The Lamentations of Jesus

DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 28, 1880,

BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"When He had come near, He beheld the city and wept over it." Luke
19:41.

ON three occasions we are told that Jesus wept. You know them well, but
it may be worth while to refresh your memories. The first was when our
Lord was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. He saw the sorrow of the
sisters and He meditated upon the fruit of sin in the death and
corruption of the body and He groaned in spirit and it is written that
"Jesus wept." Those who divided the chapters did well to make a
separate verse of that simple sentence. It stands alone, the smallest
and yet, in some respects, the greatest verse in the whole Bible! It
shines as a diamond of the first water. It contains a world of healing
balm condensed into a drop. Here we have much in little–a wealth of
meaning in two words.

The second occasion we have before us and we will make it the theme of
our discourse. At the sight of the beloved but rebellious city, Jesus
wept. The third occasion is mentioned by the Apostle Paul in the fifth
chapter of his Epistle to the Hebrews where he tells us what else we
might not have known, that the Savior, "in the days of His flesh,
offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto
Him that was able to save Him from death and was heard in that He
feared." That passage relates to the Gethsemane agony in which a shower
of bitter tears was mingled with the bloody sweat. The strength of His
love strove with the anguish of His soul and, in the process, forced
forth the sacred waters of His eyes. Thus our Savior wept in sympathy
with domestic sorrow and sanctified the tears of the bereaved.

We, too, may weep when brethren and friends lie dead, for Jesus wept.
There need not be rebellion in our mourning, for Jesus fully consented
to the Divine will and yet He wept. We may weep at the graves of those
we love and yet be guiltless of unbelief as to their resurrection, for
Jesus knew that Lazarus would rise again and yet He wept. Our Lord, in
weeping over Jerusalem, showed His sympathy with national troubles and
His distress at the evils which awaited His countrymen. Men should not
cease to be patriots when they become Believers–saints should bemoan
the ills which come upon the guilty people among whom they are numbered
and do so all the more because they are saints.

Our Lord's third weeping was induced by the great burden of human guilt
which pressed upon Him. This shows us how we, too, should look upon the
guilt of men and mourn over it before God. But in this special weeping
Jesus is alone–there was a something in the tears of Gethsemane to
which we cannot reach, for He who shed them was then beginning to
suffer as our Substitute and in that case He must necessarily tread the
winepress alone and of the people there must be none with Him. Behold
beneath the olive trees a solitary Weeper enduring a grief which,
blessed be His name, is now impossible to us, seeing He has taken away
the transgressions which called for it!

We will now turn to this second instance of our Savior's weeping and
here we find, when we look at the original words, that it is not
exactly expressed by the words used in our admirable English version.
We there read, "He beheld the city and wept over it," but the Greek
means a great deal more than tears and includes sobs and cries. Perhaps
it may be best to read it, "He lamented over it." He suffered a deep
inward anguish and He expressed it by signs of woe and by words which
showed how bitter was His grief. Our subject will not be the
lamentations of Jeremiah, but the lamentations of Jesus–the
lamentations of Him who could more truly say than the weeping Prophet,
"I am the Man that has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath. My eyes
run down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of My
people. Behold and see if there is any sorrow like unto My sorrow which
is done unto Me."

Jesus is here a King by general acclamation, but King of grief by
personal lamentation. He is the Sovereign of sorrow, weeping while
riding in triumph in the midst of His followers. Did He ever look more
kingly than when He showed the tenderness of His heart towards His
rebellious subjects? The city which had been the metropolis of the
house of David never saw so truly a royal man before, for He is most
fit to rule who is most ready to sympathize! We shall, this morning,

as God shall help us, first, consider our Lord's inward grief. And
then, secondly, His verbal lamentation. Oh for the power of the Spirit
to bless the meditation to the melting of all our hearts! O Lord, speak
to the rock and bid the waters flow, or, if it pleases You better,
strike it with Your rod and make it gush with rivers–only in some way
make us answer to the mourning of our Savior–

"Did Christ over sinners weep And shall our cheeks be dry? Let floods
of penitential grief Burst forth from every eye."

I. First, we are to contemplate OUR LORD'S INWARD GRIEF. We note
concerning it that it was so intense that it could not be restrained by
the occasion. The occasion was one entirely by itself–a brief gleam of
sunlight in a cloudy day, a glimpse of summer amid a cruel winter. His
disciples had brought the colt and had placed Him on it and He was
riding to the city which was altogether moved at His coming. The
multitudes were eager to do Him homage with waving branches and loud
hosannas, while His disciples in the inner circle were exulting in
songs of praise which almost emulated the angelic chorales of His birth
night. "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, goodwill toward
men," found its echo when the disciples said, "Blessed be the King that
comes in the name of the Lord: peace in Heaven and glory in the

highest."

Yet amidst the hosannas of the multitude, while the palm branches were
yet in many hands, the Savior stopped to weep! On the very spot where
David had gone centuries before weeping, the Son of David stayed awhile
to look upon the city and to pour out His lamentation! That must have
been deep grief which ran counter to all the demands of the season and
violated, as it were, all the decorum of the occasion. It turned a
festival into a mourning, a triumph into a lament. Ah, He knew the
hollowness of all the praises which were ringing in His ears! He knew
that they who shouted hosanna today would, before many suns had risen,
cry, "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" He knew that His joyous entrance into
Jerusalem would be followed by a mournful procession out of it when
they would take Him to the Cross that He might die.

He saw amid all the effervescence of the moment the small residue of
sincerity that there was in it and He accepted it–but He lamented the
abundance of mere outward excitement which would disappear like the
froth of the sea–and so He stood and wept. It was a great sorrow,
surely, which turned such a day of hopefulness into a season of
anguish. It strikes me that all that day the Savior fasted and, if so,
it is singular that He should have purposely kept for Himself a fast
while others on His account held a festival! The reason why He did so,
I think, is this–Mark says, "And now the eventide was come, He went
out unto Bethany with the twelve. And on the morrow, when they were
come from Bethany, He was hungry: and seeing a fig tree afar off having
leaves, He came, if haply He might find anything thereon."

Such hunger had not come upon Him if it had not been preceded by a fast
the day before. See, then, your Lord surrounded, as it were, with
billows of praise in the midst of a tumultuous sea of exultation,
Himself standing as a lone rock, unmoved by all the excitement around
Him. Deep was the grief which could not be concealed or controlled on
such a day when the sincere congratulations of His disciples, the happy
songs of children and the loud hosannas of the multitude everywhere
welcomed Him.

The greatness of His grief may be seen, again, by the fact that it
overshadowed other very natural feelings which might have been and,
perhaps, were, excited by the occasion. Our Lord stood on the brow of
the hill where He could see Jerusalem before Him in all its beauty.
What thoughts it awakened in Him! His memory was stronger and quicker
than ours, for His mental powers were unimpaired by sin and He could
remember all the great and glorious things which had been spoken of
Zion, the city of God. Yet, as He remembered them all, no joy came into
His soul because of the victories of David or the pomp of
Solomon–Temple and tower had lost all charm for Him–"the joy of the
earth" brought no joy to Him. And at the sight of the venerable city
and its holy and beautiful house He wept.

Modern travelers who have any soul in them are always moved by the
sublimity of the spectacle from the Mount of Olives. Dean Stanley
wrote, "Nothing at Rome, Memphis, Thebes, Constantinople, or Athens can
approach it in beauty or interest." And yet this is the poor, mean
Jerusalem of modern times–by no means to be compared with the
Jerusalem of our Savior's day! Yet the Lord Jesus says nothing about
this city, "Beautiful for situation," except to lament over it. If He
counts the towers there and marks well her bulwarks, it is only to
bemoan their total overthrow. All the memories of the past did but
swell the torrent of His anguish in the foresight of her doom!

Something of admiration may have entered the Savior's holy breast, for
before Him stood His Father's house, of which He still thought so much
that even though He knew it would be left desolate, yet He took pains
to purge it once again of the buyers and sellers who polluted it. That
Temple was built of white marble and much of it, the roof especially,
covered with slabs of gold. It must have been one of the fairest
objects that ever human eye rested upon as it glittered in the sun
before Him. But what were those great and costly stones? What were
those curious carvings to Him? His heart was saying within itself,
"There shall not be one stone left upon another that shall not be
thrown down."

His sadness at the foresight of the city's desolation mastered His
natural feeling of admiration for its present glory. His sorrow found
no alleviation either in the past or the present of the city's
history–the dreadful future threw a pall over all. It mastered, too,
the sympathy which He usually felt for those who were about Him. He
would not stop His disciples from rejoicing, though the Pharisees asked
Him, but He, Himself, took no share in the joy. Usually He was the most
sensitive of men to all who were around Him, sorrowing with their
sorrow and joying in their joy. But on this occasion they may wave
their palms and cut down branches of trees and strew them in the way
and the children may shout, Hosanna, but He who was the center of it
all did not enter into the feeling of the hour–they celebrate–He
weeps.

More striking, still, is the fact that His grief for others prevented
all apprehension for Himself. As He beheld that city, knowing that
within a week He would die outside its gates, He might naturally have
begun to feel the shadow of His sufferings, but no trace of such
emotion is discoverable. You and I, in such a case, with the certainty
of a speedy and ignominious death before us, would have been heavy
about it, but Jesus was not. In all that flood of tears there was not
one for His own death! The tears were all for Jerusalem's doom, even as
He said afterwards, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but for
yourselves and for your children."

It is not "Woe is Me, the holy city will become an Aceldama, a field of
blood by My slaughter," but, "Oh, if you had known, even you, in this,
your day." He grieves for others, not for Himself! Yet it must have
been a very intense emotion which thus swept away, as with a torrent,
everything else so that He had neither joy for joy, nor sorrow for
sorrow, but His whole strength of feeling was poured forth from one
sluice and ran in one channel towards the devoted city which had
rejected Him and was about to put Him to death! This great sorrow of
His reveals to us the Nature of our Lord. How complex is the Person of
Christ! He foresaw that the city would be destroyed and though He was
Divine, He wept! He knew every single event and detail of the dreadful
tragedy and used words about it of special historical accuracy which
bring out His prophetic Character and yet the eyes so clear in seeing
the future were almost blinded with tears!

He speaks of Himself as willing and able to have averted this doom by
gathering the guilty ones under His wings and thus He intimates His
Godhead. While His Nature on the one side of it sees the certainty of
the doom, the same Nature, from another side, laments the dread
necessity! I will not say that His Godhead foresaw and His Manhood
lamented, for so mysteriously is the Manhood joined to the Godhead that
it makes but one Person and it were better to assert that the entire
Nature of Christ lamented over Jerusalem. I have never been able to
believe in an impassive God, though many theologians lay it down as an
axiom that God cannot suffer. It seems to me that He can do or endure
anything He wills to do or endure and I, for one, cannot see that there
is any special glorifying of God in the notion that He is incapable in
any direction whatever. We can only speak of Him after the manner of
men and after that manner He speaks of Himself and, therefore, there is
no wrong in so doing.

It brings the great Father nearer when we see Him lamenting the
wanderings of His children and joying in their penitent return. What
but sorrow can be meant by such expressions as these? "How shall I give
you up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver you, Israel? How shall I make you
as Admah? How shall I set you as Zeboim? My heart is turned within Me;
My repentings are kindled together." "Hear, O heavens and give ear, O
earth: for the Lord has spoken, I have nourished and brought up
children and they have rebelled against Me. The ox knows his owner and
the ass his master's crib: but Israel does not know, My people do not
consider." Are these the utterances of an unfeeling God? I believe it
is the Christ, the entire Christ that both foretells the doom of
Jerusalem and laments it.

Some have even been staggered at the statement that Jesus wept. Certain
of the early Christians, I am sorry to say, even went the length of
striking the passage out of the Gospel because they thought that
weeping would dishonor their Lord. They ought to have had more
reverence for the Inspired Word and a truer knowledge of their Master
and never to have wished to obliterate a record which reflects the
highest honor upon man's Redeemer. Our Lord's lament gives us an
insight into the great tenderness of His Character–He is so tender
that He not only weeps while weeping would be of no

use–but He laments when lamentation must be fruitless! He reminds me
of a judge who, having before been a friend by warning, persuading,
pleading with the prisoner, at last has the unutterable pain of
condemning him–he puts on the black cap and, with many a sigh and
tear, pronounces sentence–feeling the dreadful nature of the occasion
far more than the criminal at the bar.

He is overcome with emotion while he declares that the condemned must
be taken to the place from where he came and there die a felon's death.
Oh the tender heart of Christ, that when it comes to pronouncing the
inevitable sentence, "Your house is left unto you desolate," yet He
cannot utter the righteous words without lamentation! In this our Lord
reveals the very heart of God! Did He not say, "He that has seen Me has
seen the Father"? Here, then, you see the Father, Himself, even He who
said of old, "As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the
death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live."
The doom must be pronounced, for infinite Justice demands it, but Mercy
laments what she was not permitted to prevent.

Tears fall amid the thunders and though the doom is sealed by obstinate
impenitence, yet judgment is evidently strange work to the patient
Judge. This anguish showed how dreadful was the sentence, for what
could stir the Savior so if the doom of sinners is a small affair? If
the doom of guilt is such a trifle as some dream, I understand not why
these tears! The whole Nature of Christ is convulsed as He thinks,
first of Jerusalem plowed as a field and her children slaughtered till
their blood runs in rivers of gore and, next, as He beholds the doom of
the ungodly who must be driven from His Presence and from the Glory of
His power to be the awful witnesses of Divine Justice and of God's
hatred of evil. Thus standing on the brow of Olivet, the weeping Son of
Man reveals to us the heart of God–slow to anger, of great mercy,
waiting to be gracious and tardy in executing His wrath.

For a practical lesson, we may remark that this weeping of the Savior
should much encourage men to trust Him. Those who desire His salvation
may approach Him without hesitation, for His tears prove His hearty
desires for our good. When a man who is not given to sentimental tears,
as some effeminate beings are, is seen to weep, we are convinced of his
sincerity. When a strong man is passionately convulsed from head to
foot and pours out lamentations, you feel that he is in downright
earnest and if that earnestness is manifested on your behalf you can
commit yourself to him. Oh, weeping Sinner, fear not to come to a
weeping Savior! If you will not come to Jesus, it grieves Him! That you
have not come long ago has wrung His heart! That you are still away
from Him is His daily sorrow–come, then, to Him without delay!

Let His tears banish your fears, yes, He gives you better encouragement
than tears, for He has shed for sinners not drops from His eyes, alone,
but from His heart! He died that sinners who believe in Him might live!
His whole body was covered with bloody sweat when He agonized for
you–how can you doubt His readiness to receive you? The five scars
that still remain upon His blessed Person, up there at the Father's
right hand, all invite you to approach Him! These dumb mouths most
eloquently entreat you to draw near and trust in Him whom God has set
forth as the Propitiation for sin! How shall He that wept and bled and
died for sinners repulse a sinner who comes to Him at His bidding? Oh,
come, come, come, I pray you, even now, to the weeping sinner's Friend.

This, too, I think is an admonishment to Christian workers. Some of us,
long ago, came to Jesus and we now occupy ourselves with endeavoring to
bring others to Him. In this blessed work our Lord instructs us by His
example. Brothers and Sisters, if we would have others come to Jesus we
must be like Jesus in tenderness. We must be meek, lowly, gentle and
sympathetic and we must be moved to deep emotion at the thought that
any should perish. Never let us speak harshly of the doom of the
wicked. Never let us speak flippantly, or without holy grief–the loss
of Heaven and the endurance of Hell must always be themes for tears!
That men should live without Christ is grief enough–but that they
should DIE without Christ is an overwhelming horror which should grind
our hearts to powder before God and make us fall on our faces and cry,
"O God, have mercy upon them and save them, for Your Grace and for Your
love's sake."

The deepest tenderness, it may be, some of us have yet to learn.
Perhaps we are passing through a school in which we shall be taught it
and if we do but learn it we need not care how severe the instructive
discipline may be. We ought not to look upon this city of London
without tears, nor even upon a single sinner without sorrow. We must
preach tenderly and teach tenderly if we would win souls. We are not to
weep continually, for even Jesus did not do that, yet are we always to
feel a tender love towards men so that we would be ready to die for
them if we might but save them from the wrath to come and bring them
into the haven of the Savior's rest!

Let me add that I think the lament of Jesus should instruct all those
who would now come to Him as to the manner of their approach. While I
appealed to you, just now, were there any who said, "I would gladly
come to Jesus, but how shall I come?" The answer is–come with sorrow
and with prayer, even as it is written, "they shall come with weeping
and with supplications will I lead them." As Jesus meets you, so meet
Him. He shows you in what fashion to return, in what array to draw near
to your Redeemer, for He comes to you clothed in no robes but those of
mourning, adorned with no jewels but the pearls of His tears. Come to
Him in the garments of humiliation, mourning for your sin. "Blessed are
they that mourn, for they shall be comforted."

Penitential sorrow works life into men. Only come to Jesus and tell Him
you have sinned and are ashamed and gladly would cease to do evil and
learn to do well. Come in all your misery and degradation, in all your
consciousness of your Hell-deservedness. Come in sorrow to the Man of
Sorrows who is even now on the road to meet you! He has said, "Him that
comes to Me I will in no wise cast out," and He will not forfeit His
Word. God bless these feeble words concerning the inner emotions of my
Lord and may the Holy Spirit again rest upon us while we further pursue
the subject into another field.

II. We are now to consider OUR LORD'S VERBAL LAMENTATIONS. These are
recorded in the following

words–"Oh that you had known, even you, at least in this, your day,
the things which belong unto your peace! But now they are hid from your
eyes." First, notice He laments over the fault by which they
perished–"Oh that you had known." Ignorance, willful ignorance, was
their ruin. "Oh that you had known." They did not know what they might
have known–what they ought to have known–they did not know their God.
"The ox knows his owner and the ass his master's crib, but Israel does
not know, My people do not consider."

They knew not God! They knew not God's only Son! They knew not Him who
came in mercy to them with nothing but love upon His lips! Oh, but this
is the pity, that the Light of God is come into the world and men will
not have it, but love darkness rather than Light. Alas, I fear that
some of my hearers live in the Light and will not see. There are none
so deaf as those that will not hear and none so blind as those that
will not see–and yet there are such in all Christian
con-gregations–who do not know and will not know. God says, "Oh that
you had hearkened to My Commandments, then had your peace been as a
river and your righteousness as the waves of the sea." Our Lord
lamented over the inhabitants of Jerusalem because they hated knowledge
and did not choose the fear of the Lord–they would have none of His
coun-sel–they despised His reproof.

Willful ignorance led to obstinate unbelief. They chose to die in the
dark rather than accept the Light of the Son of God! The Lord laments
the bliss which they had lost, the peace which could not be theirs, "Oh
that you had known the things that belong unto your peace." The name of
that city was, as we know, Jerusalem, which, being interpreted,
signifies a vision of peace. They that looked upon it saw before them a
vision of peace. But, alas, Jerusalem had lost its "salem," or peace,
and become only a vision because she did not know and would not know
her God! Oh men and women that know not God, you have lost peace! Even
now you are like the troubled sea that cannot rest, whose waters cast
up mire and dirt!

"There is no peace, says my God, unto the wicked." Oh what joys you
might have had! The delights of pardoned sin, the bliss of conscious
safety, the joy of communion with God–the rapture of fellowship with
Christ Jesus, the heavenly expectation of infinite Glory–all might
have been yours! But you have put them away from you. The Lord says of
you, as of Israel of old, "O that My people had hearkened unto Me and
Israel had walked in My ways! I would soon have subdued their enemies
and turned My hand upon their adversaries." God would have revealed to
you, by His Spirit, brighter things than eyes have seen and sweeter
joys than ears have heard–for if you had been willing and obedient you
would have eaten the fat of the land of His promises! You are losers!
You are awful losers by not being reconciled to God and you will be
worse losers yet, for that false peace which now stands in the place of
true peace and beguiles and fascinates you will depart like the mirage
of the desert and leave you on the arid sands of despair to seek rest
and find it not!

Soon shall a terrible sound be in your ears of the approaching
vengeance of God and there shall be for you no place of refuge. When
the Lord thought of what they had lost, He cried, "Oh that you had
known!" I feel ashamed to repeat His Words because I cannot repeat them
in the tone He used. Oh, to hear Jesus say these words! I think it
might melt a heart of stone! But no, I am mistaken, even that would not
do it, for those who did hear Him were not melted nor reclaimed, but
went on their way to their doom as they had done before! How hardened
are the men who can trample on a

Redeemer's tears! What wonder that they find a Hell where not a drop of
water can ever cool their parched tongues tormented in the flames! If
men are resolved to be damned, it is evident that the tears of the
best, the most perfect of men cannot stop them! Woe is me! This is
deeper cause for tears than all else besides, that men should be so
desperately set on mischief that nothing but Omnipotence will stop them
from eternal suicide!

But our Lord also lamented over they who had lost peace. Observe that
He says–"Oh that you had known, even you. You are Jerusalem, the
favored city. It is little that Egypt did not know, that Tyre and Sidon
did not know, but that you should not know!" Ah, Friends, if Jesus were
here this morning, He might weep over some of you and say–"Oh that you
had known, even you." You were a lovely child! Even in your earliest
days you were fond of everything good and gracious! You were taken to
the place of worship and sat on your mother's knee, pleased to be
there. Do you remember the minister's name that you used to lisp with
delight, the texts you repeated and the hymns you sang? You grew up to
be a lad right full of promise and all felt sure that you would be a
Christian.

What exhortations your father, who is now in Heaven, gave you! And she
that bore you and loved you till she passed away! How she prayed and
pleaded for you! Some of you have been sitting here, or in some other
place where Christ is preached, for a very long time and you have often
been very near to the Kingdom and yet you are not in it. You have come
right up to the edge of the border, but you have not crossed the line.
You are not far from the Kingdom of God, but you lack one thing–the
one essential point of decision for Christ–"Oh that you had known,
even you!" You are always ready to help the cause of God with your
purse, for you take an interest in every good work–you cannot bear
blasphemy or infidelity–and yet you are not saved!

There are a thousand things that are hopeful about you, but there is
one thing which dampens our hope, for you always procrastinate and know
not how to use your present opportunity. Jesus bids you use "this your
day," but you linger and delay. Today is God's accepted time! Postpone
no longer the hour of decision! Alas that you should perish! Shall the
child of such a mother be lost? Shall the son of such a father be
driven down to Hell? I cannot bear it! God have mercy on you, sons and
daughters of Christian parents! You that have been enriched with
Christian privileges, why will you die? Young man, so promising but yet
so undecided, it makes the Savior, Himself, weep that you, even you,
should still refuse to know the things that make for your peace!

Our Lord wept because of the opportunity which they had neglected. He
said, "At least in this, your day." It was such a favored day–they had
been warned by holy men, but now they had the Son of God, Himself, to
preach to them! It was a day of miracles of mercy, a day of the
unveiling of Gospel Grace! And yet they would not have Christ though He
had come so near to them and it was a day of merciful visitation such
as other nations had not known. Perhaps today, also, may be a day of
visitation for some of you. Shall we have to lament, "Oh that you had
known, even you, at least in this, your day"–on this Lord's-Day, this
day of power, this day of the Spirit? Oh, by His Grace, you now weep
and I perceive you feel some tender touches of the Spirit's power! Do
not resist Him and cause this day, also, to pass away unimproved!

"The harvest is passed, the summer is ended and you are not saved." And
has the autumn closed and shall the winter come and go and shall these
days in which the Spirit visits men all depart till God shall declare
that it does not become the dignity of His Spirit to always strive with
flesh and, therefore, He shall cease His operations and leave men to
their own devices? Oh, souls, I pray you think of Christ weeping
because revival days and Sundays are being wasted by you! Do not, in
these best of days, commit the worst of sins by still refusing to
receive the Gospel of God! The Lord Jesus mourned, again, because He
saw the blindness which had stolen over them. They had shut their eyes
so fast that now they could not see–their ears which they had stopped
had become dull and heavy–their hearts which they had hardened had
waxen gross so that they could not see with their eyes, nor hear with
their ears, nor feel in their hearts, nor be converted that He should
heal them.

Why, the Truth of God was as plain as the sun in the heavens and yet
they could not see it! And so is the Gospel at this hour to many of you
and yet you perceive it not. There is nothing plainer than the plan of
salvation by looking unto Jesus and yet many men have gone on so long
resisting the sweetness and Light of the Spirit of God that they
cannot, now, see the Lord Jesus who is as the sun in the heavens! The
kindest friends have put the Gospel before them in a way that has
enlightened others, but it has not affected them. They still say, "I
cannot see it!" O you blind ones, take heed lest

this has come upon you, "Behold, you despisers and wonder and perish."
Christ groans because the timings which belonged to the peace of
Jerusalem were hid from their eyes as a punishment for refusing to see.

Lastly, we know that the great floodgates of Christ's grief were pulled
up because of the ruin which He foresaw. It is worth any man's while to
read the story of the destruction of Jerusalem as it is told by
Josephus–it is the most harrowing of all records written by human pen!
It remains the tragedy of tragedies! There never was and there never
will be anything comparable to it. The people died of famine and of
pestilence and fell by thousands beneath the swords of their own
countrymen. Women devoured the flesh of their own children and men
raged against each other with the fury of beasts. All ills seemed to
meet in that doomed city! It was filled within with horrors and
surrounded without by terrors. There was no escape, neither would the
frenzied people accept mercy.

The city itself was the banqueting hall of death. Josephus says, "All
hope of escaping was now cut off from the Jews, together with their
liberty of going out of the city. Then did the famine widen its
progress and devour the people by whole houses and families. The upper
rooms were full of women and infants that were dying by famine and the
lanes of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged. The
children, also, and the young men wandered about the market places like
shadows, all swelled with the famine and fell down dead wherever their
misery seized them. For a time the dead were buried, but afterwards,
when they could not do that, they had them cast down from the wall into
the valleys beneath. When Titus, on going his rounds along these
valleys, saw them full of dead bodies and the thick putrefaction
running about them, he gave a groan and, spreading out his hands to
Heaven, called God to witness this was not his doing."

There is nothing in history to exceed this horror! But even this is
nothing compared with the destruction of a soul. A man might look with
complacency upon a dying body if he knew that within it was a soul that
would live eternally in bliss and cause the body to rise again to equal
joy. But for a soul to die is a catastrophe so terrible that the
heavens might be clothed with sackcloth for its funeral! There is a
death which never ends! The separation of the soul from God–which is
the most complete of all deaths! The separation of the soul from the
body is but, as it were, a prelude and type of the far more dreadful
death–the separation of the soul from God. Banished from hope,
existing but not living and that forever! What a condition this must
be!

I shall draw no picture. Words fail but, oh, my Hearers, shall it be
that anyone among you shall always know the meaning of the Savior's
words–"These shall go away into everlasting punishment"? Will it ever
be your lot to hear Him say–you who hear me this day, I mean–"Depart,
you cursed, into everlasting fire in Hell, prepared for the devil and
his angels"? If we could mark any here to whom this doom will happen,
we might make a ring around them and bring them home tearing our
garments and tearing our hair, for it would be a far greater grief than
if we knew that they would die by the sword or by famine in a foreign
land! All ills are trifles compared with the second death!

Bear with me just a moment while, in conclusion, I set forth our
Savior's grief as it expressed itself in other words, for those other
words may help us to fresh light. You remember the passage in the 23rd
of Matthew which I read in your hearing, where the Lord said, "O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the Prophets and stone them which
are sent unto you, how often would I have gathered your children
together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and you
would not!"? Do you see His Grace and grief? These people killed the
Prophets and yet the Lord of Prophets would have gathered them! His
love had gone so far that even Prophet-killers He would have gathered!
Is not this amazing that there should be Grace enough in Christ to
gather adulterers, thieves, liars and to forgive and change them and
yet they will not be gathered? That Jesus should be willing, even, to
gather such base ones into a place of salvation and yet should be
refused?

The pith of it lies in this–"How often would I have gathered your
children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and
you would not." See, here, the case stands thus–I would, but you would
not. This is a grief to love. If it had been a fact that Christ would
not, then I could not understand His tears, but when He says "I would,
but you would not," then I see the deep reason of His anguish! The
failure of will is in you that perish, not in Christ who cries, "I
would, but you would not." Yes and He adds, "How often would I." Not
once was He in a merciful mood and pitiful to sinners for that time,
alone, but He cries, "How often would I have gathered."

Every Prophet that had come to them had indicated an opportunity for
their being gathered and every time that Jesus preached there was a
door set open for their salvation, but they would not be gathered and
so He foretells their fate in these words–"Your house shall be left
unto you desolate." Here is a painful sentence. Set the two words in
con-

trast–"Gathered," that is what you might have been! "Desolate," that
is what you shall be–and Jesus weeps because of it! "Gathered"–it is
such a beautiful picture! You see the little chicks fleeing from danger
when they hear the cluck of the mother hen. They gather together and
they come under her wings.

Did you ever hear that little, pretty cry they make when they are all
together with their heads buried in the feathers? How warm and
comfortable they are! This is where you might have been, gathered under
the warm breast of the eternal God, feeling His love with the rest of
the people–joying and rejoicing in a communion of complete security!
But inasmuch as you would not be gathered, see what you will
be–"desolate," without a friend, without a helper. Then you will call
to the saints, but they will not be able to help you. Say to them,
"Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out"– but they must
refuse you. Unto which of the holy ones will you turn? What angel will
have pity upon you? Each cherub waves his fiery sword to keep you from
the gate of Paradise. There is no help for you in God when once you die
without Him! No help for you anywhere.

Desolate! Desolate! Desolate! Because you would not be gathered! Well
does the tender Savior weep over men since they will perversely choose
such a doom! I do not feel as if I should close in gloom. I must flash
before you a brighter light, though it is but for the last minute. The
day hastens on when Christ will come a second time and then He shall
behold a new Jerusalem, a spiritual Jerusalem, built by Divine hands.
The foundations thereof are of jewels and the gates thereof are of
pearl. How He will rejoice over it! He shall rest in His love and He
shall rejoice over it with singing! He will shed no tears, then, but He
will see in the Jerusalem from above the travail of His soul and He
shall be satisfied. When Zion shall be built up, the Lord shall appear
in His Glory and the marriage of the Lamb will have come.

Meanwhile, if any one of you who are not yet saved will come to Jesus,
He will rejoice over you, for He takes pleasure in the stones of Zion
and favors the dust, there, and if you are as little as Zion's dust and
as mean as her rubbish, He will rejoice over you! It is written that,
"There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that
repents." Now, angels stand in the Presence of the Lord Jesus and there
is joy in His heart over a single penitent! If only one sinner shall
repent because of this sermon, my Lord will rejoice over Him! I, His
servant, am, in my measure, intensely glad when a soul repents, but He
shall have the chief joy, for His is the chief love!

Who will now come to Jesus? Would to God it might be the beloved son of
a godly mother! Would to God it might be you, my long hesitating
Hearer, for years a hearer but not a doer of the Word. May the Holy
Spirit decide you at this very moment! Amen.
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The Joy Of Jesus