Condemnation and Compassion

Published by Stanley Pouw in 2014 · 7 December 2014

Let's open our Bibles to Matthew 23:37-39. This evening we come to the last few verses of this powerful Chapter. Some of my favorite people are Jewish: Jesus, Paul, Peter, Moses and Abraham. In fact I feel in my own heart the pain of the other Jews’ unbelief, the pain of their persecution. They have a covenant with God and they can't understand why it never turns to blessings, why it always seems that they are under a curse. Why?

The Jews have suffered more than any other nation in history. And yet through these centuries God has preserved them. They are never wiped out. Why? If they are the people of the adoption and the promises and the law and of whom even the Messiah came or is to come, why have they suffered so much? The present picture of the Jews in suffering really begins with the destruction of Jerusalem.

In 70 A.D., Titus Vespasian became the Roman general who besieged the city of Jerusalem and before it was over, over a million Jews were killed according to Josephus. Two years before that in 68 A.D. the Gentiles of Caesarea had slain 20,000 Jews and captured thousands more and sold them into slavery. And that really began the 2,000 years of holocaust that the Jews have suffered. For example, around that period of time in one single day, the inhabitants of Damascus killed 10,000 Jews.

They were guilty of no crime, yet they were victims of unbelievable persecution. In France they were accused of crucifying Christian children. They were accused of drinking the blood of Christian children which they had executed. The Jews who refused to become Christians were murdered. In 1236 in the time of the crusades, there were several crusaders who came to Anjou and Poitou and there they trampled to death 3,000 Jews under their horse’s hooves.

The Jews had scattered all over Europe after they lost Jerusalem and their land. And they found their way into England where they were safe for a while until there was an issue about a Dominican monk. In the Roman system, the Dominicans were a very well-known group, and one Dominican monk decided to study the Hebrew Scriptures in order to convert to Roman Catholicism. But in the process, he became converted to Judaism and was circumcised. The result was that the Roman Catholic Church was irate, and the Dominicans felt betrayed and so they took vengeance on the Jews.

They expelled them from Cambridge, laws were passed against them. They were hanged, they were exiled and they were made to wear a badge of inferiority. Finally, around 1290 the king made a decree that if any Jews were left they were to be expelled. They fled into France, which already had expelled Jews under the reign of Louis the XI, but by now the Jews could find at least a place to stay where they could live.

When the black-death disease came in the 14th Century the Jews were blamed. The plague that went all across Europe and tens of thousands of people were killed. It was said that the Jews had poisoned the wells in France and caused the black death. And so they began again to kill the Jews. One entire congregation was together in a meeting and they burned them all in that one place.

As a result they fled further to Poland and Russia. And in our contemporary time today we know about many Polish and Russian Jews. Poland really became a homeland for them. It was in Poland that they established Talmudic schools. It was in Poland that they built seminaries that they did much of their work. Then came this great conflict with the Roman Catholic Church in there again was tremendous persecution there.

Some of them managed to flee to Spain, but historians tell us that Spain was "the hell of the Jews." The two people who heaped the most horror on the Jews were King Ferdinand and queen Isabella, who commissioned Columbus to sail, who later found the western hemisphere. So while they were giving the world the benefit of opening up the western hemisphere, they were doing all they could to massacre the Jews in their own country.

All across Europe Jews became known as swine. Finally in 1492, when Columbus was sent west, the Jews were sent east out of Spain. The ones that went to Russia to this day have been persecuted. We have all read about the terrible plight of Soviet Jews, haven't we? That situation has persisted for 2,000 years like that for these people. In the middle of the 17th Century, the first persecution broke out in Poland. There was some safety there for a couple hundred years but then it all of a sudden that too changed.

Periodically through the centuries Germany had been massacring Jews, accusing them also of using Christian children's blood for their Passover. So they accused the Jews of stabbing the body of Christ. Anti-Semitism just flowed through western civilization reaching somewhat of an apex in the terrible Dryfus affair in France. Dryfus was an officer in the army who was put out of the army and humiliated as a traitor simply because he was Jewish.

By the time you come to World War II there were 16.5 million Jews in Europe. So while God is allowing all of this, God is not allowing it to exterminate this people. And then, Hitler came and he started the indescribable Holocaust extermination of nearly six million Jews. Only this time it wasn't hatred based on religion. It was hatred based on race and that was a whole new thing. Now secular society picked up the legacy of religious anti-Semitism and gave the world racial anti-Semitism.

Why is it this way with us? Why so long do we suffer? The answer is in Matthew 23:37- 38, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! 38 See! Your house is left to you desolate.” Stop there at that point.

What do you mean “your house is left to you desolate?” The Lord Jesus is saying Jerusalem, nobody is going to plow your ground anymore. Nobody is going to cultivate your field. No one is going to plant the crop. No one is concerned about your noble vine. No one is going to water you. No one is going to build a hedge around you. No one is going to protect you. You are on your own left to the elements.

For nearly 2,000 years the nation Israel has had to live its life without God and His protection, that's the difference. Why? Because God has left them unprotected from all the holocausts that the world could bring to bear. Why? Because of what it says in verse 37, Jesus came and He wanted to gather you to protect you. I wanted to bring you under my wings and you would not. Why? Because they refused their Messiah.

Now this passage closes the sermon of Matthew 23. It ends with this lament, because though God is going to judge that nation by removing protection and letting Satan go full blast at them, He still has compassion for them. Because Satan wants to exterminate Israel more than other nation, because they are the nation in the plan of God which Satan wants to thwart, because he desires to eliminate them so that Christ can never inherit them and fulfill the promise of God to them.

But the heart of God is grieved as ours ought to be. God says I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. In Jeremiah God speaks through the prophet and calls for the people to glorify Him and to obey Him and then says in Jeremiah 13:17, “But if you will not hear it, My soul will weep in secret for your pride; My eyes will weep bitterly and run down with tears.” This really grieves Him.

And it started in 70 A.D. in that terrible destruction of Jerusalem and it's still going on right now. And it will get worse. The hand of God is still off and Satan is still doing his thing. There's a time described in the Bible as the great tribulation. We're going to learn more about when we get into Matthew 24, but that is going to be worse than any other holocaust Israel has ever seen.

That doesn't mean that individual Jews can't come to Christ. They can and they do and they will, because always God has His remnant, always. Now we called verse 34 to 36 the condemnation. But the second thing tonight is compassion, verse 37 and 38. From condemnation to compassion, this is an outpouring of wrath equal to the outpouring of grief. It provides for us an essential balance and an essential understanding of the character of God and Christ.

So we read in verse 37, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem," and there is sorrow in the repetition isn't there? And if we parallel that passage with Luke 19:41-42 where it says, "Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, 42 saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” So He wept tears and it may well be that He wept again on Wednesday as He had on Monday.

Just the idea of the repetition is important. Often in Scripture repetition like that is an indication of great emotion. And Jesus characterizes the city not as the city of peace, but as the city, "who is killing the prophets and are stoning the messengers.” In fact, in the book of Revelation God calls Jerusalem “Sodom and Egypt”. Sodom relates to perversion, and Egypt relates to being pagan.

So God says, that is it, you are desolate. I take my hand of blessing off and all hell will break loose on you, culminating in the tribulation time when Revelation tells us the mouth of the pit is open and the demons that for centuries have been bound are released to run ramped across the earth. This terrible time of Jerusalem's chastening here is a symbol for the whole nation as it was very often in the ministry of the prophets.

And then you see the heart of the Savior. Look what Jesus says in Matthew 23:37, “How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” In other words, all the time of His ministry, He wanted to gather them. Matthew 11:28, "Come to me all you who are heavy laden, I'll give you rest." Even as Jesus dies on the cross, He gathers a thief into His arms who is willing to believe.

There's an intimacy and tenderness here. It's very personal, intimate and warm. Jesus wanted to give them security and the key to the whole deal is the last part of verse 37, "but you were not willing." That's the key. Here God would, but you wouldn't. And in the midst of that paradox of sovereignty and volition, we've got to see this passage. And every soul that spends eternity outside the protection of God is there because they would not come and repent.

Theologically, man's choice is as much a part of salvation as is God's choice. In this sense, grace is resistible and every person is responsible. And so we see the heart of Christ. Look at verse 38, "See! Your house is left to you desolate.” Jesus before had called it "My Father's house," but now He says it's your house. The temple has been so desecrated now your house is deserted. God just left. In 1 Samuel 4:21 it says, Ichabod, the glory has departed from Israel.” Now you are on your own.

In Luke 19: 43 Jesus said to them, "The day shall come upon you that your enemies shall cast a trench about you and compass you around and keep you in on every side." He was talking about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and Josephus says the city was raised to the ground. Nothing was left but one prominent tower and a part of the western Wailing Wall. It is divine punishment for rejecting Christ and cumulative sin of a nation killing prophets and stoning the messengers of God. Is that the end? Bless God it is not the end.

Condemnation in verse 34 to 36, compassion in verse 37 and 38, and finally, conversion in verse 39, “for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” Jesus says, I'm gone. Farewell from your Messiah. Your rejection is final and it was proven because when the apostles came and preached after Christ was gone, they wanted them dead too. Is that where the verse ends? No, it doesn't end there.

In the Old Testament God promised them that He would re-gather them. That ultimately He would be their Savior and king. That ultimately they would come into a relationship with Him and ultimately all the covenants would come to fruition. We have a God who makes promises that He will keep, so it doesn't end there. It says “till you say blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord." Well, what does that mean?

Well, back in Matthew 21: 9 that was a cry meant to identify the Messiah. The Messiah was the coming one. Zechariah 12:9-10 says, "It shall be in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. 10 And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.” Then they will recognize Me as their Messiah.

When the wrath is fully poured out, God is going to turn the tables and God is going to destroy the nations that come against Jerusalem. And on Jerusalem He will pour out the spirit of grace. And the scales are going to come off their eyes and they're going to look again at the one they pierced, Christ. And they're going to mourn as for an only son. Is He the only son? Yes, because there was only one Messiah. And the unbelievable will happen. There will be great mourning in Jerusalem and all over the land.

And in that day Zechariah 13:1-2, "In that day, there shall be a fountain open to the house of David and to the inhabitance of Jerusalem for sin and for cleansing. 2 It shall be in that day,” says the LORD of hosts, “that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they shall no longer be remembered. I will also cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to depart from the land." God's going to wash the whole nation clean. All the false prophets and unclean spirits are going to go. God's going to save His people. Then they will see Jesus for who He is and say blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord, that's our Messiah.

What does it have to do with me? Listen, if God has punished and cursed by abandoning His own beloved people Israel, what do you think is going to happen to you if you reject Jesus Christ? Do you think you'll fare any better? This lesson of a nation in history can be reduced to a lesson for a man and a woman in this moment of time. You have to make a choice. The Lord seeks to gather you into the safety of His love and salvation. Will you allow that to happen? Let's bow in prayer.