Matthew 23:37

Matthew 23:37. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem The Lord Jesus having thus laid before the Pharisees and the Jewish nation their heinous guilt and impending ruin, was exceedingly moved at the thought of the calamities coming upon them. A day or two before he had wept over Jerusalem; now he bewails it in the most mournful accents of pity and commisseration. Jerusalem, the vision of peace, as the word signifies, must now be made the seat of war and confusion: Jerusalem, that had been the joy of the whole earth, must now be a hissing, and an astonishment, and a by-word among all nations: Jerusalem, that had been a city compact together, was now to be shattered and ruined by its own intestine broils: Jerusalem, the place that God had chosen to put his name there, must now be abandoned to spoilers and robbers. For, 1st, As its inhabitants had their hands more deeply imbrued in the blood of the prophets than those of other places, they were to drink more deeply than others in the punishment of such crimes: Thou that killest the prophets, &c. And, 2d, Jerusalem especially had rejected, and would persist in rejecting the Lord’s Christ, and the offers of salvation made through him, and would persecute his servants divinely commissioned to make them these offers. The former was a sin without remedy; this a sin against the remedy. How often would I have gathered thy children, &c. See the wonderful grace, condescension, and kindness of the Lord Jesus toward those who he foresaw would in two or three days maliciously and cruelly imbrue their hands in his blood! What a strong idea do these tender exclamations of our Lord, which can hardly be read without tears, give us of his unparalleled love to that ungrateful and impenitent nation! He would have taken the whole body of them, if they would have consented to be so taken, into his church, and have gathered them all, (as the Jews used to speak of proselytes,) under the wings of the divine majesty. The words, how often would I have gathered, &c.,mark his unwearied endeavours to protect and cherish them from the time they were first called to be his people, and the following words, declarative of the opposition between his will and theirs, but ye would not, very emphatically show their unconquerable obstinacy in resisting the most winning and most substantial expressions of the divine goodness. Thus does the Lord Jesus still call and invite perishing sinners. But alas! the obstinacy of their own perverse and rebellious wills too generally withstands all the overtures of his grace: so that eternal desolation becomes their portion, and they in vain wish for a repetition of those calls when it is for ever too late.