Bible Commentaries
Luke 19

Verse 10

Cur Deus Homo

For the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost.— Luke 19:10.

I

The Lost

1. We find in our text Christ’s estimate of the condition of humanity. It is something that is lost. No doubt our spiritual condition may be put in various ways. We are guilty creatures: we are depraved creatures: we are condemned creatures: in all these fashions, and more, it may be possible truly and justly to describe our spiritual state, and express those things about us which make us so greatly in need of a part in Christ’s great salvation. But probably there is no single word which could be employed that would give so complete and comprehensive a description of man as he is by nature, as to say that he is lost. All error from the right way, all distance from our Heavenly Father’s house, all destitution, and danger, and impossibility of return, and imminence of final ruin, are conveyed in that one word, lost! Trace that word’s meaning out into its various shades and ramifications, and you will find that it implies, as no other can, all that we are, all that makes our need of the Saviour—His sacrifice, His Spirit, His intercession.

2. We are lost, as the wayfarer is lost, because we have gone away from our Father’s house, and we are wandering in the wilderness—in a wilderness where there is no supply for our soul’s greatest needs, where we are surrounded by perils, and whence we can of ourselves find no way to return. We are lost, as the great ship is lost, for we have made shipwreck of our best interests, and we drive, without a helm, over the trackless sea of life; and, away from Jesus, we know no haven for which to steer. We are lost like the guilty child that by reckless sin has broken his father’s heart; for, evil by nature, and worse by daily temptation and transgression, we are, left to ourselves, lost to holiness, to happiness, to heaven, to God. We have lost our birthright, lost our Father, lost our home, lost our way, lost our hope, our time, our souls. And what loss there is in our unimproved and unsanctified powers and faculties! How these souls are lost, in the sense that so little is made of what was meant for so much; lost as the untilled field is lost; as the flower which no man sees is lost; as the house built and then left empty is lost; as the ship which rots in harbour is lost. Are not these souls made for God’s glory: ought not every power about them to conduce to that? What glory ought we to have rendered to God; what good to man: what knowledge and happiness to ourselves? And, if a soul’s whole powers and energies are given to the mere supply of wants that end upon a present life and world,—to the mere earning of the daily bread,—is not that soul a noble thing lost, a noble machinery whose power is wasted and flung away? In all these senses and more, the Saviour’s description of us is a sound and just one.

3. But now, as we cannot be worse than lost, so our being lost, so far from shutting us out from the Saviour, forms a kind of strange door of entrance into the whole riches of His salvation,—a kind of strange qualification for the Lord, who declares here that they whom He came into the world to seek and to save were only the “lost.”

My old friend, Dr. Duncan, used to say, “For myself, I cannot always come to Christ direct, but I can always come by sin. Sin is the handle by which I get to Christ. I take a verse in which God has put Christ and sin together. I cannot always put my finger upon Christ, and say, ‘Christ belongs to me.’ But I can put my finger upon sin, and say, ‘Sin belongs to me.’ I take that word, for instance, ‘The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost.’ Yes, lost—I’m lost. I put my finger upon that word, and say, ‘I’m the lost one; I’m lost’; and I cry out, ‘What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’ ” 1 [Note: C. J. Brown, The Word of Life, 236.]

II

Christ Came to Seek and to Save the Lost

1. Christ came to seek and to save the lost. This was the greatest mission ever recorded, and this the greatest missionary that ever came to the world. Men have gone forth on different missions. Alexander went forth to conquer the world; Cæsar went forth to subdue his enemies; Plato and Socrates went forth in search of knowledge; Columbus went forth to discover the new world; Stanley went forth to explore Africa. Warriors have gone forth to rout armies, and their march has been tracked with blood, misery, and death. Travellers have gone forth to explore distant regions, to see the wonders of nature and view the monuments of art. Philanthropists have gone forth on errands of mercy, but our blessed Saviour went forth from heaven and came into the world to submit to shame, to endure scourgings and to suffer death, for a race of guilty men, that He might be able to save them from their lost condition.

While he stayed in Shansi his thoughts dwelt much on the condition of the very poor, and on some permanent work in their behalf. “The matter which weighs on me most heavily,” he writes, “is the question of what to do for the lost of Chinese society. These people are the very class Jesus would seek out to save, though I am not sure that the publicans and sinners were quite so low in the social scale as the ‘lost’ I speak of. The people I refer to are simply the scum of Chinese society, chiefly opium-smokers and gamblers.… I have sometimes thought I might or ought to give my whole time to do something for these lost.” 1 [Note: J. E. Hellier, Life of David Hill, 140.]

2. Christ is a divine-human Saviour. He is one that partakes both of the nature of God and of the nature of man. He comes into the world as the Mediator between God and man, and how fitly qualified He is for this part of His work in redemption. The knowledge which He possesses of the two parties to be reconciled is not merely abstract and theoretical; it is personal and experimental, for He is God. He knows God by experience, for He is God; He knows man by experience, for He is man. As God, He knows what is required and what is to be done to save the lost; as man, He knows how to apply this salvation to the hearts of men. As God, He requires an infinite sacrifice to justify the ungodly; as the God-man, He becomes the Substitute of the sinner and offers up Himself as this perfect sacrifice. Christ, as a Divine Person, possesses all the attributes and perfections of the Godhead. “In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead.” He is limitless in the extent of His power and wisdom, and in the sweep of His duration. He is without beginning of years or end of days. He is infinite, eternal and unchangeable in all the Divine attributes. But Christ was human as well as Divine. He was a man. In the text He calls Himself the Son of Man. This seems to have been His favourite appellation of Himself. He was Divine, the Son of God, equal with the Father; and at the same time, He was human; and He wanted to impress this truth upon the hearts and lives of the people. So He called Himself the Son of Man.

Malan read some portions of the First Epistle of John—and proceeded to pray. There was something in his foreign accent and silvery voice most winning, as he rose from a few calm little sentences into glowing utterance. In spite of occasional difficulty in finding the precise words he wanted, it was like clear water sparkling in the sun. One expression—which came out in the midst of a strain of holy yet reverential familiarity of talk with Heaven, as if the thin veil could be seen through—I can never forget: “Lord Jesus, everlasting Son of the Father, come near to us as the Son of Man, and lay Thy warm fleshy hand upon us, that we may feel it.” 1 [Note: David Brown, Memoir of John Duncan, 143.]

3. He comes to seek the lost.

(1) Christ goes in quest of men.—He had His eye on Zacchæus when he climbed into the sycomore tree. He knew where the objects of His pity were to be found, and directed His course and shaped His plans that He might meet with them. He did not sit in solemn pomp, did not dwell in quiet glory, awaiting the approach of the miserable and guilty. His love was not of the easy nature that merely listens to the cry of woe and want, that stretches out the hand when power is supplicated—but of the nobler kind that goes after the lost and ruined. He was the missionary of salvation, not only its magnificent dispenser.

A story is told of Garibaldi that in one of his arduous campaigns, one evening when he and his troops were preparing to encamp for the night, they came upon a shepherd who told Garibaldi that he had lost a lamb and was going out to search for it. The general gave permission to his followers to go out and search for the lost lamb, but, as darkness fell, they turned in tired for the night’s rest. Not so, however, with the leader himself, for in the early morning, Garibaldi emerged from the mist carrying the lost lamb.

“O Shepherd with the bleeding Feet,

Good Shepherd with the pleading Voice,

What seekest Thou from hill to hill?

Sweet were the valley pastures, sweet

The sound of flocks that bleat their joys,

And eat and drink at will.

Is one worth seeking, when Thou hast of Thine

Ninety and nine?”

“How should I stay My bleeding Feet,

How should I hush My pleading Voice?

I who chose death and clomb a hill,

Accounting gall and wormwood sweet,

That hundredfold might bud My joys

For love’s sake and good will.

I seek My one, for all there bide of Mine

Ninety and nine.” 1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti.]

A beautiful scene is that which shows us the Bishop seeking for one of his flock, a little girl who had wandered into the wilderness. Jeannie de Nord was a child of ten years, with a complexion scarcely darker than an ordinary English gipsy. Her father, old de Nord, had left her with an aunt while he went away some distance to hunt. The aunt was neglectful of her little charge, and Jeannie unable to bear this started in search of her father. So little did the aunt care that two days elapsed before the word spread that Jeannie was lost.

No sooner did the Bishop hear of it than, like the true shepherd he was, he started with others in search of the little wanderer. They pushed on over the snow, following the girl’s tracks, for she had taken her snow-shoes with her. She had no food or blanket, and the nights were cold, and starving wolves roamed the forests. And where was Jeannie? She had reached her father’s abandoned camp one night, cold and tired. Groping about, she found his gun, which had been left there, and with the cunning of the wild she discharged the weapon, and from the spark thus obtained started a fire, which kept her warm through the night. All the next day she wandered in vain, searching for her father, and, tired and hungry, crept back to the abandoned camp and fell asleep. When she next opened her eyes, it was to see standing before her the tall figure of the anxious Bishop, and to feel his strong loving arms around her as he lifted her from the ground.

The shepherd had found the lost lamb, but oh, at what a cost! The Bishop’s clothes were soaking from the overflowing streams they had crossed as they wandered about, and he could hardly reach Fort Simpson, so great were the cramps which seized him, and for days he endured great suffering. But what did it matter? Little Jeannie de Nord was safe, and none the worse for her experience. 1 [Note: An Apostle of the North: Memoirs of Bishop Bompas, 175.]

(2) That quest is continuous.—The quest is not exhausted by one act, or satisfied with one response. It is not merely that God seeks us in the hour of our proud and vain revolt, when our wilful heart bids Him a proud defiance. He does seek us then, and, by the thousand ingenuities of a love that is deeper than we can ever know, strives to woo us to reciprocal love and cleansing affection. But He goes infinitely farther than that. He is ever seeking us in the deeper reaches of our life, in its innermost and most sacred shrines, that He may find us in our largest capacities and win us absolutely to Himself. Every day of our life, when by some disloyalty of our heart we stray the least bit from Him; when by some unholy thought our mind is stained and made unworthy to be His temple, when by some act of selfishness the old bad life has a momentary supremacy, He quickly follows in pursuit of us to call and bring us home. He lights His light in our conscience and smites us with shame; He reveals His love and melts us into cleansing tears; He reveals His face and compels us by the sweet compulsion of a great attraction.

That was the Shepherd of the flock; He knew

The distant voice of one poor sheep astray;

It had forsaken Him, but He was true,

And listen’d for its bleating night and day.

Lost in a pitfall, yet alive it lay,

To breathe the faint sad call that He would know;

But now the slighted fold was far away,

And no approaching footstep soothed its woe.

Oh! would He now but come and claim His own,

How more than precious His restoring care!

How sweet the pasture of His choice alone,

How bright the dullest path if He were there!

How well the pain of rescue it could bear,

Held in the shelter of His strong embrace!

With Him it would find herbage anywhere,

And springs of endless life in every place.

And so He came and raised it from the clay,

While evil beasts went disappointed by.

He bore it home along the fearful way

In the soft light of His rejoicing eye.

And thou fallen soul, afraid to live or die

In the deep pit that will not set thee free,

Lift up to Him the helpless homeward cry,

For all that tender love is seeking thee. 1 [Note: F. W. Faber.]

Many a time it is in strange places that Christ comes upon His own. One tells of her finding in an artless story. Her heart had been touched but not melted, till one day in the garden she saw an apple tree in blossom, and as she stood under it she was flooded with the thought of the love of God. So it became true of her:—

Beneath the apple tree

There I espoused thee,

There I gave thee my hand,

And there thou wast redeemed,

Where thy mother was betrayed.

Another heart, also stirred by desire, resolved at last that she would read her Bible straight through till she found her Saviour. At last she came upon the words, “I am the way,” and there her wanderings ended. She had been found. A saint tells how the Shepherd found her in an Andalusian convent, where the fountain was the only moving sounding thing in the dead noon-day silence, when there was not a breath to stir the lemon tree or pomegranate bush. Of another, it is told that he was found out by his Master while committing robbery. Another was found by Jesus Christ when he was breaking the heart of his old mother by mockeries of religion. A preacher, well known in his day, was found when listening to an old melodrama that ended with a sailor’s drinking a glass of gin before he was hung, and saying for his last words, “Here’s to the prosperity of the British nation and the salvation of my immortal soul.” Down went the curtain, and down went the man, for he ran home with all his might. He had been struck to the quick by the words, “the salvation of my immortal soul,” and in his chamber Christ found him. 1 [Note: W. Robertson Nicoll, Sunday Evening, 33.]

After the lecture in the dissecting-room in the Glasgow University one day a student, usually all vivacity and chatter, was observed by his friend to be very silent. Asked why, he said, “A curious thing happened in the laboratory to-day. Pointing to the body on which we were working, the professor suddenly said, ‘Gentlemen, that was once tenanted by an immortal soul.’ ” The young man had never had a thought like this about the bodies he was dissecting before. So Christ startled the world. He came into its dissecting-rooms and operating theatres, its laboratories of industry, its barracks and camps, where men were holding life cheap and exploiting thousands, for the sake of gain or fame for the few, and He said, “Gentlemen, every man and woman, ay, and little child on earth, is an immortal soul and of infinite value to God the heavenly Father.” … That was Christ’s discovery of the individual to the surprise and astonishment of the world. 2 [Note: R. J. Drummond, Faith’s Certainties, 328.]

4. He comes to save the lost. It is interesting to discover that the word “salvation” as first used by Jesus did not have a distinctly religious meaning. He used it of those whom He healed of bodily sickness. “Daughter,” said the Master to the invalid woman who pressed through the throng to touch the hem of His garment, “be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole.” And it is written in St. Mark’s Gospel, “They laid the sick in the market places, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole.” “Made whole” in these verses translates the same Greek word as is sometimes translated “saved.” Saved folks were folks who were made whole, filled full of health, fulfilling their purpose. Up to this day, Zacchæus had been like a sick man, just a fragment of a man, a man who was able to use only a part of himself; just as a sick man is a man who cannot use his eyes, or his limbs, or his head, or whatever part of him is afflicted. When the sick man is made whole he lives through all his being; he no longer uses only a portion of his body; every organ fulfils its functions perfectly. Zacchæus’s conscience was diseased. When Jesus touched him that day, his conscience began to work, and, with the conscience in perfect health, and the love in him claiming those who had need of him, the publican began to live through and through all his manhood. Henceforth no part was diseased, no organ was atrophied; he was a whole man. This then is Jesus’ idea of salvation. It is not a matter of the future, it concerns the present; it is not rescue from a future hell, but rescue from a present self; it is not rescue for a future heaven, it is rescue for a present service. Salvation is living as a son through all one’s being; salvation is living as a soul for other souls.

A priest had occasion once to interview a great doctor about the terrible case of a woman of high social position who had become the slave of drink. The doctor was a man of great force and ability, and of unwearying devotion; but he was what would be called a sceptic and a materialist. The priest asked if the case was hopeless; the great doctor shrugged his shoulders. “Yes,” he said, “pathologically speaking, it is hopeless; there may be periods of recovery, but the course that the case will normally run will be a series of relapses, each more serious and of longer duration than the last.” “Is there no chance of recovery on any line that you could suggest?” said the priest. The two looked at each other, both good men and true. “Well,” said the doctor after a pause, “this is more in your line than mine; the only possible chance lies in the will, and that can only be touched through an emotion. I have seen a religious emotion successful, where everything else failed.” The priest smiled and said, “I suppose that would seem to you a species of delusion? You would not admit that there was any reality behind it?” “Yes,” said the doctor, “a certain reality, no doubt; the emotional processes are at present somewhat obscure from the scientific point of view; it is a forlorn hope.” “Yes,” said the priest, “and it is thus the kind of task for which I and those of my calling feel bound to volunteer.” 1 [Note: A. C. Benson, From a College Window, 218.]

(1) He saves by pardon.—It is done, first of all, by the complete pardon of all the sinner’s sins. The very instant that a man trusts Christ with all his heart, the past is blotted out as if it had never existed: all the sins he has ever done in thought, in word, in deed, however crimson in dye, go at once; they are sunk as in the sea, never to be found again. And this is done upon this one solitary condition, that the man believes in Jesus; and even that is not a condition, for He that bade him believe enables him to believe, and gives him the faith which saves his soul.

Men are not, according to the gospel system, pardoned on account of their belief of the pardon, but they are sanctified by a belief of that pardon, and unless the belief of it produces this effect, neither the pardon nor the belief are of any use. The pardon of the Gospel is a spiritual medicine: faith is nothing more than the taking of that medicine; and if the spiritual health or sanctification is not produced, neither the spiritual medicine nor the taking of the medicine are of any avail; they have failed of their object. 1 [Note: Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, i. 376.]

(2) He saves by bestowal of a new nature.—From the moment that a man believes in Jesus his nature becomes different from what it was before; he receives a new heart—another influence takes possession of him; another love engrosses him. When a man is absorbed by some master-passion, what a different man he becomes! The passion for wealth will work marvels; we have known idle persons become very diligent, and profuse voluptuaries become even self-denying and mortifying to their flesh, in their ambition to acquire riches. Now, God gives us another passion, the passion of love to God in Christ, and that becomes a master-principle and rules the entire man. He who loved self now loves God and lives for Him.

One part of the good news which Christ told us about God was that God would free us from evil, awake in us a new life, and open before us boundless possibilities of growth; and He showed us in His own life that men could be freed from evil. He lived before us the new life; and He made manifest the spiritual perfection of man. “This, then,” said those who followed Him, and notably St. Paul, “this which God did in His Son Jesus, He will do in all His other sons.” Into this perfect life which was made manifest in Christ, we are all to grow—growing up into Him in all things who is the Head, even Christ. 2 [Note: Stopford A. Brooke, Sunshine and Shadow, 105.]

Cur Deus Homo

Literature

Alexander (W.), Leading Ideals of the Gospels, 83.

Austin (G. B.), The Beauty of Goodness, 138.

Benson (R. M.), The Final Passover, i. 79.

Boyd (A. K. H.), Counsel and Comfort Spoken from a City Pulpit, 180.

Brandt (J. L.), Soul Saving, 139.

Burrell (D. J.), Christ and Men, 138.

Calthrop (G.), The Lost Sheep Found, 3

Chafer (L. S.), True Evangelism, 13.

Coyle (R. F.), The Church and the Times, 33.

Davidson (R. T.), The Christian Opportunity, 115.

Ellison (H. J.), Sermons and Addresses on Church Temperance Subjects, 36.

Hall (J. V.), The Sinner’s Friend, 21.

Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., v. 106.

Little (W. J. K.), The Hopes and Decisions of the Passion, 1.

M‘Clelland (T. C.), The Mind of Christ, 85, 99.

Macleod (A.), Talking to the Children, 119.

Moody (A.), “ Buy the Truth!” 117.

Morgan (G. C.), Christian Principles, 69.

Morris (A. J.), The Open Secret, 142.

Morrison (G. H.), The Footsteps of the Flock, 197.

Neville (W. G.), Sermons, 264.

Nicoll (W. R.), Sunday Evening, 29.

Parker (J.), The City Temple, i. 74.

Pulsford (J.), Loyalty to Christ, ii. 321.

Robertson (A. T.), The Teaching of Jesus, 100.

Thompson (J. R.), Burden Bearing, 121.

Thorne (H.), Notable Sayings of the Great Teacher, 54.

Whitefield (G.), Sermons, 401.

Christian World Pulpit, xxxiii. 36 (E. Johnson); xxxvi. 33 (G. MacDonald); lii. 120 (R. Thomas); lviii. 322 (S. Chisholm); lxvi. 124 (W. J. K. Little); lxviii. 385 (R. Gregory).

Churchman’s Pulpit: Christmas Day, ii. 258 (R. Gregory); Sermons to the Young, xvi. 519 (J. S. Maver).

Conversations with Christ, 203.

Homiletic Review, xlviii. 371 (R. T. Davidson).

Preacher’s Magazine, vi. 125 (A. E. Gregory); xi. 496 (M. G. Pearse).

Verses 41-42

The Impenitent City

And when he drew nigh, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.— Luke 19:41-42.

1. The Saviour’s tears were a startling contrast to the scene of rejoicing to which this incident is appended. It was in the midst of the Triumphal Entry that this occurred, when all were exulting and shouts of hallelujah thrilled the air. The simple pious hearts of the disciples were glad at this evident acceptance of their Master, and they anticipated a speedy capture of Jerusalem itself for Christ, when His cause would lay hold of the whole nation and great and glorious events would ensue. They hardly knew what they expected; but, in any case, it was to be a mighty triumph for Christ, and salvation for Israel. But as the joyful procession swept round the shoulder of the hill, and the fair city gleamed into sight, a hush came over the exulting throng; for the Lord was weeping. He had no bright and futile illusions. A wave of excitement like that which had transported the disciples could not blind Him to the actual facts of the case. He knew that He had lived, and would die, in vain, so far as that hard and proud capital was concerned. He knew that He was rejected of rulers and people; and that ears and hearts were deaf to His message. As He looked at the beautiful city, it was not with pride but with anguish. He knew that city and nation were doomed. They had had their day of visitation, and were still having it—but the sands were fast running out. In compassionate grief He yearned over them still, weeping for their blindness and hardness of heart. What a pathetic scene is here recalled to our imagination! The gay and careless city smiling in the sunlight, with eager crowds of busy men full of their interests and pleasures, full of their great religious celebration about to be kept—and the Saviour looking down on it all, weeping. They were throwing away their last chance, following false lights, and dreaming false hopes, seeking false sources of peace, stopping their ears against the voice of wisdom and of love. “If thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.”

2. Those who heard Him did not understand. Nevertheless He was right. He saw things as they were, not as they seemed. His was that prophet-power which is not so truly the vision of things future as of things present, a power which is less intellectual than moral, which in the sphere of the spiritual is the equivalent of the scientific faculty in the physical order—the power of discerning in human history the reign of law, that necessity by which effect follows upon cause, by which evil conduct must bring to pass evil fortune. He saw, and only He, how things really were with Jerusalem and its people, and therefore He saw what must happen to Jerusalem. So to Him the glowing landscape and the city shining on it like a gem were the illusion, and His doom-picture was the reality; the beauty and peace and glory were the mask; the features behind it were pain, horror, desolation. Jesus was right, and all He wept over came to pass in fullest and most bitter measure.

They climbed the Eastern slope

Which leads from Jordan up to Olivet;

And they who earlier dreams could not forget

Were flushed with eager hope.

They gained the crest, and lo!

The marble temple in the sunset gleamed,

And golden light upon its turrets streamed,

As on the stainless snow.

They shout for joy of heart,

But He, the King, looks on as one in grief;

To heart o’erburdened weeping brings relief,

The unbidden tear-drops start:

“Ah, had’st thou known, e’en thou

In this thy day the things that make for peace;”

Alas! no strivings now can work release.

The night is closing now.

“On all thy high estate,

Thy temple-courts and palaces of pride,

Thy pleasant pictures and thy markets wide,

Is written now ‘Too late.’

Time was there might have been

The waking up to life of higher mood,

The knowledge of the only Wise and Good,

Within thy portals seen;

But now the past is past,

The last faint light by blackening clouds is hid;

Thy heaped-up sins each hope of grace forbid,

The sky is all o’ercast;

And soon from out the cloud

Will burst the storm that lays thee low in dust,

Till shrine and palace, homes of hate and lust

Are wrapt in fiery shroud.” 1 [Note: E. H. Plumptre.]

Let us consider:—

I. Jerusalem’s Day of Privilege.

II. Her Rejection of the Light.

III. The Tears of the Redeemer.

I

The Day of Privilege

1. There are seasons of special privilege. Jesus here speaks of “a time of visitation.” Properly speaking, that means an overseeing. That is the strict meaning of the original word. It is thus used to describe the office of an Apostle, in the Acts of the Apostles, and the office of a bishop, in St. Paul’s First Epistle to Timothy; and, from this employment of the word in Scripture, it has come to be applied to the court—for such it is—which from time to time, a bishop is bound by the old law of the Church to hold, in order to review the state of his diocese. But this word is more commonly applied in the Bible to God’s activity than to man’s; and a visitation of God is sometimes penal or judicial, and sometimes it is a season of grace and mercy. The day of visitation of which St. Peter speaks, in which the heathen shall glorify God for the good works of Christians, is, we cannot doubt, the day of judgment. And Job uses the Hebrew equivalent to describe the heavy trials which had been sent to test his patience. On the other hand, in the language of Scripture, God visits man in grace and mercy—as He did the Israelites in Egypt after Joseph’s death; as He visited Sarah in one generation, and Hannah in another; as He visited His flock, to use Zechariah’s expression, in Babylon. It was such a visitation as this that our Lord had in view. He Himself had held it; and when He spoke it was not yet concluded.

(1) This visitation was unobtrusive.—In the Advent of the Redeemer there was nothing outwardly remarkable to the men of that day. It was almost nothing. Of all the historians of that period few indeed are found to mention it. This is a thing which we at this day can scarcely understand; for to us the blessed Advent of our Lord is the brightest page in the world’s history; but to them it was far otherwise. Remember for one moment what the Advent of our Lord was to all outward appearance. He seemed, let it be said reverently, to the rulers of those days, a fanatical freethinker. They heard of His miracles, but they appeared nothing remarkable to them; there was nothing there on which to fasten their attention. They heard that some of the populace had been led away, and now and then, it may be, some of His words reached their ears, but to them they were hard to be understood, full of mystery; or else they roused every evil passion in their hearts, so stern and uncompromising was the morality they taught. They put aside these words in that brief period, and the day of grace passed.

There was nothing of the outward pageant of royalty to greet the son of David. There were no guards, no palace, no throne, no royal livery, no currency bearing the king’s image and superscription. All these things had passed into the hands of the foreign conqueror, or, in parts of the country, into the hands of princes who had the semblance of independence without its reality. There was not even the amount of circumstance and state which attends the reception of a visitor to some modern institution—a visitor who only represents the majesty of some old prerogative or of some earthly throne. As He, Israel’s true King, visits Jerusalem, He almost reminds us of the descendant of an ancient and fallen family returning in secret to the old home of his race. Everything is for him instinct with precious memories. Every stone is dear to him, while he himself is forgotten. He wanders about unnoticed, unobserved, or with only such notice as courtesy may accord to a presumed stranger. He is living amid thoughts which are altogether unshared by men whom he meets, as he moves silently and sadly among the records of the past, and he passes away from sight as he came, with his real station and character generally unrecognized, if indeed he is not dismissed as an upstart with contempt and insult. So it was with Jerusalem and its Divine Visitor. “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” 1 [Note: H. P. Liddon.]

(2) The day of visitation is limited.—Jerusalem’s day was narrowed up into the short space of three years and a half. After that, God still pleaded with individuals; but the national cause, as a cause, was gone. Jerusalem’s doom was sealed when Christ pronounced those words.

Here was His last word to the chosen people, the last probation, the last opportunity. We may reverently say that there was no more after that to be done. Each prophet contributed something which others could not; each had filled a place in the long series of visitations which no other could fill. Already, long ago, Jerusalem had been once destroyed, after a great neglect of opportunity. The Book of Jeremiah is one long and pathetic commentary on the blindness and obstinacy of kings, priests, prophets, and people which preceded the Chaldæan invasion, and which rendered it inevitable. And still that ruin, vast and, for the time, utter as it was, had been followed by a reconstruction—that long and bitter exile by a return. But history will not go on for ever repeating events which contradict the possibility of change and renewal. One greater visitation awaited Jerusalem; one more utter ruin—and each was to be the last.

After the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus no cause of justice, no ministry of truth, no service of one’s fellow-men, need despair. Though the People, Religion and the State together triumph over them, beyond the brief day of such a triumph the days—to use a prophetic promise which had often rung through Jerusalem—the days are coming. The centuries, patient ministers of God, are waiting as surely for them as they waited for Christ beyond His Cross. Thus, then, did the City and the Man confront each other: that great Fortress, with her rival and separately entrenched forces, for the moment confederate against Him; that Single Figure, sure of His sufficiency for all their needs, and, though His flesh might shrink from it, conscious that the death which they conspired for Him was His Father’s will in the redemption of mankind. As for the embattled City herself, lifted above her ravines and apparently impregnable, she sat prepared only for the awful siege and destruction which He foresaw; while all her spiritual promises, thronging from centuries of hope and prophecy, ran out from her shining into the West; a sunset to herself, but the dawn of a new day to the world beyond. 1 [Note: G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, ii. 578.]

II

The Rejection of the Light

1. The Jews were blind to their opportunity. They knew not the day of their visitation. There is the ignorance we cannot help, which is part of our circumstances in this life, which is imposed on us by Providence. And such ignorance as this, so far as it extends, effaces responsibility. God will never hold a man accountable for knowledge which He knows to be out of his reach. But there is also ignorance, and a great deal of it in many lives, for which we are ourselves responsible, and which would not have embarrassed us now, if we had made the best of our opportunities in past times. And just as a man who, being drunk, is held to be responsible for the outrage which he commits without knowing what he was doing, because he is undoubtedly responsible for getting into this condition of brutal insensibility at all, so God holds us all to be accountable for an ignorance which He knows not to be due to our nature. Now, this was the case with the men of Jerusalem at that day. Had they studied their prophets earnestly and sincerely, had they refused to surrender themselves to political dreams which flattered their self-love, and which coloured all their thoughts and hopes, they would have seen in Jesus of Nazareth the Divine Visitor whose coming Israel had for long ages been expecting.

There is a way of blindness by hardening the heart. Let us not conceal this truth from ourselves. God blinds the eye, but it is in the appointed course of His providential dealings. If a man will not see, the law is he shall not see; if he will not do what is right when he knows the right, then right shall become to him wrong, and wrong shall seem to be right. We read that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, that He blinded Israel. It is impossible to look at these cases of blindness without perceiving in them something of Divine action. Even at the moment when the Romans were at their gates, Jerusalem still dreamed of security; and when the battering-ram was at the tower of Antonia, the priests were celebrating, in fancied safety, their daily sacrifices. From the moment when our Master spake, there was deep stillness over her until her destruction; like the strange and unnatural stillness before the thunder-storm, when every breath seems hushed, and every leaf may be almost heard moving in the motionless air; and all this calm and stillness is but the prelude to the moment when the east and west are lighted up with the red flashes, and the whole creation seems to reel. Such was the blindness of that nation which would not know the day of her visitation. 1 [Note: F. W. Robertson.]

2. The blindness of the Jews was the blindness of moral indifference. For years they had been sinking into cold spiritual indifference, while they were clinging all the more strongly to the outward formalities of religion. And then came their rejection of Christ, which consummated their ruin. They knew what tithes the poor man must pay into the treasury, but they could not understand a Christ who came to heal the broken-hearted. They knew that Jerusalem was the place where men ought to worship, and that the Samaritans were heretics; they could not understand One who came to give men life and rest in God. It was their cold-hearted indifference that thus blinded their eyes to the mission of Jesus, and it was this that caused them to destroy Him. They had found a Man who said religion was a reality—who spoke in kindling words of a spiritual world, and pointed the weary to an all-present Father; and when they found they could not put to shame a truth that clashed with their cold-heartedness, they hurried Him to the judgment-hall and the cross.

If we go back to the time of the Greeks, and ask what to the Greek mind was the greatest sin, we find that it was insolence. To them insolence meant the failure of a man to realize what was his true attitude to life, to understand that he was bound, if he would be a true man, to face life boldly and fearlessly with all its issues, to think through its problems, to recognize the limits under which his life had to be lived. Still the same thing is needed. We still ask you to look at your life straight, to see what it means, to see what are the things that will destroy it. And we are forced to conclude with the old Greeks that it is insolence which destroys a man’s life. What the Greeks called insolence, we call irreverence; and irreverence is at the bottom of it indifference. It means the want of self-sacrifice, of self-restraint, the want of manliness, the want of a desire to think things out, to face life and its issues broadly and courageously. 1 [Note: Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, ii. 26.]

3. Such a process of hardening may be very gradual. Little by little we lose our keen delight in God, our warm loyalty to our Saviour, our exquisite pleasure in noble things, our cordial sympathy with spiritual people and their aims; little by little we decline into godlessness and worldliness. There is a growing deadness of nerve, a creeping paralysis which leaves us more and more untouched and unmoved by the high and glorious things of our faith, which renders us more and more careless about the tragic possibilities of life.

Life must be a movement—a progress of some kind. We cannot stand still—rise or fall we must. Unless, therefore, we have a restraining power within us conquering those hidden evil tendencies, our life must be gradually sinking. But indifference—the mere absence of positive Christian earnestness—has no restraining influence. Not what we are not, but what we are, forms character. We resemble that which we supremely love. That rectitude of life and conduct which is not the result of choice or effort, and which may exist in the absence of temptation, is purely negative, and, unless supported by some earnest positive principle, is in peril when the slumbering evil tendencies are wakened into power by temptation. We may go a step farther, and affirm that spiritual indifference actually prepares the way for open sin. “He that is not with me is against me,” said Christ, and then followed His parable of the unclean spirit returning in sevenfold might to the empty house. The mere expulsion of evil which leaves the heart vacant and indifferent is a false reformation. Take away corrupt love, and leave the soul’s chamber empty, and it will come again in gigantic force. Thus indifference is the commencement of a blindfold descent into spiritual ruin.

You have seen the snow-flakes falling—at first they lay like beautiful winter flowers, but gradually they formed an icy crust that hardened and thickened with every snow shower. So, a man may receive the truth of Christ in the freezing atmosphere of cold indifference, until he is girded round with a mass of dead belief which no spiritual influence can penetrate. 1 [Note: E. L. Hull.]

4. These Jews knew not the day of their visitation and yet they were always expecting it. Their prophets had foretold it; in their prayers they cried out for it. Even at this very time they were looking for their Messiah. But they had made up their minds as to the way in which the visitation would be made. When at last it came in God’s way—so simply, so quietly—they could not receive it.

How many there are who are still living in carelessness, never really ranging themselves on the side of Christ, never really giving to Him their hearts and souls; and all the time they have a sort of vague idea that some day the Lord will come and visit their hearts! They do not mean to die in their irreligion. They half imagine that suddenly and unexpectedly God will call them and convert them; then the King will enthrone Himself in their hearts, and all will be well; then they must needs give up sin, and delight in religion. So now they are content to wait; till that day it does not matter much, they think, what lives they lead. All the time Jesus is with them; but they know Him not; they know not the time of their visitation; they are expecting a visitation of some strange, sensational, or terrible kind. If some storm or tempest of passion shook their being, they might yield to that; if God were to afflict them by laying them permanently on a bed of sickness, or by taking from them all that makes life dear, they would count that as a visitation of God, and would expect to be converted. Our ordinary language seems to countenance this notion. It is “a visitation of God,” we say, when a city is smitten with cholera or plague, or when death cannot be accounted for. It would be well for us all if we could realize more fully that, although God’s voice may be heard in the whirlwind and the storm, it is more often heard in the quiet whisper, speaking lovingly to the conscience.

Where are thy moments? Dost thou let them run

Unheeded through time’s glass? Is thy work done?

Hast thou no duties unfulfilled? Not one

That needs completion?

Thou would’st not cast thy money to the ground;

Or, if thou did’st, perchance it might be found

By one who, schooled in poverty’s harsh round,

Knew not repletion.

But thy time lost, is lost to all and thee;

Swiftly ’tis added to eternity,

And for it answerable thou must be;

So have a care.

Gather thy moments, lest they swell to hours;

Stir up thy youthful and still dormant powers;

Now only canst thou plant Heaven’s fadeless flowers,

Therefore, beware.

III

The Tears of Jesus

“He saw the city and wept over it.” He wept—wept aloud (there had been only silent tears at Bethany, for the two Greek words imply this distinction)—He wept aloud as the city of Jerusalem burst on His sight. The spot has been identified by modern travellers, where a turn in the path brings into view the whole city. “There stood before Him the City of ten thousand memories, with the morning sunlight blazing on the marble pinnacles and gilded roofs of the Temple buildings”; and as He gazed, all the pity within Him over-mastered His human spirit, and He broke into a passion of lamentation, at the sight of the city, which it was too late for Him—the Deliverer—to save; at the thought of the ruin of the nation, which He—the King—had come to rule. “If thou hadst known—Oh! that thou hadst known—the things that belong unto thy peace!” As if He had said, “Thou art called Jerusalem, which means ‘They shall see peace.’ Oh that thou wert Jerusalem in truth and hadst known the things that make for thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.”

The Son of God in tears

The Angels wondering see:

Hast thou no wonder, O my soul?

He shed those tears for thee!

He wept that we might weep,

Might weep our sin and shame,

He wept to shew His love for us,

And bid us love the same.

Then tender be our hearts,

Our eyes in sorrow dim,

Till every tear from every eye

Is wiped away by Him! 1 [Note: H. F. Lyte, Poems, 82.]

There is no more moving sight than a strong man in tears. Only the strong can truly weep. Tears are then the overflow of the heart. They come when words are powerless; they go where deeds cannot follow. They are the speech of souls past speaking. 2 [Note: R. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 52.]

1. It was not for Himself that He wept. The Saviour quite forgot Himself. Conscious as He was, perfectly conscious, of the terrible suffering and shame which awaited Him, He thought not of it; His whole soul was taken up with the city which lay before Him, glittering in the brilliant light of early morning. The tide of sorrow and regret which that sight set a-flowing submerged all other feelings for the moment. It is proper to man that only one very strong emotion can find room within his breast at the same moment; and our Lord was man, true man, made like unto us in all points, sin alone excepted. So He forgot for the moment all about Himself; His heart went out to the city which lay before Him, and He wept over it.

He measured the worth, or rather He estimated the worthlessness, of those greetings which greeted Him now. He knew that all this joy, this jubilant burst, as it seemed, of a people’s gladness, was but as fire among straw, which blazes up for an instant, and then as quickly expires, leaving nothing but a handful of black ashes behind it. He knew that of this giddy thoughtless multitude, many who now cried, “Hosanna; blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,” would, before one short week was ended, join their voices with the voices of them who exclaimed, “Crucify him, crucify him; we have no king but Cæsar”; and He wept, not for Himself, but for them, for the doom which they were preparing for their city, for their children, for themselves.

The contrast was, indeed, terrible between the Jerusalem that rose before Christ in all its beauty, glory, and security, and the Jerusalem which He saw in vision dimly rising on the sky, with the camp of the enemy round about it on every side, hugging it closer and closer in deadly embrace, and the very “stockade” which the Roman Legions raised around it; then, another scene in the shifting panorama, and the city laid with the ground, and the gory bodies of her children among her ruins; and yet another scene: the silence and desolateness of death by the Hand of God—not one stone left upon another! We know only too well how literally this vision has become reality; and yet, though uttered as prophecy by Christ, and its reason so clearly stated, Israel to this day knows not the things which belong unto its peace, and the upturned scattered stones of its dispersion are crying out in testimony against it. But to this day, also, do the tears of Christ plead with the Church on Israel’s behalf, and His words bear within them precious seed of promise. 1 [Note: Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, ii. 369.]

2. He wept over the doom of the impenitent city that He loved. He foresaw the hour when the Roman army would level its walls, destroy its Temple, and scatter its people through all lands; when the spot that had been so long known as the glory of Judæa should be recognized only by its ruins. And to Christ there must have been something profoundly sad in that prospect. For ages Jerusalem had been the home of truth and the temple of the Eternal. For ages its people had been the solitary worshippers and witnesses to the true Lord of men. And the thought that a nation called and chosen of old, a nation whose forefathers had been true to God through perils and captivities, should fall from its high standing through falseness to its Lord, and, shorn of its ancient glory, should wander through the world, crowned with mockery, misery, and scorn, might well fill the heart of the compassionate Christ with sorrow. But yet we cannot suppose that the downfall of Jerusalem and the scattering of its people were the chief objects of His pity. It was the men themselves—the men of Jerusalem, who, by the rejection of God’s messengers, and of Himself, the greatest of all, were bringing down those calamities—that awakened His compassion. He saw other temples than Solomon’s falling into ruin—the temples of the souls that had spurned His voice; and the ruin of those spirits moved Him to tears.

3. He knew that this dreadful doom might have been averted. There were things which belonged to Jerusalem’s peace, and which would have secured it, if only she would have known them. They were things which He had brought with Him. The guilty city, the murderess of the prophets, she that had been a provocation almost from her first day until now, might have washed her and made her clean from all that blood and from all that filthiness; she might have become, not in name only, but in deed, “the city of peace,” if only she would have consented first to be “the city of righteousness,” to receive aright Him who had come, “meek and having salvation,” and bringing near to her the things of her everlasting peace. There was no dignity, there was no glory, that might not have been hers. She might have been a name and a praise in all the earth. From that mountain of the Lord’s house the streams of healing, the waters of the river of life, might have gone forth for the healing of all the bitter waters of the world. But no; she chose rather to be herself the bitterest fountain of all. As she had refused in the times past to hear God’s servants, so now she refused to hear His Son, stopped her ears like the deaf adder, made her heart hard as adamant that she might not hear Him.

4. But He knew that His bitter tears were unavailing now. The desolation of the beloved city was a catastrophe that even the prevailing work of His redemption was powerless to avert. “Now they are hid from thine eyes.” This is a deliverance which lies beyond the limit even of the salvation which Christ is to accomplish. “Thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” All the opportunities afforded by the Divine forbearance to those who slew the prophets, who stoned the messengers, and who were about to kill the heir, and culminating in this day of Messiah’s unmistakable claim upon the allegiance of God’s people, had passed unheeded and unused. Now, once and for all, the things that belong to peace are hidden. Jerusalem Christ cannot save. Its destruction He cannot turn away. Therefore, He breaks forth into a passionate lament, like Rachel weeping for her children—“And when he drew nigh, he beheld the city, and wept over it.”

Jerusalem is the head and heart of the nation, the seat of the religious power in which Israel is personified. Why then must this power be blind and obstinate, angry and offended? Why should these high priests, elders, masters of the Law and guardians of the traditions, these leaders of the chosen people, fail to understand what the simple, the poor, the humble, the despised have comprehended? Why do their minds blaspheme while the minds of the people welcome with acclamations the Chosen One of God? Such thoughts overwhelmed and distracted the soul of Jesus. There is still time for them to acknowledge Him; they can still proclaim Him Messiah, and save Israel, to bestow upon it the peace of God. The unutterable anguish of Jesus is not for His own fate, to that He is resigned; it is the fate of His people and of the city which is on the point of demanding His execution; and this blindness will let loose upon Israel nameless calamities. The hierarchy, which despises the true Messiah, will be carried away by its false patriotism into every excess and every frenzy. It will endeavour in vain to control the people in their feverish impatience for deliverance. The Zealots will provoke implacable warfare, and, in grasping after empty glory and empty liberty, their fanaticism will be the unconscious instrument of the vengeance of God. Jesus knew it; the future was before His eyes; He saw Jerusalem besieged, invested, laid waste with fire and sword, her children slaughtered, and her houses, her monuments, her palaces, her Temple itself levelled with the ground. 1 [Note: Father Didon, Jesus Christ, ii. 175.]

5. And yet, in spite of all, He persisted in His endeavours to reclaim the lost. He threw Himself into the work of rousing and alarming Jerusalem, as though its future might instantly be transformed. From the Mount of Olives He descended straightway to the Temple, and the last week of His life was spent in daily intercourse with its chief priests. How vain, as it then appeared, were all His words! How little availed His sternest tones to stir the slumberous pulses of His time! How unmoved (save by a bitter and personal animosity) were the leaders and teachers to whom He spoke! And when that scornful indifference on their part was exchanged at last for a distinctive enmity, with what needless prodigality, as doubtless it seemed even to some of His own disciples, He flung away His life! Flung it away? Yes, but only how soon and how triumphantly to take it again! The defeat of Golgotha meant the victory of the Resurrection. The failure of the cross was the triumph of the Crucified; and, though by living and preaching He could not conquer the indifference or awaken the apathy of Israel, by dying and rising again He did. It was the chief priests who amid the anguish of Calvary were the most scornful spectators and the most relentless foes. It was “a great company of the chief priests,” who, on the day of Pentecost, scarce fifty days after that dark and bitter Friday, “were obedient unto the faith.” And thus the tide was turned, and though Jerusalem was not rescued from the vandal hordes of Titus, Jerusalem and Judæa alike became the home and the cradle of the infant Church.

The Impenitent City

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