“As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it.”
Luke 19:41
You learn a lot about people based on what they cry over. This gives us insight into their hearts. Daniel was a Godly man. He committed to serve the Lord with his whole heart and he lived out that commitment.
Daniel did not weep when he was tested and his life was on the line. He did not cry when the king of Babylon fell to the Medes and the Persians. The only time we see Daniel grieve is in Chapter 4 when Nebuchadnezzar has a dream about God’s pending judgment on his pride. After the king tells Daniel his dream (remember God has given Daniel the gift of interpreting dreams) we read that he “was dismayed for a while, and his thoughts alarmed him”. Why was Daniel grieved and dismayed? We are not told specifically but we can tell Daniel loves King Nebuchadnezzar and has likely prayed for years that he would become a believer in the one true God. Now he hears the
dream and knows God’s judgment is imminent if this proud, arrogant
king does not repent of his pride. Daniel grieved over the souls of men.
Twice in scripture we read of Jesus weeping. The first is when He looks out over Jerusalem and sees the masses of people who are oblivious to God’s truth and are living their lives as they march toward an eternity without God. We hear the Lord say, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes”. Jesus wept for Jerusalem because it rejected Him and missed its opportunity to have peace with God. But in verses 43 and 44 the Lord tells us more. “For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” The Lord wept over their judgment. The Lord also wept at the tomb of Lazarus. There the Greek word indicates that the Lord wept “silent tears” or tears of compassion for His friend. He was filled with grief over the pain and sorrow death brings into this world. At the triumphal entry where the Lord wept over Jerusalem the word wept indicates that Jesus wept aloud in anguish over the future of the city. In less than four decades the city of Jerusalem would be destroyed by the Romans and the nation of Israel would be dispersed until 1948. But the Lord was likely looking even much further into the future. could also see the day when unbelieving Jews would stand before God at the Great White Throne Judgment where they would face eternal separation from God – a fate the Lord came to deliver them from.
What can we learn? There are two lessons that are striking in these examples. First is the great love demonstrated for others. God has ptrue unconditional love for people. Christ never attacked anyone except for the leaders of false religions that distorted God’s love and compassion to mankind. The Lord looked at the myriads in Jerusalem who did not understand His love for them. The fact the love of God was not understood and ignored broke His heart. The second reason the Lord wept is He saw the horror of being separated from God for eternity. Separation from our loved ones by death is a horrible thing. Separation from God in hell for an everlasting eternity is a horror beyond description. That is a punishment God never intended for any man. Yet many chose this darkness rather than light. They do not want life. Thus the Lord weeps.