JESUS’ TEARS FOR HIS PEOPLE PREACH MERCY
Sermon Text: St. Luke 19:41-48 (v. 41-42). Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”
Lord, this is Your Word and these are Your words. Sanctify us by the truth. Your Word is truth. Lord, You did not want to hide this from us, but especially wanted us to know that You shed tears for the people of Jerusalem who turned against You and crucified You. We also turn against You when we sin in our thoughts, words, and deeds. Teach us to take refuge in Your tears, which prove Your great love for us and all people. Protect us from despising Your words to our eternal harm, which You do not want, but help us always to be very attentive to hear You. Amen.
In the name of Him who makes one of both Jew and Gentile, dear people loved by God in Christ: Grace, mercy, and peace to you from our God and Savior.
Jesus was riding on the donkey’s colt, and His disciples were walking alongside, making quite a racket, so the Pharisees told Him to quiet them. Jesus replied: “If these should keep silent, the stones would cry out.” The procession, which was moving down to the foot of the Mount of Olives, climbed a rough ascent until they looked out over a valley, which included the brook Kidron, the Garden of Gethsemane, and beyond that Golgotha.
Everyone hushed all of a sudden, because rising up above them was one of the two hills on which the city of Jerusalem stood. Suddenly bursting into view was the magnificence of the city: snow-white walls circling many homes built close together, and towering above everything the temple, its pinnacles flashing in the sun. It was awe-inspiring. Momentarily, a hush fell on the noisy band. They were ready to cheer. But a new sound made them pause.
It was the sound of wailing and sobbing, and it was coming from Jesus. He “wept over the city”in this audible way. This is found only in Luke’s gospel. God wanted to be sure that we know this, Jesus’ tears for His people – first:
1. Jesus’ tears for His people Israel.
Jesus’ tears in this scene are first a proof that He is true man. He came down from heaven, where there is no sadness, to share our human flesh in a real way; He felt sadness and shed tears like us. But His tears also do show something about Him as God. They show what God is really like.
Why was Jesus weeping for His people Israel? Because they rejected Him. But here we see how different He is from us. If you get rejected by someone, who are your tears for? Yourself. We feel sorry for ourselves. Not Jesus. He didn’t weep because of the awful things they would do to Him on Good Friday. He wept because He could see way beyond Good Friday.
Jesus looked down through the years, to 70 A.D. In this scene there was no city wall – a Roman army broke through it. There was no temple – the soldiers burned it down and crushed every stone. There were no people – of the 1.2 million Jews living there in 70 A.D., 1.1 million were dead, and 97,000 prisoners. It was the result of a long siege. What the Roman army did was “build an embankment, surround [it] and close [it] in on every side,” just as Jesus said. After the army was done with the city, in the words of an eyewitness [Josephus], “no one visiting it would believe it had ever been inhabited.” As Jesus said: “They will not leave one stone upon another.”
Why did it happen? The Romans were only God’s instrument. It happened “because you did not know the time of your visitation,” Jesus said. What does that mean? Their “visitation” refers to God visiting them in the flesh to save them. But they “did not receive Him.” They rejected their Savior. This is why Jesus weeps and wails. The burning of Jerusalem and the loss of life is a picture of something worse – their condemnation to hell, losing eternal life.
Jesus’ weeping shows that He does not want this. No matter how they hated Jesus, He still loved them. His tears show this. They’re tears of love. Of course it leads Him to do something. He went into the temple and in righteous anger threw out the money-changers. Not because He hates them. He hates what they were doing. But He loves them. He wanted them to repent. He stayed in the temple to teach. What did He teach? The kingdom of God and His righteousness – the saving Gospel.
Look beyond the end of the gospel lesson. Where was He going as He rode into Jerusalem? To Golgotha. To the cross. He took the sins of all His people – and took the punishment so they can be saved. “His people” was first a term that referred to Israel. There’s no expiration date on that. Thanks be to God, “His people” also includes us who are Gentiles. His will is for all, including the Jews, to be included in “His people” – those who believe in Him – just as all are included in His love. The preaching of the Gospel is so they would benefit from His death, by faith. The apostles first would preach in Jerusalem.
All of this shows His love for His people Israel. But especially it shows:
2. His love for His Church, which is the true Israel.
This text isn’t here so we see how wrong the Jews went. Sadly – wrongly – Christians have misused it that way, saying that the bad things Jewish people or that the current nation of Israel experience, they’ve got coming to them for killing Jesus. Or they use it to justify hatred of Israel or of Jewish people. No. This story is not for us to learn about the Jews and what happened to them in 70 AD – but to learn to know Jesus, who’s the same yesterday, today, forever.
He is from eternity. His love is timeless. But He brings Himself, and His love, into the times and places where His people live. As the 2nd Person of the Trinity, He was the God of Israel. He came to Abraham as the Angel of the Lord to stop his hand from killing Isaac. He is the God of the burning bush who appeared to Moses. He is the Glory of the Lord who was present in the temple, and even though Israel came to rely on the temple’s existence more than on God, and turned it into a den of thieves, He became flesh in order to tabernacle with mankind and to be the true temple, in fact to let them tear down the temple of His body so He could raise it again on the third day.
This tells you who the true Israel is. We are. We are His people. “His people” now is the Church. The Bible says the true descendants of Abraham are the ones who believe in the Savior: “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed. The promise [is] sure to those who are of the faithof Abraham” (Gal 3:29; Rom 4:16). The Old Testament believers’ faith is our faith. The Old Testament saints are our fathers and mothers in the faith, our true family. What they are in heaven is what we’ll be, “with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
This should prohibit us from being prideful and looking down on the Jews or thinking ourselves superior. That was their downfall! They thought they could never lose it. But in Jesus’ tears we see that He did not consider them lost. His will is one with the Father, that not one of them be lost. God wants all to be saved. Jesus’ tears were His prayer to the Father for them.
Although the destruction of Jerusalem was an example of God’s justice, punishing sins, it’s God’s “foreign work” when He condemns according to the Law. His proper work is to love and forgive. That divine judgment does not show that He was less willing to embrace them but it was only due to their rejecting Him. Jesus’ tears show this, they tell us to know Him especially according to the flip side of His justice – to know Him only by His mercy.
This is not recorded just as a matter of history. It teaches something that is always true: that when you are rejecting Him, He still loves you.
This is recorded in Luke for our comfort. For when you think of the things you do, you can become unsure that He will still love you. This was Israel’s worst hour; we have our dark hours too. We tend not to think we reject His Word like the unbelieving Jews, but what do you do? You hear His Word, then go out and act like you didn’t hear it. You lose patience with others. You condemn yourself. There are people you can’t forgive; you take them off the neighbor list. You let your sinful pride grow so that you look down on others, resent others, or find people to criticize or blame. You let your sinful pride take the lead when you worry, because your Old Adam refuses to trust God.
In doing this we act like His enemies! Like we don’t know Him. But the important thing is that He knows you. He knows you according to His mercy. And we learn to know Him – and can know Him – only this way.
Mercy often gets paired with grace, but there’s a slight difference. Grace is the forgiving love of God: it addresses things you do. Mercy is the love of God that addresses who you are: unworthy. So: mercy is the kindness of God that comes to us, and shows how God is disposed toward us, His attitude to us, given the reality of who we are, that we don’t deserve His kindness and can’t ever earn it or make ourselves worthy of it, and yet He gives it.
Jesus’ tears demonstrate this mercy. If He still loved unbelieving Israel, He still loves you. If they couldn’t drive Him away, neither can you. If He offered God’s mercy to them who were being so unkind to Him, He still offers God’s kindness to you, no matter what. This is what His tears show: “that mercy never-ending … of Him who, loving arms extending, to wretched sinners conde-scends. His heart with pity still will break whether we seek Him or forsake” (CW #386:2).
No matter what you’ve done, how badly you’ve misstepped or dishonored the name of Christ, His tears tell you that He still loves you. This is the love that drove Him to the cross for all people. When you look at Christ Crucified by faith, not only do you see forgiveness but you’re seeing God’s mercy, the love that will not let you go. You know that because God did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for you on the cross, He will love you no matter what, and not withhold from you any good thing.
Chief among those gifts is His Word. Just as He purged the temple and then taught in the temple out of love for His people Israel’s souls, He makes you His pure temple by means of His Law and Gospel. We don’t often think of it this way, but the preaching of His Word is a sign of His continuing love for us His people. It’s a sign of His mercy. He has not taken His Word from us; in that way He has not taken His Holy Spirit from us, who not only gives faith and makes us clean and holy through His Word, but He is also making us His people, and keeping us His people, only through His Word.
In this way alone we are able to “know the things that make for [our] peace.” It’s not peace as the world gives, not a worldly peace that they are working so hard to establish in present-day Israel and the Middle East. But in Christ you have the peace that never ends. In heaven we won’t be Jew or Gentile, but one glorious church – His people – in the Savior who loves us all, and changes all tears into unbounded joy. Amen!