This was a warning directly from YAHSHUA to Jerusalem, as He saw the spiritual condition of the place. He wept [audibly] over it. Luke says that as YAHSHUA approached, He saw the city, and He wept over it exclaiming, would that you had known personally, even at least in this your day, the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For a time is coming upon you when your enemies will throw up a bank [with pointed stakes] about you and surround you and shut you in on every side and they will dash you down to the ground, you, and your children with you; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not come progressively to recognize and know and understand the time of your visitation. (Luke 19:41-44). Years later, in the year 70 A.D. it happened exactly as He told them. His heart burned for that city called the “City of God.” His warning was prophetic with certainty of Jerusalem’s future. His weeping translated the gravity of the judgment coming to the city. Our Lord’s crying over a sinful and rebellious city against Himself and all that He had done for the nation, marks a time, in the space of God’s timing for serious judgment against it. YAHSHUA’S tears washed Jerusalem’s grounds with sorrows for the city, which refused to accept Him; a nation that rejected Him to the point of crucifying Him. He said, I must continue on My way today and tomorrow and the day after that- for it will never do for a prophet to be destroyed away from Jerusalem! (Luke 13:33). Jerusalem is without a doubt, an apostate place. Because of their rejection of God, Jerusalem is morally and spiritually corrupted. Figuratively called Sodom and Egypt for what they represent, as a copy of these nations. Revelation 11:8 says, and their bodies (the witnesses) will lie in the street of the great city (Jerusalem) figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. YAHSHUA’S calling the nation for repentance was ignored, bringing them serious consequences without mercy.
At the healing of a crippled man by Peter and John, (after YAHSHUA’S ascension) the people were amazingly surprised, to whom they responded: You men of Israel, why are you so surprised and wondering at this? Why do you keep staring at us, as through by our power or piety we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham and of Isaac and Jacob, the God of our forefathers, has glorified His Servant and Son YAHSHUA, Whom you indeed delivered up and denied and rejected and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when he had determined to let Him go, but you denied and rejected and disowned the Pure and Holy, the Just and Blameless One, and demanded a murderer to be granted to you, but you killed the very Source of life, Whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses (Acts 3:12-15).
The Prophet Isaiah, many years before YAHSHUA came to earth, prophesized saying, who has believed our message [of that which was revealed to us] and to whom has the arm of the Lord been disclosed? … For [the Servant of God] grew up before Him like a tender plant, and like a root out of the dry ground…He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him…He was oppressed, He was afflicted, He was submissive and opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. By oppression and judgment, He was taken away; and as for His generation, who among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of (Israel’s), to whom the stroke due? (Isa. 53). John wrote this of Him: He came into the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him; He came for His own, and they who were His own did not receive Him and did not welcome Him (John 1:11-12). As these prophecies were being fulfilled through Him, He uttered another message of warning to the nation, specifically to Jerusalem, saying, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who continue to kill the prophets and to stone those who are sent to You! How often I have desired and yarned to gather your children together as a hen [gathers] her young under her wings, but you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken! And I tell you, you will not see Me again until the time comes when you shall say, Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord! (Luke 13: 34-35). YAHSHUA was a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, as Isaiah prophesized it. YAHSHUA said, whoever hates Me also hates My Father; if they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you… (John 15). The hate that the nation had for YAHSHUA passed on to their followers. Hebrews 11: 37 we read: Some heroes and heroines of the faith were killed through hate that the Jews had against YAHSHUA. It says, they were stoned to death; they were lured with tempting offers; they were sawn asunder; they were slaughtered by the sword; [while they were alive] they had to go about wrapped in the skins of sheep and goats, utterly destitute, oppressed, cruelly treated.
Light from the Word 