I want to bring a message today
outside of what I said I would do in Galatians. We'll get back
to that next week. I'm looking forward to that with
you in Galatians 5. But this week, considering the
news of Francis' grandfather, I was led in my thoughts to this
sermon. And I want to read to you from
the book of Luke, if you want to turn to the book of Luke.
And we're going to begin in verse 41 after we pray. Father, thank
you that we can to the Lord Jesus fly, pursued by all of our sin. pursued even by the wrath of
God against us because of our sin into the bosom of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the only refuge, the only anchor for our soul
pursued because of our sin, finding rest in you. We pray, Lord, that
we would so see the Lord Jesus as everything in our salvation
and not look again to ourselves, but look with admiration and
worship to him at all times. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. The title of today's sermon is
the shortest verse in all of scripture, Jesus wept. And I want to read these verses
to you from Luke chapter 19. There are three places I'm aware
of in scripture that record Jesus weeping. And this is one of them. We'll read the other two in a
minute. So our scripture for today is in Luke 19. Jesus had
ridden into Jerusalem on a colt. And when he was come near, it
says in verse 41, When he was come near, he beheld
the city, the city of Jerusalem, and he wept, he wept over it,
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, For the day shall come upon thee,
that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass
thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay
thee even 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. The visitation
he's speaking of is his own visitation coming into the world. In these
two words, the title of our message today, Jesus Wept, there is an
ocean of revelation that reveal to us the tender compassion of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember, that's what scripture
is written to reveal, the heart and character of our Savior.
Three times in scripture we read that Jesus wept. Here, before
riding into Jerusalem, our Lord paused. He looked upon that city
and wept over it. He did not weep for its buildings.
He wept for its people. He wept for the Jews, who were
his own people after the flesh. They were not his people in heart,
yet he wept for them. Because their city would soon
be destroyed for their willful rejection of their own Messiah. And then again, in John chapter
11 verse 35, Jesus wept when he saw Mary and the Jews sorrowing
at the death of Lazarus. Lazarus had died. Before he died,
Mary and Martha sent messengers to Jesus in John chapter 11. And Jesus deliberately waited
until after he died to come. And they met him, the two sisters
met him, first Martha and then Mary. And then at the grave it
says that Jesus wept when he saw Mary and the Jews sorrowing
at the death of Lazarus. He felt sorrow for his friends. Their suffering became a burden
to his own soul. Think about that. He was touched
by the feeling of their sorrow, their helplessness before the
consequences of sin. And then the third place in scripture
where it is recorded that Jesus wept is in Hebrews chapter 5.
If you want to turn to Hebrews chapter 5. And so these three
cases where Jesus wept teach us about the Lord Jesus and his
compassion, his tender compassion for sinners. And each one of
them brings a new message, a new lesson to us. And let me give
you those lessons at the outset. First, in Hebrews chapter 5 and
verse 7, we're going to read this scripture. We're going to
see that Jesus wept. He wept as a man of sorrows because
he bore the consequences of the sins of his people. He Himself
bore our sins, and He felt the sorrow of them. Hebrews chapter
5 verse 7 says, Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered
up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears
unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and He was heard
in that He feared, though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience
by the things which He suffered, and being made perfect perfect
as our Savior, He became the author of eternal salvation unto
all them that obey Him in the obedience of faith. And so, let
us consider this last case first. Jesus wept in agony because the
sins of His people were made his sins. It says in 1 Peter
2 verse 24, who his own self bear our sins in his own body
on the tree. And then in 2 Corinthians 5 verse
21 it says, God has made him sin for us. He who knew no sin
was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. And then, Christ's agony of soul
was expressed prophetically by Job in the book of Job. After
Job's friends troubled him by their miserable counsel and comfort. And he told his friends in prophecy,
Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends, for
the hand of God hath touched me. That's in Job 19 verse 21. And then in Psalm 69, the Lord
Jesus spoke of the reproach and shame he felt because the sins
of his people were laid upon him and became his to bear. In
Psalm 69 verse 20 he said, Reproach hath broken my heart. This reproach
for sin. Reproach hath broken my heart
and I am full of heaviness and I looked for some to take pity.
But there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me
also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar
to drink." That's from Psalm 69 and verse 20 and 21. The Lord
Jesus took and bore the sins of his people before God in their
place. He wept then because he suffered
under the guilt of those sins. He wept because he suffered under
the shame and reproach for those sins. Shame and reproach before
man and especially before God. And he wept because he suffered
under the punishment of those sins at the hand of God his Father. It was a punishment in his soul.
Think of the stress his conscience endured. He loved righteousness
and he hated iniquity. He perfectly obeyed God's law.
He honored it from his heart and mind with his words and in
all that he did, and yet he was punished as the worst transgressor
that ever lived. He who did only right in the
sight of God bore the sins and punishment of one who had done
only wrong. And in his agony, there was none
to help. He suffered alone at the hand
of sinful, hateful, cruel, merciless, unjust men. And yet, their torments
were but light affliction compared to what he felt at the forsaking
of his father. Now, we cannot truly understand
the sufferings of Jesus under the weight of our sins. But we
know this. He made supplications with strong
crying and tears unto him who was able to save him from death.
That's what we just read in Hebrews 5-7. Those things that came upon
him, the weight of our sin, the forsaking by friends and family,
the mocking and torture of his enemies. And especially the loss
of the sense of God's presence in his soul altogether became
such a weight that it caused him unspeakable sorrow in his
soul and the pain in his body. A sorrow we will never, never
know. The prophet Jeremiah spoke of
Christ in these words. In Lamentation 1 verse 12 he
says, Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? Behold, and
see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow which is done
unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his
fierce anger. There was never sorrow like his,
and there never will be. His grief and woe is heard in
his cry to his father from the cross under the burden of our
sin and the punishment of God against us when he cried, my
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? As sinners, we are accustomed
to shutting out the voice of our conscience and accustomed
to hiding from God. We know very little of the effects
of sin that the Lord Jesus felt. Sin in our conscience makes us
sick in our body. We feel sadness, we feel depressed,
we become confused by it, we forget truth we once held dear,
and we don't know what to do. We feel lost, forsaken, afraid,
without peace in unrest and find no comfort, and we are unable
to receive comfort from any because God withholds the sense of His
comfort from us. Without God's word, we are without
hope. Now if by our own sin, we who
drink iniquity like water, as Kevin Thacker was given that
illustration in Rescue. It's just so natural for us to
drink water, isn't it? We don't even think about it.
Tip it up, drink it down. That's the way God says we drink
iniquity like water. If we are so accustomed to sin
and so natural, doing without thinking, if we who are such
sinners know something of the weight of affliction on our own
conscience in this, what of the holy, harmless Son of God who
never knew sin, who hated iniquity, and who only loved righteousness?
What would he who enjoyed unbroken communion in his soul with God
at the deepest level feel if the sins of God's presence were
removed from him because of the guilt and shame of sin? That
is what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane. That is what happened
on the Cross of Calvary. It was indescribable agony of
soul. And it was all because of what
Christ suffered for the sins of his people. That's the first
reason Jesus wept. God described that separation
of Christ as our sin bearer. That separation He experienced.
He describes it by the prophet Isaiah when he said in Isaiah
59, listen to these words. The Lord's hand is not shortened
that it cannot save, neither His ear heavy that it cannot
hear. But here is the Lord Jesus hanging
on the cross. forsaken by God, and these words,
but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and
your sins have hid his face from you that he will not hear." These
are the words of the Lord Jesus for our sins. When Jesus Christ
bore the sins of his people, those sins became his. He knew
for the first time and the only time what it meant for God not
to hear him. Why didn't God hear him? Because
the sins of his people became his own. Because he stood before
God as the sinner, though he himself did no sin. Yet he felt
the guilt of them in his conscience. This is why he cried, My God,
why hast thou forsaken me? Never was there a cry so mournful
as his. In Gethsemane and on the cross,
he cried out of the depths of his soul, The Book of the Psalms
is prophetic of the prayers that the Lord Jesus prayed in the
days of His humiliation when He bore the sins of His people.
Psalm 31 is one such prayer. In verse 5 of Psalm 31, the words
Jesus spoke from the cross are recorded in prophecy when he
said, "...into thine hand I commit my spirit." And yet, shockingly,
another woeful cry is uttered by our Lord in that same Psalm
when he said in verse 9, "...have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I
am in trouble." Mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and
my belly. For my life is spent with grief,
and my years with sighing. My strength faileth because of
mine iniquity. But I trusted in thee, O Lord. I said, Thou art my God. Psalm 40 is another prophetic
prayer of our Lord Jesus. In that psalm we see again the
full impact of what it meant for Jesus to personally do his
Father's will And as our great high priest, he offered himself
as the Lamb of God to make propitiation for the sins of his people. He
felt the weight of the sins of his people as he spoke these
words in Psalm 40, verse 12. Innumerable evils have compassed
me about. Mine iniquities have taken hold
upon me so that I am not able to look up. They are more than
the hairs of mine head. Therefore, my heart faileth. When we hear someone cry out
of great agony and sorrow, perhaps at the loss of a loved one, we
are greatly moved to sympathy. Such a cry arrests us. It stops
us in our tracks. We stand still and silently feel
their pain. We know something of the loss
of a loved one in life, gone, never to be seen in this life
again. And death is so very, very sad,
isn't it? But think, since the dawn of
creation there was never heard a cry more mournful than when
our Lord Jesus cried out of the darkness of his sufferings on
the cross. That cry should have stopped
all of creation in its tracks. The Great Creator, in human flesh,
a perfect sinless man, cried in agony because he who never
knew sin was now separated from God by the sins that were made
his. And he felt the loss of God's
presence as those sins bore down on his conscience. But though
creation should have stopped, This is what happened instead.
Jesus said, I looked on my right hand, and behold, there was no
man that would know me. Refuge failed me. No man cared
for my soul. No one shared his sorrow. He
suffered alone. He suffered by himself. Hebrews
1.3 says, by himself he purged our sins. We ought to ask, and
we must ask, why did God treat his son this way? The gospel
answers that question. It was to reconcile sinners in
accord with the infinite justice of God. He delivered his son
to death that he might be just and justify the ungodly. That's
amazing, isn't it? The one against whom we offended
with our sin is the one who stooped to take our sin and bear it before
God to make our peace with God. It was to bring His people to
Himself who alienated themselves by their sins. It was to make
known God's righteousness to the praise of the glory of His
grace in the salvation of chosen sinners. It was to bring His
people to Himself without a trace of sin in perfect righteousness. And so again, from 2 Corinthians
5, He hath made Him sin for us who knew no sin, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him. And so we see something
of why Jesus wept before God in his own sufferings. That's
the most significant of all places where it says Jesus wept in scripture.
He wept in sorrow of soul because of the sins of his people. That
substitution, that is the work of our Savior. That is why we're
saved. Because of what God saw in his
sufferings and received in satisfaction from him for us. Now, in the
three different accounts where Jesus wept, we see something
of the character, of the heart of our great Savior, and we learn
what He accomplished. This is eternal life, to know
God in Christ, to be saved by His redeeming work. Let us therefore
carefully consider why Jesus wept in this and in the other
two accounts recorded in Scripture. In John 11, Jesus wept again. Jesus wept when he saw Mary and
Martha and the Jews weeping. The Jews saw him weeping. They
said, behold, how he loved him, thinking he was weeping for Lazarus. Jesus could have prevented Lazarus
from dying. But he waited to come to Mary
and Martha until their brother died. Why? Why did Jesus wait? Didn't he know those he loved
were suffering great grief and sorrow? Didn't he know before
Lazarus died that he would die? Of course he did. But it was
God's will to glorify his son when sin and death were at the
height of their strength against his people. And they were evidently
beyond all human hope. And the Lord Jesus Christ, the
resurrection and the life came. And he rescued Lazarus from the
jaws of death. In this, we find all of our hope
and salvation is in Christ alone. It's when we feel our weakest,
when we have no hope in ourselves or in anyone else, and then we
hear from God's Word that salvation is not in you, it's in Christ,
and we look away from ourselves to him. Oh, what peace there
is in rest in that look He came when all hope was lost. That
is how God works in the lives of his people. Doesn't he tell
us that throughout scripture? He told Moses of the Red Sea
and the children of Israel, stand still. Their enemy is behind
them, the Red Sea in front of them, no hope. And he said, stand
still now and see the salvation of the Lord. Moses told Pharaoh
to let Israel go. Pharaoh refused and mocked his
words, the words of God. Then the Lord said to Moses,
when Moses and all of Israel gave up, he said, listen, now
shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh. That's in Exodus
6 verse 1. Faith is seeing what God has
done in Christ, who in our sin and God's judgment against us
left us dying in our sins without hope or remedy. As God told Israel
by Moses, now shalt thou see what I will do Even so, the faith
God gives us is seeing God's salvation in Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. When we were without hope, when
our enemies seemed unconquerable, then God showed us what He did
in Christ. Though Jesus would raise Lazarus
from the dead and comfort Martha and Mary by doing so, yet as
they wept when Lazarus died, He also wept. See in this the
heart of our great sympathetic high priest. He did not live
and suffer and die in stoic detachment, as if everything's going to be
all right. I'm just going to stand here
and watch it go by. Faith in Christ does not make
us insensitive to others. It heightens our compassion towards
them. Christ felt the pain of his people. He felt the pain they felt. He
bore their burdens. It says in Matthew 8.17 when
he was healing the sick in his lifetime on earth. He says he
himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses. You
see, it cost Jesus personally to comfort and save his people.
It cost him to heal the sick. It cost him to raise the dead. He himself suffered the consequences
of the sins of his people when he bore them and entered into
the sorrow of their sins to save us from our sins and give us
the comfort and joy of his victory over sin and his reception by
God. We must ever remember that the
one who walked this earth, who had compassion on the hungry
and on the sick and on the fainting and in the lepers and the blind
and the widow, mother mourning the death of her only son, that
in all these things and more, our Lord Jesus Christ bore the
burden of our sins and our own needs and sorrows. This is the
second lesson when Jesus wept. His compassion for sinners, his
tender compassion for his people who had no strength against the
consequences of their sin. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday,
today, and forever. Hebrews 13 verse 8. He is God
over all. He who had compassion on Mary
and Martha is the same one who now sits on the throne of glory. of his people, he says, in all
their affliction he was afflicted. Isaiah 63 verse 9. Know this
therefore, there is one God and one mediator between God and
men, the man Christ Jesus. The man. The Lord Jesus Christ
is both God and man. He alone, as God and man, knows
what God thinks of sin. And he alone truly knows how
sin affects man, because he suffered as a sinner before God for his
people. And as mediator, he alone both
satisfied God and saved his people from their sins. By himself,
he satisfied God and saved his people. Yet in all of his majestic,
sovereign power, he still feels the weakness of his people as
the man who bore their burdens. He feels every burden they bear.
We must admire him and adore him for his compassion. We must
go to him and unburden our hearts at all times, considering that
Jesus wept. We must look to him as all in
our salvation to know the peace and joy of his promise that we
have a high priest who can be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities, our weaknesses, because he was tried and tempted
and tested in all points that we are yet without sin. Hebrews 4.15. What greater comfort
can there be in all of heaven and earth than to know that the
Lord Jesus Christ sees and bears our every burden? To know that
He carried our sorrows and the burdens of our sins and bore
them in Himself, and now by His Spirit points us to His triumphant
victory over every consequence our sin brought upon us, to make
His grace toward us abound. That's amazing, isn't it? That's
comfort. Let us take these promises to our bosom and fly to our great
God and Savior as He has so comforted us by His gracious command when
He says in 1 Peter 5, 7, casting all your cares upon Him for He
careth for you. And let us therefore come boldly
to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find
grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4.16 Mary and Martha
mourned for Lazarus. Jesus wept for his dearly beloved
people. He tasted death for every adopted
son of God. And he knows their infirmity,
for he was in all points tempted, like we are. Now, not only did
the Lord Jesus Christ weep in sorrow and agony as He bore the
sins of His people, and not only did He weep in true sympathy
for Mary and Martha, but in Luke 19, He wept over Jerusalem, and
here we see something in our Lord that silences every excuse
of sinners while exalting His great incomprehensible goodness.
He sees the suffering and death that would come on the people
who would soon reject him and put him to death, and yet he
mourns for them because of the consequences of their sin. Jerusalem
is the city that God blessed like no other on earth. He delivered
these people from hundreds of years of Egyptian bondage. He
brought them through the Red Sea on dry land. He destroyed
Pharaoh and the Egyptian army in the height of their power
and hatred against Israel. God gave Israel His laws which
Christ would fulfill for His people. He gave them the priesthood
with sacrifices and a tabernacle where God would meet with men,
all of which Christ fulfilled in His own offering of Himself
to bring us to God and make God known to us in His own self.
And He destroyed nations in Canaan who were mightier than Israel
because our Lord would destroy all the enemies of His people
and give them eternal salvation and rest in His triumphant work.
He gave Israel kings and judges who repeatedly delivered them
from their enemies, and He worked miracles among them, time without
number. He was longsuffering toward them
and turned them from their rebellion and idolatry. Though they hardened
their hearts against him, he sent prophet after prophet to
them, and they killed their own prophets they would not hear.
And finally God sent his only begotten Son, the Son of God
in human flesh, taught in their synagogues. He healed their sick.
He raised their dead. He worked miracles. He turned
water into wine. He fed thousands. He exposed
hypocrisy in their religious leaders. He walked and ate and
he lived among them and did them only good for three and a half
years in his public ministry. And yet these same people to
whom he had given his word and for whom he had done so much
would soon take him, falsely accuse him, and unjustly crucify
him in merciless cruelty at the hands of their oppressive enemies,
the Romans. The people of Jerusalem would
kill the Prince of Life because they hated the Lord of Glory.
Out of all the people in the world, the Lord Jesus Christ,
according to his ancient prophecy, came to those Jews, to their
city. And in spite of over 2,000 years
of his goodness to them, these people now rejected their Messiah
and the God who chose them to bless them as an earthly nation
with earthly blessings above all nations of the earth. And
Jesus now comes to their great city, Jerusalem. He showed himself
openly to be God's Messiah. And what was their response?
Did they recognize Him? Did they receive Him? No. They did not know the time of
their visitation. They willfully rejected Him.
They stubbornly held to their own self-righteousness in willful
unbelief. And that is the occasion on which
Jesus wept over Jerusalem. Here's a question. Why did the
Lord of Glory, the Lord of Glory, the Almighty Sovereign, who can
turn the King's heart whether so ever He will, Why did he weep
over Jerusalem? Why would he who knows the end
from the beginning weep over anything? Why would he who humbles
proud hearts and grants repentance to God-opposing sinners weep
for these people? Couldn't he save them if he wanted
to? Could he who determines all things by his will know disappointment? Was there something deficient
in his power to save? Did He need their permission?
Did He require their decision? Did He require their cooperation
in some way? Did He need to wait for them
to exercise their will or do their part? Was Christ weeping
somehow opposed to God's will? No. No. No, no, no. No to all these questions. You
see, God gave His law to men. to us, and he warns us of judgment. But no man keeps his law. God
sends his gospel to many, but few to whom it is sent are chosen
to eternal life. Many are called, but few are
chosen. Every man is accountable to God for his own sin. Ezekiel 18 says, The soul that
sinneth, it shall die. If a man keeps God's law, he
will live, but no one keeps it. Therefore, the curse of God's
law is upon us all, for we all fail to keep it. The problem
is not with God. The problem is with sinful men.
Sin is all our fault. Every man in hell will confess
that God's judgments are right and that his own personal damnation
is his own personal fault. That is the torment of hell,
to know that we did not do what we knew was right. And here in
this place, Jesus Christ weeps over those people who were Israelites
after the flesh. He was born to that nation. He
came to the Jews, his own people after the flesh, but his own
received him not. And here is a very sad thing.
Unbelieving Israel refused Christ's words and His works. They knew
He was God's Christ, but they rejected Him. He told them their
righteousness was not righteousness before God, that it was filthy
rags in God's sight. He left no room for men to boast,
and they hated Him because He told the truth. His words stung
their conscience, yet they did not seek refuge in Him. Isaiah
9 verse 13 says, they do not seek him who smites them. They
did not turn to him and bow to him whose words smote their conscience.
The people do not turn to him that smites them, neither do
they seek the Lord of hosts." You see, as sinners, God's Word
smites us when it shows us what we are and we're sinful. But
it's not in order that we might go on in despair because we trust
in our own righteousness, our own ability to do what God requires. It's intended to point us to
the only Savior there is, the Lord Jesus Christ. So instead
of turning to him that smites them, they stubbornly clung to
their own righteousness, as men who worship idols cling to what
their own hands have made. This condition, this sinful rejection
of Christ, is not unique to unbelieving Jews. Every man, you and I included,
by nature cling to our own righteousness. Every man, you and I included,
fail to keep God's law. Romans chapter 3 says there is
none righteous. No. Not one. There's none that
understands. There's none that seek after
God. They are all gone out of the
way. God searched every heart of every man and woman and boy
and girl over time. And he said they are all together
become unprofitable. There's none that do us good.
No, not one. And God's law tells us this,
to shut our mouths so that when he shows us Christ, we will flee
to him. But the Jews would not receive
correction. They chose death rather than life. Men can choose
death. We can choose death. But in our
sinful nature, in our sinful will, we cannot choose life. Can man by his own will believe? Could Nicodemus? He heard Jesus'
words, yet he did not believe Him. He did not understand, and
he refused to believe what he heard. Jesus said, no, only what
is born of the spirit is spirit. By nature we're only flesh. By
nature we have no existence in our spirit. We cannot initiate,
we cannot direct God, we can't bring about our own spiritual
birth and creation. Can any person whose fleshly
mind is not subject to the law of God come to Jesus Christ by
his own will? Of course not. It is not of him
that willeth, nor of him that runneth or strives, but of God
that shows mercy. That's how salvation occurs.
God has mercy. Can any man bring faith out of
his own heart? No. No. Faith is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, lest any
man should boast. Can a sinner turn himself to
God? No. We are dead in sins and enslaved
by sin, accustomed to thinking and doing evil, and we cannot
change our heart. If it were possible for us to
discern or receive spiritual things, to change our mind in
repentance and belief, then why did Christ earn the gift of repentance
and give that gift to his people when he rose from the dead and
sat on heaven's throne? Acts 5.31 says that he sits as
prince and a savior to give repentance to Israel and the remission of
sins. So to these questions we must hear the answer of scripture.
No, we cannot take away this stony heart. And we cannot create
a heart of flesh in our bosom. We are accustomed to doing evil.
We cannot repent. We're like the leopard who cannot
change his spots. Our sinful will will not incline
God's sovereign will and His holy will because our will is
sinful and against God by nature. We cannot bring faith out of
our own unbelieving heart. It is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle or a leopard to change his spots
than for a sinner to turn and believe the gospel. This is God's
work. This is God's miracle of life.
Though God in his word commands us to cast away our transgressions
and make a new heart and a new spirit for ourselves, we can't
do it. We're spiritually dead. We cannot do one spiritual thing. Therefore, no, Jesus did not
weep because he is unable to save. He did not weep because
he was limited by man's sinful inability. And he did not weep
because he needed but could not get man's cooperation. If that
were the case, no man could be saved, especially not me. Fact is, Christ wept over this
city because they would soon suffer for their own sins. Remember
David? Remember how he wept for King
Saul? Saul was David's enemy. Saul repaid David's loyalty to
him with evil. Yet when Saul died, David lamented
him. You can read about that in 2
Samuel chapter 1. It's a sad thing. David lamented
Saul's death, his enemy. David also wept bitterly for
his rebellious son Absalom. Absalom made himself king in
his father's place. And so the Lord determined to
bring evil upon Absalom, David's son. Absalom was therefore killed
in the battle that he started against his own father David,
just as we as sinners die in the war we started against God.
When David heard that Absalom, his son, had been killed, he
greatly lamented his lost son. Scripture says, the king was
much moved, and he went up to the chamber over the gate, and
he wept. And as he went, thus he said,
O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, would God I had
died for thee. O Absalom, my son, my son. David knew, in the low bottom
of his heart, that it was for his own sin that God brought
this judgment on his own household. And even though Absalom was the
more immediate cause of his own death, yet David's sin was the
sin that came before him in his conscience. But God put away
David's sin, remember? Yet He did not put away Absalom's
sin. Nothing. could bring greater
grief to a father than to see his own son or daughter perish
in their sins. Doesn't it make us pray, Lord,
have mercy on my children and undo all the consequences of
my own foolishness and save them. For your glory turned the evil
of my sin as a cause for showing forth your grace. Doesn't it
cause you to do that? And so, we also see not only
David weeping for his son, his rebellious son Absalom, and for
his persecutor King Saul. We also hear Jeremiah weeping.
He said, Jeremiah chapter 8 verse 21, For the hurt of the daughter
of my people am I hurt. The whole book of Lamentations
is about this. Jeremiah wept for his people after the flesh
because they suffered for their own wickedness. Not only did
David and Jeremiah weep for lost sinners, but the Apostle Paul
wept for unbelieving Jews who would never be saved. Paul said,
I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing
me witness in the Holy Ghost that I have great heaviness and
continual sorrow in my heart, for I could wish that myself
were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen, according
to the flesh. I wonder if Paul was thinking
about his own rebellion in self-righteousness when he thought those words,
like David did, of his son Absalom. Now, God speaks of these men
to show us his own disposition towards unbelieving Jews and
Gentiles. David, Jeremiah, Paul, and others expressed genuine
sorrow over their kinsmen because those people perished for their
willful unbelief. And so, in Luke 19, the Lord
Jesus Christ, a perfect man, and God over all, wept for unbelieving
Jews. How can we reconcile these things?
Jesus wept with Martha and Mary in sympathy, because He truly
knew and bore their griefs, and this gives us as believers the
greatest comfort, to know that we can go to our Savior, who
feels our griefs and carried our burdens. And in the same
way that Jesus sorrowed for Martha and Mary, we sorrow when one
of our believing loved ones suffers, don't we? We sorrow for their
suffering, we weep when they weep, we mourn when they mourn,
and when they die, though we do not sorrow for them then,
we do sorrow for ourselves, don't we? We don't sorrow for an unbelieving
loved one who perishes because we know they didn't perish forever.
They only died in their body and they soon will be raised.
We feel the loss of their sweet fellowship, though, and we feel
the loss of their love that we enjoyed on earth. And when a
believer dies, we're sad because we've lost that sweet confession
of a fellow sinner and the communion with them and their thankfulness
and their love for the Lord Jesus that he saved them by his own
grace. But when we lose an unbelieving
loved one, we sorrow, both for ourselves, but mostly for them,
don't we? I can think of no greater sorrow.
We speak the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to our
unbelieving loved ones. We tell them Jesus Christ saves
all by himself in spite of our sin. We tell them that He has
by Himself purged our sins, that He removed every barrier between
His people and Himself that we raised by our sins. And we tell
them that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. And
we tell them that we are the chief of sinners. We tell them
that when we were in blindness and in disobedience of our own
unbelief, the Lord Jesus Christ made Himself known to us in His
saving work on the cross. And yet, when these same loved
ones die, who stubbornly cling to their own righteousness in
rejection of Christ, we join with David and Jeremiah and Paul
and the Lord Jesus sorrowing for them. This is the principle
we see when Christ wept over Jerusalem. God does not take
delight in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from
his wickedness, he says in Ezekiel 18. Yet for all of God's warnings,
for all of His warnings of certain judgment to come in our natural
sinful self, we're so proud that we oppose our own salvation and
will not bow to the Lord Jesus Christ as a guilty, helpless
sinner standing at the foot of the only Savior in heaven and
earth. Therefore, for God to save a
man, for God to save a man, He must raise that man from spiritual
death. He must create that man in Christ
and give him, make him a new spiritual man. He must grant
us repentance and He must grant us repentance to acknowledge
that Christ, crucified, risen and reigning, is everything in
our salvation. Paul told Timothy, the servant
of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle to all men in meekness,
instructing those that oppose themselves, if God peradventure
will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.
2 Timothy 2.25 You see, salvation is a rescue mission. and it's a rescue that is all
of grace. God calls dead sinners to life. He brings rebellious
sinners to repentance. He gives unbelieving sinners
faith, and he rescues hell-deserving sinners from the wrath to come.
We were in Rescue Baptist Church. I heard an illustration from
Gene Harmon. He said, when a lifeguard goes
out to save a man who's drowning, The drowning man often times
fights against the lifeguard. So much so that the lifeguard
has to knock out the drowning man so that he can save him.
What a picture of how God saves us. He has to bring us so far
down, doesn't he? Till we have no strength. The
Jews died for their sin and their unbelief. It was not for lack
of sincerity on Christ's part. He only did them good. He worked
miracles before them. He spoke the gospel to them.
Yet, something more is needed to save sinners than seeing miracles
with physical eyes and hearing the gospel with physical ears. Something more is needed than
a warning of judgment to come. The Spirit of God himself must
give us life and repentance and faith in Christ. He must create
us a new man. He must take away the stony heart
and give us a new heart, a heart of flesh. He must speak the gospel
to us and open our heart to hear it. In the end, it will be shown
that every man in hell refused to obey the light God gave him,
and it will be shown that every man in hell despised God's goodness. And it will be shown that everyone
in heaven was given eternal life out of God's pure, free grace
in Christ, in spite of their wickedness. Those God saves are
saved for one reason only. God determined to save them out
of his own free will and grace. They are drawn to Christ because
they were loved from everlasting before the foundation of the
world. And they are saved because God
determined to save them and give them eternal life. They are saved
because God delivered up his son to death for them. And they
are saved because the Spirit of God raised them from death,
created them in Christ, birthed them as God's sons, and all this
when they were dead in sins. It will be shown that everyone
in heaven was saved by the power of God under the preaching of
the gospel of Christ crucified, and that they were set free from
bondage, even the bondage of their sins, so that they might
believe Christ in obedience to the truth of the gospel. You
see, sin is all man's doing, and hell is all man's deserving. And every man in hell will bow
his knee to Christ as Lord and Judge of all. All who come to
God on the basis of their decision, rather than God's choice, come
to God by their free will, rather than bowing to God's sovereign
will. And all who trust in their own works rather than Christ's
work, and who trust their own experience rather than looking
to Christ's experience in his life and death, has their only
righteousness before God. All who thus look to anything
but Christ will receive strict justice from God. That's what
Galatians 5 means when it says, If you be circumcised, Christ
shall profit you nothing. If you do something, outward,
something seemingly insignificantly small, in order to become saved,
that's in addition to what Christ has done. Christ profits you
nothing. You're a debtor to do the whole
law. This is the saddest thing in
all the world, isn't it? Yet God will not compromise his
justice. We can only answer God's justice
one way. How? In the Lord Jesus Christ. If we do not answer God's justice
in Christ, that is, if we do not look only to Christ as our
answer to God, then we will answer God for all that he requires
in our own person. All who trust their works will
receive justice from God for their works. And though sin is
man's doing, righteousness is Christ's doing. Isn't that true? He alone has done all that God
requires. It says in Romans 10.4, Christ
is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. He
alone can remove our sins. He alone can make us holy before
God. He alone can command life to
us in the deadness of our sins. He alone can give faith to an
unbelieving sinner. He alone can save a hell-deserving
sinner. Sin is all of our doing, but
salvation is all God's doing. We are not saved because we believe. We believe because God, according
to His eternal purpose in Christ, granted us salvation with faith
when we were in unbelief. He says in Acts 13.48, as many
as were ordained to eternal life believed. Jesus wept over Jerusalem
because they would soon receive the just reward of their impenitent
hearts. He was not frustrated. He wept
for their suffering, but he did not object to or oppose God's
justice. He did not oppose God's everlasting
will to reject them. He said, I thank Thee, O Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes. Even
so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight. Jesus sorrowed
for unbelieving Israel as one sorrows for an unbelieving family
or friend. Unbelieving sinners can therefore
find nothing in Christ to excuse their sin. We can't find anything in Christ
to excuse our sin. He is only good. Let us, therefore,
take this third example of Christ weeping for these unbelieving
sinners who would soon be judged, and cast aside our stubborn pride
and our self-righteousness, abandon all trust in our own experience
or decision or will, and know that if you or I are saved, it
will be only by God's will, by Christ's work, because of His
faithfulness and by His preserving grace. He bought and sought and
calls His own sheep by name, and He will not let one of them
perish. But if you find no need, if you and I find no need to
cry to the Lord Jesus and trust Him to save you by Himself and
God's people, and I weep for you. O fellow sinner, cry, Lord,
save me, a great sinner. Lord Jesus, I have no answer
before God. Be my answer. Answer all to God
for me. Let your blood and righteousness
be my salvation. As you gave yourself for your
elect, give yourself for me. Do what is impossible for me,
save me for your glory. All who thus call on Christ from
their heart, looking to him for all, shall not be put to shame. The judge of all the earth will
do right, and yet God has not forgotten to be gracious. He
will be gracious to sinners and save sinners to the praise of
the glory of His grace. And He will save sinners according
to His righteousness. The Lord Jesus Christ wept three
times. Once in the agony of his own
soul because he was a substitute for his people. Once in the compassion
of sympathy for his sorrowing people. And once in sorrow for
those who, because of their own sin and willful rejection, brought
God's judgment on themselves. And yet, according to God's will,
it's recorded in scripture that he even agreed with God on this.
The Lord Jesus Christ is perfect as man and God, and he shows
us the heart of God and the heart of a pure and holy man. Let's
pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for
all that you are. Thank you for your goodness,
for your tender compassion towards your people. Thank you for substituting
yourself willingly and fully answering every charge of justice
against us for our sins, making satisfaction and fulfilling all
of our obedience in your own righteousness and then telling
us this with your spirit so that we might live and believe you
and find all comfort in life in you. Lord, we pray that you
would do these things for your namesake, for your glory, and
help us to see you only and trust you at all times. We pray for
this grace for all who are here now. Speak your peace and your
own work on the cross to them and draw us to yourself with
irresistible drawing power. Save us for your namesake. In
Jesus' name we pray. Amen.