The scripture reading is in two parts this morning. The first will be from Deuteronomy 18:15-22, and the second will be from the Gospel of Matthew 23:37-39. God, in His providence, has brought you here today to hear His word read, specifically these passages. So please give your attention to it.

The Lord your God—this is the Deuteronomy passage—will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen, just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, or see this great fire anymore, lest I die.” And the Lord said to me, “They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

“And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’ When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.”

Now, in the Gospel of Matthew 23:37-39, which is also our sermon text: “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'”

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever. Amen. You may be seated.

Well, as our sermons continue through the Gospel of Matthew, if we are to consider this Gospel that has been given to us and look at the content throughout it, you will notice that Matthew uniquely ties to many themes that you might read throughout the Old Testament. You see that particularly in the person of Jesus Christ.

You notice that Jesus comes as the second Adam. He is one who obeys all of God’s law and is faithful in what He was set to do, whereas Adam failed. You see, Jesus is the faithful and the true Israel. He is the one who goes into the wilderness and remains obedient and faithful for 40 days as he is tempted by the devil. Whereas Israel failed and wandered for 40 years, Christ was faithful.

You see Jesus often doing the work of a priest. He would heal people of their diseases and sicknesses. He would cast out demons. You see Jesus as well as the king. He is building His church. He is the one who directs it. He directs its governance. He supplies it with leaders. He is the one who declares how one becomes a citizen. He even makes people citizens and he gives directions for how it is to go, what are its documents, its governance so to say. He governs it with the Spirit.

But something that has been happening throughout the Gospel of Matthew, particularly since chapter 21, is building and culminates today is that Jesus Christ is also the prophet, the promised one, the promised prophet that was to come to Israel. You heard in Deuteronomy 18 in the reading of the scriptures that there would be one raised from the midst of Israel to be amongst them, from your brothers, who would be the prophet to preach and to proclaim the word and that the word of the Lord would be in his mouth; that God would put his words in his mouth.

This prophet, as we understand, is culminated in that promise and comes forth to us revealed that it is in fact Jesus Christ. He was the promised prophet to Israel, to God’s people. Now, what this tells us is that Christ, who was and is the prophet that was to come, is that one because what He does is fulfills for us the roles of a prophet that had been seen and laid out before and were building.

Did you notice in the confession of faith we had this morning that Christ executes the office of a prophet, revealing to His church in all ages by His Spirit and word in diverse ways of administration the whole will of God in all things concerning their edification and salvation? Now, that is telling us what He does as a prophet. What it is saying there is that the prophets’ work of revealing God’s word to the church in all ages is that Jesus is the one who is executing that office in those ages.

In other words, or said a different way, when you see a prophet in the Old Testament, they were actually pre-showing us what Christ was doing and how He would come and speak and preach to His people.

Now, I want you to think about this throughout the Gospels of Matthew but also the other Gospels as well. The prophets would be like him, the promised one. They would bring the word of God. They were sent with the word of God. Think of Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and the minor prophets of the Old Testament. Those prophets that came along the way brought the word of God. They were sent with the word of God and would say, “Thus saith the Lord. Here is what God’s word is.”

And what did they do? What was the style of their preaching, of their prophesying? They often did a few things that would overlap. They would reveal the sins of the people. They would declare who God was, His character, and His nature. Then they would show where the people had gone astray. They would reveal the word of God and show how the people have sinned against God and what they have done. The prophets would express a desire for repentance amongst the people.

They would call for the people to repent and to be restored to God. They also promised that God would come and give a new life and a new heart to the people; that He would give the gift of regeneration to His people in their repentance, that He would restore them to Himself. They expressed a desire for repentance, but they also promised judgment were there not to be repentance. They were very clear.

“You have sinned against God. Here is your God. Here is what He has told you, and you have failed. You have rebelled against Him. And God will judge you for your sins as He has promised. Yet if you repent, God will forgive you. He will restore you. He will give you life as He has promised.” The prophets would express the desire to repent.

But another thing prophets would do is lament. They would lament the condition of the people. They would say, “Oh, the people have gone astray! They have turned from the Lord! They have fallen away!” The glory that was once theirs has departed. What they have known is gone. They heard that the people have turned in their hearts, are turning towards false gods, and are turning away from the Lord. The Lord beckons them, and yet they seem not to return, and it is for this they would receive judgment.

Now, when I say all of that, I then ask you to consider: have you not seen through the chapters to chapter 23 in the Gospel of Matthew? Have we not seen the Lord Jesus doing this very thing? Think through His life and His ministry and His work. He has called the people to repentance, demonstrating to us that what the prophets were saying of old about bringing His word to the people, speaking when they said, “Thus saith the Lord,” they were bringing His words, and thus He is the one that was promised in Deuteronomy 18.

Jesus Christ is the one that would know, because He never says, “Thus saith the Lord.” He brings the word of the Lord because He is the word of God. He is the promised prophet to us. In this text throughout Matthew 23, Jesus has been doing the very things that the prophets were doing, both in the manner and in style but often in the content itself.

Jesus has come and revealed the Father to the people. He has shown them their sins. He has called for them to repent and is expressing this for them to repent. He has promised judgment for their sins but has also often called for restoration and to come and give them a new heart.

So, what you learn is that when Jesus does this work throughout Matthew 23, He is bringing a judgment as a prophet would. In today’s text, you see that Jesus is bringing a lament over what is seen among the people. Jesus in Matthew 24 is going to bring predictions of the future of what is to come, and then he will explain it through the teaching of parables in Matthew 25.

So, what you are to see as you come to this text today is to understand that it is a culmination, in many ways, of the prophetic work of Jesus towards the nation of Israel and the people of God.

I want to show you a few things as we come to this text. First, I’ve actually already done the first point, which is Christ as the prophet. That was point one, so we are ahead of the game. The next points are going to be this: we will see the lament of Christ in this text, then we’ll see the desire of Jesus Christ from this text, and then Christ’s judgment, and we will close with application.

So first, the lament. Look at what Jesus says in verse 37 again: “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent!” This is often titled a lament. It’s a lament because Jesus is speaking here from grief. This is actually not a cry of anger. We have seen the righteous anger of Jesus, haven’t we?

It’s been very clear. But what you have here is again that other part of what brings forth the word where He is lamenting not in anger but from grief. What is He saying? “The city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent!” He then says, “How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!”

How often I would have gathered you! How I have sent prophets to you! What is He saying? I remember we tied into the text last week where Jesus was declaring that when prophets came, He was sending them. He was showing His deity, and His grief here is saying, “I have sent prophets to you to warn you, to reveal God’s word to you,” and He has done the same. “Oh Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!”

He spent His ministry calling these people to repent and to be restored to God. He came to them in mercy, offering them grace, showing forth the holiness and righteousness of God. His ministry and His life amongst them were doing the same: to come and to beckon them to be restored to their Lord and their God.

What Jesus is expressing here is that this is what He has come to do. It’s what He wanted for them. It’s what He desired for them. When He says, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” it is not out of hate, but it is out of love. He loves them! He cares for them! He wanted them to be restored. He longed for their repentance. He’s demonstrated that through His life, through His words, through His work in the Gospels themselves, but also in the past as He appealed to them through the prophets.

He wanted their restoration. If you wonder where His emotions are, you can go and read Luke 19:41, where it says that Jesus wept over the condition of the people. You see that this is not a lament of anger, but it’s one of grief. Jesus looks at the state of the church, and though there is righteous anger, of course, the state of His people then, there is grief because He does not want this. He never sought this for them.

He will bring and does judge righteously, but He is grieving over their condition, their wretchedness, their rot, and their decay. This should cause us to do the same. Dear Christian, when we see the condition of the church when it is in bad shape, when we see the condition of people in their walking away from the Lord, and in rejecting Him and rejecting His words, there is a right sense of righteous anger, but it must also be that of grief and of sadness to see the condition of someone whose heart is filled with iniquity against the Lord and has turned from him.

This should bring us grief, and we should love them and desire to see the church purified and restored. It should not cause us to hate, but to grieve.

Now, what is the desire of Christ? This is in verses 37 and 38. This is what He says: “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not; you were not willing,” is what He is saying. He uses the analogy of a mother hen gathering together baby chickens—an interesting analogy.

Now He tells us here that He wanted to gather them together as a mother hen would gather together her chickens. What is this? It again demonstrates His love for them. Before we understand what He’s saying, it shows that this is near affection. This is a close affection, and it’s one that is demonstrated by the fact that He watches them closely. He is near them, and He cares for them.

This analogy shows us that He desired to cover them with wings of protection from danger. So again, as a mother hen would call out to her chicks, she would call to them and she would cover them and protect them from what would bring them harm. Jesus is saying this was His desire: to protect them from danger, to comfort them when they are hurting, to watch over them closely, and to bring healing to them for where they have been hurt.

This is the understanding of Malachi chapter 4, as He comes with healing in His wings, to watch over them, protect them, and comfort them. He would call out to them as the baby chicks might be running frantically or not paying attention and not knowing what’s going on. The call was: “You come here! You’re in danger, and I will protect you! I will comfort you! I will heal you!”

And He did this, did He not? He did this through the prophets as He sent them to bring His word. He often called them. He saw the danger they were in, and in His own ministry and life, He saw the danger they were in, and He warned them to repent. He warned them to take heed and not come under the judgment and the wrath of God. He desired to protect them from the righteous judgment that was due them.

He wanted to restore them, and He did this because He loved them. He calls out, and His desire was for them to be restored, and it was out of love.

In other words, He says, “This is what I did, and you would not. You were unwilling.” That then shows you that He was the willing one. He says how often He did this! Do you see what this is actually saying? When you take into account the bigger picture, Jesus is saying that He proclaimed to them and sent prophets to them often, and He called them out many times.

You’re learning again of His deity, of His omniscience, and of His ability to understand. No! In other words, Jesus knows each and every time He called to His people. He has a record of it. You might say He knows of every call. If you say, “When did you call to me?”—often! How often? He has a total exhaustive list of each and every appeal that He makes to His people.

Now, think of your ability to remember. When did you call? The omniscience of God is in totality—He knows it all. He would say, “How many times did the prophets speak? How many men were sent? How many times were you warned? How many prophets? How many recordings? Isaiah has 66 chapters of this. Jeremiah has 50. There are 12 minor prophets, and they have chapters upon chapters. There are words of the prophets sent.

John the Baptist came to you, and I came to you. John would say, the apostle John in writing of his epistle that he said and did so many things that you couldn’t record it if you tried to write it all down. He knows every time! How often!

I ask you to consider that. How many times would you say that Christ has appealed to you for repentance? Through reading His word, through hearing it read publicly? How many sermons have you heard where God’s word was proclaimed? How many books has someone faithfully taught? How many times can we say we have heard the word? How often He appealed to us?

That should bring a bit of humility and a bit of fear over our rejection of Him. But then it also stirs us to love, doesn’t it? To see that He has appealed to us numerous times. He has often been the willing one to bring the repentant one to Himself, but they were unwilling. They killed the prophets. They stoned the prophets. Why? Because they preached repentance.

Go and read throughout the Old Testament when the prophets came to bring the word of God. How quickly the leadership of the people hated them and turned upon them because they were warning them to repent. He says they stoned the prophets. What is His point? Stoning was the penalty for those who preached and prophesied falsely. What He is saying is that those who brought you mine, you killed them. You stoned them as if they had violated the law of God. You are the ones who were violating the law of God.

He offered restoration to them over and over throughout history, and they refused. They were not willing to receive the Lord Himself. They refused to believe that judgment would come upon them. They loved their sin. They loved darkness, and they did not love the Lord who loved them. They rejected Him and trusted in other things, such as what? They trusted in their own works. They trusted in their own righteousness.

They did not trust the Lord. They trusted in their city and their town. “We are citizens of Jerusalem, the city of God. We have the temple here. We trust in that. That is our sign! Oh, the temple! The temple of the Lord!” as they cried out and said so often.

And Jesus is saying, “You trusted, you refused Me, but you turned to something else. You turned to the temple as if the temple itself or the gold of the temple was anything, and you turned from the Lord. You would not receive Me as I brought you the word. You turned from Me, and for this, your house is left desolate. You have turned from Him. You have turned from Me, and He leaves you to judgment.”

Now, this comes to the third point, or the fourth point, excuse me: the judgment of Christ. He says in verse 38, “Your house, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'” The house is left desolate. That word might sound familiar to you. If it does, you might say, “Where?”

Well, in the Gospels, it is frequently used when Jesus went out to a desolate place to pray. Now, what does it mean? The desolate would say it was uninhabited and could not be inhabited. You could not live there; it was a place that was desolate. There was no home. It was not fit for a home. You could not dwell there.

If you’ve been out in the trails, you come to places where you say, “This is a desolate place! You could not put a house here. No one lives here!” Jesus would say that’s where He would go. He often took His people with Him to go and pray, commune with the Father, to rest, to be restored. It was desolate in that sense, and He needed it for that purpose.

Now He is saying, “Your house is left to you desolate.” It’s like those places that you go; you cannot live there. No one comes there. It is uninhabited; it is not livable. “Your house is left to you desolate.” He is prophesying here. What is He prophesying of?

We’re going to understand more about this in the coming chapter, but what He is saying here is He is telling us that the events that occurred in Jerusalem in 70 AD—when the city was ransacked and destroyed and stone upon stone was thrown over and the city was destroyed, and the temple itself was destroyed by the barbarians who came in—He is saying this is the judgment, the temporary judgment that was coming upon you for your sins.

He appealed to you, and you would not; you were not willing, and for that, your house is left desolate. This is what’s coming. He is saying ultimately, if you would have the prophets and the word that the prophets brought, and if you would not have Christ the promised one come as He has come to you, if you will not have Me, you will not have God.

You cannot separate because you cannot separate the persons of the triune God. There is one God in three persons, and you cannot dare to separate Him. You must have Jesus; you will not have God. What you trusted in: your city, your temple, your works, your righteousness—it’s all going down. And that happened. That happened! You can read of this account in many places! That event that He said there happened.

Now He also says, “You will not see me again.” Do you understand that? What He’s saying is that once we conclude verse 39, He’s not going to speak to these people again. Many of them will see Him at the cross, but that will be it. His withdrawal is a judgment: “You will not see Me again.” This is His last word of appeal to them in the flesh.

He is saying, “You will no longer have My covenantal protection. You won’t have it! You will not have it as a nation anymore. You are no longer under My covenantal protection. You will not see Me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'”

Now, this probably sounds familiar because this is what the crowd was chanting when He entered Jerusalem in Matthew 21. It’s Psalm 118, and He says there, “You will not see Me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'”

Now, what is this? This is looking to the last day, to the very last day, when the Lord Jesus Christ, whom after His resurrection—after His ascension, a day that is not known, as we will find out, and only known to Him and to the Father—returns. This is what He refers to on the final day when He resurrects the living and the dead, and all are brought before His seat.

All are brought to Him, and all see Him face to face. They see Him in the flesh. On that day He says, “You will acknowledge Me, and you will bow the knee to Me, and you will say, ‘He has come! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!'” And it will not be for joy but for their utter destruction because they will realize, “He was the one! He was the promised one! He was the one who was always coming to us! He always spoke to us, and He did the thing He said He would do! He is the blessed one that comes in the name of the Lord!”

That’s who He is; that’s who He was. Their guilt will consume them. So we see, though, that this is His last word to the people that He appealed to, the people that He loved.

Now, how can we apply this text? I want you to see that Christ is held out to us here, good and gracious, is He not? He is good, and He is gracious. Look at how He loves! Look at how He loves His people! Look at His call and appeal to those that rejected Him and hated Him and lied about Him, who often killed His prophets, His men He sent. They persecuted His people, and yet He loves them.

He is good because He sees sin. He sees our sins, and He would reveal God to us. He reveals the nature of the Father. He reveals Himself to us. He reveals God’s word. He reveals God’s will to us. He is good and gracious and loving because He reveals our sins to us. He tells us how we have fallen short. He shows us through His word where we have sinned against Him.

He preaches to us. He gives us His word to call us to repentance. But most of all, we see His goodness in that He offers Himself on the cross in our place. Jesus Christ sees our sins and knows of our judgment, and He is the one, as He is nearly there to this day where He will suffer in the place of His people for those who will repent. He will suffer for them. He will take the consequences due His sins. He will take the wrath of God upon Himself for our sins to save us from the very judgment He’s warned us of.

You see why He is so good and so gracious and why He is so loving. If you aren’t a Christian, or if you have rejected Him and yet He is calling you again, He has brought you here today again to give you His word.

So what is my word to you? Don’t refuse Him! Don’t refuse Him! Don’t walk away from Him! He’s called you here! He has ordered all things and brought you here for the sake of hearing His word because He loves you and desires your repentance and wants to bring you to Himself! Don’t refuse Him.

You may wonder and say, “I’ve considered this. I don’t know what to do.” That is the conviction of the Holy Spirit drawing you now! The Spirit is working to pierce your conscience to draw you in that you would be repentant and bring your sins to Him and trust Him by faith alone! He can be clear that God desires for you to be reconciled to Himself. He offers His Son in your place so that you, through His victory and resurrection, could be adopted as one of His very own. He offers that to you. He will become your Father!

The gracious, holy, awesome judge will also be your Father! Come to Him! Don’t reject Him! If you are a Christian and you hear this and wonder, “What must I do?” You must remember that there is a clear word to Christians, isn’t it? For this is written to the covenant people of God; it’s a word to covenant people.

And so I would say, first, do not trust in anything else to give you salvation. Put your security in nothing else but the Lord Jesus Christ. Dear covenant children, your salvation rests not in the fact you were born in a Christian home but in Jesus Christ alone! Parents, if you are seeking to raise your kids in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and have joined a Presbyterian church, that is not your salvation! It cannot be!

If you think that merely sitting under the word and by osmosis it will come into you, you’re lying to yourself! You can’t think that certain things by being around them or being near them is all you need and that will cut it. No, it will not! Only Jesus may bring you to the Father. Only Jesus’ life lived on your behalf; only Jesus’ death on the cross for your sins will see where God’s wrath is poured for your sins, not upon you. You want to avoid that? You have to have Jesus.

You want to be made right with the Father? It will not be through effort; it will be through Him and trusting in Him and resting in Him alone! Your faith can be in nothing else and no one else and no other action but Jesus.

Now Christians do this; we understand where we say, “I know that, but my sin has seemingly consumed me! What do I do?” Do not believe the lie of the devil that you cannot be restored! He’s appealing to you now! The preaching of His word is coming to you to appeal to you, dear Christian, to be repentant, to confess your sins and be made right with God! Don’t believe the lie of the devil that you cannot be restored!

Don’t believe that your sin must always rule you. No, it does not! You have the Holy Spirit! Be free of that and come to Him! You might even say as a Christian, “What do I say?” You just acknowledge your sins. Say, “I am a sinner, and I have done this, and I grieve over it for breaking and harming and hindering any nearness I’ve had with you; but please forgive me and cleanse me with Christ’s blood.” And He will.

For the Christian, for the non-Christian, He will do that because He loves you and wants you, and He preserves His word and sends the preaching of the word so that you can hear and be made right with Him, restored to Him, or if you have not yet been regenerated, so that you might have life. He brings this message to you.

Finally, as you think about your life and all this judgment, this does point ahead. It points ahead in one sense to that event that happened in 70 AD. But does it not also point ahead to the final day of judgment? Now that day is a fearful day for all to contemplate, isn’t it?

But for the Christian and in Christ Jesus, it is a day that we are not, and we should not have to be afraid of. On the one hand, we say, “Yes, I consider my own sins.” The idea of standing in the judgment seat of God—oh, that brings me great fear! But Christ stands in our place, and Christ answers for us and we are forgiven.

Thus, we don’t simply sit back and wait; we press forward. We do what He calls us to do. We hope in Him. We trust in Him. We seek to be godly, all those things. But when we think about the last day, you can be encouraged! You can be encouraged because there is a day coming when the wrath of God is filled to the full, and it is poured out justly upon all of those rebels!

But you will not be one of them if you are secure in Jesus Christ. You will be forgiven, and you will be brought to Him. You will live forever with Him, with sin removed, in His presence, made right, forgiven, cleansed, and restored, given a new life—to live forever! You are safe in the arms of Christ! His wings of protection will reign over you forever so that when that day comes, you would not cry out for the rocks to fall upon you, but you would cry to Jesus, and you would know Him and know that He has protected you!

He’s given you Himself, and He will keep you secure. So maybe when you think of the last day and you think about what awaits you, you might think just like the Apostle John and say, “I want that day with sin removed, with Christ reigning and all things made new.”

That is why John said, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.” May we have the same desire in our hearts that the Lord Jesus would come and bring us to Himself and make all things new.

Let’s pray to that end.

Oh Father, we thank You for the word that You give to us, and we thank You for the appeals that You have made to us through Your Son and through the prophets. We confess, Lord, that we know of the stubbornness of our own hearts, how we have refused You, how we’ve not taken Your word seriously, how we’ve denied it, and how we’ve put it aside.

Yet You’ve been so gracious to us in Jesus. We thank You, Jesus, and praise You for dying for those sins, for receiving the wrath that is justly due us in our place, and for trading our unrighteousness for Yours. We love You. We praise You, and we bless Your name.

We would ask You to send Your Holy Spirit to indwell us, to sanctify us, to encourage us, and give us hope. To remind us, Holy Spirit, please remind us of Your love. Remind us of Your care. Remind us of Your quickening grace. Remind us of Your preservation and comfort that is for us.

Father, we would pray for those Christians and our brothers and sisters in Christ who wander, who trust in other things, who are weak and despair, who believe the lies of the devil. We pray, Holy Spirit, that You would draw them and restore them, reminding them of all we have in Jesus.

We pray for our friends who would be here now and who might be listening later, our friends that are on our minds that are outside of the covenant of grace. Father, have mercy upon them. Have mercy upon the thousands that we know—the thousands in this city, in this state, in this country—who will not hear Your cries, that You have often sent the word to them and they’ve rejected.

We pray You’d have mercy upon them and restore them, regenerate them, and give them life in and through Jesus Christ. And I pray now for the covenant children that would hear this, that they would not set it aside but would take this to heart and would believe even today and trust in Your word given to them.

We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.