By Pastor Dave Farmer
2nd Article in series. This day is filled with contrasts. The people are joyous, the Pharisees are angry, and Jesus is sad. His heart just aches. The people speak in ignorance, the Pharisees speak in defiance, Jesus speaks with calm assurance in truth and doctrine. The people's hope was deliverance from Rome. The Pharisees hope was to be delivered from Jesus. The Prince of Peace's hope was to deliver them all from their sins; from the carnal expectation of the people and the blind arrogance of the Pharisees.
It has always been hard for me to deliver a message on Palm Sunday that is celebratory. I don't want to be a wet blanket, but for me, Palm Sunday marks the beginning of my Lord Jesus Christ's suffering. This is a day of loneliness and great sadness for Him. Can you be lonely in a crowd? Yes! Jesus was the only one that day who realized that He has come to Jerusalem to suffer and die. There is no one who understands His mission! He is entirely alone. There is not one person in the crowd, among the disciples, and even in His family, that has the same divine perspective as the Lord.
His mission and the unfolding events of this week are outlined in the Old Testament Scriptures. If you knew your Bible, you would understand our Lord Jesus Christ's mission. Instead of joining the crowd in their euphoric mood, you may have wanted to be in prayer for the Lord that He would remain faithful and strong and undeterred from following the Father's plan. He is the only savior. There is no other way of salvation. If He fails, we all fall. We carry upon our shoulders a condemnation that is impossible for us to lift. We are hemmed in by a spiritual death that we cannot escape. So our hope is in the Lord who will bear our burden to Golgotha and be judged in our place. He will bear on His shoulders our sins. He will lift our curse. He is our way of escape. Hallelujah! What a savior!
Yet, the real killjoys are dogging our Lord's footsteps. They seem to appear at every party and every parade. They are full of arrogance and approach the Lord with insolent boldness!
[39] Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.”
The Pharisee's believed that the people were incorrect in their view of Jesus. They were hailing Him as the Messiah. This He was not! So a reprimand was called for. I wonder why they didn't censure the people? So they ordered 2 Jesus to quiet the crowd and quit their blasphemy.
[40] But Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these [the people] become silent, [then] the stones will cry out!” 2
Jesus' answer must have surprised them for they had no reply. He was emphatic. He answered them in this manner, "if there is ever a time in history when there is no testimony about Him, then inanimate matter will declare the truth." If such a circumstance ever did occur, the very stones would speak.
All too often, when we hear great speeches on evangelizing the world, that we draw a false conclusion. We think about how much God needs us. We are God's hands and if we do not use our hands for the glory of the Lord then, God's hands will be tied. It is interesting that Jesus does not hold that view.
The Church of Jesus Christ has the responsibility to take the Gospel to the World (Acts 1:8). We are all ambassadors of the gospel (2 Corinthians 5:20). This is our mission as Christians. As we survey the mission field (the world) we see how great the need and how so few are working in it. It is easy to conclude that we must do more or the work will fail to be accomplished. Jesus did not hold that view.
He was fully orientated to the Grace of God and grace teaches us that everything is dependent upon God. We need God, He doesn't need us to accomplish His will, plan, and purpose. This is backward thinking. We have been given a great privilege, honor, and responsibility to be His witnesses. Our motivation is out of a love for Him that we seek to fulfill His will not through self-promoting impulses or emotional desperation. What did Jesus believe?
The word of the Lord abides forever and the message will be declared with or without us. It will be to our advantage to share in the work of the Lord, to partner with Him in reaching the lost, but it never depends on us. It is arrogance to think so.
I am reminded of this principle in the story of Moses during his stay among the Midianites and while pasturing the sheep at the foot of Mt. Horeb. There was no one to witness to Him. There was no missionary. Just a bush, a burning bush. And it spoke! A bush that spoke, imagine that!
Probably the funniest story in the Bible is about Balaam in Numbers 22. Balaam wanted to pronounce a curse on the people of Israel and cash in on his prophetic gift. King Balak of Moab was going to pay him a lot of money to curse Israel. God does not want Balaam to do this. As Balaam heads to the mountain top that would overlook the Israelite camp, his faithful and beloved donkey would resist him and turn off the path. Balaam would get so mad that he would begin beating the animal with a stick. What Balaam couldn't see is that on the road there stood the Angel of the Lord with his sword in his hand ready to stop Balaam. Stop or I will chop.
The animal turned from the path in order to protect him and received a berating and a beating for it. Eventually, the third time this happened, when the donkey was hit with the stick, she began to talk. Can you picture that? The donkey began to counsel Balaam. In the absence of a witness and the lack of anyone to stop Balaam, the animal spoke. What is the truth?
God's hands are not tied to our hands. He does not need us, we need Him. In fact, if God's plan ever depended on us, it would fail. A plan is no stronger than it's weakest link, therefore the plan would indeed fail because we are the weak link. This idea that God needs us at any point is the devil's lie. It is a view of ourselves that will inevitably leads us down a path of pain and discipline. Pride comes before a fall says the Lord. Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before stumbling. [Proverbs 16:18 ]
Our Lord's point was this, the truth of God cannot be silenced. The Pharisees got the message, so they headed back to Jerusalem to plot His death.
The road to Jerusalem from Bethany goes around the Mt. of Olives. As the road rises and turns Jerusalem comes into view. It is at this point something unexpected comes about. Jesus began weeping 4.
[41] When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and [began weeping] 4 over it,
Jesus' tears was not because they didn't like Him, like the tears of a child who has been made fun of, or a lover who has been jilted . It ran deeper than hurt feelings. His sadness was because He saw the consequence of their rejection and the awful punishment ahead, both in time and eternity. The people who are rejoicing and the Pharisees who are retreating have one thing in common. They are sinners who need a savior. Jesus' mission was to provide the remedy for their spiritual condition. There is only one way of escape from eternal judgment and when you reject Christ you turn away from the only solution.
[18] “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. [John 3:18 ]
[36] “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” [John 3:36]
[42] saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace [with God]! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.
The Jews have no excuse. They have the Scripture, they have the prophets, they had the Law and the Covenants, the temple and the sacrifices, and they had the ministry of Jesus Christ for three and half years (Romans 9:4). What broke the Lord's heart? They had rejected the truth and when you do, the truth becomes hidden from your eyes.
Mankind and their infernal excuses. I don't need a savior. I am going to Heaven because I am a good person. I am a Jew. I keep the Law of Moses. It is sad when people think they are good enough to go to Heaven and rely on everything but trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ who is the only way to Heaven.
[43] “For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side,
These words are prophetic. They will be fulfilled in A.D.70 when the Roman Army of Titus besieges the city. Jerusalem will fall and it's people scattered all over the world. Our Lord foresaw this and He wept.
[44] and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”.
The covenant that God made with Israel contains the Laws of Discipline 5. These are a series of five laws that are set in motion when the nation departs from God. They are progressive. The fourth cycle of disciple occurred in 63 B.C when the Jews came under Roman law. The nation did not repent. It did not turn back to God. The religious establishment of Israel, the Pharisees, Sadducees, the Scribes and Priests, continued to lead the people away from God (This will be crystal clear in our next studies). The warnings of the last cycle were ignored. Jesus was predicting the fifth cycle of discipline. This is when the nation losses it's freedom and national sovereignty.
It occurred in 721 BC when the Assyrians destroyed the Northern Kingdom smashing the capitol city of Samaria. It happened again in 586 BC when the Babylonians destroyed the Southern Kingdom. They sacked, burned, and carried many Jews into slavery. Now for a third time the fifth cycle of discipline would fall upon them. Jesus says that the reason for this punishment was because they had rejected their Messiah. "The time of their visitation" was Messiah's coming. Since they had rejected Jesus, so God would apply the last cycle of discipline.
I hope this article may help you see why Jesus wept and why this event was not so triumphant as it is often billed.
ENDNOTES:
1 The Pharisees were one of two religious parties in Israel, the other being the Sadducees. They were the scribes and theologians of the that day. They wanted a pure Hebrew way of life. They believed the entire Old Testament as authoritative and about a thousand extra laws they added. They prayed seven times a day. They went to the temple three times a day. They held great authority and power especially those who served on the Sanhedrin.
2 The aorist imperative of epitimao is correctly translated "rebuke" The imperative mood is the mood of command and the preposition "epi" that is prefixed to the verb intensifies the action of the verb," to sternly rebuke the people".
3 "then the stones will cry out" Jesus said. The entire verse is a conditional sentence which has two parts, the IF clause/and the THEN clause. If the first part is true, then the second part will occur. In these kind of sentences, we have the protasis clause [a standing before] "If the people become silent"; followed by the apodosis clause [a giving back] which is the consequence "these stones will cry out". Along with the conditional sentence we have the future active indicative of the verb krazo - to cry. The use of the future tense in this passage is called the gnomic future where the future [which hasn't occurred] is stated with certainty. It says whenever the condition of the protasis exists, you can expect with absolute certainty the condition of the apodosis to occur. If there is ever a time in human history where there is no testimony about Christ from human agency, then inanimate matter will declare the truth.
4 This is the ingressive use of the Aorist which looks at the action as it begins.
5 The five cycles of discipline are found in the reference section of this magazine. Link here