S. Jesus Weeping Over Jerusalem

JESUS WEEPING OVER JERUSALEM

TEXT: And when He drew nigh, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, when thine enemies shall cast up a bank about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall dash thee to 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. Luke 19:41-44. A very profound impression has been made upon my mind by the study of the Sunday school lesson of today, Christ’s triumphal procession into Jerusalem. Some months ago I preached to you a sermon on Christ’s public visit to Jerusalem, after He had commenced His ministry. This is His last. This closed His ministry. I wish I knew how to get clearly before you the contrast between Christ’s triumphal entry and the triumphal entry of the kings of this world. Pick up your Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” and read his graphic descriptions of the triumphs decreed for the general who had accomplished some great object, who had subdued a nation, who had slaughtered a million and led a million into captivity, and mark how that triumphal entry (for it was always celebrated in Rome) was managed in its ceremonies. See the prisoners manacled with irons that were brought from that far-off land to grace the triumph. See the chariot, drawn by four, or six, or ten, or twenty, magnificent, beautiful, snow-white horses. See the ensigns of war carried at the head of the column. Behold the pomp and circumstance and splendor, every step of it prescribed by a master of ceremonies. Who should meet it as it came to a certain point? Where should be the arch of triumph? What distinguished citizens should make speeches at a certain point? And how those speeches were carefully written out and all the rhetorical finish upon them coldly prepared in the study. A Roman triumph! Go and stand under the Arch of Triumph as it once stood in the City of Paris and read on it the inscriptions of the great victories of Napoleon Bonaparte, and study just one triumphal procession as it passed under that arch, and then read how Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords entered into the Holy City. No master of ceremonies; no cold programme of set speeches; no arrangement of the crowd that should come out from the city to meet the crowd that went in, but all of it was the involuntary, instantaneous and unprompted uprising of the souls of the poor, of the people who had been benefited by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not a sword, not a flag, not a war horse, not a chariot, none of the trappings that were usually placed upon the steed that was to bear the conquering hero that came, were seen here. No cloth of gold spread out upon a field of gold, as when earthly kings meet, to impress upon the eyes of the rabble and upon the heart of the rabble, some conception of their earthly dignity. He came riding upon the foal of an ass, without saddle or bridle. Sitting on that untrained colt He rode in, and such branches as the people might pluck from the trees were scattered where gratitude prompted that they should be placed. And if one would spread down his tunic, or outer garment, upon the ground, to signify that a king was coming, that might be done. I do wish you would take into your hearts the difference between Jesus and the spirit of this world. Strauss, who has written as a German, but largely from the standpoint of Renan, a Frenchman, endeavoring to deny anything supernatural in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, has asserted that Jesus Himself lost His balance and was temporarily led away by the expressions of applause that greeted Him on this occasion, and that He must have regretted that the popular tide did not have depth and force enough in it to carry Him to the kingdom which He sought. The object of the selection of my theme today partially is to sweep away any such conception, to furnish an absolute demonstration that the Lord Jesus Christ understood the whole situation, in all its present and backward and forward relations. That He was never for one moment deceived by any cry falling from the lips of His humble disciples, or by any questioning or accusation that rose from the malicious hearts of the Pharisees that would smite Him to death; but that He thoroughly comprehended the deep and eternal significance of all of it. Now mark you that this paragraph which I have read immediately follows your lesson. Your lesson closes with, “Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna to the Lamb of God.” Your lesson closes with palm leaves and garments spread before Him. Your lesson closes by giving every demonstration which it is alleged had misled even Jesus Himself. And while they are saying hosanna, and while the colt upon which He rides is walking upon the outspread garments, and upon the scattered palm leaves, their road makes a turn. You can go and stand there now and see where it occurred. The road makes a turn and as it turns the city bursts upon His view. The city of Jerusalem rises up in all of its glorious splendor. And as He saw it a great gasping sob shook Him. It was not that silent weeping, as when He stood at the grave of Lazarus and wept. A different word is used. It is an outcry of grief. It is a lamentation. It is an extorted wail, a dirge like a funeral note of woe that breaks from His pallid lips as a vision bursts upon His sight. And what is that vision? Let us look at the fact first. There is nothing upon this earth that so impresses the human heart as when walking along the pathway of life, all at once, whether you have expected such a thing or not, all at once, by the Providence of God, a curtain is held back and you see over yonder into the future. When from some unclouded summit of vision there bursts upon the eye what shall be in the near future, and the lips speak what the startled heart feels, there is an awful impression, a deep and sublime impression made upon the mind by such a sight. The poets have tried, with all the arts known to the dramatic writer, to grasp this. See how Campbell tries to bring it out when he introduces a seer as meeting Lochiel, “Whose clan is a thousand, whose breast is but one,” when he meets him on the eve of the battle of Culloden and startles him by gathering back the curtain and showing him that bloody field. But you can trace the art all the way through in the expressions of Campbell. It is only when a real vision is seen, only when God’s Providence draws back these curtains and the eye which is opened looks upon actuality, that the voice is natural and that the utterances have tears in them. And such it was then. Just as clearly as men saw the fact forty years later, the Lord Jesus Christ, in the midst of that shouting, in the midst of that waving of palms, saw Titus coming. He saw the Roman armies gathering. He saw the embankments raised around that doomed city. He saw that city shut in on every side. He saw famine in its ghastliness and pestilence in its noisesonneness, and conflagration with its torch of fire, and war with all of its grim and grisly horrors, and civil strife and insurrection, and women eating the bodies of their children - -all of it burst upon His mind at one time. Now let us read it, and I will read, connecting it with your lesson, so as not to make a break: “Blessed is the king that cometh in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. And when He drew nigh He saw the city.” Many men who have visited Jerusalem have gone back on the road to Jericho and gotten into that road and followed it slowly and solemnly around, just as if they were in that procession, to make the effect upon them as they turned that very corner of the mountain side, and to see the city burst upon their view, and have described the impression that it made upon them. “And when He drew nigh He saw the city and He wailed over it,” not wept. He wailed over it: “If thou hadst known in this thy day, even thou, the things which belong unto thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee when thine enemies shall cast up a bank about thee and compass thee around and keep thee in on every side, and shall dash thee to the ground and thy children with thee. And they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another because thou knewest not the day of thy visitation.” What a deep, significant reason. Forty years after, Titus comes. Forty years before Titus is the cause. There the effect; here the cause. Who will trace out the subtle connections between the downfall of Jerusalem and their rejection of this last offering of our Lord Jesus Christ, this last coming! He had been there before. He had been there often. It had been line upon line and precept upon precept. He is not mistaken. He knows that it means death to Him. He has announced that it means death to Him. And when Mary, who believed His words, who believed He was to die, and the only one who did, when she took her precious alabaster box of ointment and broke it and poured it over His head and over His feet, and wiped His feet with the hair of her head, she knew that the nails would very soon pierce these feet, and Jesus says, “She hath done this beforehand, to prepare me for my burial.” There was no misconception in His mind, but the awful thought on His mind was this: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the lost! Oh, how often I would have gathered them, but they would not. How many times before this have I sent my prophets, sent my servants. How tenderly have I pleaded with them. And even now, when I see them on the verge of their final doom; even now when they have turned away from me forever; even now, when blindfolded, the things that make for their peace hidden from their sight, even when they go out of sight down the dark pathway of irreparable disaster, as that pathway closes behind them, I stop and weep over the lost and fallen.” It is a picture of the heart of Jesus. It is an exhibition of the soul, the compassionate soul of the Son of God. He is the express image of the invisible God, of that God whom no man has seen at any time. He was sent in order to make known to men who were despising and misunderstanding and misrepresenting God, a father’s loving heart. Is this a tyrant? Is this a tyrant that stands where the perverse and incorrigible and malicious and murderous and persistent despisers of divine love and compassion have passed by and gone down and gone down forever? Oh, these tears of Jesus, even when He knows that the men He weeps for are lost forever! What a picture of God’s heart! I want to make the application of this in two directions. What occurs in human experience can govern only the individual life in which that experience occurs. I mean to say that the standard for the government of the world is the written word, and that you cannot substitute in place of that word any feeling you have had, any vision you have seen. You may not say, “I, too, have a vision,” and put it in place of what is written. I doubt not that in ways innumerable and with people innumerable, the Lord God does send beforehand impressions that are genuine and correspond to the divine influence that produces them, and that so far as that particular soul is concerned it is as if God had said, “Here at the turn of the road I show you the city. See it from this standpoint. See it from the standpoint of the rejection of Jesus Christ. See it from the standpoint of malice against the principles of His holy religion. Let me show you the city.” And I doubt not men have seen it, but it is not to take the place of what is written. Then this word “nigh.” This is followed by an exclamation point at the end of the sentence. It expresses not only such a thought as, “It might have been,” not only that, but it expresses the sadness of a heart that had so deeply longed that a different thing had been. “If thou hadst known in this thy day, even thou, the things which belong unto thy peace!” Now here was the last time when it was possible for that city to get a glimpse of the things which made for its peace. God knew it was the last time. Jesus knew it was the last time, and He knew that if they did not see it that day they would never see it. He knew that as that road wound around that mountain, and as it passed a specific point, that at that point there was the last opening, the last vista up which and through which Jerusalem could ever see her peace, and that if that opening was passed, never more would there be any open way through which their sight could reach peace and things which made for their peace. Now you can understand His grief. Just to see that city pass out, and Him looking at it. See the three or four millions of people, see those three or four millions representing the nation. See that nation that has walked from the days of Abraham until now under the direct Providence of God. See that people upon whom the most signal blessings have been bestowed, and that have been the marked recipients of divine favor above all nations in every age of the world up to this time. See them passing without knowing, without seeing, without being conscious of it, the very last place from which they can ever see peace. “Oh, if you could know it today! Even if today, as I come in my procession into Jerusalem, while these people are spreading their palm leaves, while they are shouting hosanna to the Son of God. Oh, if today, the last opportunity, you would look to the things which make for your peace! But they are hidden from your sight.” And they are hidden yet. One hundred years is a long time. Eighteen hundred years, oh, what a long time that is! Nineteen hundred years, what a stretch of time! And yet nearly twenty centuries have rolled away since they passed that point. Have they come to a place yet where they could see? Not yet; not yet. Did the Romans come? They came. Was the embankment thrown up? It was. Were they shut in on every side? They were. Were they left to internal strife, fighting among themselves? They were. Did brother grapple brother by the throat? They did. Did women eat their own children in their hunger and their starvation? They did. Did ruin such as the world had never known before come upon them? It did. And is the night on them yet? It is. To me it would be the saddest thing on earth to look at but for one expression in this connection that stretches far over the centuries and takes hold of a time when this nation, that had been scattered and dispersed over the earth, to be a by-word of hissing and reproach, at last it shall turn to the Lord, and Israel shall be saved. That is the only thing that relieves the dark picture to my mind. Now there is a remarkable similarity between a nation of people and an individual. That has struck every student of nations; every man that ever studied history has been impressed with that thought, that as an individual person has his childhood, and as he grows and matures and reaches manhood and after a while passes the zenith and then goes down, so with nations, so with people gathered together. And that student of history is also bound to notice this point, that just as certain as an individual is responsible to God for all departures from the moral law and for lack of conformity thereto, so is the nation. And the nation that forgets God is doomed just as much as the individual that forgets God. The doom cannot be averted. No counsels of men, no precautions of earthly wisdom, no massing of armies, no mustering phalanx or Pretorian Guard, no hitherto invincible regiments of Swiss infantry or Austrian hussars can keep down the doom when it comes upon the nation. There are things which make for our community peace. There are things which make for our State peace. There are things which make for our national peace, and wise are we if they are not hidden from our eyes, and it is a sure token of the manifest judgment of God if we cannot look down some of the openings and discern the things which make for peace. And now let us close with the reference of this matter to the individual. It has always, ever since I have had any religious thoughts on the subject, been to me a matter of profound concern that education should be in a religious atmosphere, and that mere mental and physical development, without moral and spiritual development, signified nothing in the wide world toward the conservation of public morals, toward the perpetuity and stability of government. And it has also ever been to my mind clear that there is a propitious period; there is a standpoint from which many roads to peace can be walked and many sights of peace can be seen. I refer to young people. How few can tell. These Baylor boys will soon go home. It is true it is a month or two yet until they go, but it is not a month or two until their last opportunity this year for salvation has passed. When did you ever read about anybody being converted in the days that you are preparing for examination-when the mind is diverted by thoughts of going home? Is that a time for conversion? Oh, is there not from where we now stand on this first Sunday in April-is there not a way through which if you look you can find some student hitherto lost who can see and find peace, and that if passed now will be forever passed! Gone! Gone! And gone so that after it is gone you can just look back and say, “Oh, oh, if I had known!” Oh, in view of heaven lost and hell gained; oh, son or daughter, if you had known, even that last time, the things that made for peace! Too late! Too late! I have myself felt my heart almost break as I would stand over a dead child, a dead baby, a dead boy. Oh, it is bitter, it is bitter! But what is that to standing over a dead soul, a soul from which peace is gone forever, yea, forever and forever! Then beyond the student (and, oh, Lord God, let there be nothing in me that would hide peace from their sight!) beyond the student I look at the city. I look at the congregation, I look at the young people here in Waco, and I cannot help it. I have passed through some strange experiences in the last forty-eight hours. I do not present it as a revelation, as gospel; there is no standard but the Word of God. But I have been where I could see and feel the certainty and the nearness of the eternity of heaven and of hell. And there are some that have come often here; some maybe whose fathers died in the faith of the gospel that is preached here; some, it may be, whose mothers, from the spirit world are looking down on this earth; some over whom God’s light has been shining with special brightness; some who have been held under the uplifted prayers of the pious, and whose pillows, even the pillows in their cradles, have been bedewed with the tears and have been surrounded with the watching and prayers of mothers who prayed for them while they were yet in the cradle. And some of these, maybe, are now and forever passing the point where they will never see peace any more, never will again. Who would make a mock of death? I do want to say this to you: There is in the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ a self-evidencing demonstration of its truth. It is true and the soul that rejects Jesus Christ is lost. That soul is lost. And would you be satisfied, after death has come, to say, “Well, we had a magnificent funeral?” Would you be satisfied to say after death has come, “We had flowers put on the grave?” Would you be satisfied because a monument of pure white marble has been erected? Would you be satisfied if a quotation from the Bible and about heaven has been inscribed on that tombstone, if, notwithstanding the flowers, notwithstanding the external indications, that marble monument rests on a breast which once caged a lost soul? To show the foreknowledge of Jesus it is only necessary to note that right in connection with this visit He instituted this very memorial of the supper we celebrate today. If a stranger inquire: “What is that? What is it?” That is intended to represent a shroud, a white shroud. What is under the shroud? The emblems of a dead body. How are they the emblems of a dead body? The body and the blood are separated. And what does it signify? It signifies that the One whom the people greeted with their hosannas, the meek and lowly One, that without pomp or ceremony came into Jerusalem on the day that you have read about in your lesson-that Jesus put away His personal glory; that Jesus emptied Himself and took upon Himself the form of a slave; that Jesus gave His life for the salvation of the people. Who would sing hosanna? Let no man sing it who has not the spirit of Jesus. Let no man, through a form, celebrate a ritual of Palm Sunday. Oh, yes, all through the ages you read about Palm Sundays. Today is Palm Sunday, as they call it. Read in novels and romances and histories about how they set this day forth. No, keep no such days. “Touch not, taste not, handle not,” said the Apostle Paul, not that way. How then? Oh, in your souls, in your spirits, come up to the Lord Jesus Christ and catch the spirit of humility and of sacrifice that was in Him. That would be a real Palm Sunday. Oh, that would be a triumphant procession of Jesus Christ into Waco. That would do more to recognize Him than to spread a cloth of gold for Him to walk on. Not gold, but hearts, hearts! Bring your souls and place them on the altar today, on this day of the solemn communion that commemorates His death. Oh, if one spark of the light of Christ’s religion is in your heart, if one echo of His precious promises yet faintly sounds in your soul, oh, if there be just one breath in the lungs of your spiritual life that is like the breath in the lungs of the life of Jesus Christ, let us use that today in coming right up to Jesus, right near to Jesus. Mary saw it. She felt it. She never said anything about it, but she gave her choicest and her best. Not in words did she speak, but in actions she said, “Oh, dying Master, I see it! I feel it! I believe it! Let me prepare Thee for Thy burial! Oh, let the odor of the ointment of my sacrifice fill the world.” Mary saw it! Let us pray.