We have three portions of God's word to read tonight. Each one conveying a situation in which Jesus was brought to tears. The first one is John 11, John 11, 33 through 44. When Jesus Therefore saw her, Mary, weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her. He groaned in the spirit and was troubled and said, where have you laid him that is Lazarus? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, behold how he loved him. And some of them said, could not this man which opened the eyes of the blind have caused that even this man should not have died? Jesus therefore again, groaning in himself, cometh to the grave. It was a cave and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days. Jesus saith unto her, said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God? Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me, and I knew that Thou hearest me always. But because of the people which stand by, I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent me. And when he had thus spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes. And his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go. And in Luke 19, Luke 19, 41 through 44. And when he was come near, he, Jesus, beheld the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, encompass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee, and they shall not leave one stone, shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. And then Matthew 26. Matthew 26, 36 through 39. Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, sit ye here while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, my soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death, tarry ye here and watch with me. And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." That's far the reading of sacred scripture. Let's now read from the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed. which you can find on page two in back of the Psalter. Page two. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God. Begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, who for us men, for our salvation, came down from heaven. and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and he shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets. And I believe one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. We'll be praying this evening for Cornelia Neely's sister, Willie, who is struggling with cancer. And also, we'll remember Pastor John Proce, who hopes to be installed in the Chilliwack HRC congregation next week, Sunday morning, and do his inaugural on Sunday evening. dear church family, and dear boys and girls, tonight we want to talk about tears. Tears. You all cry. You've all seen your brothers and sisters cry. Maybe you've seen your mom and your dad cry. But tonight we want to ask What do you cry about? And what makes you cry? Why do you cry? And we want to look at that subject of our tears by looking at Jesus crying. Three times in the Bible, we read that Jesus cried. And I want to show you tonight that each one of these times, Jesus cried for different reasons. But His tears were always good tears. They were never selfish tears. Jesus wept. So our text tonight is John 11.35, which, boys and girls, is the shortest verse in the Bible. Jesus wept. But also Luke 19.41, when he was come near, he beheld the city, that is Jerusalem, and wept over it. And then Hebrews 5.7, which refers to the Garden of Gethsemane, who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared. So our theme tonight is the tears of Jesus. We'll look at three thoughts. First, those tears at Bethany. Second, those tears over Jerusalem. And thirdly, those tears in Gethsemane. So we have before us tonight a proof that three times Maybe more, many more, perhaps, that we don't know about. Jesus cried. What does that teach us? Well, it teaches us a few things right away about Jesus, doesn't it? It teaches us that he was totally human. Totally human. Physically. Psychologically. He was as human as you and I are. Sin is not an essential part of human nature. Pre-fall we had no sin. The fact that Jesus didn't sin does not at all diminish His humanity. Does not at all diminish His humanity. His weeping proves how real His humanity is. He partook of a true body. He had eyes. He had tear ducts. He had cheeks down which the tears could run. Jesus was as human as you and I are. But it also shows us, secondly, as the Westminster Confession says, that Jesus had a reasonable soul. He possessed a soul. He had human mind and human thoughts and an inner being that behind the tears lay those thoughts, lay those emotions. He had reason to weep as well as the capacity to weep because he had a soul. And thirdly, it tells us right away that Jesus was the Son of God in human flesh and form. We see in him the God who was and is and who is to come. He said, he who has seen me has seen the Father. Just as something of the Father is revealed with the works that Jesus accomplished with his hands, so something of the Father is revealed in the tears that Jesus shed with his eyes. That Jesus wept actually tells us something about the kind of being God is, His Father is. So let's look at these texts then about His weeping. Let's look at each one and say, what kind of tears are these? And what does it have to say about our tears. So first let's go to Bethany. Jesus wept. These tears were, first of all, tears of sympathy, obviously. Lazarus had died. Mary and Martha were very sad. They were grieving. So were their friends and associates. who came to sympathize with them. Verse 33 says, when Jesus therefore saw Mary weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, he wept, and was troubled. So Jesus was surrounded by the tears and weeping of others. He weeps, he's a Savior who weeps with those that weep. So it's part of human nature, isn't it? To be affected by what happens to other people. The closer our relationships with other people are, the more we love them, the greater is our grief when we share in their grief. And we're told in this chapter, verse 5, that Jesus loved Martha and loved Mary and loved Lazarus. So these are tears of compassion, tears of sympathy. These are genuine tears. Jesus is showing here the nature of Jehovah, the true and living God, of whom the Old Testament prophet says, in all their affliction, he was afflicted. God remembers that we are but dust. He knows our frame. He knows our frailty. He's not just distant and unconcerned. He's the one who stoops to save us and stoops to have compassion upon us in and through Jesus. Jesus who was tempted in all points, like as we are, yet without sin. So God is saying, through the tears of Jesus, already at Bethany, that He essentially, since He who has seen Me has seen the Father, He's a compassionate God who understands sorrow. He's kind, amazingly kind, tenderly kind, repeatedly kind. He's a God who's a brother in adversity, a companion in sorrows, a friend in affliction, a strength in weakness. He felt every sin that you ever committed, child of God, on Golgotha's Hill, and he feels every affliction that you ever have to go through. He's touched not by, Hebrews 4.15 says, but he's touched with, with the feeling of your temptations, your trials, your afflictions. It means He enters into it with you. He bears your name. Your name is written on His high priestly shoulders. It's carried in His high priestly heart. It's engraven in His high priestly hands. You're in His high priestly eyes. He will never, no never, no never forsake the work of His own hands. He will never forsake you. He'll never turn His back upon you in the midst of affliction. He's an amazing God. who has tears. He wept because he's compassionate. So if there's anyone here this evening that thinks that God does not care about sinners and about your troubles and problems, and that Jesus Christ is at best far away, seated at the right hand of the Father, and can't see you anymore, you have a fundamentally wrong conception about the God and the Savior of the Bible. It's our dullness, our blindness, our unbelief that makes us feel this way. The Bible presents us with a God who is sensitive to our needs and to our cries. He will hear the needy when they cry. Jesus wept. The bottom line of the two shortest words that make up a verse in the Bible. Shortest verse in the Bible. The bottom line is simply this. God cares for sinners like you and me. He feels with them and He feels for them. Yes, He's the almighty, transcendent, exalted God. but he's also the imminent, near at hand, understanding God, who is tempted through Jesus in all points, in his human nature, like as we are. And so our bottom line is that we are to go to this God, just as we are, with all our sins, with all our needs, with all our troubles, with all our impossible burdens, to find in Him a Savior who knows how to weep, but who also is almighty, to exceed all our expectations. His sympathy is immeasurable. His power is immeasurable. Jesus wept. But there is also in these tears at Bethany, something else going on. They're not just tears of sympathy. They are also tears of groaning. Look with me there at verse 33. Verse 33, John 11. He groaned in the Spirit. He groaned in the Spirit, in the depths of His being. These are tears of groaning. And you see it in 33, and then again in verse 38, Jesus therefore again, groaning in himself, cometh to the grave. Now let's put these things together a moment. Mary and the Jews are weeping. Jesus hears them weeping and wailing. His first response was that he groaned, not that he wept. He groaned and was troubled. What does that mean? And then he wept. And the Jews said, see how he loved them. So they understood that his tears were tears of sympathy, the kind of tears we've been referring to. In fact, they even said, Couldn't he have prevented this man from dying, given the fact that he loved him, given the fact that he's opened the eyes of the blind? Couldn't he have stopped this man from dying? And then we read that Jesus groaned again. There was something that was troubling Jesus in these tears. Jesus wept not only out of sympathy, but out of antipathy. That is to say, out of opposite feelings. Opposite feelings. When he groaned in spirit, he was taking a very different kind of attitude from those who were weeping. It was an attitude of opposition. And what does that mean? Well, in the New Testament, this word groaning is used three other places. And it was known in those days especially to be a word that was associated with the snorting of horses. Horses were said to groan when they were about to go into battle. You know, they would paw the dirt and then they would groan and they'd rush into battle with the warriors on their backs and go to war, fight the battle. That's what Jesus is doing here. I say it reverently. Mary and the Jews were wailing, but Jesus was agitated. There was a turbulence. There was an unrest. There was even a sense of anger inside of Jesus. These were tears of also indignation. Jesus is upset. Why? Well, for two reasons. First, He's upset. at the limited faith, the limited faith of those who believe in him. Martha, Mary, they both complained to him. If thou hadst been here, our brother would not have died. They came up to him individually. But now he's died and everything is over. There's nothing more, Lord, to say or to do. They were disappointed with Jesus. But Jesus is troubled. And it's not the first time. You remember with Jairus' daughter, when they were all kind of complaining around his daughter passing away, and they mocked him because he said, no, she will live again. He said, why do you make all this ado and weep? The damned soul's not dead, but sleepeth. See, there's that groaning within Jesus. He goes out and he raises the girl to life. He's the king of death, you see. He's almighty. and he's got the victory in his hands. So yes, Jesus wept tears of sympathy, but there's also a holy anger in Jesus against the unbelief in the face of death, the limited understanding on the part of those who ought to know better. You see, his tears indicate This is an enemy. This is an enemy that has done this. Death is not natural. Death is brought into the world by sin, by Satan, into this world which God made originally very good, and to those human beings made in His image and likeness, and for His fellowship and service, Satan sowed folly, sowed iniquity, bred sin and death. Satan ruins life. And he does it by sin. Sin is what brings confusion. Sin is what brings division. Sin is what brings disaster. But oh, Jesus Christ, He's the one who can conquer sin and can conquer death. Like the poet says, when all was sin and shame, the second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came. Here's the seed of the woman, as it were, pawing the ground, ready to rush into battle, ready to raise Lazarus from the dead, ready to bruise the serpent's head. And so these are tears of groaning that he might destroy the works of the devil. As he's surrounded by weeping and wailing people, Jesus girds himself. He rushes into battle to face death, to conquer death. And what a victory that is. Not just over Lazarus, but what a victory it is over him. For him, rather. To cry out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And then to say, I thirst and it is finished. I've gotten the victory over death. Hebrews 2.15, in his death he destroyed him who had the power of death, even the devil. This is a groaning Savior here. And that's exactly the kind of Savior we need, who can sympathize with us on the one hand, but who's mighty, almighty on the other, who can raise us on the great day from our graves and bring us to be with Him where He is, who can say of us and to us one day, sinners saved by grace, come forth, so that the grave cannot hold us back. You know, death still today causes weeping and wailing, doesn't it? The prophet Isaiah spoke of a veil of mourning over the face of all peoples because of death. Death marks us. Death reminds us that we're frail and fallible. Death causes fears within us. Most people go through life looking for fun, pretending they have nothing to fear. pretending that they have all the resources and all the answers to life. But deep inside, deep inside, we all know, we all know that whenever we hear of a death, we're reminded what is true of all of us. We are now all born to die. And we try to stifle those feelings. We try to silence our conscience. But we are defeated by death, are we not, in our own strength. Conscience makes cowards of us all. We're all going to die. Death lays its icy hands even on kings. It doesn't matter who we are. It doesn't matter how high up the ladder we've climbed. Death will bring us down. We have no choice, no control over the day of our birth, but we also have no choice over the day of our death. There's something about death that defeats us. And it's the sin within us that makes us fear because death takes us from avoiding God to facing God. And how can we deal with it? How can we deal with it? We need a mighty Savior. We need someone who is roused to act for us. Not merely a Savior who feels for us, but someone who can act for us. Someone who can put away sin. Someone who can conquer death. We need a Savior who feels for us and a Savior who fights for us. Who can take on the enemy. Who can put an end to sin. Who can deal the death blow to death. Who can bring everlasting life. And so Jesus, groaning, weeping, groaning, comes to the grave of Lazarus. He says, take away the stone. Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me. Verses 41 and 42. That Thou hearest me always. to take away the storm. And there's a divine echo, you see, to the anger that he's expressing as he cries out, Lazarus, come forth, and the dead comes forth. Jesus, the conqueror of sin and death and grief, eternal life, is in his hands. The one who weeps is the victor. Tears of sympathy and tears of groaning anger, full of power, full of compassion. And my dear unconverted friend, it's this Savior that you desperately need. This Savior who calls you again tonight to repent before Him and to trust in Him before it is too late. If you continue to reject and grieve the Son, and by extension grieve the Father and the Spirit, you may be sure that the Triune God one day will groan against you on the Day of Days. So I warn you in love, don't grieve. Don't grieve the Son. Don't step upon the heart of the Father. Don't vex the Holy Spirit. God is either worth everything Or God is not real and He's worth nothing. And you know that God is real. Your conscience tells you that. But why aren't you living as if God is everything? Because He is. He's everything you need. Yesterday, my wife and I came back from Nashville, Tennessee. We had an Uber driver. taking us to the airport, asked him on the way if he was a Christian. Oh, yeah, yeah, he said. But, you know, I'm not too religious. I don't make it to church too often. My kids want to go. Well, we were at the airport before we knew it, and he's getting the bags out of the trunk. I just looked him in the eye and I said, Sir, can I just say one thing to you? He said, you know that God exists, right? Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. I said, well, if God exists, he's worth everything, don't you think? Do you think that? You can't get to heaven by kind of factoring God into 10% of your life, my friend. God's got to be at the center. He's got to be everything. And here's a Savior who can make Him everything. A groaning Savior who can get the victory over you and over your sin and conquer your heart and make you ready for the day of resurrection and can say to you and your soul and make you a new creation, now, sinner, come forth. Come forth in repentance and faith and one day say to you and to your grave, come forth. and you'll come out of the grave, and you'll be ready to meet him. Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and you perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. But blessed are all they that put their trust in him. He's worth everything. Are you living that way? Are you seeking his face with all that is within you? Are you obeying Isaiah 55? Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he's near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him turn to our God, for he will abundantly pardon because of this groaning, victorious, sympathetic Savior. Those are the two big lessons from the tears of Jesus at Bethany. But what about those tears over Jerusalem? Luke 19, 41 says, When he was come near, he beheld the city and wept over it. What kinds of tears were these? Well, these were tears of anguish. Anguish. It's the same word that was used of people in Bible times when they broke into wailing. The Jews had a way of crying loudly. They wailed, they let all their emotion out. We try to, in our culture, American culture, we try to keep it in, don't we? And we burst out and we try to control our tears as if we're embarrassed to cry. But the Jews, when they're really sad, they just wail, they let it all out. Jesus wept this way. Imagine, the Son of God, the creator of the ends of the earth, wailing. wailing when he comes around the corner as he's traveling to Jerusalem. By the way, they have a church built on that spot, that very spot where he could first come around the corner, and suddenly he sees Jerusalem all laying at his feet. You can still go there today, exactly where he was standing. You come around the corner, and suddenly all of Jerusalem is laying like in a valley right before you. You can see all the old walls and the city, Jesus, as he came around that corner, and he just looked at Jerusalem, and he thought about all the people that were rejecting him, rejecting his ministry, rejecting life eternal. He burst out into wailing. He said, if thou hadst known, even thou in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, but now are they hid from thine eyes, thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, in a parallel account in Matthew, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thee, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and ye would not. Behold, your house, your temple is left unto you desolate. He's weeping, wailing, anguishing over Jerusalem. Now what is he saying to these Jerusalem sinners? Well, he's saying that they're making three fatal mistakes. Three fatal mistakes. Number one, he tells them they did not realize their day, the day of divine visitation. They were ignorant of the great opportunity that was theirs. They were ignorant of the special time in which they lived, that the Messiah was among them, that the Son of God had come to earth, that the greatness of God's love was manifest, walking in flesh and blood before them. They were ignorant of that. They didn't realize it. Today was like any other day for them. Jesus was no different to them than any other self-proclaimed prophet teacher. And he wept, he wept over them. You know, sometimes I wonder, do we realize the incredible benefits we have today? I think about just the one gift of reading and the books that we have available today and the scriptures that we have in our homes and think back in church history. The printing press has only been the latter part of church history. For most of church history and Bible history, people, if they had one or two books in their home, that was it. Most of them didn't even own a Bible. And what about all those millions of people that lived in an age when the Bible wasn't even complete, before the New Testament canon was done? What incredible privileges we have. I think sometimes of you young people and children at Plymouth Christian School, oh, I look back on my life, how I would love to have gone to a Christian school. I was in a secular school. I didn't hear the name of God all day long, every day at school. It's terrible. You get it at school. You get it at home. You get it through family worship. You're surrounded by good books to read. You've got the Bible. You've got your own copy of the Bible. You get to come to church to hear the gospel in its purity, free grace, salvation. Are you aware of the tremendous day of divine visitation that God has for you today? Do you think there's 1% of people in the entire world that get to hear the pure gospel? and have the kind of means available and the kind of teaching you get from this pulpit, from your school teachers, I can scarcely imagine it's more than 1%. You are among the most favored people on the face of the earth. We really are. Do you count it an incredible blessing that God comes to visit you with His offers of grace and with the means of grace and tells you clearly the way of salvation. Or do you not realize your day, this day, is a day of divine visitation? And you just take it all for granted and you're like that Uber driver, oh well, yeah, but Religion doesn't mean too much to me. Jesus weeps over those kind of people, Jerusalem sinners. But secondly, he weeps because they had not responded to the divine warnings. Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, we sent you prophets and you killed them. Sent you prophets and you stoned them. And he warns them about hell. He warns them about hell. "'Be not afraid of them,' he goes on to say, "'that kill the body. "'But I forewarn you who you shall fear. "'Fear him, which after he is killed "'has power to cast into hell.'" That's God, of course. That's Jesus himself. You see, Jesus spoke about hell more than anyone else in the Bible. He spoke about hell. Did you ever realize that? He spoke about hell in the four Gospels more than all the prophets combined in the entire Old Testament. Jesus was intense about hell. That's why he wept. He saw their eternal punishment coming. And he had no desire in the death of the wicked. You know, boys and girls, young people, when we breathe our last, whether we're young or whether we're old, we're beyond the reach of every other human being. And we're even beyond the reach of God's mercy at that point. But while we are alive, we are within reach, within the grasp of the living God, that God who's able to consign our soul and our body to everlasting hell, and that God says, come unto me just as you are, and I will in no wise cast you out. Fear Him, Jesus says. Fear Him, who can cast your soul and your body into hell. Dear church family, we've been warned many times from this pulpit We've been warned many times as we open the Word of God. We've been warned many times by schoolteachers and by others, by elders, not to trifle with our never-dying souls. Are you hearing? Are you hearing? Or are you not responding to divine warnings? Are you just going your own way? and thinking that somehow, somehow, you're gonna make it into heaven at the end, apart from finding all your hope only in the blood of Jesus Christ. It's not going to happen. If you're not in Christ, you will be lost forever. You will, you will go to hell. Please take seriously the warnings of Jesus, your future judge. And then thirdly, not only did these people disregard divine warnings, and not only did they not realize what a special day of visitation they were living in, but they also disregarded the divine allurements, the divine wooings. How often I would have gathered thy children together. I would, but you would not. It's not like, oh, they wanted to be saved, but Jesus didn't want them. It's not like election or predestination is somehow an obstacle. No, no. Election is the friend of sinners. Election reveals the heart of God. Election is what makes salvation possible. God is saying, I would, but you would not, if you only knew the things that belong to your peace, Jesus said. Can I ask you a question? Would you go home tonight and get on your knees by your bed and just think about your soul? Just think about your soul and ask yourself, if I were to die tonight, would I have the blood passport of Jesus Christ in my possession to hand to God so that I could enter into heaven? Or does the blood of Jesus mean nothing to me? Are you saved? Are you saved? Or are you not thinking about the things of your eternal peace as Jesus puts it here? Just going on. having some impressions maybe on Sunday, and they're gone by Monday, and you don't deal with your sin, and you don't deal with God, and you don't deal with your soul, and you're not ready to meet Him. Think about your soul. Think about your eternal peace. Think about the awfulness of hell. Think about the joy of serving God. Don't go on your own way. Remember the things that belong to your peace, Jesus said. Your peace, your peace. Think about that. Don't try to get through life without Jesus. You need him now. Jesus wept. He wailed over sinners like you whom he invited to come to himself who would not come. He wept for those who would not weep for themselves. Is that you? You won't even weep for your own soul, but he's weeping over the kind of sinner you are. You will not come to me, he says, that you might have life. And he's able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him. That includes you. So please do away with all your excuses for remaining unconverted and bend the knee and ask this God to save you even tonight and to no longer allow you to go on disregarding the day of his visitation, disregarding his tears of anguish. Hebrews 5 verse 7. who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying, that's Gethsemane, but then it adds, and tears unto him that was able to save him from death and was heard in that he feared. Literally, in Greek, was heard because of his godly fear. Obviously, the reference here is to the Garden of Gethsemane. Now the gospel writers are opening another time of tears for Jesus. Why did he weep? Why did he weep in the garden? What kind of tears did he shed there? Weeping in the presence of God. Weeping when there was no one immediately around him. Weeping and praying, praying and weeping. Crawling on the ground. These are tears of godly fear. These are tears struggling to say, thy will be done. And he does say it. Tears of submissiveness, tears of obedience, tears of godly fear to his father, but they're also tears of sheer agony. Because he's paying collectively. for all the sins that all his elect deserve to pay for in an everlasting hell. It's all coming down upon Jesus in Gethsemane. The wrath of God descends upon the Son of Man. His soul is engulfed in the garden. Mark says he's so amazed Matthew says, he cried out, my soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. He crawls on the ground as a worm and no man. He sinks to his knees, the gospel writer says. Doesn't get on his knees. He just falls to his knees, the weight of the sin. And then the weight of the sin, under the pressure of our sin, he falls on his face after he sinks to his knees, and he crawls on the ground as a man who was just overwhelmed and encompassed with grief and with agony, paying the price, the eternal price of our sin, infinitely bearing, because his divinity undergird him, this awful, awful price of eternity. Tears of agony over your sin, dear believer, over my sin. No, it wasn't just on the cross, as you heard this morning. That the apex was reached there, oh yes. But already in the garden, the Father opened the spigots and poured out a deluge of His wrath upon His only begotten Son. It was the cup. had to drink. It was the hour he had to bear. It was a temptation he had to endure in our infirm, frail humanity. But he bore it undergird by divinity. But all the crying Hebrews 5.7 says it was strong crying. It was loud cries and loud tears. The sinless one becoming sin as it were, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. The sinless one taking over our hell. And we taking over our sins and we receiving through faith, through repentance, through surrender at His feet, Through the work of the Holy Spirit in our soul, showing us what we are and driving us and drawing us to the Son of God, through the Son of God we receive His righteousness, His salvation, His gospel, His promises. Oh, the rigorous price of God's justice against sin. Oh, the costliness of sin. How expensive our salvation was for the Son of God, though it is now free to us. How awful, how awful the wrath of God is. How great is the gospel of God. Blood, sweat, toil, tears, soul agony of the incarnate Son of God. should make us to fear God's justice and to love His salvation. Jesus wept tears of agony for your sin, dear believer. Gladly, willingly, knowing all things that should come upon Him, He went forth. And He doesn't ask us now to weep for Him. He said to the daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves. Weep for your children. Come, weeping sinner, to the cross. Come to the Garden of Gethsemane. And there is a Savior who can meet your every need, who can pay for your every sin, Behold Him, crawling on the ground, sweating great drops of blood, for sinners exactly like you. A poet says that he should leave his place on high and come for sinful man to die. It is the thing most wonderful, almost too wonderful to be, that God's own Son should come from heaven and die to save a child like me. This is why Jesus cried, boys and girls. Jesus shed tears to be the exact kind of Savior that you need as a child, that you need as a young person, that you need as a parent, that you need as a senior, that you need as a single, that you need as a widow. He's just the kind of Savior you and I need. We need His Bethany tears of tender sympathy and of groaning anger. We need His Jerusalem tears of wailing and anguish. We need His Gethsemane tears of godly fear and sheer agony. All to be our substitute. All to draw us to Himself. We need a Savior full of anger against our sin, full of compassion toward our plight, full of power to execute our salvation. And this Savior is available right now to every person in this audience tonight. And He calls to you tonight. If you never hear another sermon in your life, you hear once more tonight, He's willing to be your Savior. Don't stay away from Jesus. And don't rest in your tears. Most of our tears are very selfish. We cry, don't we, boys and girls, about things we want more than we cry about our sins and the need of our soul. But Jesus has the kind of tears that we need. You go to Him and you ask Him to teach you your sin. Ask Him to teach you how to weep for your own soul and how to go to Jesus by faith. and trust in Him. Don't, don't, don't stay away from a Savior who weeps over hard-hearted sinners. Ask Him to break you and to bring you to Himself. And seek for grace, seek for grace to bow before this only Savior, this only name, this only name, in heaven and upon earth, whereby you must be saved. Amen. The great God of heaven, we thank Thee so much for the Savior's tears, for all kinds of His tears. We need every kind, Lord. We pray, Lord Jesus, that as the powerful, almighty, weeping Savior and Lord who paid the price of our sin fully, oh, that we would bow and surrender and come just as we are, and that it would be personal for us, that Thou hast paid that price also for me, and that the wonder Like the poet said, the wonder would almost be too wonderful that God's own son should come from heaven and die to save a child like me. Lord, let that be real for the boys and girls here tonight, the teenagers, the singles, the married, the oldest among us. Oh God, help us, help us to Put away all secondary things in life until our soul, our soul, our soul's case is settled with Thee, and we are resting in the bloody satisfaction of Jesus Christ. Please, Lord, don't let us go our own way. Have mercy upon us. And remember all those who are suffering greatly among us, Some who are perhaps near the Jordan, O God, deliver their soul, even in this late hour, enable them to rest in the finished work of Jesus. No other way, no other way to be saved. Convince them of that, O God, and help them to cast themselves as poor, needy, naked sinners on the finished work of the Lamb of God. He who cried out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? So that he would never have to forsake a crying sinner. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.