Taking Easter to Heart

Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead — an act by which he was glorified, proven, to be the Creator in flesh on Earth. Martha did not get it. No one was getting it. Jesus wept. And here in Luke we find Jesus shortly thereafter on his way into Jerusalem from the east. He stops, perhaps near the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem and weeps again. This time he is weeping for an entire nation, His nation. They don't get it either.

This week, Holy Week, I am trying to wrap my heart around the death of the nation of God, the end of the Old Covenant, and the events which created a new people of God. This huge hinge in the redemptive history of humanity occurred two thousand years ago on a cross outside Jerusalem. Is there any way I can come close the magnitude its importance?

To fully understand the power of this passage, we have to go outside the Bible. Jesus' prophetic words were literally fulfilled in A.D. 70 when the Romans seized Jerusalem and burned the Temple. Josephus, an eyewitness to the horrific events of that decade, sums up the war by saying "no other city has ever endured such horrors, and no generation in history has fathered such wickedness." [Josephus, The Jewish War]

So this is what Jesus is seeing 40 years earlier. This is why Jesus is weeping. Over a million of his people are going to die at the hands of the Roman legions. The Temple which at one time was the tabernacle of the glory of God will be reduced to rubble. The morning and evening imperfect sacrifices will come to an end.

In Luke 21:20 we have other details of this predicted overthrow of the city and the Temple. There Jesus adds, "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near." Forty years later the Roman armies under Titus came in and fulfilled the prediction to the very letter. With Titus was a Jewish historian named Josephus who recorded the terrible story in minute detail. It was one of the most ghastly sieges in all history. When the Romans came the city was divided among three warring factions of Jews who were so at each others' throats that they paid no heed to the approach of the Romans. Thus Titus came up and surrounded the city while it was distracted by its own internecine warfare. The Romans assaulted the walls again and again, and gave every opportunity to the Jews to surrender and save their capital from destruction.

During the long siege a terrible famine raged in the city and the bodies of the inhabitants were literally stacked like cordwood in the streets. Mothers ate their children to preserve their own strength. The toll of Jewish suffering was horrible but they would not surrender the city. Again and again they attempted to trick the Romans through guile and perfidy. When at last the walls were breached Titus tried to preserve the Temple by giving orders to his soldiers not to destroy or burn it. But the anger of the soldiers against the Jews was so intense that, maddened by the resistance they encountered, they disobeyed the order of their general and set fire to the Temple. There were great quantities of gold and silver there which had been placed in the Temple for safekeeping. This melted and ran down between the rocks and into the cracks of the stones. When the soldiers captured the Temple area, in their greed to obtain this gold and silver they took long bars and pried apart the massive stones. Thus, quite literally, not one stone was left standing upon another. The Temple itself was totally destroyed, though the wall supporting the area upon which the Temple was built was left partially intact and a portion of it remains to this day, called the Western Wall. [Ray C. Stedman, What's This World Coming To?  Emphasis added]

Jesus wept because his people could have had so much more. They could have been blessed to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. They could have been the nation that God had intended for them to be from the beginning. It did not have to end like this. They could have had God as their King, but instead they chose to have no other king but Caesar. The only hope for humanity, the only hope for us, was to replace the imperfect daily sacrifices with the perfect sacrifice of the unblemished Lamb of God himself.

I can't just sit here and keep it all in my head as facts. I can't just reduce the events of Easter to chocolate bunnies and marshmallow Peeps. I must take it to heart. I must take it even further — down into the very depths of my soul. Down to where I can feel Him weep for me when I say "no", weep for me when I don't get it, weep for me when I miss an opportunity to do His will because I wasn't paying attention, weep for me when (God help me!) I don't even show up.

And down to where I can feel His joy, His rejoicing, when I say "yes" and do what He wills for me.

Lord, pray for me. Pray for me again like you did in the garden on the night you were betrayed (John 17:20-26). Pray that I "get it". They can have their plastic grass and jelly beans. I want You. I want to feel what You feel, see what You see, weep when You weep and rejoice when You rejoice. Abide in me, "tabernacle" in me, so that You may be glorified, proven, by what I do for You — what You do through me. Use me for whatever You need done here in the garden we call Earth. Amen.

Luke 21:5-6 When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down."

Matthew 24:1-2 As Jesus came out of the temple and was going away, his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. Then he asked them, "You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down."