Agony of the King

For our meditation, I want us to turn to Luke's Gospel, chapter 19, verses 41 through 44. As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you."

This is a significant moment in Luke's narration. One of the things I want to lay before you up front is that Luke has presented the ministry of Jesus as a journey to Jerusalem. The journey begins in chapter 9, yet it takes ten chapters for Jesus to finally arrive; it is only in chapter 19, verse 45, that we see him actually entering the city. That is what makes this chapter the climax of everything Luke has been building toward. Back in chapter 9, verse 51, the literal sense is that as the time approached for him to be taken up, Jesus resolutely set his face. His eyes were on the city. All through the walking, the talking, the healing and the teaching, he was moving toward this one place—and now, at last, he has come near.

Earlier in this same chapter, the parable of the king and his servants teaches us how the Jewish nation at large refused to receive its king. Look at verse 14: "We don't want this man to be our king." That is a picture of the people saying to Jesus, in effect, we want Pontius Pilate, we want Caiaphas, we want Annas—we have nothing to do with you. The contrast is sharp. On one side stands Zacchaeus, the least likely man, a tax collector, welcoming the king into his house, and transformation follows. On the other side stand the people at large, who refused.

From verse 28 onward the phrase "drawing near" is repeated three times. Verse 28: after Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, drawing near to Jerusalem. Verse 37: as he came near the place. And our key verse, verse 41: as he approached, as he drew near to Jerusalem. So what should we expect when the king finally comes near to this city? What is so special about Jerusalem? It is the city of David, the city of the temple. The temple stood like a rock of refuge and strength for the Jewish people. Three times a year—for Passover, for Tabernacles, and for Pentecost—they would go up to Jerusalem; it was the high point of their devotion. So Luke builds our curiosity: what will happen when the king draws near to this city? Will it be like anyone else approaching it—like Gamaliel approaching, or a high priest approaching? Or will there be twists and turns when he comes near to this great, lofty place?

If I were to title this sermon, it would be in the form of a question: was this a triumphant entry, or a tearful entry? Our Bibles often print "the triumphal entry" as the heading—here is the conquering king, the crowds crying out. But I want us to consider the agony of the king. Notice two very different responses. Jesus does not approach Jerusalem alone; the disciples and the crowd are with him. Verse 37 says that when he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices. Luke does not use the word "Hosanna," but the other Gospels record it—Hosanna to the king, the cry of Palm Sunday. Yet the stark contrast is verse 41: as Jesus approached, he began to weep. Why the difference? The crowd is excited, and the same thing can happen even today. In a place like this, some are happy and rejoicing, while others sit with deep pain and tears—two entirely different experiences in the same room.

A theologian, reflecting on the emotions of Jesus, put it this way: "I am spellbound by the intensity of Jesus' emotions. Not a twinge of pity, but heartbroken compassion." Think of Matthew 9, where Jesus saw the crowd and had compassion on them. The word there is no ordinary word. In the original language it is the verb splanchnizomai, from splanchna, the inward parts—what the Greeks regarded as the seat of the deepest emotions. When Jesus saw the crowd, something moved in him from the inside; his heart broke, his heart ached. And it was not only compassion. He did not have passing irritations, but terrifying anger—Mark 3 shows him looking around at the religious leaders in anger, and Mark 10:14 shows him indignant when the disciples kept the children away. His tears were not silent; they were groans of anguish. His smile was not weak; it was ecstatic celebration. Jesus was full of emotion: compassion that rises from within, anger that shows on the face.

Now look again at that word in verse 41, "he wept over it." Our popular translations have not captured its full force. The literal sense is not quiet weeping but sobbing, wailing—deep and audible sorrow. This particular word (klaiō) appears eleven times in Luke's Gospel. You find it in chapter 7, verses 12 and 13: as Jesus approached the town gate, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she a widow. She is weeping uncontrollably, and verse 13 says, "When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, 'Don't cry.'" You find it again in chapter 8, verse 52, at the house of Jairus, where all the people were wailing and mourning for his daughter.

How many times do the Gospels record that Jesus wept? Only two. One of the first verses many of us memorized as children is John 11:35, "Jesus wept." But the word used there (dakryō) is different from the word used here. In John 11:35 the picture is of tears quietly rolling down the cheeks—inward, silent grief. In the very same chapter, John 11:33, when Jesus saw Mary weeping, the word is the loud, audible one used in our passage. English cannot easily distinguish the two. So as Jesus draws near to Jerusalem, he is not shedding silent tears; he is crying aloud, uncontrollably. Remember the detail Luke gives us elsewhere: it was Jairus's only daughter (chapter 8:42), the widow's only son, Mary's only brother. That is the weeping of one who has almost lost all hope. So why is Jesus weeping like this?

As I read it, Jesus is not crying for himself. He is not weeping out of fear of the cross, or of Pontius Pilate, or of Judas's betrayal. He is weeping because he loved this place—every stone, every person, everything in that city. His heart was there. In chapter 13, verse 34, he had already cried, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing." I wanted to protect you; I came for you. That is why, in sending out his disciples, he told them not to go first to the Gentile territories but rather to the lost sheep of Israel. He is weeping because he longed to protect them, and now it is almost out of his hands; it is almost too late. As I sat with this passage, I thought: O God, this is your heart—for me, for all of us. His heart goes out to sinners. Even in Ezekiel 18:32 God says, "I take no pleasure in the death of anyone. Repent and live."

So Jesus weeps uncontrollably over hearts that will not repent—over their spiritual condition, over a people who rejected their king. When was the last time we wept like that over lost souls in our own family, our neighborhood, our city? Can you think of a day when everyone around you was laughing and rejoicing, but you could not hold back your tears—when you went into a room, closed the door, and wept, not because you lost a job or failed an exam, but because you thought of someone's future, that they are heading toward a lostness apart from Christ and do not know the peace he offers? J.C. Ryle wrote about the lazy indifference we carry toward the spiritual state of others—and I include myself in that. He said such indifference will doubtless save us some trouble: the trouble of weeping. We are comfortable with two-hour services, comfortable with a song, comfortable with a ten-minute family prayer. But, he says, to care nothing about our neighbors who are perishing may be the way of the world; it is not the way of Christ.

When I meditated on this, I thought of Paul's words about having the mind of Christ (Philippians 2; 1 Corinthians 2). To have the mind of Christ is not merely to possess certain abilities. It is to have his tears. It is to be willing to bear the nails and the crown of thorns. That is why Paul could say in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." To follow Jesus, to have his mindset, is to feel that intense ache within when we look at our neighbors, our friends, our own classmates who do not know him. That pain is what makes us more like Jesus.

And what exactly did Jesus see? Verse 41 says he approached and saw the city; he had not yet entered it. If we were standing on the slope of the Mount of Olives, looking across at Jerusalem, the one thing we could not miss would be the temple—the second temple, built around 516 BC and beautified by Herod, a master architect who built seven palaces for himself. Why would such grandeur make Jesus weep? Because he was weeping over the superficiality of the place—its shallowness, its hypocrisy. On the outside stood magnificence, and everyone who saw it said, "God is there." It is sometimes like our own lives: outwardly we carry our Bibles, we call ourselves followers of Jesus, and people say, "What holy people you are." Jerusalem stood as an icon of the holiness and majesty of God—surely God lives there, in the most holy place—and yet underneath was superficiality. That is why, in verse 45, the very next thing Jesus does on entering the temple courts is to drive out those who were selling.

There is a superficial evangelism that goes on even today. Martyn Lloyd-Jones described it as an evangelism that puts the gospel entirely in human terms; the preacher's questions become, "Are you happy? Are you worried? Do you want this or that?"—and people have no idea who Jesus really is. "I want a financial deliverance." It is all superficial. Leonard Ravenhill spoke of the superficiality of the present-day church when he said it has more fashion than passion, is more pathetic than prophetic, more superficial than supernatural. We are meant to be the hands of Jesus, the eyes of Jesus, the feet of Jesus, but superficiality has so taken hold that there is little supernatural strength left—and I do not mean only healing. We need supernatural strength to cry out for others, to come out of self-centeredness, where all we can pray about is my life, my desire, my disease, my family, my children. To be like Jesus and weep for others, we need the supernatural power of God.

Jesus gives us two clear reasons for his weeping. First, in verse 42: "If you, even you..." Every word in Scripture is worth noting, and "even you" intensifies everything. Even you—the people who have the law, who have the commandments, who know the Messiah is coming, who live in the holy city. The contrast is with Zacchaeus: even that despised tax collector recognized the king, but you, the religious, the Torah-keeping people, do not know what would bring you peace. If only you had known, on this day, what would bring you peace. Ask the people of Jerusalem—ask Annas, ask Caiaphas, ask an ordinary man—"Do you have peace?" and they would say, "Yes; Pilate and the high priest are on good terms, we can worship freely in the synagogue, we are at peace with Rome and with Caesar." We often reduce peace to a passing feeling or a circumstance: a husband comes home, his wife sees something on his face, and a long-awaited promotion or a financial breakthrough has finally come.

But the biblical understanding of peace is not individualistic tranquility—not merely "I'm feeling okay these days." Biblical peace is peace with God. You were once an object of wrath, a child of disobedience, and now you have been reconciled to the living and all-powerful God through the work of Christ on the cross. In Zechariah's song in Luke 1, this peace is described: because of the tender mercy of our God, the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace. Why did Jesus come? Not to establish a religion, not merely to make our lives more comfortable, not as a vaccine so we would escape some disease. He came to give us peace, because we had no connection with the living God; his wrath was upon us and we were doomed. By the cross, by the blood shed on our behalf, Jesus now looks at us and says, "You are my friend; you are reconciled to the Father." Do we have that peace in our hearts, or do we come on Sundays and read the Bible as a religious exercise, assuming everything will go well—until a twist comes, a doctor's report, a loss of pay, a lost job, and we ask, "Where is God? I was baptized, I was reading the Bible, and now my peace is gone"? But that peace is not taken from us when disease strikes. The risen Jesus tells his disciples, "My peace I give you; not as the world gives." It is a peace that passes all understanding, for, as Paul says in Ephesians 2, he himself is our peace. This is the first reason for his tears: they missed the way of peace.

Second, in verse 43: "The days will come upon you." Jesus knows where this peaceful-looking city is heading. He says the enemy will build an embankment against you and you will be utterly destroyed. This shows that he sees our future. When everything is going well—when we have money and position—everyone is around us; but when health and wealth are gone, we are left alone. Jesus, however, is fully aware of where each path leads. He knows the choices we will make, and over some he weeps. Ten years from now, when he comes, will Jesus be rejoicing—"my son, my daughter is heading in the right direction, at peace with me"—or wailing—"there is money now, there is position now, but in the end, ruin"? God sees our future and grieves over the road we are choosing.

Lastly, verse 44: they did not recognize the time of God's visitation. Each of us has times of God's visitation in our lives. That is why some of us are here. You were healthy, going along, when suddenly something happened, and you paused and thought about life—"How long will I live?" Someone prayed, and you were healed. That was a day of God's visitation, given so that light would dawn on who Jesus is. The people of Jerusalem had been visited again and again: at the wedding in Cana, water became wine; Jairus's daughter was raised; blind Bartimaeus received his sight; Lazarus was called out of the tomb. God visited them at moment after moment, and still they did not recognize it.

So when Jesus drew near to Jerusalem, the crowd was loudly rejoicing, but Jesus was wailing—because they had missed the way of peace, had not recognized the day of God's visitation, and had rejected their king. Let it not happen to any one of us. Let us leave this place having peace with God, recognizing the day of his visitation, and bringing honor to God by receiving Jesus as king. Do not do the expected; do not, like Jerusalem, let the king pass by in tears.