Missing The Hour Of Our Visitation With God

Today being Palm Sunday, we always reflect upon what it really means. 1,989 years ago, a young Rabbi named Yeshua sat on the summit of a mountain looking down over the city of Jerusalem and lamented deeply in his heart for the condition of the people that he had come to try and save from the terrible fate that he knew would be theirs for many generations to come.

Yeshua, or as we call him, Jesus, the Son of God, was taking in his final view of the city before he would enter the gates riding on a donkey and welcomed by shouts of joy and the waving of palm branches. He was entering the city to not only celebrate Passover, but to become the Passover Lamb that would be sacrificed for the sin of Israel and all of humanity.

This was a day of mixed emotions in the very heart of the Son of God. There’s no doubt that Jesus had seen this day coming for a long time with both dread and joy, and there was no escaping it. On this day Jesus was filled with compassion for the lost souls of men, especially the people of Israel.

As a man he dreaded what was coming for it meant much pain as he would face the beatings, torture the whip and finally the hammer and nails of the cross at the hands of the Romans under Pontius Pilate. The hour of his departure from this world, from among the living, was at hand and he was in anguish because he knew what was about to happen.

How could Jesus have joy over what he would face? Hebrews 12:2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. The Joy was based upon the finished work that he would accomplish that would make a way of salvation for all men.

Love bound him to the path set before him. How great is the Love of God to send his Only Son to die for the sin of man – the very creation of God that had rejected him and fallen ever deeper into the darkness of rebellion!

Just before riding into the city Jesus stood on the mountain overlooking the city and wept as he looked down over the scene before him and saw the future of what was to come for the city, the nation and the people that he loved so much. Jesus had come to save them. He had come to be their Messiah that they had prayed for and hoped for, and searched for through hundreds and thousands of years.

Jesus had come, but they did not know him because of the blindness of their hearts and because they had been misled and lied to by the Priests, the very ones who were to be their spiritual leaders led them away from the truth. Jesus had been rejected and though The Very Son of God walked among them and they did not know the hour of their visitation. The Jews were about to destroy what they desired most of all and it would leave them cursed for many generations in a dangerous world where they would become the target of destruction until they would see Jesus come again at the end of the age.

You can sense the sorrow in his heart as Jesus stood on the mountain in Matthew 23:37-39 and spoke these words: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that killed the prophets, and stoned them which are sent unto you, how often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

For I say unto you, You shall not see me after this, till you shall say, Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.”

In a greater sense, I believe that Jesus knew he wasn’t just speaking to Jerusalem, but that he was thinking of the whole world and all of humanity.

As the Son of God, he looked down through the centuries of history that were yet to come and remembered all that had happened in the centuries past, and he felt the pain of hopelessness Israel and the whole human race had known before and the terror, hardship, pain and death that they would face in the years to come.

He remembered the death and destruction of the Assyrian Captivity. He remembered the capture of Jerusalem, the slaughter of the people and the leading of so many into the Babylonian Captivity under Nebuchadnezzar. He remembered the day that Israel invited the Romans in to bring peace among the warring factions of the Jews, and how that had now become the Roman Occupation. And Jesus knew that the Romans would ultimately destroy Jerusalem and the temple, and that they would shatter Israel as a nation by exiling the Jews to the four corners of the earth.