Jesus was a weeper

JESUS WAS A WEEPER
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
Luke 19:41-42 And when he drew nigh, he saw the city
and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known in this
day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace!
but now they are hid from thine eyes.
GreatTexts of the Bible
The Impenitent City
1. The Saviour’s tears were a startling contrastto the scene ofrejoicing to
which this incident is appended. It was in the midst of the Triumphal Entry
that this occurred, when all were exulting and shouts of hallelujah thrilled the
air. The simple pious hearts of the disciples were glad at this evident
acceptanceoftheir Master, and they anticipated a speedy capture of
Jerusalemitself for Christ, when His cause would lay hold of the whole nation
and greatand glorious events would ensue. They hardly knew what they
expected;but, in any case, itwas to be a mighty triumph for Christ, and
salvationfor Israel. But as the joyful processionsweptround the shoulder of
the hill, and the fair city gleamedinto sight, a hush came over the exulting
throng; for the Lord was weeping. He had no bright and futile illusions. A
wave of excitement like that which had transported the disciples could not
blind Him to the actualfacts of the case. He knew that He had lived, and
would die, in vain, so far as that hard and proud capitalwas concerned. He
knew that He was rejectedofrulers and people;and that ears and hearts were
deaf to His message. As He lookedat the beautiful city, it was not with pride
but with anguish. He knew that city and nation were doomed. They had had

their day of visitation, and were still having it—but the sands were fast
running out. In compassionate griefHe yearned over them still, weeping for
their blindness and hardness of heart. What a pathetic scene is here recalled
to our imagination! The gay and careless citysmiling in the sunlight, with
eagercrowds ofbusy men full of their interests and pleasures, full of their
greatreligious celebrationabout to be kept—and the Saviour looking down on
it all, weeping. They were throwing awaytheir lastchance, following false
lights, and dreaming false hopes, seeking false sourcesofpeace, stopping their
ears againstthe voice of wisdom and of love. “If thou hadst knownin this day,
even thou, the things which belong unto peace!but now they are hid from
thine eyes.”
2. Those who heard Him did not understand. Nevertheless He was right. He
saw things as they were, not as they seemed. His was that prophet-power
which is not so truly the vision of things future as of things present, a power
which is less intellectualthan moral, which in the sphere of the spiritual is the
equivalent of the scientific faculty in the physical order—the powerof
discerning in human history the reign of law, that necessityby which effect
follows upon cause, by which evil conduct must bring to pass evil fortune. He
saw, and only He, how things really were with Jerusalemand its people, and
therefore He saw what must happen to Jerusalem. So to Him the glowing
landscape and the city shining on it like a gemwere the illusion, and His
doom-picture was the reality; the beauty and peace and glory were the mask;
the features behind it were pain, horror, desolation. Jesus was right, and all
He wept overcame to pass in fullest and most bitter measure.
They climbed the Easternslope
Which leads from Jordan up to Olivet;

And they who earlierdreams could not forget
Were flushed with eagerhope.
They gained the crest, and lo!
The marble temple in the sunsetgleamed,
And golden light upon its turrets streamed,
As on the stainless snow.
They shout for joy of heart,
But He, the King, looks on as one in grief;
To heart o’erburdened weeping brings relief,
The unbidden tear-drops start:
“Ah, had’st thou known, e’en thou
In this thy day the things that make for peace;”

Alas! no strivings now canwork release.
The night is closing now.
“On all thy high estate,
Thy temple-courts and palaces ofpride,
Thy pleasantpictures and thy markets wide,
Is written now ‘Too late.’
Time was there might have been
The waking up to life of higher mood,
The knowledge ofthe only Wise and Good,
Within thy portals seen;
But now the past is past,

The lastfaint light by blackening clouds is hid;
Thy heaped-up sins eachhope of grace forbid,
The skyis all o’ercast;
And soonfrom out the cloud
Will burst the storm that lays thee low in dust,
Till shrine and palace, homes of hate and lust
Are wrapt in fiery shroud.”1 [Note: E. H. Plumptre.]
Let us consider:—
I. Jerusalem’s Dayof Privilege.
II. Her Rejectionofthe Light.
III. The Tears ofthe Redeemer.
I

The Day of Privilege
1. There are seasons ofspecialprivilege. Jesus here speaks of“a time of
visitation.” Properly speaking, thatmeans an overseeing. Thatis the strict
meaning of the original word. It is thus used to describe the office of an
Apostle, in the Acts of the Apostles, and the office of a bishop, in St. Paul’s
First Epistle to Timothy; and, from this employment of the word in Scripture,
it has come to be applied to the court—for such it is—whichfrom time to
time, a bishop is bound by the old law of the Church to hold, in order to
review the state of his diocese. Butthis word is more commonly applied in the
Bible to God’s activity than to man’s; and a visitation of God is sometimes
penal or judicial, and sometimes it is a seasonofgrace and mercy. The day of
visitation of which St. Peterspeaks, in which the heathen shall glorify God for
the goodworks ofChristians, is, we cannot doubt, the day of judgment. And
Job uses the Hebrew equivalent to describe the heavy trials which had been
sent to test his patience. On the other hand, in the language ofScripture, God
visits man in grace and mercy—as He did the Israelites in Egypt after
Joseph’s death; as He visited Sarahin one generation, and Hannah in
another; as He visited His flock, to use Zechariah’s expression, in Babylon. It
was such a visitation as this that our Lord had in view. He Himself had held it;
and when He spoke it was not yet concluded.
(1) This visitation was unobtrusive.—In the Advent of the Redeemerthere
was nothing outwardly remarkable to the men of that day. It was almost
nothing. Of all the historians of that period few indeed are found to mention
it. This is a thing which we at this day canscarcelyunderstand; for to us the
blessedAdvent of our Lord is the brightest page in the world’s history; but to
them it was far otherwise. Rememberfor one moment what the Advent of our
Lord was to all outward appearance. He seemed, let it be said reverently, to
the rulers of those days, a fanaticalfreethinker. They heard of His miracles,
but they appearednothing remarkable to them; there was nothing there on

which to fastentheir attention. They heard that some of the populace had
been led away, and now and then, it may be, some of His words reachedtheir
ears, but to them they were hard to be understood, full of mystery; or else
they roused every evil passionin their hearts, so stern and uncompromising
was the morality they taught. They put aside these words in that brief period,
and the day of grace passed.
There was nothing of the outward pageantof royalty to greetthe sonof David.
There were no guards, no palace, no throne, no royal livery, no currency
bearing the king’s image and superscription. All these things had passedinto
the hands of the foreign conqueror, or, in parts of the country, into the hands
of princes who had the semblance of independence without its reality. There
was not even the amount of circumstance and state which attends the
receptionof a visitor to some modern institution—a visitor who only
represents the majesty of some old prerogative or of some earthly throne. As
He, Israel’s true King, visits Jerusalem, He almost reminds us of the
descendantof an ancientand fallen family returning in secretto the old home
of his race. Everything is for him instinct with precious memories. Every stone
is dear to him, while he himself is forgotten. He wanders about unnoticed,
unobserved, or with only such notice as courtesymay accordto a presumed
stranger. He is living amid thoughts which are altogetherunshared by men
whom he meets, as he moves silently and sadly among the records of the past,
and he passes awayfrom sight as he came, with his real stationand character
generallyunrecognized, if indeed he is not dismissed as an upstart with
contempt and insult. So it was with Jerusalemand its Divine Visitor. “He
came unto his own, and his own receivedhim not.”1 [Note: H. P. Liddon.]
(2) The day of visitation is limited.—Jerusalem’s day was narrowedup into
the short space ofthree years and a half. After that, God still pleaded with
individuals; but the national cause, as a cause, was gone.Jerusalem’s doom
was sealedwhenChrist pronounced those words.

Here was His last word to the chosenpeople, the lastprobation, the last
opportunity. We may reverently say that there was no more after that to be
done. Eachprophet contributed something which others could not; eachhad
filled a place in the long series of visitations which no other could fill. Already,
long ago, Jerusalemhad been once destroyed, after a greatneglectof
opportunity. The Book ofJeremiahis one long and pathetic commentary on
the blindness and obstinacyof kings, priests, prophets, and people which
precededthe Chaldæan invasion, and which rendered it inevitable. And still
that ruin, vast and, for the time, utter as it was, had been followedby a
reconstruction—thatlong and bitter exile by a return. But history will not go
on for ever repeating events which contradict the possibility of change and
renewal. One greatervisitation awaitedJerusalem;one more utter ruin—and
eachwas to be the last.
After the PassionandCrucifixion of Jesus no cause of justice, no ministry of
truth, no service of one’s fellow-men, need despair. Though the People,
Religionand the State togethertriumph over them, beyond the brief day of
such a triumph the days—to use a prophetic promise which had often rung
through Jerusalem—the days are coming. The centuries, patient ministers of
God, are waiting as surely for them as they waitedfor Christ beyond His
Cross. Thus, then, did the City and the Man confront eachother: that great
Fortress, with her rival and separately entrenched forces, forthe moment
confederate againstHim; that Single Figure, sure of His sufficiency for all
their needs, and, though His flesh might shrink from it, consciousthat the
death which they conspiredfor Him was His Father’s will in the redemption
of mankind. As for the embattled City herself, lifted above her ravines and
apparently impregnable, she sat prepared only for the awful siege and
destruction which He foresaw;while all her spiritual promises, thronging
from centuries of hope and prophecy, ran out from her shining into the West;
a sunsetto herself, but the dawn of a new day to the world beyond.1 [Note: G.
A. Smith, Jerusalem, ii. 578.]

II
The Rejectionofthe Light
1. The Jews were blind to their opportunity. They knew not the day of their
visitation. There is the ignorance we cannot help, which is part of our
circumstances in this life, which is imposed on us by Providence. And such
ignorance as this, so far as it extends, effaces responsibility. God will never
hold a man accountable for knowledge whichHe knows to be out of his reach.
But there is also ignorance, and a greatdeal of it in many lives, for which we
are ourselves responsible, andwhich would not have embarrassedus now, if
we had made the best of our opportunities in pasttimes. And just as a man
who, being drunk, is held to be responsible for the outrage which he commits
without knowing what he was doing, because he is undoubtedly responsible
for getting into this condition of brutal insensibility at all, so God holds us all
to be accountable foran ignorance which He knows not to be due to our
nature. Now, this was the case with the men of Jerusalemat that day. Had
they studied their prophets earnestlyand sincerely, had they refusedto
surrender themselves to political dreams which flattered their self-love, and
which coloured all their thoughts and hopes, they would have seenin Jesus of
Nazareththe Divine Visitor whose coming Israel had for long ages been
expecting.
There is a wayof blindness by hardening the heart. Let us not concealthis
truth from ourselves. Godblinds the eye, but it is in the appointed course of
His providential dealings. If a man will not see, the law is he shall not see;if he
will not do what is right when he knows the right, then right shall become to
him wrong, and wrong shall seemto be right. We read that God hardened
Pharaoh’s heart, that He blinded Israel. It is impossible to look at these cases
of blindness without perceiving in them something of Divine action. Even at
the moment when the Romans were at their gates, Jerusalemstill dreamed of

security; and when the battering-ram was at the towerof Antonia, the priests
were celebrating, in fancied safety, their daily sacrifices. Fromthe moment
when our Masterspake, there was deep stillness overher until her
destruction; like the strange and unnatural stillness before the thunder-storm,
when every breath seems hushed, and every leafmay be almostheard moving
in the motionless air; and all this calm and stillness is but the prelude to the
moment when the eastand westare lighted up with the red flashes, and the
whole creationseems to reel. Such was the blindness of that nation which
would not know the day of her visitation.1 [Note:F. W. Robertson.]
2. The blindness of the Jews was the blindness of moral indifference. For years
they had been sinking into cold spiritual indifference, while they were clinging
all the more strongly to the outward formalities of religion. And then came
their rejectionof Christ, which consummated their ruin. They knew what
tithes the poor man must pay into the treasury, but they could not understand
a Christ who came to heal the broken-hearted. They knew that Jerusalemwas
the place where men ought to worship, and that the Samaritans were heretics;
they could not understand One who came to give men life and rest in God. It
was their cold-heartedindifference that thus blinded their eyes to the mission
of Jesus, and it was this that causedthem to destroy Him. They had found a
Man who said religion was a reality—who spoke in kindling words of a
spiritual world, and pointed the weary to an all-present Father; and when
they found they could not put to shame a truth that clashedwith their cold-
heartedness, they hurried Him to the judgment-hall and the cross.
If we go back to the time of the Greeks,and ask whatto the Greek mind was
the greatestsin, we find that it was insolence. To them insolence meant the
failure of a man to realize what was his true attitude to life, to understand that
he was bound, if he would be a true man, to face life boldly and fearlesslywith
all its issues, to think through its problems, to recognize the limits under
which his life had to be lived. Still the same thing is needed. We still ask you to
look at your life straight, to see whatit means, to see whatare the things that

will destroy it. And we are forced to conclude with the old Greeks that it is
insolence which destroys a man’s life. What the Greeks calledinsolence, we
call irreverence;and irreverence is at the bottom of it indifference. It means
the want of self-sacrifice, ofself-restraint, the want of manliness, the want of a
desire to think things out, to face life and its issues broadly and courageously.1
[Note:Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, ii. 26.]
3. Such a process ofhardening may be very gradual. Little by little we lose our
keendelight in God, our warm loyalty to our Saviour, our exquisite pleasure
in noble things, our cordial sympathy with spiritual people and their aims;
little by little we decline into godlessness andworldliness. There is a growing
deadness of nerve, a creeping paralysis which leaves us more and more
untouched and unmoved by the high and glorious things of our faith, which
renders us more and more carelessaboutthe tragic possibilities of life.
Life must be a movement—a progress ofsome kind. We cannotstand still—
rise or fall we must. Unless, therefore, we have a restraining power within us
conquering those hidden evil tendencies, our life must be gradually sinking.
But indifference—the mere absence of positive Christian earnestness—hasno
restraining influence. Not what we are not, but what we are, forms character.
We resemble that which we supremely love. That rectitude of life and conduct
which is not the result of choice or effort, and which may exist in the absence
of temptation, is purely negative, and, unless supported by some earnest
positive principle, is in peril when the slumbering evil tendencies are wakened
into powerby temptation. We may go a step farther, and affirm that spiritual
indifference actually prepares the way for open sin. “He that is not with me is
againstme,” said Christ, and then followedHis parable of the unclean spirit
returning in sevenfoldmight to the empty house. The mere expulsion of evil
which leaves the heart vacantand indifferent is a false reformation. Take
awaycorrupt love, and leave the soul’s chamber empty, and it will come again
in gigantic force. Thus indifference is the commencementof a blindfold
descentinto spiritual ruin.

You have seenthe snow-flakes falling—atfirst they lay like beautiful winter
flowers, but gradually they formed an icy crust that hardened and thickened
with every snow shower. So, a man may receive the truth of Christ in the
freezing atmosphere of cold indifference, until he is girded round with a mass
of dead belief which no spiritual influence canpenetrate.1 [Note:E. L. Hull.]
4. These Jewsknew not the day of their visitation and yet they were always
expecting it. Their prophets had foretold it; in their prayers they cried out for
it. Even at this very time they were looking for their Messiah. Butthey had
made up their minds as to the way in which the visitation would be made.
When at lastit came in God’s way—so simply, so quietly—they could not
receive it.
How many there are who are still living in carelessness, neverreally ranging
themselves on the side of Christ, never really giving to Him their hearts and
souls;and all the time they have a sort of vague idea that some day the Lord
will come and visit their hearts!They do not mean to die in their irreligion.
They half imagine that suddenly and unexpectedly God will call them and
convert them; then the King will enthrone Himself in their hearts, and all will
be well; then they must needs give up sin, and delight in religion. So now they
are contentto wait; till that day it does not matter much, they think, what
lives they lead. All the time Jesus is with them; but they know Him not; they
know not the time of their visitation; they are expecting a visitation of some
strange, sensational, orterrible kind. If some storm or tempest of passion
shook their being, they might yield to that; if God were to afflict them by
laying them permanently on a bed of sickness,orby taking from them all that
makes life dear, they would count that as a visitation of God, and would
expectto be converted. Our ordinary language seems to countenance this
notion. It is “a visitation of God,” we say, when a city is smitten with cholera
or plague, or when death cannot be accountedfor. It would be well for us all if
we could realize more fully that, although God’s voice may be heard in the

whirlwind and the storm, it is more often heard in the quiet whisper, speaking
lovingly to the conscience.
Where are thy moments? Dostthou let them run
Unheeded through time’s glass? Is thy work done?
Hast thou no duties unfulfilled? Not one
That needs completion?
Thou would’st not castthy money to the ground;
Or, if thou did’st, perchance it might be found
By one who, schooledin poverty’s harsh round,
Knew not repletion.
But thy time lost, is lostto all and thee;
Swiftly ’tis added to eternity,

And for it answerable thoumust be;
So have a care.
Gather thy moments, lest they swellto hours;
Stir up thy youthful and still dormant powers;
Now only canstthou plant Heaven’s fadeless flowers,
Therefore, beware.
III
The Tears ofJesus
“He saw the city and wept over it.” He wept—weptaloud (there had been only
silent tears at Bethany, for the two Greek words imply this distinction)—He
wept aloud as the city of Jerusalemburst on His sight. The spothas been
identified by modern travellers, where a turn in the path brings into view the
whole city. “There stoodbefore Him the City of ten thousand memories, with
the morning sunlight blazing on the marble pinnacles and gilded roofs of the
Temple buildings”; and as He gazed, all the pity within Him over-mastered
His human spirit, and He broke into a passionof lamentation, at the sight of
the city, which it was too late for Him—the Deliverer—to save;at the thought
of the ruin of the nation, which He—the King—had come to rule. “If thou

hadst known—Oh! that thou hadst known—the things that belong unto thy
peace!” As if He had said, “Thou art called Jerusalem, whichmeans ‘They
shall see peace.’Ohthat thou wert Jerusalemin truth and hadst known the
things that make for thy peace!but now they are hid from thine eyes.”
The Son of God in tears
The Angels wondering see:
Hast thou no wonder, O my soul?
He shed those tears for thee!
He wept that we might weep,
Might weep our sin and shame,
He wept to shew His love for us,
And bid us love the same.
Then tender be our hearts,
Our eyes in sorrow dim,

Till every tear from every eye
Is wiped awayby Him!1 [Note:H. F. Lyte, Poems, 82.]
There is no more moving sight than a strong man in tears. Only the strong can
truly weep. Tears are then the overflow of the heart. They come when words
are powerless;they go where deeds cannot follow. They are the speechof souls
past speaking.2[Note:R. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 52.]
1. It was not for Himself that He wept. The Saviour quite forgotHimself.
Conscious as He was, perfectly conscious,ofthe terrible suffering and shame
which awaitedHim, He thought not of it; His whole soulwas takenup with
the city which lay before Him, glittering in the brilliant light of early morning.
The tide of sorrow and regret which that sight seta-flowing submerged all
other feelings for the moment. It is proper to man that only one very strong
emotion can find room within his breastat the same moment; and our Lord
was man, true man, made like unto us in all points, sin alone excepted. So He
forgotfor the moment all about Himself; His heart went out to the city which
lay before Him, and He wept over it.
He measured the worth, or rather He estimatedthe worthlessness,ofthose
greetings which greetedHim now. He knew that all this joy, this jubilant
burst, as it seemed, of a people’s gladness, was but as fire among straw, which
blazes up for an instant, and then as quickly expires, leaving nothing but a
handful of black ashes behind it. He knew that of this giddy thoughtless
multitude, many who now cried, “Hosanna;blessedis he that cometh in the
name of the Lord,” would, before one short week was ended, join their voices
with the voices ofthem who exclaimed, “Crucify him, crucify him; we have no

king but Cæsar”;and He wept, not for Himself, but for them, for the doom
which they were preparing for their city, for their children, for themselves.
The contrastwas, indeed, terrible betweenthe Jerusalemthat rose before
Christ in all its beauty, glory, and security, and the Jerusalemwhich He saw
in vision dimly rising on the sky, with the camp of the enemy round about it
on every side, hugging it closerand closerin deadly embrace, and the very
“stockade”whichthe Roman Legions raisedaround it; then, another scene in
the shifting panorama, and the city laid with the ground, and the gory bodies
of her children among her ruins; and yet another scene:the silence and
desolateness ofdeath by the Hand of God—not one stone left upon another!
We know only too well how literally this vision has become reality; and yet,
though uttered as prophecy by Christ, and its reasonso clearlystated, Israel
to this day knows not the things which belong unto its peace, and the upturned
scatteredstones ofits dispersion are crying out in testimony againstit. But to
this day, also, do the tears of Christ plead with the Church on Israel’s behalf,
and His words bear within them precious seedof promise.1 [Note:Edersheim,
Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, ii. 369.]
2. He wept over the doom of the impenitent city that He loved. He foresaw the
hour when the Roman army would level its walls, destroyits Temple, and
scatterits people through all lands; when the spot that had been so long
known as the glory of Judæa should be recognizedonly by its ruins. And to
Christ there must have been something profoundly sad in that prospect. For
ages Jerusalemhad been the home of truth and the temple of the Eternal. For
ages its people had been the solitary worshippers and witnesses to the true
Lord of men. And the thought that a nation calledand chosenof old, a nation
whose forefathers had been true to God through perils and captivities, should
fall from its high standing through falseness to its Lord, and, shorn of its
ancient glory, should wander through the world, crownedwith mockery,
misery, and scorn, might well fill the heart of the compassionateChrist with
sorrow. But yet we cannot suppose that the downfall of Jerusalemand the

scattering of its people were the chief objects of His pity. It was the men
themselves—the men of Jerusalem, who, by the rejectionof God’s messengers,
and of Himself, the greatestofall, were bringing down those calamities—that
awakenedHis compassion. He saw other temples than Solomon’s falling into
ruin—the temples of the souls that had spurned His voice;and the ruin of
those spirits moved Him to tears.
3. He knew that this dreadful doom might have been averted. There were
things which belongedto Jerusalem’s peace, andwhich would have securedit,
if only she would have known them. They were things which He had brought
with Him. The guilty city, the murderess of the prophets, she that had been a
provocationalmost from her first day until now, might have washedher and
made her cleanfrom all that blood and from all that filthiness; she might have
become, not in name only, but in deed, “the city of peace,”if only she would
have consentedfirst to be “the city of righteousness,” to receive aright Him
who had come, “meek and having salvation,” and bringing near to her the
things of her everlasting peace. There was no dignity, there was no glory, that
might not have been hers. She might have been a name and a praise in all the
earth. From that mountain of the Lord’s house the streams of healing, the
waters of the river of life, might have gone forth for the healing of all the
bitter waters of the world. But no; she chose ratherto be herselfthe bitterest
fountain of all. As she had refused in the times past to hear God’s servants, so
now she refused to hearHis Son, stopped her ears like the deaf adder, made
her heart hard as adamant that she might not hear Him.
4. But He knew that His bitter tears were unavailing now. The desolationof
the belovedcity was a catastrophe that even the prevailing work of His
redemption was powerless to avert. “Now they are hid from thine eyes.” This
is a deliverance which lies beyond the limit even of the salvationwhich Christ
is to accomplish. “Thouknewestnot the time of thy visitation.” All the
opportunities afforded by the Divine forbearance to those who slew the
prophets, who stonedthe messengers, andwho were about to kill the heir, and

culminating in this day of Messiah’s unmistakable claimupon the allegiance
of God’s people, had passedunheeded and unused. Now, once and for all, the
things that belong to peace are hidden. JerusalemChrist cannot save. Its
destruction He cannot turn away. Therefore, He breaks forth into a
passionate lament, like Rachelweeping for her children—“And when he drew
nigh, he beheld the city, and wept over it.”
Jerusalemis the head and heart of the nation, the seatof the religious power
in which Israelis personified. Why then must this powerbe blind and
obstinate, angry and offended? Why should these high priests, elders, masters
of the Law and guardians of the traditions, these leaders of the chosenpeople,
fail to understand what the simple, the poor, the humble, the despisedhave
comprehended? Why do their minds blaspheme while the minds of the people
welcome with acclamations the ChosenOne of God? Such thoughts
overwhelmed and distracted the soul of Jesus. There is still time for them to
acknowledge Him; they can still proclaim Him Messiah, and save Israel, to
bestow upon it the peace of God. The unutterable anguish of Jesus is not for
His own fate, to that He is resigned;it is the fate of His people and of the city
which is on the point of demanding His execution; and this blindness will let
loose upon Israel nameless calamities.The hierarchy, which despises the true
Messiah, willbe carried awayby its false patriotism into every excess and
every frenzy. It will endeavour in vain to control the people in their feverish
impatience for deliverance. The Zealots will provoke implacable warfare, and,
in grasping after empty glory and empty liberty, their fanaticismwill be the
unconscious instrument of the vengeance ofGod. Jesus knew it; the future
was before His eyes;He saw Jerusalembesieged, invested, laid waste with fire
and sword, her children slaughtered, and her houses, her monuments, her
palaces, herTemple itself levelled with the ground.1 [Note: FatherDidon,
Jesus Christ, ii. 175.]
5. And yet, in spite of all, He persistedin His endeavours to reclaim the lost.
He threw Himself into the work of rousing and alarming Jerusalem, as though

its future might instantly be transformed. From the Mount of Olives He
descendedstraightwayto the Temple, and the last week ofHis life was spent
in daily intercourse with its chief priests. How vain, as it then appeared, were
all His words! How little availedHis sternesttones to stir the slumberous
pulses of His time! How unmoved (save by a bitter and personal animosity)
were the leaders and teachers to whom He spoke!And when that scornful
indifference on their part was exchangedat last for a distinctive enmity, with
what needless prodigality, as doubtless it seemedeven to some of His own
disciples, He flung away His life! Flung it away? Yes, but only how soonand
how triumphantly to take it again!The defeatof Golgotha meantthe victory
of the Resurrection. The failure of the cross was the triumph of the Crucified;
and, though by living and preaching He could not conquer the indifference or
awakenthe apathy of Israel, by dying and rising againHe did. It was the chief
priests who amid the anguish of Calvary were the most scornful spectators
and the most relentless foes. It was “a great company of the chief priests,”
who, on the day of Pentecost, scarcefifty days after that dark and bitter
Friday, “were obedient unto the faith.” And thus the tide was turned, and
though Jerusalemwas not rescuedfrom the vandal hordes of Titus, Jerusalem
and Judæa alike became the home and the cradle of the infant Church.
The Impenitent City
BIBLEHUB RESOURCES
Pulpit Commentary Homiletics
The Tears Of Christ
Luke 19:41
W. Clarkson

We are touched by the tears of a little child; for they are the sign of a genuine,
if a simple, sorrow. Much more are we affectedby the tears of a strong and
brave man. When a man of vigorous intelligence, accustomedto command
himself, gives wayto tears, then we feelthat we are in the presence ofa very
deep and sademotion. Such were the tears of Christ. Twice, at least, he wept;
and on this occasionwe understand that he gave free vent to an overpowering
distress. The tears of Christ speak of two things more especially.
I. HIS TENDER SYMPATHYWITH HUMAN SORROW, The grief which
now overwhelmedthe Saviour was (as we shall see)very largely due to his
sense ofits past and its approaching guilt. But it was also due, in part, to his
foreknowledgeofthe sufferings its inhabitants must endure. An intense
sympathy with human woe was and is a very large element in the character
and life of Jesus Christ.
1. It was his compassionfor our race that brought him from above - that we
by his poverty might become rich.
2. It was this which, more than anything else, accounts for the miracles he
wrought. He could not see the blind, and the lame, and the fever-stricken, and
the leprous without tendering them the restoring grace it was in his power to
bestow. He could not see mourning parents and weeping sisters without
healing the heart-wounds he was able to cure.
3. It was this which drew to himself the confidence and affectionof loving
hearts. It was no wonder that pitiful womenand tender-hearted children, and
men whose hearts were unhardened by the world, were drawn in trust and
love to the responsive Sonof man, whose stepwas always stopped by a human
cry, to whose compassionno strickenman or womanever appealedin vain.
4. It is this feature of his characterwhich makes him so dearto us now as our
Divine Friend. For in this world, where sorrow treads so fast on the heels of
joy, and where human comforters so often fail us, of what priceless value is it
to have in that Everlasting One, who is the Ever-present One, a Friend who is
"touched" with our griefs, and who still carries our sorrows by the powerof
his sympathy!

(1) Let us thank God that we have such a Friend in him; and
(2) let us resolve before God that such a friend will we seek andstrive to be.
II. HIS PROFOUND REGRETFOR THOSE WHO ARE IN THE WRONG.
With what eyes do we look upon human sin when we see it at its worst? How
are we affectedby the sight of a drunkard, of a thief, of a foul-mouthed and
fallen woman? Are we filled with contempt? Many bad things are indeed
contemptible; but there is a view to be takenwhich is worthier and more
Christ-like than that; a view which is more humane and more Divine - a
feeling of profound pitifulness and sorrowfulregret. It was this which filled
the heart of Christ when he lookedupon Jerusalem, and that calledforth his
tearful lamentation. Much was there about that city that might well move his
righteous anger, that did calldown his strong, unsparing indignation
(Matthew 23.) - its spiritual arrogance, its religious egotism, its fearful
pretentiousness, its deep-seatedhypocrisy, its heartless cruelty, its whitewash
of ceremony without with all its corruptness and selfishness within. But Jesus
forebore to denounce; he stopped to weep. He was most powerfully affectedby
the thought that Jerusalemmight have been so much to God and man, and
was - what she was. Jesus Christ was not so much angeredas he was saddened
by the presence and the sight of sin. He might have withered it up in his
wrath, but he rather wept over it in his pity. This is the Christian spirit to be
cherishedand to be manifested by ourselves. We must contemn the
contemptible; but we rise to higher ground when we pity the erring because
they are in error, when we mourn over the fallen because theyare down so
low, when we grieve for those who are afaroff because they are astray from
God and blessedness. Butwe must not only weepfor those who are in the
wrong because theyare in the wrong. We must do our utmost to setthem
right. "How often" did Christ seek to gatherthose sons and daughters of
Jerusalemunder the wings of his love! How often and how earnestlyshould
we seek to reclaimand to restore! - C.

Biblical Illustrator
Jesus wept. - The word is different from that used to express weeping in ver.
33; but this latter is used of our Lord in
Luke 19:41
Christ's tears
J. Donne, D. D.
(Text, and Luke 19:41;Hebrews 5:7): — It is a commonplace to speak of
tears;would that it were a common practice to shed them. Whoeverdivided
the New Testamentinto verses seems to have stopped in amazement at the
text, making an entire verse of two words. There is not a shorter verse in the
Bible nor a largertext. Christ wept thrice. The tears of the text are as a spring
belonging to one house. hold; the tears over Jerusalemare as a river,
belonging to a whole country; the tears on the cross (Hebrews 5:7) are as a sea
belonging to all the world; and though, literally, these fall no more into our
text than the spring, yet because the spring flows into the river and the river
into the sea, and that wheresoeverwe find that Jesus weptwe find our text, we
shall look upon those heavenly eyes through this glass ofHis own tears in all
these three lines. Christ's tears were —

I. HUMANE, as here. This being His greatestmiracle, and declaring His
Divinity, He would declare that He was man too.
1. They were not distrustful inordinate tears. Christ might go further than
any other man, both because He had no original sin within to drive Him, and
no inordinate love without to draw Him when His affections were moved.
Christ goes as faras a passionate deprecationin the passion, but all these
passions were sanctifiedin the root by full submission to God's pleasure. And
here Christ's affections were vehemently stirred (ver. 33); but as in a clean
glass if waterbe troubled it may conceive a little light froth, yet it contracts no
foulness, the affections of Christ were moved but so as to contractno
inordinateness. But then every Christian is not a Christ, and He who would
fast forty days as Christ did might starve.
2. But Christ came nearer to excess thanto senselessness. Inordinateness may
make men like beasts, but absence ofaffectionmakes them like stones. St.
Petertells us that men will become lovers of themselves, which is bad enough,
but he casts anothersin lower — to be without natural affections. The Jews
argued that saw Christ weep, "Beholdhow He loved him." Without outward
declarations who can conclude inward love? Who then needs to be ashamedof
weeping? As they proceededfrom natural affection, Christ's were tears of
imitation. And when God shall come to that last actin the glorifying of man
— wiping all tears from his eyes — what shall He have to do with that eye that
never wept?
3. Christ wept out of a natural tenderness in general;now out of a particular
occasion— Lazarus was dead. A goodman is not the worse for dying, because
he is establishedin a better world: but yet when he is gone out of this he is
none of us, is no longera man. It is not the soul, but the union of the soul that
makes the man. A man has a natural loathness to lose his friend though God
take him. Lazarus's sisters believedhis soul to be in a goodestate, andthat his
body would be raised, yet they wept. Here in this world we lack those who are
gone:we know they shall never come to us, and we shall not know them again
till we join them.

4. Christ wept though He knew Lazarus was to be restored. He would do a
greatmiracle for him as He was a mighty God; but He would weepfor him as
He was a good-natured man. It is no very charitable dispositionif I give all at
my death to others, and keepall my life to myself. I may mean to feasta man
at Christmas, and that man may starve before in Lent. Jesus would not give
this family whom He loved occasionof suspicionthat He neglectedthem; and
therefore though He came not presently to His great work, He left them not
comfortless by the way.
II. PROPHETICAL— over Jerusalem. His former tears had the spirit of
prophecy in them, for He foresaw how little the Jews wouldmake of the
miracle. His prophetical tears were humane too, they rise from goodaffections
to that people.
1. He wept in the midst of the acclamations ofthe people. In the best times
there is ever just occasionoffear of worse, and so of tears. Every man is but a
sponge. Whether Godlay His left hand of adversity or His right hand of
prosperity the sponge shall weep. Jesus weptwhen all went wellwith Him to
show the slipperiness of worldly happiness.
2. He wept in denouncing judgments to show with how ill a will He inflicted
them, and that the Jews had drawn them on themselves (Isaiah16:9). If they
were only from His absolute decree, without any respectto their sins, could
He be displeasedwith His own act? Would God ask that question, "Why will
ye die?" etc., if He lay open to the answer, "BecauseThouhast killed us"?
3. He wept when He came near the city: not till then. If we will not come near
the miseries of our brethren we will never weepover them. It was when Christ
Himself, not when His disciples, who could do Jerusalemno good, took
knowledge ofit. It was not when those judgments drew near; yet Christ did
not ease Himselfon accountof their remoteness, but lamented future
calamities.
III. PONTIFICAL— accompanying His sacrifice. Thesewere expressedby
that inestimable weight, the sins of all the world. And if Christ looking on
Petermade him weep, shall not His looking on us here with such tears make
us weep.

1. I am far from concluding all to be impenitent who do not actually shed
tears. There are constitutions that do not afford them. And yet the worst
epithet that the best poet could fix on Pluto himself was "a person that could
not weep." But to weepfor other things and not for sin, this is a sponge dried
into a pumice stone. Thoughthere be goodtears and bad tears, yet all have
this degree of goodin them that they argue a tender heart; and the Holy
Ghostloves to work in wax not in marble. God made a firmament which He
calledheaven after it had divided the waters:after we have distinguished our
tears worldly from heavenly then is there a firmament establishedin us, and a
heaven openedto us.
2. I might stand long upon the manifold benefits of godly tears, but I contract
all into this, which is all — godly sorrow is joy.
(J. Donne, D. D.)
Christ's tears
W. M. Taylor, D. D.
In our recoilfrom Socinianism we are apt to go too far to the other extreme.
This accounts for our surprise at reading that Jesus wept. We are not
surprised that Jeremiah wept, or that Paul or Peterwept. Why be surprised to
hear that Jesus wept, exceptthat we do not acknowledgeHis manhood? On
three occasions Jesus wept. To eachof these I wish to call your attention.
I. TEARS OF SYMPATHY. Three thoughts are suggested.
1. It is not sinful to weepunder afflictions.
2. The mourner may always counton the sympathy of Jesus. Jesus thought
not of these sisters alone. There sounded in His ears the dirge of the oceanof
human misery. The weeping of Mary and Martha was but the holding of the
shell to His ears. Thattear of love is a legacyto every Christian.
3. When our friends are mourning we should weepwith them. The truest
tenderness is that which distils in tears. When the heart feels most keenly, the

tongue refuses to do its bidding, but the tear expresses all. The tear is never
misunderstood.
II. TEARS OF COMPASSION (Luke 19:41). He was about to enter
Jerusalemover Mount of Olives. Before His vision, instead of the fair scene,
He saw the legions of Rome, etc. "Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem," etc. It was
baffled affection.
1. Observe the privileges which were granted the Jews andneglected. Who
shall say what glory had been Jerusalem's had she heard the prophets and
Jesus? All hearers of the Word have privileges and visitations.
2. Observe the sorrow of Jesus for the lost. He saw. that the chance to save
was past forever. He abandonedthe effort in tears.
III. TEARS OF PERSONALSUFFERING (Hebrews 5:7). The tears Paul
speaks ofvery probably referred to Gethsemane.
1. Think not because yousuffer that you are not chosen. As Christ was made
perfect in His work, through His suffering, so are we thus to be led.
2. Norare we to think that we are not Christians because we feelweak. Tears
are liquid emotion pressedfrom the heart. It is not murmuring in you to feel
the sting of suffering. Yet the undercurrent must always be, "Thy will be
done." Patience is not apathy. Restsure of this, the prayer cable is not broken.
The Gethsemane angelhas gone on many a strengthening mission since that
day in Gethsemane.
(W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
The tears of Christ
Cardinal Newman.
I. HE WEPT FROM VERY SYMPATHY WITH THE GRIEF OF OTHERS.
It is of the nature of compassionto "rejoice with those," etc. It is so with men,
and God tells us that He is compassionate. We do not well know what this
means, for how canGod rejoice or grieve? He is hid from us; but it is the very

sight of sympathy that comforts the sufferer. When Christ took flesh, then, He
showedus the Godheadin a new manifestation. Let us not say that His tears
here are man's love overcome by natural feeling. It is the love of God,
condescending to appear as we are capable of receiving it, in the form of
human nature.
II. HE WEPT AT THE VICTORY OF DEATH. Here was the Creatorseeing
the issue of His ownhandiwork. Would He not revert to the hour of Creation
when He saw that all was very good, and contrastman as He was made.
innocent and immortal, and man as the devil had made him, full of the poison
of sin and the breath of the grave? Why was it allowed? He would not say.
What He has done for all believers, revealing His atoning death, but not
explaining it, this He did for the sisters also, proceeding to the grave in silence,
to raise their brother while they complained that he had been allowedto die.
III. HE WEPT AT HIS OWN IMPENDING DOOM. Josephcouldbring joy
to his brethren at no sacrifice ofhis own. The disciples would have dissuaded
Christ from going into Judaea lestthe Jews shouldkill Him. The
apprehension was fulfilled. The fame of the miracle was the immediate course
of His seizure. He saw the whole prospect — Lazarus raised, the supper, joy
on all sides, many honouring Him, the triumphal entry, the Greeks earnestto
see Him, the Phariseesplotting, Judas betraying, His friends deserting, the
cross receiving. He felt that He was descending into the grave which Lazarus
had left.
(Cardinal Newman.)
The tears of Jesus
F. W. Robertson, M. A.
I. CAUSES OF CHRIST'S SORROW.
1. The possessionofa soul. When we speak ofthe Deity joined to humanity we
do not mean to a body, but to manhood, body and soul. With a body only

Jesus might have wept for hunger, but not for sorrow. That is the property
not of Deity or body, but of soul. The humanity of Christ was perfect.
2. The spectacle ofhuman sorrow.(1)Deathofa friend (ver 36). Mysterious!
Jesus knew that He could raise him. This is partly intelligible. Conceptions
strongly presented produce effects like reality, e.g., we wake dreaming, our
eyes suffused with tears — know it is a dream, yet tears flow on. Conception
of a parent's death. Solemn impression produced by the mock funeral of
Charles V. The sadness ofJesus forHis friend is repeatedin us all. Somehow
we twine our hearts round those we love as if forever. Death and they are not
thought of in connection. He die!(2) Sorrow of His two friends. Their
characters were diverse:two links bound them together:love to Lazarus,
attachment to the Redeemer. Now one link was gone. His loss was not an
isolatedfact. The family was brokenup; the sun of the systemgone; the
keystone ofthe arch removed, and the stones lose their cohesion. Forthe two
minds held togetheronly at points of contact. They could not understand one
another's different modes of feeling: Martha complains of Mary. Lazarus
gave them a common tie. That removed the points of repulsion would daily
become more sharp. Over the breaking up of a family Jesus wept. And this is
what makes death sad.
II. CHARACTER OF CHRIST'S SORROW:Spirit in which Jesus saw this
death.
1. Calmly. "Lazarus sleepeth" in the world of repose where all is placid.
Struggling men have tried to forgetthis restless world, and slumber like a
babe, tired at heart. Lazarus to his Divine friend's imagination lies calm. The
long day's work is done, the hands are folded. Friends are gathered to praise,
enemies to slander, but make no impression on his ear. Conscious he is, but
not of earthly noise. But "he sleeps well."
2. Sadly. Hence, observe —(1) Permitted sorrow. Greatnature is wiserthan
we. We recommend weeping, or prate about submission, or say all must die:
Nature, God, says, "Letnature rule to weepor not."(2)That grief is no
distrust of God — no selfishness.Sorrow is but love without its object.
3. Hopefully — "I go," etc. (ver. 11). "Thy brother" (ver. 23).

4. In reserve. On the first announcement Jesus speaksnot a word. When He
met the mourners He offered no commonplace consolation. He is less anxious
to exhibit feeling than to soothe. But nature had her wayat last. Yet even then
by act more than word the Jews inferred His love, There is the reserve of
nature and the reserve of grace. We have our own English reserve. We respect
grief when it does not make an exhibition. An Englishman is ashamedof his
goodfeelings as much as of his bad. All this is neither goodnor bad: it is
nature. But let it be sanctifiedand pass into Christian delicacy. Application.
In this there is consolation:but consolationis not the privilege of all sorrow.
Christ is at Lazarus's grave, because Christ had been at the sisters'home,
sanctifying their joys, and their very meals. They had anchoredon the rock in
sunshine, and in the storm the ship held to her moorings. He who has lived
with Christ will find Christ near in death, and will find himself that it is not so
difficult to die.
(F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
The import of Jesus'tears
T. E. Hughes.
The weeping was precededby groans. After the groans come tears — a gentle
rain after the violent storm. Jesus in this, as in all things, stands alone.
1. Different from Himself at other times.
2. Very unlike the Jews who came to comfort the two sisters, and —
3. unlike the sisters themselves. Jesus'tears imply —
I. THE RELATION BETWEENTHE BODY AND THE MIND
(Lamentations 3:51). Tears are natural. The relation existing betweenmatter
and mind is inexplicable. Yet it exists. From this factwe canreasonto the
relation existing betweenGod and the material universe.
II. THE RELATION BETWEEN THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE. Here
we have a proof of His humanity. What more human than weeping? Following

this manifestationof humanity is the manifestationof divinity. We should
guard againstthe old errors concerning the constitution of Christ's person;
for they appear from age to age under new forms:
1. Arianism — denying His proper Divinity.
2. Appolinarianism — denying His proper humanity.
3. Nestorianism— dual personality.
4. Eutychianism — confounding the two natures in His person.
III. THE RELATION BETWEENCHRIST AS MEDIATOR AND
HUMANITY, IN GENERAL, IN ITS MISERY, AND HIS PEOPLE, IN
PARTICULAR, IN THEIR AFFLICTIONS.
1. The question, why He wept? is here answered.(1)He was sorrowful because
of the misery causedby sin. As Jerusalemwas before His eyes when He wept
over it, so here humanity in its sin and all its misery passedin review before
His face.(2)His weeping was a manifestation of His sympathy. No comparison
betweenHis consoling, comforting tears and those of the Jews.
2. The intercessorywork of Christ as our High Priestin heaven is here
implied. He is the same there as when here upon earth (Hebrews 13:8). Has
the same heart beating with ours. He is our sympathizing Friend and Brother
there. APPLICATION:
1. Have you wept on accountof your sins? They have caused, and are still
causing, Jesus to weep.
2. Do you realise Christ's friendship for you?
3. Let us learn from His example to sympathise with the sorrows ofour fellow
men.
(T. E. Hughes.)
A unique verse

C. H. Spurgeon.
I have often felt vexed with the man whoever he was, who chopped up the
New Testamentinto verses. He seems to have let the hatchetdrop
indiscriminately here and there; but I forgive him a great deal of blundering
for his wisdom in letting these two words make a verse by themselves, "Jesus
wept." This is a diamond of the first water, and it cannot have anothergem
setwith it, for it is unique. Shortestof verses in words, but where is there a
longerone in sense? Let it stand in solitary, sublimity and simplicity.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
Embodied sympathy powerful
George Eliot.
"Ideas are often poor ghosts;our sun-filled eyes cannot discernthem. They
pass athwart us in this vapour and cannotmake themselves felt. But
sometimes they are made flesh, they breathe upon us with warm breath, they
touch us with soft, responsive hands, they look at us with sad, sincere eyes,
and speak to us in appealing tones. They are clothed in a living human soul,
with all its conflicts, its faith, and its love. Then their presence is a power, and
we are drawn after them with a gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to
flame."
(George Eliot.)
Jesus sympathizes with all who suffer
H. W. Beecher.
If a man be found weltering by the roadside, wounded, and a strangercomes
along, he will pity him, for the heart of man speaks one language the world
over. But if it were a nearneighbour or strong personalfriend how much
more tender the pity. That of the man's own father far transcends those. But
the noblestheart on earth is but a trickling stream from a shallow fountain

compared with the pity of God, which is wide as the scope of heavenand
abundant as all the air.
(H. W. Beecher.)
Christ satisfying the instinct of sympathy
DeanVaughan.
There is a word in our language — the iron Romanhad to arrange many
circuitous approaches to it — we borrow it straight from the plastic,
responsive Greek — the word sympathy
I. THE INSTINCT. The wordhas gone through one process since it left its
root "to suffer," which root does not mean suffering in our common sense, but
"being affected." So sympathy does not mean fellow suffering, but community
of affection. It may be —(1) A community of congruity. There is sympathy
betweentwo persons where there is such a likeness ofdisposition that they are
mutually drawn to eachother.(2) A community of contagion. You sympathize
with a person when in some particular sorrow or joy you share the feeling
arising out of circumstances notyour own.
1. As a community of disposition, sympathy is —(1) The spring of all love. We
see in the soul which looks through those eyes, its windows, the very
counterpart and complement of our own. Even beauty acts through sympathy.
It is not the flesh, grace, colour, etc., but the idea or promise of beautiful
qualities which wins the heart. Another may be more comely, but we are not
attractedbecause we read not the disposition which ours craves. We blame
ourselves for not loving. Why do we not love? For the lack of that sympathy of
congruity representedby the word "liking."(2)The inspiration of eloquence.
What is there in that insignificant figure, uncomely countenance, unmusical
voice which nevertheless swaysmultitudes as the oratorlists. An empire has
hung in suspense while one man has talked to 10,000. Why? Becauseofthe
charm of sympathy.(3) The secretofpowerin poetry and fiction. What is it
which draws tears from eyes which know they are Witnessing imaginary
sorrows? Itis the skill with which genius draws upon the resources ofhuman

feeling. The moment the tragicalpassesinto the artificial, the teardries of
itself.(4)The explanation of all magnificent successes.A want of sympathy
accounts for the failure of men possessedof every gift but one. You see it in
oratory: there is learning, industry, etc., but the audience is unimpressed
because there was no heart. You see it in action:there is education, character,
opportunity, etc., but coldness of temperament chilled the touch of
friendship.(5) This sympathy has its excesses. Itis so charming and
remunerative that some men are guilty of practising on good impulses, and
become insincere, and destroyothers by means of the soul's best and tenderest
affections.
2. Sympathy of contagion, too, is an instinct. To feel is human; we calla man
unnatural, unhuman who cannotpity. But some men feel without acting, and
consequentlyfeeling is deadened. Others keepawayfrom them what will
make them feel, and waste the instinct. To this kind of sympathy belong all
those efforts by which we throw ourselves into another's life for benevolent
influence. This alone renders possible an education which is worthy of the
name, the teachersharing personally the difficulties, games, weaknesses, etc.,
of the taught.
II. CHRIST SATISFYING THIS INSTINCT.
1. He presented Himself to us in one thrust, as possessing allthat beauty
which has a natural affinity to everything that is noble and true.(1) He appeals
to the instinct in its form of likeness. We must be cautious here, a not confuse
the ruined will, the original temple. Still there is no one who has no response
in him to that which is lovely and of goodreport. The instinct finds not its rest
here below. Some profess to be satisfied: they have what they want. They are
happy — might it but last; were there no storms and eventual death. But for
the restcare, toil, ill-health, bereavementhave forbidden it, or they have not
yet found the haven of sympathy. The first movement of such in hearing of
Christ satisfying the wants of the soulis one of impatience: they want
something substantial. What they really want is community of affection.
There is offeredto them a perfectlove.(2)Christ guides and demands
sympathy. He makes it religion, which is sympathy with God; "liking" the

drawing of spirit to spirit by the magnet of a felt loveliness. "Idrew them with
cords," etc. Without this religion is a burden and bondage.
2. Christ satisfies the sympathy of contact. We might have thought that the
Creatorwould shrink from the ugly thing into which sin has corrupted His
handiwork. But He never heard the lepers cry without making it a reasonfor
drawing nigh. Again and againHe went to the bereaved, and it was to wake
the dead; and this not officially, as though to say, "This proves Me the
Christ." Jesus wept. There was no real peril or want with which He did not
express sympathy. He loved the rich young man; He wept over Jerusalemwith
its unbelief and hypocrisy; He was in all points tempted, and so is able to
sympathize with our infirmities. What He sympathized with was poor sin-
spoilt humanity, and for that He died. Conclusion:What Christ did He bids us
do not in the way of condescension, but as men touching to Him, not loving the
sin, yet loving the sinner. Lonely people cease to be alone. "Rejoicewith them
that rejoice," etc.
(DeanVaughan.)
The tears of the Lord Jesus
WatsonSmith.
I. JESUS WEPT;FOR THERE WAS CAUSE WORTHYOF HIS TEARS.
The finest, noblestrace of God's creatures dismantled, sunk in death before
Him, all across earthand time from the world's beginning. Tears, we know,
show strongestin the strongest. When you see the strong man broken down
beside his sick babe you cannotbut feel there is a cause. Whateverelse there
may be in the man, you see that he has a heart, and that his heart is the
deepest, is the Divine part of him. As the father's tears over his child testify
the father's heart, so the tears of Jesus testify that He has a heart which beats
with infinite love and tenderness toward us men. For we are His, and in a far
more profound and intimate sense belong to Him, than children can to an
earthly parent. And the relation into which the Lord Jesus has come with our
humanity is closerand tenderer than that of earthly parent. We speak of Him

as our Brother, our Elder Brother; but the truth is, Christ's relation to us is
Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Husband, Friend, all in One. But He knew —
further — that a sadder thing than death and its miseries lay behind, even sin.
This touched and affectedHim most, that we were a fallen and dishonoured
race, and therefore death had come upon us and overshadowedus. Why else
should we die? The stars do not wax old and die, the heavens and the earth
remain unto this day, though there is no soul or spirit in them. Why should
the brightness of an immeasurably nobler and more exalted creature like man
wax dim? Stars falling from heavenare nothing to souls falling from God. The
one are but lights going out in God's house, the other the very children of the
house perishing. Jesus wept then for the innermost death of all death, the
fountain misery of all miseries But while in His Divine thought and sorrow He
penetrated to the rootand source of that evil and of all evil, the mighty
attendant suffering awoke inHim the truest and deepestcompassionand
sympathy. He wept, then, with eachone of us; for who has not been calledto
part with some beloved relative, parent, partner, companion, guide, or friend?
With all sorrowing, desolatehearts and homes of the children of men He then
took part. Again, the Lord Jesus felt how much the darkness and sorrows of
death were intensified and aggravatedby the state of ignorance and unbelief
in which the world lay. How mournful to His spirit at that hour the realization
of the way in which the vast bulk and majority of the human race enter the
world, go through it, leave it 1 for He knew, better than any other that has
been on earth, man's capability of higher things and of an endless life and
blessedness. "Like sheepthey are laid in the grave," says the writer of the
49th Psalm, What a picture! Like that abject, unthinking, and helpless animal,
driven in flocks by awful forms, cruel powers, they can neither escape nor
resist, to a narrow point and bound, where all is impenetrable darkness.
II. Let us consider"THE TEARS OF JESUS" AS REVEALING THE
DIVINE HEART. Are we to believe that He out of whose heart have come the
hearts of all true fathers and mothers, all the simple, pure affections of our
common nature and kinship, of the family and the home; are we to believe, I
say, that God has no heart? Some one may say, There is no doubt God can
love and does love — infinitely; but can He sorrow? Now, my friend, I pray
you, think what is sorrow but love wanting or losing its objects, its desire and

satisfactionin its objects, and going forth earnestlyin its grief to seek and
regainthem? Sorrow, suffering, is one of the grandest, noblest, most self-
denying, and disinterested forms and capabilities of love, apart from which
love could not exist, whether in nature or in name.
III. THE TEARS OF JESUS ARE THOSE OF A MIGHTY ONE
HASTENING TO AVENGE AND DELIVER. They are not the tears of one
whose pity and sympathy canonly be thus expressed, but who has no power
— whatever may be his willingness and desire — to help. The tears of Jesus
are those of a hero over his native country and kingdom laid waste by an
enemy whom he hastens to meet and avenge himself upon. There is hope,
there is help for our world; Jesus Christ weeps overit, and He "will restore all
things" of which we have been robbed and spoiled.
IV. HENCE WE LEARN OUR TRUE SOURCE OF COMFORT, HELP,
AND RESTORATION. He who wept and bled and died for man has proved
Himself to be our greatDeliverer. Do we ever feel we can go anywhere else
but to Him when sicknessand death threaten and invade us and ours?
(WatsonSmith.)
STUDYLIGHT RESOURCES
Adam Clarke Commentary
And wept over it - See Matthew 23:37.
Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible
And when he drew nigh, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst
known in this day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace!but now are
they hid from thine eyes. Forthe days shall come upon thee, when thine

enemies shall castup a bank about thee, and compass thee round, and keep
thee in on every side, and shall dash thee to the ground, and thy children
within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because
thou knewestnot the time of thy visitation.
He saw the city ... Dummelow, Bliss, Childers, Spence, and many others affirm
that a most extraordinary view of Jerusalemand the temple was afforded by
any of the routes that Jesus might have taken from Bethany into the city;
however, Ash says that Jesus could have seenthe crowds and the southeast
corner of Jerusalem, but not the temple."[52]Barclaysays, "The whole city
lies fully displayed in sight."[53]
And wept ...
The word does not mean merely that tears forced themselves up and fell down
his face. It suggests ratherthe heaving of the bosom, and the soband the cry
of the soul in agony. We could have no strongerword than the word used
here.[54]
And why did Jesus weepso bitterly in the very moment of what men would
have hailed as his most magnificent hour?
All this moved Jesus to tears. He saw something which others did not see. He
saw the coming destruction of the city. He knew that all of his efforts to avert
the tragedyhad been repulsed and rejected.[55]
Even more, however, than the physical ruin of the city and the brutal
slaughterof tens of thousands of her citizens, Jesus saw in his impending
rejectionby the people of Israela seconddisaster, comparable in every way to
the one in Eden. If, and only IF, the Jews had receivedthe Son of God, hailed
him as Lord and Saviour of mankind, and led the campaignfor all nations to
accepthis authority, the subsequent centuries would have been times of
unbelievable joy and happiness upon the earth. Eden indeed might not have
been fully recovered, but humanity blew its secondchance whenthe Jews
rejectedtheir King. This writer believes that it was the incredible moral
setback ofthe human race which was sustainedin the rejectionof the Saviour
which might have precipitated the bitter weeping of this occasion. True, the

crucifixion could not have been avoided; the prophecies had foretold it, as well
as the rejection;but it was the near totality of that rejectionwhich bound all
subsequent ages in wretchedness andfrustration, at leastas contrastedwith
what might have been.
Shall casta bank about thee ... compass thee ... dash thee to the ground, etc. ...
It has become fashionable in certain schoolofcriticism to allege that the
verses containing these prophecies "were not uttered by Jesus, but are a
`vaticinium post eventum',"[56]that is, a retrospective inclusion of these
words by Luke writing after the destruction of Jerusalem;but such
extravagantclaims are the kind that leadintelligent men to rejectthe totality
of such "source criticisms." This Gospelwas written before Paul's death, long
before Titus destroyedJerusalem;and there simply cannot be any intelligent
doubt that Jesus prophesiedthe very thing that happened. Such is not only
proved by the unanimous recordof the holy Gospels, but is it likewise proved
by the historicalfact that not a Christian was lostin the siege ofthe Holy City.
If Jesus did not predict it, how did that come about? Geldenhuys has a
marvelous comment on these expressions as the true words of Jesus
Christ.[57]
This lament over Jerusalemis actually one of three. See fuller comment in my
Commentary on Matthew, Matthew 23:37. They are in Luke 13:34; Matthew
23:37 and here. Some would meld the three, or suppose only two; but this is
not necessaryatall. There were goodand sufficient reasons oneachof the
three occasions forJesus to have exclaimed over the fate of the Holy City
which he so clearly foresaw.
[52] Anthony Lee Ash, op. cit., p. 101.
[53] William Barclay, op. cit., p. 251.
[54] NorvalGeldenhuys, op. cit., p. 484.
[55] Charles L. Childers, op. cit., p. 588.
[56] NorvalGeldenhuys, op. cit., p. 464.
[57] Ibid., pp. 484-485.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible
And when he was come near, he beheld city,.... Of Jerusalem;being now
nearer, and in a situation to take a full view of it, he lift up his eyes, and
looking wistfully on it, and beholding the grandeur and magnificence of it, the
number of the houses, and the stately structures in it, and knowing what
calamities, in a few years, would come upon it; with which being affected, as
man, he lookedupon it,
and wept over it; touched with a tender concernfor it, his natural passions
moved, and tears fell plentifully from his eyes. This must be understood of
Christ merely as man, and is a proof of the truth of his human nature, which
had all the natural properties, and even the infirmities of it; and as affected
with the temporal ruin of Jerusalem, and as concernedfor its temporal
welfare;and is not to be improved either againsthis proper deity, or the
doctrines of distinguishing grace, relating to the spiritual and eternalsalvation
of God's elect;things that are foreignfrom the sense ofthis passage:some
ancient Christians, and orthodox too, thinking that this was not so agreeable
to Christ, but reflectedsome weaknessanddishonour upon him, expunged
this clause concerning his weeping;but we have another instance besides this;
see John 11:35 and even the Jews themselves cannotthink this to be
unsuitable to the Messiah, whenthey represent the Shekinah, and God himself
weeping over the destructionof the templeF16;and it is particularlyF17 said
by them of the Messiah, that he shall weepover the wickedamong the Jews,
according to Isaiah53:5 and they encourage persons to mourn over
Jerusalem:they sayF18 whoeverdoes anybusiness on the ninth of Ab, (the
day that city was destroyed,)and does not mourn over Jerusalem, shall not see
its joy; but whoeverdoes mourn over it, shall see its joy, according to Isaiah
66:10 F19.
Geneva Study Bible
9 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,

(9) Christ is not delighted with destruction, no not even of the wicked.
Robertson's WordPictures in the New Testament
Wept (εκλαυσεν — eklausen). Ingressive aoristactive indicative, burst into
tears. Probably audible weeping.
Vincent's Word Studies
He drew nigh
“Again the processionadvanced. The road descends a slight declivity, and the
glimpse of the city is againwithdrawn behind the intervening ridge of Olivet.
A few moments, and the path mounts again;it climbs a rugged ascent, it
reaches a ledge of smooth rock, and in an instant the whole city bursts into
view … .It is hardly possible to doubt that this rise and turn of the road was
the exactpoint where the multitude paused again, and He, when he beheld the
city, wept over it” (Stanley).
The Fourfold Gospel
And when he drew nigh, he saw the city and wept over it1,
And when he drew nigh, he saw the city and wept over it. The summit of
Olivet is two hundred feet higher than the nearestpart of the city of
Jerusalemand a hundred feethigher than its farthest part, so that the Lord
lookedupon the whole of it as one looks upon an open book. As he looked
upon it he realized the difference betweenwhat his coming might mean to it
and what it did mean to it; betweenthe love and gratitude which his coming
should have incited and the hatred and violence which it did incite; between
the forgiveness,blessing, and peace whichhe desiredto bring it and the
judgment, wrath, and destruction which were coming upon it. The vision of it

all excited strong emotion, and the verb used does not indicate silent tears, but
audible sobbing and lamentation.
Calvin's Commentary on the Bible
41.And wept over it. As there was nothing which Christ more ardently desired
than to execute the office which the Father had committed to him, and as he
knew that the end of his calling was to gatherthe lostsheep of the house of
Israel, (Matthew 15:24,) he wished that his coming might bring salvation to
all. This was the reasonwhy he was moved with compassion, and wept over
the approaching destruction of the city of Jerusalem. Forwhile he reflected
that this was the sacredabode which God had chosen, in which the covenant
of eternal salvationshould dwell — the sanctuaryfrom which salvationwould
go forth to the whole world, it was impossible that he should not deeply
deplore its ruin. And when he saw the people, who had been adopted to the
hope of eternal life, perish miserably through their ingratitude and
wickedness, we neednot wonder if he could not refrain from tears.
As to those who think it strange that Christ should bewailan evil which he
had it in his powerto remedy, this difficulty is quickly removed. Foras he
came down from heaven, that, clothed in human flesh, he might be the witness
and minister of the salvationwhich comes from God, so he actually took upon
him human feelings, as far as the office which he had undertaken allowed.
And it is necessarythat we should always give due considerationto the
characterwhich he sustains, when he speaks, orwhen he is employed in
accomplishing the salvation of men; as in this passage, in order that he may
execute faithfully his Father’s commission, he must necessarilydesire that the
fruit of the redemption should come to the whole body of the electpeople.
Since, therefore, he was given to this people as a minister for salvation, it is in
accordancewith the nature of his office that he should deplore its destruction.
He was God, I acknowledge;but on all occasions whenit was necessarythat

he should perform the office of teacher, his divinity rested, and was in a
manner concealed, that it might not hinder what belongedto him as Mediator.
By this weeping he proved not only that he loved, like a brother, those for
whose sake he became man, but also that God made to flow into human
nature the Spirit of fatherly love.
James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary
WHY JESUS WEPT
‘And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it.’
Luke 19:41
How touching, but how solemn, to think of our Lord weeping! No doubt there
were many occasions onwhich He wept bitterly (Hebrews 5:7). ‘He was a man
of sorrows and acquainted with grief’—but only two instances are recorded
(John 11:35; Luke 19:41). In eachcase death was the cause. Naturaldeath had
graspedLazarus, the friend whom Jesus loved. Spiritual death had grasped
Jerusalem, the city that He loved. It is of the latter that our passage speaks,
and we shall best enter into its teaching by dwelling on the three leading
points thrown out by our Lord in reference to Jerusalem—
I. ‘Thy day.’—This is the time when we enjoy the light, and are able to work
with all diligence (John 9:4). So in spiritual things, ‘the day of salvation’is the
time of opportunities. The Sun of Righteousnesshas risen, and sheds light on
every hand (Malachi 4:2; John 8:12; John 12:35-36). It is the time for work
(Ecclesiastes 9:10;Philippians 2:12). Nothing can be done if the opportunity is
lost (Hebrews 2:3). Such a day of grace Jerusalemenjoyedin having Jesus
(Luke 19:9-10;Isaiah 55:6; Hebrews 3:7-8).
II. ‘Thy peace.’—Thisfollows the right use of the day of salvation(Romans
5:1). Only Godcan bestow it (2 Thessalonians3:16). It is the desire of Jesus
that all His people should have it (John 14:27). And eachsoulmust
appropriate it in receiving Jesus (Luke 2:29). He is ‘the peace’(Micah5:5).
The Jews wouldnot receive Him (John 1:11). They could not see in Him

anything to desire (Isaiah 53:2-3;see Romans 11:8; Romans 11:25). In
rejecting Jesus, Jerusalemlosther peace.
III. ‘Thy visitation.’—Godhad told the Jews to expectJesus in many parts of
the Old TestamentScriptures (Isaiah9:6-7; Daniel9:25; Malachi3:1). But
when He came, they were not prepared for Him (John 5:16; John 7:1). They
knew not the day of their visitation (Deuteronomy 5:29; Psalms 81:13). What,
therefore, did it bring? Judicial blindness (Luke 19:42; Acts 28:25-27);
condemnation (Luke 19:43-44;John 3:18-19);and solemnrebuke (Luke
19:45-46;John 12:48).
Three things, then, we must lay to heart from this lesson—‘Now’is our day (2
Corinthians 6:2). ‘Jesus’is our peace (Ephesians 2:14). The day of visitation is
coming (Acts 17:31). Are we ready?
Bishop RowleyHill.
Illustration
‘There, before the Saviour’s gaze of tears, lay a city, splendid apparently and
in peace, destinedto enjoy another half century of existence. And the day was
a common day; the hour a common hour; no thunder was throbbing in the
blue unclouded sky; no deep vows of departing deities were rolling though the
golden doors;and yet—soundless to mortal ears in the unrippled air of
eternity—the knell of her destiny had begun to toll; and in the voiceless dialect
of heaven the fiat of her doom had been pronounced, and in that realm which
knoweth, needeth not any light, save the light of God, the sun of her moral
existence had gone down while it was yet day. Were her means of grace over?
No; not yet. Was her Temple closed? No;not yet. No change was visible in her
to mortal eyes. And yet, for her, from this moment even until the end, the
acceptedtime was over, the appointed crisis past; the day of salvation had set
into irrevocable night. And if it were so with the favoured city, may it not be
so with thee and me? What shall the reed of the desert do, if even the cedar be
shatteredat a blow? It is not that God loses His mercy, but that we lose our
capacityfor accepting it; it is not that God hath turned away from us, but that
we have utterly paralysed our own power of coming back to Him. Life

continues, but it is really death; and on the dead soulin the living body the
gates ofthe eternal tomb have closed.’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
CHRISTIAN RESPONSIBILITY
He who came to seek andto save lostsinners could not witness with
indifference the sin and ruin of His beloved city.
I. These tears overJerusalemflowedfrom His perfect knowledge.—Ofher
obstinacyand impenitence (Luke 19:42;Luke 19:44; Mark 3:5; Mark 8:12;
Acts 13:45-46). Ofher judicial blindness (Matthew 13:14-15;Acts 28:25-27;
Romans 11:8). Of the complete measure of her iniquity (Matthew 23:32; 1
Thessalonians 2:16). Of the awful extent of her loss (Matthew 21:43; Romans
11:19-22). Ofthe irrevocable certainty of her doom (Luke 19:43-44;Matthew
23:35-38;Matthew 24:1-2;Matthew 24:34-35).
II. They were but an index of that heart of love, which causedHim—To leave
the bosomof His Father (Philippians 2:6-7). To suffer the hidings of His
countenance (Matthew 27:46). To endure the contradictionof sinners against
Himself (Matthew 22:15; Matthew 22:46; Hebrews 12:3). To support
unknown shame and agonies (Isaiah1, 6; Galatians 3:13). To shed His most
precious blood (1 John 3:16).
III. In the spirit of this blessedexample, let us learn what our feelings ought to
be towards those who neglectthis greatsalvation.—We shouldbe deeply
concernedfor them as St. Paul was (Acts 17:16; Romans 9:1-3). We should be
earnestin prayer for them, as Moses was (Exodus 32:31-32;Deuteronomy
10:17-19;Deuteronomy 10:22). We should grieve and weepfor them, as David
and Jeremiahdid (Psalms 119:136;Jeremiah9:1; Jeremiah13:17). We should
labour for them, as the Apostles did (2 Corinthians 6:4-10). Do I pray for the
conversionof my friends, neighbours, for the enemies of Christ and His
Gospel(1 Timothy 2:1)? Do I let my light shine before them (Philippians
2:15)? Am I careful not to put a stumbling block in their way, by my own
misconduct or inconsistency(1 Peter2:16; 1 Peter3:16)? Oh! how inexcusable
is my indifference in that which costmy Saviour tears, agonies, and blood!

How apt am I to feel disappointment, and even anger, at the hardness or
enmity of my fellow-creatures, forgetting that such once was I! Lord, turn
these sinful feelings into a holy compassion, that in this, as in every other
feature, I may be conformedto the blessedimage of Thy dear Son.
—Rev. C. Bridges.
Illustration
‘Let our work for the public wealbe accompaniedand sanctifiedand guided
by patriotic prayer in public and in private. Do not forget Abraham’s
intercessionfor guilty Sodom, and how he was assuredthat for ten righteous
the city would have been spared. Do not forget the Psalmist’s passionate
supplication for the “peace ofJerusalem.” Our own Book ofCommon Prayer
strikes the right key-notes and puts the right words into our lips. Alas! they
sometimes—itis to be feared—fail to awakena responsive echo within our
souls. Our so-calledState prayers, and our prayers for Parliament, may fall
upon listless ears and chilly hearts. Let there be more faithful spiritual
concentration, and more holy enthusiasm in these devotions. A little leavenof
earnestworkers and of devout supplicants may leaven the whole lump. A
handful of sincere Christian patriots may be as the salt of the earth, to
sweetenand purify the towns, or even the country, in which they live. What
wonders have been wrought by single-minded patriotic individuals! Elizabeth
Fry reformed our prisons; Florence Nightingale reorganisedour hospitals;
Wilberforce and Clarksonfreedour slaves.’
(THIRD OUTLINE)
THE TEARS OF JESUS
I. The tears of Jesus Christare compassionatetears.—LikeHis Heavenly
Father, He has no pleasure in the death of him that dieth.
II. The tears of Jesus are admonitory.—He would not have wept merely
because a little pain, or a little suffering, or even a little anguish and misery,
lay before us. There was only one thing which Jesus Christ could not endure,
and that was the real displeasure, the prolonged hiding of the countenance,

the punitive wrath of God. It was because He foresaw that for impenitent
sinners that He wept.
III. The tears of Jesus were exemplary tears.—As He wept, so ought we to
weep. We ought to weepmore exactly as He wept. He wept not for Himself: so
also, in our place, should we.
IV. The tears of Jesus Christ are consolatorytears.—Theysayto us,
‘Provision is made for you.’ They say to us, ‘It is not of Christ, it is not of God,
if you perish.’ They say to us, ‘Escape for your life—becausea better, and a
higher, and a happier life is here for you!’
—DeanVaughan.
Illustration
‘If we think of what it was that evidently causedthose tears of Christ over
Jerusalem, we emphasise that specialdanger and that particular sin which, if
uncheckedand undetectedin our midst, will bring its certainjudgment on any
congregation, town, or country that lies under its hand. There are few places
in the Holy Land more movingly pathetic than that corner of the road from
Bethany to Jerusalemwhich circles round the slope of Olivet and gives you in
a moment the sudden view of the whole city of Jerusalem. Yet Jesus wept! He
wept because the city’s doom stoodout (in His mind’s eye)in dismal certainty;
He wept because man’s fickleness couldthus to-day cry “Hosannah!” and in a
few days “Crucify!”; He wept because that “might have been” of the great
possibility of Israel’s conversionsweptlike a mist of tears over His eyes;He
wept because the sands of time were running out and the Judge stood before
the fast-closeddoor, and Mercyhad already raisedher hand to hide her face,
and Justice takenup the swordto smite the blow of judgment. And all the
while the people knew it not.’
(FOURTH OUTLINE)
INDIFFERENCE
The whole picture of the text is the most moving evidence of God’s abiding
sorrow for indifference.

I. A real foe.—And is not this the sin which seems above all others to be our
specialfoe in this our so-calledChristianage and in this so-calledChristian
land? It would be idle to dispute the factthat this indifference is a real foe
with which the Church has to contend to-day—a foe of deadly strength, a
mighty enemy of the Church’s growth and power. How God has warnedus
againstthis danger in His Word!
II. Causes ofindifference.—How many causes go to make up the sum of man’s
indifference?
(a) The attitude of the Church. The Church, alas!is not altogether
irresponsible. Her voice, so often silent when men expect to hear her speak,
her liberality and breadth of sympathy and freedom of opinion almost
extending to a dangerous latitudinarianism, seemto give rise to it. And
besides this there is her jarring strife of tongues when she is stirred to speak—
her odium theologicum. And this makes men impatient, and they become
further discontented, and then in their despair they stand aside upon the
neutral ground of the indifferent.
(b) The attitude of the world. But, on the other hand, a far largershare of this
indifference comes from the attitude and action, not of the Church, but of the
world. For there must be much that the world cannot square with a religious
life.
III. A foe to be fought.—Let us recogniseand fight as a foe this cowardly
indifference. Let us care more, and magnetise with a truer interest the vis
inertiœ of worldliness. Let none of us affectindifference. Live in the things of
God and you will grow to care for them. Stop nowhere short of Christ
Himself.
IV. Christ’s care.—Above all, remember this: whateveryou may feelor may
not feel, whateveryou may know of all that this world has to teachyou,
remember that He cares for you. He made you for Himself. He needs you for
His work.
Bishop the Hon. E. Carr Glynn.
(FIFTH OUTLINE)

WOES OF A GREAT CITY
No inhabitant of a great city can read this narrative without greatsearching
of heart.
I. City life is one of the greatproblems of the day, and in London it reaches its
most acute shape. A large city is a loveless place;yet it cannot be that
salvationfor our cities is only to be found in arresting development. City life
in itself is distinct from the evils of city life.
II. A city was meant to represent an aggregationofexcellences. Johnsetforth
in the Apocalypse the ideal of a greatcity. Yet how far are we removed from
that! There is much to deplore in the loss of the old spirit which consecrates
work, and in the growth of a spirit of frivolity. A city should representthe
ideal of mutual help and co-operation;yet what is there to compare with the
isolationof the inhabitants of greatcities? And what shall we say of those who
are living to prey on their fellow kind? Every Christian man must see to it
that negativelyhe is not a source ofharm to, but rather a helper of, others.
III. There is still a beauty belonging to a city which still attracts crowds to
visit. It was meant to be a beautiful place. Let us, then, purify our streets, our
books, our plays, our life, and we shall see that a city may yet become a joy of
the whole earth.
Rev. Canon Newbolt.
John Trapp Complete Commentary
33 And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereofsaid unto them, Why
loose ye the colt?
34 And they said, The Lord hath need of him.

35 And they brought him to Jesus:and they casttheir garments upon the colt,
and they setJesus thereon.
36 And as he went, they spreadtheir clothes in the way.
37 And when he was come nigh, even now at the descentof the mount of
Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God
with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen;
38 Saying, Blessedbe the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in
heaven, and glory in the highest.
39 And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him,
Master, rebuke thy disciples.
40 And he answeredand said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold
their peace, the stones wouldimmediately cry out.
41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,
Ver. 41. He beheld the city] That common slaughter house of the prophets.
Our Lord is said to have been slain at Rome, Revelation11:8, because
crucified at Jerusalemby the Roman authority.

And wept over it] Shall not we weep overthe ruins of so many fair and
flourishing churches, that now lie in the dirt? Christ wept in this day of his
solemn inauguration. It shall be in our last triumph only that all tears shall be
wiped from our eyes;till then our passions must be mixed, according to the
occasions.
Sermon Bible Commentary
Luke 19:41
I. It is interesting and instructive to notice in this passagehow the Lord
regards men—both in their corporate and their individual capacities.He
made us, and He knows what is in man. He knows that eachimmortal stands
on His own feet, and must meet with God alone, as far as regards all the rest
of humanity. But He knows and recognisesalso,that we are made with social
instincts and faculties, that we cannotexercise the functions of our nature
without society;and that we are all affecteddeeply by our intercourse with
others, both as regards our time and our eternity. In one aspect, eachman
stands or falls for himself alone;in another aspect, we graspeachother, and,
like the victims of a shipwreck, either help to sink or help to save one another.
It is in the latter aspectthat our Lord regarded the inhabitants of Jerusalem
as He lookedon them across the glen from the neighbouring mountain's brow.
They were brethren in iniquity. Hand was joining in hand in preparation for
the highestcrime everdone in the universe. They were leaguedin a dark
covenantto crucify the Sonof God. Looking down on Jerusalem, and making
greatlamentation over it, the ground of His grief was, not that they had
sinned and so brought on themselves condemnation—in that there was
nothing peculiar to Jerusalem;—whatmakes Him weepis, that they will not
acceptredemption at His hands.
II. "In this thy day"—Jerusalemhad a day. Every community and every
person has a day—a day of mercy. If in that day the lostshall turn they shall
get life in the Lord. But if they allow their day to pass, there remaineth only

darkness—"afearfullooking for of judgment." "The things which belong
unto thy peace."The things which Godhad fixed in the eternal covenant, and
revealedin the fulness of time, were things that Jerusalemdid not know. Like
the wayside, hard, trodden ground, they did not open their hearts to take in
the seedof the Word. The lessonthat we learn from the text is this: that Jesus,
the Author and PossessorandGiver of eternalredemption to the lost, rejoices
when they acceptHis gift, and weeps over them when they neglectit.
W. Arnot, The Anchor of the Soul, p. 326.
References:Luke 19:41.—J. Greenhough, ChristianWorld Pulpit, vol. xxxii.,
p. 291;Parker, ChristianCommonwealth, vol. vii., p. 611;Church of England
Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 369;C. Kingsley, Discipline and other Sermons, p. 290;
Homilist, vol. vi., p. 104;Ibid., 3rd series, vol. i., p. 156;Spurgeon, Sermons,
vol. xxvi., No. 1570;Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 92;J. Armstrong,
ParochialSermons, p. 28; J. Keble. Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, part i.,
p. 353;H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Waterside MissionSermons, No. xx.; Ibid., The
Life of Duty, vol. ii., p. 85; W. G. Horder, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxix., p.
152;Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iii., p. 21.
Expository Notes with PracticalObservations onthe New Testament
No soonerdid our Saviour come within the sight and view of the city of
Jerusalem, but he burst out into tears, at the considerationof their obstinacy,
and willful rejecting of the offers of grace and salvationmade unto them; and
also he wept to consider of the dreadful judgments that hung over their heads
for those sins, even the utter ruin and destruction of their city and temple.
Learn hence,
1. That goodmen ever have been, and are men of tender and compassionate
dispositions, sorrowing not only for their own sufferings, but for others'
calamities.

2. That Christ sheds tears as well as blood for the lost world; Christ wept over
Jerusalem, as wellas bled for her.
3. That Christ was infinitely more concernedfor the salvationof poor sinners,
than for his own death and sufferings: not the sight of his own cross, but
Jerusalem's calamities, made him weep.
Greek TestamentCriticalExegeticalCommentary
41.]Our Lord stoodon the lower part of the Mount of Olives, whence the view
of the city even now is very striking. What a history of divine Love and human
ingratitude lay before him!
When He grieved, it was for the hardness of men’s hearts: when He wept, in
Bethany and here, it was overthe fruits of sin.
Johann Albrecht Bengel's Gnomonof the New Testament
Luke 19:41. ἰδὼν, having beheld) A new step in His approach to the city. The
sight of it moved Him. It was on that very spot afterwards that the Roman
siege ofthe city began. See on Matthew 24:15.—[ἔκλαυσεν, He wept) Behold
before thee the compassionateKing, amidst the very shouts of joy raisedby
His disciples!Jesus weeps overJerusalem, and yet compels no man by
force.—(V. g.) But who shall endure the swordwhich proceedethout of His
mouth, when He shall appear, borne on the white horse? Revelation19:11,
etc.—Harm., p. 446.]— ἐπʼ αὐτῇ, [over or] concerning it) not [over or]
concerning Himself. Comp. ch. Luke 23:28.
Matthew Poole's EnglishAnnotations on the Holy Bible
Those who of old blotted out this sentence, as thinking that weeping was not
becoming Christ’s perfection, seemto have forgottenthat he was perfect man,
and a sharerin all the natural infirmities of human nature (if weeping upon
the prospectof human miseries deservethno better name than an infirmity,

being an indication of love and compassion). Those who think that it was idle
for him to weepfor that which he might easilyhave helped, seemto oblige
God to give out of his grace, whethermen do what he hath commanded them,
and is in their power to do, yea or no. Christ wept over Jerusalemas a man,
having compassionforthese poor Jews, with respectto the miseries he saw
coming upon them; as a minister of the gospel, pitying the people to whom he
was primarily sent.
Justin Edwards' Family Bible New Testament
Wept over it; in view of its guilt, and the miseries which were coming upon it.
Cambridge Greek Testamentfor Schools and Colleges
41. ἰδὼν τὴν πόλιν. The Temple was at that time magnificent with gilding and
white marble, which flashed resplendently in the spring sunlight (Jos. B. J.
Luke 19:5, § 6), and the city was very unlike the crumbling and squalid city of
to-day. But that “mass ofgold and snow” woke no pride in the Saviour’s
heart. Few scenes are more striking than this burst of anguish in the very
midst of the exulting procession.
ἔκλαυσεν. Not merely ἐδάκρυσεν‘shed silent tears,’as at the grave of Lazarus
(John 11:35), but ἔκλαυσεν ‘wept aloud;’ and that although not all the agonies
and insults of four days later could wring from Him one tear or sigh.
PeterPett's Commentary on the Bible
‘And when he drew near, he saw the city and wept over it,’
Then Jesus moved solemnly on towards the city, and as He saw its future He
wept over it. His thoughts were full and overflowing. He had no pleasure at
the thought of the judgment that was coming on this city because ofwhat they
were going to do to Him. There was only the thought of, ‘Father forgive them,
for they know not what they do’. There is something hugely dramatic about

this entry into Jerusalem, with Jesus offering Himself as its King and Messiah,
and yet weeping because He knows that it will rejectHim and bring on itself
its own judgment, even though the final result will be God’s offer of salvation
to the world.
For a comparisonwith the weeping of Jeremiahover what was to happen to
the old Jerusalemsee Jeremiah8:18; Jeremiah8:21; Jeremiah 9:1; Jeremiah
15:5. He too foresaw hope following disaster(Jeremiah29:10; Jeremiah
31:31-34).
Whedon's Commentary on the Bible
41. Near… the city—At the moment when descending the summit of Olivet
the city appeared in its beauty before him.
Expository Notes ofDr. Thomas Constable
Luke continued to describe Jesus as approaching Jerusalem, His city of
destiny. Jesus saw the city in the light of its rejectionof His gracious offerof
salvation. He foresaw it visited in judgment later since it had rejectedHis
peacefulvisit. This is the only place in the Gospels beside John 11:35 where we
read that Jesus wept(wailed). His compassionis something Luke pointed out
frequently. The fate of sinners who rejectGod"s grace broke Jesus"heart.
Jeremiahalso wept over the fate of Jerusalem( Jeremiah8:18-22; Jeremiah
15:5; Lam.; cf. 2 Kings 8:11-12).
Schaff's Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Luke 19:41. And when he drew nigh, seeing the city. Tradition, assuming that
our Lord took the direct road, over the summit of the Mount of Olives, points
out the spot as half-way down the westernslope. But it is more probable that
the road takenwas the main or southern one, passing betweentwo peaks (see
on Matthew 21:2). Comp. Stanley(Sinai and Palestine, p. 187). ‘Jesus has
reachedthe edge of the plateau; the holy city lies before His view. What a day
it would be for it, if the bandage fell from its eyes!But what has just passed
betweenHim and the Pharisees presenthas awakenedin His heart the
conviction of the insurmountable resistance whichHe is about to meet. Then
Jesus, seized, and, as it were, wrung by the contrastbetweenwhat is and what
might be, breaks out into sobs.’(Godet.)
Wept over it. An outburst of grief, not silent tears now, as at the grave of
Lazarus (John 11:35). Peculiar to Luke.
George Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary
He wept. St. Epiphanius tells us, that some of the orthodox of his time,
offended at these words, omitted them in their copies, as if to shed tears, were
a weakness unworthy of Christ: but this true reading of the evangelistis found
in all copies, and receivedby all the faithful; and the liberty which those who
changedthem took, was too dangerous ever to be approved of by the Church.
Neither do these tears argue in Jesus Christ any thing unworthy of his
supreme majesty or wisdom. Our Saviour possessedall the human passions,
but not the defects of them. The Stoics, who condemned the passions in their
sages,labouredto make statues or automata of man, not philosophers. The
true philosopher moderates and governs his passions;the Stoic labours to
destroy them, but cannot effecthis purpose. And when he labours to
overcome one passion, he is forced to have recourse to another for help.
(Calmet) --- Our Saviour is said to have wept six times, during his life on
earth: 1st, At his birth, according to may holy doctors;2ndly, at his
circumcision, according to St. Bernard and others;3rdly, when he raised
Lazarus to life, as is related in St. John, chap. xi.; 4thly, in his entry into

Jerusalem, describedin this place;5thly, during his agonyin the garden, just
before his apprehension, when, as St. Luke remarks, (Chap. xxii.) his sweat
was as drops of blood trickling down upon the ground; and 6thly, during his
passion, when he often wept, on accountof his greatdistress of mind,
occasionedprincipally by the knowledge he had of the grievousness ofmen's
sins, and the bad use they would make of the redemption he was, through so
many sufferings, procuring for them. (Dionysius)
E.W. Bullinger's Companion Bible Notes
come near. Marking the progress.
beheld . . . and = looking on. App-133.
wept = wept aloud. Greek. klaio = to wail. Notdakruo to shed silent tears, as
in John 11:35.
over. Greek. epi. App-104.
Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible - Unabridged
And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,
And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it. "Mine eye"
said the weeping prophet, "affectethmine heart" (Lamentations 3:51); and
the heart in turn fills the eye. Under this sympathetic law of the relation of
mind and body, Jesus, in His beautiful, tender humanity, was constituted even
as we. What a contrastto the immediately preceding profound joy! But He
yielded Himself alike freely to both.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers
(41) He beheld the city, and wept over it.—This, and the tears over the grave
of Lazarus (John 11:35), are the only recordedinstances of our Lord’s tears.
It is significant that in the one case they flow from the intensity of personal
friendship, in the other from that of the intense love of country which we

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