The text means that those of us who are Christians shall show by our
very faces that we are on the king's business and that it is solemn
business.
One day a man knocked at the door of my study, was admitted, sat down
on the couch in the room and began to sob. He did not need to tell me
why he had come. I knew, but finally when he sobbed it out this was
his message: "I have come to ask you to bury my wife, and to ask if you
will not go with me to comfort the children, for they are heartbroken."
I knew by the very look of his face that he had lost a loved one. Do
you think for a moment that those who gaze at us would imagine that we
had the least conviction that people away from Christ were lost? I am
sure they would not.
The text also means that we shall be desperately in earnest. A father
and his boy heard a minister preach a sermon on the judgment and as
they went to their home the father said, "My boy, it was a great sermon
and you must think about it." And the boy did. He made his way to his
room and threw himself on his bed only to hear his father downstairs
laughing and singing; and he said to himself, "It is not true, for if
my father believed I was in danger of the judgment he could not laugh
and he would not sing." That day was the turning point in the boy's
life. He became a man of renown but never a believer in Jesus Christ
as we accept him.
The text also indicates how we should pray, with an eye single to his
glory but with a purpose that cannot be shaken. Pray as the Shunammite
prayed, pray as the woman besought the unjust judge; such prayer brings
victory.