[39] And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples." [40] He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out."
[41] And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, [42] saying, "Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. [43] For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side [44] and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation."
(Luke 19:39-44 ESV)
It is 'at the descent of the Mount of Olives' (19:37), with the jubilant crowds surrounding the King who comes, as the prophet had foretold, riding on an ass,11 that Luke makes his fourth addition to the story. After the retort to the Pharisees' shocked complaint when the disciples hail Jesus as King (19:39–40), he ends the story of the great journey with Jesus's lament over Jerusalem (19:41–44).
It comes at the travellers' first view of the city. The temple will not be sighted till a little while later; coming over the shoulder of the Mount of Olives the first glimpse of Jerusalem is the south-eastern corner of the City of David. For it is not the end of the Jewish religion which is at this stage uppermost in Jesus's mind. Rather he foresees the ruin of the nation's capital, the royal city in which his ardent supporters expect him shortly to mount the throne.
Thus again we see how Luke corrects misunderstanding about the kingship of Jesus. He is indeed 'the King who comes in the name of the Lord' (19:38); but as he comes in sight of his presumed capital, what he sees in prospect is a smoking, desolate ruin. He is King—but of what? Of this city which within a generation will be destroyed?
No; Jerusalem had failed to recognize the One who had visited her, and it was not of Jewry that he would henceforth be King.12 For Luke's grasp of the message of the kingdom has from the beginning made him stress the universality of it. Jesus is King; but the earthly Jerusalem is too small and mean to contain his majesty. All nations are to be his. He is the Saviour of the world.
So the destruction of that city and people, though in one sense a tragedy, is in another sense a challenge to take seriously the call to worldwide evangelism. The kingdom is for every city, every people, that the church can reach and touch with the message of salvation.
None of these thoughts is new in Luke's Gospel. They have all appeared frequently in the central section, and nearly all were intimated in the prophetic words of men and angels which heralded Jesus's birth is chapters 1 and 2.
So Luke is reiterating and underlining the great themes of the message of Jesus. It is indeed, as Jesus had said from the beginning, 'the good news of the kingdom of God' (4:43), and the whole passage from 18:15 to 19:44 describes the King's royal progress to his capital, but Luke is concerned to bring out the real meaning of this kingdom. He turns his readers' eyes away from its ultimate glory to the suffering without which that glory will never be attained; the kingdom centres on the cross. He turns our attention away from the political transformation of society to the spiritual transformation of the soul, which must precede it; the kingdom must first come to the human heart. He conditions us to think in terms not of immediate success and quick returns, but of long delay and protracted struggle; the kingdom must grow throughout its King's extended absence. He re-focuses our gaze so that we see the King whom God has set on Zion, his holy hill, as the One who has in fact been given the nations as his heritage, and the ends of the earth for his possession;13 the kingdom embraces the world.
These things, then, Luke would have us learn from his Gospel. God has given his only Son to die on the cross. By virtue of that death, he offers to the hearts of men salvation from sin and a new life. Then he gives them the centuries of Christian history in which to proclaim that salvation far and wide; for it is of the whole world that he will one day be Saviour and King.
Wilcock, M. (1979). The Savior of the world: The message of Luke's gospel. The Bible Speaks Today (175–176). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
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Regards,
Ryan Chia
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Mission exists
because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is
ultimate, not man.
*From John Piper, Let The Nations Be Glad*
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