Jesus in this little paragraph warns Jerusalem of its fate, and the reason for it. This is said both to the crowds and to the Pharisees and Scribes - to the people and their leaders. It is almost His last word to the crowds; only one more word will He speak to them: "At that time Jesus said to the crowd, 'Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me?'" (26:55) What a tragic comment on what He said here that was to be.
Jesus makes a simple statement of fact in v. 37. He is not, like a judge in court, passing sentence. It is a lament, not a formal pronouncement of judgment on Jerusalem. Luke recalls that when Jesus caught His first sight of the city on Palm Sunday, it moved Him to tears. We should not forget that this indicates the attitude which underlay the 'Woes.'
His mind ranged over the city's past, its present and its future; under those three general headings we shall consider it.
Matthew's word 'Jerusalem' is written, not in its Greek but in its Aramaic form; a small point, but one of those little clues to the fact, easily overlooked, that Matthew is remembering the actual words Jesus said.
Jesus reflected on Jerusalem's past, first from the human side, and then from the divine side.
i. On the human side - man resisting
Jerusalem had always rejected God's prophets ... and she had not changed. She is about to reject God's Son, as Jesus forecast in His parable of the vineyard. Already the plotters are plotting, the schemers scheming to get rid of Him. 'Killing' is present tense: they are still doing it. They will kill Jesus ... and James ... and Stephen.
'Stoning ...' as they did Zechariah, v. 35, in the very place where Jesus is addressing them, and as they will Stephen. The persistence of sin in the human heart is a tragic thing. David, when he first founded the city, dreamed such dreams for it: it would be a place above all other places on earth where God would be honoured. But it became the place above all other places on earth where He was dishonoured. All our ideals and dreams founder on the stubborn rock of sin in the human heart. Jesus "knew what was in man," as John observed (John 2:25). It was for that reason, he tells us, that Jesus "did not trust Himself to men." It is one of the saddest comments ever made upon our race. Jesus knew that in committing Himself to our redemption He had set His hand to a simply enormous task, altogether beyond human resources.
What He goes on to say reveals the resources did He have in God.
ii. On the divine side - God persisting
Perhaps the most impressive resource He had from God was God's seemingly limitless patience. Patience is a strong virtue; in the end, one of the strongest. Especially when we are young and eager, it seems such a pale virtue in our eyes. But as we grow older, our respect for its power grows; and the more so when it is born of love, especially of such a love as, like God's, "hopes all things."
How God's patience did wait upon His people's response, and how deeply rooted in love His patience was. Our Lord's lament is a window into it.
"How often would I have gathered you, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings."
The phrase 'under her wings' is reminiscent of Old Testament passages like Deut. 32:11, "For the Lord's portion is his people. In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him ... like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions."
Psalm. 17:8, "Keep me as the apple of your
eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings from my enemies."
Psalm. 36:7, "How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low
among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings."
The contrasts in the Lord's lament are staggering when you ponder them: with monotonous regularity Israel resisted God, and with equal regularity God renewed His appeal to her. His patience was not exhausted by her obduracy over a long span of centuries. For how many centuries did God persist? How many times did He say, as He said in Hosea 11:8ƒ, "How can I give you up O Ephraim; how can I surrender you up, O Israel? My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim."
How often indeed God spoke so. As Jesus said the words, He was Himself the Son God had sent, after all those failures! He had taken the last great risk, thrown in His last reserve, holding nothing back. It is the quality of makrothumia (Greek) so often referred to by the apostles: limitless goodwill in the face of endless provocation.
But there is an end to it. When does it come? Not when God's patience runs out, but when our capacity for repentance dies out. (When "the iniquity of the Amorites comes to the full." Gen. 15:16)
There is another thing in what Jesus said too.
"As a hen gathers her chicks ..." Campbell's Morgan's comment on that was, "Here is the coming out in all the simplicity of truth of the great underlying fact of the Motherhood of God, as well as of His Fatherhood." (G. Campbell Morgan, "The Gospel according to Matthew' [Revell] p. 279)
Zeph. 3:17, "The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." That is the picture of a mother comforting her child.
But ... "you would not." The very heart of sin is captured in that "Ye would not."
Says Jesus, "I would ... ye would not."
That was Jerusalem's story; pray God it not be ours.
In v. 38 Jesus says, "Your house is left unto you desolate," present tense.
"Your house" may mean:
i. The Temple: 21:13, "My house shall be
called a house of prayer."
ii. The City: Jer. 12:4, "How long will the land mourn? I will
forsake my house, abandon my inheritance; I will give the one I love
into the hands of her enemies.
iii. The Nation: Ez. 18:31, "Why will you die, O house of
Israel?"
Luke in his Gospel records that only a few days earlier, on Palm Sunday, Jesus had wept over the city, "As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, 'If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace - but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognise the time of God's coming to you.'" (Luke 19:41-44)
Approaching it from the east, from Bethphage and Bethany, your first sight of the city is as you round the shoulder of the Mount of Olives. It is a splendid sight. But that is not how Jesus saw it; He saw it as a heap of smoking ruins - saw its inevitable tomorrow in its today.
He loves us as He loved the city, He grieves over our blindness as He grieved over the city's, and His desire for our salvation, as for the city's, remains undiminished; but not even His love can save us if we will not receive Him. The Lord's lament is the tragedy of rejected love. He is the Lover who would woo, not the burglar who would break in. He will not violate our freedom, though we lose our souls. If He were to violate our freedom, He would destroy our souls. We have been given the tragic gift of freedom.
His lament is reminiscent of David's lament over Absalom: "The king was shaken. He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: 'O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you. O Absalom, my son, my son!' And for the whole army the victory that day was turned into mourning, because on that day the troops heard it said, 'The king is grieving for his son.' The men stole into the city that day as men steal in who are ashamed when they flee from battle." (II Sam. 18:33)
Has the Saviour's grief ever affected us that way?
The key to that lament is the word 'visitation', "the time of God's coming to you." Luke began his gospel by declaring that God had "visited and redeemed His people," and its long central section was designed to lead up to the day when Jerusalem would receive the Royal Visit. When the day did come, the city was not ready for it. God had indeed visited His people, and the consequence, as always, was either salvation or judgment. "He does not come to judge the world." But if we reject Him at His coming, judgment must inevitably overtake us. If we will not have Jesus as our Saviour, we must have Him as our Judge.
He came humbly, gently, with healing, grace and truth. But they would not have it. Beware lest, like the Pharisees, we say, "O, but if I'd been living then, I would not have rejected it as they did." Remember that we reject it, not only when we reject it for ourselves, but when we reject it for our brother. Reject grace for our brother and we reject grace. Jesus made it plain over and over again that that is the truth. Let us never be deceived into imagining that salvation is, only for ourselves, by grace through faith.
Ponder the consequences of their rejection of God's marvellous grace. Forty years is all it took; one generation - and all of the Lord's grim prophecy was fulfilled. They abandoned the divine way of love and pursued the human way of power politics. And as in our quarrels and our wars we destroy what we fight over, so the city brought upon itself its own entire destruction.
Note the contrast between 'My House, a House of Prayer,' and 'your house, a desolation.' We have to choose. Let our house be His house and it will be bathed in the atmosphere of prayer - of communication and communion. Keep it as our own house, and it will be a cold, grey waste. The desolation lies in the fact of His absence. To be without Him is to be desolate indeed. Nothing can restore peace and well-being if He be not present.
He would often have gathered them, but now even He is helpless to avert the judgment their impenitence will bring.
v. 39 "You will not see me again until ..." surely refers to the end of the age. Cf. Matt. 24:30, "At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the heavens, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory."
Will the Jews say then, "Blessed be He who comes in the Name of the Lord"? It is what they said on Palm Sunday. Will they mean it that time round? "Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." (Phil 2:10)
It should not be overlooked that Jesus here expressed a hope that reached on beyond judgment. He saw an hour, beyond the judgment He had prophesied, in which His people of old would say, "Blessed be He who comes in the Name of the Lord." That hope we may still embrace.
Matthew has so placed this lament as to make it the last word in the tale of 'Woes.' It underlines the spirit of grief, not of harsh denunciation, in which they were uttered.
It also reveals how appalling dishonesty is. The Pharisees' and Scribes' preoccupation with outward holiness revealed their awareness of its beauty and desirability; but their inward pollution revealed their deliberate choice of evil even in the face of their vision of the good.
In Luke 13 the saying is fitted in after a warning by some Pharisees of Herod's wish to kill Him. Jesus says that nothing can interfere with His ordained course, which includes death in Jerusalem.
Campbell Morgan : "Behold the King! How gracious He is, yet how just. We see both His passion for righteousness and His compassion for the unrighteous. His passion for righteousness never overwhelms His compassion for the worst. His compassion for the worst never overwhelms His passion for righteousness. It is well that our hearts be solemnised by His words of woe. The work of the King is not the excusing of a man who persists in unrighteousness, and presently admitting him in spite of it all to the presence of God and the heaven of light. Naught that defileth can enter there." (G. Campbell Morgan, "The Gospel according to Matthew' [Revell] p. 280)
His love is righteous love, and love of righteousness. In our sinfulness and need, we must pray for grace, and be serious about receiving it. That will affect us not only in our own souls, but in our attitude to others.
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