In Luke 111And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. (Luke 11:1), the Lord Jesus gives the beautiful instance of the Queen of Sheba. Her conscience and affections were stirred when hearing that Solomon had the knowledge of God. “When the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord” (1 Kings 10:11And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions. (1 Kings 10:1)), she took the long journey to Jerusalem, just to find out God.
What stirred the conscience of the men of Nineveh? Jonah’s words. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3:44And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. (Jonah 3:4)). The result of this was that the king clothed himself with sackcloth. Even the horses and sheep were so clothed. What a ridiculous thing to put animals in sackcloth! Yet, who can measure the agony and impulses of an awakened conscience? Analyzing and criticizing can give no account of such soul work. It is blessed to see, as in the stricken cases today, that the convicted conscience cannot stand upon measure. Send us a sign, they said. No, says the Lord. You must believe on Me with your conscience.
While the Lord was about to answer the second of these questions (vss. 15-16), there was a woman in the company whose affection was stirred. Human affections are often stirred under the cross. The daughters of Jerusalem took their places apart from the prosecutors. While I do not trust this excitement of nature, I do not treat it as vile. There may have been a crop for Jesus in it—a blessing in the cluster.
You may be prepared for a variety of moral activities nowadays, but the Lord says, as it were, to this poor woman, “There is a mistake in your judgment, because, rather, blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it.”
Connection with Christ is to be spiritual and not fleshly, divine and not human. Do you not delight to know that nothing less than your necessity as a sinner is to form the link between you and Jesus? Anything else would snap asunder like the withes that bound Samson.
J. G. Bellett (adapted from Notes on the Gospel of Luke)