Luke 19

Today’s Passage: Luke 19

The long road to Jerusalem that began back in chapter nine is nearly finished, and it runs its last miles through Jericho. There Luke sets down the scene the whole Gospel has been walking toward. A small, rich, thoroughly hated man climbs a tree to get a look at a passing rabbi, and the rabbi stops under the branches, looks up, calls him by name, and invites Himself to dinner. The crowd grumbles. The little man comes down and gives half of everything away. And Jesus says the sentence that gathers up every shepherd and every coin and every runaway son in this book: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Everything after that in the chapter moves fast and gets heavier. Because they are close to the city now and the mood is rising, He tells a parable about a nobleman who goes away to be made king and comes back to settle accounts, a parable with servants who traded, a servant who hid his money in a handkerchief, and subjects who sent word that they would not have this man reign over them. Then the colt, the cloaks in the road, the loud singing of the disciples, and the Pharisees asking Him to quiet them. And then, at the crest of the Mount of Olives with the whole city spread out below Him and a parade behind Him, He stops and weeps aloud. Luke alone records it. The chapter ends in the temple courts, with tables overturned, with crowds hanging on His words, and with the men who run the place quietly deciding He has to die.

As you read, hold this: The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost, and the same Lord who invites Himself to a swindler’s table weeps over a city that will not know the hour God came to it.

Luke 19:1–6 (BSB)

¹ Then Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. ² And there was a man named Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector, who was very wealthy. ³ He was trying to see who Jesus was, but could not see over the crowd because he was small in stature. ⁴ So he ran on ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see Him, since Jesus was about to pass that way. ⁵ When Jesus came to that place, He looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down, for I must stay at your house today.” ⁶ So Zacchaeus hurried down and welcomed Him joyfully.

Watch this happen slowly, because it is the gospel in one scene and it deserves your full attention. Jesus was passing through. Jericho was not a destination that week; it was a town on the way to a cross. And in that town is a man with everything and nothing. Very wealthy, Luke says, and he tells you that before he tells you anything else, because the money is the whole trouble. Zacchaeus was seeking (ζητέω) zēteō, pronounced zay-TEH-oh. Strong's G2212, to seek, to search out, to go looking for. Zēteō is not a grand word. It is what you do when you have lost your keys. To look for, to search out, to go hunting until you find. Luke has been using it all along: the shepherd goes after the sheep, the woman lights a lamp and sweeps the house and searches carefully for the coin, and back in chapter two Mary and Joseph sought the boy Jesus for three days in Jerusalem. Here it is a small rich man in a tree, doing his poor best to see. And then, seven verses later, the same verb comes out of the Lord’s mouth and everything turns over: “the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Do you see what has happened? Zacchaeus climbed that tree thinking he was the one doing the searching. He was not. He had been searched for. The One passing through Jericho that day had come a great deal farther than the man in the branches, and He knew the name of what He was looking for before He looked up. That is how it always is. We think we are the ones who went looking for God, and we find out later, usually much later, that we were found. to see who Jesus was, which is a modest enough ambition, just a look at a face. But he could not see over the crowd, and here Luke adds the detail that has made children love this story for twenty centuries: he was small in stature. Understand what the crowd was doing. Nobody was going to step aside for the chief tax collector. He was rich enough to buy the street and too short to see over it, and there is a whole sermon in that. So he does something no dignified man in that culture would ever do. He picks up the skirts of his robe and runs, out ahead of the procession, and climbs a tree like a boy, a sycamore fig with its low broad branches, and settles in the leaves to watch. He has given up his dignity to get a glimpse.

Then Jesus comes to that place, and He looks up. He was not asked to. Nobody pointed. He stops under the branches of a fig tree in a crowded street and says, “Zacchaeus, hurry down, for I must stay at your house today.” He knows the name. And that little word must is one of Luke’s favorites for the will of God: it is the same must that had Him in His Father’s house at twelve years old and that would take Him to Jerusalem to suffer. It was a divine necessity that Jesus eat supper in the house of a man everybody in town hated. So Zacchaeus hurries down. Twice in two verses Luke uses that word, hurry, and then adds the note that makes the whole scene shine: he “welcomed Him joyfully.” No argument, no bargaining, no long dark night of the soul on the branch. Joy. The man had climbed a tree hoping to see the back of a rabbi’s head, and he went home with the Lord of glory as his houseguest.

Luke 19:7–10 (BSB)

⁷ And all who saw this began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinful man!” ⁸ But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, half of my possessions I give to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone, I will repay it fourfold.” ⁹ Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man too is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

“All who saw this began to grumble.” Not some. All. And it is the same grumble Luke has recorded before, word for word almost, the one that provoked the three greatest parables in the Bible:

"So the Pharisees and scribes began to grumble: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”" Luke 15:2 (BSB)

That complaint is the hinge of Luke’s whole Gospel, and it is never once denied. It is simply true. He does welcome sinners and eat with them. That is what He came for, and the people who cannot bear it are always the people who have not yet noticed that they are sinners too. Now watch Zacchaeus. He stands up, which in a reclining dinner is the posture of a man making a public declaration, and he addresses Jesus as Lord, and he opens his hands. “Half of my possessions I give to the poor.” Not I will, someday, when it is convenient. He gives it, then, standing there. “And if I have cheated anyone, I will repay it fourfold.” Fourfold is not a number he picked at random. The Law required a thief who had killed or sold a stolen animal to repay four sheep for a sheep:

"“If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters or sells it, he must repay five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep." Exodus 22:1 (BSB)

For simple fraud voluntarily confessed the Law asked only the principal plus a fifth. Zacchaeus reaches past the lenient provision and sentences himself under the harshest one, as a common thief, and pays it out of what is left after he has already given half away. Now, be careful here, because this is where people go wrong. He is not buying anything. The Lord had already stopped under his tree and called his name and gone home with him before a single coin moved. But grace that has actually landed always lands somewhere, and in this man’s case it landed exactly where his sin was, in the strongbox. That is worth sitting with. Repentance that costs nothing has usually not happened yet.

Then Jesus speaks, and He speaks about Zacchaeus to the grumblers as much as to him. “Today salvation has come to this house.” Today. Luke loves that word; salvation in this Gospel keeps arriving on an actual date, in an actual house, at a table. “Because this man too is a son of Abraham.” Do not rush past that. The crowd had written him off as a traitor to his own people, a Jew who had sold his birthright for a tax contract. Jesus hands the birthright back in public. He is not an outsider to be tolerated; he is a son of Abraham, restored to the family that had shut him out, and the people who despised him are told so to their faces. And then the sentence. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save (σῴζω) sōzō, pronounced SOZE-oh. Strong's G4982, to save, rescue, heal, make whole. Sōzō is a bigger word than our English save, and Luke uses it in every direction. It is what a doctor does and what a lifeguard does and what God does. When the storm was swamping the boat the disciples cried out that they were perishing, and He saved them. When the woman touched the hem of His robe He told her that her faith had saved her, and she was healed. When Jairus was told his daughter was dead, Jesus said only believe and she will be saved, and she was raised. The word carries rescue, healing, and wholeness together, and it will not be pulled apart into a merely spiritual transaction. That is why it fits Zacchaeus so perfectly. What happened in that house was not a private religious experience that left everything else where it was. A crooked man was made whole, and you could see it in the ledger. The rescue reached his money because the rot had reached his money. Ask yourself, gently, where the rot has reached in you, and then hear the promise again: the Son of Man came to seek and to save. He is not in the business of making people slightly better. He makes them whole, and He usually starts in the room we would rather He did not enter. the lost.” There is the thesis of the Gospel of Luke, spoken out loud at last in the dining room of a swindler. Every shepherd on a hillside, every widow with a lamp, every father running down a road, every leper and centurion and bleeding woman and dying thief in this book, all of it is compressed into eleven words. He came for the lost. Not for the impressive. If you have ever wondered whether you are the kind of person He is interested in, that verse settles it, and it settles it in your favor.

Luke 19:11–14 (BSB)

¹¹ While the people were listening to this, Jesus proceeded to tell them a parable, because He was near Jerusalem and they thought the kingdom of God would appear imminently. ¹² So He said, “A man of noble birth went to a distant country to lay claim to his kingship and then return. ¹³ Beforehand, he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. ‘Conduct business with this until I return,’ he said. ¹⁴ But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We do not want this man to rule over us.’

Luke does us the kindness of telling us exactly why this parable is told, and we should let his reason govern our reading of it. They were near Jerusalem. The pilgrims were streaming up the pass. Something enormous was clearly about to happen, and they had concluded that the kingdom of God would appear immediately, that week, with the Son of David enthroned and Rome sent packing. Jesus does not tell them the kingdom is unreal. He tells them a story to correct the when, and the correction is this: the King goes away first, and there is work to do in the interval, and the accounting comes at the return. That is all the timetable this parable offers, and it is all any of us have been given. It is a mercy that the Lord left the date out. Men have wasted a great deal of life on charts, and this parable is aimed squarely at the sort of excitement that produces charts instead of work.

The nobleman goes to a distant country to lay claim to his kingship. Before he goes, he calls ten servants and gives each of them one mina. A mina was a modest sum, roughly three months’ wages for a laborer, and every one of them got the same. That matters. This is not the parable of the talents, where the amounts differ. Here the sum is small and identical, which puts the whole weight of the story on what each man does rather than on what each man was handed. “Conduct business with this until I return.” That is the commission for the whole season between the going and the coming back. And then the sour note: his subjects hated him, and sent a delegation after him to say, “We do not want this man to rule over us.” That is not a detail borrowed from Archelaus for local color only. It is the very thing that is about to happen in Jerusalem, within the week, to the Man telling the story.

Luke 19:15–19 (BSB)

¹⁵ When he returned from procuring his kingship, he summoned the servants to whom he had given the money, to find out what each one had earned. ¹⁶ The first servant came forward and said, ‘Master, your mina has produced ten more minas.’ ¹⁷ His master replied, ‘Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very small matter, you shall have authority over ten cities.’ ¹⁸ The second servant came and said, ‘Master, your mina has made five minas.’ ¹⁹ And to this one he said, ‘You shall have authority over five cities.’

He comes back a king, and the first thing he does is send for the servants. Notice how the faithful ones talk. “Your mina has produced ten more minas.” Not I have earned. The servant knows whose money it was, and there is no strutting in him. And listen to what the king says back, because it is one of the loveliest disproportions in Scripture: “Because you have been faithful in a very small matter, you shall have authority over ten cities.” A very small matter. Three months’ wages, traded for a while, and the reward is a province. That is not payment. No amount of trading earns a city. That is a king delighting to give, using a servant’s small faithfulness as the occasion for outrageous generosity. And the second man, who made five, is not scolded for making less than ten. He gets five cities, and no comparison is drawn between them. Each is measured against himself and against what he was given, and both hear the same welcome. If you have ever quietly suspected that your service is too ordinary to matter, that you have only the one mina and a small corner to trade it in, this is the part of the parable to write down. He does not ask for ten. He asks for faithful.

Luke 19:20–23 (BSB)

²⁰ Then another servant came and said, ‘Master, here is your mina, which I have laid away in a piece of cloth. ²¹ For I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man. You withdraw what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow.’ ²² His master replied, ‘You wicked servant, I will judge you by your own words. So you knew that I am a harsh man, withdrawing what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? ²³ Why then did you not deposit my money in the bank, and upon my return I could have collected it with interest?’

Here is the man the parable is really about, and he did not steal a thing. He kept it. He wrapped the coin in a cloth and put it somewhere safe and handed it back exactly as he received it, and he seems to think that is a defense. Then he explains himself, and the explanation is the heart of the matter: “For I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man.” Everything wrong with this servant is in that sentence. He did nothing because he believed his master was a hard, grasping man who would take what he had no right to. He never troubled to find out whether it was true. He simply assumed it, and then arranged his whole life around the assumption, and the assumption made him useless. Note what the king does not say. He does not say, “That is not who I am.” He says, “I will judge you by your own words.” He takes the servant’s own picture of him and shows that even on those terms the man is condemned, because if you truly believed your master was that ruthless, fear alone should have driven you to the bank, where the money would at least have gathered interest without any risk or effort on your part. The servant’s excuse does not even work as an excuse. What we have here is not a man who tried and failed. It is a man who never traded at all, because he did not trust the one who gave him the coin. And that is worth a long, honest look. A low view of God’s character will hollow out a life quietly, without a single scandal, and leave nothing at the end but a clean handkerchief with a coin in it.

Luke 19:24–27 (BSB)

²⁴ Then he told those standing by, ‘Take the mina from him and give it to the one who has ten minas.’ ²⁵ ‘Master,’ they said, ‘he already has ten!’ ²⁶ He replied, ‘I tell you that everyone who has will be given more; but the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. ²⁷ And these enemies of mine who were unwilling for me to rule over them, bring them here and slay them in front of me.’”

The bystanders object, and their objection is the natural one. It seems unfair. The man with ten already has ten. Why give him the eleventh? But the principle the king states is not a rule about money, it is a rule about life under God: “everyone who has will be given more; but the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.” Whatever is used grows. Whatever is buried rots, and eventually it is not even there anymore. Anyone who has watched a gift go unused for twenty years knows this is simply how things are. The servant did not lose the mina by spending it wrongly. He lost it by not spending it at all.

And then the last line, and we will not tidy it up, because the Lord did not. “And these enemies of mine who were unwilling for me to rule over them, bring them here and slay them in front of me.” That is a hard ending and it is meant to be. It is the end of the other thread, the delegation from verse fourteen, the people who sent word that they would not have this man reign over them. Understand what is being said and what is not. This is not a verdict on a nation or a people, and it never has been; it is the parable’s own accounting for those who deliberately and finally refuse the King. Jesus is telling it in the shadow of Jerusalem, days before men who did not want Him to reign will hand Him over. And He is telling it because it is true. He is a real King, He will really return, and to reject Him is not a neutral preference. The kindest thing an honest witness can do with a verse like this is neither to soften it into something harmless nor to speak it with any hint of satisfaction. Say it plainly, grieve over it, and then go and find someone in a tree.

Luke 19:28–34 (BSB)

²⁸ After Jesus had said this, He went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. ²⁹ As He approached Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, He sent out two of His disciples, ³⁰ saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. ³¹ If anyone asks, ‘Why are you untying it?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it.’” ³² So those who were sent went out and found it just as Jesus had told them. ³³ As they were untying the colt, its owners asked, “Why are you untying the colt?” ³⁴ “The Lord needs it,” they answered.

“He went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.” He is out in front the whole way. Nobody is dragging Him. The road from Jericho climbs more than three thousand feet in fifteen miles, and at the top of it, over the shoulder of the Mount of Olives, the city and the temple come into view all at once. Bethphage and Bethany are villages on that eastern slope, and it is there He stops and gives two disciples a strange errand. There is a colt tied in the next village, one that no one has ever ridden, and they are to untie it, and if anyone asks, the answer is four words: “The Lord needs it.” Luke reports the errand and then reports it happening, almost word for word, which is his quiet way of telling you that the Man riding into this city is not being swept along by events. He arranged this. Everything after this point looks like a trap closing on Him, and every step of it is His own.

An unridden animal was the kind you set apart for a sacred purpose, and a king coming in peace came on a donkey rather than a warhorse. The prophet had said so five hundred years before:

"Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." Zechariah 9:9 (BSB)

So He is claiming the title in the plainest possible way, and claiming it in the humblest possible form, and both things are true at once. Here is your King. He is coming on a borrowed farm animal. And there is one more small thing not to miss: somewhere in Bethphage a family owned that colt, and their whole part in the story of redemption is that they let it go when they were told the Lord needed it. That is not a small part. It never is.

Luke 19:35–40 (BSB)

³⁵ Then they led the colt to Jesus, threw their cloaks over it, and put Jesus on it. ³⁶ As He rode along, the people spread their cloaks on the road. ³⁷ And as He approached the descent from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of disciples began to praise God joyfully in a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen: ³⁸ “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” ³⁹ But some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples!” ⁴⁰ “I tell you,” He answered, “if they remain silent, the very stones will cry out.”

They throw their cloaks on the colt for a saddle, and then they start throwing them on the road, which is what people did for a king. And at the descent from the Mount of Olives, where the whole city bursts into view, the singing starts. Luke tells us exactly what set them off, and it is worth noticing that it was not a doctrine but a memory: they praised God joyfully in a loud voice “for all the miracles they had seen.” Every one of them had a story. The blind man from Jericho was probably in that crowd, walking. So was Zacchaeus, most likely, several thousand denarii lighter and singing. They are quoting the great pilgrim psalm, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD,” and inserting a word that psalm does not have: the King. And then, “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest,” which is the angels’ song from the fields of Bethlehem turned around and sent back up. Heaven sang “on earth peace” at His birth. Earth sings “peace in heaven” at His coming to the city. The circle closes.

The Pharisees want it stopped. “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.” It is easy to be hard on them, but consider that a Roman garrison was watching from the Antonia fortress and a Passover crowd shouting about a king was exactly how riots started. Whatever the mix of fear and offense in it, they are asking Him to deny what the singing means. And He will not. “I tell you, if they remain silent, the very stones will cry out.” He does not say the praise is excessive. He says it is so necessary that creation itself would take it up rather than let the moment pass in silence. Let that settle in you the next time you are tempted to be quiet about Him out of embarrassment. The rocks are waiting for the chance.

Luke 19:41–44 (BSB)

⁴¹ As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it ⁴² and said, “If only you had known on this day what would bring you peace! But now it is hidden from your eyes. ⁴³ For the days will come upon you when your enemies will barricade you and surround you and hem you in on every side. ⁴⁴ They will level you to the ground—you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”

Stop here. Of the four Gospels only Luke gives us this, and it is the emotional center of the chapter and perhaps of the journey. There is a parade behind Him. Cloaks in the road, palm-strewn joy, His own disciples singing themselves hoarse about the King who comes in the name of the Lord. And at the top of the descent, with the temple gleaming white and gold across the valley, He looks at the city and He weeps (κλαίω) klaiō, pronounced KLY-oh. Strong's G2799, to weep aloud, to wail. Klaiō is not the polite verb. Greek had a quieter word for shedding tears, and John uses it of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus. This one is louder. It is what the widow of Nain was doing behind her son’s coffin when the Lord told her to stop. It is what Peter did outside in the dark after the rooster crowed, weeping bitterly. It is what the women of Jerusalem were doing along the road to the cross, when He turned and told them to weep for themselves and their children instead. It is grief with a voice. So set the picture in front of you honestly: a King on a colt, a crowd singing, and in the middle of it the King Himself in open, audible mourning, because He is looking at the city and seeing a funeral. We are so careful, most of us, to keep our religion composed. Here is God in the flesh, weeping out loud over people who are about to reject Him, at the exact moment when everything seemed to be going well. Whatever else that tells you about Him, it tells you that His warnings are not the warnings of a hanging judge. They come out of a throat thick with tears. over it. Not a tear discreetly wiped away. The word means the sound a mourner makes at a graveside. He is in the middle of His own welcome and He is wailing, because He can see what the singers cannot, that this same city will shortly say what the subjects in the parable said, and that the consequences will fall on children not yet born.

“If only you had known on this day what would bring you peace!” The sentence breaks off unfinished in the Greek, the way grief breaks off. And there is a terrible tenderness in the wordplay, because the name of the city carries peace in it, and Peace Himself is standing outside the wall weeping while the thing that would have brought her peace rides past unrecognized. Then He describes what is coming, and He describes it soberly: a siege wall, an army hemming her in on every side, the city leveled, not one stone left on another. Within forty years the Roman legions under Titus did precisely that, throwing up an embankment around Jerusalem, starving it, and finally burning the temple and pulling the walls down. Read those verses with grief and never with satisfaction. There is no gloating in the Lord’s voice and there must be none in ours. This is not a scorecard against a people; it is a Savior in tears over a city He loves, the city that had killed the prophets before and would refuse Him now, the city He had already grieved over in the same words:

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling!" Luke 13:34 (BSB)

And then the reason, which is the last phrase and the heaviest one: “because you did not recognize the time of your visitation (ἐπισκοπή) episkopē, pronounced eh-pee-skoh-PAY. Strong's G1984, a visitation, a coming to look upon. Episkopē means an inspection, an overseeing, a coming to look upon someone. It is the noun behind the word for an overseer in the church, but in the Greek Old Testament and here it carries the great biblical idea of God visiting His people, coming near in person to help or to judge. Luke has been sounding this note since the first chapter. Zechariah, filled with the Spirit at the birth of his son, sang, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, because He has visited and redeemed His people.” When the dead boy at Nain sat up, the crowd cried, “God has visited His people!” That is the word. And now, at the end of the journey, the charge against the city is not that she was too wicked to be forgiven. It is that she “did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” He came, and she did not know it was Him. There is a lesson in that for every reader, and it is not a comfortable one. God’s visitations rarely arrive labeled. They come as an ordinary Tuesday, a hard providence, a plain sermon, a friend’s honest word, a passage of Scripture that will not leave you alone. Ask Him for eyes. It is a fearful thing to be visited by God and to notice only that the crowd was loud. from God.”

Luke 19:45–48 (BSB)

⁴⁵ Then Jesus entered the temple courts and began to drive out those who were selling there. ⁴⁶ He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be a house of prayer.’ But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” ⁴⁷ Jesus was teaching at the temple every day, but the chief priests, scribes, and leaders of the people were intent on killing Him. ⁴⁸ Yet they could not find a way to do so, because all the people hung on His words.

He comes down off the mountain, through the gate, and straight into the temple courts, and the first thing the weeping King does in His Father’s house is clear it out. Luke tells it in a single verse, without drama. The selling took place in the outer court, the one area where a Gentile could come and pray, and it had been turned into a livestock market and a currency exchange for the convenience of pilgrims and the profit of the men who ran it. Jesus answers with two prophets. The first is Isaiah, and it is worth hearing the whole verse, because of who the house was supposed to be for:

"I will bring them to My holy mountain and make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on My altar, for My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations.”" Isaiah 56:7 (BSB)

The very court where the nations were meant to seek God had been filled with tables. The second quotation is sharper still, and every scribe in the courtyard would have known where it came from:

"Has this house, which bears My Name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Yes, I too have seen it, declares the LORD." Jeremiah 7:11 (BSB)

Jeremiah preached that in the temple gate before the first destruction, to people who thought the building itself would keep them safe. A den is not where robbers do their robbing. It is where they retreat afterward and feel secure. That is the charge: religion used as a hideout. It is possible to run a very holy operation and be running a cave.

And then Luke closes the chapter with a picture that should stay with you. Day after day He is there teaching, and the leaders are looking for a way to kill Him, and they cannot find one, “because all the people hung on His words.” The Greek is vivid: they were hanging on Him, the way a man hangs from a ledge. The King wept over this city on Sunday and by midweek He is standing in her temple every morning, teaching anyone who will listen, while the men who will condemn Him circle at the edges. He did not withdraw. He kept preaching until they took Him. That is what the seeking and saving of the lost actually looked like in the last week of His life.