Jesus’ Denunciation of Sin and a Heart Bursting with Compassion

Tuesday

Jesus issued a blistering diatribe about the hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders in Matthew 23. However, he concluded this outright attack with one of the most tender, heartrending pleas recorded in all of Scripture: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Matt 23:37). 

Scripture offers no greater example of the uniting of divine holiness and divine love than this statement. After delivering this denunciation of sin, Jesus revealed a heart bursting with compassion for sinners. Israel’s “chicks” refused the prophets’ messages and thus refused to come under the protective wings of their mother hen! Now, in rejecting the Prophet, they were following their forebears. Jesus implies another truth, although hypothetical: if Israel had responded to Jesus’ many invitations to salvation, he would have restored them to the land from which they had been dispersed for hundreds of years.

This was not the only time Israel’s Messiah wept over Jerusalem’s unbelief.

I mentioned in Sunday’s devotion that on the western descent of the Mount of Olives sits a lovely chapel called Dominus Flevit (Latin for “the Lord wept”). Commanding a magnificent view of the Temple Mount and the old city of Jerusalem, this chapel, built in the shape of a teardrop, recalls the broken heart of Jesus, who deeply loved this city and its people despite their unbelief. Adorning its altar is a beautiful mosaic of a hen gathering her little chicks under her wings.

This moving statement revealing the heart of the Savior points out a valuable lesson about salvation. No matter how people view the vexing problem of God’s sovereign role in salvation as it relates to election, one fact is clear from Scripture: The plight of those who are lost is not because Christ is unwilling to save them. It’s because they would not come to Christ. While an individual’s salvation is wholly of God, his ruin is wholly due to himself.

Jesus ended His denunciation and appeal with a prophecy of the Temple’s destruction (Matthew 24:1-2). Israel’s religious leaders rejected the Lord of Glory and sowed the seeds of their Temple’s eventual demise, Sanhedrin, and city. How tragic are the consequences of refusing to recognize the Lord’s Anointed One! This same Messiah demonstrated his prophetic knowledge by predicting such a destruction, which so dramatically occurred in 70 AD. 

Prayer for Reflection: 

“Lord Jesus, I stand in amazement that you foretold in detail the destruction of the amazing Temple. Thank you for being a prophet, my priest, and my king. I look forward to the end of all this. Hasten the day of your coming. May the fact of fulfilled prophecy encourage me to know that the future also is in your hands and that I am part of that future blessedness.”

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©2023 William Varner. Used with permission.