Jan 7, 2023
“Jesus wept.” John 11:35
Why did Jesus weep? In this passage, the shortest one in all of the Bible, Jesus wept as He saw the pain and heard the mourners’ crying over Lazarus’s death. Did Jesus let His emotions get the best of Him? Why would Jesus weep about Lazarus’s death when He knew He would soon raise him from the dead?
“And when he came near, he beheld the city and wept over it.” Luke 19:41, KJV
We are told that Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem. Jesus knew that He was going to be crucified for the sins of the people soon enough. Why did Jesus weep? Initially, it is not because He knew that Lazarus was dead, for He knew that Lazarus would soon be restored to life. Did He simply get emotional hearing Lazarus’s sisters and friends crying out? In the second instance, did He weep because of the agony set before Him as He came to the close of His earthly ministry? Did He weep out of fear of the pain and suffering He was about to endure?
May I suggest to you that Jesus wept over Lazarus and the city of Jerusalem, not because He was about to suffer and die soon as a result of being rejected. He cried because they, the nation of Israel and the Jewish people, would suffer and die in mass in the not-so-distant future. Jesus knew that Titus would destroy Jerusalem in 70 AD. He looked ahead and saw the terrible consequences that would befall this stubborn and rebellious people. He wept for their suffering in this life and the suffering that awaited them in the next.
Israel historically killed the prophets and was soon to kill the Son of God, their long-awaited Messiah. As a consequence, they would be punished and scattered across various lands, as they had been in the past. This marked their third major exile. From 70 AD until Israel was reestablished in 1948, the Jewish people had no homeland of their own. God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob seemed lost forever for nearly two thousand years. Jesus used this story to show them what their future would hold since they would not accept Him.
“Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise. But last of all, he set unto them his son, saying, they will reverence my son, but when the husbandman saw the son, they said among themselves, this is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. When the Lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen? They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons. Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes? Therefore, say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. Matthew 21:36-43.
Is there any doubt about why Jesus wept over them? God’s preferred plans for them did not envision taking the Kingdom away from them. He wanted to bless them continuously. Taking the kingdom from them and giving it to other nations, producing the fruit of the kingdom, was not His desire for Israel. Israel’s stubborn and wicked behavior left Him no other choice. This broke God’s heart and caused His anger and fury to surface.
Jesus wept because the glory had already departed (Ichabod) many years earlier. Now, the glory of God, present in Jesus Christ, has returned but will depart again because of their rejection of Him. Jesus wept, knowing that this truth meant the glory of God would soon leave again. You might remember the day the Ark of the Covenant was taken captive by the Philistines. On that very day, Phinehas’s son, a priest at Shiloh, had a son born. The mother died when she heard that her husband and Eli, her father-in-law, had died. Before she died, she named her son Ichabod, for the glory of Israel had departed when the Ark was taken. Jesus wept when He saw the city, knowing that the glory of God still had no place in Jerusalem.
I believe that Jesus sees America, which, like Israel, was dedicated to Him, and He weeps. He knows the judgment that is coming on our nation, like every nation that once knew Him and subsequently forsook Him. He knows our fate. Like the children of Israel before us, we, too, “kill” prophets of God who say things we don’t like or disagree with. “Christians” today hate the prophetic voice of God telling them to repent from their many sins or God will damn them. This is precisely why Israel killed their prophets. Those prophets said to them that they must repent or else they would be destroyed. In the USA, at this moment in time, we do not “kill” by actual murder, but by slander, criticism, false witness, or silence. We have other ways to silence the prophetic voice. Christians don’t want to be told that they must stop sinning or face the consequences, including eternal death. They have accumulated for themselves teachers who will tell them what they want to hear.
What do they want to hear? They want to hear about God’s grand plans for their lives. They want to know how God will bless them and reward them with wealth, prosperity, and health even if they never bother to repent of any of their sins. They want to be told that they have nothing at all to worry about, that God loves them unconditionally. There is an overabundance of false prophets, like in the days of the major prophets of Israel, telling Christians that they are forever secure and that nothing can separate them from the unconditional love of God. They love lies, not the truth. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” 2 Timothy 4:3-4.
Jesus weeps because He sees our national sins like the slaughter of over 62 million innocent babies. Jesus weeps because we reject Him in our government and our politics. Jesus weeps because of our willingness to bless what He hates, and that includes gay marriage and gender fluidity, and our abuse of our children. Jesus weeps over our sins that include violations of all the commandments of God, such as fornication, homosexuality, adultery, lying, theft, slander, gossip, covetousness, greed, and the love of money. Our nation and most of its leaders have purposefully forgotten God and replaced His infallible word with the fallible word of ungodly men and women.
Think of all the evil in the world today and imagine how much our Lord still weeps. Why does Jesus weep for us? Not because His pain is so acute, but because He knows what awaits us. He foresees all our suffering and death (here and hereafter), and He weeps. Jesus prays, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” But it is not that we don’t know, because we hold (suppress) the truth in unrighteousness, Romans 1. We know that we have refused the truth of God. It’s that we really don’t understand (or know) the consequences of an eternity in hell. That is why Jesus said, “they know not what they do.” But His intercession and His weeping will not prevent the damnation of God that is coming unless we repent of our many sins.
Jesus weeps because so very few people believe Him and trust Him. He freely offers us everlasting life, but most choose their self-centered way and reap eternal death. They are unwilling to repent of their sins.
All genuine children of God should be weeping with Him. When we consider the future of the mass of humanity in these final days, it will be said that God’s children wept.
