In addition to thinking about how Peter fits Psalm 1, there's another passage I think about. It's good to think of the two together because this second one is encouraging. Earlier, Jesus was prophesying what was going to happen to Peter, and He said to him, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." This is an encouraging passage because it teaches us that although Peter was prone to fall, and did fall, Jesus, nevertheless, was concerned about him and prayed for him. As a result of Jesus' prayers, although he fell by denying the Lord, his faith did not fail. That is, he remained joined to Jesus in a saving way and so was strengthened by the experience.

Yesterday, we were talking about the need to be broken over the eternal state of the lost. I want to conclude this first application with a story from personal experience.

The third thing is that not only is the Lord weeping because the people are precious to Him and because they didn't know God, He's also weeping because judgment is coming. The judgment He's talking about here is the judgment that would fall upon Jerusalem when it rebelled against Rome, bringing the armies under Titus to destroy it in A. D. 70. Jesus foresaw all this. The words here accurately depict what will come. And yet, I think, in view of everything He said during this final week, that it wasn't only the destruction of the city He had in mind. He saw that, of course. But He saw beyond that to a far greater destruction—a destruction that we normally describe as the final judgment.

There must have been many times during the three-year teaching ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ that there was weeping, even though we're not told about it. But whatever the case may have been earlier, there was certainly a great deal of weeping during the final week of ministry that began on what we call "Palm Sunday."

The final section of this three-part psalm (the last two stanzas in the New International Version) breaks away from heaven to speak of three past leaders of Israel—Moses, Aaron and Samuel, and of the wilderness experience of the people, when God "spoke to them from the pillar of cloud" (vv. 6, 7).