any.who said, I would fain come to Jesus, but how shall I come? The answer is,--come with sorrow and with prayer, even as it is written, they shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them. As Jesus meets you so meet Him.
III. We are now to consider our LORDS VERBAL LAMENTATIONS. These are recorded in the following words: Oh that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.
1. First, notice, he laments over the fault by which they perished--Oh that thou hadst known. Ignorance, wilful ignorance, was their ruin.
2. The Lord laments the bliss which they had lost, the peace which could not be theirs. Oh that thou hadst known the things that belong unto thy peace.
3. But our Lord also lamented over the persons who had lost peace. Observe that He says,--Oh that thou hadst known, even thou. Thou art Jerusalem, the favoured city. It is little that Egypt did not know, that Tyre and Sidon did not know, but that thou shouldst not know! Ah, friends, if Jesus were here this morning, He might weep over some of you and say--Oh that thou hadst known, even thou.
4. Our Lord wept because of the opportunity which they had neglected. He said, At least in this thy day. It was such a favoured day: they aforetime had been warned by holy men, but now they had the Son of God Himself to preach to them.
5. The Lord Jesus mourned again because He saw the blindness which had stolen over them. They had shut their eyes so fast that now they could not see: their ears which they had stopped had become dull and heavy; their hearts which they had hardened had waxen gross; so that they could not see with their eyes, nor hear with their ears, nor feel in their hearts, nor be converted that He should heal them. Why, the truth was as plain as the sun in the heavens, and yet they could not see it; and so is the gospel at this hour to many of you, and yet you perceive it not.
6. Lastly, we know that the great flood-gates of Christs grief were pulled up because of the ruin which He foresaw. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The tears of Jesus
Strangely mysterious are these tears! But they were as real as they are mysterious--solemnly and awfully real--the bitterest that ever descended from a grief-stricken countenance. They were the tears of a man, but the expression of Deity; and viewing them in the light of the ancient love and peculiar complacency with which Jerusalem and its inhabitants had been divinely regarded, we may designate them as the tears of disappointed affection. How briny and how many have been such tears, as they have fallen, hot and scalding, from the eyes of broken-hearted weepers! There are the tears of the father, welling up from the depths of parental love, in thinking of his prodigal boy. There are the tears of the mother, wept over a lost daughter--tears that had been less bitter had the green turf received them instead of a memory of shame. Bitter, indeed, are such tears, but not so intensive of sorrow as the tears of Jesus wept over lost souls. I have read somewhere of a traveller who found a fragment of an arch among the ruins of Jerusalem; and by calculating on the principles of architectural construction, he proved that the arch, when complete, must have spanned the gulf that was near the city, and have rested on the other side. That ruined arch, to the eye of that traveller, indicated what it originally was, as contrasted with what it then was. Sin in the soul reveals the same thing. In man, apart from sin, we see what the soul was made to be. In sin we see what the soul is--a noble thing in ruins. It is solemnizing to walk amidst the vestiges of some sacred temple--to pick up here and there fragments of what were once objects of beauty and strength; to see in one place pieces of an antique window; in another, the segment of a colossal pillar; elsewhere, a remnant of tracery work, with bits of rich and curious mosaic. But what must have been the emotions of Jesus, as He stood there before the collapsed powers, and contemplated the desecrated sanctities of human temples!--souls once so fair in beauty, and so glorious in strength, that the Creator looked upon them, and behold, they were very good! Now so completely a wreck that as the Saviour looked, He beheld and wept! How fearful is the power belonging to man! Here we see the Son of God--One whose might and dominion over all material forces, satanic agencies, and physical ailments were absolute. No power stood in His way as a resisting medium save one; and this was a power of resistance that opened the floodgates of soul-sorrow, drew tears from His eyes, and broke forth in the convulsive exclamation: O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! In the light of these tears what awful responsibility is seen to clothe the human spirit! What power of will!--of a will that can resist the Divine will! How often would I, but ye would not! (G. H. Jackson.)
Tears a true mark of manhood
If it really was so, as has been gathered from Epiphanius, that some of the ancient Christians, or persons who bore the name, wished to expunge from the canon of Scripture what is said of the Saviours weeping on these two occasions, as if it had been unworthy of so glorious a Person to shed tears, it was very strange, and betrayed at once a sinful disrespect for the inspired Word of God, a leaning to the doctrines of Stoical pride and apathy, and an ignorance of what constitutes real excellence of human character. It is certainly a mark of imbecility to be given to weep for trifling reasons; but to weep occasionally, and when there is an adequate cause, instead of being a weakness, is perfectly compatible with true courage and manly sense, nay, is, in fact, a trait in the character of the majority of the most heroic and stout-hearted men of whom we read, either in sacred or profane history. As examples of this from Scripture may be mentioned, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, David, Jonathan, Hezekiah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Peter, and Paul. Who more firm than the apostle of the Gentiles?--yet he thus writes to the Philippians, Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction. As for King David, that mighty valiant man, and man of war, the ancestor, and, in some respects, the type of Christ, it is worthy of notice that he wept at the very place were Jesus now wept; for it is thus written, in the account of his fleeing from Jerusalem, on the rebellion of Absalom, David went up by the ascent of Mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and had his head covered; and all the people that were with him covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up. Nor is it foreign to the defence of this act of weeping, as consonant with the character of the brave, to produce the authority of heathen writers. Homer, then, attributes tears to several of his heroes, Virgil to AEneas, and their respective historians to Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cato, Brutus, Marcellus, and Scipio; and one of the Latin poets says, Nature shows that she gives very tender hearts to mankind, by giving them tears. This is the best part of our disposition or feeling. Beyond a doubt, the tenderness which our Lord now displayed harmonized with, and set off by contrast, the wonderful resolution which animated Him, when He turned not back, but set His face like a flint to what was now before Him. (James Foote, M. A.)
The tears of love
I heard the other day of a bad boy whom his father had often rebuked and chastened, but the lad grew worse. One day he had been stealing, and his father felt deeply humiliated. He talked to the boy, but his warning made no impression; and when he saw his child so callous the good man sat down in his chair and burst out crying, as if his heart would break. The boy stood very indifferent for a time, but at last as he saw the tears falling on the floor, and heard his father sobbing, he cried, Father, dont; father, dont do that: what do you cry for, father? Ah! my boy, he said, I cannot help thinking what will become of you, growing up as you are. You will be a lost man, and the thought of it breaks my heart. Oh, father! he said, pray dont cry. I will be better. Only dont cry, and I will not vex you again. Under God that was the means of breaking down the boys love of evil, and I hope it led to his salvation. Just that is Christ to you. He cannot bear to see you die, and He weeps over you, saying, How often would I have blessed you, and you would not! Oh, by the tears of Jesus, wept over you in effect when He wept over Jerusalem, turn to Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
If thou hadst known, even thou
Christs lament over Jerusalem
Let us observe, briefly, that in our Lords lament over the doomed city there is to be traced a threefold vein of feeling.
1. The tears and words of Jesus Christ are the tears and words of a true patriot, for Jerusalem was the heart and head of the nation. It was, politically speaking, more what Paris is to France than what London is to England, and although Christs ministry had been largely spent in Galilee, we know from St. Johns Gospel that at the great festivals He had laboured often and continuously in the sacred city. It may be thought that there was no place for patriotism in the heart of Jesus Christ--that coming as He did from heaven with a mission to the whole race of men, and with a work to do for each and for all, He could not thus cherish a mere localized and bounded enthusiasm--that, as all had interest in Him, His interest must reciprocally be for all and world-embracing--that as in Him, according to His apostle, there is neither Greek nor Jew, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free, but all are one, so He must have been Himself incapable of that restricted and particular concentration of thought and feeling and action upon the concerns of a single race or district which we practically understand by patriotism. My brethren, there is an element of truth in this. Jesus Christ, although a Jew by birth, belonged by His freedom from local peculiarities to the whole human family. He was, in a higher, more comprehensive, more representative sense than any before Him, human. All that was best, all that was richest in humanity, had its place in Him, and this is, at any rate, one import of the title by which He was commonly wont to speak of Himself as the Son of Man. But His relation to the whole race did not destroy His relation to His country any more than it destroyed His relation to His family--to His mother, to His foster-father, to those first cousins of His who, after the Hebrew manner, are called His brethren. Certainly He subordinated family ties as well as national ties to the claims of the kingdom of God--to His Fathers business as He called it when only twelve years old. But because He kept these lower sympathies, claims, obligations, in their proper place, He did not ignore--He did not disavow them. To Him, as the Son of Mary, His family was dear; to Him, as the Son of David, the history of His country was dear. He would have parted with something of His true and deep humanity had it been otherwise; and therefore when He gazed on the city of His ancestors (for such it was) and saw in vision the Roman conqueror already approaching, and casting up earthworks on that very hill on which He was standing, and then by and by entering the sacred city with fire and sword, nor resting from His work till he had ploughed up the very foundations, till not one stone had been left upon another, His Jewish heart felt a pang of anguish which became tears and words. If thou hadst known, even thou at least in this thy day the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.
2. But the lamentation of Christ over Jerusalem had a higher than any political or social meaning. The polity of Israel was not merely a state: it was a church as well. It was the kingdom of God among men. It is this which explains the passionate emotion towards Jerusalem which abounds in the Psalter--the joy in her glory, in her beauty, in her world-wide fame--the enthusiasm which can walk about Zion and go round about her andtell the towers thereof--the anger deep and strong which cannot forget that in the day of Jerusalem it was Edom which joined in the cry for her destruction--the woe which cannot, which will not, be comforted when she lies before the heathen in her ruin and her desolation. It was as a theocratic kingdom--as we should say, a Church--that Jerusalem and the whole Jewish polity was so dear to the religious Jew; and this aspect of the sacred city underlies those words which Jesus spoke on the road from Bethany. Once more. Jerusalem was not merely a country or a church; it was a hive of men and women: it was a home of souls. Among these, to each of these, the Divine Christ had preached, but had preached in vain it was not the threatened architecture of the Herodian temple which drew tears from those Divine eyes. It was not chiefly the tragic ending of a history rich in its interest and its incident. It was the condition, the destiny, the eternal destiny of the individual men and women of that very generation to which Christ had ministered? What of them? They had heard Him; and what were they after hearing Him? Ah! it was over those souls for which He was presently to shed His blood that Jesus wept His tears. It was souls that for Him made up Jerusalem. And it is in this last sense that our Lords words come most closely home to us. Our influence upon our country, upon our portion of the Church, is necessarily very, fractionally small. We are each one as a private soldier in a great army, who has only to obey orders that are given by others; but in our individual capacities it is otherwise. Here as single souls we decide as well as act. Here we are free to make the most of opportunities: we are responsible for doing so. And opportunities come to us as we walk along the path of life, as Christ came to the Jews eighteen centuries ago. They come to us: we see them coming. We know that they are at hand--that they are close upon us. We know--we might know--that they will not be within our reach always--perhaps not to-morrow. It is the time, the solemn time, of our visitation. It is some friend who has brought before us for the first time the true meaning, the true solemnity, the blessedness of life. It is some change of circumstances, some great soul-subduing sorrow which has forced upon us a sense of the transitory nature of all things here below. It is some one truth or series of truths about our Divine Lord, His person, or His work, unknown, or known and rejected before, which has been borne in upon us with a strength and clearness of conviction which we cannot, if we would, possibly mistake, and which involves obedience, action, sacrifice, as its necessary correlatives. It is an atmosphere of new aspirations, of higher thoughts, of longings to be other and better than we are, that has, we know not how, taken possession of us. It is the presence and the breathing, could we only know it, of a heavenly Friend who haunts our spirits that, if we will, He may sanctify them. Christ--in one word--has been abroad by His Spirit in the streets and secret passages of the soul, as of old He was abroad in the by-ways and the temple-courts of Jerusalem; and the question is, Have we welcomed Him?--Have we held Him by the feet, and refused to let Him go except He bless us? We are worse off though we may not trace the deterioration. We have suffered if not without yet assuredly within. We have been tried, and failed; and failure means weakness entailed upon, incorporated into, the system of the soul. (Canon Liddon.)
Tenth Sunday after Trinity
We have here, not only weeping but tearful lamentation, weeping accompanied with voice and words; and the weeper is the God-man, Christ Jesus. Eternal Deity is not an unfeeling Almightiness. He has a heart, and that heart can be touched, and grieved, and moved with compassion, and stirred with emotions.
I. GOD INTENDS GREAT THINGS FOR THOSE TO WHOM HE HAS GIVEN HIS WORD AND ORDINANCES. He had chosen Jerusalem, and set up His temple there, and made it the centre of His most particular dealings with the elect nation, that it might reflect His glory, show forth His praises, and be the crown and rejoicing of the whole earth. The thing meant to be reached and made the everlasting possession of its people, is here summed up by the Saviour in the word peace; not mere rest from disturbance and strife; nor yet only health and well-being, as the word often denotes in the Old Testament; but that which is the subject of Divine promise, the highest results of Gods mercy and favour, the true Messianic blessing of everlasting freedom from the distresses and consequences of sin, and exaltation to near and holy relationship with God and heaven. And great things are meant for us, even the same things of peace which pertained at first to the ancient Jerusalem.
II. THERE IS A DAY OR SEASON WHEREIN TO KNOW AND ATTEND TO THE THINGS THAT RESPECT THIS PEACE. And unto us have their forfeited privileges now descended. This is our day, beaming with all the light and blessings which once belonged to the Jews, only marked by an easier ritual and a better economy (Heb_12:18-24).
III. THE DAY OF GRACE HAS ITS BOUNDARIES OVER WHICH GODS SAVING MERCIES DO NOT FOLLOW THOSE WHO MISIMPROVE THEM. There was a Jewish age which ended in judgment, and the cutting off of those who failed to improve it; and so this present age must also end. The day of grace is limited, on the one side, by the lateness of the period in life at which the gospel comes to a man, and, on the other, by the failure of the faculties necessary to handle and use it. It is also quite possible for ones day of grace to terminate while yet both reason and life continue. There may be a loss of the external means and opportunities of salvation, or such a separation from them, as for ever to prevent our reaching it. And where there has been long and persistent resistance of grace, habitual suppression of religious convictions and feelings, wilful refusal to fulfil known duty, and persevering withstanding of the influences and impulses of the Spirit of God, there is not only a possibility, but great danger of bringing on a state of callous indifference, and incapacitation which puts the offender beyond the reach of salvation.
IV. THE TERMINATION OF THE DAY OF GRACE, WITHOUT HAVING SECURED THE BLESSING FOR WHICH IT WAS INTENDED, IS AN AWFUL CALAMITY. In the case of Jerusalem it brought tears and lamentations from the Son of God. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.)
The solicitude of Christ for incorrigible sinners
I. SPECIFY SOME OF THE MORE OBVIOUS CHARACTERISTICS OF INCORRIGIBLE MEN. There are several classes of people who, to say the least, are greatly exposed to unyielding impenitence, and who give fearful indication of final ruin.
1. This may be affirmed of men of a sceptical turn of mind. Such men are very apt never to become pious.
2. Another class of persons who are rarely made the subjects of grace are those of notoriously loose and vicious habits.
3. It may also be remarked, that men who are in the habit of making light of sacred things, and trifling with God, seldom become men of piety. If they can scoff at religion, if they can deride its conscientious disciples, there is little reason to believe they will ever become its disciples themselves.
4. In the same melancholy multitude are likewise found all those who are ardently and eagerly attached to the world.
5. There is another class of men who exhibit fearful symptoms of deep degeneracy, and they are those whose chosen companions are the guilty enemies of God and all righteousness. Men cannot habitually associate with those who are destitute of all moral principle, and have no fear of God before their eyes, without partaking of their character.
6. Those persons also give strong indications of being incorrigible, who have become hardened under religious privileges.
7. Still more hopeless are those who have outlived conviction, and resisted the Holy Spirit.
8. There is one class of persons more whose condition is as hopeless as that of any we have mentioned; I mean, the hypocrite and self-deceiver.
II. We proceed, in the second place, to inquire, WHAT THERE IS IN THE CONDITION OF SUCH PERSONS TO EXCITE THE SYMPATHY AND SOLICITUDE OF CHRIST.
1. Their determined rejection of offered mercy. This is like a dagger to Christs heart.
2. Their perversion of the means of grace.
3. Their utterly depraved character. And now, in conclusion, I cannot forbear remarking, in the first place, how unlike the Spirit of Christ is the apathy of the people of God in view of the perishing condition of impenitent men. Secondly, our subject strongly enforces, the importance of a diligent and anxious improvement of the day and means of salvation. Once more, in view of our subject, we may not avoid the inquiry, Are there none in this assembly towards whom the Saviour is now exercising the same tender compassion, which He exercised over incorrigible Jerusalem? I only add, in the last place, if such are the compassions of Christ towards guilty sinners, what confidence may we have that He will save all that come to Him. (G. Spring, D. D.)
Christ weeping over Jerusalem
I. WHY DID HE WEEP? It has been supposed that the picture of that approaching ruin and desolation which was coming so rapidly upon the unconscious capital, at once appalled and overwhelmed Him. He sketches that picture in strong and rapid strokes Himself (Luk_19:43-44). And that which added to it an element of profoundest gloom, was the unconsciousness of those whom such a doom was threatening. Scarce a soul in Jerusalem seems to have been greatly sensible either of the national decadence or of its own individual peril. Must it not have been this that made Him weep? I do not doubt that it was an element in that Divine and unmatched sorrow. But that sorrow loses its profoundest significance unless we see that it had another and deeper element still. What is it, that in the thought of a wise and good man costs him the deepest pang when he encounters the waywardness and wrong-doing of his own child? Is it merely that, as he looks forward, he sees the inevitable misery which that waywardness will entail? But you may be sure that such a parent is thinking of something else with a keener anguish still. He is thinking, What must the nature be that is so insensible to love and duty and goodness! He is thinking, What are the moral sensibilities of one to whom baseness and ingratitude and wrong-doing are such easy and instinctive things! He is thinking, What have I to hope for from a child whose ruling impulse come out in deeds like these! And even so, I think, it was with Christ. Nay, we are not left to our surmises. His own words tell us what made Him weep: If thou thine eyes. It was this spectacle of human insensibility, of eyes that would not see, and of ears that would not hear, that broke the Saviour down. The love of goodness, the longing for righteousness, the aspiration for nobleness and spiritual emancipation--these were dead in them. And it was this that made Christ weep.
II. And this brings me to that other question suggested by these tears of Christ. WHAT DID THEY MOVE HIM TO DO. Remember, that so far as the Jerusalem of that day was concerned, He Himself intimates the case to have been hopeless. And when that scornful indifference on their part was exchanged at last for a distinctive enmity, with that needless prodigality, as doubtless it seemed even to some of His own disciples, He flung away His life. Flung it away? Aye, but only how soon and how triumphantly to take it again! Such a history is pregnant with lessons for to-day. There are a good many of us, who from the elevation of a thoughtful observation, are looking down on the city in which we live. How fevered and faithless and morally insensible seem multitudes of those who live in it. How can such a one look down on all this and not weep? God forbid that such a spectacle should leave any one of us insensible or unmoved! But when that is said, let us not forget that with Christ weeping was but the prelude and forerunner of working. There were tears first, but then what heroic and untiring toil! I hear men say, no matter what good cause invites their cooperation, It is of no use. Most men are bound to go to the devil; it is the part of wisdom to get out of the way and let them go as quickly as possible; and I brand all such cries, no matter in what tones of complacent hopelessness they may utter themselves, as treason against God and slander against humanity. Faithlessness like this is a denial of God, and of goodness as well. And as such, it is an atheism with which no terms are to be made nor any truce to be kept. For, high above our blinded vision there sits One who, as He once wept over Jerusalem and then died for it, now lives for Jerusalem and for all His wayward children, and who bids us watch and strive with Him for those for whom once He shed His blood! And if He is still watching, even as once He wept over His creatures, God forbid that of any human soul you and I should quite despair! And therefore least of all our own souls. And so, while we weep, whether it be over the evil that is in others or in ourselves, our tears will be rainbows, bright with the promise of an immortal hope. Aye, far above the sorrows and the sins of the city that now is, we shall see the splendours of the New Jerusalem that is yet to be. (Bishop H. C. Potter.)
The sinners day
I. THAT THE SINNER HAS HIS DAY OF MERCY AND HOPE.
1. It is a period of light. Night is the season of darkness.
2. A period of activity. We must work now, or never.
3. An exceedingly limited period. A day. But a step from cradle to tomb.
4. The present period is our day.
II. THIS DAY IS ACCOMPANIED WITH THINGS WHICH BELONG TO THE SINNERS PEACE. By peace here we understand the welfare, the salvation of the sinner. The peace of God is the pledge and earnest of every blessing. Now, in this day we have--
1. The gracious provisions of peace. Christ has made peace by His cross, and before us is the cross lifted up.
2. The invitations and promises of peace belong to this day.
3. The means of obtaining peace belong to this day.
III. THAT IF THESE THINGS ARE NOT KNOWN NOW, IN THIS OUR DAY, THEY WILL BE FOR EVER HIDDEN FROM OUR EYES. Now observe--
1. The future state of the sinner is one of night. As such it is a period of darkness.
2. This state of night will be everlasting.
APPLICATION: We learn--
1. That the sinners present state is one of probation and mercy.
2. That God sincerely desires the salvation of souls.
3. That all who lose their souls do so by their own impenitency. (J. Burns, D. D.)
Christs lamentation over Jerusalem
I. THE EXHIBITION OF CHARACTER WHICH IT GIVES US. Here we perceive--
1. The Saviours deep interest in the state of man.
2. The Saviours compassion to the chief of sinners.
II. The sentiments it conveys.
1. That there are things belonging to a mans peace which it becomes him to know.
2. That there is a day in which a man might know these things.
3. That if this day be wasted these things will be hidden from him. (Essex Remembrancer)
Three times in a nations history
These words, which rang the funeral knell of Jerusalem, tell out in our ears this day a solemn lesson; they tell us that in the history of nations, and also, it may be, in the personal history of individuals, there are three times--a time of grace, a time of blindness, and a time of judgment. This, then, is our subject--the three times in a nations history. When the Redeemer spake, it was for Jerusalem the time of blindness; the time of grace was past; that of judgment was to come.
I. THE TIME OF GRACE. We find it expressed here in three different modes: first, in this thy day; then, the things which belong to thy peace; and thirdly, the time of thy visitation. And from this we understand the meaning of a time of grace; it was Jerusalems time of opportunity. The time in which the Redeemer appeared was that in which faith was almost worn cut. He found men with their faces turned backward to the past, instead of forward to the future. They were as children clinging to the garments of a relation they have lost; life there was not, faith there was not--only the garments of a past belief. He found them groaning under the dominion of Rome; rising up against it, and thinking it their worst evil. The coldest hour of all the night is that which immediately precedes the dawn, and in that darkest hour of Jerusalems night her Light beamed forth; her Wisest and Greatest came in the midst of her, almost unknown, born under the law, to emancipate those who were groaning under the law. His life, the day of His preaching, was Jerusalems time of grace. During that time the Redeemer spake the things which belonged to her peace: but they rejected them and Him. Now, respecting this day of grace we have two remarks to make. First: In this advent of the Redeemer there was nothing outwardly remarkable to the men of that day. And just such as this is Gods visitation to us. Generally, the day of Gods visitation is not a day very remarkable outwardly. Bereavements, sorrows--no doubt in these God speaks; but there are other occasions far more quiet and unobtrusive, but which are yet plainly days of grace. A scruple which others do not see, a doubt coming into the mind respecting some views held sacred by the popular creed, a sense of heart loneliness and solitariness, a feeling of awful misgiving when the future lies open before us, the dread feeling of an eternal godlessness, for men who are living godless lives now--these silent moments unmarked, are the moments in which the Eternal is speaking to our souls. Once more: That day of Jerusalems visitation--her day of grace--was short. A lesson here also for us. A few actions often decide the destiny of individuals, because they give a destination and form to habits; they settle the tone and form of the mind from which there will be in this life no alteration. We say not that God never pleads a long time, but we say this, that sometimes God speaks to a nation or to a man but once. If not heard then, His voice is heard no more.
II. THE TIME OF BLINDNESS. If a man will not see, the law is he shall not see; if he will not do what is right when he knows the right, then right shall become to him wrong, and wrong shall seem to be right.
III. THE TIME OF JUDGMENT. It came in the way of natural consequences. We make a great mistake respecting judgments. Gods judgments are not arbitrary, but the results of natural laws. The historians tell us that Jerusalem owed her ruin to the fanaticism and obstinate blindness of her citizens; from all of which her Redeemer came to emancipate her. Had they understood, Blessed are the boor in spirit, Blessed are the meek, and Blessed are the peacemakers; had they understood that, Jerusalems day of rum might never have come. Is there no such thing as blindness among ourselves? May not this be OUT day of visitation? First, there is among us priestly blindness; the blindness of men who know not that the demands of this age are in advance of those that have gone before. Once more, we look at the blindness of men talking of intellectual enlightenment. It is true that we have more enlightened civilization and comfort. What then? Will that retard our day of judgment? Jerusalem was becoming more enlightened, and Rome was at its most civilized point, when the destroyer was at their gates. Therefore, let us know the day of our visitation. It is not the day of refinement, nor of political liberty, nor of advancing intellect. We must go again in the old, old way; we must return to simpler manners and to a purer life. We want more faith, more love. The life of Christ and the death of Christ must be made the law of our life. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
The things belonging to our peace
I. THERE ARE THINGS WHICH BELONG TO OUR PEACE. Peace has a large signification; it implies not only the inward feeling of the mind, but generally our happiness and welfare. The things which belong to our peace are provided for us and pressed upon our acceptance in the Gospel of Christ. And this peace must be sought for personally by each one on his own behalf. But it concerns his everlasting peace that the sinner should undergo a change of heart.
II. THERE IS A TIME IN WHICH WE MAY SECURE THOSE THINGS THAT MAKE FOR OUR PEACE. Now is that time, and now is the only time. Of to-morrow neither you nor I are secure. Now is the time in which you may seek the Lord, and in which He will be found.
III. THERE IS A TIME WHEN THEY WILL BE FOR EVER HID FROM OUR EYES. There is such a thing as a hard and obdurate heart--there is such a state as final impenitence--there is such a calamitous condition as that of a lost soul. (H. J. Hastings, M. A.)
Christs appeal to the heart
I. THIS THY DAY. The day of thy visitation, the day when Gods goodness and grace were especially near thee; the day of dawning hopes and bright promises; the day which, if it had been welcomed and used aright, might have coloured, ennobled, and redeemed all the rest. It was the day when, as youths, we left our fathers house to take our place in the busy world, when thoughts of duty and honour, of true work and faithful service, were fresh and strong in our breasts, when we were resolved, God helping us, there should be no idle hours, no corrupting habits, no dread secrets which could not be breathed or even thought of in the sanctity of the home, or in the presence of our sister or our mother. Or, it was the day when some heavenly vision of the beauty of goodness, of the sacredness of service, of the helpfulness of prayer, of the nearness of God to your innermost soul, filled your heart with its glow and peace, and you longed and vowed ever to cherish the kindly light, ever to obey the heavenly voice, ever to walk with God, and repose in Him. Or, it was the day when, after some sad fall, or after many reckless, wasted years, you came to yourself, you saw from the very edge the precipice to which you had come, you felt keenly and bitterly the misery of the shame into which you had sunk, and, for the first time, Christs vision of the face and heart of God, of the Father seeking the poor prodigal, brought penitence and hope; when thoughts of Christ, with His words of forgiveness and help and peace, seemed welcome and consoling to you, as rest at last to the sleep less brain, or kindly, gentle care to the fever-stricken patient.
II. IF THOU HADST KNOWN AT LEAST IN THIS THY DAY. Tis one of the sorrows of life that we spend a lifetime in gaining the needful experience. Human experience, says Coleridge, like the stern-lights of a ship at sea, too often only illuminates the faith we have passed over. The youth does not know the value of the school till alter he has left it, or the comfort and charm of the home till it is broken up and he is alone in the world; the man does not know the value of time, or health, or money, or character, till harsh misfortune or his own fault have deprived him of them; we do not fully realize how much we needed the companionship, example, and sympathy of friends till death has snatched them from us. And so with spiritual blessings and opportunities.
III. THE THINGS THAT BELONG ONTO THY PEACE. The life of Christ in the heart. The service of our heavenly Father here and now. (J. T. Stannard.)
Our day of grace
As God dealt with the city of Jerusalem, so He deals with us as individuals. God has given us a day of grace-has given a time wherein to repent of sin and prepare for another world. This day and this period is circumscribed. It is, as it were, a circle described around us; and when we pass over that boundary., then the day of grace is past and gone; the spirit has ceased to strive, and our doom is fixed for ever. I will illustrate this from history. One of the kings of Syria made war upon Egypt, which was at that time an ally of the Roman republic. When the news reached the Roman senate, they despatched into Egypt two senators, one of whom was a dear friend of the king. They went direct to the camp of the Syrian monarch, who came forth to meet them; but the senator, refusing to recognize him as his friend, at once put him upon his choice--to raise the seige and withdraw his army out of Egypt, or to forfeit his friendly relation with Rome, who would at once send forth her legions and compel him. To this he endeavoured to give an equivocal answer: he would consider over it or he would consider of it at another time. But this was not enough for the Romans; the senator, therefore, with the wand he had in his hand, drew a circle around him on the sand where they stood, and demanded his answer and decision ere he left it. He had to make his choice: he decided to withdraw his army, and then the senator extended his hand and recognized his friend. In a similar way God has drawn a circle around us, and demands us to make a choice. That circle is our day of grace. May we, then, to-day, while it is called today, harden not our hearts, lest God should swear in His wrath we shall not enter into His rest! (A. Jones.)
In this thy day
Thy day! If when the sun sets in the west we were not sure whether he would rise on the morrow, oh what an evening it would be! ONE DAY! Thy day! How precious! But if the day is allowed to pass, and the work of the day not done, how terrible the sunset! Jerusalem had her day; the day was passing--it was past. Jerusalem did not know her day, and did not notice that it had passed. Jerusalem, with her day done, was laughing: Jesus, looking on lost Jerusalem, wept. This is not of private interpretation--it is written for our sakes. Our city has a day; ourselves have a day. Throughout this day it is peace--your peace--pressing like the air around us. The night cometh, when that light of life is gone. Men mistake the meaning of Emmanuels tenderness. It is not tenderness to sin, Men are tender to their own sin, treating it as a spoiled child--blaming it in words, but fondling it all the while; and they think that Christ will turn out such an one as themselves. His grief does not indicate a holding back, a hesitating to cast away the wicked. The earnestness with which the Redeemer strove to snatch the brand from the burning, shows that there is a burning for the brand. The tears He shed over Jerusalem do not prove that He will falter and hesitate to lay her even with the ground when her day is done: if He had thought that Jerusalem might escape in her sin, He would not have wept to see her sinning. No preachers are so terrible as the Redeemers tears. (W. Arnot.)
Too late
God forbid that any of you should at the last have the dismay of the Scotchwoman of whom I was reading. One night she could not sleep because of her souls wandering from Christ. She got up and wrote in her diary: One year from now I will attend to the matters of my soul. She retired, but could not sleep. So she arose again, and wrote a better promise in her diary: One month from now I will attend to the matters of my soul. She retired again, but found no sleep, and arose again and wrote: Next week I will attend to the matters of my soul. Then she slept soundly. The next day she went into scenes of gaiety. The following day she was sick, and the middle of next week she died. Delirium lifted from her mind just long enough for her to say: I am a week too late. I am lost! Oh, to be a year too late, or a month too late, or a week too late, or a day too late, or a minute too late, or a second too late, is to be for ever too late. May God Almighty, by His grace, keep us from the wild, awful, crushing catastrophe of a ruined soul. (Dr. Talmage.)
The time of the visitation
Knowing the time of our visitation
I. THE TIME OF OUR VISITATION.
1. The country which has given us birth. We are highly favoured in this respect. We enjoy religious freedom.
2. The dispensation under which we live. Full blaze of gospel sun.
3. The revelation which God has been pleased to give us of His will.
4. The ministry, by which the written Word is explained to the understanding and enforced on the conscience.
II. THE PURPOSES FOR WHICH TIMES OF VISITATION ARE GRANTED. They are granted for purposes of the highest consequence to every one of you.
1. First of all, to be instrumental in accomplishing the conversion of your hearts and lives to God.
2. This entire conversion of your hearts and lives to God, is the foundation of all Christian experience and all Christian practice.
3. And then, as to its final and ultimate object, this time of visitation looks forward to your everlasting salvation; for the work of religion is not only to be begun, and it is not only to be proceeded with, but it is likewise to be perfected.
III. OUR NEGLECT OF THESE OPPORTUNITIES. How is it that, notwithstanding we are all favoured with the means of salvation, and with many loud calls to secure the purposes for which they are given to us--how is it that so many amongst even you are as yet unsaved, and know not the time of your visitation?
1. I suppose that, in reference to some, it is in consequence of your perseverance in the practice of sin.
2. There are others who know net and do not improve the time of their visitation, by reason of their thoughtlessness and inattention to Divine things.
3. There is another reason to be assigned for your not knowing the time of your visitation--and that is, indecision and delay. He that is not with Me, said Christ, is against Me.
4. Then, let me say, further, that all those know not the time of their visitation, who, for any reason whatever, do not come to the Lord Jesus Christ to believe with their hearts unto righteousness.
5. Perhaps I ought to say, there are some who know not the time of their visitation, by reason of their inconstancy and negligence.
IV. In the last place, we ought to look a little at THE JUDGMENT WHICH, SOONER OR LATER, IS SURE TO OVERTAKE ALL THOSE WHO PERSIST IN DISREGARDING THEIR MEANS AND OPPORTUNITIES. (J. Bicknell.)
Divine visitations
The system of the natural world--with all its laws, facts, processes, and events; the system of social life, including the family and civil society; the system of business life, including all proper industries and right occupations, all rightful forms of development, all cares and labours--all these are included in the system of visitations which God employs in His daily education of men, and their treatment and control. In other words, God employs all the apparatus of the natural world, in its results both upon the body and the mind; all the social influences that surround and educate men; all the organizations by which man is drawn out in various industries, and becomes an operative and a creator; all the various events that transpire outside of the mind or its volition, which come up in what we call providences of God; and above all these, the direct gospel system, supervised by Gods personal Spirit. Through all these various influences, God acts upon the human soul; and all these are but parts of Gods one system, for the development, the education, and the elevation of men. The time of Gods visitations has included every period of our lives. They have not been special to youth, to middle life, or to old age. Not only has the Divine economy had respect to the faculties of the soul, but to man as a creature. For example, there are times--and the element of time has entered largely into the system of Divine culture--when they have met us in childhood, with influences appropriate to that period, acting through the easier affections and susceptibilities of early life. I do not believe that there is a man in this house, who, if he were to speak his experience, would not say, I was subject in my boyhood to times of religious depression. They say depression, though they should rather say religious inspiration and elevation. These were awakenings by which they were lifted up from the dull and the obscure of life, and made to feel something of the invisible, and of the power of the world to come. And as childhood goes into boyhood or early manhood, the Divine strivings do not cease. They may change their form; they may cease to act through the same susceptibilities; they may take hold through the developments of the understanding, the speculations of a mans reason, or a different and larger reach of the imagination; but, nevertheless, they take hold still in early manhood and middle life. Gods visitations of mercy not only include every one of the faculties of the human soul, and all the periods of time in which a man lives, but are made to act upon men through every gradation and variation of their condition and history. In other words, we are tried in every possible development of our physical state. We are tried by our disappointments; we are tried by our successes! God heaps mercies upon men, and then takes them all away! He blesses, enriches, and establishes men, and then shuts them up, impoverishes, and subverts them! It is remarkable, in respect to these visitations of God, that they do not follow the telescope; they are rather like comets, that come when they please; for when you search for God, by searching you cannot find Him out. Such thoughts have come to you unbidden, sometimes in your counting-room, or when you were on a journey, or on the sea; sometimes when you have been in your house all alone, your family in the country; sometimes in trouble and adversity; in various ways--often coming, though never twice alike, as if the Divine phases had sought to present, at different times, different aspects to you. And if, all the way along, you had treasured up these times--precious times of great treasure!--if you had treasured them as you have when you have made a good bargain, or gained a new honour; if you had treasured all these interior peculiarities as you have the exterior--you would find them, I think, almost within speaking distance all the way from childhood to manhood; and although you had never such a consecutive view of the whole, yet really all along you have been subject to such impressions! Under such visitations there is brought very near to men such a thought of the other life, of Gods eternal kingdom and their immortality in it, as may produce very serious practical fruits in them. In view of these facts and illustrations of facts, I remark in closing, first, upon the immensity of the influences which men receive for good--the disproportion in this world between the educating influences for good, and those which sometimes we suspect are for evil. For we are apt to think that this great world is all against goodness, and that men are surrounded by such inducements to evil, such temptations of their passions, that there is an impression that man is so neglected and so set upon at disadvantage, that there is scarcely the evidence of his ever being an object of mercy. Contrariwise, it is a truth that man stands in the midst of a world which is one peculiar and complex educating institution, and what is more, educating in the right direction. The gradual growing effect of the course that I have been speaking of, is worthy of a moments attention--the habit of thus resisting the visitation of Gods Spirit upon us. What is the result of having a visitation, and of neglecting it? The general apprehension is, that it offends God, and that man is destroyed vindictively, or penally; but we must look at it more narrowly than that. In the first place, then, I think that it is in respect to our moral susceptibilities as it is in regard to all our senses; they become blunted by repeated perversion. A man can treat his eye in such a way that he shall become blind. He can blunt his hearing so that he shall become deaf. He can injure his tongue so as to have no appreciation of flavours. He can conduct himself so that his whole body may be broken down and destroyed before he is fifty years old. So in respect to a mans moral nature. A mans moral susceptibilities may be so dull, that by the time he is fifty years old, these approaches no longer affect him in this world. Anal the effect is, the gradual diminution of moral susceptibility; so that the conjunctions of circumstances, by which the man shall appear to himself to be surrounded, are less and less frequent, because their effect is less and less apparent. What is the state of such a man? What a terrible condition it is for a man to stand in! Ah! when the day of visitation is passed, what has happened?--not alone in those extreme cases, of men who are hardened past all shame and feeling; but what has happened in other cases, where men are not so incorrigible, and not so hard? Is God so angry at them that He ceases to offer them any more mercy? Does He pass them altogether by? Not at all! Oh, the goodness of God! There is just as much summer in the deserts of Arabia as in our American prairies! The sun and the showers of summer are in both places: but it is a desert in one, and it is a growing, luxuriant prairie in the other. There is just as much summer for a sepulchre as there is for a mansion; but the summer sun brings joy and cheer to those in the populous house, where the father and the mother are happy, and all the children are full of glee and joy; while, as it shines upon the sepulchres roof, everything is solitary, sad, and still, because there are dead mens bones within, which the sunlight can never waken! It is just the same in the moral government of God. There is the same provision of light, of air, of warmth, of raiment, in immense abundance; but all these are conjoined with this one invariable, universal necessity--our own appropriation of them. There is unlimited store of good, yet men will starve if they do not appropriate it to themselves. There is an ocean of air, yet men will suffocate if they refuse to breathe. He is resolute for evil. He has been surrounded by Divine influences, but he has continually resisted them, until he has been hardened by the process--until moral susceptibility has died out of him--until he has disorganized his nature--until he has destroyed himself! And when he passes through the brief period of his life--through its rapid rolling months and years--and rises into the presence of God, he stands in condemnation! Then he will not be able to say one word! The long procession of Gods teachings, which were given to draw him away from his immorality; all the Divine influences that have been visited upon him; all these things will then stand out unmistakably and indisputably; and the man will have nothing to say, except this--I destroyed myself! (H. W. Beecher.)
Times of visitation
1. And first, I would ask you to go back to the period of your youth. Was not that a time of visitation? Do you not remember its freshness, its freedom, its joy?
2. Again: I may speak of those special Divine influences which arc often realized in connection with the services of the sanctuary, and the preaching of Gods Word, as constituting a time of visitation.
3. Yet again: there are times of visitation, in which the individual is more directly concerned, as separate from all around him. It may be in the church, or it may be at home in the quiet chamber, or it may be in neither, but out under the great dome of heaven, and among the scenes of nature.
4. Once more: there are providential events which may be regarded in the light of a time of visitation to those concerned in them. (C. M. Merry.)
The time of visitation
I. WHAT IS A DIVINE VISITATION?
1. The common use of the word associates it with judgment, with judicial infliction of punishment of some sort.
2. Divine visitations are often connected with the purpose of blessing.
3. God visits us, in giving us the fruits of the earth in due season.
4. Visitation means warning. It is in this sense our Lord here describes His own ministry as the visitation of Jerusalem. Partly, no doubt, it was a visitation of judgment, yet more was it a visitation of blessing; it brought with it instruction, grace, pardon. His visitation was also a warning against some besetting sins of a very old and settled religion--against formalism, hypocrisy, insincere use of sacred language, insincere performance of sacred duties; and it was especially a warning to the people of Israel, against their taking a wrong turn in their thoughts and aspirations and efforts in the future before them.
II. WHY SHOULD THE FAILURE TO KNOW THE TIME OF VISITATION VERY OFTEN BE FOLLOWED BY SUCH GREAT CONSEQUENCES?
1. Because such failure implies the decline of spiritual interest, which in those who have had any religious training and opportunities is culpable. To believe sincerely in the living God, who interests Himself in His mortal creatures, is to be on the look-out for tokens of His intervention in the affairs of men; in other words, for His visitations. When a Divine visitation comes, it is a touchstone of the interests of souls: it finds some anxious, expectant, willing to recognize and make the most of it, and others, as our Lord said, whose hearts have waxed gross, and whose ears are dull of hearing, and whose eyes are closed. This insensibility to the approach of God in His life and power wounds the heart of God. We cannot forsake Him for anything else with impunity.
2. If God visits in warning, then to neglect His visitation is to neglect conditions of safety against dangers which are before us So it was now with the Jews. If the Jews had given heed to the teaching of our Saviour the conflict with the Roman authority would never have taken place.
III. THE DIFFICULTY FOR MANY MEN IS TO RECOGNIZE AT THE CRITICAL MOMENT THE FACT THAT GOD IS VISITING THEM. The most vitally important days and weeks in the history of a soul may have little to distinguish them outwardly from other days. It needs the earnest, penetrating recognition of Gods unceasing and loving interest in His creatures to read life aright, whether it be corporate or individual life, to see the moral and spiritual worth of events. It may be said that there is room for a great deal of illusion in this matter of Divine visitation. We may easily think ourselves more important people than we are; we may imagine that the events of our little lives have a meaning and worth which does not belong to them. Is there any test or criterion of His visitation? Well, we have first of all to remember that no human life at any moment is other than an object of the deepest interest to God. He who made, He who redeemed, He who sanctified us, does not think any life too insignificant to be visited by Him. The hairs of your head are all numbered; it is impossible that the Infinite Love should ever despise the work of His own hands, the purchase of His own cross. The only question is, whether we are warranted in thinking that His interest and oversight have at a given time reached a special climax or visitation, having exceptional claims on our attention; and we are justified in thinking that this is the case if the truth which such a visitation enforces is in correspondence with the higher truth which we have learned before, though, perhaps, going beyond it, and if the conduct to which we are impelled or encouraged involves self-denial, involves that which is unwelcome or exacting. (Canon Liddon.)
Divine visitations
1. God visits a nation, when at a critical moment in its history He bids it maintain some imperilled principle, or do some great act of justice. Perhaps the opportunity has been neglected; it passes, and then the sentence of national decline is written on the pale of history, with the added reason: Because thou knowest not, etc.
2. God visits at His own time the several branches of His Church, it may be after long years of apathy and darkness. He visits a church when He raises up in her teachers who insist upon forgotten aspects of truth, who call men from false standards of life; or when He opens great ways of extending His people and of influencing numbers of human beings to seek the things that belong to their peace. If this invitation to better things is set aside, nominally as ii it were the revival of some old superstition, but rather really because it makes an unwelcome demand on the conscience and the will, then the day of visitation passes, and the doom of the church which comes in time is justified in the conscience of its own children: Because, etc.
3. Souls are the units of which nations and churches are composed, and God visits a soul when He brings before it a new range of opportunities. One of yourselves, we will say, has been for years recognizing just so much of religious truth as the people about him, and no more; acting just so far upon the duties which it suggests, and no further; your thought and practice are, as we say, conventional--that is to say, they are determined by the average feeling of those among whom you are thrown in life, and not by any personal sense or grasp of religious principle, of what religious principle is, of what is due to it, of what is due to the Infinite and Everlasting God. And then something occurs which appeals to the soul as nothing has appealed to it before, which puts life, destiny and duty, truth, Holy Scripture, the Cross of Christ, the Person of Christ, the garments of Christ, the Church of Christ, before it in quite a new light. It may be a sentence in a letter: it may be a sudden thought which takes possession of you at the time of prayer; it may be a friend who insists on duties which have hitherto been mere phrases to you; it may be that you suddenly find yourself obliged to decide between two courses--one involving sacrifice more or less painful, and the other the surrender of something which your conscience tells you is right and true, and the having to make a decision puts a strain on your moral being, which is of itself a visitation. Or, one who has been intimately associated with you for many years has died; his death has taught you the emptiness of this passing life, it has put you out of heart with the half-hearted religion of past years; in short, this trial, while it presses heavily on your heart, has gone far to make you quite other than what you were. And this is a visitation. God is speaking to your soul, and much depends on your under standing Him, on your resolving and acting and re-fashioning your life accordingly. Much, I say, depends on this; for be sure that it is very serious to have enjoyed such a religious opportunity and to have neglected it. Divine visitation does not leave us where it found us; it always leaves us better or worse. To have been in contact with truth and grace, and to have put it from us, is to be weaker, poorer, worse off--religiously speaking--than we were. When the Divine visitation of the soul has been rejected, then the day of its enemies has arrived; then the legions of hell encamp all around it, the powers of darkness make sure of their victim. There is such a thing as the last chance in the life of a soul. God knows when it has passed by each of us, but one day certainly all of us do, in whatever way, pass it. (Canon Liddon.)
The visitation of Jerusalem
1. This visitation of Jerusalem by its Monarch was unobtrusive. There was nothing of outward pageantry or of royalty to greet the Son of David; there was no royal livery, no currency bearing the kings image and superscription--all these things had passed into the hands of a foreign conqueror, or in parts of the country, into the hands of princes who had the symbol of independence without its reality. There was not even the amount of circumstance of state which attends the reception of a visitor to some modern institution--a visitor who only represents the majesty of some old prerogative or some earthly throne. As Israels true King visits Jerusalem He always reminds us of a descendant of an ancient family returning in secret to the old home of his race; everything is for him instinct with precious memories; every stone is dear to him, while he himself is forgotten. He wanders about unnoticed, unobserved, or with only such notice as courtesy may accord to a presumed stranger. He is living amid thoughts which arc altogether unshared by the men whom he meets as he moves silently and sadly among the records of the past, and he passes away from sight as he came, with his real station and character generally unrecognized, if, indeed, he is not dismissed as an upstart with contempt and insult. So it was with Jerusalem and its Divine Master. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. It may, indeed, be asked whether the unobtrusive character of His visit does not excuse the ignorance of Jerusalem. But, my brethren, there is ignorance and ignorance. There is the ignorance which we cannot help, which is part of our circumstances in this life, which is imposed on us by Providence, and such ignorance as this, so far as it extends, does efface responsibility. God will never hold a man accountable for knowledge which God knows to be out of his reach; but there is also ignorance, and a great deal of it, in many lives for which we are ourselves responsible, and which would not have embarrassed us now if we had made the best of our opportunities in past times, and just as a man who, being drunk, commits a street outrage is held to be responsible for the outrage which he commits without knowing what he is doing, because he is undoubtedly responsible for getting into this condition of brutal insensibility, so God holds us all to be accountable for an ignorance which He knows to be due to our own neglect. Now this was the case with the men of Jerusalem at that day. Had they studied their prophets earnestly and sincerely, had they refused to surrender themselves to political dreams which flattered their self-love and which coloured all their thoughts and hopes, they would have seen in Jesus of Nazareth the Divine Visitor whose coming Israel had for long ages been expecting. As it was, His approach was too unobtrusive for a generation which looked forward to a visible triumph. Thus they knew not the time of their visitation. And the visitation of Jerusalem was final; it was not to be repeated. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers of the Jewish race by the prophets, in these last days spoke unto them by His Son. Those were His last words to His chosen people, the last probation, the last opportunity; we may reverently say that there was no more after that to be done. Each prophet had contributed something which others could not; each had filled a place in the long series of visitations which no other could fill. Already Jerusalem had been long since once destroyed after a great neglected opportunity. The Book of Jeremiah which we have lately been reading in the daily lessons, is one long and pathetic commentary on the blindness and obstinacy of kings, priests, prophets, and people who preceded the Chaldean invasion, and who rendered it inevitable. And still that ruin, vast, and for the time being, utter as it was, had been followed by a reconstruction, that long and bitter exile by a return. But history will not go on for ever repeating events which contradict probability. One greater visitation awaited Jerusalem, one more utter ruin, and each was to be the last. Because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. What is the explanation of that because? What is the connection as between cause and affect which it suggests? Does it mean merely that the Jews, having as a people rejected Christ, were punished by the destruction of their city and temple, but that nothing further can be said about it? That the punishment was independent of the crime, although not excessive, and that it might just as easily as not have been something else than what it was, since the punishment was inflicted from without by the Roman army, which, consisting as it did of brave and disciplined pagans, could have no ideas about the spiritual history or responsibilities of a distant Asiatic race? No, brethren; this is not the full or the true account of the case. Here, as elsewhere, God works by laws which we may trace and which are not generally superseded by agencies of a different character. Jerusalems ignorance of its visitation by the King Messiah, had a great deal to do as cause with effect with Jerusalems ruin. What was the main cause of that ruin? It was, as has been said, that the Jews were under the influence of a false and blind prejudice and ambition. They had made up their minds that their Messiah was to be a political rather than a spiritual king; He was to make Jerusalem the centre of an empire which would hold its own against the legions of Rome; and with this overmastering prejudice in their minds the Jews could not recognize the real Messiah when He came, and the day of their visitation escaped them. Yet it was this same political phrenzy of theirs which ultimately brought them into trouble with the Roman power; and if they had only understood the real meanings of their prejudices, had seen in their Messiah a spiritual monarch, and had accepted Him when He came, the mind of the people would have taken, must have taken, a totally different direction, and the fatal collision with the forces of Rome would never have taken place. (Canon Liddon.)
Illness regarded as Gods visitation
There are two ways of looking at an illness. We may trace it to its second or immediate cause, the infection, the blood-poisoning, the imprudence, the hereditary taint, and there stop; or we may with greater reason look up to Him who is the true Lord of all, the first cause, and who worketh all things by the counsel of His own will; and if we do this last, we must see in an illness a visitation from God. He knows what we want. He sees, it may be, that in us which will never be corrected in the days of rude health and of high spirits; He sees the insensibility to the seriousness of life, to the claims of others, to the true interests of the soul, to the unfathomable love of the Divine Redeemer; and an illness which gives time for prayer, for reflection, for resolution, is a school of discipline. Those who have never had bad health are, it has been truly said, objects of anxiety; those who have had it, and who are none the better for it, are certainly objects of the very deepest concern and compassion. There was a story told many years since of a boat which was getting near the rapids above the Falls of Niagara. The boatmen managed to reach the shore, but, disregarding the advice which was earnestly given them, they put out again into the stream, with the object of crossing to the opposite bank. The current proved too strong for them, and those who had warned them of their danger looked on with a distress which was too great for words while the boat glided down with an ever-increasing speed to the edge of the falls. It is possible, brethren, in what concerns another life, to be in that condition, to have ignored Gods last word of warning, and to be hurrying onwards, under the stress of influences which we cannot any longer resist or control, towards the awful future. Great reason is there for prayer, that at the critical turning-point of our career we may have, in our Lords words, eyes to see and ears to hear, that we may distinguish Gods visitations in life from what is ordinary in it; that we may remember that in every life, even in the most highly favoured, there is sooner or later a visitation which is the last. (Canon Liddon.)
Guilty ignorance
Well-known as these words are, there is in them something, when we think of it, unexpected; something different, apparently, from what we should have looked for. The condemnation of the people seems to be put upon a cause somewhat unlike what we might have thought. The Lord does not say, it is because ye are about to crucify the Lord of Glory; or, because ye have been a sinful and stiff-necked people; or, because by your traditions ye have made the Word of God of none effect; or, because ye are hypocrites, or impenitent: though all these things, and many more, were not only true against the people, but had often been alleged by Himself to their condemnation. He does not, I say, allege any of these broad, overt, intelligible sins in this, the last most solemn, irreversible denunciation of their judgment; but He says, Because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation! God had visited His people, and they knew it not I He had come unto His own, and His own had known Him not He does not even say, that they had pretended not to know Him; but, literally and plainly, that they knew Him not. They might have known Him; they ought to have known Him; but He came, and they knew Him not. Let us learn, then, that men may really be quite ignorant of what they are doing, and yet very guilty, and involved in the heaviest condemnation. But, again, are we to suppose that they did not choose to know; that they might, then and there, by a stronger exercise of will, by some more forcible or candid purpose, have known what they thus wilfully were ignorant of? It is possible that they might; but it is by no means certain: that is, it is by no means certain that much disobedience, much inattention to the constant indications of Gods will vouchsafed to them, much neglect of opportunities, had not set them so much out of the way of forming right judgments on such things, as to make it morally impossible, or, at least, in the highest degree unlikely, that they should come to a right knowledge of the nature of our Lord and the sacredness of His mission. No doubt they had, if we may so speak, a great deal to say for themselves, in their firm and persevering rejection of our Lord and His doctrine; not, indeed, a word of real weight or truth, but a great deal which, urged by men in their state of mind, and addressed to men of their state of mind, would appear to be full of force and cogency. Would they not, feeling no doubt of the sacred validity of their own traditions, look upon Him and describe Him as one who made light of the authority of God, and of Moses, and the ancients? May we not easily suppose with what immense effect they would urge the impolicy of giving any heed to our Lords teaching: the impolicy in respect of the Romans; the impolicy in respect of the great impediment which would, by our Lords partial success, be thrown in the way of the true, temporal Messias, so long expected? If we suppose that the actions, which we criticize, appeared to the persons who were about to perform them in the same clear and unquestionable light in which we see them, we at once lose, or rather turn into mischief and hurt, the historical examples: we do exactly what the Jews did, when they said, If we had lived in the times of our fathers, we would not have been partakers in their deeds, and yet filled up the measure of those very fathers, by doing a deed precisely like theirs in kind, though infinitely worse than theirs in degree. We comfort ourselves by condemning them, while we exactly imitate, or even exceed their sins. We, like them--like all mankind--are perpetually called upon to act; often suddenly--often in cases ofgreat and obvious consequence--often in cases apparently slight, but really of most serious and vital importance to us: the same per plexities and bewilderments as I just described, of feeling, of policy, of liberality and candour, of conscience, of foreseen consequences, rise up around us; we act in more or less uncertainty of mind, but our uncertainties often woefully aggravated by our previous misconduct; and there are many to excuse us, many to encourage us, many to take part with us, and yet, in the sight of God, our act is one, it may be, of clear and undoubted sin. But again, the particular thing of which the Jews were in this instance ignorant, was the visitation of God. Christ had come to them, God had visited His people; and they, blinded by all these various kinds of self-deceit, of long continued disobedience, of inveterate hardness of heart, and neglect of lesser indications of Gods will and presence, had not known Him. Now here again is matter of high concern and warning to us all. For we, too, have our visitations of God; if not exactly such as this great one of Christ coming actually in the flesh, for us to worship or to crucify, according as our hearts recognize and know Him, or disown and rebel against Him, yet visitations many, various, and secret. But it by no means follows that we have known them. Some, indeed, may have been so striking as not to be mistaken. But many, perhaps most, perhaps the most searching and important, may have been absolutely unknown to us. And not less than this seems to be plainly taught by our Lord, where, in the 25th of St. Matthew, He describes the actual scene of judgment. The righteous and the wicked alike seem to be amazed to hear of the matters alleged for their acquittal and condemnation. How unexpected, then, may be to us the voice of judgment! (Bishop Moberly.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On v41 41–44. He saw the city and wept over it.…
41–44. He saw the city and wept over it. This lament over the wicked city is given only by Luke. In that moment when the multitude is shouting his praises, his heart is breaking over the woes of the city that he knew would slay him. Only in one other place are we told that Jesus wept (John 11:35), each time over human sorrow.
If thou hadst known in this day. The day of opportunity and mercy. But their eyes were blinded by unbelief. The things which belong unto peace. The acceptance of Christ would have prevented the rebellion against Rome, the destruction of the city, and would have secured heavenly as well as earthly peace.
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Thine enemies shall cast a bank about thee. The Romans threw a wall around the city outside of the walls of defence in order to hem in all the population and to starve them out.
Shall not leave in thee one stone upon another. The city was utterly destroyed. See notes on Matthew, chapter 24. Because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. When Christ came to save them from their awful fate.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v37 Luk 19:37 - Luk 19:48.
Luke
A NEW KIND OF KING
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Luk 19:37 - Luk 19:48.
‘He went on before.’ What concentrated determination, and almost eagerness, impelled His firm and swift steps up the steep, weary road! Mark tells that the disciples followed, ‘amazed’-as they well might be-at the unusual haste, and strange preoccupation on the face, set as a flint.
Luke takes no notice of the stay at Bethany and the sweet seclusion which soothed Jesus there. He dwells only on the assertion of royalty, which stamped an altogether unique character on the remaining hours of Christ’s life.
I. The narrative brings into prominence Christ’s part in originating the triumphal entry {Luk 19:30 - Luk 19:34}. He sent for the colt with the obvious intention of stimulating the people to just such a demonstration as followed.
As to the particulars, we need only note that the most obvious explanation of His knowledge of the circumstances that the messengers would encounter, is that it was supernatural. Only one other explanation is possible; namely, that the owners of the animal were secret disciples, with whom our Lord had arranged to send for it, and had settled a sign and countersign, by which they would know His messengers. But that is a less natural explanation.
Note the remarkable blending of dignity and poverty in ‘The Lord hath need of him.’ It asserts sovereign authority and absolute rights, and it confesses need and penury. He is a King, but He has to borrow even a colt to make His triumphal entry on. Though He was rich, for our sakes He became poor.
Jesus then deliberately brought about His public entry. He thereby acts in a way perfectly unlike His whole previous course. And He stirs up popular feelings at a time when they were specially excitable by reason of the approaching Passover and its crowds. Formerly He had avoided the danger which He now seems to court, and had gone up to the feast ‘as it were in secret.’ But it was fitting that once, for the last time, He should assert before the gathered Israel that He was their King, and should make a last appeal. Formerly He had sought to avoid attracting the attention of the rulers; now He knows that the end is near, and deliberately makes Himself conspicuous, though-or we might say because-He knew that thereby He precipitated His death.
The nature of His dominion is as plainly taught by the humble pomp as is its reality. A pauper King, who makes His public entrance into His city mounted on a borrowed ass, with His followers’ clothes for a saddle, attended by a shouting crowd of poor peasants, for weapons or banners had but the branches plucked from other people’s trees, was a new kind of king.
We do not need Matthew’s quotation of the prophet’s vision of the meek King coming to Zion on an ass, to understand the contrast of this kingdom with such a dominion as that of Rome, or of such princes as the Herods. Gentleness and peace, a sway that rests not on force nor wealth, are shadowed in that rustic procession and the pathetic poverty of its leader, throned on a borrowed colt, and attended, not by warriors or dignitaries, but by poor men unarmed, and saluted, not with the blare of trumpets, but with the shouts of joyful, though, alas! fickle hearts.
II. We have the humble procession with the shouting disciples and the background of hostile spies.
The disciples eagerly caught at the meaning of bringing the colt, and threw themselves with alacrity into what seemed to them preparation for the public assertion of royalty, for which they had long been impatient. Luke tells us that they lifted Jesus on to the seat which they hurriedly prepared, while some spread their garments in the way-the usual homage to a king:
‘Ride on triumphantly; behold, we lay
Our lusts and proud wills in Thy way.’
How different the vision of the future in their minds and His! They dreamed of a throne; He knew it was a Cross. Round the southern shoulder of Olivet they came, and, as the long line of the Temple walls, glittering in the sunshine across the valley, burst on the view, and their approach could be seen from the city, they broke into loud acclamations, summoning, as it were, Jerusalem to welcome its King.
Luke’s version of their chant omits the Jewish colouring which it has in the other Gospels, as was natural, in view of his Gentile readers. Christ’s royalty and divine commission are proclaimed from a thousand throats, and then up swells the shout of praise, which echoes the angels’ song at Bethlehem, and ascribes to His coming, power to make peace in heaven with an else alienated world, and thus to make the divine glory blaze with new splendour even in the highest heavens.
Their song was wiser than they knew, and touched the deepest, sweetest mysteries of the unity of the Son with the Father, of reconciliation by the blood of His Cross, and of the new lustre accruing to God’s name thereby, even in the sight of principalities and powers in heavenly places. They meant none of these things, but they were unconscious prophets. Their shouts died away, and their faith was almost as short-lived. With many of them, it withered before the branches which they waved.
High-wrought emotion is a poor substitute for steady conviction. But cool, unemotional recognition of Christ as King is as unnatural. If our hearts do not glow with loyal love, nor leap up to welcome Him; if the contemplation of His work and its issues on earth and in heaven does not make our dumb tongues sing-we have need to ask ourselves if we believe at all that He is the King and Saviour of all and of us. There were cool observers there, and they make the foil to the glad enthusiasm. Note that these Pharisees, mingling in the crowd, have no title for Jesus but ‘Teacher.’ He is no king to them. To those who regard Jesus but as a human teacher, the acclamations of those to whom He is King and Lord always sound exaggerated.
People with no depth of religious life hate religious emotion, and are always seeking to repress it. A very tepid worship is warm enough for them. Formalists detest genuine feeling. Propriety is their ideal. No doubt, too, these croakers feared that this tumult might come to formidable size, and bring down Pilate’s heavy hand on them.
Christ’s answer is probably a quoted proverb. It implies His entire acceptance of the character which the crowd ascribed to Him, His pleasure in their praises, and, in a wider aspect, His vindication of outbursts of devout feeling, which shock ecclesiastical martinets and formalists.
III. We see the sorrowing King plunged in bitter grief in the very hour of His triumph.
Who can venture to speak of that infinitely pathetic scene? The fair city, smiling across the glen, brings before His vision the awful contrast of its lying compassed by armies and in ruins. He hears not the acclamation of the crowd. ‘He wept,’ or, rather, ‘wailed,’-for the word does not imply tears so much as cries. That sorrow is a sign of His real manhood, but it is also a part of His revelation of the very heart of God. The form is human, the substance divine. The man weeps because God pities. Christ’s sorrow does not hinder His judgments. The woes which wring His heart will nevertheless be inflicted by Him. Judgment is His ‘strange work,’ alien from His desires; but it is His work. The eyes which are as a flame of fire are filled with tears, but their glance burns up the evil.
Note the yearning in the unfinished sentence, ‘If thou hadst known.’ Note the decisive closing of the time of repentance. Note the minute prophetic details of the siege, which, if ever they were spoken, are a distinct proof of His all-seeing eye. And from all let us fix in our hearts the conviction of the pity of the judge, and of the judgment by the pitying Christ.
IV. We have Christ’s exercise of sovereign authority in His Father’s house.
Luke gives but a summary in verses 45-48, dwelling mainly on two points. First he tells of casting out the traders. Two things are brought out in the compressed narrative-the fact, and the Lord’s vindication of it. As to the former, it was fitting that at the end of His career, as at the beginning, He should cleanse the Temple. The two events are significant as His first and last acts. The second one, as we gather from the other Evangelists, had a greater severity about it than the first.
The need for a second purifying indicated how sadly transient had been the effect of the first, and was thus evidence of the depth of corruption and formalism to which the religion of priests and people had sunk. Christ had come to cleanse the Temple of the world’s religion, to banish from it mercenaries and self-interested attendants at the altar, and, in a higher application of the incident, to clear away all the degradations and uncleannesses which are associated with worship everywhere but in His Church, and which are ever seeking, like poisonous air, to find their way in thither also, through any unguarded chink.
The vindication of the act is in right royal style. The first cleansing was defended by Him by pointing to the sanctity of ‘My Father’s house’; the second, by claiming it as ‘My house.’ The rebuke of the hucksters is sterner the second time. The profanation, once driven out and returning, is deeper; for whereas, in the first instance, it had made the Temple ‘a house of merchandise,’ in the second it turned it into a ‘den of robbers.’ Thus evil assumes a darker tint, like old oak, by lapse of time, and swiftly becomes worse, if rebuked and chastised in vain.
The second part of this summary puts in sharp contrast three things-Christ’s calm courage in continuous teaching in the Temple, the growing bitter hatred of the authorities, who drew in their train the men of influence holding no office, and the eager hanging of the people on His words, which baffled the murderous designs of the rulers. The same intentional publicity as in the entrance is obvious. Jesus knew that His hour was come, and willingly presents Himself a sacrifice. Meekly and boldly He goes on the appointed way. He sees all the hate working round Him, and lets it work. The day’s task of winning some from impending ruin shall still be done. So should His servants live, in patient discharge of daily duty, in the face of death, if need be.
The enemies, who heard His words and found in them only food for deeper hatred, may warn us of the possibilities of antagonism to Him that lie in the heart, and of the terrible judgment which they drag down on their own heads, who hear, unmoved, His daily teaching, and see, unrepentant, His dying love. The crowd that listened, and, in less than a week yelled ‘Crucify Him,’ may teach us to take heed how we hear, and to beware of evanescent regard for His teaching, which, if it do not consolidate into resolved and thoroughgoing acceptance of His work and submission to His rule, will certainly cool into disregard, and may harden into hate.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v41 Christ’s lament over Jerusalem:
Christ’s lament over Jerusalem:
v. 41. And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it,
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v. 42. saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes.
v. 43. For the days shall come upon thee that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side,
v. 44. and shall lay thee even with the ground and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.
Jesus continued on His way, accompanied by shouts of "Hosanna!" and songs of praise, until He reached a point opposite the city. And there suddenly He burst into tears, weeping aloud, as one in the depths of grief. Note: The tears of Jesus over the reprobate city of Jerusalem are the best evidence that He is sincere in His redemption for the sins of the whole world, that He wants all men to be saved. If the inhabitants of the capital city had but known, if they had but had the right understanding, if they had not deliberately hardened their hearts! In extraordinary fullness and brightness their day of grace had come upon them, since the Son of God personally had come into their midst and brought the glorious Gospel of their redemption to them. But now the day of grace was drawing to its close, and still the understanding pertaining to their salvation was hidden before their eyes. Because of their unbelief and hard-heartedness the time of grace was rapidly coming to a close, and the salvation which they had foolishly sought by means of works was as far from them as ever. And not only the fact of their unbelief and hard-heartedness caused. the bitter tears of the Lord, but also the fact that He knew the fate of the city, saw the final destruction taking place before the vision of His omniscience. There is a picture of coming ruin before His eyes: Enemies coming upon the city, like hawks upon their prey; they dig trenches and erect walls of palisades all around the capital; they draw an impenetrable ring around her; they enclose her from all sides, leaving not a loophole of escape; they cast the city down to the ground and all her inhabitants within her (raze the city, dash the people to pieces); they do not permit one stone to remain upon the other within her: and all, because Jerusalem and its inhabitants had refused to recognize the time of their visitation, when the Lord came to them in the richness of His mercy and offered full atonement, life, and salvation to all the people of Israel. If anyone despises the visitation of grace that comes upon him in time, when the Word of God is brought to his attention, when he has the use of the means of grace, then the time will come when spiritual blindness will set in, as the penalty of such contempt; and then comes the Judgment. O, that all people to whom the Word of grace is proclaimed, would remember at all times the bitter tears of the Lord over Jerusalem, and know in time the things which belong to their peace!
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv37, 39, 41 As he was now approaching
As he was now approaching
"As Jesus was going near." Jesus' disciples were traveling with him.
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where the Mount of Olives descends
"where the road goes down from the Mount of Olives"
mighty works which they had seen
"great things they had seen Jesus do"
Blessed is the king
They were saying this about Jesus.
in the name of the Lord
Here "name" refers to power and authority. Also, "Lord" refers to God. (See: Metonymy)
Peace in heaven
"May there be peace in heaven" or "We want to see peace in heaven"
glory in the highest
"May there be glory in the highest" or "We want to see glory in the highest." The words "the highest" refer to heaven, which is a metonym for God, who lives in heaven. AT: "Let everyone give glory to God in the highest heaven" (See: Metonymy)
translationWords
joy
praise
voice
works
bless
king
lord
peace
heaven
glory
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv38, 40 19:38 Blessings on the King . . . glory…
19:38 Blessings on the King . . . glory in highest heaven! See Pss 118:26; 148:1. Psalm 118 was one of the psalms sung by pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem for one of the festivals (Pss 113–118). • Jesus brought peace in heaven—reconciliation between God and human beings—but peace on earth awaits the future (cp. Luke 2:14; see 12:51-53; 19:41-44).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.