Dear Christian friends:

The purpose of our gathering here each Wednesday during Lent is to honor and praise our Savior as we see Him suffering in the various places.

But we need to be careful about this. We may think that we honor Him, but really do not, like these women in our text. They thought they were doing right when they cried for Jesus. But Jesus did not accept their tears. Let us attend to our text and see why. So tonight we see:


Pontius Pilate had given Jesus to the Jews to be crucified as they demanded of Him, although He knew Jesus was innocent and He didn't want to do it. Now the soldiers were leading Jesus through the city streets on the way to Mt. Calvary where they intended to crucify Him.

Many people stood along the street to watch the three condemned men bear their crosses to their place of death. People always hurry and gather where their is trouble: a fire, terrible accident, where people are suffering and dying.

Many do not gather because they want to help those who suffer, but they come because they are curious and they want excitement. Maybe that's why many people watch violent movies and dramas on TV. We seem to enjoy watching what is terrible and wicked. That shows how sinful our heart really is.

We read in the text that many women were beating their breasts and weeping as Jesus passed by carrying His cross. But we read that Jesus turned to them and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, don't cry over Me." Why does Jesus not accept their tears? Because they only felt pity for Him and perhaps anger against the Jewish Council who forced Pilate to condemn Jesus. They remember how good and kind Jesus had been in healing their sick children and they knew that Jesus was a good man. They were sorry to see evil men win over a good man.

But Jesus doesn't want that kind of crying and honor from us when we see Him suffer and die. If we only feel sorry for Jesus and become angry at Pontius Pilate and Judas and the Jewish Council and the mean soldiers. If we say, "I would never do such a thing. Shame on the Jewish Council, shame on Judas and the soldiers we misunderstand and waste our time and tears.

That is the crying and honor unbelieving bring to Jesus. He doesn't want it. Why? Because these people fail to see Jesus as the Son of God and their Savior. They fail to see that they are as bad as Pontius Pilate, Judas, the Jewish Council and the soldiers.

They do not know Jesus volunteers to suffer and die to win forgiveness of sins for all the world, and themselves. Jesus does not accept the sorrow and tears of unbelievers and He warns them of final destruction: "weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!'" (Luke 23:28-29)

By this Jesus is warning them of the destruction of Jerusalem which happened forty years later when the Roman General Titus and his army besieged the city in 70 A.D. None could go in and none could go out. Many starved to death. Mothers ate their own children. Finally the walls were broken down and the city burned, leveled to dust, not one stone left on the other.

The destruction of unbelieving Jerusalem is a hint of the destruction of all unbelievers at the end of the world when Jesus comes to judge the quick and the dead.

Though Jesus here speaks as judge of the world and avenger of all unbelievers He says this to the women, not to frighten them, but to warn them so they will perhaps wake up, and have true sorrow of faith. Perhaps many of those women did listen to His warning and believed that He was the promised Savior of the world, as He often before preached and said and proved by His wonderful works.

Jesus words of warning ought to also to help us to awake form unbelief and sin and have the true sorrow of faith, true sorrow because we are very sinful, and we see how God is angry because of our sins, that He demands such suffering and payment from Jesus.

When we see the holy Son of God bearing the heavy cross, with His crown of thorns, suffering the shame and curses with robbers and murderers, we ought to really be sorry and resolve to praise because we see the terrible results of our sins in the suffering, shame and death of Jesus the Lamb of God. We see His great love for us, because He rejected the world's crown of gold and wore the crown of thorns that He might make peace between God and us. For pleasure, money and crowns of gold we are tempted and often do betray our own mother and brother, husband or wife.

All this sin, guilt and shame this holy Man of Nazareth bears as He walks the way of sorrows to His death outside the city.

If you weep like this and believe like this you honor and praise Jesus in His suffering and death. In verse 31, Jesus says, "For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?" Jesus is the green tree, the good, living fruit producing one. Man is the dry tree, dead with no spiritual life.

The green, living one is cast into the fire. His holy life is the perfect offering for sin. Now the dry trees are saved. Yes, Christ, the green tree, the Prince of Life died.

But this wonderful green tree did not stay in death. He arose and lives forever. He gives new life to all dry trees who are sorry about their sins and believe in Him. He gives us His love and life to resist the ways of Satan and death that we may do the works of His life and spirit.

Amen.