By: Scott Adkins, Sling ‘n Stone Ministry
Carter County Times
The Lord Jesus Christ came as “a man acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53:3) Confirming that prophecy, Luke 19:41-44 says: “As He came near, He beheld the city, and wept over it.” (Luke 19:41). Jesus wept because those who He came to save stood blind to “the time of [their] visitation.” (Luke 19:44) Weeping, Jesus declared Israel’s rejection of Him meant their destruction. (Luke 19:42-44) Thirty-seven years later, Rome’s army laid waste to Jerusalem.
Isaiah 53:3 also prophesied Jesus would be “a man of sorrows.” Remember the rich young ruler and the Garden of Gethsemane? The young ruler rejected Jesus’s invitation, “Follow Me,” choosing worldly riches instead. (Luke 18:18-23) When Jesus saw that, “Jesus was very sorrowful.” (Luke 19:24) Jesus knew the young man’s choice meant “a furnace of fire,” where “there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:42) In Gethsemane, Jesus wrestled with His approaching crucifixion’s agonies and confessed: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful unto death.” (Mark 14:34) So, the Lord openly wept and sorrowed for sin and its consequences for all who reject Him.
I Peter 2:21 says: “Christ… leaving us an example, the ye should follow His steps.” What does this mean for us? It means we should say, as did the Psalmist: “Rivers of water run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law,” (Psalms 119:136) and “I beheld the transgressors and grieved; because they kept not thy Word.” (Psalms 119:158) We know those who die in sin suffer eternal fire, weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. But do we weep and sorrow for their sinful souls and pray God give them repentance? Great revival preachers of old did.
During the First Great Awakening, God’s great evangelist George Whitefield openly wept heaving sobs before sinful thousands, proclaiming: “If you will not weep for your crimes against a holy God, then George Whitefield will weep for you!!” Then, Whitefield would throw his head back and sob like a baby in open-air meetings, weeping for the lost multitudes. When did any 21st century preacher last do that? When did any of us last do that? When did we last weep for sinners and their certain doom, either privately before God, or publicly before sinners as did George Whitefield?
This, beloved, we must do if we are to rescue sinners from a Christless eternity. We must soak our prayers and harvest fields with torrents of hot tears and follow Jesus’s example. If we do not, folks we today love will be forever lost; weeping, wailing, and gnashing their teeth under God’s vengeance in His fiery furnace. Beloved, that need not be; and so now, weep, we must.
