NYC #4 – Grieving over a City

How do we respond to our City? Good things happen. And we celebrate. But bad things happen too. And we grieve.

One day when Jesus “approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it” (Luke 19:41).

Jerusalem had been given the greatest gift of all, God incarnate. But they rejected him. Jesus had come with a message of life, but they scorned him and the authorities plotted to kill him.

The City of Peace had an opportunity for real peace. But they failed to recognize the Prince of Peace.

Like Jeremiah the prophet who wept for his people, Jesus cried out a lament over his people. Instead of Jerusalem serving as God’s light to the nations, they would experience a dark judgment.

History records how about 40 years later in 70 A.D., the Romans besieged and destroyed Jerusalem. As the opposition crumbled, the Romans massacred the Jews, burned the temple, and leveled the city.

Jesus foresaw this. Judgment was coming. He knew it and he wept.

As we think of our own city – the weight of this pandemic, the weight of injustice, the weight of inequity – all these things matter to God and we should grieve.

As we consider the spiritual blindness of people – that people are separated from God, need Christ’s salvation, and will one day face the judgment – we should grieve.

As we reflect on the masses of people who need God in the cities of our world – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Beijing, Mumbai – we should grieve.

Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision, prayed, “Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.”

David Livingstone, Christian doctor, missionary, and explorer in Africa, repeatedly cried, “Lord, when will the wounds of this world’s sin be healed?”

What should we do? We should pray earnestly for God to act. We should respond in faith to the needs we see. We should tell others Christ’s good news. We should be advancing God’s kingdom.

~ Pastor Dave