In This Thy Day
*’ Ajid when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over
Luke xix. 41.
MMEDIATELY before his passion, the Lord had retired for a time with his disciples beyond Jordan. But as the period of his appointed baptism approached, he was straitened and stirred by his desire to finish the work. He arose and set his face steadfastly toward Jerusalem. On the way he taught precious lessons, and performed merciful cures, but he tarried nowhere long. His heart was full of his great purpose, as the moment approached for its fulfilment. He took the twelve aside by the way, and told them plainly of his approaching death. But the message was so great, that, though spoken in the clearest terms, they lacked capacity to take it in. They understood him not. As they passed Jericho, the two blind beggars were healed; and Zaccheus, the chief publican, was visited and won.
On the way between Jericho and the eastern slope of
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Olivet, the Master taught his little class yet another feature of the kingdom under the figure of the ten pounds intrusted to the ten servants. The nobleman left his home to obtain from the supreme power of the world the sovereignty of his native country. When he returned with kingly power, he rewarded the loyal and punished the faithless. Shadowing forth his own return in power, the Lord in the person of that earthly potentate said, “But those mine enemies, who would not that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay them before me.”
“And luhen he had thus spoken, he went before, ascending lip to Jerusalemy — After predicting his second coming in glory to judge the world, he hastened onward to Jerusalem, that he might be judged, condemned, and crucified by wicked men. What union of honour and shame, of power and weakness, of mortality as man and life eternal as God over all!
“Ajid zvhen he was come near, he beheld the city, and zvept over it!’ — On the same spot David stood and looked down on Jerusalem, and wept (2 Sam. xv. 30). David was a type of Christ. His weeping was in many aspects the opposite of Christ’s, as a type is the reverse of its lesson. David was ascending the hill; Jesus was descending. David was hastening out of Jerusalem to save his life; Jesus was hastening into Jerusalem in order to lay his life down. David wept for himself, because he had lost a crown he once wore; Jesus wept for others, because they refused a crown and kingdom in their offer.
Mark then the fact, for it is significant, that the ground which drank in the falHng tears from David’s cheeks on the day of his dethronement, was wet with tears from the eyes of David’s Lord on the day when he had been accepted King of Israel by the acclaim of assembled thousands.
After his great humiliation, David’s tears were dried, and he returned to Jerusalem triumphant — returned, like the nobleman in the parable, to reward those who had been faithful to his government; and to render a reward also to those men who had said, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” In like manner, the Messiah, after these tears, and the crown of thorns and the cross, will return to reign and to judge.
The Messiah was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. His life was one long suffering; but in it there are two marks — two monuments set up to designate the places where he wept. Two Bochim pillars stand on the edge of his path over this life. Both the spots were on the Mount of Olives: one on the western slope and one on the eastern; one in sight of Jerusalem, and the other at Bethany, with the mountain-ridge between. A strange history has that hill: the earth on either side of its base was wet with the Redeemer’s tears; while the olive - yard of Gethsemane was the scene of his bloody sweat.
These two recorded weepings of the Lord Jesus were a balanced pair in their moral meaning, as well as in their physical position. The one was a melting in sympathy with human suffcrlnfr; the other an a^ony on account of human sin. He wept at Bethany because his friends suffered; he wept at OHvet because his adversaries were noting in the pleasures of sin.
The two weepings are recorded by two completely distinct words. The term employed to express the weeping at Bethany indicates tears only. It was a silent flood. The term in this text means a crying; that physical effect of human sorrow when it reaches its highest point — a combination of flowing tears and strong cries. It is not often that a man of mature age, if he enjoys mental and physical health, is seen shedding tears; but it is still more seldom that a man of mature age bursts out into that peculiar agony which rends his frame with audible sobs. This seems to have been the kind of grief into which the Redeemer had fallen on that spring evening on the edge of Olivet which looked towards the setting sun.
The difference between the two weepings seems to be like the difference between a soft spring shower, and the rain that strikes the earth in heavy, quick drops, when the clouds are riven with lightning, and the mountains are echoing with the thunder’s roar. How different the moral meaning of these two rainings on the earth. For the suffering of the two saved sisters, Jesus wept the soft, tender, silent tears of sympathizing love: over the crowd of self-pleasers, Christ-crucifiers, that filled Jerusalem when Jerusalem was filling up the measure of her sins, Jesus wept those hot, burning drops, which are
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shaken fitfully from a human face, when the mourner’s whole frame is rending, and convulsive cries are breaking unbidden from his lips.
David had two weepings as well as Jesus. Not that the king of Israel wept only twice in his life, or during his reign; for we know that sometimes he made his bed to swim with his tears: but in his history two examples stand out on record, like monumental pillars, near the path on which he trod. One of these, as we have already seen, was on the western slope of Olivet, at the spot where Jesus long afterwards wept; the other was far eastward of that mountain, when his rebellious but well-beloved son was dead. In that sorrow David stands in clear contrast to his Lord. He wept in weakness, because he could not save his son’s life by laying down his own.
That weakness does not adhere to our King. The Heir of David’s throne sheds no such feeble tears. He is mighty to save. He gloriously accomplished what David fondly and despairingly wished he had been able to do. When he wept over Jerusalem, he did not weep in weakness, as one that could not save: he wept in tenderness, as knowing that the perishing would not accept salvation at his hands. In bringing many sons unto glory, the Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffering. By dying, he destroyed death, and him who had its power. He did the very thing which his type lamented his inability to do: he gave his life a ransom for many.” He bare our sins in his own
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body on the tree:” “He died, the just for the unjust;” he died that we might live.
The lamentation of David was on this wise: Alas! I cannot give my life to atone for and recall my prodigal son; and though I gave my life, it would not avail. The lamentation of the Son of God is, that the prodigal, when atonement is made, and righteousness wrought, and pardon won, shuts his eyes against the light, and will not accept the salvation that is pressed to his heart.
What David the father could not do, in that he was weak through the flesh — mere humanity — Jesus Christ the Son did, by his own power and goodness, as God over all. Our help is laid on one that is mighty.
We have had fathers of our flesh who loved us, who would have given their own life for ours, who wept when they could not ward ofl” the blow from our head by laying their own beneath it. Oh, if we had known no other help! They could not save: they must stand and see us sink. But our help is on One that is mighty. “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.”
Why he wept: “Saying, If thou hadst know it eve7i thoUy at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.” — It is interesting and instructive to notice here, how the Lord regards men both in their corporate and their individual capacities. He made us, and he knows what is in man. He knows that each immortal stands on his own feet, and must meet with God alone, as far as regards all the rest of humanity. But he knows and recognizes, also, that we are made with social instincts and faculties; that we cannot exercise the functions of our nature without society; and that we are all affected deeply by our intercourse with others, both as regards our time and our eternity. He who at one time exclaims, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! “or,” O Chorazin! “” O Bethsaida! “at another time brings the sword of the Spirit to the very breast of an individual man, and singling him out from all the world, runs it through his joints and marrow. ‘’Simon, son of’ Jonas, lovest thou me y” “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me t” Each in turn; each in its own place. Now the community is addressed, and now the person. In one aspect, each man stands or falls for himself alone; in another aspect, we grasp each other, and like the victims of a shipwreck, either help to sink or help to save one another.
It is in the latter aspect that the Lord regarded the inhabitants of Jerusalem, as he looked on them across the glen from the neighbouring mountain’s brow. They were brethren in iniquity. Hand was joining in hand in preparation for the highest crime ever done in the universe. They were leagued in a dark covenant to crucify the Son of God. Priest was stirring up people; people were preparing to support priest. Native population was preparing to coerce foreign ruler; foreign ruler to falter and give way to the coercion of a mob. They were linked together as one man: “Let us break his bands asunder, and cast away his cords:” “We will not have this man to reign over us:” “This is the heir; come let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.”
Looking down on Jerusalem, and making great lamentation over it, I find the ground of his grief was, not that they had sinned, and so brought on themselves condemnation. In that there was nothing peculiar to Jerusalem. Here they were in the same state as all the world. For that, though the loss was great, a remedy was ready. This Redeemer, travelling in the greatness of his strength, would not weep because men needed redemption. What makes him weep is, that they will not accept it at his hands. There was a weeping for the Fall; but it is past. There was a weeping in heaven when sin began; but the covenant dried up those tears. The Son interposed: “Save from going down to the pit, for I have found a ransom.” The atonement is sufficient for a world. There needs no weeping now over the fall. One woe is past; but, lo! another cometh. The lost will not accept the Saviour; and again he weeps. It is not. Oh, if thou hadst never fallen! but, If thou hadst known the redemption that I bring.
This, under the covenant of grace, is the turning-point with us all. There is condemnation over all the world, as long as the world meets God on its own work; but “there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”
hi this thy day’.’ — Jerusalem had a day. Every community and every person has a day — a day of mercy. If in that day the lost shall turn, they will get life in the
Lord. But if they allow their day to pass, there remaineth only darkness — a fearful looking for of judgment.
“The things which belo7ig unto thy peace!’ — The things which God had fixed in the eternal covenant, and revealed in the fulness of time, were things that Jerusalem did not know. Like the way-side, hard-trodden ground, they did not open their hearts to take in the seed of the word. If the things had been harsh and forbidding, we might have understood their distaste; but the things concerned their own peace. Peace through pardon; peace from God; peace with God. Strange, that men should turn away from that winsome sight!
Merchants know the state of the markets, capitalists know how it goes with shares, — the things which belong to their gains; but how many know not the things that belong to their peace!
“Bnt they are hid from thine eyes!’ —” The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.” “Hid!’ The tender mercies of God held out in free offer, and pressed, how come they to be hid .-* Hid, as sometimes the sky and the sun are hid by thick exhalations that rise from the gross earth. “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts.” This cloud comes up and covers the great things of God — blots out from the bhnded transgressor the lights set high in heaven, to illuminate a darkened world and lead to a happy home.
Instead of carrying further the exposition of the text in its original application, I shall now endeavour to apply its lesson to our own time and place. It was meant to be so transferred. The word of the Lord remains for us after the holy men who wrote it have gone to their rest. This word “liveth and abidcth for ever.”
We have here a city, and it is a city of many solemnities. This is our Jerusalem. Many precious things are embalmed, like bits of amber, in its somewhat hard and rugged history. Especially, here the Reformation had its dwelling in its youth. Here its ministers faithfully preached, and its martyrs meekly fell. Edinburgh is one of the sacred places for the Protestants of Scotland, and of the world. It is a city that has been lifted up to heaven by its privileges: if it fall by its sins, it will be more crushed than other sinful cities, because it falls from a greater height. Even in our own days the Lord hath done great things for us here, whereof we are glad.
If the same Jesus should stand on the hill that overlooks our city from the east and look on its busy multitudes, what might his emotions be.’’ He is “the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever;” and if we be like the Jerusalem he then gazed upon, he would weep. In the conflict of emotions which would rise in the breast of the Son of man, would the “Father, I thank thee,” or, “Oh! if thou hadst known!” be the prevailing exclamation t
Those eyes that were blinded with tears, are the same that John saw as a flame of fire. Those eyes are over all the earth, and in the secrets of every heart. It is because of what he, as omniscient, sees in men, that he weeps as Mediator for and with them. He penetrates into the dark places of the city. He ranges through the wretched streets, and hears the jubilee of the wicked ones in their midnight orgies. He looks within the low, dark, cold dwellings, where men and women may lie on the floor by night, but can hardly stand erect by day. He sees the unnatural parents who starve their little ones, that they may feed their own lusts. He sees the thoughtless youth who deserts in poverty the mother who bore him. He sees the fiery appetites of the intemperate, and the enticements spread out to allure the victim into the net. The confused hum of a noisy and noisome pauperism is articulate in his ear, and he traces the threads of the tangled web to their source and cause.
Lifting his eyes from this quarter of the city and fixing them upon another, he beholds a gay fluttering throng pressing forward, and trampling on each other, chasing a phantom that continually recedes and baffles them. The very eye-balls of the chasers seem ready to start in the eagerness of the race; and while they all follow pleasure, pain is stamped on every brow. “Lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” And again, as he looks on the city, he weeps.
But are there not many companies in this city who are called by his name, and make their appeal to his Word y Surely he will be well pleased when his eye rests on these. True, wherever he sees a faithful witness, and a humble disciple, with that man he will dwell. From the high heaven he will descend, and make his abode with the man who accepts him as his Lord and Saviour. But wherever he sees profession without practice — wherever he sees a zeal for God that twines around uncharitableness to men — wherever he sees the new name wedded to the old nature, — he weeps over the unequal yoking.
Lord, is it I y — Lord, is it I y Oh! if every man were not only zealous for public faithfulness, but jealous over himself with a godly jealousy! — if every man should so receive an indwelling Christ, that wrath and malice and evil-speaking should be driven away at his presence, the Lord would look down on our beautiful city as his garden, and enter it to taste his pleasant fruit. He would wipe his tears away, and rejoice over us with singing.
“In this thy day.” Thy day! If when the sun sets in the west we were not sure whether he would rise on the morrow, oh what an evening it would be! ONE day! Thy day’’! How precious! But if the day is allowed to pass, and the work of the day not done, how terrible the sunset! Jerusalem had her day; the day was passing, — it was past. Jerusalem did not know her day, and did not notice that it had passed. Jerusalem, with her day done, was laughing: Jesus, looking on lost Jerusalem, wept.
This is not of private interpretation, — it is written for our sakes. Our city has a day; ourselves have a day. Throughout this day it is peace — your peace — pressing
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like the air around us. The night cometh, when that light of life is gone. Men mistake the meaning of Emmanuel’s tenderness. It is not tenderness to sin. Men are tender to their own sin, treating it as a spoiled child, — blaming it in words, but fondling it all the while; and they think that Christ will turn out such an one as themselves. His grief does not indicate a holding back, a hesitating to cast away the wicked. The earnestness with which the Redeemer strove to snatch the brand from the burning, shows that there is a burning for the brand. The tears he shed over Jerusalem do not prove that he will falter and hesitate to lay her even with the ground when her day is done: if he had thought that Jerusalem might escape in her sin, he would not have wept to see her sinning. No preachers are so terrible as the Redeemer’s tears. People speak of some ministers as harsh because they say that the wicked shall be turned into hell. Ah! the sternest preacher is soft compared with this weeping of Christ. You despise the weakness that weeps over an unreal woe. Would you write this weeper down as a fool, making an ado where there is no danger y This same Jesus will not weep when he says to them on his left hand, “Depart from me;” but he weeps to-day over those who neglect his salvation, if so be that by this last and strongest drawing he might draw the lost from the pit.
The lesson that presents itself at the close, is the lesson that springs out of almost every text, — the lesson,
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as fresh and precious now as when it was first articulated by the tongues of men, — the lesson that Jesus, who bought redemption with his own blood, who has redemption plenteous treasured in the eternal covenant — pardon, instant and free and complete for ever — that he, the Author and Possessor and Giver of eternal redemption to the lost, rejoices when they accept his gift, and weeps over them when they neglect it!