Suffering in Ignorance

Author: Joseph

Date: December 17, 2023

Yeshua asks His disciples to go and find a colt and a donkey that were tied up in a nearby village. The disciples retrieved the animals and Yeshua sat upon the colt as He rode into Jerusalem. He was greeted by people laying down leafy branches and their coats on the road. The crowds shouted, “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD; blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David; Hosanna in the highest! (Mark 11:9-10). However, some Pharisees in the crowd were sternly demanding that Yeshua rebuke His disciples. They did not believe Yeshua was the awaited Messiah and they did not want Yeshua to be welcomed as king – which the crowd was convinced Yeshua was coming to fulfill at that time. He answers the Pharisees “I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!” (Luke 19:40). Yeshua was coming as King, just not in the manner that the crowd was expecting, and through Him, salvation would be brought and the Kingdom of God established. But no one understood how this would happen. The crowd assumed that Yeshua would enter into Jerusalem and begin His kingdom like King David. The Pharisees, neither wanting this nor wanting the crowd to believe so, eagerly demanded that they stop and that the disciples be rebuked. But this was not the will of God.

The stones would cry out if the people were silent. Meaning, what was about to happen with Yeshua’s entry into Jerusalem would change the entire world. The earth, which had been cursed since creation, would even cry out for what was about to happen and Yeshua’s fulfillment of His ministry was coming to its pinnacle time. Yet, no one apart from Yeshua understood this.

When Yeshua approached Jerusalem, “He was the city and wept over it, saying, ‘If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes’” (Luke 19:41-42). Yeshua was about to bring forth the Kingdom of God through providing salvation for anyone willing to accept it: “the things which make for peace.” But no one recognized that this was His purpose and they were missing completely what was happening right before their eyes. They could see Yeshua Himself coming into the city, but they did not understand His purpose, blinded by their own desires and misunderstandings.

The peoples’ lack of recognition was not only “missing out” on the moment, it was judgment upon them as well. Yeshua says as He looks upon the city, “For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:43-44). The people of God did not recognize what was happening, not solely out of ignorance, but because they had been misled. They trusted in their false teachers, the Pharisees, who led them astray from loving God. They were motivated to come out of the rule of the Romans (who at the time occupied all of Israel) and so their desire for a king to deliver them was at the forefront of their thoughts. They called Yeshua the “Son of David,” “the prophet,” and someone who comes in God’s name, but did not understand that it was God Himself in the flesh coming to them. They did not understand His identity, though they had a long history of expecting a Messiah to save them. They defined it according to their own traditions rather than what God’s Word said.

Yeshua did not apathetically condemn the city for not recognizing Him. No. Yeshua wept over the city. How deeply sad it must have been for the appointed time to come and pass without recognition from the very people who were given everything in order to know that this was the time. The deception in the land was widespread and pervaded the minds of all the people. This would cause the vast majority of them to not only not recognize God’s will, but to be opposed to it for not meeting their own expectations. Instead of rejoicing for the salvation to come, the people were rejoicing at Yeshua’s entry for their own blind desires. The crowds would follow him only as far as Yeshua did not go against their expectations. So He wept, knowing that they were unable to see what was really happening with His coming into the city.

"...He wept, knowing that they were unable to see..."

What kind of expectations do you have about Yeshua’s second coming at the end of days? Are you making assumptions that will blind you from understanding what is really going to happen? It is for the same reason Yeshua wept here in this passage that many people will fall away from the faith in the end or be deceived by lying spirits (antichrists, false prophets, false teachers). Many people have an expectation about who Yeshua is that is false and contrary to who He actually is. Reflect on what you expect for the second coming of Yeshua and meditate: what if your expectations are wrong? It’s time to look into God’s Word now and seek to know the truth with discerning effort and sincere faith.

Matthew 21:1-10 (Mark 11:1-14; Luke 19:28-44) Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org