January 4, 2009 (Matthew 12:38-50)

…Only an evil, adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign… (Matt. 12:38) This passage used to bother me a lot. It seemed like Jesus was being inconsistent. Didn’t Gideon ask for a sign to make sure it was really God telling him to drive the foreigners from Israel? (Judges 6:11-17ff) And didn’t the apostle Thomas ask to see the nail-scarred hands of Jesus before he would believe in the resurrection? (John 20:24-25) Surely Jesus wouldn’t have declared them “evil and adulterous,” would He?

After thirty-one years of life, I think I’ve finally come to realize the difference between Gideon, Thomas, and the Pharisees of Matthew 12. Gideon had seen his nation repeatedly brutalized by foreigners. It was nearly impossible to believe that good days would ever return to Israel. Thomas had believed with every ounce of his heart that Jesus was, indeed, the Messiah of God; but then he had to watch as that Messiah was betrayed by a man Thomas thought of as a brother…was shamefully mocked and ridiculed before being put to a torturous death…and was finally buried in a borrowed grave. It must have seemed to Thomas that all the hope, light, and goodness had gone out of life forever.

In Gideon and Thomas we have men who desperately wanted to believe that God still cared…that He had not forgotten them. Yet they had been so demoralized it was almost impossible to believe. They NEEDED a sign. In the case of the Pharisees of Matthew 12:38, they merely WANTED a sign. They were not asking so that they could believe seemingly-impossible good news. Rather, they sought some excuse to avoid what they considered bad news from Jesus (i.e., that THEY needed to repent)

Re-read the response Jesus gave them, and see if you do not also detect a difference between a miracle given to strengthening hope, and a miracle demanded in a vain attempt to forestall repentance:

…the only sign I will give…is the sign of the prophet Jonah. 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.

The people of Nineveh will stand up against this generation on Judgment Day and condemn it, for they repented of their sins at the preaching of Jonah. Now Someone greater than Jonah is here—but you refuse to repent.

My word to you who feel that you must have a sign from God simply to be able to make it through another day is this: Don’t lose heart. If you’re right, God will provide the sign that you need. If you’re wrong, God will use even this “dark night” of your soul to shape you in His image. In either event, the Lord loves you and He has not forgotten you. My word to you who would simply demand a sign to reinforce what you already know in to be true, but do not wish to be true is simply to repeat the warning that Jesus gave: The people of Nineveh will stand up against [you] on Judgment Day and condemn [you], for they repented of their sins at the preaching of Jonah…

-- Justin