Luke 19:41-44--Jesus Weeps over Jerusalem

Luke 19:41-44
English Standard Version
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Jesus Weeps over Jerusalem
41 And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side 44 and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

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I made reference to much of this in the last journal article.  What is seen as a time of joyous proclamation to us is a time of mourning and sadness for Jesus.  This ties in with the lesson from the fig tree that we'll see in Luke 21.  The people appear to be responding correctly and look like they have life and should be bearing fruit, but the Lord knows that their heart is dead and that they are fruitless and that this means judgment is coming up on them.  Even in the midst of knowing what was coming, it was not for Himself that Jesus was grieving, but the pain He felt was for the Jews that they had rejected Him, even though it was all part of the plan.

This specific prophecy was fulfilled in 70 AD when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans.  They tore down every brick because they heard that the Jews had used gold for the mortar between their bricks and they wanted to take every little bit of gold that was there.  Jesus says that the reason this will happen though is because they were not ready at the time of visitation, even though they had all the prophecies to tell them to be ready (and some very specific ones to tell them exactly when the Messiah would be "cut off" (His crucifixion), so they could infer when He would be coming like Simeon and Anna did at the beginning of the gospel of Luke).  Again, we'll see much of this explained by Jesus using the symbolism of the fig tree, which represented the nation of Israel, but we should not miss that it also is going to represent a lot of us when Jesus comes back the second time.  We too should be ready for Him to come at any time, and many of us who have a form of godliness are really spiritually dead and there will be an even greater condemnation and judgment to come upon those who are not ready in the day of His appearing, for at the time of His appear, it will be the time for the living and the dead to be judged and those outside of Christ will not be able to enter the kingdom of God and will instead enter into eternal judgment, hellfire and damnation.