I PROMISED you last month that I would say something more to you about “weeping.” I hope you searched in your Bible, and found all the places referred to in the last GOOD NEWS; and that you also looked into the New Testament to find there about people weeping whom I did not refer to. You will read about a poor widow who wept because her son, was dead; about a Mary who wept when she had lost her brother; another Mary who wept because she thought she had lost her Saviour; and a woman, whose name we do not know, who wept about her sins. So many tears she shed that she even washed the feet of Jesus with them. Think, dear child, of these four weeping women. Jesus asked one of them why she wept; another He told not to weep; another He allowed to bathe His feet with her tears, but with Mary and Martha He wept Himself! “Jesus wept!” It is the shortest verse in all the Bible, but it is one of the most wonderful. It is more wonderful to me than that verse which says, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” That is just what I should expect to be said about Him who was never less than God; but for that same Jesus to be in the very world He had made, and for His eyes to run down with tears! How really he had become a man! and how full of tenderness His heart was! But how was it that He wept The Jews who were round thought it was because He had been so fond of Lazarus, and was so sorry to think he had died; but it could not be that which made Him weep, because He knew quite well that He was just about to call Lazarus out of his grave, and then He would see him again. It was in order to this that the Lord had allowed him to die at all; for He could just as easily “have caused that even this man should not have died,” even without going to Bethany to him, as He could open the eyes of the blind, or do any other mighty work. So it was not sorrow at the loss of His friend Lazarus that made Jesus weep, as it was not sorrow that made Joseph weep over his brothers. But Jesus saw the trouble Mary was in, and those who were with her; and although He knew He was going to turn their sorrow into joy, yet He felt so tenderly for them in their sorrow that He wept with them! And this is just what He wishes His people to do for one another. He does not say, Go to those who are in sorrow, and tell them not to let it trouble them. Nor does He set us to always dry their tears, though it is very nice to help each other out of trouble when He gives us the power to do so. But, whether we can do that or not, what He now does say to us is, “Weep with those who weep.” That is what He did; and He desires that, if we know Him and love Him, we should be like Him and act like Him, and go and feel the sorrows of others as if they were our own. Some day before long He will come and call us away to His home, to rejoice with Him, instead of coming into our world to weep with us. Not only one Lazarus will He raise from the grave, but all “those who are Christ’s” will, “at His coming,” rise up from among the dead, and not one of then will have to die again as Lazarus had to; for death shall be no more, neither sorrow, nor crying, and God shall have wiped away “all tears” from their eyes.
But here in this eleventh chapter of John we find Jesus Himself in tears; and in another place, also, we read of His weeping, not there with those who loved Him, but over those who hated Him, and were going to cry out for His blood! Yet He was not weeping there because of what he was going to suffer from them, but because of what they were going to suffer from their enemies! Was not that being kind, tender-hearted Be sure you find the place where we read about that and may we learn to be more like Him, never causing any to weep, not even those who do not love us, but feeling tenderly for them when they do.
O give us hearts to love like Thee,
Like Thee, O Lord, to grieve
Far more for others’ woes than all
The wrongs that we receive!
When I read about the Lord Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, and know from such passages as Isa. 65:18, 19,18But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. 19And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. (Isaiah 65:18‑19) that a day is coming when He will rejoice over that same city, and “joy over her with singing,” it makes me think of that little Psalm which says, “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” Jesus toiled and wept with sowing the “good seed” of the Word of God. He will “doubtless come again,” and present us unto Himself “with exceeding joy” Some of His most faithful servants, too, have wept as they have labored for Him. One served the Lord “with many tears,” and in one place alone he stayed for three years among the Lord’s disciples, and did not cease to warn them night and day “with tears.” There were some who professed to love the Lord, but who thought so much about “earthly things” that they showed plainly enough they did not care much for things above; and Paul was so sorry about them that, when he was writing a letter and speaking of them, he could not refrain from “even weeping.” That was very much like the love and sorrow of the Lord’s heart, and very different from “rejoicing in iniquity,” writing as though he was glad when he had to speak of the naughty ways of others.
Another of the servants of Jesus “wept much” in heaven (in a vision), until he heard something about the Lord that dried up his tears; and you may be sure it is always something about the Lord Jesus that will give the most real comfort to those in trouble. When He was about to leave this world and go back to His Father, He told those who loved Him that they would “weep and lament;” but then He said, “Your sorrow shall be turned into joy.” This is true of all those who belong to the Lord Jesus. He says, “I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice; “while those who can be quite sometime or other have their” mirth “turned into “heaviness.”
I must not forget to remind you of the women who followed Jesus, pitying Him, and weeping for Him. They were sorry for Him, but did not know or would not believe the sorrows that were coming on themselves. Jesus knew it all, and had wept over them, so now He turns and tells them not to weep for Him, but for themselves and for their children. How many since have wept as they have heard the story of the sufferings of Christ, but who have never wept in secret over their own sins, or learned to fear the “wrath to come.”
It maybe I have now said enough to you on this subject of weeping. I will only ask you more to find about the Lord Jesus offering up prayers “with strong crying and tears,” and to think what it was that caused Him all that agony in the garden, when He said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death,” and when “His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” It was because He was going to the cross to bear, not only all the cruelty of wicked men, but the punishment from God Himself of our sins! He “bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” Oh, think what a dreadful thing sin must be in the sight of God, and how solemn a thing it would be to have to meet God about those sins, to stand face to face with Him as one who had not only sinned against Him, but neglected the “great salvation,” and turned away from the great and only Saviour!
W. TY.