Luke 12:54 Commentary and Bible Study

Having given this private explanation to Peter and the other disciples, the Lord Jesus again addresses the crowds. For the most part, they have failed to recognise him as their Messiah. They have followed him with enthusiasm for a while, but they have not known him as he really is. Their interest has been limited to their desire to see the miracles, and to observe the spectacle of a new prophet ministering to the nation. That is a cause of great sorrow, because Judah, of all people on the face of the earth, ought to have recognised their Messiah . Christ therefore reproves them severely. Here is an explanation for unbelief, which gets at the heart of the problem. If the disciples tried to account for the response of the multitude, they might have been hard pressed to find a plausible explanation. What was really going on? What was the explanation for this failure? He puts his finger on the problem: Their failure is not due to insufficient information, or lack of clarity in what he has said to them. They are entirely to blame for their unbelief. They have ample testimony in the Scriptures to identify him as the one who had been promised by God from the very first prophecies of the Bible. He fitted every single prediction connected with the Messiah. To expose their failure to believe in him, the Lord makes a comparison. They are astute enough in one area of life. How is it that they are not astute in a far more significant area of life? They are good enough at predicting the weather, and interpreting the weather patterns to recognise when it is going to rain, and when the opposite will happen and it will be hot because of the wind coming up from the south. This is no criticism of them for reading the weather patterns; there is nothing wrong with doing that. He is not saying that they care more about the weather than they do about the times in which they live. The point is that this prediction of the weather shows they have an ability to understand which they are making no use of in connection with his ministry among them.