Jesus Lamented for Jerusalem

Study of Luke 13:31-35

Just at that time some Pharisees approached, saying to Him, “Go away, leave here, for Herod wants to kill You.” And He said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I reach My goal.’ Nevertheless I must journey on today and tomorrow and the next day; for it cannot be that a prophet would perish outside of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it! Behold, your house is left to you desolate; and I say to you, you will not see Me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’”

— Luke 13:31-35

After answering if there are only few who are saved, some Pharisees told Jesus “Go away, leave here, for Herod (Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea) wants to kill You.” It's uncertain if these Pharisees are sincerely concerned about Jesus' safety or they are just trying to scare Jesus away from their region. Jesus seemed to take their report at face value and boldly replied that He will not be intimidated by such a death threat. 

And He said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I reach My goal.’

Jesus will continue His business and won't be hindered by Herod whom He called a fox which symbolizes deceitfulness and cunning. Foxes aren't really that dangerous to human life than wolves, serpents, lions, and bears. They often target poultry animals and are annoying to farmers. So Jesus is basically saying that Herod is not a fearsome enemy. He is just a small time puppet tetrarch and is more of a nuisance than a threat.

Jesus added 'Nevertheless I must journey on today and tomorrow and the next day; for it cannot be that a prophet would perish outside of Jerusalem.'

Jesus have His own timeline of activities and He will go as planned. He is immortal until His mission is accomplished. He is set on fulfilling His Father's command and no petty tetrarch will stop Him. His goal is to die in Jerusalem, about whom He lamented

'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!'

Although not all prophets died in Jerusalem, Jesus is using hyperbolic statement as He often does, Jerusalem has a track record of persecuting the prophets.

Then the Spirit of God came on Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest; and he stood above the people and said to them, “Thus God has said, ‘Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord and do not prosper? Because you have forsaken the Lord, He has also forsaken you.’” So they conspired against him and at the command of the king they stoned him to death in the court of the house of the Lord.

— 2 Chronicles 24:20-21

Indeed, there was also a man who prophesied in the name of the Lord, Uriah the son of Shemaiah from Kiriath-jearim; and he prophesied against this city and against this land words similar to all those of Jeremiah. When King Jehoiakim and all his mighty men and all the officials heard his words, then the king sought to put him to death; but Uriah heard it, and he was afraid and fled and went to Egypt. Then King Jehoiakim sent men to Egypt: Elnathan the son of Achbor and certain men with him went into Egypt. And they brought Uriah from Egypt and led him to King Jehoiakim, who slew him with a sword and cast his dead body into the burial place of the common people.

— Jeremiah 26:20-23

Jesus sorrowed over the hardness of Israel's heart that even though God Himself, through the prophets, and now in the flesh in Jesus, has repeatedly called them to repent from their sins and turn back to their God, they are unwilling. The whole nation is in apostasy that is why Jesus was sent by God the Father to bring back the nation to God.

And now says the Lord, who formed Me from the womb to be His Servant,

To bring Jacob back to Him, so that Israel might be gathered to Him

(For I am honored in the sight of the Lord,

And My God is My strength),

— Isaiah 49:5

Israel broke their covenant with God, the Mosaic covenant, and now they are rejecting their only way to escape the covenant curses. Some of which are the following.

‘But if you do not obey Me and do not carry out all these commandments, if, instead, you reject My statutes, and if your soul abhors My ordinances so as not to carry out all My commandments, and so break My covenant, I, in turn, will do this to you: I will appoint over you a sudden terror, consumption and fever that will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine away; also, you will sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies will eat it up. I will set My face against you so that you will be struck down before your enemies; and those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when no one is pursuing you. If also after these things you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. I will also break down your pride of power; I will also make your sky like iron and your earth like bronze.

— Leviticus 26:14-19

‘Yet if in spite of this you do not obey Me, but act with hostility against Me, then I will act with wrathful hostility against you, and I, even I, will punish you seven times for your sins.

— Leviticus 26:27-28

I will lay waste your cities as well and will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your soothing aromas. I will make the land desolate so that your enemies who settle in it will be appalled over it. You, however, I will scatter among the nations and will draw out a sword after you, as your land becomes desolate and your cities become waste.

— Leviticus 26:31-33

But you will perish among the nations, and your enemies’ land will consume you.

— Leviticus 26:38

Jesus warned 'Behold, your house is left to you desolate;'

Indeed in A.D. 70, Rome sieged Jerusalem, killed many Jews, destroyed their temple, and scattered them over the world. And since that time the Jews are persecuted wherever they went because they did not remain faithful to God.

But Jesus said there is an end to their curse. God promised Israel restoration. There's hope in Jesus' words as indicated by the word UNTIL.

'and I say to you, you will not see Me UNTIL the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’”''

There are many crucial "UNTILs" in the Bible that we ought to pay attention to. For now let us focus at the passage at hand. Jesus is saying they will not see Him again until they repent and accept their Messiah quoting from Psalm 118:26 which is a Messianic psalm that is part of the Hallel which are sung during festivals especially the Passover. In what is known as Jesus' triumphal entry where He enters Jerusalem sitting on a donkey the people were quoting this 

The crowds going ahead of Him, and those who followed, were shouting,

“Hosanna to the Son of David;

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord;

Hosanna in the highest!”

— Matthew 21:9

But that is not the fulfillment as Jesus did not accept it because the nation as a whole and its leaders did not really repent so He again lamented at a later time:

Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’”

— Matthew 23:38-39

The fulfillment of Psalm 118:26 then is at Jesus' second coming when there will be national repentance that will result in their spiritual and physical salvation and restoration as God promised.

Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God. But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the Lord.’”

— Leviticus 26:44-45

And in that day I will set about to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.  “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.

— Zechariah 12:9-10

And the Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord will be the only one, and His name the only one.

— Zechariah 14:9

For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. You will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God.

— Ezekiel 36:24-28

I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? “Lord, they have killed Your prophets, they have torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.” But what is the divine response to him? “I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s gracious choice. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.

— Romans 11:1-6

 

For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery⁠—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation⁠—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written,

“The Deliverer will come from Zion,

He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.”

“This is My covenant with them,

When I take away their sins.”

From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

— Romans 11:25-29

God is perfectly faithful. He never goes back on His word nor redefines His covenants and promises. What God does in history is a reflection of the eternal realities of His unchangeable character. He literally fulfilled His promised curses of destruction and scattering to Israel, He will also literally fulfill His promised blessings of national regathering, salvation, and restoration for the sake of His holy name. How God deals with the nation of Israel in this physical realm is a visible demonstration of both God's wrath over sin and His abundant grace toward unworthy sinners. It gives us inexcusable proof of the truthfulness of God's final judgment in hell and final salvation in heaven. Eternal death and torment await everyone, Jew or Gentile, who defies the Lord and want to remain in sin, on the other hand salvation and eternal life is available to all who would repent and put their faith on Israel's Messiah. And in Him alone, Jewish and Gentile Christians, individually, are fellow (meaning distinct but united in the sharing of the blessings of union with Christ) citizens... of God’s household (Ephesians 2:19), the church, without becoming one or the other while Israel as nation is in a state of unbelief until the times of the Gentiles is fulfilled (Luke 21:24).

There's no reason to be dissuaded by replacement theologians who disbelieve God will actually fulfill His promises to His elect nation Israel and claim all the promised blessings solely for the Church. If they can't break God's fixed order of natural law, neither can they break God's covenant with Israel.

Thus says the Lord, ‘If you can break My covenant for the day and My covenant for the night, so that day and night will not be at their appointed time, then My covenant may also be broken with David My servant so that he will not have a son to reign on his throne, and with the Levitical priests, My ministers.
— Jeremiah 33:20-21

Thus says the Lord, ‘If My covenant for day and night stand not, and the fixed patterns of heaven and earth I have not established, then I would reject the descendants of Jacob and David My servant, not taking from his descendants rulers over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But I will restore their fortunes and will have mercy on them.’”
— Jeremiah 33:25-26

 “God is not a man, that He should lie,
Nor a son of man, that He should repent;
Has He said, and will He not do it?
Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
“Behold, I have received a command to bless;
When He has blessed, then I cannot revoke it.
— Numbers 23:19-20

“So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the Lord your God has banished you, and you return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back. The Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers.     “Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.
— Deuteronomy 30:1-6

Greg Harris gives us a small sampling of God's irreversible blessing:

"Genesis 49 begins with Jacob dying as an old man. As his father had done for him, he wanted to bequeath to his sons their proper portions. Because a father bequeathing to his children is a common occurrence, it is easy to see why this important event could be overlooked.

However, this bequest is different because it will become part of God's holy and unbreakable promises in Scripture. So in a very real sense, these are not solely Jacob's words or thoughts; these are God's words and thoughts given by Jacob. Genesis 49:1 begins, "Then Jacob summoned his sons and said, 'Assemble yourselves that I may tell you what shall befall you in the days to come.'" Although it is easy to miss their importance, two biblical nuggets of pure gold have already been exposed. For instance, "the days to come" can also be translated as "the end of the days," or "the last days," and Genesis 49:1 is the first time that phrase appears in Scripture—but it will not be the last time. So God takes the original audience and all future readers throughout thousands of years from the original utterances to the people and events in the last days.

The second revelatory nugget from God is likewise easy to miss. In Genesis 49:1, God gave Jacob words regarding future specific events as Jacob proclaimed, "Assemble yourselves that I may tell you what shall befall you in the days to come." God clearly reveals the "you" whom He has in mind. At the end of Jacob's blessing, Genesis 49:28 summarizes: "All these are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is what their father said to them when he blessed them. He blessed them, every one with the blessing appropriate to him." Genesis 49 makes it a biblical impossibility for the Jewish people to be eradicated by an enemy or by collective enemies. Genesis 49:1 and 28 require that the twelve tribes of Israel be living and functioning in the last days. Absolutely no one—from Haman to Hitler to anyone else—can eradicate the Jews from the face of the earth. It is a biblical impossibility because God's Word clearly shows that the twelve tribes will be present in the last days. Those two verses in Genesis would be enough, but there is more—much, much more.

Not only does Genesis 49 contain the first reference to the last days during which the twelve tribes of Israel will be present; Genesis 49:8-12 gives one of the earliest prophecies of the coming Messiah and reveals new details that God had not yet disclosed elsewhere in Scripture:

Judah, your brothers shall praise you; Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; Your father's sons shall bow down to you. Judah is a lion's whelp; From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He crouches, he lies down as a lion, And as a lion, who dares rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes, And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. He ties his foal to the vine, And his donkey's colt to the choice vine; He washes his garments in wine, And his robes in the blood of grapes. His eyes are dull from wine, And his teeth white from milk."

From this point forward, it becomes a biblical mandate that the Messiah, according to God's sovereign decree, must be from the tribe of Judah. So whoever the Messiah is, he must give clear documentation of his lineage—and it must be traced back to the tribe of Judah. Also, it should not be overlooked that the Messiah's reign will not be limited only to or over the nation of Israel. When God's Messiah reigns "to him shall be the obedience of the peoples" (Gen 49:10), which is another way of saying that his kingdom will be a worldwide kingdom over all the earth; no people groups, kingdoms, nor individuals will be exempt from his reign and rule. We could conclude here with what we have already seen and marvel at what God has already promised, but we have still more to glean from this wonderful revelation from God.

In Genesis 49 comes this double blessing to Joseph and his lineage due to his faithful walk of holiness and obedience to God. Verse 28 states, "All these are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is what their father said to them when he blessed them. He blessed them, each one with the blessing appropriate to him." So, in verses 22-26 God blesses Joseph this way:

"Joseph is a fruitful bough, A fruitful bough by a spring; Its branches run over a wall. The archers bitterly attacked him, And shot at him and harassed him; But his bow remained firm, And his arms were agile, From the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob (From there is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel), From the God of your father who helps you, And by the Almighty who blesses you With blessings of heaven above, Blessings of the deep that lies beneath, Blessings of the breasts and of the womb. The blessings of your father Have surpassed the blessings of my ancestors Up to the utmost bound of the everlasting hills; May they be on the head of Joseph, And on the crown of the head of the one distinguished among his brothers."

So much is contained in this wonderful blessing of the Lord that it would be understandable how one could miss some of its significance. But as with any other truth that God reveals in this chapter, we must have within this background before us "the last days," and "what shall befall you," the twelve tribes of Israel (Gen 49:1, 28).

With the promise of the Lion of the tribe of Judah being the Messiah who will reign over the entire world, (Gen 49:8-12), comes these two further designations regarding God's future Messiah, in verse 24: "from the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob (from there is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel)'" Two additional descriptions of the Messiah are given in this one verse. Whoever the Messiah is, he must do the work of God's sent Shepherd and God's sent Stone of Israel, and—this is important—he must do so in the last days (Gen 49:1), with the twelve tribes of Israel (v. 28). The promised Messiah sent by God must fulfill these prophecies, or else He is not the promised Messiah.