Jesus Weeps

0:16Thank you for listening to the Sermon Audio Podcast for Crossroads Bible Church in Rockdale, Texas. Crossroads Bible Church is a Reformed Confessional Baptist Church that meets every Lord's Day at 10 a.m. for Bible study and 11 a.m. for corporate worship. For more information about our church and for directions, you can find us online at www.crbcrockdale.org. Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The title of our sermon, as you see from our uh from your bulletin, is uh Jesus Weeps. And that is certainly a theme in our text that we're gonna read uh this morning. But I have veiled the big idea, the main idea with the use of that title, Jesus Weeps. We are going to be talking about the reality that Jesus did weep. And we're gonna be talking about what that communicates to us. But more than that, we must know this morning precisely why Jesus was weeping. And that's perhaps the thing that we miss. We can get caught up in the emotion of our Lord weeping over Israel. And certainly that is valid. Something we will consider. But we must not let our tears blind us to the truth of the cause of our Lord's weeping. And I'm gonna keep the tension on that for just a bit. I'm gonna ask you to listen very closely for that when we read our text in just a moment. But to set it up, I want to look back before we read our text, our main text for this morning, to look at Luke chapter 18, starting in verse 31. And I'm just gonna read that for us as we begin. So look at Luke 18. Luke chapter 18 and verse 31. He says, And taking the twelve, he said to them, See, we are going to up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished, for he will be delivered over to the Gentiles, and he will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise. But they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said. Christ clearly knew all the all of the things that were going to happen to him. When he went to Jerusalem, he knew and so clearly told his disciples what was about to happen. That's important as we begin for two reasons. One is that we need to understand the divine nature of Christ. He had foreknowledge about the future events. And he was willing to proceed, knowing full well what he was walking into. But secondly, for our purposes this morning, we know that this weeping of his was not random. This weeping that we will read about in just a second was not a random emotional outburst from our Lord, having been taken off guard or being overwhelmed by a situation. He knows what is happening. He's never been surprised by anything. Even according to his human nature, he knows people and situations so perfectly well that nothing has ever surprised him. What this is, then, we will read and sift through, is nothing less than the purest form of grieving over sin. Grieving over unbelief. This is what it looks like, then, to grieve, to mourn, and to weep over sin. I say, this is not our Lord expressing overwhelm. This is our Lord doing what only he can do. Expressing genuine sorrow over unbelief. That's still not the big idea, though. He who has ears, let him hear the truth as we get into it this morning. So let's stand as we read our main text. This is Luke 19, starting in verse 41. And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation. This is the word of the Lord. As always, Lord, we pray it ask, would you please speak to us this morning through this word? Lord, in what I speak. It is in his name that I pray.

6:20Amen.

6:34Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. This is what the Gospel of Matthew records for us in those events just prior to the weeping that we just read about. Hosanna, they shout.

6:54You know what Hosanna means?

6:58It means save us or save now. Directed at Jesus and who they thought he was or who they wanted him to be, it was a cry, save us, King. There's a group of Psalms called the uh Hill Psalms. You could say hallelujah Psalms if you don't want to use the Hebrew word, but it's the Hillel Psalms. This is Psalm 113 to Psalm 118. You're taking notes, 113 to 118. Read them this week. That is an order from the pulpit. 113 to 118. And these hallelujah psalms were broken up into two parts. 113 to 114, or the psalms that were sung before the Passover meal. As a result of their context being primarily about that exodus from Egypt, the Egyptian Exodus. And 115 to 118 were sung after the Passover meal. So in Matthew 26, verse 30, it says that they sung a hymn after the Lord's Supper. And then they went to the Mount of Olives in the Garden of Gethsemane, and you went on to the story. Stephen talked about that this morning. But when it says that they sung a hymn after the Lord's Supper, it was almost certainly, in fact, we can say certainly, Psalms 115 to 118 that they sung. And that puts Psalm 118 into a whole new context. When you read it considering that those were the last words that Jesus sung right before he went to the garden, right before he went to the cross. Keep that in mind this week when you read Psalm 118. It will wreck you. Imagining our Lord singing those words, knowing what is about to happen. But it is from Psalm 118 where that phrase, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. This is where it comes from. So what is in view for them as they are singing this and shouting this to our Lord on that Palm Sunday, as they give praise to Jesus, they plea for salvation. What is on their minds is those hellel psalms, specifically Psalm 118. That was their catechism. It was their tradition. This was their longing for salvation. And contained within those psalms, all of them are praises to the transcendence of God, who is above all, the God who sits high in the heavens, but also the God who is quite near, to help the needy and the poor and the barren. There are praises of presence that even when the Lord delivered them from the bondage of slavery, Judah became his sanctuary, his dwelling with the people. That he was present with them. You see the theme there, transcendence and presence. The transcendent God is near. He is with them. He is saving them. There are also pleas in those Psalms for mercy to be spared from death. There's pleas to have one's soul delivered from Sheol, to be spared from suffering, to be spared from distress, to be spared from anguish. There are praises there of steadfast and enduring love of God. There is confidence in the Lord to be our strength, to be our song, and to become our salvation. These are beautiful words. The words that our God loves to hear from us.

11:19But these people, our Lord's people, shout them. But their hearts don't even know what they are saying.

11:34Not at all by coincidence. In the middle of those halel psalms, Psalm 115, there is a rebuke of idolatry. Psalm 115, verse 4. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak, and eyes but do not see, they have ears but do not hear, noses but do not smell, they have hands but do not feel, feet but do not walk, and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them. This is a great irony, a great irony, a tragic irony, that right within those songs of praise, the songs that put words to the deepest longings of our and their hearts, is their condemnation. That they have constructed in their minds a God that cannot save them. It was right there in their songs, save us. Walk with us, guide us, keep us from stumbling, love us with a love that endures forever. That is what their hearts truly needed.

13:11That is not what their hearts wanted.

13:17And it is for that reason, then, that when our Lord turns the corner down from the Mount of Olives and overlooking the city, when he sees his city, when he hears the shouts of those words behind him, knowing their hearts he wept.

13:39What blindness in causes. This is the same irony of the psalms in real life. At their hearts' deepest longings. In the flesh.

14:05And even with our lips we honor him. Yet only a few short days is all it takes for those same lips to shout crucify him. This is brutally painful.

14:22So he weeps. So he weeps. And here's the big idea then. His weeping is mourning over sin.

14:39His weeping is sorrow over unbelief. But the root of that is that they, and often we, are blind to and rejecting of the source of peace.

14:59Blind to and rejecting the source of the Again Luke 19, verse 41.

15:12And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace.

15:28But now they are hidden from your eyes. That's what they wanted, right? That's what you want, right? Peace. But the peace they wanted was not the peace that they needed. They wanted temporal peace.

15:51Wanted peace in the world. When they shouted, Hosanna, save us, they wanted Jesus to do what? To overthrow the Romans? Give them their world back? Jesus, if you would just fix the government, if you would just fix politics, if you could just squash all our enemies, then we could have peace.

16:20No kings, they may have shouted.

16:25This is the assumption or belief that the problem of peace is an external force as opposed to an inward sin. Because we misdiagnose what the real problem is. The external chaos is but a symptom of an internal disease. What is the universal salve of the Psalms? What is the great balm that brings comfort to the distressed? What is it that brings hope to the hopeless? What is it that brings healing to the sick and salvation to the sinner? It is the love. It is the nearness. It is the reconciliation of God. Christ, his salvation, his transformation, his reconciliation, his intercession. This alone is our peace. This is what our Lord knows they need, but again, it is not what they want. It is not what they want because they think that their greatest enemy was the Romans. But in reality, their greatest enemy was themselves. It is only when we see that the instigator of our chaos is our own sin that we truly see those things that make our peace. Bring us peace would that you even you had known on this day the things that make for peace. Church, the call for you today. Regardless of if anyone else joins you, you weep over your own sins. We weep over them still. Because it was those sins, it was our sin nature, it was our sinful passions, it was our sinful desires that broke our peace. It was those things that put us in danger and separated us from God. Even now, having been saved by grace through faith, it is still our sin that damages. It's still our sin that separates, it's still our sin that disrupts our peace. This has become, this becomes quite clear when we consider why Jesus came into the world to begin with. If we look at his mission, the mission of Christ, what was his focus? What did he accomplish on the cross? It is there that we see the great problem of peace that he dealt with. 1 Timothy 1, verse 15. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Luke 19, verse 10, for the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. Again I say, Hosanna, save us.

20:22Bring us peace from what? We are at war.

20:34That is true in many ways, but practically speaking, and daily now, multiple countries are dropping bombs, trashing drones, killing each other. When we think about what is going on presently in Gaza and the Middle East, we can imagine that living there would certainly make one live on the edge. Just practically consider for a moment that feeling of what it would be like to live under the threat that at any moment a bomb could fall out of the sky and could take you and your family out. How terrible of a station in life that would be to be on edge constantly. And anyone in that situation would certainly cry out, save us, bring us peace. But I ask even then, would that be your greatest danger? Let me remind you again of a far greater danger. I quoted this sermon before, but these are the words of Jonathan Edwards. O sinner, consider the fearful danger you are in. Tis a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about and ready every moment to singe it and to burn asunder, and you have no interest in any mediation, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep the flames of wrath off of you, nothing of your own, nothing that you have ever done, and nothing that you can do to induce God to spare you one moment.

22:54That is as perilous as it gets.

22:59It is sin that has us in the gravest danger. It is sin that puts us on the brink of death. And the greatest and most dangerous enemy to the unrepentant sinner is not man with his guns or his bombs or his words. The greatest danger to the unrepentant sinner is the wrath of a holy God. We do not fear man who can kill the body, but only God who has the power and authority to destroy both the body and the soul. I'm really going to sound like a Baptist pastor here. But how often do we heed the warnings of the newscasters? How often do we heed the warnings of the weatherman, but ignore the warnings of the preacher? Do you understand that idolatry has always been the problem? We fashion a God in our own image who is not terrifying, who has no wrath, so we don't have to worry about him. If we pretend like he isn't who the Bible says he is, we clear ourselves of danger. Remember the condemnation in the Psalms that we read earlier of the one who makes idols. Their idols are gold and silver, the work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not hear. Excuse me, they have ears but do not hear, noses but don't smell, hands, but do not feel, feet that don't walk.

24:48And those who make them become like them.

24:54The truth of God is too terrifying for us to deal with. So we make him powerless. We close his mouth, we shut his eyes, we stop up his ears, we restrict his movement and his activity, we prop him in a corner and we pray. Just don't look at what I'm doing, my God. Don't hear what I'm saying, don't speak to me, don't move, just stand there, and when I need something, I'll ask. Oh, that we would not worship idols, but the true God. That we would know that we are in real danger or were. And only then may we truly see those things that make for peace. And you may say then, well, I'm in Christ now. Praise God. But I no longer have need for the contemplation of these things. It's not true. Consider our Lord Jesus Christ, who himself was perfection in the flesh. He was God in flesh, who himself had no need to contemplate the dangers of sin and the perils of wrath, according to that same logic. Certainly the perfect man who never sinned had no need to worry about the dangers of worshiping a false God. Even still. Jesus weeps over the lost at the contemplation of the real danger that they are still in and cries, Would that you had known on this day the things that make for peace. Consideration of these truths, then, is essential because it reminds us once again of the real danger that Christ saved us from. And it keeps our attention upon those who are still in grave peril. Even still, we may say, such things are so dark, they're so depressing. What good is it to hear these things again? Joel Beeky so eloquently said in a sermon I listened to, it is by these truths alone that the Spirit wounds us. He says, It is by these truths that the Spirit pierces us to make room for the Spirit of Christ. You could say then that it is by these truths he rips our hearts out, that he may give us a new and better one.

27:45Beeky also says that false peace is the misery of miseries. May our broken, or may our hearts then bleed this morning.

27:59May our hearts bleed this morning from the piercing reality of our past and present peril.

28:16The good news for us this morning is that true peace can be found.

28:36This is verse 43. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side, and tear down to the ground you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you. This prophecy is literal in that those words actually came true in history. I did say there was good news. I'm gonna get to it, I promise. One more bit of bad news. In Matthew 27, when Pilate washes his hands of the situation, finding no fault in Christ, the Jewish people responded by saying, His blood be on us and upon our children. Crucify him. In A.D. 70, the prophecy of Christ and the wishes of the Jews to have the responsibility of the Son of God's death laid upon them found their fulfillment. Historians estimate that over a million Jews were killed just in the Romans, that initial Roman siege of Jerusalem. Josephus writes that Romans were crucifying 500 Jewish people a day for months. The region was running out of trees because of all the crucifixions. The entire city of Jerusalem was leveled exactly as Christ said it would be. This is all I can do as a preacher. As one who proclaims the gospel, is to show you the peril that you were or are in apart from Christ. You are in grave peril apart from Christ. And to weep over the sins of the lost and to proclaim to you where peace comes from.

32:54Where true peace comes from. The good news.

33:02The good news that Paul gives to the Greeks in Acts 17 is that if we would feel our way towards him, we would find that he's actually not far from each of us. That's wonderful news if you know what Paul is really saying there. In context of that passage and in application to our passage this morning, as dangerous as our situation is, apart from reconciliation to God, as perilous as our situation is, we are only ever a moment away from peace and salvation. As desperate and chaotic as our souls can be, as much an enemy to God as we can be, in the twinkling of an eye, we can rest secure in the arms of our Savior.

34:19So I ask, is he visiting you today? Is today the day of salvation? Do you know where true and lasting peace comes from? Do not miss him. Please do not miss him. And he visits.

35:24That we would all know again today those things that make for peace. That is the blood of our Lord, the covering of our sins, the passing over the covering of our transgressions, the mercy of God visiting us by his spirit and bringing us to safety and hiding us in the cleft of the rock. The God man Jesus Christ. This is our peace. Let us then this week in the grace and mercy of his work that we will celebrate next week. The victory that we have in the empty tomb, that sting of death forever defeated. By that humble one who rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey.

36:20Who wept over unbelief. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Perhaps that means something deeper now. Amen.

36:59Through the cross, through this instrument of judgment and death, Lord, you have brought us peace. We thank you, Lord, that you have visited us. And in your grace and in your mercy, you've revealed to us the peril of our own sin, apart from a saving work of Christ. Of how good you were to us in our sin. Of how gracious you were to us in saving us.

37:43May we weep over them today.

38:00Would you let us be the instruments of peace of the good news, the truth of where peace is found? We thank you for Christ. It's in his name that I pray.

38:12Amen.