Daily devotion – Our Lord weeping!
Luke 19: 41 Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, 42 saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, 44 and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
Every visit to Israel is both exhilarating, as we walk in the footsteps of Jesus, but also tinged with great sadness!
We see the people of God pressed hard against the Western Wall in prayer, and yet they are blinded spiritually about their Messiah already having come to their nation.
Jesus wept on two occasions we know of that are recorded in the Bible, the first being at the tomb of His friend Lazarus who lay dead now for four days – John 11:35. There Jesus wept quietly.
But in the text we are looking at today, Jesus uttered a loud lamentation like one mourning over the dead.
Jesus was like the prophet Jeremiah who wept bitterly over the destruction of Jerusalem – Jeremiah 9. Yet another prophet by the name of Jonah, looked on Nineveh and hoped it would be destroyed – Jonah 4.
Jesus looked at Jerusalem at this time because it had destroyed itself!
For no matter where Jesus looked, He found cause for weeping. If He looked back, He saw how the nation had wasted its opportunities and been ignorant of “their time of visitation.”
If Jesus looked within, He saw spiritual ignorance and blindness in the hearts of the people. They should have known who He was when He rode in on that colt on Palm Sunday.
God had given them His Word and sent His messengers to prepare the way. As Jesus looked around, He saw religious activity that accomplished very little which we witness every time we visit now the Holy Land.
The Temple had become a den of thieves that Jesus had to cast out and the religious leaders were out to kill Him!
As Jesus looked ahead, He wept as He saw the terrible judgment that was coming to the nation as too it will fall upon our nation Australia. For Jerusalem would crumble in A.D. 70 under the Roman General Titus after a siege of 143 days and more than 600,000 Jews killed.
Why did all this happen you ask?
Because the people did not know that God had visited them. We live in a world now that believes the same as those back then. Jesus has come but they are completely ignorant of His coming.
The Apostle John would write the words of great lament – “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not – John 1:11 – these same people said, “We will not have this man to reign over us!” – Luke 19:14.
Let us pray for the people of Israel that their eyes be opened, the veil lifted, and also let us pray for our own nation.
The time is short!