The Siege Of Jerusalem

But Jesus also gives the answer to ‘WHY?’ His comment at the end is chilling. He says that this would happen, ‘because you did not know the time of your visitation’. Christ had come to Jerusalem. The Jews had rejected him, and this was the consequence. So it WAS God’s doing, God’s judgment.

A second passage which relates to this event is Matthew 21:33-41. Jesus is in the temple in Jerusalem, teaching. He tells this parable:

‘Listen to another parable: there was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall round it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.

‘The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them in the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. “They will respect my son,” he said.

‘But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, “This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.” So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

‘Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’

‘He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,’ they replied, ‘and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.’

Who is the son in this parable, whom the tenants kill? [Jesus!] Who is the son’s father? [God the Father.] In this parable, Jesus asked the people what the father would do to the tenants if they kill his son. The people of Jerusalem answered, ‘He will put those wretches to a wretched end...’ Jesus didn’t disagree. The owner of the vineyard would act in judgment.

Jesus predicted that Jerusalem would be torn down to the ground ‘because you did not know the time of your visitation.’ The people who killed the vineyard owner’s son would incur the owner’s wrath. So the siege of Jerusalem WAS God’s judgment.

So, the first lesson we get from this story is a challenging one. We may imagine that God’s love and mercy are limitless and that God could never be the cause of such an event as the siege of Jerusalem. But if we think that God never gets angry then we’re wrong. If we think that God never judges in the present then we’re wrong. This story shows that God does get angry, and he does judge in the present. All judgment does not wait for the Day of Judgment.

LESSON 2: GOD SAVES IN THE PRESENT

You may be thinking that this is a rather depressing message. Can’t we have some good news? Well, there is some. We find that just as God judges in the present as well as in the future, so he also saves in the present as well as in the future. Let’s look at Luke 21:20-22. Jesus is speaking:

‘But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it, for these are days of vengeance, to fulfil all that is written.’