Why Did Jesus Weep!

 

The New Testament tells us of three specific occasions when Jesus wept. In this article I will attempt to explain just what we, as born-again believers, and children of God, can learn from this in our frail humanity.

Chapter 11 of the Book of John recounts the story of the death and subsequent resurrection of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha and also a friend of Jesus.

And right in the middle of this story we are told that Jesus wept!

John 11:35 (NIV)

Jesus wept.

Now, just why did Jesus weep?

Was it because his friend had died? Somehow, I don’t think so because Jesus already had a plan for Lazarus, he was going to raise him from the dead! He even delayed going to Lazarus for two days! He had a purpose, and that purpose was to glorify God by resurrecting Lazarus from the dead!

John 11:1-7 (NIV)

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

4 When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, 7 and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

Jesus tells the disciples that he is going to Lazarus to wake him up because he was dead! Jesus was delaying on purpose so that the disciples would truly believe in Him as the Son of God.

John 11:12 15 (NIV)

12 His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” 13 Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

14 So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, 15 and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

When Jesus arrives in Bethany he is met by Mary and Martha and other friends and family who were wailing and crying because Lazarus had been dead for two days.

John 11:33-35 (NIV)

33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34 “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

35 Jesus wept.

It was at the point that Jesus wept, He was deeply moved in and troubled in His spirit. This was not because of their sorrow and grief, although I am sure he had empathy for them, but it was because of their lack of faith in Him to be able to do something about the situation! These people had been around Jesus for just over three years and had witnessed the many miraculous things he had done, and yet they still showed an incredible lack of faith and belief in Him as the Son of God. It was this lack of faith that troubled Jesus and made Him cry in anguish!

Even when Jesus told the crowd to remove the gravestone from the entrance to the tomb, they still didn’t believe that Jesus was able to resurrect the dead!

Jesus admonishes them with these words:

John 11:40-42 (NIV)

40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

When they had taken away the gravestone there was no stench of death and Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb alive and well!

John 11:43-44 (NIV)

43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

And here we have the Glory of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit revealed to the crowd in resurrection power!

In Luke 19 we have another example of Jesus weeping but this time He is weeping over Jerusalem just before He enters the city to face death on the cross for mankind!

Luke 19:41-42 (AMP)

41 As He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it [and the spiritual ignorance of its people], 42 saying, “If [only] you had known on this day [of salvation], even you, the things which make for peace [and on which peace depends]! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.

Here Jesus is about to enter Jerusalem to face his crucifixion but takes time to stop and weep over the city and its people.

This is another picture of Jesus weeping. But again, He is not weeping for Himself! He s committed to the will of the Father. He knows He is going to his death and knows that if He doesn’t, there will be no salvation for mankind! What amazing love!

Jesus is weeping over the Eternal City and the spiritual ignorance of the people. He knows that despite all the good and miraculous things He has done, the people are still going to crucify Him.

Isn’t this a mirror image of what the world is like today? A world that is spiritually ignorant of the one true God! And even many born-again believers are lacking in faith and have many areas of spiritual unbelief about Christ Jesus and what the Church can accomplish when we are sold out to Him! There is nothing that God cannot do!

Isaiah 53:3

He was despised and rejected by mankind,

a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces

he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

It never ceases to sadden me when the words of the prophet Isaiah, words that he spoke over two and a half thousand years ago, are still reverberating around the world to this day.

TODAY’S WORLD IS SPIRITUALLY IGNORANT AND MUCH OF THAT IGNORANCE IS ALSO IN TODAY’S CHURCH!

Church! Let’s not become the people that God talks about through Paul to Timothy!

2 Timothy 3:1-5 (AMP)

But understand this, that in the last days dangerous times [of great stress and trouble] will come [difficult days that will be hard to bear]. 2 For people will be lovers of self [narcissistic, self-focused], lovers of money [impelled by greed], boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy and profane, 3 [and they will be] unloving [devoid of natural human affection, calloused and inhumane], irreconcilable, malicious gossips, devoid of self-control [intemperate, immoral], brutal, haters of good, 4 traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of [sensual] pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of [outward] godliness (religion), although they have denied its power [for their conduct nullifies their claim of faith]. Avoid such people and keep far away from them.

Church! Let’s always be crying out to God as Jesus did about the spiritual ignorance of the world and the ignorance that permeates today’s Church!

Jesus cried for the Church more often than we realise! Let’s follow in His footsteps. Let your heart be broken for the salvation and spiritual awakening of others, especially those who profess to believe!

Let’s be like Jesus!

Let’s learn from His example!

He still weeps for us, and He is always interceding for us along with the Holy Spirit!

Hebrews 5:7-10 (NIV)

7 During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8 Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered 9 and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him 10 and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

John 15:13 (NIV)

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Romans 8:34 (NIV)

Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

Romans 8:26 (NIV)

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.

Prayer
Dear Heavenly Father
I pray in the name of Jesus this day that you would break my heart over the spiritual ignorance of the Church and of the world. Let your Holy Spirit fill me and guide me to pray and intercede for others as Jesus does for me. Amen.

To Jesus belongs all glory, honour and praise!

Jesus the Name above all names!