A weeping God did not despise
Jesus Weeping Over Jerusalem
On the day the crowds hailed Him as king, Jesus looked at the city of Jerusalem and wept over it. His tears were not for Himself but for a people who would not recognize the peace standing right in front of them. This is the grief of God over those who will not come home.
“And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,”Luke 19:41
The tears
The heading is: The tears. As Jesus approached Jerusalem in the days before His death, riding in on what we call the triumphal entry, the crowds were rejoicing. But Jesus was not caught up in the celebration. And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it (Luke 19:41). The word used describes not a quiet tear but audible weeping. And He spoke the reason: If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes (Luke 19:42). He saw the coming destruction of the city, and He saw the deeper tragedy behind it: they knew not the time of their visitation (Luke 19:44). God Himself had come to them, and they would not receive Him. This is the grief of unrequited love on the largest scale, the Savior weeping over the very people He came to save, who were about to reject Him. Days later some of the same crowds would cry, Crucify him. And He, knowing all of it, wept over them rather than turning away in anger.
What God did with them
The heading is: What God did with them. We must be honest: the city Jesus wept over did not turn. Within a generation Jerusalem was destroyed, as He had foreseen. His tears did not, in that hour, bring the repentance He longed for. This is one of the hardest truths in the Gospels, that the love of God can be genuinely refused, and that God grieves the refusal. Yet even here, judgment was not the whole of it. Jesus had already lamented over the city with aching tenderness, saying, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her brood under her wings, and ye would not! (Luke 13:34). And His response to the city that would kill Him was not to abandon it but to die for it, and then to send the gospel out from that very place, so that thousands in Jerusalem later believed. God did not stop pursuing the people He wept over. His tears were not the end; they were the grief of a love that kept giving even to those who spurned it, a love that opened salvation to all nations from the city that rejected Him.
How it points to Christ
The heading is: How it points to Christ. Here the tears are Christ's own, and they reveal the very heart of God. He is the man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3), and His deepest grief is over the lost. This weeping shows that God's judgment is never cold; it comes only after tears, after a love that longed to gather and was refused. Because He wept over sinners rather than despising them, we know He can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Hebrews 4:15) and that He desires none to perish. The One who wept over the city then went outside its walls to die for it. And the story does not end in the ruin of Jerusalem but presses toward a new Jerusalem coming down from God, where He shall wipe away all tears from their eyes (Revelation 21:4). The tears of Christ over the lost will be answered by a gathered people from every nation who did come home.
Questions people ask
Why did Jesus weep on the day the crowds were praising Him?
Because He saw past the celebration to a people who did not recognize the peace standing among them, and to the destruction that would follow their rejection of Him. His tears were for their tragedy, not His own triumph.
Did Jesus' tears change Jerusalem?
Not in that hour; the city did not turn, and it was later destroyed as He foresaw. Scripture is honest that God's love can be genuinely refused. Yet He still died for that city and sent the gospel out from it, so that many there later believed.
What do these tears reveal about God's judgment?
That it is never cold or eager. Jesus wept before He warned of destruction, and He longed to gather the very people who rejected Him (Luke 13:34). God grieves over the lost; judgment comes only after refused love.