The Evil Generation

Introduction

The Sign of Jonah

Saint Chrysostom

Could then anything be more foolish than these men, who after so many miracles, as though none had been wrought, say, “We would see a sign from Thee?”

Our text begins in the same scenario, yet now it is the scribes and pharisees, apparently others than those who called him a worker of demonic power according to Luke’s account. These treat Jesus with more verbal respect, but still not as much as he deserves. They call him teacher here, elevating him to the position of a Rabbi, but not so much as to call him Lord, which is what they should be calling him after the great wonders and works of God they had seen. Instead, they use this title as a flattery while they demand a sign from Jesus. As Chrysostom pointed out, they are out of line to demand a sign when Jesus had just unmistakably cast a demon out of a man, as well as perform many other miracles throughout his ministry.

Doubt here is just as evil as before, but it comes in a different form. Before it was the outright denial of Christ’s power coming from God by the blasphemous suggestion that it came from the devil, but here it is more subtle. Instead of denying Christ’s divine power or authority, these scribes and Pharisees demand a sign that would satisfy them by proving that Jesus was from God. However, as innocent as this request sounds, it is loaded with unbelief and is just as evil as the blasphemy of the other Pharisees. Although they are smoother and seem more genuine by the words they use, they are deceptive words that are not truly interested in knowing if Jesus is the Christ, but rather interested in having power. They want to be the judge of Christ, they want Jesus to satisfy their expectations, they want to have the final say. In other words, they want to be in control. The jealousy that characterized the Pharisees and other religious leaders was provoked by the Lordship that Christ claims. He puts himself in the middle of his message, which is why it is foolish for people to say that they agree with Jesus’ teachings, but don’t worship him as Lord, God, or Christ. Jesus always taught with himself as the centre, telling people to come to him and he would give them rest, that to reject his teachings was to reject God and the path to life, and to refer to himself as the Son of Man, which is a title from Daniel 7:13-14

Daniel 7:13–14 ESV

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

Jesus, we are told, taught as one with authority, and not as the Scribes and Pharisees. This provoked a jealousy as those who believed Jesus were oblidged to believe that he was the Christ, and therefore had the final say on any topic or debate. That being the case, why would anyone want to follow the Pharisees anymore? So we can see that there was a great, sinful motivation for these men to oppose Jesus’ ministry that stopped them from even genuinely considering whether he might be who he says he is.

Do not be deceived by false teachers or doubters who use sly, cunning language to make themselves appear genuine in their questions when they are not. Jesus could see through the hearts of these men and knew that they did not come with faith, but with skepticism. This is what leads us to Jesus’ answer. This answer comes in three parts:

The pronouncement of the Scribes and Pharisees as representative of the current evil generation that currently is the physical people of Israel, along with the promise of a single sign and no other: the sign of Jonah.

This is not to say that Christ did not do any more miracles; he surely did. What it’s saying is essentially that Jesus is not going to call down fire from heaven to please their judgmental minds. Instead, he will follow the example of Jonah, who was in the sea, symbolic of the realm of death, in the belly of the fish. He then was thrown upon the land and then went on to have a successful ministry among the Gentiles. The sinful attitude of Jonah at the end of the story should not be taken into account; that’s not Jesus’ point.

If Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is not enough, than no sign will be enough to convince them that this is the work of God. Ironically, when made aware of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Priests, Scribes, and Pharisees, the same crowd Jesus is preaching to, would cover up the truth rather than humbly submit to it. Jesus gave them a sign, and they simply did not want it.

Evil and Adulterous Generation

Since this is the case, and Jesus is able to look into the hearts of these scholars and teachers of the OT Scriptures, he knows that in their hearts they are just as blasphemous as the Pharisees whom he just rebuked. However, instead of addressing them specifically, we see Jesus use them as an example of the generation Jesus is ministering too. These Pharisees and Scribes are not alone in their unbelief, they represent a more widespread attitude towards Christ which Jesus condemns. He has already touched on this trend of unbelief when he pronounced woes on the unrepentant cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. These unrepentant cities also show a general lack of belief despite the mighty works that were done there. Jesus now expands those woes to the entire generation as exemplified in the skeptical challenges of these teachers of the law.

By generation, Jesus means the people who have heard his message and have not believed. It can be a word Jesus uses to describe not only people of the same ethnicity, culture, and time in history, but also of the same quality. Jesus is specifically calling out a qualitative group of Israelites who are identified as evil and adulterous.

This closely mirrors language we have seen used by the OT, specifically in the book of Deuteronomy, referring to those who died in the wilderness previously due to their grumbling, disobedience, and ultimately unbelief.

Deuteronomy 1:35 ESV

‘Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers,

and Deut 32:20

Deuteronomy 32:20 ESV

And he said, ‘I will hide my face from them; I will see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness.

A couple of weeks ago, I was accused of antisemetism by a gentleman who came into the service. He heard me refer to John 8:44 where Jesus declares that this generation of Pharisaical Jews has the devil as their father, rather than God or even Abraham as they imagine. My response to this accusation of racism against the Jewish people is to point to the OT itself and see how God described the hearts of those he led out of Egypt.

Psalm 95:10–11 ESV

For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.” Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.”

Jesus is showing that the current generation of Jews in his day are no different than those who lived in the days of the exodus. They are evil because the intentions of their hearts are not set on knowing God through faith, but on wicked schemes. They are adulterous because they have committed spiritual adultery against God through their rejection of the greatest commandment: to love God with all their being. If they loved God they would listen to him, and if they listened to him they would see that Jesus is the Christ, and so their lack of recognition of who Jesus is proves the state of their hearts.

The Sign

So what is this sign of Jonah? I preached a separate sermon on this question extensively, which I know you can find on the church website if you search for the sermon titled ‘The Sign of Jonah’. In short, Jesus uses the miracle of the prophet Jonah caught in a great fish, going into a metaphorical realm of the dead as illustrated in Jonah’s pray in Jonah 2:6

Jonah 2:6 ESV

at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.

Jesus is pointing these doubtful men, not to a magic trick that he will perform for them at will, nor does he even point people to the many miracles and even the expulsion of the demon that he just performed, but to the one miracle that will prove who he is once and for all: the resurrection from the dead.

Jesus points to this because it is the resurrection that ultimately brings not only this great proof of his power being from God, but that in the resurrection the Gospel comes into bloom. It is the Resurrection that brings us to the point where we must decide, do I believe in Jesus as Christ and the Gospel he has brought, the salvation from our sins through his blood, or do I set it aside? Jesus does not play the game of these crafty Pharisees, but he doesn’t leave them without a sign. It is the event that creates the Gospel.

Jesus’ death alone is insufficient to save people from sins. For the sign of Jonah to be completed he must also be raised from the dead.

Thomas Schreiner

It would be clear to these men through the testimony of the Roman guards and the evidence presented in the preaching of the Apostles, that Jesus is the Christ. If this is not enough of a sign for them, nothing will be.

Condemned by Those who Believed

What is the result of such unbelief from a generation plagued with evil and adulterous hearts towards God? They see a sign greater than a man being spit out of a fish to preach, and yet the Ninevites believed. The glory of the incarnation of God in the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of God in the resurrection of Christ is much greater than the wealth of Solomon, and yet the Queen of the South, a Gentile without the knowledge of the true God, came to hear his wisdom. If such people turned to God by such comparatively insignificant signs and figures in Israel’s history, then those who witness the coming of Christ and the glory of his death and resurrection and the preaching of the Gospel through Spirit-empowered Apostles with signs and wonders proving the continuation of the Spirit’s work will surely be condemned.

Jesus’ preaching will be attested by a deliverance like Jonah’s only still greater; therefore there will be greater condemnation for those who reject the significance of Jonah’s deliverance.

D. A. Carson

The Returning Spirit

This is a passage that we almost always take out of the context of the rest of what Jesus says to these religious rulers. We think of this passage from verses 43-45 as being something individualistic and ultimately specific to the context of demon possession, but notice what Jesus says at the end of this passage: “So also will it be with this evil generation.”

This means that Jesus’ main point is to address what will happen to the current generation, not to make a point about individual cases of possession but rather he is making a statement about the state of the unbelieving Israelites as a whole. As Jesus has just

2 Peter 2:20–22 ESV

For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”

Conclusion