Sermons

Matthew 23:37-39 – Jesus’ Lament, Freewill, and Sovereign Grace

Intro: Brief passage bridging chps 23 and 24.

• Linking X’s 7 woes w/end times.
• Israel’s judgment and future hope.

[KEY] X’s focus from provocation to anguish.  

• Passage is standalone/distinct for what it reveals @/X.
  • Weeping over those he loves.
  • Who rejected him.

 

• X’s provocations stated; now weeping.

 

[KEY] “X’s final word to them” though not the end of the story.

• Though a lament, also an appeal.
  • X would not reach Israel by forced entry.
  • Only weapon X wielded was love.

 

[Quote] “No handle on outside of the human heart: it must be opened from the inside.”

[Quote] Isael’s glaring sin was, “Deliberate open-eyed refusal of God’s repeated appeal thru X to believe.

 

[TRANS] 3 verses packed, but passage raises two big idea questions on subject, “freewill.”

• Is freewill a real thing?
• Why is freewill important?

 

[Prop] The reasons and results of freewill.

1. The reason there is freewill

 

1. Jesus exercises freewill (v. 37a)

[KEY] First, is there really a question regarding whether Jesus had freewill?

• He is the Lord, so being sovereign, he can act according to his own prerogatives.
  • At the same time, X’s lament is a reaction to a nation rejecting him.

 

• Remember: Parable of the tenants in Matthew 21:33-41.

[Illus] Tenants killed the master’s servants and then ultimately conspired to and killed the master’s son. Jesus just taught this parable, meaning he was fully aware of God’s sovereign plan or Israel. What they would do and why. None of this caught X by surprise. So, why the tears.

 

• X still

 

• Cries over the city, Jerusalem.
  • Slain prophets.
  • Murdered messengers of God.

 

• X’s final woe was over the fact of Israel’s history.
  • Murdered the prophets (v. 31).
  • Will kill, crucify, and flog God’s messengers (v. 34).

 

• Arguing for X’s freewill; argues for X’s full humanity.
  • X weeps w/authentic tears.
  • Not legal fiction or proforma.

 

[KEY] Emotion not to be underestimated.

• X repeating the words: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.”
  • Repetition means intense emotion.

 

[Illus] David when betrayed by his son, found executed in battle, cried: “My son Absolom, my son Absolom!” (2 Sam. 18:33). X cried out, “Simon, Simon, Satan desires to sift you like wheat…” (Luke 22:31), Paul at Damascus, the Lord said: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4).

 

• X weeps over the city he’s committed to judgment.
  • Now bursting to tears.
  • Real compassion from X’s free exercise and expression.

[KEY] Reinforces X’s commitment to them.

• X’s genuine offer as Messiah.

[KEY] Synoptics say X: Not return to Jerusalem until these last days.

“How he could have even made this genuine appeal to Jerusalem if he was never there?”

• Gospels did not record all X did.

 

• John’s Gospel says as much.
• Too much for even books to hold on Jesus.

^ESV  John 21:25 Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. (Joh 21:25 ESV)

• John says X went on 3 to 4 times to Jerusalem (cf. Jn. 2, 5, 6, 7, 12).

 

• Jesus cleansing the temple, the Passover, the feast of booths etc.

 

• X also reached Jerusalem by reaching the Jews from Jerusalem or associated with Jerusalem by ethnicity as he traveled Galilee and other regions.

[Appl] Same experience we have reaching the world, wherever we are, as our reach is through the spread of the Word of God.

• X’s freewill unincumbered w/o sin.
  • w/o sin’s influences.
  • Otherwise X operating just like anyone else.
    • X tempted as we were (Heb. 4:15).
    • X grew in obedience (Luke 2:52; Heb. 5:8).
    • X fulfilled all righteousness (Matt. 3:15).

 

• Paul exercised his freewill w/like emotion.

^ESV  Romans 9:1-6 I am speaking the truth in Christ– I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit–

² that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.

³ For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

⁴ They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises.

⁵ To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

⁶ But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, (Rom 9:1-6 ESV)

• Romans 9 pinnacle on sovereign election.
  • Begins w/Paul’s lament of how would trade himself for eternal hell for his kinsmen to be saved!

 

• X, fully human, longed to embrace Israel as a “hen gathers her brood under her wings” (v. 37).

 

• Real desire as a mother bird gathering, protecting, and keeping her young.

 

• Like Paul’s heart to pastor of Thessalonians (1 Thess. 2) like a nursing mother to her young,

 

• X’s lament for children who’ve willfully rejected him.

 

 

• God is sovereign.
  • Bible again and again states his predetermined plan.
    • Unfolding according to his perfect will

 

• [BUT] God’s will never undermines God’s active passion and involvement with the world.

 

• His appeals are authentic.
  • Accepted and rejected.
  • Offer and passion sincere.

^ESV  Ezekiel 33:11 Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel? (Eze 33:11 ESV)

^ESV  2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2Pe 3:9 ESV)

 

• God’s sovereignty is never determinism.
  • People never mere puppets.
  • Bible nowhere teaches determinism.

 

 [TRANS] Coming clear on X’s freewill (in view of God’s sovereignty) but what about man’s freewill.  

 

1. Israel exercises freewill (v. 37b)

[KEY] At end of v. 37, X states why would not gather Israel to himself.

• “…and you were not willing!” (v. 37).

 

[Illus] Armenians claim God limits his sovereignty to put man in the driver’s seat to literally stall what God would otherwise desire to do. Logic-based which essence “un-God’s, God!”

God is either in the driver’s seat based on his nature or he is not. Open-Thesim was a theological attempt to characterize God as being open to but not sovereign over a zillion possible outcomes based on what man chooses.

This to protect God from the accusation that he is responsible for unfair things happening to good people.

 

These attempts to explain God from our perspective miss the way God is both outside and inside of time at the same time.

 

[TRANS] Back to Israel’s freewill, “…you were not willing!” (v. 37).

 

[Question] “Was it Israel’s unwillingness to embrace X what kept X from embracing them?”

• Yes, in terms of X’s offer being genuine.

 

• No, in terms of Israel’s unbelief determining God’s sovereign plan.

 

 

[KEY] Difficult to square God’s bigger plan and w/these reactions.

[Illus] X predicted his death then begged his Father to not drink the cup of wrath. Then submitted to his Father’s overarching will.

 

[Illus] Remember X, while on earth did not know the day or the hour of his return.

 

[Appl] So much of understanding the sovereignty of God and the freewill of man is perspective.

Seeing things from heaven’s perspective.

Verses seeing things from earth’s perspective.

Understanding that one perspective does not contradict the other.

 

[Illus] Remember Job 1-2. There is earth’s perspective which is the normal way that we observe things happening to us and the choices we make and then there is the rare moment when God pulls the curtain back and we see things from God’s realm and perspective.

 

In the case of Job, we know there was a debate between Satan and God over whether Job’s faith would break under the worst of circumstances. God under his sovereign will allowed Satan to attack Job, so Job lost everything and Job only saw his circumstances.

 

The point remains that heaven’s realm does not contradict earth’s realm. God’s sovereignty does not contradict but coalesces with human responsibility. God’s will and man’s will.

 ^ESV  Proverbs 16:9 The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.

 (Pro 16:9 ESV)  

[Appl] This dynamic where God’s sovereignty is working, while man as a free moral agent is making decisions has in recent years been called compatibilism, not hyper-Armenian and neither is it hyper-Calvinism.

[Illus] As the author o the book, What about freewill, Scott Christiansen wrote: Everyone has encountered “all-or-nothing” people. You ask them to turn down the TV because it’s too loud, so they turn it off instead. They poke down the rod when you are running late for an appointment. So instead of speeding up a little, they suddenly morph into Mario Andretti. Many Christians reflect this all-or-nothing approach to human choosing.

 

[Illus] RC Sproul, “Man has freewill, but man does not have autonomous will.

 

[TRANS] Move from answering @ Reasons for freewill to its real Results in life.  

 

2. The result of freewill (vv. 38-39)

 

1. Israel’s full judgment (v. 38)

[KEY] X says, “See, your house is left to you desolate” (v. 38).

• X says, “See” being emphatic over what they have lost by their unbelief.

 

• Rejecting X, they condemned their city to desolation.
• Point cements man’s moral culpability for sin.

[Ryle] Let the ground we take up be always that of passage we are now considering: Christ would gather men, but they will not to be gathered;

Christ would save men, but they will not to be saved. Let it be a settled principle in our religion, that man’s salvation if saved, is wholly of God; and that man’s ruin, I lost, is wholly of himself.

The evil that is in us is all our own: the good, I we have any, is all of God. The saved in the next world will give God all the glory: the lost in the next world will find that they have destroyed themselves.

 

[Question] What does X mean that Jerusalem “is left to you desolate?”

• God warned, early in history that if Israel would not obey the LORD, then there would be curses (cf. Dt. 28:15-68).

^ESV  Deuteronomy 28:15 “But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. (Deu 28:15 ESV)

• Desolation of the house of Jerusalem could be limited to mean “the temple of Israel.”
  • X already declared temple should be, “…. called a house of prayer” (Matt. 21:13).
    • Corrupted for centuries by now.

 

• Ichobod, “inglorious” w/o glory (cf. 1 Sam. 4:21, ark had been captured).

 

• Glory had departed, Ezekiel 10 (586 BC exile period).

 

• Desolation, symbolized more than this house; was Israel as nation.

 

• Remember Jesus, two days before at the end of his triumphal entry likewise wept over his vision of the coming destruction of Jerusalem (see Luke).

^ESV  Luke 19:41-44 And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it,

⁴² saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.

⁴³ For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side

⁴⁴ and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luk 19:41-44 ESV)

• X amid being praised Messiah, sees their hearts and that their fate is sealed.
  • The freewill of X is met by the freewill of the Jews.
    • Rejecting X would mean their destruction.
    • Fulfilled in AD 70 when Rome under General Titus would starve the city and raise it where “not…one stone [would be let] upon another” (v. 44).

 

[TRANS] Verse 39 appears to leave things hopeless and it would w/o verse: 2^nd half.

1. The Lord’s full rescue (v. 39)

[KEY] First half of verse 39 is like a death knell [tolling of a bell], “For I tell you, you will not see me again…” (v. 39).

[Illus] Spurgeon narrated w/sadness: “Nothing remained for the King but to pronounce the solemn sentence of death upon those who would not come unto him that they might have life…The whole house of the Jews was left desolate…a spiritual desolation when X finally left it. Jerusalem was too far gone to be rescued from its self-sought doom…His personal ministry to them was at an end.”

 

[KEY] Second half of verse 39, where X brings hope.

• Where the Lord overrides man’s freewill.
  • Man bent on choosing sin and death.
  • X w/saving grace promises to return.

 

[KEY] The single word, “until” is the pivot from hopeless to hopeful.

• Israel will be restored (see. Jer. 23:5-6; Is. 66:10-22; Zech. 14:1-11).

^ESV  Zechariah 12:10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn. (Zec 12:10 ESV)

• Joy mixed w/sadness; grace mixed with full acknowledgment of prior, willful rejection the Messiah for millennia.

[KEY] X did not say, “unless” but “until” making this not possible but promised.

• Days before, Israel sang Psalm 118:26 in vain.
  • But one day there will be an ingathering (Rom. 11:11-12).
  • Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 12:1-3).
  • Israel is regrafted into God’s plan.

[KEY] Israel today remains under a stupor while the remnant is being saved.

• Israel is its own phenomenon.

 

• No nation has endured such attacks.

 

• 6 million Jews slaughtered by Hiter’s rage.

 

• Attacks from all sides by enemy nations.

 

• Scattered around the world but with identity still in tac.

 

• 1948, reestablished nationhood.

 

• Yet something remains!

 

• One day, “all Israel will be saved!”

^ESV  Romans 11:23-26 And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again.

²⁴ For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.

²⁵ Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

²⁶ And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; (Rom 11:23-26 ESV)

 

 

Conclusion:

Your freewill is yours – but be clear that your choice apart from God’s intervention and grace – will always be the wrong one.

• Bc/sin nature you’re born with.

 

• Our natural inclination is always to digress to our world, our flesh, and sadly to the Devil.

 

• Say, “Yes” to the grace X gives us and be love him.

 

^ESV  1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us. (1Jo 4:19 ESV)