It is not that I did choose thee,
Lord, for Lord, that could not be. Yuba-Sutter Grace Church would
like to invite you to listen to a sermon by our pastor, Rick
Warda. We currently meet at the Yuba
County Library, located at 303 2nd Street in downtown Marysville,
California, on the corner of 2nd and C Street. Weekly services
are held on Sunday at 11 a.m. at the library. For more information,
visit our website at ysgracechurch.com. Now here's our pastor, Rick Warda.
The scripture for today is in Luke chapter 19. Jesus rode into
Jerusalem on a colt, the foal of an ass. And when he was come
near, he beheld the city and 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 enemy shall cast a
trench about Thee, and compass Thee round, and keep Thee in
on every side, and shall lay Thee even with 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. I've entitled this message, Jesus
Wept. 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 Jews after the flesh,
who after the flesh were his own people. 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 Messiah. Then, again, in John chapter
11 verse 35, Jesus wept when he saw Mary and the Jews sorrowing
at the death of Lazarus. He felt the sorrow of his friends.
Their suffering became a burden to his soul. He was touched by
the feeling of their sorrow and their helplessness before the
consequences of sin. And the third place where it
is recorded that Jesus wept is in Hebrews chapter 5 verse 7.
Let us consider this last case first. Jesus wept in agony because
the sins of his people were made his sins. 1 Peter 2.24 says,
"...who his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree."
And 2 Corinthians 5.21, "...he hath made him sin for us." He
took and bore the sins of his people in their place before
God. He wept then because he suffered
under the guilt of those sins. And he wept because he suffered
under the punishment of those sins at the hand of God. It was
punishment in his soul. He perfectly obeyed God's law.
He honored it from his heart and mind, with his words and
in all that he did. 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. We cannot truly understand his
suffering, but we know he made supplications with strong crying
and tears to Him who was able to save him from death. Those
things that came upon him, the weight of 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,
all together became such a weight that it caused him unspeakable
sorrow in his soul and body, a sorrow we will never, never
know." Jeremiah prophetically spoke these words of Christ.
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. Lamentations 112. 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 sin and the punishment of God. He said, My
God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? As sinners, we are accustomed
to shutting out the voice of our conscience and hiding from
God. We know very little of the effects of sin that our Lord
Jesus felt. Sin in our conscience makes us
sick in our body. We feel sadness. We feel depressed. We are confused by it. We forget
truths we once held dear. We don't know what to do. We
feel lost, forsaken, without comfort, and unable to receive
comfort from any because God withholds His comfort. Without
God's Word, we are without hope. Now, if we who are sinners know
this affliction of conscience in some small part, what of the
holy, harmless Son of God who never knew sin, who hated iniquity,
who only loved righteousness, What would he who enjoyed unbroken
communion in his soul with God at the deepest level feel if
the sense of God's presence was removed from him? That is what
happened. It was indescribable agony. God describes the separation
that Christ, as our sin-bearer, experienced. In Isaiah 59, He
says, "...the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot
save, neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your
iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins
have hid His face from you, that He will not hear." 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 did
God not hear Him? Because the sins of His people
became His own. He felt the guilt of them in
His conscience. This is why He cried, My God,
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 sorrow of soul. The book of 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, the words Jesus spoke
from the cross are recorded, Into thine hand I commit my spirit. Yet, shockingly, another woeful
cry is uttered by our Lord in that same psalm. He said, 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 the Lord. I
said, Thou art my God. Psalm 40 is another prophetic
prayer of our Lord Jesus. In that psalm, we again see the
full impact of what it meant for Jesus to personally do His
Father's will. As our great High Priest, He
offered Himself as the Lamb of God to make propitiation for
the sins of the people. He felt the weight of the sins
of his people as he spoke these words in Psalm 40, 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. Now, since the dawn of creation,
there was never heard a cry more mournful than when our Lord Jesus
Christ 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. He felt the loss of God's presence
as those sins bore down on his conscience. But though creation
should have stopped, no man cared for his soul. No one shared his
sorrow. By himself he purged our sins. Hebrews 1.3 We ought to ask,
and 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. 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. 2 Corinthians
5 sums it up, He hath made Him sin for us, who knew no sin,
that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Thus we see something
of why Jesus wept before God in His own sufferings. In these
three different accounts where Jesus wept, we come to know the
heart of our great Savior and we learn what He accomplished.
This is life eternal, to know God in Christ, to be saved by
His redeeming work. Let us therefore carefully consider
why Jesus wept. In John 11, Jesus wept when he
saw Mary and the Jews weeping. The Jews saw him weeping. They
said, behold how he loved him. He could have prevented Lazarus
from dying, but he waited until Lazarus died to come. Why? Why did Jesus wait? Didn't he
know those he loved were suffering? Didn't he know Lazarus 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 beyond all human hope. In this, we find
that all of our hope and salvation is in Christ alone. He came when
all hope was lost. That is how God works in the
lives of His people. Doesn't He tell us this throughout
Scripture? Stand still and see the salvation
of the Lord. Moses told Pharaoh to let Israel
go. Pharaoh refused and mocked his words. Then, in Exodus 6,
verse 1, the Lord said to Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will
do to Pharaoh. Faith is seeing what God has
done in Christ when our sin and God's judgment against us left
us without hope. Faith is seeing God's salvation
only in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Though Jesus would
raise Lazarus from the dead and comfort Martha and Mary by doing
so, yet as they wept when Lazarus died, Jesus wept. See in him
our sympathetic high priest. He did not live and suffer and
die in stoic detachment. Faith in Christ does not make
us insensitive to others, it heightens our compassion towards
them. Christ felt the pain his people felt. He bore their burdens. He himself took our infirmities
and bore our sicknesses. Matthew 8.17 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 suffered the consequences
of the sins of His people 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. We must ever remember that the
one who walked this earth, who had compassion on the hungry,
on the sick, on the fainting, on the leper, on the blind, on
the widow mother mourning the death of her only son, that our
Lord Jesus Christ bore the burden of needy sinners. Now Jesus Christ
is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is God over all. He who had compassion on Mary
and Martha is the same who now sits on the throne of glory.
Of his people, he says, in all their affliction, he was afflicted.
Know this, there is one God and one mediator between God and
men, the man Christ Jesus. 1 Timothy 2.5 The Lord Jesus
Christ is both God and man. He alone knows what God thinks
of sin and He alone truly knows how sin affects man. And as mediator,
he alone both satisfied God and saved his people from their sins.
Yet in all of his majestic, sovereign power, he still feels the weaknesses
of his people as the man who bore their burdens. He feels
every burden they bear. We must admire and adore Him
for His compassion. We must go to Him and unburden
our hearts at all times. 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 because He was tried and tested in all points as we
are yet without sin. Hebrews 4.15 What greater comfort
can there be in all of heaven and earth than to know the Lord
Jesus Christ sees and bears our every burden? To know that He
carried those burdens in Himself and bore them, and now, by His
Spirit, points us to His triumphant victory over every consequence
our sin brought upon us, to make His grace abound towards us.
Let us take these promises to our bosom and fly to our great
God and Savior, as 1 Peter 5, 7 says, 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. Mary and Martha mourned for Lazarus. Jesus wept for His dearly beloved
people. He tasted death for every adopted
Son of God, Hebrews 2, 9. Now not only did the Lord Jesus
Christ weep in soul 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. Here we see something in our
Lord Jesus that silences every excuse of unbelieving sinners
while exalting His great goodness. He sees the suffering and death
that would come on the people who would soon put Him to death.
Yet he mourns for them because of the consequences of their
sins. Jerusalem is the city that God
blessed like no other. 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. He
gave them the priesthood with sacrifices and a tabernacle where
God would meet with men. He destroyed nations in Canaan
who were mightier than they. He gave them kings and repeatedly
delivered them from their enemies. He worked miracles among them.
Times without number, He was long-suffering towards them and
turned them from their rebellion and idolatry. Though they hardened
their hearts against Him, He sent prophet after prophet to
them, yet they would not hear. Finally, He sent His own 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 the hypocrisy of their
religious leaders. He walked and ate and lived among
them and did them only good. for three and a half years in
public ministry. And these same people, for whom
he had done so much, would soon take him, falsely accuse him,
and crucify him at the hands of their 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 ancient prophecy,
came to these 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 and blessed them with an
earthly nation. Jesus now comes to Jerusalem.
He showed himself openly to be the Messiah. And what was their
response? They did not know the time of
their visitation. They willfully rejected Him.
It was willful unbelief. They stubbornly held to their
own righteousness. That is the occasion on which
Jesus wept over Jerusalem. question. Why did the Lord of
Glory, the Almighty Sovereign who can turn the king's heart
withersoever he will, weep over Jerusalem? Why would he who knows
the end from the beginning weep? 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? Was there something deficient in His power to save? Did He
require their cooperation in some way? Did He need their permission? Did He need to wait for them
to exercise their will or do their part? Was his weeping opposed
to God's will? No, no, no, no. You see, God gave his law to
men and warns men 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. Jesus said, many are called,
but few are chosen. Every man is accountable to God
for his own sin. If a man keeps God's law, he
will live, but none keep it. God's law curses all who fail
to keep it. The problem is not with God.
The problem is with sinful man. Sin is all our fault. Every man in hell will confess
that God's judgments are right and that his damnation is his
own 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, after
the flesh, his own nation. Here is the 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 man to boast.
and they hated him because he told them the truth. His words
stung their conscience, yet they did not seek refuge in him. They did not turn to him and
bow to him whose words smote their conscience. Instead, they
stubbornly clung to their own righteousness as men who worship
the idols their own hands have made. This 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. God says there is none righteous,
no, not one. There is none that understandeth,
there is none that seek after God. They are all gone out of
the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good,
no, not one. but the Jews would not receive
correction. They chose death rather than
life. Man can choose death, but his sinful nature will not choose
life. Can man by his will believe? Can anyone come to Jesus Christ
by his own will, by faith that is resident in his own heart?
A thousand times no. Romans 9.15-16 says, It is not
of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that
showeth mercy. Can a sinner turn himself to
God? If that were possible, then why did Jesus Christ earn the
gift of repentance and now give it to his people from his throne
in glory? No, it is easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle or for a leopard to change his
spots than for a sinner to turn and believe the gospel. Though
God in his word commands us to cast away our transgressions
and make a new heart and a new spirit for ourselves, we cannot
do it. We are spiritually dead in sins.
We cannot do one spiritual thing. No, Jesus Christ did not weep
because he is unable to save. He did not weep because he was
limited by man's cooperation. If that were the case, none could
be saved, especially this sinner. The fact is, Christ wept over
this city because they would soon suffer for their own sins. Remember David? He wept for King
Saul. Though Saul was David's enemy,
causelessly, and repaid David's loyalty with evil, yet when Saul
died, David lamented him. David also wept bitterly for
his rebellious son Absalom. Absalom made himself king in
his father's place. The Lord determined to bring
evil upon Absalom for that. Absalom was therefore killed
in the battle he started against his own father David, just as
sinners die in the war they started against God. Now, when David
heard that Absalom had been killed, he greatly lamented for his lost
son. Scripture says the king was much
moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and 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. Not only did David weep for those
he loved after the flesh, but Jeremiah wept for Jerusalem and
the people of Judah, though they were idolaters and persecuted
him. Jeremiah said, for the hurt of
the daughter of my people am I hurt, Jeremiah 8.21. 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." Now, God speaks of these men to show his own disposition
towards unbelieving Jews and Gentiles. David, Jeremiah, Paul,
and others experienced genuine sorrow over their kinsmen because
those people perished for their willful unbelief. 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 for Mary and Martha in sympathy because He truly
knew and bore their griefs. In the same way, when a believing
loved one of ours suffers, we sorrow for them. And when they
die, we sorrow for ourselves because of their loss. We feel
the loss of their sweet fellowship and love, and the loss of a fellow
sinner saved from his sins by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But when we lose an unbelieving loved one, we sorrow mostly for
them. 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. Yet when these same loved
ones die, stubbornly clinging to their own righteousness in
rejection of Christ, We join 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, Ezekiel 18.32. Man is so proud that he opposes
his own salvation. Therefore, for God to save a
man, he must raise him from spiritual death. He must overcome his unbelief. He must grant him repentance
to acknowledge Christ crucified, risen and reigning is all of
his salvation. Paul told Timothy, the servant
of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto 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. God calls dead sinners to life. He brings rebellious sinners
to repentance. He gives unbelieving sinners
faith. He rescues hell-deserving sinners. The Jews died for their sin and
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.
The Spirit of God Himself must give life and repentance and
faith in Christ. He must apply the gospel to us. In the end, it will be shown
that every man in hell refused to obey the light God gave him
and despised God's goodness. And it will be shown that everyone
in heaven was given eternal life out of pure grace in spite of
their wickedness. Those God saves are saved for
one reason only, God's free grace in Christ, because He loved them
before the foundation of the world, because He determined
to save them, because He delivered His Son up to death for them,
because the Spirit of God raised them from death when they were
dead in sins by the preaching of the gospel of Christ crucified. Sin is all man's doing, and hell
is all man's deserving. 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, or their free will, or their
works, or who trust their experience, will receive strict justice from
God. This is the saddest thing in
all the world, yet God will not compromise His justice. We must
answer God's justice in Christ, or we will answer it in our own
person. All who trust their works will
receive justice from God for their works. Though sin is man's
doing, righteousness is Christ's doing. He alone has done all
that God requires. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone that believeth. Romans 10, 4.
He alone can remove our sins. He alone can make us holy before
God. He alone can command dead sinners
to live. He alone can give faith to an
unbeliever. He alone can save hell-deserving
sinners. Sin is man's doing, but salvation
is God's doing. We are not saved because we believe. We believe because God, according
to His eternal purpose in Christ, granted us faith. Acts 13.48
says, as many as were ordained to eternal life believed. Jesus
wept over Jerusalem because they would soon receive the just reward
of their impenitent hard 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 these unbelieving Jews. He sorrowed for them as
one sorrows for his unbelieving family or friend. Unbelieving
sinners can therefore find nothing in Christ to excuse their sin. He is only good. Let us therefore
cast aside our stubborn pride in self-righteousness. Abandon
all trust in our experience and our decision and especially our
own will. If you or I are saved, it will
be only by God's will, His work, His faithfulness, and His preserving
grace. He bought and sought and calls
His own sheep by name, and He will not let one of them perish. You have just heard a sermon
by our pastor, Rick Warda. You may contact us by email or
by phone, or download a copy of this sermon by visiting our
website at ysgracechurch.com.