4/24/22 John 11:35, Luke 19:41, Heb. 5:7 “Why Did Jesus Weep?”

22 Apr 4/24/22 John 11:35, Luke 19:41, Heb. 5:7 “Why Did Jesus Weep?”

4/24/22   John 11:35, Luke 19:41, Heb. 5:7     “Why Did Jesus Weep?”

I remember one Sunday afternoon a few years ago when Sharon and I drove up to Fargo for a late lunch or early supper.  In other words it was about 3 PM.  Sharon told me that she wanted to stop at Penney’s.  I assumed that she was going to get something.  Of course I was wrong.  Now I’m a very poor shopper at best and I think that it might be a gender thing.  Anyway, I declined shopping in favor of having a cup of coffee and just sitting for a bit as I was a little tired.  So I sat and I watched people for several minutes.  I was reminded of just who we are.  I saw people of all shapes and sizes.  I saw tall people, short people, thin people, and round people.  I saw people of all different shades of brown.  I saw people in a hurry and people who were just taking their time.  I just saw all kinds of people.  The really amazing part of people watching is that there are no two that are the same.  We are all different.  Even more amazing is that even though we come in all different sizes and shapes and dispositions, God still loves us all.  We are all made in His image.  All of this is great and the way God made us.  However, I would bet that if I could have talked to the people I was gawking at, I would have found that very few of them knew Jesus or thanked Him for all He had done.  We will have 3 readings today and the first is one possible response by God to many of the things we do.  In John 11:35 we read, “Jesus wept.”  Let’s see if we can understand why Jesus would weep and if we can prevent Him from weeping for us.

I would like to begin today by looking at what real men do.  I am using the illustration of men rather than women because I have more experience being a man.  The first one in my opinion is obviously that real men don’t shop.  Of course there is also real men don’t ask for directions.  Real men don’t cry.  Real men ride broncos.  Real men don’t order things that they cannot pronounce in a restaurant.  Real men hunt and fish.  And of course real men don’t eat quiche.  And this is just the beginning of the list.  Oh, and real men love pickup trucks.  I could go on and on here but I think you get the point.  The point is that these are stereotypes that we use, hopefully, for fun.  Real men are just who you are.  We are all real men and those who aren’t, well, are real women.  The Bible tells us that we are either men or women so that is where I stand on that subject.  And I would guess that if we looked really deep, we would find that all us men weep on occasion.

Jesus wept.  We can find mention of Jesus weeping three times.  This is the first time.  The second time is in Luke 19:41 where Jesus is just about to go into Jerusalem for the last time and He weeps.  And the last time is in Hebrews 5:7 where He weeps when He prays for his disciples and us.  The experts like to say that this was probably when Jesus was praying at Gethsemane but we don’t know for sure.

In John 11 we find the famous story of the death of Lazarus.  We all know this story.  Jesus finds out that Lazarus is sick but He delays going to him and he dies.  Jesus is in no hurry and takes 4 days to get back to them.  When He does return the mourners are all there and Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days.  When Jesus arrived, He first talked with Mary and Martha.  Then Jesus wept.  The question is ‘why did He weep.’  The text doesn’t help us with the answer.  We can only speculate.

There are many theories on this.  Maybe He wept because he knew that this would be him in a very short time and He was mourning what was to come. All of this takes place right before the triumphal entrance into Jerusalem.  Maybe He wept because He didn’t want to bring Lazarus back from heaven.  Maybe he wept because of all the unbelief that he saw at this place.  One thing is for sure, He didn’t weep for the death of Lazarus because He knew that he was not dead and that He was going to bring Him back.

All of these theories are good and they are plausible.  There are even some more but I don’t think any of this is why Jesus wept.  I think that Jesus, who was a human just like all of us, wept because He felt so bad for Mary and Martha, who were the sisters of Lazarus.  He cried in sympathy.  He was feeling the tremendous pain of these women.  And as weird as this sounds, this is great news for us.

When we have Jesus in our lives, then we never have to face pain alone.  Jesus will always feel the pain with us.  We often hear this in times of crises or at a funeral, “Where is God in all of this?” or “Where was God when I needed Him?”  The answer to this is that He was or is right beside you all the way.  The promise from God is not that He will keep you from hard times but rather that He will be with you during these hard times.  I think that God is far sadder in some of these situations than we are.  He doesn’t want His children to be sad but when we are, then He is there.

I would like to say at this point is that there are a lot of things that grieve us in this world.  I try to talk of some of these things when I preach.  There is no way I can cover all the things wrong in this world because we all have stories and incidents of things gone wrong and we grieve.  I can’t cover them all but I can direct you to the one who can.  Jesus Christ came to this world for you.  Once you accept Him as your Savior, He will always be right beside you during times of turmoil, stress and anything bad you can think of.  He is there.  If you get nothing else from this sermon, understand that He is always there, in good times and bad.

I think it is so sad when I go to a funeral and see a family who doesn’t know the Lord.  They ask all these questions about God and why.  They are looking for comfort in the world about them.  They are totally unaware that Jesus is right beside them.  He is mourning and weeping with them but they are too blind to see.

The second place where we come across Jesus weeping is in Luke 19:41.  It reads, “As He approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it.”  This happens at about the same time as we have Lazarus dying.  Jesus had been far to the north when He started His last journey to Jerusalem.  He was very determined to get there but He still had time to minister and do things for the people along the way.  Luke tells us that as He approached the city, He wept.  I would guess that He healed Lazarus right before or right after this.  We are not sure.

Anyway, He sees the city and He weeps.  When He was with Lazarus He wept quietly but in this case He weeps loudly like one mourning for the dead.  Once again we have speculated many reasons for this.  One reason is that He looked at a city that had and would continue to destroy itself.  Jerusalem would be destroyed again in a few decades.  And if you remember Jerusalem had destroyed all its prophets and it would continue to do the same with Jesus.

However, I think in this case He was weeping out of concern for the people.  If He looked back, He saw a nation that had ignored Him.  They had wasted their opportunities.  It seemed that no matter what He did, the people did not believe.  If He looked within the people, He saw spiritual ignorance and blindness in their hearts.  They had been told He was coming but they had missed it.  As He looked around He saw that religion had done very little.  The temple was a bed of thieves and the religious leaders were looking to murder Him.  The city was celebrating the Passover but they didn’t even know what that meant.  If He looked ahead, He saw His destruction, along with the city and temple destruction of 70 AD.  At that time the Romans not only destroyed the city but they killed 600,000 Jews.  Jesus had reason to weep for the people.

He has reason to weep today in the same way He did so many years ago.  If we look back, we see how we have made meaningless laws to throw Jesus out of our midst.  Satan would love to make this country a place where we can never say the name of Jesus again.  The New York Times supports this.  As we look within, we find all the people, especially from this country, who only believe what they want to believe and want to take out whole sections of the Bible.  We have spiritual blindness everywhere as we insist on worshipping ourselves instead of Jesus.  Worse still is that we feel we can define who Jesus is.  Only the Bible can do this!  If we look around at our churches, we find that they are becoming more and more like cult organizations than religions.  We find the church isn’t relevant anymore because, to be quite honest, it isn’t relevant.  We have quit worshiping God.  If we dare to look ahead, I think that we can only see that things will get much worse for us rather than better.  Jesus has a lot to weep over today.

And He weeps because of His concern for us.  He sees all that we have done, are doing and will do and He still has compassion.  He cares that we do all these things wrong, and He wants us to change our ways.  To the outsider, it would seem that the task just keeps getting harder all the time.  But to the insider, we know that it is far easier because we have Jesus to help us in everything.  I think that we often lose sight of this when there is ministering to be done in our community.  All you have to do is go and help others.  Jesus will help you to do the right things and give you the right words.  Jesus weeps and He weeps for us.

The third place we read about Jesus weeping is in Hebrews 5:7.  It reads “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and He was heard because of his reverent submission.”  So every time He offered up prayers and petitions for us, He did so with tears.  We find that Jesus will soon be doing this as He offers up his petitions at the Mount of Olives.  Jesus weeps over the sin of the world.

We all know about sin.  It is everywhere.  It is here among us today.  We surely don’t want to talk about it.  We cannot get away from it.  You know what I like to say after you have communion, “Go and sin no more.”  I do this as a reminder that you have been cleansed and forgiven after taking the elements.  I think that you are in as pure a state as you will ever be until you take the next communion.  Hopefully you will be in this state of perfected grace, as John Wesley called it, for the whole day or maybe for 2 days.  But at some point sin will regain a small foothold.  But I want you to realize that you can be without sin for a short time, maybe even a longer time.  This is why I tell you to sin no more.  Every person in your area is guilty of sin as is every person in this country.  I would go so far as to say that every person in the world is guilty of sin.  When Jesus went to the cross to die, He didn’t just do this for you.  He did it for every person in the world.  And this wasn’t every person in the world at the time of Jesus.  It was everyone in the world for all times, both past and future.  He died for you and your sins of today.

This is the grief He felt.  I cannot imagine what that would be like.  I get overwhelmed when bad things happen to one person.  I get overwhelmed when our kids make mistakes.  Parents, you know what I am talking about.  We love our children and it hurts us when they are hurting even if they caused their own pain.  We still grieve.  So I cannot imagine the pain that Jesus felt when He died.  The burden would be too much for a human to bear.

I think that the important lesson here is that Jesus feels our pain and He probably feels it even more than we do.  I will borrow from Edgar Jackson for an illustration.  Jesus grieves with the young divorced woman who is trying to raise 3 children, alone.  You see, we weren’t made for divorce and Jesus grieves with these people.  Jesus grieves with the person who is so filled with uncertainty and confusion that they lash out at others.  Jesus can settle this uncertainty.  Jesus grieves with the mother who goes to the cemetery every day to be alone with her thoughts of someone she has lost.  Jesus wants us to know that the loss is just temporary as long as we have faith in Him.

Jesus knows of the grief of the silent, knife-like terror and sadness that comes a hundred times a day, when you start to speak to someone who is no longer there.  Jesus wants you to know that He is always, always there.  You will be speaking to this person again when you join them in heaven.  Jesus knows of the emptiness that comes when you eat alone after eating with someone for so many years.  Jesus tells us that you never have to be alone.  Jesus knows us when we teach ourselves to go to bed without saying goodnight to someone we love who has died.  Jesus is always there to help us sleep.  Jesus always knows when you wish you had done something different that you will never be able to change.  Jesus wants you to hang your mistakes on Him and He will take care of it in His way.  Jesus knows your grief and he wants to help you through it, no matter what it is.

It is kind of like when we were raising the family.  I would tell the children that no matter what they did, don’t do something that would make mom cry.  I’m sure we could put dad into this equation also.  When you make mom cry, you are doing something really wrong.  When you make Jesus weep, then you are doing something really wrong.  I have told you this before that this stuff isn’t rocket science.  I call on you this week to just believe in Jesus and put all your questions and bad attitudes aside.  Just believe!  This wonderful God of ours loves you in the very times when you are unlovable.  He loves you during your happiness and your depressions.  He loves you when you do right and when you do wrong.  He loves you if you are tall or short, or thin or round.  Remember this and believe.  Turn your brain off this week and trust everything you do to the one who can do everything.  Trust in Jesus for there is no other way.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.