Luke 19:41-48

Transcript

00:00:01:17 – 00:00:33:27
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Welcome back on a monday. As we start the week together through the Gospel of Luke, we find ourselves at the end of Chapter 19. Jesus has entered Jerusalem, and that’s a pivotal, pivotal moment in the Gospels, but particularly in our case, in the Gospel of Luke. Luke is going to spend some time talking us through what we call now on this side of Easter Holy Week and Luke doesn’t quite line it out day by day, but there’s a lot that happens.

00:00:33:27 – 00:01:03:16
Clint Loveall
We get a lot of material. Luke is going to spend several chapters here and so not quite 25%, maybe 15, 20% of Luke’s gospel is concerned with what happens this last week of Jesus earthly life. So we jump into that today when we saw the triumphal entry or the Palm Sunday, though Luke doesn’t use that language. Today, we start in verse 41.

00:01:03:21 – 00:01:33:14
Clint Loveall
The first thing that Jesus does when he gets to Jerusalem. So verse 41, Chapter 19, as he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, If you even you had only recognize on this day the things that make for peace. But now they’re hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you and hem you in on every side.

00:01:33:14 – 00:02:11:33
Clint Loveall
They will crush you to the ground, you and your children with you. And they will not leave within you one stone upon another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God. Interestingly, the first thing that Luke does is show us Jesus expressing lament a a grieving over Jerusalem, which in Jesus words, is a foreshadowing of being lost, that Jerusalem has this moment, the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of God is within the walls of Jerusalem.

00:02:11:38 – 00:02:38:20
Clint Loveall
And not only is Jerusalem not moved and turned by that, it will be the site where that very same Messiah is put to death. And so interesting, we we sometimes some of us know the story of Jesus weeping over Lazarus. And a lot of people would be maybe inclined to say that that’s the only time Jesus cries. But here Jesus literally this word wept.

00:02:38:20 – 00:02:50:08
Clint Loveall
He sheds tears over the holy city. And this is a I think this is a significant moment. Michael. One, we could read past, but one we shouldn’t miss.

00:02:50:13 – 00:03:24:43
Michael Gewecke
And actually there’s a wide variety of versions or perspectives of this story that all I think are important. There’s a historical perspective in which scholars who look at the Bible to study it, you know, they have questions about when exactly did Luke write this? And what was remember about what Jesus had said. And so some will look to a passage like this and they’ll talk about it in relation to the year 70 A.D. when in fact, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman Empire after a series of political and military confrontations.

00:03:24:48 – 00:03:48:23
Michael Gewecke
So some will look to it for that purpose. And that’s an interesting conversation. But I think one that we shouldn’t forget is that this is just filled, chock filled with allusions to the Old Testament throughout the Old Testament, we see references to warnings for Israel, to warnings of destruction and of being dispersed. And of course, the people of Israel throughout their time.

00:03:48:23 – 00:04:16:57
Michael Gewecke
If you have read your Old Testament, you know that they have already had a series of engagements where they’ve been military militarily defeated, where the residents of Jerusalem have been sent away. And so here, as Jesus now turns and weeps over Jerusalem, it’s a poignant moment because it’s a reminder of those things that have come before. It’s also a reflection of some of the really warnings and omens that have been given before.

00:04:16:57 – 00:04:41:19
Michael Gewecke
And then this all stands at the very moment where the savior himself is both standing inside that city and reflecting upon the future of city and that that heightens the irony of this text, because Jesus has been proclaiming the kingdom of God. He’s been showing the reality of that by what he does and says. And now when he’s come to the city, he’s been greeted in this triumphal procession.

00:04:41:24 – 00:05:01:09
Michael Gewecke
He now stands within the city, speaking and seeing ahead to the ultimate end. And it grieves him. And there’s a deep, deep scriptural irony that it grieves him to see what will happen, despite the fact that the people should be able to see the revelation of God right in front of them. And they don’t. They miss who’s there.

00:05:01:13 – 00:05:21:20
Michael Gewecke
And that’s only going to become a cause for greater irony. And by irony, I would be clear there, like a literary irony, it becomes for us as the reader, a greater lapse between what we know should be and what turns out to be true in the story. And that has some powerful theological import and some lessons for us in that as well.

00:05:21:25 – 00:05:54:40
Clint Loveall
I think both this passage and the one we’ll look at in a moment really also give us a reminder of the particular time and place and identity that Jesus occupies. Jesus is Jewish. Jesus has grown up in this area. Jesus looks to the temple as the house of God. Jesus looks to Jerusalem as the holy city. There is a connection here with the Old Testament and the covenant language of God and God’s people and a Holy Land.

00:05:54:45 – 00:06:29:13
Clint Loveall
That that is very tangible, very observable and really important. In this story. Jesus weeps over this city that is to be the place of knowledge of God’s work. It is to be the place that is centered in God, saving grace and saving action. This is to be the home of faith, the home base. In fact, it will serve as the home base for Luke in the in the story of Acts, the Book of Acts and the story of the church going out.

00:06:29:18 – 00:07:08:31
Clint Loveall
And here Jesus sees that instead of filling that calling, they have missed it. And Jesus imagines foresees a day in which they will suffer, where that will be taken from them. Again, when Luke how aware at this moment is Jesus or Luke of the destruction of the temple? It’s kind of a Bible scholar argument and they certainly you can read those four days, but here Jesus has a heartfelt moment of grief for what should have been true and wasn’t.

00:07:08:31 – 00:07:44:34
Clint Loveall
And I, I liken this, Michael, to, you know, whenever whenever we attend a funeral service, we inevitably grieve for something that isn’t going to happen now because those possibilities are gone. And Jesus here, I think, has that sense to his words that this bridge has been crossed and Jerusalem isn’t what it should have been. And and Jesus is going to willingly pay the price for that, but pay the price nonetheless.

00:07:44:43 – 00:07:48:07
Clint Loveall
And I think this really is a profound moment in the gospel.

00:07:48:12 – 00:08:11:34
Michael Gewecke
And interestingly, this story does connect to some of the early stories start earlier, your stories and Luke, sorry, especially here, verse 42, If only I had recognized on this day the things that make for peace. And you know, the angels come for claiming the peace of God. There’s this theme throughout Luke that the Kingdom of God brings peace.

00:08:11:35 – 00:08:36:41
Michael Gewecke
You know, the irony here at Jesus’s arrival in the city is not only that the people have heard or in this case the text says, you know, did not recognize the time of visitation. So they didn’t see or understand that visitation. The the interesting facet of that is they have missed the opportunity to see God’s ultimate kingdom come to them, though that’s what they’ve been looking for.

00:08:36:41 – 00:09:16:23
Michael Gewecke
This city represents for the nation of Israel the throne of David. The hope at this time in history would be the restoration of their national identity, that they might be the people that God promised them that they would be. And here Luke makes it absolutely clear that Jesus sees the disjunction of this moment that he, the true first Son of God, as we see later in the Epistles, the one who represents the full glory of God, stands inside God’s city, and all of the people there who have been waiting this whole time for the restoration of the kingdom, for things to be made right again for ultimate peace on earth.

00:09:16:28 – 00:09:38:49
Michael Gewecke
They not only missed Jesus, but they’re going to not see that peace in their own lived lifetime. They’re going to see destruction. They’re going to see that city fall to ruins. And that is maybe in some sense, we might look at that as an Old Testament voice of judgment. You know, that the city will pay for the the fact that they missed the one who came to save them.

00:09:38:54 – 00:10:08:36
Michael Gewecke
There’s also just a simple fact of history that it will be upon that moment that as Luke will tell the story in acts that the Gospels that’s sent out are thrust out of the city of Jerusalem. And that’s that’s the amazing sort of movement. We have to remember that Luke and acts are part one and part two. So much of Jesus says life and ministry go towards the salvific work he will accomplish in and just outside of Jerusalem and in the church’s work, led by the power of the Spirit.

00:10:08:36 – 00:10:30:37
Michael Gewecke
In the book of Acts, are going to once again culminate in the Spirit being shed or being given in Jerusalem, and then that being the engine upon which that spirit is then thrust out across the entire world. And Jerusalem is no longer going to be the center of God’s work in the world, that peace is going to come from Jerusalem.

00:10:30:37 – 00:10:38:58
Michael Gewecke
Ultimately, though, the city itself will be destroyed in an act of violence. And that’s the kind of disjunctive things happening in this text all at one time.

00:10:39:03 – 00:11:14:06
Clint Loveall
This text and the next one here that will read. I think both have a sense of justice. One is national and one is much smaller. The centerpiece of Jerusalem for Jewish people is indeed the temple. And so no surprise that it is the first place that Jesus shows up a little bit. Interesting that for all Luke’s passion about money and for all of Luke’s emphasis on material wealth and the rich and the poor, in some ways, he tells us the simplest version of this story, which is in other gospels.

00:11:14:06 – 00:11:34:37
Clint Loveall
But in Luke, it’s really only two verses long. So let me let me read it. We’ll come back to it. Then Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there. He said, It is written. My house shall be a house of prayer, but you’ve made it a den of robbers. Every day. He was teaching in the temple.

00:11:34:42 – 00:12:00:19
Clint Loveall
The chief priests, the scribes and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him. But they did not find anything they could do. For all the people were spellbound by what they heard. So you may know this in in first century Jerusalem, there is a large economy tied to the temple. People would come in for festivals like the Passover, which is happening here at the time.

00:12:00:19 – 00:12:34:54
Clint Loveall
Jesus is there. And rather than bring sacrificial animals with them, they would bring money, they would buy those animals. At the temple there were stables, there were pens as part of the temple. There were people who kept those animals and they would also trade money. You could not use Roman money at the temple. So there was a money changers, literally, like when you travel and you trade dollars for pesos or for francs or for euros or whatever it is that was happening there at the temple.

00:12:34:58 – 00:13:02:56
Clint Loveall
And of of course they are there to make some profit. And so when Jesus encounters this in The Passion of Holy Week, he reacts to it also passionately less obvious in this. But it, John almost suggests he reacts violently to it. We don’t have that language here of turning over tables or making a whip. But in the other versions of this story, Jesus does.

00:13:02:56 – 00:13:30:04
Clint Loveall
He’s a little bit more disruptive here. He just begins running them out, saying this should be a house of prayer. And again, what is what is the idea here? Morning. This is not what it should be. It is supposed to be this, but you’ve made it this instead. Now again, Luke loves that language. Luke is always interested in stories that involve money and the temptation of money.

00:13:30:09 – 00:13:45:31
Clint Loveall
But here just a very simple telling of it as Jesus is so moved with anger and frustration at what they’re doing to the temple, what they’re doing to worship, that he cannot help but react and does so aggressively.

00:13:45:36 – 00:14:04:26
Michael Gewecke
And Luke not only cares about money, but Luke cares about power. And I think it’s worth noting here specifically what Luke has to say about this. It is the chief priests, the scribes and the leaders of the people that are actively looking for a way to kill him. That this, for Luke, is a departure from some of those stories that we’ve had before.

00:14:04:26 – 00:14:32:09
Michael Gewecke
We said this last week that the Pharisees were very much left at the door of Jerusalem. Now, as Jesus comes into the center of Israel life, it is now the chief priests. It’s the top brass of the temple, and it’s the leaders of the people in the very cosmopolitan center of Jewish life, Jerusalem. These are the ones who’ve now turned their attention to and ultimately against Jesus.

00:14:32:22 – 00:15:10:06
Michael Gewecke
This is this is really meaningful. Jesus is now making enemies in very, very high places. And Luke is making clear to us that Jesus is not only angered by the injustice of people who are poor, paying a tax rate or a fee to be able to worship God. Jesus is also at this moment inciting the very anger and rage of the people who have the power and motive and ultimately the success in bringing Jesus to the point of crucifixion, of death, how he’s now dealing with the highest level of of the people, the leaders of the country.

00:15:10:06 – 00:15:36:18
Michael Gewecke
And we might miss that. Right. But this would be akin to someone going to the center of power in our own culture. I suppose that would be going to something like a Washington, DC or maybe your state capitol. And they’re staging a kind of protest and doing so with the very people who are exercising the seats of power and authority there, that those are the people have the most means and capable of doing something about it.

00:15:36:18 – 00:15:56:00
Michael Gewecke
And that’s ultimately what is going to happen to Jesus. So that that’s the interesting thing that Luke is doing in a story like this is he’s simultaneously giving us the facts that Jesus goes, He’s moved by the injustice and he responds to it. And also, more practically, Jesus is now making enemies in very high places, and he’s doing so.

00:15:56:00 – 00:16:21:50
Michael Gewecke
The very tense moment in Jewish life. This is a very if you know your history, this is also a time where Rome and the Roman occupiers, the military, were at greatest odds with the Jews because this was a season. Passover was a season where historically there are very many records of both small and large revolts of people sort of standing up and pushing back against Roman power and authority.

00:16:21:50 – 00:16:41:42
Michael Gewecke
And so this is a tense moment already in Jerusalem when you’ve got a person going in and driving out the people who make the one of the busiest times of the year in the temple, the most profitable times of the year in the temple, that’s going to get noticed and it’s going to result in some big things as Luke is going to show us later.

00:16:41:47 – 00:17:31:57
Clint Loveall
I don’t think that this is obvious in the text, but there are some scholars who suggest that in putting this event on the Holy Week, the Monday of Holy Week typically is when we believe this happened. As you read it in the Gospels, there are those who suggest that this single event, the cleansing of the temple, is the kind of last straw that this is what really sort of signs Jesus’s warrant that it is in reaction to disrupting the temple, to acting out, to lashing out that that this is what sets the the now inescapable course toward the cross, that you know, that when Jesus does this, the Pharisees, the priests, the the high standing

00:17:31:57 – 00:17:58:10
Clint Loveall
officials in Jerusalem who are Jewish, they now decide once and for all this guy has got to go. And that that this event moves that forward the most in the end. Again, I don’t think you can get that from the text itself. I’m not sure that it’s that clear, but it is an interesting suggestion. It is clear that everybody mentions this first and it does set the tone for the week.

00:17:58:10 – 00:18:32:15
Clint Loveall
And so whatever else it is, it is a passionate display from Jesus that that worship is to be about God. And that’s where I think we talk about the applicability of a text like this. Michael You know, it seems a long time ago and far away and very strange. There’s animals being bought and sold, but effectively this reminds us that Jesus stands against any effort to make the church and worship about something other than the God who who calls us to do it.

00:18:32:15 – 00:18:36:52
Clint Loveall
And I think in that sense, it’s also a good devotional text. Well.

00:18:36:57 – 00:19:03:19
Michael Gewecke
This is maybe part of why this text is difficult for us reading it thousands of years later. And most of us not reading it from a Jewish cultural framework. Clint, this is the center of Jewish life. This is the most core aspect of what it means to be standing in the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and to be in David and Solomon’s Temple after destruction and reconstruction, all these things.

00:19:03:19 – 00:19:23:37
Michael Gewecke
But this is a center of national identity. Is that the core of what they consider to be their cultural heritage? And it’s in this place where Jesus, who’s been teaching this whole time, we’ve heard Jesus talking about how God’s kingdom is coming for all people. We’ve heard the expansiveness of this grace. It’s already been included in Luke. That’s not an accident.

00:19:23:42 – 00:19:43:23
Michael Gewecke
But, you know, there’s that thing that happens for humans where we hear a thing and we say, okay, yeah, maybe he’s just pushing his point, or I understand, you know, that’s interesting. But when Jesus shows up at the temple and he puts action to that teaching, when he talks about that kingdom being God’s kingdom and not David’s kingdom, it’s God’s kingdom.

00:19:43:28 – 00:20:09:27
Michael Gewecke
And that is the moment in which everything turns. The people see that Jesus is teaching even yet goes to the center of that sort of cultural life at the temple. And and it’s ultimately all about God. It has been for Jesus the whole time. And I think that you could look at a story like this and see that now everyone else has been able to catch a grasp of how seriously Jesus meant that.

00:20:09:32 – 00:20:24:11
Michael Gewecke
And when they come into that realization, it raises the stakes and it angers very powerful people. And like you’ve said, I think very helpfully, it creates the path upon which Jesus is now going to walk to the end.

00:20:24:16 – 00:20:51:43
Clint Loveall
Yeah, obviously, I think if you want to get people mad at you, you go to the money, you disrupt the income, you disrupt the flow. That that is that’s a powerful statement that Jesus makes. And it’s not a surprise that his enemies react strongly to it. Luke starts off hot. Now we’ll back off a little bit and we’ll kind of slow burn through the rest of the week for a couple of chapters.

00:20:51:43 – 00:21:03:14
Clint Loveall
But hope you’re going to be with us because Luke has now set us on the path of kind of the last part of the story and I think is certainly the culmination for the way that he writes it.

00:21:03:19 – 00:21:17:52
Michael Gewecke
You made this far. We hope that there’s been something encouraging for you. If there has give this fit you would like. And if you’d like to stick with us as we go through stubbies just like this one, please subscribe so that you can get videos as they come out. That said, until we see though tomorrow or whenever it is, give us.