The Sign of Jonah

Matthew 12 : 38 – 42  

Prayer: ‘Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will refresh you’

Last week, we were thinking about how God reveals Himself through Jesus…

….and Matthew continues this theme in chapter 12, but now we find there is real opposition to the claims of Jesus…

…it comes from the Pharisees, and Matthew tells us they are so opposed to Jesus and Who He claims to be, that they start plotting to kill Him (v14)

In Chapter 11, Jesus says that God reveals Himself to those  who have a humble, childlike faith…

….yet here in Chapter 12, we have the very opposite…the religious leaders of Israel…who say that Jesus is doing His work through the power of Satan!

They refuse to trust Him, and that lack of trust is revealed by their demand for a “sign” from Him…

…some kind of miracle from Him that validates His claims to be the Messiah…

The irony is that if we look back over chapter 12, the religious leaders have seen Jesus already giving many signs…

Healing a man with a shrivelled hand in verse 13, healing ‘all who were ill’ in verse 15…and then healing a demon possessed man in v22, which then leads them on to say that Jesus has done by the power of the devil…

Jesus simply shows them the folly of their argument by saying ‘How can Satan cast out Satan?’ It doesn’t make any sense!

But much more serious is the hardness of their hearts which refuses to believe Who Jesus is…

…which leads on to this statement in verse 32:

Anyone who speaks against the Son of Man can be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, either in this world or in the world to come.

What is the unforgivable sin?

It’s the sin of denying that Jesus is the Christ…that as John puts it, ‘He is the way the truth, and the life…’ and that no one can come to God the Father except though Him.

Sometimes Christians can feel afraid that they’ve committed the unforgivable sin…

…but this passage clearly shows us that the only sin that can’t be forgiven is rejecting Christ…

Why? BECAUSE He is the Way to God, the only way…

If we reject Him, we reject all that He has done for us in going to the cross, bearing the penalty for our sins, and through that, opening the way for us to come into a relationship with God.

In Chapter 11, Jesus says these things are revealed to those with a childlike faith…

Yet in Chapter 12, we find that the very ones who are leading God’s people have no faith in Him at all!

They distrust Jesus and His motives…

….and they ask Him for another sign to ‘prove Himself’ to them…

And Jesus responds with 3 statements.

  1. Firstly, He says in verse 39: ‘A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign!’

Quite a challenging statement to the religious leaders of His time!!

Why would Jesus use the terms ‘wicked and adulterous’?

To understand this, we need to go back to the Old Testament and to God’s constant challenge to His people that they were abandoning Him and going after other gods…

We find it in Isaiah…in Jeremiah…and especially in the book of Hosea, where God reveals through Hosea’s marriage to a prostitute how Israel have become an adulterous nation through worshipping false gods…

In Hosea 4:1 we read God’s charge against Israel:

“There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land”….and in Hosea 5:4 “A spirit of prostitution is in their heart, they do not acknowledge the Lord”

Things haven’t changed much in the New Testament, as Jesus begins with those words addressed to the religious leaders…

… “ A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign”

You see, we can look very spiritual on the outside, as the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law were…

No doubt they spent a large part of the day reading their Bibles…

…they were known for scrupulous observance of God’s Law…

But on the inside, the true nature of their hearts were revealed by their response to Jesus..

And as we heard last week, the exclusive claims of Jesus produce one of 2 responses…

…we’re either drawn towards Him In childlike faith, or we’re repelled by Him…

Yes, we might think of Him as a great leader and teacher, and be drawn to His compassion and sacrifice…

…but the question is: Will we receive Him, and welcome Him into our lives as LORD and Saviour?

2.    And so we move on to the second statement Jesus makes in this Chapter following the Pharisees demand for a sign..

Jesus says to them in Matthew 12:39,40:

But Jesus replied, “Only an evil, adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign; but the only sign I will give them is the sign of the prophet Jonah.
40 For as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.

What is this ‘Sign of Jonah?’

Some of us will remember Jonah from our Sunday School days…

He’s the guy who tries to run away from God and ends being swallowed by a whale…

And he’s in the belly of this huge fish for 3 days and 3 nights…

The last time I prepared a sermon on Jonah I came across a commentator who was very convinced that if you look at Jonah’s words, it looks like he actually dies inside the whale…

Whatever our take on Jonah is, Jesus clearly says that ‘the Son of Man (that is Jesus) will be 3 days and 3 nights in the heart of the earth’…He will definitely die…

Jesus will be crucified on a cross outside Jerusalem; He will be buried in a tomb, the after 3 days He will rise again.

This is the one ‘sign’ that the religious leaders WILL see, ironically, because it is they who will put Him there, alongside the Roman army.

But it’s not just the religious leaders and the Roman army who will put Him there….we are all part of the crowd crying ‘Crucify Him, crucify Him’…

The reason for this ‘sign of Jonah’ is that as Paul says in Romans 3:23 ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’

Jesus came into the world to bear our sins on the cross so that we don’t have to.

Isn’t it incredible to think that the One Who created the universe should step into our world in the most humble of surroundings…and choose to go to the Cross because of His great love for us?

We’re all in the same boat with the Pharisees and the Romans because of the problem of sin…

Paul says in Romans 7:18,19

18.I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t.
19 I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.

And it leads him to this conclusion in Romans 7:24:

‘Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?’

BUT…he goes on to say in verse 25:

‘Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!’

Paul says ‘thanks be to God’ because it is Jesus Christ who delivers him from the power of sin…

It is this ‘sign of Jonah’, the cross of Christ where our sins are forgiven and we’re given a righteousness from Jesus that is not our own, but is His gift to be received by faith…

On the third day He rises again to validate the greatest sign of all, to show that He is Lord, sovereign over the twin powers of sin and death…

THIS is the ‘sign’ that is more important than any other sign, and the religious leaders will still have an opportunity to turn in faith to Jesus, when His death and resurrection take place.

Their hardened hearts can soften, and their unbelief can turn into faith, if they are willing to turn from their pride and humbly acknowledge that Jesus is indeed Lord…

But will they?

And will we?

3.   Jesus third and final statement challenges us all to evaluate where we stand as He points back to the Ninevites who Jonah was sent to preach to, and the Queen of Sheba who visited King Solomon.

After Jonah was vomited out of the body of the whale, he went to Nineveh, Israel’s old adversary in modern day Iraq…

Initially Jonah had run away from God’s command to go and preach to them, because like his fellow countrymen, he detested them due to their cruelty and what they had done to his nation.

They had been an exceptionally cruel nation..and in Jonah’s mind, there was no way these Ninevites deserved God’s mercy…

So he ran away from God because he couldn’t bear the thought that God would be merciful to these wicked people…

Maybe there are people in our lives who we find it really difficult to pray for…

Perhaps someone who has hurt us, or maybe a member of our family…

If we sense that, we’ll understand how Jonah felt, and why he was running away from being a messenger of God’s mercy…

Jonah is so like us, isn’t he, believing people who do bad things should be exempt from any kind of mercy…

But God is not like us.

He will go to the greatest lengths imaginable to rescue us from our sins.

And the thing is, when Jonah went to the Ninevites and preached to them, they turned from their sin.

They repented.

They saw that God could save them, despite their past.

Very unlike the Pharisees, who thought they were good people…why would they need God’s mercy?

I wonder if that attitude is what kept them blind to Jesus and Who He was…

They didn’t see their need of Him…

They couldn’t see the inner state of their hearts…couldn’t see that no amount of religiosity and no amount of good works could save them…

Because they were blind to their own need, they couldn’t see that only God could save them…

And that here, right in front of them, was God in human flesh…

Which is why Jesus says to the Pharisees, and to all of us, that ‘Someone greater than Jonah is here’

That ‘Someone greater’ is Jesus.

Jonah was just a preacher, yet he came with God’s message of mercy to the Ninevites..

And they recognised the truth of his words…

They recognised the evil in their hearts and their need for God’s forgiveness…

And they repented…the whole city turned to God, because they believed God could save them from coming disaster…

They weren’t God’s chosen people, like these Pharisees in front of Jesus…yet the Ninevites believed God’s message, and they repented…

They hearts were softened by God’s messenger and God’s message.

The Queen of Sheba, another ‘foreigner’ in the eyes of Israel, came to visit Solomon, because she had heard about his great wisdom, which came from God…

…and she trusted God’s wisdom displayed in King Solomon.

Jesus  tells the religious leaders that at the Judgement, the Ninevites and the Queen of Sheba will rise up to condemn the religious leaders of Israel…

Why?

Because they refused to listen to God’s message through His chosen Messenger…

They refused to turn from their stubborn disbelief in Jesus as the Son of God, the One sent by God to save them from their sin.

So the irony is, Here is God’s Son, present on earth, and the religious leaders won’t recognise Him, even though He performs miracles, heals people, calms stormy seas, and raises people from the dead.

But there is this one sign yet to come, the sign of Jonah.

We know a few of the Pharisees were persuaded by it, because one of them, Saul of Tarsus, became the greatest Christian missionary of all.

This is the one sign above all others…

The sign of God’s gracious love and mercy to all of us in sending His own Son to die on the cross for us…

It’s the one sign that continues to be present today…

We may have been going to church for years, like the religious folks in Jesus time…or we may be hearing this message for the first time like the Ninevites or the Queen of Sheba….

It doesn’t really matter…what matters is what we do with the message and the Messenger…

The sign of Jonah is available for all of us today.

Jesus said:

‘Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear My voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.’ (Rev3:20)

This is not ‘fake news’. This invitation is as real as the person next to you.

It’s a wonderful promise that right here, right now, Jesus is knocking on the door of our hearts…

He loves us, He longs for us to know Him as our friend, to come in to our hearts and live in us…

But He won’t force His way in…

Jonah didn’t force the Ninevites to repent…Jesus didn’t force the religious leaders to trust Him…

Because it’s a question of trust…will we trust Jesus?

So we finish this morning by asking ourselves:

How will I respond to the ‘sign of Jonah’?

Will I take that step of faith in Jesus and trust in His finished work for me on the cross and in His resurrection?

Last Monday there was a program on Panorama about the Anti-Vaxxers…a small minority of people who are radically opposed the Covid vaccines, and are spreading misinformation on social media.

The program looked at a small sample of people who had looked at their websites, and found some of what they said quite convincing, partly due to the way they presented themselves as experts, some saying they were GPs, and dressed in white coats.

The influence of Social Media is very much under the microscope at the moment, partly fuelled by Donald Trump’s old Twitter slogan ‘Fake News’…

And we live in an age that constantly questions what truth is, what’s sometimes called the ‘post-truth society’

Who are we to trust?

Who can we trust today?


Category: Lent , Sermons , The Bridge

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