Matthew 12 (Part 5) :38-50

--- Matthew, we're picking it up in verse 38, but I'm not going to read the whole thing right away. We're just going to read the first portion that we're going to be covering, and then we'll kind of get through the rest of them. But starting off in verse 38, if you're there in your Bible, it says,

Let's stop there for right now. We'll get through more, but let's pray. Lord, open our hearts, open our eyes, open our ears. Give us ears to hear, because we believe that you are speaking. In fact, we believe you're speaking way more than we're listening. We pray that you would help us to hear your voice. We pray that you would speak to us, Lord, and give us grace and understanding, and that you would equip us today. Help us also, Lord, to know how to apply the things that we're looking at here in the Word. That's always an incredibly important element of spending time in your Word, not just being hearers, but doers. Help us, Lord, to know how to do. Father, we ask you to do this in Jesus' name. Amen. This section begins with the religious leaders, Pharisees, and teachers of the law approaching Jesus and asking him to give them some kind of miraculous sign, some kind of phenomenon that they can be excited about. Actually, they're not really interested at all. But this was something fairly common to the Jewish people. What I mean by that is they were the kind of people who looked for signs. If somebody came along with claims or whatever, they wanted to see some kind of something special to kind of corroborate the whole thing. And Paul even made mention of this in his first letter to the Corinthians. I'll put this on the screen for you from chapter 1, verse 22. Paul even wrote, being a Jew himself, he said, Jews demand signs. That's just kind of the characteristic of the people. Where Greeks might be looking after the deep wisdom and so forth, Jews want signs. That's what they want to see. And, you know, you look at this request that these guys make of Jesus. When they come and they say, you know, we want to see a sign. And you think, well, what's the big deal? What's wrong with that? You know, what's the problem? I dare say, I bet some of you have done that in the past. Maybe lying in bed late at night, hanging out, just kind of looking into the darkness and whispering a prayer to God. Why don't you just kind of do something really cool here at the foot of my bed and we'll be all good, you know, sort of a thing, you know. Some of you are smiling. I think that probably, you probably, you know, were there at some time. But the fact of the matter is, as it relates to these people, these religious leaders, you have to understand something. Jesus had been performing miraculous signs in front of these guys for a long time. They had, frankly, seen a lot of supernatural events. These are the same guys who planted a crippled man, withered in his hand, you'll remember, in the front row of the synagogue just to see if Jesus would actually heal him on the Sabbath. And when he did, they became enraged and ran out afterwards and decided this guy needed to die. These are the same men who watched as Jesus delivered person after person from demonic possession, who couldn't deny that something was going on, but in order to try to explain it away, decided to tell people that this man, Jesus, was just in league with the devil and that's how he was actually doing the things that he was doing. The fact of the matter is, they had seen lots of miracles and they refused to believe that Jesus was who he said he was as a result of those things. And so, what sounds like a semi-reasonable request on their part, at least on the surface, is nothing of the sort. In fact, it's just unbelief, very thinly disguised unbelief. And Jesus saw what was in back of it all and he confronted them for it and he said, it is wickedness and spiritual adultery, in fact, unfaithfulness for you to come and ask of me a supernatural sign when, in fact, these things have been going on right in front of you and you have refused to believe. And then just to further prove his point, he actually said, you know what, I will give you a sign. You know, it's interesting, when they asked him for a sign, even though he told them they were wicked and adulterous to ask, he did accommodate them. Not perhaps in the way they wanted, but he did accommodate them. He said, listen, okay, I'll give you a sign. The sign I'm going to give you is what I'm going to call the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the huge fish, so the son of man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, meaning poetic language for the grave. And by the way, that is a sign that he made good on, but they didn't believe that one either, even when he told them to expect it ahead of time. You know, I mean, to give you forewarning even, I'm going to do this, and then to make good on it, and so forth. And they still didn't believe. Had they truly been sincere about their desire to know who he was, had they truly looked into the word of God and investigated the things about him, they would have recognized him for who he was. But the fact of the matter is, they did not want to believe. And I'm going to talk more about that in just a little bit. But the point I want to make before I do that is to make this simple clarification. I don't think that we can necessarily take this passage of Scripture and assume from it that God never will give someone a sign because of their request. We do have biblical examples, Gideon comes to mind, of someone who sought a sign from the Lord and was granted one. I wouldn't necessarily recommend Gideon or the whole thing that Gideon did. You know, we talk about that laying a fleece or setting a fleece before the Lord. You know, you've probably heard that phrase. You know, somebody's praying and they'll say, well, we just want to lay a fleece before the Lord. Well, it's all based on, you know, Gideon and the fact that he took a fleece, a sheepskin, and laid it out before God and asked him to do some miraculous things related to confirming his will. But the point of this whole thing is, and Gideon is not necessarily an example of faith for us, which is interesting. We say that, you know, I'm going to fleece the Lord, and it's really not necessarily even a good example of faith at all. But, you know, the point is that God isn't, or I should say here, Jesus isn't necessarily condemning the fact that they requested a sign as much as he was what was underlying that request, and that was unbelief. They weren't asking because they wanted to believe. Do you understand? That's something you and I have a hard time sometimes seeing. When somebody talks to us, somebody might ask you a question when they find out you're a Christian, and they might start asking you questions. You kind of think, whoa, got a live one here, you know? They're asking questions about the Bible. They're asking questions about God. Ooh, that's cool. Let's engage them. But they're not asking questions because they want to know. They're not asking questions because they want to believe. They're asking questions because they want to make you look stupid, and they think they can probably do that. And so they're going to throw out some, you know, well-rehearsed questions perhaps to try to trip you up, or at least, at the very least, you know, make you look dumb. So, you know, just because someone expresses some interest doesn't mean that they care, doesn't mean that they really want to know. Jesus understood that. You and I have a hard time kind of discerning that sometimes. But he recognizes here that these men are filled with unbelief. And even though they come to him and they say, we would like to see a miraculous sign, they don't. Because all they're going to do, if they've done it in the past, they see another way, they're just going to explain it away. You know? They're going to just try to use whatever they can. And that's the thing you understand about unbelief. Unbelief is one of those interesting things that doesn't seek truth. It avoids it, you know, at all costs. Now, Jesus goes on to cite a couple... of Old Testament examples here, which I think are very interesting, because they're examples of something important that he wants them to see in contrast to their own attitude. Look at verse 41 here in your Bible. It says,

Interesting that he should bring up this example after just talking about the sign of Jonah that he was going to fulfill. Do you guys remember this Old Testament story? Nineveh was a huge city, it's said it took days to actually walk the distance of it. By the way, it was in ancient Assyria, which is a place, Nineveh was actually a city in what is now modern day Iraq, the Persian kingdom, if you will, of the Old Testament. Jonah, who was a Jew, was called to go to Nineveh and preach to the city. God came to him one day and said, I want you to go to Nineveh, and I want you to preach to that city, and I want you to tell them that if they don't repent of their sin, I'm going to destroy the entire place. You guys remember the story. Jonah didn't want to go, not because he had anything better to do, but because he hated the Ninevites. He absolutely despised them, because they were Assyrians, essentially, and they were a threat to Israel, they were pagans, they were involved in the most vicious, vile forms of paganistic religious worship, filthy, immoral people. Jonah wanted nothing to do with these people, in fact, he just wanted God just to nuke the place and get it over with, and he didn't want to go preach to them, because he was concerned that they might respond to that preaching and repent, which is the worst thing he could imagine. Oh, what are we going to do if the Ninevites repent? We want them dead. So you know the story. He hopped a ship for distant shores and just tried to run from God, see how that works for you. You know the thing. He finally ends up in Nineveh, walking through the city, preaching to them a message of repentance. Repent, you know, or God is going to destroy this place. He goes through the entire city, and what happens? They respond. From the king on down to the lowest person, in fact, the king puts out an edict and says, we are all going to repent, and they repented in sackcloth and ashes, and God relented of sending his destruction, and you'll remember Jonah went outside the city and sat down and had a pity party for a few days, because he was bummed about the whole thing. What's interesting about that story is that no signs or wonders related to Jonah's preaching. He just simply walked through the city, and he didn't even care about the people, and that's something you can't disguise. He hated these people. So he's walking through the city, repent, you know, or God's going to destroy this place, you know, repent. It's a great message, and he did that for days, and not one sign, not one miracle, not one supernatural phenomenon associated with that preaching, and it says that all the entire city repented in sackcloth and ashes, humbled themselves before God, and Jesus said, and now one greater than Jonah is among you. You have witnessed not only the miraculous, you have seen miracle after miracle, healing after healing, deliverance after deliverance, and not only is it not just a prophet who is among you, it is the son of the living God who has said to you, repent, and you have refused, and the men of Nineveh who needed no miracles and who literally responded to an angry prophet will stand up at the judgment and condemn you for your hardness of heart and your stubborn refusal to believe the truth. And then he talked about, in verse 42, the woman he calls the Queen of the South, you and I know her as the Queen of Sheba, and you might remember this story too. During the reign of King Solomon, you remember Solomon? He was the man who prayed and laid his heart out before God. God was pleased with his prayer, and he said, listen, I'm going to give you anything you want. How would you like that? I mean, talk about hitting the lottery. I mean, the eternal God says to you, I'll give you whatever you want, and Solomon says, you know what? I'll tell you what I need. I need wisdom. These people are too numerous, and I am just an idiot, and I need wisdom to be able to govern these people, and God was pleased. He said, you know what? I'm pleased by that. He didn't ask for riches or long life, and you asked for wisdom, so I'm going to give you wisdom. In fact, I'm going to give you wisdom unmatched. There will never be another person born upon the earth save that, of course, Jesus Christ himself who is God in human flesh, but there will never be another human who will be wiser than you. Well, that wisdom was a powerful thing. It became known far and wide to the point where this woman, this queen of this area called Sheba, we don't even know exactly how scholars differ on how far away it was, but it was a distance. She heard a word of mouth of the wisdom of Solomon, and she made that long journey to just come and hear his wisdom. You and I, let's imagine maybe it was a thousand miles. I don't know exactly. If you and I were going to set out and make a thousand mile journey, it's a pretty big deal today. I mean, it's not a small thing, but imagine what it was like back in those days. Traveling was dangerous. It was hard. How would you like to go that far on a camel or some other beast of burden or something like that? Going through the hot desert and bandits and all the other things that you have to deal with weather. She made the trip. There was such a desire, but again, no miracles, no phenomena, no lights in the sky, no warm fuzzies. It was just, she heard about this man that had been given wisdom from God and her passion to know just drove her to make that journey. And Jesus said the kind of passion that the queen of Sheba displayed in her desire to to know the wisdom of God, because she heard it had been given to this one man in, in this just powerful way is a, is a sign, is a, is a picture that stands in contrast to your unwillingness as a people to, to even get into the word of God. Where these Jews had the word right in front of them, all of the prophecies about the coming of Messiah, had they even lifted a finger to look into these things, they would have known that Jesus was who he said he was, but they didn't look into it because they didn't care. It was unbelief, total lack of desire, total lack of passion on their part. Do you remember when they were having the discussion among themselves at the Sanhedrin and they were talking about whether to condemn Jesus to death and get the Romans involved and so forth. A couple of the Pharisees spoke up on behalf of Jesus and said, you know, is it our custom to condemn a man without a trial? And they responded and said, look into it yourselves. Do any prophets come out of Galilee? Well what they were saying essentially was, you know, listen, our own prophetic writings don't say a word about any prophet coming out of Galilee. And they just assumed Jesus had been born and raised basically in Galilee, but the point of this whole thing is, had they taken the time to ask him, say, by the way, where were you born? Bethlehem. Oh. Well, see, the prophecies do talk about the Messiah coming out of Bethlehem. Okay. See, they didn't even stop to ask. Do you see the difference, the contrast that Jesus is giving them here between this queen who comes this great distance just to hear Solomon, no miracles, no nothing, and these people who won't lift a finger to find out, is this guy really? Is he the real deal? You know? All they want to do is condemn him and so forth. Unbelief doesn't make an effort. It just makes excuses. And then Jesus goes on here in this passage to tell a parable that kind of underscores and defines for us the desperate condition of unbelief. I hope I'm painting a picture for you this morning of how serious. This unbelief really is. And he gives this story, this parable, beginning in verse 43. Look with me in your Bible. He says,

Boy, it's a good thing you put that last little line in there because we might've read this and thought, what in the world does this little story he's telling have anything to do with anything that's going on in the passage? It's like, all of a sudden, he starts talking about demon possession and what happens when a demon gets cast out of a man. But then he makes the connecting statement. He says, that is how it will be with this generation, this house of Israel. That's what he's doing. He's likening in that story Israel to the man who has been cleansed of a demonic presence, who has been swept clean, put in order, but is still as yet unoccupied so that the demon is able to come back and reoccupy that vessel. And what's the point that he's making? Well, the late Dr. Harry Ironside, who's a guy I love to read, great writer, great past teacher of the Bible, suggested that the unclean spirit in this parable was the spirit of idolatry that had so taken hold of the nation of Israel during their years under the judges and the kings that God eventually expelled them from the land. And we know we have that in the Bible. God allowed the Babylonian army, when Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon, to invade the area of Judah, Jerusalem, to destroy the city, to take the people captive, cart them off to the Babylonian empire, where they were in exile for 70 years before they finally came back to their homeland. And we can read about their coming back to the homeland in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. But what it tells us about Israel is that when they came back, they were changed. That spirit of idolatry was temporarily gone. They began to truly worship the Lord their God once again. So they were delivered, if you will, like a man who had a demon would be delivered from a demonic presence, but they remained unoccupied. Dr. Ironside suggests that this basically is the whole idea that they refused to accept the Messiah who was sent to them and instead decided to rely on their religious rules and rituals and stuff like that, to the point where their traditions became literally more important than the word of God, and that they then were in a greater position as a result of unbelief, so that Jesus says they will be worse off at the end than they were at the beginning before they were even possessed in the first place, which Dr. Ironside believes is what will take them into the Great Tribulation. I think it's an insightful perspective, perhaps, but it basically underscores just how serious is the condition of unbelief. But what's interesting is that when we sit and talk about sin, you know, when I hear Christians talking about sin or they're asking me about sin, what they want to do is they want to kind of just, they want to talk about individual sins, and they're always interested. They'll say, Pastor Paul, is it a sin to, you know, whatever. Is it a sin to drink beer? Is it a sin to get a tattoo? You know, what does the Bible say about, you know, such and such? Is that a sin? Is it a sin to go to movies? Oh, you know, I don't know. You know what people never ask about? The sin of unbelief. They don't even bring it up. And yet the scripture talks about how serious is the sin of unbelief. Why? Hebrews 11, verse six. Let me put this on the screen. And without faith, it's impossible to please God. You could say that another way. With unbelief, it's impossible to please God. Why? Because anyone who comes to him has to believe in the first place that he existed, and that he, in fact, is the rewarder of those who earnestly seek him, to know him, and so forth. They have to proceed from a place of faith. So if there's unbelief, they're not even going to lift a finger to come to him. They're not going to desire him. And there's no possible way they can please him. Unbelief keeps someone from coming to God in any way, shape, or form. But I want to clarify something about unbelief if I haven't made it clear already. And this is important. Unbelief is a choice, okay? Unbelief is a choice. And regardless of what people may say to you about matters of conscience, or matters of intellectual question, people will share the gospel, will share things with people, and they'll say, well, you know, I don't know. I've got some problems with that. I've got some intellectual problems with some of the things you've said. The older I get, the more I learn about people, the more I see that that's a dodge. It's a smoke screen. There is a refusal. We see this throughout the scripture, and then we also see in the word why. I want to show you both. First, on the screen from Acts chapter 14, it says that at Iconium, Paul and Barnabas went, as usual, into the Jewish synagogue, and look what it says. It says that while they were there, they spoke so effectively in the gospel of Christ that a great number of Jews and Gentiles believed. It was an effective work, but the Jews who, what, had intellectual problems or matters of conscience. It doesn't say that. It says, but the Jews who refused to believe decided they were going to stir up trouble with the Gentiles, and they poisoned their minds against the guys who had come, and so forth, and the key, of course, there, is the fact that they refused. It wasn't that they couldn't believe. They refused. They didn't want to believe. I don't want to believe, okay? I wish people would just be so transparent and honest they could say that. Instead of all the hoopla, and all the dancing around the corners, and well, let's talk about this, and I wish they would just be, part of it, I think, they're not even honest with themselves. I'm not sure they even could be honest about it, necessarily, and be able to say, you know what, let me tell you the truth. I don't want, I don't want to believe. You know what, now that I think about it, I've actually had some people say that to me. So, yeah, praise God for the really honest folks. I had a guy I worked with, I just remembered this, years ago, and I wasn't even walking with the Lord, and we were talking about the Bible, and we were talking about God, and his mom was a devoted believer, and he and I were both, you know, disc jockeys back in the day, in our early 20s, both of us, and both living for the world, and I remember he was telling me about how his mom used to harass him about going to church and stuff like that. Neither he or I went to church, ever, and we were talking about why he didn't do it, and he, you know, honestly, he came out and admitted to me. He said, he said, I don't want to change the way I live, and you know, now that I think back on it, I think, wow, that was probably one of the most brutally honest answers I think I've ever gotten. I don't think I've ever gotten that one since I've become a believer from anyone, but essentially, when Jesus talks to us about the purpose or the undergirding of unbelief, that's what's going on. Check out this passage from John chapter three, verse 19, on the screen. Jesus speaking here, he says, this is the verdict. Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil, and you know, I understand that reading this verse, it's really kind of harsh, isn't it, and even you and I as believers, we might kind of read it and go, wow, I'm kind of uncomfortable with just how brash, you know, that verse is, but you know, think about it. The bottom line is that if I put my faith in Jesus, it's going to demand a change in the way I live. It's going to demand a change in how I live my life, and if I'm not interested in making any changes in my life, in fact, if I like the way my life is going and I am enjoying my sin, why would I want to talk to you about this Jesus character? I mean, you're right. I'm doing good. Leave me alone. That's why it's so. Difficult to witness to somebody who's in the summertime of their sin. They're having a blast, you know, and sin is fun, isn't it? For a season, the Bible says, but it's a kick and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. So it's hard, it's really hard to talk to somebody in that sort of a situation. People want to stay out of the light because they don't want it to expose what their lives are really all about, which is living for themselves. In the final concluding verses, and it might look as we read these verses like it's kind of a departure from what's going on, but there is a connection. Verse 46 and following says that while Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, your mother and brothers are standing outside wanting to speak to you. And he replied to them, who is my mother and who are my brothers? Pointing to his disciples, he said, here are my mother and my brothers, for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. What is this all about? You have to understand something once again about the Jews. They prided themselves in being the children of Abraham and they considered themselves by that the family of God. We are the family of God, you know, we're the children of God. So Jesus needed to make an important point and he used it with a time when his own family came to speak with him. This is not meant to be a dig against his mother or his brothers or anything like that, but he's simply saying in essence, listen, you need to know who my family, who the family of God really is. It's not people who have been born of Abraham, it's not people who have been born into a Christian home. I don't know if you were born into a Christian home or not, but that doesn't make you a Christian. The Bible says to all who received him, to those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. So he says in essence here, those who do the will of my father in heaven, those who are connected that way, they are my family. And that's an important point that he's making here to further distance himself from the mentality of the Jews who thought that they were okay even though they lived in unbelief concerning the will and purposes of God. Now I want to kind of close with a thought that may be disturbing to some of you, others. It's like, yeah, I agree, but as believers in Christ, as born again Christians, we can struggle with unbelief, and we do. And sometimes I see myself like that father who brought his son to Jesus and his disciples to heal him. Remember that story? His son was having these seizures and there was a demonic element that was playing into it, and so the Bible says he brought his boy to Jesus, but Jesus wasn't there at the time. He was up on the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter, James, and John, and so at the bottom of the hill he kind of met with the other disciples and they decided, well, we'll do this. We've seen Jesus do this a few times, so we're going to do this. And so they started casting out the devil or whatever and it didn't happen. So finally Jesus comes down the hill with the three that he went up with and asked them what was going on, and the father stepped up and said, I brought my boy to be healed by your disciples, but they couldn't do it. Jesus said, oh, unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I deal with you? And he had the boy brought over and he rebuked the demon and cast it out. But before that happened, he started asking the father some questions like, how long has your son been this way? Oh, since he was this old and the demon does this, throws him into fire and water to destroy him and so forth. And then the father said this, he said, if you're able, please help my son. Jesus looked at the man and just said, if I'm able? And the father knew that he was dealing with unbelief and so he said to Jesus, I do believe, but help me with my unbelief, which sounds like a contradicting statement and I used to see it that way. I used to think, well, that's dumb. How can you say, I believe, help me with my unbelief? Well, I've learned that you can have both going on at the same time, as crazy as it may sound. And what that means is, I believe that my sins are forgiven. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for me. I believe that when this body gives up and whatever, I'm going to go be with the Lord. I believe that with all my heart. But for my bills that need to get paid, for health issues, for family relational problems, for work issues, business matters, we're tanking every day, all of us. We're freaking out. We have to come to the Lord and deal with it for what it really is. It's unbelief. People who are believers can actually struggle with unbelief and we do, on a regular basis. The point is, we don't confront it in our lives as unbelief. We in fact give ourselves excuses to not believe about certain things in our lives. And we make excuses about why we're not believing and putting our faith in God. You know, it's just hard. All these things going on, right? And what we need to be doing is getting down on our knees and confessing to God our unbelief. You know what, God? I believe you for my salvation, but I'm just not believing you for this. For this thing that's right in front of my eyes. I believe that you've saved me for all eternity, but for this thing here, my home, my family, my marriage, my children, you know, my finances, I got to just confess to you right now, I am filled with unbelief. And that's why I'm freaking out right now. And I confess it to you, God, and I ask you to deal with my unbelief, deal with my heart, deal with the root of the issue. And that's where we need to be. We need to be straight up with God, start talking to him about what's really going on, and stop trying to skirt the issue. And frankly, the way we see our family too, you know, I tell you, it's crazy. People's love for family members is so strong, they refuse to admit that their family members are filled with unbelief. They will just, you say that word in front of them, they'll just get offended, you know? Would you come and pray for my little cousin, Jackie, you know, or my son, Tommy, and, you know, he's just really having a hard time, he's just totally rebelling, and, you know, but I know he's saved because he went up and responded to, killed children's camp when he was nine, and he prayed the sinner's prayer, so I know he's a Christian, I know nothing of the sort. But see, people, they just don't want to do that, they don't want to admit that their family members lost, that they've never once seen fruit in that person's life. And so they're just saying, oh, I'm just really praying for him, you know, yeah, just pray that God would confront and arrest their unbelief. They are living in total unbelief. So pray for them that way. Talk to God about what's really going on. And stop assuming that it's all going to be okay because they prayed that prayer when they were nine. You have no idea what went through their heart at that time. Could have been nothing more than the pressure of the moment because some other kids did it and they had absolutely no faith that they applied to that situation. I'm not saying that to upset you, I'm saying that, you know, we better start dealing with things as they really are. We better start coming before God and stop playing games with him about what is going on and why it's going on, and understand the role that unbelief plays in these situations, and understand how to come against it, how to thwart it. It's by putting our faith in God, confessing our unbelief, and asking him to change our hearts and the hearts of those for whom we're praying. God, change their heart, take away their unbelief, bring them to a place of faith that they really will walk with you, and we'll see the fruit of that life. Those are hard things, I understand that, but, you know, we're not doing anybody any favors by pretending things are okay when they're not. And same thing goes with our own hearts, we're not doing ourselves any favors by pretending we're okay when we're not. God, I am filled at times with unbelief, and I confess it, and I need your help, and I believe you will, I believe that you will, and you're going to bring me from a place of unbelief to faith, vibrant, living, active faith. Do that work in my heart that I need. All right. All right. Thank you. ---