Luke 23. Luke 23. This passage, and I love seeing
you come in here happy and joyful and greeting one another with a holy
kiss. That's good. God's people ought
to be, for the most part, very happy, joyful people. But this passage is very very
solemn and very serious and very sobering. You know, you can be serious
and yet be joyful. You can weep and rejoice at the
same time. You know that? Like the story
of Ezra and Nehemiah, people wept and rejoiced. You can do both. The Lord is
walking through the streets of Jerusalem carrying His cross. which they put on someone else. He'd been beaten without mercy. He'd been spit upon. They stripped
him, mocked him, put a fake royal robe on him, ridiculed him, tortured
him. We use the word inhumanely. Inhumane. Humans are not humane. They treated him inhumanely. At first, the religious leaders,
what they did to him, we saw that Wednesday night. And then
pilots, soldiers, professional soldiers that love to inflict
pain and suffering on their subjects. He'd inherit soldiers back and
forth, gang after gang of ruthless, heartless men and even some women,
perhaps. beat on him and spit on him.
Treated the altogether lovely son of the Most High God like
worse than a curd dog. That should touch us. Only the hardest of hearts would
not be touched by that and bring some emotion or tears to us. And yet the Lord When this was,
after this happened, he turned to a crowd of people, look at
verse 27, there followed him a great company of people, of
women which bewailed him and lamented him. And he turned unto
them and said, daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me. Now what I hope
we will see in this message, and by the way, that message
you probably heard in 1958, weep not for me, I sent it to many of you. I put
it in a bulletin. I thought it was my dad, but
it was Ralph Barnard. He was the one who preached that.
And I listened to it two or three more times. But what I hope to
see here is that there's a difference between sentiment and salvation. That there's a big difference
between fleshly emotion and spiritual conviction. heart-felt conviction
over sin. Alright, there was a great company
of people that followed Him, and of women, verse 27. A great
company followed Him, then and now. Many, many people who claimed
to believe on Him, they did then, didn't they? They claimed to
believe on Him. then and now. And the Lord turned
to a great crowd that was following him, and he said, You follow
me for the loaves and the fish. You follow me for what you get
out of me. You're not following me for me,
but what you can get from me. Now doesn't that describe most
people in the religion? And he turned to another crowd
that was following him and said, You follow me because of the
miracles, because you want to see a sign. And he said a wicked
generation, evil generation follows him for a sign, wants to see
a sign. There's nothing greater than
the Word of God. His words, God's people, true
people, His disciples hang on His Word. His Word is life. But people who just come to church,
so to speak, for all of the festivities or Pentecostalism, they want
to see signs and miracles and wonders and people who want to
feel good and people who want health and wealth, that's an
abomination. That's not worshipping God. That's
just another form of entertainment. You can attract a huge crowd
if you offer all of these things. But just stand up and say, we
preach Christ here. And you might get a few. I'll
tell you who you'll get. Those who need Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. And so people followed Him for
what they could get out of Him, and for health and wealth, and
people, you know, material things, and people get in trouble, and
then they want out of their trouble so they get religion. And when
the trouble's over, their religion is too. But there were a few,
and I believe most of these women that were following him, there
were a few, then and now, a few men and women who, like these
women, followed him because they loved him, because they needed
him, because they wanted him. They were his bride, they were
his wife that he had chosen, that he had redeemed, that he
had saved, that he had revealed himself to. And so they were
the call, they were chosen, and they were faithfully following
him. They needed him, not what they
could get out of him, He, the mercy and the grace and
His wisdom and His salvation, they needed His salvation. Then
and now. If you follow Him, for His sake,
for Christ's sake. So some of these women were Mary
Magdalene. She's not going to leave Him.
She saved, He saved her. Seven devils. She's right now
at the feet of Jesus Christ. You're not going to pull her
away from Him. Salome. Mary. There's another
woman called the Other Mary. Throughout the Scriptures, the
Other Mary. Is that you, Mary? The Other Mary. There she is.
That's the Other Mary. Woman at the well. We don't even
know her name. Boy, she's here. She's here.
Following Him. Joanna and others bewailed him. They were wailing. Like when
somebody, you're going to lose somebody you love. Wailing. Lamenting. Rightfully so. And yet, he stops and turns and
looks at them through blood swollen eyes. Blood all over his blood-caked
face. And he says, Daughters of Jerusalem,
don't weep for me, but weep. This is the last message our
Lord preached before He went to the ground. You can read on. He said, Daughters, verse 28,
of Jerusalem, weep not for me. He called them daughters. This
is their Heavenly Father. They know it. Weep not for me,
but weep, weep, yes, weep for yourselves and for your children.
For behold, the days are coming, in which they shall say, blessed
are the bearer and the wombs that never bear, the paps which
never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say
to the mountains, fall on us, to the hills, cover us, and that's
Jeremiah, Revelation, it says, hide us from the face of him
that sitteth on the throne. And he said in verse 31, if they
do these things in a green tree, if they do it now, what shall
be done in the dry? Oh, how bad it shall be in the
end. So, there's so much to learn
here. Our Lord tells them and us, don't weep for him. The Lord
doesn't need Their pity. But they sure needed His. Right? The Lord God, the Lord Jesus
Christ doesn't want or need anyone's pity or sorrow. But everyone,
whether they know it or not, they need His. And the only ones who will need
his pity and his sorrow are broken-hearted sinners. You see, this is what
we're going to learn here. Man, and it's worse, if they
did this in a green tree, what's it like now? Well, I'll tell
you what it's like. Man has made God out to be a poor old man.
Upstairs, who just loves everybody without exception so badly, people
just won't let him be God, you know. Poor old fella. Won't let him have his way. Man
has his sovereign free will, but God wants to do things and
won't cooperate. Poor God. And the Lord Jesus Christ, He's
not seated on a throne. He's standing outside everybody's
heart door, mocking. People just won't let Him in. Poor Jesus. He's out there in
the rain and just weeping all the time. Our Lord Jesus Christ. The King
of kings and the Lord of lords came to this earth sent by God. He left his throne condescending in the mind, the will, the purpose,
the covenant of God ordered in all things and sure before the
world began that Lord Jesus Christ was sent to this earth given
a body of a man to live in for his people sent by God with a
purpose According to God's covenant and will, to do a work, ordered
in every jot and tittle, sent him to this earth to do a thing.
There was nothing, no chance, no, it was all ordered. Every
single move he made, every word he spoke, Everything that happened
to him was ordered by God, ordained by God, under the absolute sovereign
control of God. Every lash of the whip on his
back, every fist that landed on his face was ordered by God. And our Lord Jesus Christ and
submission to this will and purpose of God, this covenant of God,
being made sin, being made the substitute for God's people,
taking the place of guilty sinner, took it all. He didn't have to,
so to speak, but if he's going to fulfill the will of God and
die according to Scripture, he's going to take it all willingly. He's going to fulfill it all.
As we said before, it's amazing how that every single thing they
did was written in the Scriptures, like Psalm 22 and other places.
To the plucking out of his beard, Scripture said they would do
that. I thirst, they're giving him vinegar to drink, his back
being smitten. Everything they said while he
was hanging on the cross, he saved others, himself became...
It was written in the Scriptures before he came. Now, he doesn't need our pity.
He didn't want or need any pity. We need to stand amazed at all
that. Amazed. Utterly amazed. Fulfillment of God's Word. And
this declares His absolute reign and rule and sovereignty over
the hearts, the minds, the hands, the wicked hands. You with wicked
hands have taken and crucified and beat on Him and whipped Him,
but you did what God determined before to be done. Why? Because that ought to happen
to us at the hands of God. We ought to be ridiculed. God
is going to ridicule some people. God is going to mock some people.
That's what Proverbs 1 says, doesn't it? He said, you'll call
and I'll mock you. Why? He's not mocking us as people. He's mocking and laughing. He
says, you'll laugh. They laughed at Christ. Laughed. They're not laughing now. Don't be anybody laughing there.
He told his people, don't weep for me. But buddy, everybody's
going to be weeping one of these days. Everybody. People that
won't shed a tear over Jesus' pride. Won't it be? Now he's going through all that
was purpose for him. All that he was to fulfill and
God's purpose. He could have in the garden. And he showed, don't you love
that? When they came for him in the garden, He went out in
front of them, like the captain of our salvation always does. Right out in front of them. He
said, Whom seek ye? A crowd, you know. They did it
at night. Cowards show up at night. Like
the Ku Klux Klan. That's what they were like. A
lynch mob. They're going to lynch the Lord. Oh, are you? And he went out
in front of them and said, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus. And one last show that no man
takes his right from man. Nobody does anything but what
he directs sovereignly, what he absolutely controls. He said,
I am. And they all hit the ground.
And boy, what a picture that is of man's utter depravity.
He slew them all. They all fell to the ground.
What happened to them? But not one single person stood
up and said, I'm sorry. Forgive me. Have mercy. No. There's scriptures after scriptures
say they won't turn to him that slays him. The wrath of God,
Romans 1, 18. Revealed from heaven against
all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Are men and women called
in for mercy? No. Why not? God has to Has to reveal
Himself to you. He has to slay you, doesn't He?
He has to convict you of sin. It's not terror of things. It's terror of the Lord, fear
of the Lord, to begin with. He could have killed them all
in a garden. Whom seek ye? Jesus Christ. Could have killed them all, right
there. Standing before Pilate, he could have brought Pilate
to his knees. In fact, I do believe Pilate
was shaking. Our Lord would not. I just love
thinking about him standing there. And though his eyes were indeed
swollen, and yet he looked through with those eyes as a flame of
fire. You know, his eyes are as dove's
eyes to his people. washed with milk, fitly set to
his people, love and mercy and grace, but, boy, on his enemies. I remember my dad, you know,
he loved me. I knew he loved me. I loved him. But there were
times when he shouldn't have loved me. And there were times
when he looked at me, did your dad ever do this? Looked at you
like, ooh, he's going to lighten me up. I feared him. He looked through
those eyes, he could have brought Pilate, those soldiers. He could have called, he said,
Peter, Peter's the one who took out his sword. He said, put up,
don't you know that I could call twelve legions of angels? I've often thought, were the
angels watching this, did they know what he had to do? Did they
know? If they did not, don't you know
they were all hovering? Just say the word. How could
our Lord let them do this? Why? Just say the word. But he didn't. I would have. He didn't. He must suffer. Christ kept saying
that, didn't He? That was Eric's message. He must
die according to Scripture. So He says, don't weep for me. Be amazed at what He's doing,
at what He willed to do, what He willingly endured. Scripture says, for the joy set
before Him. Endured the cross. What would
you endure for your child if you had to? You love your child.
What would you go through? What have you gone through? Would
you do anything? Would you do anything for that?
Would you die for her? Wouldn't stop thinking about
her. Would you take her place? Would you take her shame? Would
you take her? Yes, you would. That's what our
Lord's doing. For the joy set before her. endured
the cross, even the cross. Don't weep for him, but, he said,
weep for yourselves and for your children and your grandchildren.
Don't weep over Christ crucified, but weep over what put him on
that cross. Jeremiah 9, turn over to Jeremiah
9, weeping Weeping is a strange thing, isn't
it? We're the only animal that does
it. Water pours out of our eyes when
our hearts are touched, or whatever. It's amazing. David, when David
said, my moisture has turned to drought, I think he's talking
about when he wept so long he couldn't, there were no more
tears to weep. Remember that? Our Lord wept. Our Lord wept
at Lazarus' tomb. And they said, oh, how he loved
him. Oh, you just don't know how he loves you. We don't know.
I mean, we just don't know how he loves us. By the way, he's
not weeping over us right now. He's waiting, smiling, although he's touched
with every feeling of our infirmity. with our sorrow, and he is. We
can grieve, and this is a mystery, we can grieve the Spirit of God. In Genesis 6, where the Lord
looked down, it says, He grieved him that he might not grieve.
That's amazing, isn't it? Our Lord wept at Lazarus' tomb,
and yes, he loved Lazarus, but I tell you what he wept over.
Surely he wept not over his sickness, not over the fact that he's now
sleeping and resting from that sickness or whatever it is, but
he's weeping over the cause of that sin. and the sorrow that
sin brought, and the death, the ultimate result of sin, over
the unbelief of His people who should have trusted Him, should
have believed Him. Mary and Martha were both distraught. That's the way we get when we're
going to lose someone we love, and someone gets sick, and we
worry, and we die. Our Lord, you know, we ought
to believe the Lord more, shouldn't we? Shouldn't we trust Him more?
He kept telling them over and over and over and over again.
who he was and why he came, and they just didn't believe him.
So they were overcome with emotion. And so he wept over that, surely,
that needless... Oh, we sing that hymn. Oh, what peace we often forfeit. Oh, what needless pain that we
bear. All because we do not carry everything
to our God in prayer. Oh Abraham, don't you know that
Abraham, the Lord said, take your son, your only son, and
go and offer him as a burnt offering up on a mount that I'll show
you. And then it didn't say anything else for three days. Don't you
know the emotion? Can you imagine the emotion? What was going through Abraham's
heart? For three days, no word. No word from the Lord. Don't
you know he's calling? Maybe, Lord. Oh, he believed God, didn't he? That's
what Hebrews 11 says. He believed God. He knew that,
well, if this is going to happen, God's going to raise him. Brothers
and sisters, God's going to grace us too. Every believing child
of God, don't weep. Rejoice. Weep over losing them. Don't weep for them. And they're not weeping for us.
You know that? Back's not weeping for us. He
can't wait to see us. He knows what's coming. And we
do too. So why? Well, here's some things about
weeping. We'll look at Jeremiah 9. Jeremiah
is called the weeping prophet. Oh, did he go through suffering. A couple of things about weeping.
First of all, weeping can be deceitful. We can deceive ourselves
and we can certainly deceive others. Little children, especially
little girls, know early on how to turn on the tears. And my
wife, as being a female, you know, Hannah would do it early
on. And she'd, you know, and you'd get after her and she'd
come to me and just turn on me. Daddy, daddy, daddy. You know,
daddy's just, oh honey, you know. But she didn't, no, no, no, no,
no, no. She needed a spanking. But those
tears, that's going to keep her out of it. That's going to, you
know, turn my wrath. But it did mine, did not mean
it. She saw through her. And isn't
it so? Tears can be deceitful. We can
deceive ourselves. I was, you know, as a young,
very young child, I remember distinctly my dad would look
real harsh at me. I'd just break out crying, you
know. Some kids do that, don't they?
And it didn't stop the spanking. And I remember standing and looking
in the mirror, crying. And it got worse. Look at you. Aren't you sad? Self-pity, huh? Anybody? Self-pity? Poor me! No, not poor you. Yeah, you ought to weep over
yourself. You know what we ought to get
in the hands of God? Barney used to say, anything this side of
hell is mercy. Tears, we can deceive ourselves,
we can certainly deceive others. Tears are not a sign of a tender
heart, necessarily. It's a sign of emotion. Emotion
is not salvation. Don't trust your tears. Trust Christ. Look to Christ.
Lots of emotional people. I preached to a woman for the
longest time who I never saw her one time respond with any
emotion to Christ being crucified her. God's mercy and grace and
kindness. You talk about her departed father
and she was bald like a baby. That's emotion. A lot of people's
religion is just emotion. Emotion is not salvation. It's
emotion. It's fleshly emotion. And you
can jerk emotion out of people easy. It's often a sign of weakness.
Too much tears is a sign of weakness. I know you'll say, you know,
real men don't cry. That's not true. Our Lord didn't.
But the fact is, you know, you don't cry over everything. You
don't need to cry over everything. And my dad, I remember him, when
I'd get to him mostly, he'd say, if you don't stop your crying,
I'm going to give you something to cry about. No more tears. And isn't that
so? That's us. Emotion is not a sign of a tender
heart. And people say then, well, you don't know my heart. The fact of the matter is we
don't know our hearts. Jeremiah 17, 9 says, the heart
is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can
know? David was a man after God's own heart. That's what God said. That's a man that has my heart. Boy, he didn't cry over everything,
did he? But, buddy, one time he was crying. What was he crying
over? What was he saying? God, be merciful
to me, the sinner. God, let the blood propitiation
on the mercy seep from my soul. Create in me a clean heart. Wash me throughly for my sin. Purge me with hyssop and I'll
be clean. Sin is ever before me. That's what broke David's heart. He was weeping for himself because
he was such a sinner. And weeping over the cause. Sin,
we should weep, all right, over the sin in this world, everything
that it causes in this world, the sin in us, the hurt, the
pain, the suffering that sin causes in everybody, the hurt,
the pain, the suffering that we have caused. Right? Yes, weep for ourselves and our
children. If our children don't know the
Lord, if they don't come to know the Lord, the hand of God is
coming down hard on them. That's something to weep at. Our Lord said, blessed are they
that mourn. Mourn over what? Sin. Everybody in the world. And more
than that, we all go through it, and we should weep with those
that weep, and we should have compassion and pity on those
that are suffering, whatever they're suffering, whoever it
is, even our enemies. We shouldn't want pain and suffering
to come upon anybody. children and spouses and suffer
with sickness and all that, we should feel for that. But what
our Lord is saying here is, we, because of sin and its consequences,
and finally, the final result, that sin, what's going to happen
to people that don't care for Christ? That's something to weep over.
He said, Blessed are they that mourn. The Lord is nigh, here's
who the Lord is nigh unto. People everywhere suffer and
mourn and weep over various things. And we're not callous to that.
And our Lord doesn't take pleasure in the death of the wicked. The
Lord doesn't take pleasure in people's grief, though He sends
it. He doesn't take pleasure in that, at all. His tender mercies are over all
His work. But the fact is, most people
don't give a flip about God or His Son. So He's just, and He's
going to give people exactly what they deserve. And it might
be our children, our grandchildren. It just might be. It could have
been. It should have been me. And this is why my salvation
is in two words. But God. I didn't want this. Thank God. He said, you will. I will have
mercy on you. I don't need mercy. Yes, you
do. And you're going to know it.
And you're going to ask for it. Now, don't trust your tears. And you know, the people that
want to go to heaven, everybody wants to go to heaven. That's
not salvation. Salvation is wanting to be with
Jesus Christ. And so, you know, weeping over
whatever, if it's not weeping over sin that put Christ on the
cross. And my sin in me and the sin
in the world, it's not vexed with all that's going on in the
world and vexed with what is in me and just vexed with sin
because of sin against the holy God, the goodness of God. If
the goodness of God hadn't led you to this kind of repentance,
no, your tears aren't, it's just emotion. You know, music can
bring emotion. It sent chills up my spine, just
anything. But that's not salvation. So
he says, we, where am I? Jeremiah 9. Look at Jeremiah
9. Jeremiah 9 verse 1. If you have,
if you want someplace to start reading, start reading Jeremiah.
Okay? It's never been more relevant
or current. Oh, that my head, verse 1, were
waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day
and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. Oh, that
I had in the wilderness a lodging place. Now at first he's weeping
over people that God did this. Why? Because of sin, I believe.
God sent judgment. Oh, verse 2, look at this, and
now he wants to get out of this place, this wicked place. I had
in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men that I might
leave my people, go from them, because they're nothing but adultery,
assembly of treacherous men. They bend their tongues like
bows for lies. They're not valiant for the truth.
They proceed from evil to evil. They don't know me. Let me just find a place to go.
We come here. Come out from among them. God,
this is a place for wayfaring men. This is a place to get away
from it all. Even the old man is a junk. We
want to try to escape him. This is the only place you can
escape him. Looking for the Lord. He goes
on to talk about don't take heed of everyone, his neighbor and
even his brother, to deceive everyone. Look at verse 9. Shall not I visit them for these
things, saith the Lord? Shall not my soul be avenged
on such a nation as this? God's not mean. God's not hard. But God's holy. God's righteous. God's just. And he goes on to
say what he's going to do to Jerusalem. Verse 12. Who's a wise man that may understand
this? Verse 13, the Lord said, Because
they have forsaken my law which I have set before them and not
obeyed my voice, they have walked, verse 14, after the imagination
of their own hearts, after false gods. Therefore, verse 15, I
am going to feed them with wormwood and give them the water of gall
to drink. I am going to send trouble. Now look at verse 17, keep reading
with me. that our eyes may run down with
tears, that our eyelids gush out with water, the voice of
wailing is heard out of Zion. Oh, we're spoiled, we're greatly
confounded, we've forsaken the land, our dwellings have cast
us out. Hear the word of the Lord, ye women, let your ear
receive the word of his mouth, teach your daughters wailing.
Everyone and neighbor lamenting death has come upon us. So, go back to the text. And our Lord, so He said here,
if they've done these things in the green tree, our Lord grew
up as a root out of dry ground, tender plant, didn't He? Tender plant, green tree. He
is the tree, tree of life. And look what they did to it. Now, if things were bad then,
our Lord said, what's going to happen when it's dry? When it's dry. You know what?
When things get real dry, what's going to happen? When the forest,
when the woods, when everything's dry, there's no moisture, no
rain. You know, rain is a symbol of God's mercy. Rain is the water
of life. Rain is God's mercy. Let the
skies pour down righteousness. It's the word of God. It's the
truth. It's Christ. He's the rain. He's the water. When that
dries up, what's going to happen? Burn it. Burn that. Like candle. So our Lord says, weep for yourself
and for your children. Okay.