Luke #49 Resurrection Prophecy

INTRODUCTION Luke 11:29-36.

I shared with you recently how chapter 11 marks a decisive change in the ministry of Jesus.

In our lesson this morning we will observe that change.

Jesus’ words take on a more judgmental tone.

From now on, most of the encounters He has with the religious elite will be hostile, on both sides.

The religious leadership in Israel has decided He is a fraud, and that He must die.

The people are in awe of Him, and if they follow Jesus, the religious elite may well lose their place of power.

Likewise, Jesus begins to teach in parables.

Folks, parables were not meant to make things easier to understand.

Quite the opposite, they made it almost impossible to understand.

Therefore Jesus had to explain them to the disciples.

Matthew 13:11 explains what it going on, Jesus was asked, why do you teach in parables?

Matthew 13:11 ESV

And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

By the way, Matthew 12 and Luke 11 are parallel chapters, both contain the sign of Jonah.

The religious leadership has rejected their Messiah, and this is His judgment on them.

The door has closed, Jesus is done with them.

SEEKING A SIGN

To really get a full understanding we need to lean on Matthew’s gospel account of this same incident.

Matthew records that some scribes and Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign.

Luke does not contradict Matthew, Luke simply does not tell us what prompted Jesus to say these things right here.

You have to back up to verse 16 to see Luke’s explanation for what prompted this response.

So there is no contradiction.

It is the spiritual leaders who demand that Jesus do more.

This is really preposterous, when you consider how many miracles Jesus was performing on a daily basis.

There was no doubt Jesus could do miracles.

That is why they had to say it was by the power of Satan that Jesus did them.

So what are they wanting?

There has been a lot of speculation about what they wanted.

I think it is pretty simple, prove to us you are not of Beelzebul.

Do you see the arrogance and self righteousness in that?

Not a one of them has ever performed a miracle, and yet they are passing judgement on Him.

Prove you are not of Satan.

Luke informed us they were seeking a sign from heaven.

It is possible they wanted Jesus to call down fire like Elijah or copy some other miracle from one of the great prophets.

Possibly they wanted Jesus to stage some great miracle against the Romans.

But no matter what He did, I would suggest it still wouldn’t be enough for many of them.

Later Jesus would chastise them by telling them a story where Abraham says, Luke 16:31

Luke 16:31 ESV

He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’ ”

Jesus’ response to their request is quite forceful, even hostile.

They were a wicked generation.

Wicked comes from a Greek word that means sickly or diseased.

Now we have to keep this in perspective.

He is not talking about pagan idolaters.

He is not talking about law breakers.

This was the most religious people on the planet.

These were the most moral people on the planet.

Jesus is not talking to a pagan people, but a people who would claim to know and love God.

This is why Jesus would say of them, you have washed the outside of the cup.

They looked good, on the outside.

Yet is was these most moral people who rejected Him the most.

In Luke 15, the story of the Prodigal Son is told.

The older brother is really a picture of the Jews and their self righteousness.

In Luke 15:29 we see the depth of his self righteousness.

Luke 15:29 ESV

but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends.

Did you catch that, for all these years I have served you and never disobeyed.

Never!

That man is self delusional, self righteous to the core, proud and arrogant.

Yet for all there religious piety, Jesus says they were sickly.

This has been His message from the very beginning, you look good, your look righteous, but you are sick.

When Jesus uses it in a spiritual application, we understand Him to be saying something more than just sick.

Jesus is actually saying what Jeremiah said.

Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

The problem was, they did not know they were sick.

These men who led the opposition against Jesus fit well into what Pauls writes of the lost in 1 Cor 2:14

1 Corinthians 2:14 ESV

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

Nothing Jesus said resonated with these men because they were spiritually dead and therefore unable to understand spiritual truth.

They are headed for destruction.

Jesus came that they might have life, and they rejected His offer.

There is nothing left then but to pronounce judgment upon then.

Some struggle to harmonize the words of Jesus in verse 29.

First Jesus says no sign will be given.

Then He says the sign of Jonah will be given.

There isn’t really any contradiction.

First, Jesus is saying, I am not going to dance to your tune.

I am not going to give you what you want.

This is in keeping with His entire ministry.

Jesus came to do the Father’s will.

And at the end of HIs life Jesus could say, I accomplished it all.

So Jesus is not going to be detoured from following the plan of the Father in order to try and impress these who have rejected Him.

He is not saying He won’t do any more miracles.

He is simply putting them on notice that He is not subject to their control.

The sign of Jonah will be given.

Now for us this is very simple.

As Christian we look back and we see how Jonah in the belly of the fish was a picture of Jesus in death.

But you have to put yourself in their place, they had no clue what the connection was.

I imagine they went away scratching their heads.

But notice the comparison Jesus makes.

We automatically think this is about the death and resurrection of Jesus.

But it is more than that.

Really what Jesus is saying is, you won’t listen to the word of God now, and you won’t listen when the final sign comes.

SEEKING THE TRUTH

Now stop and think about what Jesus just said, the sign of Jonah.

Jonah should have been dead, but he lived.

The implication in this is that the Ninevites understood this.

Jonah was a sign unto them that he was from God.

Look down at verse 32, Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah.

They saw the sign of his life, heard the words of his mouth, and they repented.

They recognized that Jonah was preaching for God, that is the only explanation for their repentance and fasting.

It was the sign of his miraculous life that convinced them Jonah spoke for God.

They believed, they repented.

Furthermore, the Lord spared that generation from judgment.

Folks, I believe we are going to meet a whole bunch of Ninevites in heaven some day.

They were saved because they repented at the preaching of the word of God.

This is the message here.

And what a condemning message it is.

You, God’s chosen people, the descendents of Abraham, have seen countless miracles, heard the preaching of God’s word, and you will not believe.

Furthermore, the Jews had the scriptures, they should have known.

That is always the attitude of Jesus, you have the scriptures, you should know who Messiah is by what He does.

But they would not listen.

When those pagans, who had far less than you did listen.

Next, Jesus illustrates with the Queen of the South.

This was the Queen of Sheba.

Sheba was in northern Arabia, near modern day Meddina.

The point is, she heard rumors of Solomon’s great wisdom from the Lord, and she came seeking the same and probably more.

The Biblical text emphasizes she sought truth, and Jesus seems to confirm this.

The point of this, is very simple, she had only heard of Solomon’s wisdom in the Lord and she came to investigate.

Now look at her testimony in 1 Kings 10:9

1 Kings 10:9 ESV

Blessed be the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel! Because the Lord loved Israel forever, he has made you king, that you may execute justice and righteousness.”

I believe we shall meet her in Heaven.

And yet Jesus is far greater than Solomon, and the Jews will not listen to Him, much less seek His knowledge.

The principle here is this, seek the Lord while He may be found.

Now I need to put that in a proper theological perspective.

First of all, the Bible teaches that nobody seeks God.

Romans 3:11 ESV

no one understands; no one seeks for God.

So what does the Bible mean when it says seek the Lord while He may be found?

I think the text we are looking at explains that for us.

Second, the Lord reveals Himself, and I am about half convinced, that at some point He will reveal Himself to all people.

When that happens, we must respond.

John 6:44 ESV

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

So when drawn, man must respond.

And the bottom line is that God can draw in many many ways.

For the Ninevites, he sent Jonah.

For the Jews, the Father sent the Son.

For you, a friend or family member may have first shared the gospel.

The older I get, and the more I study, the more reformed I have become.

But like our pastor has said, I to believe, you still have to believe.

The Ninevites heard the word, and they repented, they sought God.

The Queen of the South heard of this great wise king, and she came seeking his wisdom.

The point Jesus is making is this, after all Jesus has said and done, the Jews should have been asking the question of Him what shall we do?

That is the only seeking man can do.

No man finds God on his own, the Bible is clear.

Man though, when he is exposed to the gospel, can seek more.

And in fact he should.

Let me illustrate.

All the Pharisees heard what Jesus was doing, then they saw with their own eyes what He was doing.

They heard His message loud and clear.

Jesus was revealing Himself to the nation.

But do you realize, that only 1 single Pharisee came seeking to understand more?

Only 1.

Nicodemus in John 3 came to speak with Jesus and they had a spiritual conversation.

Nicodemus left that conversation unsure and undecided.

But in the end, Nicodemus was born again.

Most, but not all of the Pharisees perished.

They perished because in their self righteous arrogance, then did not have any need to be taught more, they thought they had all the answers.

The condemning words from Jesus are pretty strong.

Someone greater than Jonah is here, and you will not listen.

Folks, we are just months from the cross chronologically, and Jesus is done.

He is through with them, they have been judged.

From this point on, Jesus puts most of His efforts into the training of the disciples.

The sad reality is this, when the final sign came, they should have made some connections.

Jonah was swallowed by a great fish.

Christ was swallowed up by the earth.

Jonah should have died and ceased to live.

Jesus did die, and that should have been the end.

Jonah miraculously survived three days in the fish.

Jesus miraculously had victory over death.

When those religious leaders heard Jesus was raised from the dead, they should have remembered these words, and made the connection.

But they weren’t seeking truth.

Instead in Matt 28 we read of their response.

The soldiers came and reported, the earth shook, the stone rolled away, angels appeared, and we fell down as dead men, and Jesus is gone.

Now at that moment, lightbulbs all over the sandhedrin should have come on.

In unison they should have declared, we get it, He is the Messiah.

But instead, they chose to bribe the soldiers to lie and say the body was stolen.

SEEKING LIGHT

Last, Jesus illustrates their blindness.

Light is all around them;

Jesus is the light of the world. John 8:12.

Upon those living in darkness, a light has dawned.

Jesus was that light.

He proved He was everything Messiah was supposed to be.

But they could not see it, because their eye was bad and full of darkness.

Again this is consistent with lostness.

2 Corinthians 4:4 ESV

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Those religious leaders belonged to Satan, and they were blind.

Their eyes were full of evil.

Folks, we have really become too polite in our modern Christianity.

Jesus warned them again and again, you are going to perish, and they would not listen.

But also, we do not realize how offensive any works based religion truly is.

The Lord hates them absolutely hates them.

So much so that any who preach a different gospel, is accursed.

The Greek word for accursed means dedicated for hell.

CONCLUSION

When the opportunity presents itself, seek the Lord.

That is the main idea in this passage.

But they would not, and now they could not.