A Theology of Tears

Turn in the Word of God this evening to John 11. John 11. The Gospel of John, the 11th chapter. I don’t often read just one verse, but I’m going to do so this evening.

In the past week, three instances in which someone before me was in tears. Not my fault, by the way. Just as I was saying that, I realized, maybe I’m doing something wrong. I hope not in any way in which I was adding affliction or salt to wounds.

But seeing it, observing it, the suffering, the sorrow of saints in this world, and got to thinking about this experience of tears. Experience of tears. I know that some shed tears more than others. Some are weepers, others not so much, but I imagine that the vast majority, if not every single one of us, at some point we have shed tears. Maybe we need, if we really don’t remember, perhaps we need our mothers to remind us of the fact you shed tears too. It was the bane of my existence for a long time: your crying, hunger, and crying, and weariness.

So we understand the experience of sorrow and the expression of tears. And we have this amazing record given in John 11:35: “Jesus wept.”

Jesus wept. You think about it. Jesus wept.

There is a theological sense in which it wouldn’t be wrong to say God wept. I’m not speaking about the essence of the divine. But what is true of the Son in his flesh is true of the divine. There’s a carryover. You see that in Acts 20:28, about the church of God which he has shed—he has purchased, rather—with his own blood. The church of God purchased, in a certain sense, by the blood of God. There’s theological aspects there which I’m not here to explore right now.

Jesus wept.

Let’s bow together in prayer.

Lord, help us tonight to consider your Word. Bring aid to us, O Lord, in hearing your Word. Whatever weariness and tiredness and distraction, may it be banished. May it please the blessed Spirit to be very much active, unhindered here tonight. So we pray against the enemy who steals away the seed of the Word. We pray for the ministry of the Holy Spirit in power. Oh, fill us, Lord, preacher and hearer, and move in this place, even in the unregenerate heart. We pray in our Savior’s name. Amen.

Why?

Why did Jesus weep at the grave of Lazarus? And why does John record it? Not every expression and emotion of our Lord is recorded, but this is. So why did Jesus weep? And why did John record it?

Was it because our Lord loved Lazarus? Was it because he felt sympathy for Mary and Martha? Was it because he was seeking to underscore the reality of his humanity? Maybe that leans more into John’s reason for recording it. Was it because of the misery that sin and death has brought into the world, a rising sense of just anger confronted with the consequences of sin and misery? Was it over the unbelief of those around him?

Was it to show that weeping is a lawful expression of human emotion?

Perhaps there’s a sense in which it was all of the above, that we can look at this event and see a spectrum of reasons and grounds that tell us why our Lord wept and why John recorded it.

The shortest verse in all the Bible contains enough theology for an entire volume, maybe multiple. The crowds see it, of course, in the next verse. And their interpretation is, “Behold how he loved him.” And they’re not wrong. We know, we know that the Lord loved Lazarus and Mary and Martha.

But they’re only scratching the surface, I think. And I suspect the same is true for most tears. Most tears carry more than we understand. They carry more of a message than we can explain. Thomas Brooks, the Puritan, noted, “Tears are not mutes. Tears have a voice. Tears have tongues. Tears can speak.”

And they’re among the most ancient of preachers in this world. Tears speak, and they do. They form one of the oldest of the preachers in this world, carrying a message, a message that’s often varied, a message that’s often misunderstood, but a message nonetheless. Sometimes even a message which the one weeping can’t fully express.

Why are you crying?

I don’t entirely know.

The focus tonight is upon tears of sorrow. I know there are tears of joy. Scripture deals with tears of joy, too. Events and circumstances are detailed in which there is sorrow in a context of joy. But usually, when we think of tears, usually we’re thinking about them more in the context of sorrow.

And so, if I was going to be really precise tonight, perhaps we would consider this as a theology of sorrowful tears. But I’m just calling it a theology of tears. I want us to look at tears, what the Bible says about tears, why they exist, and help us to understand something that is so—I mean, think about it. This experience, which is so familiar to man, is little studied.

As I said, seeing eyes well up, tears being shed, sobbing, my heart was just pondering this whole thing. So, let’s consider it: a theology of tears.

And note with me, first of all, the curse that brings them. The curse that brings them.

As we think about this, in the first place, tears belong to the fall. They belong to the fall.

Tears of sorrow belong to the fall, certainly; that when God first made the world, there were no tears of sorrow. Tears of sorrow did not stain the cheeks of Adam and Eve. They didn’t experience this. They didn’t know anything about it. They would have not had the language to explain it at all. You cannot identify with David when he talks about watering his couch with his tears. It was not true for Adam and Eve before the fall.

Tears of sorrow were not native to the creation as it came from the hand of God and stood in its perfection. It became an intruder as a result of the fall. It invades in because of man and his sin and rebellion against God. They belong to the tragedy of man’s rebellion.

And you go back and you read Genesis 3, you will see, not tears so much, as when God speaks to the woman and then speaks to the man, he tells them both in what he explains to them: sorrow. Sorrow. Your experience is going to be marked with sorrow, Eve. Adam, yours also.

Now, the particulars he deals with are distinct for Eve and then for Adam, but sorrow is there. It’s a common aspect of their experience. Sorrow, Eve. Sorrow, Adam.

In Ecclesiastes 4 verse 1, Solomon considered, quote, “the tears of such as were oppressed.” He saw the oppression of this fallen world. He saw the tears shed amidst such oppression. He considered it, he pondered it, an experience of man in this world.

Jeremiah explains of his own experience, “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears.” He’s a man who feels the effect of the fall, the suffering of a world at odds with God, especially the rebellion of the covenant people.

So what we understand is that tears belong to the fall. No fall, no tears of sorrow like this. And in a certain sense, then, they speak to us. Creation bears the marks of the fall, and I think man most of all. Man, perhaps more than any other aspect of creation, bears peculiar marks of the fall.

Every funeral confirms what God’s Word says and what God promised. You rebel, the day you eat of the fruit, you will die. We die because of sin. We sorrow because we fell, and tears are among the very fruit of our rebellion against God.

When you see tears of sorrow, when you see tears of sorrow, they’re reminding you: here is evidence of man’s rebellion.

Not only do tears belong to the fall, tears reveal man was made for more. Tears reveal that man was made for more.

It’s not just a reflex. Tears are not just a reflex of a creature in pain, but they are a witness that we are those who bear the image of God. And yet we’re in a fallen world. We have corrupted the world in which we are in by our sin, and we feel it like other creatures do not.

I know, I know that elephants, when they pass by the location where one they knew of their herd has fallen, that there seems to be some observation of mourning. I’m aware of those things, that some creatures seem to have some expression of mourning when they’re confronted with death. But it doesn’t begin to explain or get close to the experience of man.

Death hits man in a way it does not hit any other creature. The strike, the blow of death, the ultimate consequences of the fall, so frequently mingled with the tears of man.

This is the consequence of our rebellion. Here is what happens, and we feel it. We feel it. We shed tears when we are exposed to forms of injustice, experience of betrayal. These things cut and devastate, and we are brought to tears because we know that this is not the way the world is meant to be. This is not how it ought to be. We know that there is some kind of friction going on here. It shouldn’t be this way.

We shouldn’t bury our loved ones. We shouldn’t experience betrayal. We shouldn’t go through this. We know that it is a consequence of something that has gone horribly wrong. We were made for more.

God made us so that we might enjoy life and righteousness and peace, be able to taste those things and experience them, communion with God and all the benefits of that. So when tears are shed, they bear witness to the fact that we were not fashioned initially to experience all of this, that we were made for something different.

Have you ever wept over the loss of a loved one? Ever wept over the loss of a loved one, even though in one sense you’re happy for them? They’re a believer. They’ve run their race well. In one sense, you see the journey that God has brought them along, and now finally the prayer of the Lord Jesus has been answered, where he wills that they behold his glory, and he has now taken them to be with himself. And you’re fully resigned to that. You’re not in opposition to it. You’re not fighting against it. You know it’s for the best. You know it’s for good. And yet still you shed tears.

Abraham wept for Sarah, felt the loss, the absence of his bride.

Have you ever wept over the loss of one where you were not sure where they stood before God? Have you ever shed those kind of tears?

Turn to 2 Samuel.

The humanity of King David. You see it at the close of Absalom’s rebellion. Absalom had broken David’s heart in more ways than one. His son had led a great rebellion against his reigning father. The battle comes to an end at the close of 2 Samuel 18. These are some of the most harrowing words you’ll read anywhere in Scripture.

The tidings come, word of verse 31: “The Lord hath avenged thee this day of all them that rose up against thee.”

“And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Cushi answered, The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is.

“And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

What a scene. The fate of a son is sealed. Nothing can be done to change the outcome. Absalom is gone. Perished in rebellion. And David finds no delight in the news. His heart is broken.

Even when we are looking at those who rebelled against God, there is something in us that understands: this is not how it originally was to be. Death. Separation.

David would write in Psalm 42 verse 3, “My tears have been my meat day and night.” We’ve not outgrown this. This is part of life.

There are some philosophies that try to fight against it. It’s a certain kind of stoicism that might try to suppress this natural response, this sense of sorrow, as we’re faced with the fall and its consequences. This is an unnatural thing to us. We know that there is meant to be something more, that this is not right, this is not a good thing.

So we should not think lightly of tears. They’re witnessing. They’re telling. They are expressing. They are communicating, sending forth a message. The curse is real. Man is out of step with God.

So, the curse that brings them.

In the second place, consider the God who sees them. The God who sees them.

God sees tears. Repeatedly he makes note of this. For example, Psalm 56 verse 8, “Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?” That’s the confidence of the psalmist, that his very tears are gathered up by God.

When the Lord saw Hezekiah’s tears, Isaiah 38, the prophet is sent to say, “I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears.”

God sees them.

And Eli may have misinterpreted Hannah’s sorrow, but the Lord didn’t. He saw the heart. He saw the real message behind her sorrow, her lamentation.

Same is true of our Lord. Luke 7, when you read that passage, you hear me refer to it frequently. It’s so touching. The religious standing there, making accusation in his heart and mind against the Lord Jesus. If he understood what kind of woman this is, he wouldn’t be standing there letting her weep over his feet and wipe those tears in his feet with her hair. If he knew what kind of woman she was.

But the Lord did know. The Lord knew her past, knew her life, and he saw this penitence in the soul and understood the meaning of her tears, even though the religious around could not.

See, God sees tears. He sees them.

Jeremiah, we mentioned already, who of course is known as the weeping prophet, constantly in sorrow over the harrowing loss of the favor of God. His heart is broken. And when the Lord comes with encouragement to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31, part of the language says there, “Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears.” And it goes on to encourage him. It gives him an encouraging word.

But the point is this: that the Lord sees. He sees the weeping voice. It’s interesting, isn’t it? Thy voice. “Refrain thy voice from weeping.” Your voice is weeping.

It’s funny how we can interpret that, can’t we? We can discern that when someone’s voice just alters just enough. There’s a little change in it, and there’s a weeping in the very voice. And the Lord sees it too.

So God sees them.

And a couple of things to note here. When he sees them, he weighs them. When he sees them, he weighs them. He assesses them. He puts them in balances, as it were. Not every tear is precious. Not all tears mean the same or matter the same way to God.

When Esau sought the lost blessing with tears, his tears were worthless because they were devoid of repentance. And Esau may weep, and weep, and weep over the loss. There’s no message of hope that comes from God on that occasion. There’s no repentance. He mourned what he lost, but not his sin.

And we see this in man. We see tears of wounded pride, tears of vexation and frustration when things do not go as we would want, when the world does not bow to our will, when things do not go as we would desire, tears over the consequences of things that have happened in our life, but not over our sin.

And God knows that. He knows the difference between the weeping of a broken heart and the weeping of a broken hope. The heart that’s truly broken in penitence and knows itself before God, and the one who’s frustrated because the desire has not come to pass.

He distinguishes. He weighs the difference of tears of self-pity and tears of penitence. He weighs them, tears that flow from mere nature and tears that flow from grace.

And so when he sees Peter’s tears, when he went out and wept bitterly, it means something to the Lord. He sees it. He values it. It’s an expression of grace in the heart.

When he sees them, he not only weighs them, but he sanctifies them. He sanctifies them.

Wonderful way in which the Lord sanctifies our tears, makes them have a certain value. This mark of the curse gets turned, utilized by God in a way that they are now set apart as distinct. And that’s, again, the psalmist’s conviction in Psalm 56, that his very tears are bottled. They are set apart.

It’s not every tear that’s shed that is held in a bottle, as it were, by God. Some tears are sanctified. They’re set apart. They mean something to God.

Spurgeon said, “Jesus wept, and by that act He sanctified our tears.”

Yes, the tears may come as a result of the consequences of the fall. All tears of sorrow, they would never exist if it wasn’t for the fall. But the Lord takes these tears as a result or consequence of the fall, and He is able to overrule by grace.

So, it is a special thing, you see, when the body of Christ weeps with those that weep. It’s not the same as other tears. He sanctifies. He takes note of that. Weeping with others, feeling with others.

The Apostle Paul could say that he served the Lord in Acts 20, he served the Lord with many tears. He warned everyone night and day with tears. The tears really was part of the engine of Paul. Not because they drove him forward. They weren’t the motivating principle, but tears, in a certain sense, lubricated the very cogs of his heart as he looked at a perishing world, as he saw the lost in their condition, as he saw the people of God so afflicted with ignorance, led astray and succumbing to the enemy and his deceit. Tears constantly flowed from him.

The Lord sanctifies them. They’re not some meaningless expression under the curse. They have value.

So, the curse that brings them, the God who sees them.

In the third place, the mediator who understands them. The mediator who understands them.

Well, you have it here, of course, expressed so concisely in John 11:35, “Jesus wept.” Jesus, the mediator of the people of God, who stands between God and man. By Him we make our approach to God, and only by Him is the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by Him.

As we think of the mediator who understands our tears, note first, he wept in sympathy. He wept in sympathy. Our Lord weeps in sympathy. Sympathy for His people.

There’s an expression here, like I said at the start, there are layers to what one may say is the reason why Jesus wept. I think it’s multiple. I think He’s fulfilling in John 11:35 what we’re told to do in Romans 12, to weep with them that weep. That’s what he’s doing. He’s fulfilling his own work, his own heart. To not stand there, unfeeling, unable to understand why others are sorrowing and feeling as they are. He weeps in sympathy.

He is no God of marble. He came as a true man. Holy, yes, but tender also. No coldness. A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

And these tears that he shed, John 11:35, is just one example. They do not taint his perfection. They manifest the complexity and the genuineness of his humanity.

They do undergird and communicate to you, sitting here tonight, feeling sorrow, feeling grief, having shed tears recently and pondering your own sorrows. It’s stated here, recorded by the Spirit of God, so you understand there’s one who understands why you shed your tears.

And when He was in the presence of others who were shedding tears like you have been, perhaps, He shed tears with them. Jesus wept.

He’s not distant, beloved. He’s not distant. He’s not cold. He’s not far away. He is very close. He understands.

And He doesn’t understand merely by divine omniscience, but by human experience. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. The full spectrum of those infirmities, he understands.

Sometimes when we see someone’s sorrow, even if we have been in a similar place, we can forget what it’s like to feel as they’re feeling in that moment. But not Jesus. He does not forget. With perfect recollection, he can step right into that experience, understanding why you shed the tears you do in the moment in which you shed them.

He not only wept in sympathy, he wept over the unbelieving. He wept over the unbelieving.

When he drew near to Jerusalem and he looked over that city, and he wept, the heart of the evangel. The heart of the evangel.

Lord Jesus came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, to give his life a ransom for many. And this he did with tears. But not just for the elect. He looked over that city which was filled with those who would crucify him and perhaps never repent. Still he has sorrow. Still he weeps over them.

I’m not sure if there has ever been an occasion in which a judge has wept in a courtroom as the sentence has been pronounced. It may have happened. Some of you here who may know enough about law and legal history to be able to tell me, yes, there’s record of that occurring. But I’m sure it doesn’t happen very often.

But this is where you have the judge, the Lord Jesus, the judge of all the earth, weeping, weeping over Jerusalem, because he holds in his hand the things that belong to their peace. The pardon is being stretched out to them, and they won’t take it.

You don’t have to perish. You don’t have to be lost forever. And he weeps. He weeps.

Great evangelists of the past, very often you’ll find their ministry being married to frequent tears. George Whitefield was known for it. M‘Cheyne was known for it. Others I could mention. As they preached, as they prayed, as they looked at the lost condition, utterly helpless, utterly helpless by their own powers to bring them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God, they weep.

The Lord weeps too. Such compassion in the God-man.

Holiness is not at odds with His tenderness. He sees the city’s blindness, he sees their stubbornness, he knows their coming ruin, and yet does not speak in a cruel spirit. All the warnings he utters are true, and yet the warnings are mingled with his very tears.

So Paul did the same. I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart for his Jewish kinsmen.

There’s a way to speak about judgment that is orthodox and yet not like Christ. It’s all true. Hell awaits and gapes before the lost who are without the blood of Jesus to wash away their sins. That’s true, friends. Every single one of you needs to know it. Hell is hungry and will take you in. But it doesn’t need to be that way.

And the Lord has a love and compassion.

In Proverbs 24:17, we are warned, we are instructed concerning wisdom: “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth.”

Our Lord wept over the unbelieving. I fear we don’t do enough of that.

You know, there’s a sense, we have a midweek prayer meeting. I think it’s very important. I also think, really, the heartbeat of it, at least in a significant way—not entirely, but in a significant way—a heavy weight of the prayer meeting is the heartbeat of the evangel. It’s the intercession for the lost. It’s coming before God for perishing souls.

And I’ll tell you, there’s no livelier prayer meeting, no livelier prayer meeting that I have ever been in, than those prayer meetings that are frequently marked by intercessions for the lost. I hear it. It does my heart good to hear you pray for people. It tells me, number one, you care. You care about your community.

That you’re not viewing your life as randomly surrounded by people, but that you, a Christian—you, God has put you, a Christian, in proximity to these lost people. There’s no mistake in that. You might be the only Christian in such proximity. The only one that has gained their respect.

In a city like this in which it’s commonplace for people to talk about the hypocrisy of the church, your sincerity is crucial and your compassion is crucial. It should spill over into your prayers.

Also, he wept under the curse. Our Lord wept under the curse.

He not only wept in sympathy and over the unbelieving, but he wept under the curse. Hebrews 5:7 speaks of him that in the days of his flesh, offering up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears.

Most are agreed the scene spoken of is that of Gethsemane, the sorrow of the Lord Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. The holy soul of our Savior and our Redeemer entering into that darkness of being made a curse, approaching the cross, unwilling to shrink back from it, unwilling to disobey the Father’s will, embracing the cup of wrath, and as burdened as this—and I know there’s interpretive differences here—but when I preached through Hebrews 5, you may recall, if you were here, you may recall that I laid out my understanding of Hebrews 5.

And what happened in Gethsemane is our Lord, He was not afraid of dying. He was sent for that purpose. The entire plan, all the typology, everything: He must suffer. He wasn’t afraid of dying. He wasn’t so overwhelmed by satanic attack that it was almost getting the better of him. I don’t believe that.

I believe that the concern of his soul was not anything relating to a fear of dying, but victory over death. There is concern that he would not be held under death.

His burden before the Father is that he would rise as was prophesied. “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” And he was heard in that he feared. The Father heard his prayer. The resurrection is an answer to his request, a fulfillment of the prophecy, yes, but the very burden of our Lord: don’t leave me under death. I must rise.

And this was the agony, because if he doesn’t rise, it helps us understand the strain. For if he does not rise, all of his effort is in vain, and we have no hope. And everyone perishes, and heaven is left without any to occupy it, and hell engulfs its billions.

But he wept under the curse because death is that final great enemy. It is the ultimate mark of the curse, and he weeps under it. He weeps as he’s confronted with it. He is looking for deliverance over that last great enemy. And praise God, he was heard.

Oh, he felt the curse in a way that we can’t even begin to understand. He knew what was at stake, and he wept. He wept because you need to be saved. And this was the only way.

In the fourth place, the grace that sanctifies them. The grace that sanctifies these prayers.

A few things to note you need to understand about your tears.

First of all, tears may be prayer. Tears may be prayer.

There are times when we cannot find the language. There is no coherence about our speech. There’s no way to express what we feel. Sorrow, guilt, the burden, it’s all too great.

Psalm 39:12 says, “Hold not thy peace at my tears.” Hold not thy peace at my tears. See them, Lord. See the language. Understand what they are saying.

Thomas Brooks says, “There is no prayer compared to those which secret tears make in the ears of God. Tears make the most forcible entry into the ears of the great God of heaven.” Tears make the most forcible entry into the ears of the great God of heaven, and we have found it to be so.

Tears are prayer. God reads the language of our grief. He understands the brokenness of the heart.

How many times has the child of God found themselves before the Lord, scarcely able to utter anything, and yet going away knowing that they have been in prayer? It’s an interesting thing, isn’t it, when you find yourself there upon your knees before the living God, pouring out tears, language almost beyond you, and when you stutter out your closing amen, there’s not a person could convince you that you were not in prayer.

You know you’re in prayer.

Tears may be prayer.

Tears may deepen communion. Many times you see the times of sorrow in the lives of believers. Jacob fearful of Esau, or fearful of that occasion at Peniel there as he goes to meet Esau. He’s fearful, and yet in all that agony of his own soul and prayer, it deepened his communion. David in the caves, and Machpelah, Hannah in her bitterness of soul. Often these times of darkness become lights where we meet with God in an unusual way. Our communion is deepened.

You go through barrenness, barrenness of weeks or months. Some of you may have gone through times of spiritual barrenness for years, years. And there’s a little part of you that knows that you’ve been backslidden, but it hasn’t really pressed in upon you with any force until the Lord illuminates your heart. And you realize you have been walking afar off. You’ve been at odds with God, distant from God.

And what’s the first expression when you realize it? And the Spirit teaches your heart that for weeks and months, maybe years, away from God, and you have a time of communion with the Lord that cannot be compared to anything that’s happened during the entire period of your backslide.

Tears may be prayer. Tears may deepen communion.

Tears may be seed for a harvest. Psalm 126: “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” That’s a wonderful thing. Shedding tears, like longing for deliverance and shedding your tears and bringing the matter before God and burying the whole matter in your tears.

We find out later that those very tears we shed produced a harvest. A harvest. So we sorrow, and we sorrow, and we sorrow, and then there’s deliverance, and we rejoice.

Finally, the day that removes them. The day that removes them.

There’s coming a day that’s going to remove the experience of tears of sorrow. I think I’ve mentioned from this pulpit before, and not that long ago, that maybe there will be tears in heaven, but tears of joy.

I struggle to think that there will be there worshipping and gratitude, and there will be no tears, that these ducts that we have will no longer be in use at all. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there will be no tears at all. Maybe what the Scripture says is absolute across the board. But I tend to think it’s the tears of sorrow. The tears that relate to the curse. The tears because of the curse.

Think first with me of what is promised.

Isaiah prophesies, “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces.”

Revelation: “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying.”

Revelation 7: “For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them,” and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

These tears of sorrow are gone forever. You see, death is gone.

All that came as a result of the fall, all those things that break your heart. You’re by the bed of one you know, you know that they’re dying, and there’s not a thing you can do about it. That experience, that powerless experience that brings tears, gone.

And tears that have been brought about through suffering, the agony of things you have endured, things that go back to your childhood, things that still haunt you into adulthood, tears shed many times. Those things are gone.

Perfect deliverance. This is what is promised. God shall wipe away. God shall wipe away.

Does that not show us condescension? God, not just that he stops our tears. That would be fine. We would rejoice in that. He stops our tears. Sometimes we talk to people in sorrow, we try to communicate something to them to stop their tears. But what we are told is God shall wipe away.

I don’t know exactly how. I don’t know if the Lord Jesus has a handkerchief which he will use to wipe away tears. I don’t know what way it will be, but I know this: that underpinning it all will be the sense of sympathy.

Because that’s what undergirds an action like that, isn’t it? When a mother looks at her little child and wipes away the tear, it’s not harsh, is it? It’s an act of tenderness.

God, tender to us, wipe away our tears. The curse and all its consequences, all of its fruit, gone with a stroke. That’s what’s promised. It’s gonna be great.

How is it possible? How is it possible?

It’s not just sentimentality, is it? No, this came at great cost. Because, undergirding this—this is where understanding the theology of it is so vital—this is all as a result of the curse. So the curse has to be addressed.

In other words, in order to stop the shedding of tears of sorrow, it required the shedding of the blood of the Lamb.

God would take our nature, suffer. He doesn’t just stand off and watch man suffer under the curse and look at it and wonder why. Why do they respond in this way? He takes our nature. He enters into the fullness of our sorrows to become a man of sorrow. He’s become a man of sorrows, sorrow marking Him.

That sorrow and the consequences of the fall and the judgment of the curse, He puts His arms around all of it, and it goes all the way to Calvary, and it goes to that cross appointed. The Lamb should be slain from before the foundation of the world, that there he’d be offered up as a lamb without blemish, without spot, making sacrifice, dying in our place, lifting the curse, ending the shedding of sorrowful tears by the shedding of his blood. That’s how it’s possible.

You need to understand, all Christians, some of you, I know, you have experiences you don’t wanna talk about. It’s too painful to talk about. Things have happened. Life has not gone as you ever planned or imagined it would. Things have happened to you. Things have happened to your children. Things have happened to your grandchildren. There are things in your own life you regret. Things in your family’s life that you cannot change. There are all these things.

And you have a God. As I said, our Lord Jesus is no God of marble. He is touched. He can feel. His heart is not cold. It is not indifferent.

Jesus wept.

He comes alongside by the Spirit of God, who is the very Comforter of the people of God, the Paraclete, the one who comes alongside to extend that comfort in an ongoing way. So he still comes by. The Spirit of God loves us as much as Jesus loves us. The Spirit of God sympathizes even with us, communicates the ministry of Christ presently to our hearts so that we know we’re not alone.

We have a sympathizing high priest.

Jesus wept.

You weep.

Let’s bow together in prayer.

Have you trials and temptations? Take them to the Lord in prayer. Is there anyone who can help us? One who understands or cares? Yes, there’s one.

Lord, we thank you for everything that you have done, are doing, and will yet do for us.

Amidst this weary pilgrimage, give to your people a sense of your nearness in their trials, that you don’t merely appoint them sovereignly and leave us to ourselves. Yes, you appoint them, but you also console us in them.

Give strength of faith to every child of God through the pain, amidst the sorrow, the things of the past, things yet to come. Teach us to weep before thy presence and to be comforted at your comprehension of our sorrow.

We thank you again for all that you mean to us. Help us tonight to afresh recognize just how deep that your love goes.

Give strength to your people then. Empower them by the Spirit. Let them not be crushed by their sorrows. May the victory and power of the Spirit of God abide in them. May they continue on forward, even through their tears.

Help us this week. We know not what will be on the morrow. Let us walk close with thee, humbly with thee, and all for thy praise.

Bless our fellowship tonight. Sanctify the time, and may the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of every blood-bought child of God, now and evermore. Amen.