This love that Christ has for you is just like the love that He had for the people of Jerusalem. If you look at Luke 19:44 you will notice how He referred to them. He called them ‘children.’ Doesn’t this reveal the fatherly care and compassion that He had for them? Psalm 103:13 says, “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him.”
Now we can see that the tears that Jesus shed on His way to Jerusalem were not just tears of grief over their lack of peace, and over their sins of unbelief. They were also tears of unbounded love for His people. Just two days after the Triumphal Entry when Jesus uttered another lamentation over Jerusalem, He expressed His love for her people much more extensively. This is found in Matthew 23:37-39: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see Me again until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Can you see here how tenderly Jesus loved His people? He longed to gather them like a mother hen under His wings – so that they will find rest in Him (“Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” – Matthew 11:28) and life in Him (“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” – .John 10:10). And not only did He want to gather them together under His wings, He says that He had wanted to do it often – He had sought not just once, but again and again to bring them under His wings, but each time He did this, they would not respond.
The tears that Jesus shed for Jerusalem truly reveal His great unbounded love for His own, a love that never ceases to seek earnestly after their welfare and salvation. Dearly beloved, this same Jesus who wept tears of love at that time, weeps also out of love for you now. Have you been like Jerusalem, in a backslidden condition, unwilling to listen to His many calls to you, His calls to obey Him and to renew your first love for Him? Have you grown cold toward Him, refusing to respond to the many tender appeals and warnings He has been giving to you again and again through His Word? If you have been like this, you must respond to His love. Let it draw you back to the Lord. Let His love bind you with a new commitment and resolve to walk with Him each day, and to live for Him each day.
And when you have seen how greatly the Lord Jesus loves you, please do not forget how much He loves others too. Let us do all that we can to make His love known and to bring the lost to Him, so that by the time when Christ will come riding triumphantly from heaven to earth to receive His own and to gather them under His wings, many would have already received Him.
(REV CHARLES SEET)