Matthew 12: Here's your sign

Introduction

The testing of Jesus by the religious leaders continues in the second half of chapter 12. This time the Lord will rebuke them for requesting a sign. His rebuke will be a stern warning that they’ll only get one sign - his resurrection. If they still refuse, they will become even more spiritually desolate than when they started. But should they embrace Him and obey Him, they can be part of His family.

12:38-42: Offending Jesus

In the previous section the religious leaders had gotten themselves into hot water with Jesus because they had gotten dangerously close to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, by attributing His power to the devil.

After the Lord pretty firmly rebuked them, they now try to turn an about-face. This might have been another trap, but it made them look even worse.

They had just clearly seen Jesus cast out a demon and cure a mute and blind man. First they accuse of him being in cahoots with the devil, and now they turn and say, “Actually can you show us a sign?”

Their pride had blinded them more than the man that had just seen healed was.

They knew Jesus was angry with them which is why I think they called him, ‘Teacher’. They refused to call him Master or any other higher title. We see this same thing happen with the rich young ruler.

I think we still see this today. People love to think of Jesus as a “good teacher”, but refuse to call him Lord and Savior! In their stubbornness, people want the teachings of Jesus without submitting to Him. But that’s not how Jesus works!

As C.S. Lewis pointed out, to simply call Jesus a ‘good teacher’ is impossible. He’s either a liar, lunatic, or Lord!

Is it any surprise that Jesus gives them such a strong rebuke? They just blasphemed His authority, and now they have the audacity to turn around and ask for a sign?

Paul criticized the Jews for their incessant demand for ‘signs’ in 1 Corinthians 1:22 “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,”. The Lord Jesus and His Gospel flies in the face of any of our earthly expectations.

By asking for a sign, not only are these people completely ignoring all of the miracles Jesus has performed so far as legitimate, but they are also calling into question His integrity. They are implying that He might be lying.

In case your keeping track, they have now accused Jesus of being in league with the devil, and now they are accusing Him of lying. They are basically saying, “We don’t believe anything you’re saying unless you show a miracle to back it up.” How frustrating!

If blaspheming the Holy Spirit was bad, imagine calling the Son of God a liar. Not good!

And so Jesus gives them another strong rebuke by calling them an “evil and adulterous generation”.

Jesus is alluding to how the Israelites had always been compared to an adulteress woman because they always turned their hearts away from God. Now God was standing right in front of them and they were blind as bats.

Isaiah 57:3–4 “But you, draw near, sons of the sorceress, offspring of the adulterer and the loose woman. Whom are you mocking? Against whom do you open your mouth wide and stick out your tongue? Are you not children of transgression, the offspring of deceit,”

Since they are in the habit of ignoring the obvious miracles and signs Jesus has already performed, He tells them that they won’t be getting any signs. This shouldn’t be a surprise - even if Jesus had given them one, they wouldn’t have believed him.

But He does promise one particular sign. The ‘sign of Jonah’. Here Jesus uses the story of Jonah as an example for them.

First, Jesus prophesies about His Passion. Just like when Jonah spent three days in the fish, so too will Jesus (calling himself the Son of Man) be in the ‘heart of the earth’ aka the grave.

This was actually a pretty consistent message from Jesus for those who demanded a sign. The only sign would be the Passion.

He uses a different illustration with the same meaning in John 2:18–19 “So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.””

By using the title Son of Man, the Lord is once again making a claim to deity - this title comes straight from Daniel.

This usage of the Jonah story is even more apt, because as Jesus points out, the men of Nineveh repented when they heard Jonah’s message.

This has levels to it. Remember, the Ninevites weren’t Jewish. They were Gentiles. And yet when they heard God’s message, they repented.

Remember Jonah’s reaction? He was angry! He didn’t want the Ninevites to be saved. Sound familiar?

These religious leaders were just like Jonah. They hated the Gentiles, and they certainly didn’t want them to be saved.

But even more embarrassing is that Jesus says that the Ninevites will actually judge them at the resurrection. The ‘godless’ Assyrians (Nineveh was their capital) would judge the so called “children of God”. Why? Because the Assyrians obeyed!

But it’s even worse: the Ninevites repented just by hearing the message of a stinky prophet who’s name they probably didn’t even know.

These people get to hear the very words of God himself (“something greater than Jonah is here”) in their presence and not only do they not listen, but they have the audacity to ask for a sign? Stubborn!

To some extent I also think this illustration prefigures the acceptance of the Gospel by the Gentiles, too. The Israelites rejected the Messiah, but the Gentiles, like the Ninevites, heard the Good News and repented.

The Lord doesn’t stop there though. He also mentions the “queen of the South” doing the same thing. This is a reference to 1 Kings 10:1 “Now when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to test him with hard questions.”

I think this is almost a double insult. First Jesus is saying that Gentiles will be their judges? And now he’s saying a woman will be their judge? The two groups that these people held in contempt would be their judges.

Similar to how the Gentiles readily accepted the Gospel, so too, did women. They were among the Lord’s earliest disciples.

Again, Jesus says, “Something greater than Solomon is here.” He’s pointing to the wisdom of Solomon. As we know, Solomon was known for his great wisdom. But now Jesus is claiming that His wisdom is even greater than Solomon!

This makes sense because Jesus is the “wisdom of God”. 1 Corinthians 1:22–24 “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Really, all of 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16 is basically a commentary on this passage.

A few takeaways from this passage:

Jesus isn’t a liar, and we should believe Him at His word. He did demonstrate his power through miracles and signs, but our faith shouldn’t solely depend on those. His death and resurrection are enough.

Let us make sure we never become ‘blind’ to Jesus. This is especially true for those who have grown up and Church and maybe take the Gospel too lightly, or abandon it altogether. They will be judged by those who whole-heartedly embraced Jesus.

12:43-45: An Unclean Spirit

This section really isn’t separate from the previous one. It’s a continuation of the Lord’s judgement against them.

He uses this illustration of an unclean spirit leaving and then coming back. But who’s he talking about here?

Well, He says at the end, “So also will it be with this evil generation.” So he’s talking about these Jewish leaders - the same ones whom he previously called ‘evil and adulterous’.

So how does this illustration apply to them?

An unclean spirit - the Israelites, like all other people groups, once had an “unclean spirit” when they lived in Egypt.

After Egypt, this unclean spirit was cast out by the giving of the Law. It could be said that this ‘unclean spirit’ went out into the rest of the world (“waterless (lifeless) places”)

In this way, the people were prepared by the Law for the coming of the Messiah and to be filled with the Holy Spirit. They were “swept, and put in order”.

When the Holy Spirit finally came, they did not embrace Him. But the rest of the world did, and suddenly those “waterless places” became overflowing with the Water of Life.

So the “unclean spirit” returned to it’s original home - which it found prepared....but empty. And so it brought in seven of it’s friends, and the person was worse than it was in the beginning.

The seven evil spirits are the opposite of the Seven fold Spirit of God which should have been dwelling there.

Isaiah 11:2–3 “And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear,”

To sum it up, Jesus is saying that these people, more than any other people in the world, were prepared to recognize Him. And they didn’t. Or they stubbornly didn’t want to. And now because of that they were going to become even worse spiritually than they had at any time in their history.

This is a warning to anyone who has experience Jesus, or at the very least been given every opportunity to know Him, but still refuses Him. If we will not be filled with the Holy Spirit, we will be filled with evil spirits!

12:46-49: The mother and brothers of Jesus

I do think this passage bookends in the entire chapter. In the previous sections, the Lord had made some serious claims to his identity and authority as God.

His claim to be the Son of God, and to be ushering in the Kingdom by the power of God (the Holy Spirit)

His earthly family showing up at this time is going to raise some questions.

The first one is obvious: how can this guy call himself God, when his mom and brothers are clearly right here?

This is going to show up more clearly at the end of Chapter 13.

Mark tells us that Lord’s family showed up to apparently stop ‘bring him home’. Mark 3:21 “And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.””

John also tells us in John 7:5 “For not even his brothers believed in him.”

So the Lord’s own family doesn’t even believe Him. This opens Him up to criticism.

That’s why I think the Lord takes this moment to clarify something: the opinions of even his earthly family does not change who He is or what He is saying.

To back this up he takes the opportunity show that his “true” family is anyone who does the will of the Father - or in other words, anyone who obeys Christ.

I don’t think that Jesus was minimizing his earthly family, or even rejecting them, and neither should we. He was simply stating that those who obey Him and the Father are just as much family (and probably more so!) than earthly family.

It should also make us feel blessed that the Lord calls us family when we obey Him!

John 15:14 “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”

Hebrews 2:11 “For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers,”

Luke 11:28 “But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!””

Conclusion

Key takeaways from today’s passage:

The resurrection should be the only sign we need proving Christ’s identity (Romans 1:4 “and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,” )

The Lord is not a liar, and if we are willing to accept the words of mere prophets we should be willing to accept the words of the Son of God.

Those who do not accept these two truths and obey Christ will be even more spiritually desolate than they were before.

But to those who do put their faith in Christ and obey Him and His Father, He calls us family.

Let’s continue to obey Christ and may we never become blind to his majesty. Amen.