The cry of rejected love…………..

“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!

See! Your house is left to you desolate; 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!’ ”                     Matthew 23: 37-39 NKJV  

Do we cause Jesus to weep over us like He did over Jerusalem?

Does He weep over us because we fail to heed His urgent warnings?

 I truly desire that all of us hear His warnings and realize the urgency of our situation.  I want us to quit putting off till tomorrow what He calls us to do today.   There may not be a tomorrow.

“Jesus lamented over Jerusalem.”   It is the parting wail of a rejected love.  

What we obviously see in chapter 23 of Matthew is the unrequited love of a man for a nation.  It has been said that great lovers are great weepers, and that great servants are great weepers.  I think the order should be love, weeping and servant hood.  It is the love that leads to the weeping over failure to respond, and it is that love and that weeping that leads to servant hood.

Jeremiah has been called the Weeping Prophet, and with good reason, because Jeremiah is the man who said, “O that my head were waters, and my eye a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.”  (Jer.9:1)

I think I can understand why when Jesus was here and asked at Caesarea Philippi, “Who do men say that I, the Son of man, am,” that the disciples replied, some say you are Elijah and some say you are Jeremiah.  It is because there was characteristic of our Lord Jesus the weeping of a man like Jeremiah.

Jeremiah had a soft nature, a susceptible temperament.  His tears flowed readily. That too describes Jesus, for He was a lover, and because He was a lover, He was a weeper, and because He was a lover and a weeper, He also was a servant.  He is despised and rejected of men, a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”, Isaiah said.   So we are not surprised then to read that Jeremiah is called the suffering servant of Jehovah.

A great love for a nation, an unrequited love, led to weeping, but it also led to a complete devotion to the best interests of those for whom He came.