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The Weeping King Luke 19:37-44; Mark 11:12-21
When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you. Lk.19:37-44
The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fruit tree in leaf, he went to find out of it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And the disciples heard him say it. On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a ‘den of robbers.’” The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching. When evening came, they went out of the city. In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered. Mark 11:12-21
The first inquiry concerning Jesus Christ in the Gospels is: Where is he that is born King of the Jews? The last formal introduction before his death on the cross was worded on the sign placed upon that cross—Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. On Palm Sunday we remember the triumphal entry of King Jesus into Jerusalem and the events that surrounded that entry. It is an event so important that it appears in all four Gospels of the New Testament.
In his temptation experience, Jesus was offered the kingdoms of this world on the devil’s terms. He rejected kingship on that basis. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus described the nature of his kingdom and the characteristics of the citizens of his kingdom. Throughout his ministry Jesus demonstrated kingly authority over demons, over disease, over destructive forces of nature, and even over death.
There were times when his followers wanted to make him a king. They were thinking of his being a nationalistic and political king, who would re-establish the sovereignty of the nation of Israel as a political force in the world. Jesus rejected that kind of kingship. Even at this entry into Jerusalem the people were calling for this kind of king. The cry Hosanna meant Save Now! And there is even a political undertone in the cry Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Because the words the king of Israel were added in John’s version of the story.
In his triumphal entry into Jerusalem Jesus boldly and compassionately offered himself as the king of love and grace. He was making a bold declaration that he was indeed the Messiah, and he was claiming to be the Christ, the anointed one of God. He came into Jerusalem not to assert his rights to the throne of David’s political kingdom, but to declare his kingship in the hearts of those who would trust him and follow him.
Jesus came lowly and riding on the colt of a donkey. That is significant because in the culture of the day, that meant something. When a king was entering a city as a political conqueror he rode in on a horse. The horse was the mount of war. But the donkey was the mount of peace. So, when Jesus claimed to be king, he claimed to be the king of peace. As Isaiah had prophesied, he shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. And Zechariah prophesied [9:9] Behold your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt. Jesus showed that he came not to destroy, but to love; not to condemn, but to help, not in the might of arms, but in the strength of love.
Luke describes one experience in connection with the triumphal entry that is not recorded by the other Gospel writers. Luke records As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.” Here we see the king weeping over the city.
This is the second time that the Scripture records Jesus as crying. The first was at the grave of Lazarus. So why was he weeping here? The king was not weeping for himself. These were not tears of self-pity, remorse, or personal failure. They were the tears of a king suffering for his people, the tears of a heart breaking.
The king was weeping from compassion. His heart was filled with compassion for his people. He was experiencing the pain of a shallow acceptance, which did not deceive him into believing that the people were willing to accept a king of love, grace, mercy and righteousness. He knew that the cries of Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed be the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Would soon change to Crucify him! Crucify him! Give us Barabbas! Crucify Him! Matthew tells us that Jesus said, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.
That tender picture shows that Jesus wants to have a close, loving relationship with us. He is longing for us to have an intimate relationship with him, to know him personally, to love him, to want to be with him. Is Jesus weeping for you because you are not willing to do that?
The king was weeping because of the blindness and deafness of the city. Throughout his earthly ministry Jesus restored sight to the blind and made it possible for the deaf to hear. By doing this he hoped that people would see the need to really use their eyes for seeing what God was doing and use their ears for hearing what God was saying.
Jesus sought to minister to a group of people who were preoccupied with their own ways and goals and were unwilling to open their minds to new truth about God. They were spiritually and morally blind and deaf and would not permit themselves to see and hear. This caused the king to weep on their behalf. Is Jesus weeping for you because you preoccupied with your own agenda and you are not hearing what God is saying or seeing what he is doing? Are you even looking for that?
The king was weeping because the city was on a collision course with disaster. He describes this in Matthew 24 where he foretells the destruction of the temple and the calamity that was to befall the city. His predictions became reality by 70AD when the Roman general, Titus, captured the city and destroyed the temple.
Mark points out another concern that was on the mind of Jesus; one that may also have caused his weeping. It was the judgment of a church. Mark makes it clear that the survival of religious institutions is not guaranteed by God. They can become expendable. They can be dismissed from history.
This is the urgent warning sounded in the story of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple. This fig tree story may strike us a bit strange. Mark tells us that Jesus was hungry. He sees a fig tree in leaf and went to see if it had any fruit on it. When he got up to the tree he was there was no fruit, only leaves, so he cursed the tree and it withered and died. This is not the gentle Jesus meek and mild remembered from Sunday school days. This is the king who calls his people to make decisions that have consequences.
Now that is strange enough, but Mark also notes that this was not the season for figs. Jesus having lived all his life in that area would know when the season for figs was. Doesn’t that seem rather unreasonable to curse and kill a fig tree because it was not bearing fruit out of season?
But Jesus was giving us an acted parable here. You see in the spring leaves begin to appear on the fig tree. Around this same time quite a crop of small knobs spear called taqsh. They are not the real figs, but a kind of early forerunner. They are also edible. When these come to maturity they fall off and the real figs appear about 6 weeks later. But if the leaves appear and these knobs are not there, that is a sign that there will be no figs. Since Jesus found nothing but leaves, leaves without the taqsh, he knew that it was a hopeless, fruitless fig tree.
Jesus actions had the same lesson as the spoken parable of the fruitless fig tree in Luke 13:6-9. In that spoken parable a landowner came three years in succession expecting fruit from a fig tree on his property, and when, year in and year out, it proved fruitless, he had it cut down because it was using up the ground to no purpose.
In both of these parables the fig tree represents the city of Jerusalem and especially the temple there. The people there were majoring in minors. Jesus said, You tithe mint, dill and cumin and neglect the weightier matters of the law. Big issues and petty issues were getting confused.
The story is told of a little boy who was watching a western on TV. His mother happened to come into the room just as the hero was entering a saloon. The little boy said to his mother, O don’t worry, Mom, he’s not going in there to get a drink. He’s just going in to shoot a man!
The temple was designed to bring people closer to God, that they might become more like God. Jesus expected to find fruit there from God’s investment in the temple, but he did not.
On the last Sunday of each year, Pastor Stevens would begin his sermon with the same question. People in the congregation heard it year after year, yet never tired of the inquiry. In fact, that Sunday became a favorite, precisely because of this yearly tradition. The question was certainly predictable, but it never grew old. It was one of the most relevant questions asked of them, a short of checkpoint for their spiritual pilgrimage. As faithful as the changing year, Pastor Stevens would say, Beloved, another year is almost gone. Have you become more like Jesus?
With that single question, the pastor identified the main goal of Christian discipleship—becoming more like Jesus. Day by day, month by month, year after year, followers of Christ are to change. Christians are never to stay the same.
Is Jesus weeping over you because you are not drawing closer to him, or becoming more like him?
We in the church need to stop and think that Jesus was here judging the worship of these people. When I was on a trip to Israel, one of the hotels I stayed in was right on the Mount of Olives. You got a beautiful panoramic view of the city of Jerusalem from there. It is the view that Jesus would have seen that day, without the modern buildings. And the part of the city that is most obvious from the Mount of Olives is the temple area where the gold topped Dome of the Rock Mosque stands now. When Luke tells us that Jesus came to the Mount of Olives and wept over the city it would have been the temple that was most in his view and the outer temple area was the first place he went as he entered the city. No doubt it was the temple and what was going on there that caused him to weep.
Jesus said they turned the temple into a den of thieves. It is important to see clearly what the issue was here. The issue has nothing to do with church dinners or bazaars. The issue was the court of the Gentiles, that part of the temple reserved for Gentiles, the only part of the temple in which Gentiles could worship God and gather for prayer, that sacred space symbolic of God’s intention to save all people.
That is precisely where the merchants had set up shop. They didn’t care about having any space to remind them of their world responsibilities, to bring the Gentiles to God. They didn’t expect to have any Gentiles there, and they didn’t even want them. Gentiles were not their kind of people. They had lost sight of God’s vision of a house of prayer for ALL people. By allowing the court of the Gentiles to become a noisy, smelly marketplace, the Jewish religious leaders were interfering with God’s provision for non-Jewish people to come and know him.
If world evangelism is not on your heart, you are out of touch with the heart of God. Forest Grove UMC is here because someone had a heart for world evangelism. There were plenty of needs to be met at home in England in the late 1700’s but in spite of those needs, John Wesley had a heart for world evangelism. He said the world is my parish. He went to the American colonies, to Georgia, as a missionary. He was not too successful at that point, but he still had the heart to reach the unreached in the Americas with the gospel of Jesus Christ. He believed in a God big enough and with enough resources to meet all the needs at home and abroad. All he needed was people willing to step out in faith and follow him.
Later John Wesley sent Methodist preachers to America to spread the gospel here, to win people to Jesus Christ and to make them into his disciples. And back in the mid 1800’s some Methodists thought that there were people outside their community, way up in Joelton who needed Jesus, so this church was started. If John Wesley and the Methodists of England had been satisfied to say We have plenty of needs here at home to respond to. We don’t need to concern ourselves with needs outside our country. Then Methodism would be just some denomination in England and there would be no Forest Grove UMC. Is Jesus weeping over you because your concern for others is too narrow and your vision is too small?
It is important to understand why the sellers of animals and money changers were there. People coming to the temple had to buy animals for sacrifice. Otherwise those coming from long distances would have to bring a goat or calf or whatever the sacrifice was going to be with them all along the way. And Jerusalem was an international city with people coming there from many different parts of the Roman empire with many different types of coins. Just like international airports have places to change foreign money into the money of the country the money changers were there to do that. Only the bronze temple coin was acceptable. Pagan coins were not. But they were cheating the people right in the temple of God.
When the disciples of Jesus saw the temple they were quite impressed. Look teacher, what wonderful stones, what wonderful buildings, they said. And, no doubt, it was a splendid sight, covering 13 acres. Herod the Great, for all his horrible faults, was a great builder. But Jesus told his disciples that not one of those stones would be left upon another. He said that with a great deal of sadness. Jesus loved the temple. It was designed as an important part of God’s plan for salvation. It was a place where people could have their sins forgiven. It was a place where they could meet with God. It was precious to him. But the temple was not as precious as the God to which it pointed.
Although many Christians participate in worship services on a regular basis, few have a clear understanding of worship. Ask believers to define worship and they will refer to attending church services, singing, praying, listening to a sermon. The focus is upon the MEANS of worship—what people DO in the service.
But worship is supposed to be a meeting between God and his people. God becomes present to his people who respond with praise and thanksgiving. The worshiper is brought into personal contact with the one who gives meaning and purpose to life. From this encounter the worshiper receives strength and courage to live with hope and power in a fallen world.
Our English word worship comes from an old English word meaning worth-ship. To worship, then, is to ascribe worth to God. Believers come into his presence and actively declare his worth. Worship is a glorious celebration of God and all he has done in creation and redemption. It is meant to be a wondrous celebration of God’s self-giving in which believers energetically declare his worth.
But the activities of the temple had become so bound up in rules and regulation and corruption that true worshipers were hard to find at the temple. As Jesus watched the rich people bringing their tithes to the temple he noted that it was a poor widow who only gave two small copper coins who really made contact with God. God said through the prophet Isaiah, These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men. [29:13]
When you come to worship are you a spectator or a participant? Do you actively praise and thank and worship God yourself, or do you watch and listen to what is being done for you? When you sing hymns and choruses do you just mouth the words or do you sing them as YOUR words to God? When you pray the Lord’s prayer do you really pray those words or do you just repeat them along with everyone else? Do you just go through the service following the bulletin point by point and leave without ever really getting in touch with God? Is Jesus weeping over you because you honor him with your lips but your heart is far from him? You probably all know the song Jesus loves me from your childhood. Well there is another verse to that song that goes like this:
I love Jesus, does he know? Have I ever told him so?
Jesus wants to hear me say, that I love him every day.
Yes, I love Jesus! Yes, I love Jesus! Yes, I love Jesus!
Because he first loved me.
Is Jesus weeping over you because you have not told him that you love him for a long time?
It is ironic that this king that entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was all powerful in creation. John tells us that nothing that was created was made without him. This king was all powerful in keeping the machinery of the universe in perfect coordination. Paul tells us in Colossians that in him all things hold together. But this king has no power in human hearts until he is invited to come in and take the place of authority. He is not king in our heart unto we crown him king in our lives.
It is easy for us to be critical of those who rejected the claims of the king during his earthly ministry. Before we condemn them, however, we need to ask ourselves if we too have rejected or ignored the kingly claim of him who conquered death and the grave and who will someday come back as the king of glory.
Jesus was born to be our king. We need to make him the Lord and king of our lives. We need to let him be the Lord of love in our homes. We need to let him be Lord in our jobs. We need to let him be the Lord of our decisions. Is Jesus weeping over you because you have not yet given your whole life over to him, allowing him to guide your everyday life?
Let’s pray:
Would you all bow your heads and close your eyes?
If you would say in your heart, Jesus might be weeping for me. I need to draw closer to him. I need to go deeper in him. I need a change of heart. I need to crown him king in my life, will you just lift your hand and put it down again. I want to pray for you.
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