The Things That Make for Peace
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, 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. 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 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.” (Luke 19:41-44)
From first look, Jesus had just been praised by multitudes of people and yet now we see Jesus weeping over the city. The people had rejoiced at His arrival on that colt, but their expectations and the box they had put the long-awaited Messiah into skewed their perspective and they missed the reality of His coming and the things that make for peace. They wanted peace in defeating the Romans in the physical realm and Jesus came to give them peace with God in the spiritual realm. And in doing so they didn’t know on that specific day the things that make for peace.
The prophecy of that specific day and the Messiah’s arrival had been prophesied long ago (Daniel 9). Daniel’s vision in Daniel 9 was written around 538 B.C., long before Jesus ever came, and the date of what we call the Triumphal Entry was precisely prophesied down to the day. God had made it known to the people over half a millennium in advance and had given detailed prophecies about Jesus as Messiah, of which Jesus fulfilled, and they missed it.
Jesus then prophesied the consequence of not knowing their time of visitation and His prophecy that the enemies would barricade around Jerusalem and destroy everything, happened only 38 years later in the year 70 A.D. when secular history documented that Titus, a Roman army general who later became emperor, surrounded Jerusalem and cut off their food supply and eventually stormed in and destroyed everything, completely burning the temple to the ground.
A Humbling Response
Now I don’t know about you, but initially the fact that they missed their day of visitation and the horrible consequences they’d receive because of it, kind of makes me shake my head and think, “How on earth could you have missed it? God made it so clear”, but when I look at how Jesus responded, I’m quickly humbled. Jesus knew the upcoming prophesy in light of the people not knowing the day of their visitation, and He gave them the prophecy long ago about their day of visitation, AND He ensured it was recorded and preserved for them; but He didn’t shake His fist or head and become indignant at the lack of knowledge; instead, He wept.
He loved all people then, He loves all people now, and He wants us to understand the revealed mystery that He is our Prince of Peace who came to bridge the chasm our sin created and allow us to make peace with God through His sacrifice on the cross. And now, thousands of years later, we have a complete canon of Scripture that clearly lays out all the Law and Prophets of old and how Jesus clearly fulfilled all the prophecies about Messiah and has more than proven to be God in the flesh who came and dwelt among us, our Savior. As we just celebrated the birth of Jesus, may we never forget nor take for granted the thing Jesus did to make for our peace with God.