Weeping Over the City: Luke 19:28-48

Download MP3 audio of this message here.

The event about which we just read took place on this day, some 1975 years ago give or take. This is the day of the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem in fulfillment of the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9 – “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey, Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” We call this day Palm Sunday, for the Gospel writers say that as He entered the city, multitudes were waving palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna!,” a Hebrew expression that means “Save us now!”, and singing “Blessed is the King who comes in the Name of the Lord!” But as the multitudes rejoiced, Jesus wept. He wept, Luke tells us, over the city, saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.” Jesus saw the city and He wept. It is that point that I want to expound on today.

Cities are the heart of the world. Like a beating heart sends blood through the rest of the body, so thousands of arteries flow in and out of the world’s great cities sending out people, activity, news and influence into the rest of the world for good and for evil. Urban centers influence the economy, politics, and social movements. What goes on in the city affects the world.

In 1900, only eight percent of the world’s population lived in urban centers. Today, it is estimated that over 50% do. Before the end of the 21^st Century, it is estimated that 80% of the world’s population will live in cities. The unreached peoples of the world are rapidly becoming, not those who live on the other sides of oceans, jungles and deserts, but the multicultural multitude that are living side-by-side in the world’s major urban centers. Every major city is a microcosm of the whole world, with people of different classes and cultures living in close proximity.

Major cities are places of great need: poverty, greed, homelessness, crime, corruption, addiction, violence, and alienation. Certainly Greensboro is no exception. As soon as these doors open at the conclusion of the service, you can see all of the above. Where do these problems come from? Do they come from the city itself? No, these problems flow forth from the hearts of depraved humanity. In other words, they are the very kinds of problems that Jesus Christ came into the world to solve by bringing salvation. D. L. Moody once said, “Waters run downhill, and the highest hills in America are the great cities. If we can stir them we shall stir the whole country.” If we can bring salvation into the city, we can bring it to the whole world.

Jesus came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And as He approached the city, we are told that He did two things. He saw it and He wept.

I. Consider What He Saw.

Jesus saw everything there was to see as he crossed the brow of the Mount of Olives. He saw the beauty and the ugliness, the glory and the shame, the joy and the sorrow, the wealth and the poverty, the righteousness and the sinfulness. He saw the beautiful place of worship, and the monuments to vice. He saw the piety of true worshippers, and the perversion of those who sought to profit off of them. These contrasts are present in every city, including our own, as a writer of a bygone century has put it, “heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between them.”

Jesus saw these contrasts, and He saw the heartbreaking conditions of fallen humanity. He saw those whose lips might be used to sing the praises of God if their mouths weren’t full of cursing. He saw those whose energies might be used for ministry if they weren’t exhausted by addiction, perversion, and wasteful existence. He saw prisoners bound for hell who might otherwise be pilgrims journeying to heaven. We must see these these things as well, and see them for what they are: symptoms of a spiritual disease for which the gospel of Christ is the only cure.

Society all around us sees the symptoms themselves, and spends millions of dollars trying to remedy the symptoms without giving a passing thought to the disease. It builds prisons, shelters, centers, and cemeteries. And it sees no lasting change. And there will be no lasting change until those with the cure for the disease look at the city and see it as Jesus did on that Palm Sunday so long ago. We must see our city through His eyes, in all of its contrasts and conditions, and go out to distribute the cure for the disease of the soul that affects so many. Only the Church of Jesus Christ can do that. But first we must see it for what it is through His eyes.

II. Consider What He Did.

Seeing all that the city displayed, Jesus wept. He did not weep as a politician might who longed for the votes of those in the city. He did not weep as a merchant might who desires the income that those would-be consumers have to offer. He did not weep as a patriot might who longs to see beautification and security return to a once glorious place. He wept as a Savior who could save those people from their sins if only they would turn to Him. He wept not only for what that day held, but for a future day when they would face judgment because they Had not received Him. As He wept He said, “If you had known in this day … the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.”

When you look at the city around you, do you weep? Do you weep as Jesus wept? Do you weep at the fact that the streets are filled with people who live most of their lives in utter forgetfulness of God and His grace? Do you weep at people who are hustling and hurrying through life only to find hell awaiting at its end? Do you weep at the number who drive and walk by the open doors of the church en route to psychics, cults, and other systems of false hope? Do you weep that they line up to receive from us money, food, and any other thing we might give them out of the kindness of our hearts, but who are not interested in receiving from us the cure for their disease in the gospel of Jesus Christ? Jesus wept as He saw these things, but He was not content to merely weep in despair. His tears drove Him to action.

He went first to the sanctuary and drove out those who had made it into a den of thieves in effort to restore it unto a house of prayer for all nations. Where would He go first in our city? I believe He would go first to the churches and begin a massive overhaul. Lutheran Pastor Herman Prange who served a church in inner city Minneapolis in the early 20^th Century put it this way: “If Jesus were here with his whip of scourging … He would drive out all those who teach the commandments of men in place of the oracles of God; who have forsaken the fountain of living water, and who direct men to the broken cisterns which hold no water; who feed their flock with the store of human opinion and wisdom, instead of the Bread of Life, Christ crucified, the power of God unto salvation. He would cast out men who are saints on Sunday and devils during the week. He would drive out the man who teaches in the Sunday School and swears at his clerks in his office. He would drive out the man who praises God with a loud voice as he sings from his well-bound book during divine service, and who during the week grinds the face of the poor. He would drive out the woman who comes to church to show her finery and spends the week debauching the young by setting an example of vanity. In a word – He would drive out all men and women who are simply whitewashed, without being washed clean.”

Prange is referring there to those who are like the Pharisees whom Jesus chastised, saying, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” (Matt 23:27-28). They had never been cleansed of their own sins and clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ by faith.

Jesus wept and His tears drove Him to action, purifying the faith and practice of the religious community in the city of Jerusalem. So must we also. We must get serious about the testimony we present to our city through our words and through our deeds. When this city looks upon the church as representatives of God’s people, my hope is that they do not weep in despair over our contrasts and conditions, but rather see that we are a house of prayer for all nation, where they might find the soul-saving remedy for their sinful condition.

And then Jesus continued on teaching daily in the city. This is what the city needs. It needs the presence of Christ and His word directing them to salvation. Our city needs to see His presence through us as we present a consistent witness to those within our sphere of influence on a daily basis. There are seven days in the week, and the city is bustling with activity, some good but much evil every day. We cannot undo that with one hour on Sunday. We must labor in this place daily for Christ as witnesses to His life-changing power.

But Jesus did not stop there. At the end of that week, He laid down His life for the souls of that city and died for their sins on the cross. And the message of the cross is the only hope for first century Jerusalem and 21^st Century Greensboro. We must proclaim that message, and we must live that message, at willing to endure whatever personal sacrifice in necessary for the salvation of the city’s multitudes. Then we will see lives changed. And as lives are changed this city will be changed. And as this city and others like it are changed, the world will be changed by the power of God and for the glory of God.