As Jesus looked upon the city of Jerusalem during his final week of earthly life, he wept at the sight of her, saddened by the many opportunities she had enjoyed throughout the many centuries of her existence. He knew that the Roman destruction of the city lay but forty or so years in the future (70 A.D.). Many Jews would die in the fall of great capital of Judaism. The magnificent Temple would be burned and taken apart stone by stone. The city would be renamed by the Romans as Colonia Aelia Capitolina and a temple to the Roman deity Jupiter Capitalinus (Jupiter Optimus Maximus) would replace the ancient Jewish sacred precinct. Later still, on this same spot would stand two Muslim mosques, the Mosque of Omar and the Al ‘Aqsa Mosque. Never again would it provide the location for a Jewish Temple precinct. The Savior mourned her impending and devastating losses:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills prophets, and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate (Matthew 23:37).

When we read these words we can almost feel the pain of his own personal loss, as an observant Jew. We have seen people who stand over the ashes of a burnt-out home. Tears well up in their eyes, and sobs arise from deep within. All of the memories, gone. All of the sentimental artifacts of lives lived gone for good, none of which could ever be replaced. Even if insurance money were to pay the actual value of the loss, which it seldom does, the price of some things is more than gold or silver. But it must be said that Jesus felt a loss there that day that was far worse than any such human situation.

A comparable situation had arisen prior to the first destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 586 B.C. God had made persistent appeals to his people to save them from destruction. But they would not heed. And so he had given them over to their enemies. After it was all over, the Lord spoke to them by Jeremiah the prophet and said:

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: You have seen all the disaster that I brought upon Jerusalem and upon all the cities of Judah. Behold, this day they are a desolation, and no one dwells in them, because of the evil that they committed, provoking me to anger, in that they went to make offerings and serve other gods that they knew not, neither they, nor you, nor your fathers. Yet I persistently sent to you all my servants the prophets, saying, ‘Oh, do not do this abomination that I hate!’ But they did not listen or incline their ear, to turn from their evil and make no offerings to other gods. Therefore my wrath and my anger were poured out and kindled in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, and they became a waste and a desolation, as at this day (Jeremiah 44:2-6).

In the latter instance God had made hundreds of overtures to his people, attempting to get them to repent and return to him. He made one final effort to save them when he said, “Perhaps they will reverence my son” (Luke 20:13; John 5:32). But even as our Savior and Lord made his way toward the city its leadership was conniving and plotting to put him to death and have an end to his meddling in their affairs of state. At every turn he had proven himself to be a thorn in their side and an irritant to them; he seemed to miss no chance to embarrass or humiliate them. They were tired of it, and this was to be the final Passover that they were going to have to deal with him and his aggravating discomfitures. He would mortify them no longer. They intended to put the Roman procurator in a position where he would have to alleviate their suffering by putting this man to death or else!

The long and the short of all this was that Jerusalem was out of chances. Rejection of God’s Son, the Messiah, Jesus, was the last straw. The suffering of the Jewish nation in the years that followed this prophecy was incalculable. Jesus was crucified just outside the city. And his rejection forced the hand of God. This was the final straw. It is ironic that the Roman Legions surrounded the city of Jerusalem during the years of her siege and prior to her fall with an embankment that was dotted with crosses, upon which dying men cried out in agony, night and day until they took a final breath, whereupon another man was hung up on that same cross to die and the carcass of the last one was cast down into the passage between the city wall and the embankment to rot. The stench must have been horrendous! And the sight even more so! But such is the lot of doomed men living in a doomed city. Jerusalem was out of chances. Rejection of Jesus was the final straw.

The lesson in all of this is that the Lord’s patience is not eternal. Your patience wears thin at times. And so does mine. The Lord’s patience is beyond our human comprehension. He is merciful and full of grace when our human limits would have been reached long ago. But that does not mean that it is endless. There is a limit to it. And reaching that limit with God is not a desirable thing. The circumstances of Jerusalem’s fall perfectly illustrate how painful such a thing can prove to be.

Each of us has just such a limit with God. He will be patient with us when no one else would be. He will extend to us another chance when every human friend or relative would have thrown in the towel on us long before. But Jerusalem shows us that his hand can be forced. Do not force it, my friend! Do not push him beyond his limit!