Luke 19:41-44 - William Tant

Luke 19:41-44. " And when he came near he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, if thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace I but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee. round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." Many take Occasion, from these words, to infer, that the Lord Jesus Christ strives, seeks, and endeavours, to save men universally, but cannot accomplish his wishes ; but let -it be remembered Jesus is here speaking as a man, in contemplation of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans, together with the dispersion of the Jewish nation, and the miserable cruelties which they would have to endure at the hands of their enemies. But there is no reference made by Christ, in this compassionate exclamation, to spiritual things; but he confines his pathetic language wholly to temporals. Jerusalem did not know " the time of her visitation," when he, as the promised Messiah, had actually come, and for her rejection of him, the Jewish nation was to be scattered. Yet, for the sake of argument, I would suppose for a moment, that the Jewish nation, as a nation, received Christ. This might have been done, and yet the Jews, as a nation, have no grace: England nationally acknowledges Christ as the Messiah, at this very moment, but, alas ! very, very few know anything of him by a grace communion with him. Therefore no inference can be drawn from these words of Christ, that Jerusalem had out sinned her day of grace; or that men universally have a day of grace put into their hands, which they may out sin. It might, with as much propriety, be inferred, that because Christ said, when he reached Lazarus' grave, roll ye away the stone," that therefore he could not raise Lazarus to life without Lazarus' consent, as to say he desired to save' the inhabitants of Jerusalem spiritually and eternally, but could not do it because they were not willing. And yet this is the notion most current among religious teachers. Jesus called the period when he was speaking, Jerusalem's day, not God's day of grace, nor God's day of striving to save it. Jerusalem's peace, not God's peace, nor God's offer of peace. Instead of a day of grace being out sinned, I would say it cannot, for the promise is certain to all who have grace, and they only can be said to have a day of grace : " Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law but under grace."