Devotional
What Makes you Weep?
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God's messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn't let Me.
And now, look, your house is abandoned and desolate.
Matthew 23:37-38
And now, look, your house is abandoned and desolate.
Matthew 23:37-38
In the week leading up to the cross, Matthew and Luke both record this moment where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. He weeps because He sees something no one else sees. He mentions the words abandoned and desolate. This is strange for Jesus to say especially at Passover where the city would be bustling and overflowing with people.
As we continue to read, we realise Jesus is talking about the destruction of the temple and the sacking of Jerusalem that happened in AD70, only 40 years from Jesus death. He saw it and wept. But I suspect that his weeping was not just for the suffering of the city but for their rejection of him. Jesus came to save his people and yet his people did not receive Him. They were consistent with their own history. They killed the prophets and messengers of God. Now they were about to kill the Messiah. This is why Jesus wept.
The fact that Jesus died for the world and yet there are people in the world who reject Him is the saddest thing. There are a lot of bad things that happen in the world. We see greed, and suffering, and poverty, and war. Yet nothing is as sad as a soul for whom Jesus came to die and yet refuses to believe.
Pray this Easter that the message of the gospel will cut through all the noise in the world and will draw the hearts of people back to God.
Brett
As we continue to read, we realise Jesus is talking about the destruction of the temple and the sacking of Jerusalem that happened in AD70, only 40 years from Jesus death. He saw it and wept. But I suspect that his weeping was not just for the suffering of the city but for their rejection of him. Jesus came to save his people and yet his people did not receive Him. They were consistent with their own history. They killed the prophets and messengers of God. Now they were about to kill the Messiah. This is why Jesus wept.
The fact that Jesus died for the world and yet there are people in the world who reject Him is the saddest thing. There are a lot of bad things that happen in the world. We see greed, and suffering, and poverty, and war. Yet nothing is as sad as a soul for whom Jesus came to die and yet refuses to believe.
Pray this Easter that the message of the gospel will cut through all the noise in the world and will draw the hearts of people back to God.
Brett
Posted in Devotional