WE will now meditate on chapter xi. We are tracing certain characteristics in the Lord's ministry. Here we find the minds of the disciples in what we may call a very interesting moment. They were learning the necessity of taking the new-creation place. The law never taught them that. Prayer is the expression of dependence,-the law taught them independence. The soul was insensibly learning its necessities, though not formally, or dispensationally, till after Christ's death. John went beyond Moses, his disciples wanted to be taught to pray. So it is here, with the disciples of the Lord. Then, as the perfect minister of their souls, He sets Himself to teach them, and you find a form of prayer. He suits His words to their then condition. Prayer is the expression of the heart in its present. condition.
Then He speaks of a man going to a friend at midnight, and asking for three loaves. "And he, from within;" these are pregnant words! Are you " within "? It is a dangerous condition in this world. What I mean by that is losing your sympathies with the joys and sorrows around you. So the Lord shows out God's grace, on the dark ground of that man's selfishness. You have not to " ask, and seek, and knock," that is importunity: but " ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." See the divine readiness in answer to human necessities. Never say importunity is needed to move God. At your leisure read Dan. 10 For "three full weeks" Daniel was chastening his heart before God, and no answer was given. At the end of that time the answer comes, and how? The, angel tells him that as soon as ever he began to pray he was heard; but a certain transaction that was going on in heaven hindered the answer. He went on in importunity for three weeks, but as soon as ever he had prayed, he was heard. So you may have been praying for a long time, and getting no answer, but be sure the interval has been well employed' if not in heaven, in the chastening of your spirit. This beauti- fully illustrates what we get here. There is no reluctancy in God; not that selfishness to be overcome that there was in the man at midnight; but there may be reasons to delay the answer, and when it does come, it may be in a way you are little prepared for. Paul prayed three times, and the thorn was not taken away, but the answer came at last, and in a way he had not expected. The thorn was left till the day of his death, but he was given grace by which lie could triumph in it.
When the, Lord has thus commented on prayer, He enters,, verse 14, on a solemn scene. Two antagonist thoughts come up to Christ. The Lord was constantly enduring the contradiction of sinners against Himself. The one set of people came to charge Him with casting out devils by Beelzebub; the other, tempting Him, sought of Him a sign from heaven. The first of these represents perverted religion • the second represents infidelity. We will look at these for a little. We have the same thing to meet to this hour. The Lord takes up the first of these first. He begins to address those who say He casts out devils by the prince of the devils. Mark, here His exquisite beauty. " If Satan be divided against Himself, how shall his kingdom stand!" He begins by the gentler argument. I wish you and I copied Him in the beauty of His style and in the truth of His substance. His style was as inimitable as His substance was perfect. In answering this contradiction, He begins by showing them the folly of their thought. " Would Satan be so foolish? Why are you so senseless! You would make me divider of my own house!" Now, His argument is addressed to themselves: " Let us go back to your favorite David, when he tuned his harp, and delivered Saul from the evil spirit." The carnal mind is not enmity to David but to God. How He presses in on their consciences! " By whom do your sons cast them out." Now, He is approaching the serious part of the matter. " No doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you. Take care what you are about." The very style in which He conducts the argument has a beauty and an order. He begins by the gentler argument, and then goes on to the stronger, and now He says, "Take care, you are on dangerous ground." Then He indites the parable of the strong man, to show that it was by the finger of God He cast them out. The strong man only gets his house rifled by a stronger than himself. God alone is stronger than Satan. We have already been conquered and made slaves of by the devil; so that when we get him bound in this world, God alone has done it, for no child of man could. If I see any one stronger than Satan in this world I have a witness that God is here. He shows that what Satan is doing, he is doing in collision with God-that his bruiser has appeared. That is what He taught Satan in the wilderness. Satan is not afraid of us, but he has more than his match in the Son of God. He is bold as a lion when he comes to you and me, but he trembles in the presence of Christ.
Now, in verse 23,—He draws a very solemn conclusion. The battle is proclaimed, and there is no neutrality. God has made the world the scene of the conflict, in which the question between Himself and Satan is to be decided, the fruit of which is to occupy eternity. The voice goes forth: "He that is not with me is against me." Then, when the Lord had thus solemnly sounded the voice of the trumpet across the field, the blast of the silver trumpet, proclaiming war, in verse 24, He sketches a very solemn sight, where we may linger a little. It is a most pregnant, awful picture. It was illustrated in Israel, and I believe will be in Christendom. The besom of Babylon may have swept the house of Israel, and to this day they abominate idols, but a clean house may be just as fit for Satan as an unclean one; Reformation will not do. So it is with Christendom. I trust there is not a single heart here that trusts in Reformation. We are all thankful for that which gave us the privilege of sitting here together in peace; hut mere Protestantism will not do. The Lord teaches us that the swept and garnished house may be worse than before. What has taken the place of idols in reformed Christendom? Is it knowledge of Jesus? Aye, in His own elect; but human vanities have conducted man in Christendom by the same path as the Jew. It is • only hurrying on to a matured form of apostate iniquity.
Then He turns to those who were requiring a sign and says, " There shall no sign be given you." Now, why was it ever said to Christ-" Show us a sign from heaven?" Worldliness dictated it. They wanted a Christ that would astonish the world. The Lord would not and could not answer that. If you and I do not accept our Jesus in rejection, we never shall accept Him in glory. Shall I. think to see my Lord glorified in a defiled world,-in the midst of such moral elements as fill it. He will give no sign here. If He is accepted, it must be under the sign of the prophet Jonas; not with a crown on His head, but buffeted and spit upon. Instead of giving a sign from heaven, He gives one from the bowels of the earth-in death and humiliation. Then He gives the beautiful instance of the Queen of Sheba. Her conscience and affections were stirred when she heard that Solomon had the knowledge of God. She " 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)), and she took the long journey, from the South 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. Then the king clothed himself with sackcloth." What a ridiculous thing to go and put horses and sheep in sackcloth! Who can measure the throes and compunctions of an awakened conscience! You may sit and analyze and criticize, but it will give no account to you. It is blessed to see, as in the stricken cases now-a-days, that the convicted conscience cannot stand upon measures. "Send us a sign," they said.- " No," says the Lord, "you must believe on me by your conscience."
While the Lord was about to answer the second of these questions, there was a woman in the company whose affection was stirred. Now tell me, do not you often find human affections stirred under the cross? The daughters of Jerusalem took their places apart from the persecutors. Now I am not to trust this excitement of nature, but I am not to treat it as vile. There may have been a crop for Jesus in it,-a blessing in the cluster. You must be prepared for a. variety of moral activities now-a-days. The Lord says to this poor woman, "There is a mistake in your judgment; 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 not you delight to know that nothing less than your necessity as sinners is to form the link between you and Jesus? Anything else would snap asunder, like the withes that bound Samson.