O Jerusalem - Luke 19:41-44

I know that Jesus is perfect and that he doesn’t make mistakes, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t get emotional. He has dedicated His life to the service of God, He alone can perform the single act that can save all mankind and He has agreed to do it at great personal cost. The atonement would literally kill anyone else, and no one else is worthy to do it, it has to Him or nothing. He spent a lifetime discovering who He is and His purpose as the Savior of all mankind, and then devoted the last three years of his life to that purpose. He was fully and deeply committed to the cause, and he didn’t need the atonement because he was perfect. He could have easily said, “nope I can’t do it, it’s too much and it doesn’t benefit me at all, I’m out.” The most interesting thing about the atonement is that it’s the one single event in the history of the universe that matters, and yet most people don’t even know about it. It will be so interesting to get to the other side and find out what is really important and what is not.

I imagine that the reception that Jesus received when He proclaimed Himself King of the Jews was very gratifying, like “yes, thank you, follow me and we can all be happy.” But that would have been overshadowed by the fact that Jesus knew what was coming. It would be one thing for the people to love him and embrace the gospel, but the Roman’s kill him. But it’s totally another for the Romans to say “this guy didn’t do anything wrong,” and for the people that you came to, your people who were supposed to be waiting for you, to demand your execution. I don’t believe that Jesus doubted his purpose, I just think it would have been disheartening is all, so experiencing the emotional highs of support and acceptance then the lows of rejection and crucifixion within the same week, it must have been exhausting for Him.

Jesus rides the donkey to the temple, where he looks around but then leaves the city and goes back to Bethany because it is getting late. Sometime either that night or the next morning, he sits outside and “beheld the city, and wept over it, Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto they peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in one every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knowest not the time of thy visitation.”

This clearly is a prophecy about the physical destruction of Jerusalem, which we will talk about later, but I also think that there is a spiritual component here as well. We know that a place is destroyed when they are so wicked that living any longer will not benefit them spiritually. I’ve noticed, that by scriptural accounts, this seems to be the time around when they start to kill the prophets. Jesus isn’t a prophet, he’s the Son of God. We know that the scriptures have said that the Jews in Jerusalem at the time of Christ were the only ones so evil that they would crucify their God. But we also know that before the Savior comes again, that the people in this world will be the most wicked of all time. When Jesus prophecies about the destruction of the Jerusalem and it’s people, that would be equivocal to their spiritual destruction after killing their God.

Physically, Jesus is prophesying about a very specific event that is coming up. The IM says, “as described in these verses, the Savior prophesied that the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed, a prophecy that was fulfilled about 40 years later when the Jews were fighting for their freedom from their Roman rulers. In A.D. 70, after months of intense fighting between the Roman army and Jewish rebels, the rebels took refuge within the walls of Jerusalem, and the Romans laid siege to the city. The famine and hunger that followed were so severe that some resorted to cannibalism. Any Jew caught trying to escape was crucified in front of the walls of the city for all inside to see. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus described the destruction and violence that occurred when the Roman army finally broke into the city and set the temple on fire: ‘While the temple blazed, the victors plundered everything that fell in their way and slaughtered wholesale all who were caught. No pity was shown for age, no reverence for rank, children and greybeards, laity and priests, alike were massacred; every class was pursued and encompassed in the grasp of war… there were the war-cries of the Roman legions sweeping onward in mass, the howls of the rebels encircled by fire and sword, the rush of the people who, cut off from above, fled panic-stricken only to fall into the arms of the foe… You would indeed have thought that the temple-hill was boiling over form its base, being everywhere one mass of flame, but yet that the stream of blood was more copious than the flames and the slain more numerous than the slayers.’ In the end, the magnificent temple was destroyed and has not been rebuilt since. Josephus estimated that 1,100,000 Jews perished in the conflict.”

Interestingly, Wikipedia says, “according to Josephus 1.1 million non-combatants died in Jerusalem, mainly as a result of the violence and famine. Many of the casualties were observant Jews from across the world such as Babylon and Egypt who had travelled to Jerusalem wanting to celebrate the yearly Passover but instead got trapped in the chaotic siege. He also tells us that 97,000 were enslaved.” Thinking about it, 1.1 million people sounds like a lot for the standard population of Jerusalem, it would make sense that that number was from migration for the Passover. This fate waiting for his people, along with the spiritual death that was coming to them must have been overwhelming. It’s like he was sitting there looking at the city and asking “how many times would I have gathered you under my wings like a mother hen?” It’s heartbreaking actually.