Searching for a Sign - Matthew 12:38-45

Transcript

If you have a Blue Bible New, it'll be on page 477. There won't be a lot of text on the screen, so we encourage you to follow along with us there. In the late 90s, I got to witness a cinematic classic. And I'm not talking about Titanic. I'm not talking about The Matrix. I'm talking about the rom-com, Fool's Rush In.

So, show of hands. Who has seen Fool's Rush In? Alright, like 10 or 15. Alright, so for everyone else, let me fill in the plot. So Matthew Perry from Friends is the lead role.

He plays the same sarcastic character he does in everything he's ever been in. He meets a girl. That's how romantic comedies work. Played by Selma Hayek. And she lives her life guided by fate. So she looks for signs from fate.

And that's how she lives her life. Now, you can pretty much fill in the plot from there. Fate brings them together. Tears them apart. But in the big climactic finish, the signs lead them back together and they live happily ever after.

So, that was in the late 90s. Early 2000s, Hollywood said that worked. Let's do it again. And they made the movie Serendipity. Which, y'all, is the same plot. Fate brings them together.

They follow the signs. It tears them apart. And then ultimately, it brings them back together. Now, this idea of searching for signs is starting to catch on. Then the show of How I Met Your Mother comes in the mid-late 2000s.

And then the idea of not fate guiding you, but the universe guiding you starts to become mainstream. I mean, throughout that show, it's this consistent theme of the universe is telling me. The universe is giving me signs. And now, that is a mainstream idea. You will hear people say, I think the universe is trying to tell me something. I think the universe is giving me a sign.

And we, as Christians, look at this and we go, that's not right. Right? Like, we don't look to the universe for signs. That's giving the universe this vague idea of universe fate, this God-like force. But what I have seen is I've seen Christians kind of adopt similar language when it comes to God.

I've seen Christians say, I'm looking for a sign from God. That I'm waiting for a sign from God to show me what I should do next. This is something that is, because we live in an experiential culture and we are trying to gather experiences like this. This is something that's consistently I'm seeing over and over again. And my question is, is that okay? Is it okay for us to be searching for signs for God to lead us in pursuits?

Like, is it okay to ask for God for signs if this is the one I should marry? If this is the job I should take? If this is the favorite child that I should spend most of my time with? All the basic pursuits. But then it becomes even bigger when you think about the more profound questions in life.

Is it okay to ask for God for signs with some of the bigger questions? Does God exist? Does He love me? Does He care for me? God, show me a sign that you love me, that you care for me, that you're here. Is that okay?

Is that posture okay to ask of God that He would reveal Himself to show His power, His presence, His love that He exists? That is a question that we're going to face today. It's a question that this story that we're going to read interacts with. In this story today, we're in another chapter of Jesus v. the Pharisees. You've been here the last few weeks. There's been one showdown after the other.

The Pharisees come and confront Jesus. And then He puts them in their place. We get another chapter of that. But it's going to interact with this bigger question. Is it okay for us as Christians to search for signs? So, let me pray.

And then we will jump into the passage and hear what God has to say. Father, I thank You that we get to gather this morning. God, I pray that You would help us be present. That You would give us ears to hear. That You would speak clearly to us and we would respond. We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Alright guys, verse 38. Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered Him saying, Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you. Alright, so if you were here last week, this is what happened. Jesus casts out demons. And the Pharisees accuse Him of getting His power from Beelzebub.

Of getting His power from the demonic. They accuse Jesus of essentially worshipping demons and getting His power from them. And then the follow-up request that comes from this is, Okay, fine. Then show us a sign. We wish to see a sign from you. Which is just a crazy back-to-back follow-up request.

Now, it's not that signs are inherently bad. Otherwise, Jesus has been doing them over and over again. Since the Sermon on the Mount, we've seen Him heal paralyzed. We've seen Him heal the sick. We've seen Him control the weather. He's continuously performing miracles, displaying His power.

But this request is different. It is uniquely different. The Pharisees have shown, even in this last exchange that happened last week, they don't believe Jesus. They don't believe He is who He says He is. They don't believe what He is doing. And this is a request from unbelief, but also it's one of arrogance.

They are arrogantly looking at Jesus and saying, Dance. Perform a sign. Do what we want to see. And they have completely miscalculated the situation. You don't, creation does not get to look at the God of the universe and say, Do this. That position of arrogance is not okay.

And Jesus makes that abundantly clear in verse 39. But He answered them, An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. So no, Jesus is not going to bend Himself to these arrogant men in this moment. To the Pharisees, to the scribes, to the religious leadership, to everyone who has come out over this period of time, who have seen Him perform miracles, who have heard His teaching, and have not repented, because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He calls them an evil and adulterous generation. This is the language that is used throughout the Old Testament to describe the nation of Israel when it goes after foreign gods.

It's a strong way of saying faithlessness. This generation is faithless, and yet you demand a sign from this position of arrogance. This is similar to if you share the gospel with somebody who is not a believer, and at the end of it they say, No, I won't. If God is loving, and He's imminent, and He's all these things that you say He is, then He should just show up and prove Himself. Why is He hiding? It's this position of arrogance that is uniquely different.

It is not that Jesus is against doubt. It's not that He's against doubt at all. And we see that in the Gospels. We see that when Thomas, one of his disciples, who unfortunately gets the nickname Doubting Thomas, that's really not fair. He has one moment of doubt in the church for the next 2,000 years that gives them that label. But he has this moment after Jesus resurrects.

They say that He's risen. He doesn't believe. And he's like, I need to see His wounds. I need to see His wrists. And Jesus comes. He doesn't respond by saying, You should have believed.

He responds by, Put your hands here. We see this again in another situation where a father has a son who's afflicted by demons, and He comes. And Jesus uses some of this similar language of evil and adulterous generation. And He comes to them and He says, I believe. But Lord, help my unbelief.

Which is one of my favorite passages in the Bible. And Jesus doesn't respond with, He responds compassionately and lovingly. And He heals His son. And so Jesus is not against doubts. That isn't what's happening here. What's happening here is different.

It is unbelief. It is arrogance. And He is not going to respond with anything but what He just said, the sign of Jonah. You will get the sign of Jonah. Now, in order for us to understand the sign of Jonah, we need to understand the story of Jonah and a little bit of the context of Jonah. So just give me a moment.

Let me walk through the story of Jonah again. So he's an Old Testament prophet. God calls Jonah. He says, I want you to go to the city of Nineveh. And I want you to call out to the city of Nineveh. He wants to call them to repentance.

And Jonah says, No. And he runs the opposite direction. Gets on a ship. Goes as far away as he can from Nineveh. Jonah, a storm comes. And it's about to capsize the boat.

Jonah realizes this is from God. This is his fault. He tells them, Throw him overboard. The men on the ship. And they reluctantly throw him overboard. The sea is calm.

And a great fish comes up and swallows him whole. You may have heard the whale. That's fine. We don't know what kind of fish it was. But if the whale is good for picturing your mind, that's fine.

But a great fish comes up, swallows him, and he lives. For three days and three nights, he lives inside the belly of this great fish. And in that period of time, he reflects. He repents. He prays. And God doesn't destroy him for being a disobedient prophet.

He gives him grace. And Jonah is spit out onto dry land. He walks into the city of Nineveh. He preaches this message of repentance. Repent or you are going to be destroyed. And then he walks outside of the city and he sits down and he waits.

And they repent. In sackcloth and ashes, deep repentance, they repent. And Jonah is upset. He is angry. And unless you know the context of what's happening there, that seems a little bit confusing. Nineveh was one of the biggest cities in the kingdom and the empire of Assyria.

And in this period of time, the Assyrians have come in and completely destroyed the fabric of the nation of Israel. And they come in and ten tribes are completely forgotten. If they're not killed and destroyed, they're deported and scattered all across their empire. There is no one who looks for their lineage in Reuben or Dan or Asher or Manasseh. You can't because of what the Assyrians did. And not only that, they were the first major kingdom, the first major empire that was absolutely known for their brutality.

They did things like skin people alive. They were terrorists. Live dismemberments, live castrations. They would put men on, they put people on stakes and watch them die slowly to put fear in people's eyes. They did some of this stuff to the people of God. And Jonah's sitting outside the city and he wants justice.

He wants absolute fire from heaven, burn him up. Now, Jonah isn't justified in what he did. He gives you a little bit of background into why he did it. He didn't understand God's grace. But you need all of that.

You need all that context for the story to understand what Jesus is actually going to say next. In verse 40, he says, For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Jesus uses Jonah's experience to point forward. Just as Jonah was cast into the sea, presumed dead by the men who put him there in this great fish, so also Jesus is going to be killed, presumed to stay dead, and put into the heart of the earth, put in a tomb. And just as Jonah, three days later, bursts forth miraculously from this great fish, Jesus is going to burst forth miraculously from the empty tomb.

He is pointing forward and saying, this is the sign. His death, his resurrection. That's the sign that you need. He's prophetic, and he also knows that still is not going to be enough. He's prophetic and HEezing that the man's not going to be. He is about to persevere a lot of the missed places before he passed away.

He agreed to find UNIVE Thank you.