Listen to the Signs Matthew 12:38-42

It's hard to argue against the fact that the most well-known symbol in the world is the cross. You can go just about anywhere in the world and see a cross. The place where you expect to find crosses is on church buildings.

In fact, yesterday, Eric and Derek put one on our steeple or cupola, whatever you want to call it. So take a look at that. But you will find crosses in numerous places, everywhere. You'll find them at grave sites, on the side of the road to mark a loved one lost.

You'll find them on necklaces, even on the necks of those who aren't committed Christians. And I'm willing to bet that one of the most common tattoos is a cross. This most famous symbol comes from the most influential man in the history of the world, Jesus Christ.

But before Christ came on the scene, the cross was a symbol that represented something different than what we are used to today. The cross was a symbol of justice and humiliation for criminals in the Roman Empire.

And as men, these criminals, were hung on this cross, it was a warning to the entire Roman population that if you do a serious crime, this will happen to you. That's what the cross represented for hundreds of years.

Until Christ came on the scene and He was crucified unjustly. When people all over the world today see the cross, no one would say that it symbolizes this negative connotation of justice and humiliation.

But the cross has the most positive connotation. That of the greatest example of love. Jesus went to the cross willingly as an act of love on behalf of sinners. In John 10 .18, Jesus said, No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.

He came to this earth on a rescue mission to save sinners and anyone who believes in Him will be saved. When you see the cross, that's what you should think. But it became a fashion. Interesting enough, but that's what the cross means.

He came on a rescue mission to save sinners. The symbol of the cross is a message and it is a message that the world must listen to. And whenever someone sees it, this is what they should think about.

The Jewish Leaders Demand a Sign from Heaven

Now this morning, Jesus talks about the main message of Him coming to this earth. And He communicates this as a rebuke to His greatest earthly enemies. These enemies we've seen over and over again as we've gone through Matthew.

The Jewish leadership, the very ones who would put Him on that cross. We once again see Him put them in their place. So at this time, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew 12, verses 38 -42.

This is where we are in our sermon series through Matthew. We've been at this for about a year and a half. If you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on page 972. This sermon is titled, Listen to the Signs.

Listen to the Signs. I'm going to begin by reading this text. These are the words of Matthew, but we'll also see the words of Jesus. But it's all the Word of God. Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered Him, saying, Teacher, we wish to see a sign from You.

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. 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.

The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.

And behold, something greater than Solomon is here. Here's our big idea. Understand that you have all the information you need to believe. Understand you have all the information you need to believe. And we're going to see two instructions why from Jesus.

But before we jump in, let's look at where we were one week ago. We looked at Jesus. Use the analogy of a tree to explain how to spot healthy people from unhealthy. Just as you can spot a healthy tree, you can spot healthy people from unhealthy people.

A good tree is going to bear good fruit, and a bad tree is going to bear bad fruit. We can know some things about one's heart through their words. As Jesus said, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Words reveal the depths of one's heart, and we heard Jesus say something very sobering in our text a week ago. He told us that every person will be judged for our words. The unbeliever's words will show him or her to be guilty, and their future will be in hell.

On the other hand, the believer will lose reward for every careless word that we have spoken. The message we were to take away is that our words matter more than we know, far more than we know. It reveals who we are, and Jesus will judge us based on our words.

So we must live in light of this. Now this leads us back to our text. We're going to begin by looking at verse 38. Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered and said, Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.

Now we once again see the scribes and Pharisees in this ongoing conflict between Jesus and the Jewish leaders. To remind you, the Pharisees were a powerful sect of Jews that had lots of influence among the common people.

And the scribes were much like the Pharisees. They were also a very powerful people, but they were the teachers of the law. They were the ones who taught the people publicly. If you were to go to a synagogue in the first century, the scribes were the ones who would teach you.

If people had a question about the Bible, they were the ones who could answer their questions, supposedly. But three times in Matthew, Jesus called them blind guides. They were supposed to lead them to truth.

They were supposed to lead them to the pasture. But they would lead them the wrong way. And as Jesus has this confrontation with the Jewish leaders, He desires to point the people away from them and to Him.

He wants to point people to the truth because He is the truth. John 14 .6.

Anybody know it?

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. As the Jewish leaders are trying to silence Jesus, they are pointing people away from the One who is the truth. As those who are trying to point people away from Jesus, the Jewish leaders ask Jesus a question with this motivation.

So we know that this is not a pure, honest question. There is motive. There is evil motive behind it. They don't want to find out that He really is the Messiah. They want to disprove that He is before the people.

And this is a public conversation that they're having. The crowds are present. They're observing Jesus and the scribes and the Pharisees have this conversation. And the scribes and the Pharisees want to say, He's not the Messiah.

He's a false Messiah.

Follow us.

Follow our religious system. But as we've already seen, the Jewish leaders could not deny the miracles that Jesus was doing. But they irrationally believed that His power came not from God, but from Satan.

Remember, if Jesus is from God, then they're not. And in their minds, that can't be possible because they were the teachers of the law. They were the models for the people. They were the ones who had the answers.

And this guy is opposing them. He can't be from God. Now it might seem silly to us that they ask for a sign. Haven't they been paying attention? That's all He's been doing. He's been teaching, yes, but He's been doing all these miracles.

So why do they ask for a sign? It's interesting here. They're not asking for the kind of signs that He's already done. Releasing people from demonic possession. Healing a blind man. Healing a deaf man.

Making a lame man walk. Healing a woman who is broken and overwhelmed with her disease. That's not what they're asking for here. They're asking that He perform an even more extraordinary sign. Because once again, against all evidence, they do not believe He is the Messiah, but a pretender.

And it's interesting, in the first century, there were Messianic pretenders. People who came on the scene saying, follow me, I'm the Messiah. I'm the one the Old Testament's been predicting. And of course, time would tell that they were a phony.

And they're saying, Jesus is one of them. And they want Him to perform a greater sign. Now where do I get this? Matthew 16 .1 tells us this. In Matthew 16 .1, in that passage, the Pharisees and Sadducees, so these are still the Jewish leaders, they asked Jesus to show them a sign from heaven.

A sign from heaven. It makes sense that in our passage, the Pharisees and Scribes are asking Jesus to perform a celestial sign that the whole world would be able to see. Now, heaven in the Bible can either mean the place where God dwells, or it can be the sky.

It can be the atmosphere. It can be outer space. So when they say heaven, a sign from heaven, what they're saying is that the whole world will be able to see it. And if He did this sign, this would prove without a doubt that He is the Messiah sent by God.

To perform a cosmic miracle would be greater than any miracle He has performed to this point. In Jesus' ministry, all the miracles He performed were done for a handful of people to see. And even at His baptism, when God the Father's voice came from heaven, it was not a miracle for everyone to see.

Only a handful of people were there. But if He causes an eclipse, or the earth to stop rotating, or to do some other extraordinary sign from heaven, this would prove that He is the Messiah, according to these Jewish leaders.

As they challenge Jesus, crowds of Jewish people are listening. The Pharisees and Scribes want to win the people over to them and away from Jesus, and by asking Him to perform a great sign, they believe they will succeed.

Because irrationally, they don't believe He's the Messiah, even though all the evidence points to that. And as the people were standing there, they would be saying, these are the experts in the law. They must be right.

Let's see Him perform a sign in the heavens. Let's forget about what He's already done. But what people who understand the Old Testament know is that nowhere does it say that the Messiah would perform a sign in the heavens at His first coming.

Jewish tradition said that that would happen, but of course, Jewish tradition was largely false. And so that's why they're looking for Him to perform this sign. But the Old Testament never said that He would perform a sign from heaven.

But what many Jews fail to see is that Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies one by one, and now these Jewish leaders are asking Jesus to do something that the Old Testament never predicted He would do.

For example, Matthew 11 .5 tells us the Old Testament predicted that through the Messiah, the blind would receive their sight, the lame would walk, the lepers would be cleansed, and the dead would be raised.

He did all of this. But what they are asking the Messiah Jesus to do, He was not to do at His first coming. There would be signs in the heavens at His second coming, but this would come from God the Father, not from the Messiah.

And as they ask this question, we know that the question is not coming from a place of humility, but with the motivation to turn people away from Jesus to them. And by the way, we know what it's like to get a question that is insulting, and to get a question that is sincere and humble.

Sometimes people ask you a gotcha question, and you're thinking, I'm not going to answer this because you have a false motive behind this question. But if someone asks a sincere question, we want to answer that question.

But that's not what the Jewish leaders are doing here. Let's see what they say at the beginning of verse 38, or what Jesus says here. But He answered them, an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign.

Jesus calls them evil and adulterous. Now the word generation can mark a group of people who live in a certain time of history. Baby boomers, millennials in our day. But it can also describe a people in general.

And what Jesus is describing here is the hardness of heart that largely describes the nation of Israel. All the way back to Moses, the nation of Israel made a covenant with God to obey His commandments.

It's called the Mosaic Covenant. And as you read the Old Testament, what you see is that they broke this covenant over and over again. In several occasions in the Old Testament, God spoke of His relationship with Israel in terms of a marriage covenant.

In Isaiah 50, verse 1, the Lord said, Where is your mother's certificate of divorce with which I sent her away? Behold, for your iniquities you were sold, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away.

You also see the marriage analogy in the whole book of Hosea. That book focuses on the spiritual adultery of Israel. The people who stand before Jesus are just like their forefathers. The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.

They are adulterous spiritually, and Jesus is not afraid to tell them this. Now the Jews in the first century did not have the metal images of Baal and Molech like their forefathers. But after the Old Testament was written, these idols were replaced with different idols.

The heart is an idol factory. If one idol goes away, a new idol will come in. And our hearts are meant to be filled only by God. But idols are more than glad to fill that heart. The new idol of the Jewish leaders was man-made traditions.

It looks religious. It looks so holy. It looks so spiritual. And yet, God hates it. Think about how many churches today are just going through the motions. Just going through the motions. God hates it.

He doesn't receive that worship. And that's what they did. That's what they were engulfed in. The new idol was man-made traditions. During this period between the Old Testament and the New Testament, about 400 B .C. to the first century A .D., they invented their own system of works.

This works righteousness system. That if we do these works, we'll be pleasing to God. And yet, they went against what the Old Testament taught. That people are saved by grace alone, through faith alone,.

In God alone.

It's always been that way. And yet, they invented this works righteousness system. And they invented these man-made traditions. They put these burdens on people. And God hates it. And that's what Jesus is going after.

And that's their idol. They don't want to give that up. Because if they follow Him, they have to give it up. They don't want to give up their idol. And they walked away from God even though they thought they were following Him.

Now these scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus calls evil and adulterous ask Him for this cosmic sign. And He says,.

Nope.

Not doing it. We say, well, He could just confirm it without a question right here. And Jesus says,.

No.

Not doing it. He says no, not because He can't do it. He could do it. He most certainly could. He has infinite power. He says no, because it was not God's will. God decides what information people need to receive.

Not man. He's the giver of revelation. Yes, the book of Revelation, but the whole Bible. The 66 books of the Bible. He gives us what we need to know. And they had received plenty of information as to who Jesus really was.

And He will not bend to them. He will not bend to these evil and adulterous people. If they will not receive the revelation that He has already shown everyone through His words and His actions, then another sign won't do anything.

But Jesus tells them what they need to believe. In the second half of v. 39 and v. 40, He says this. Very interesting. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

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. As we see what Jesus said, let me first note this.

And you might think, why am I even saying this? Because this needs to be said. Jesus believes that Jonah was really swallowed by a whale.

Okay?

It's settled.

So why are there all these professors in colleges and seminaries who say that Jesus wasn't swallowed by a whale? And why are these schools employing these people? I mean, I'm saying this. It's an obvious answer.

I mean, if I'm a president of a seminary, if I'm a president of a college, and if I find out that someone doesn't believe that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, you're getting the ax.

Okay?

This really happens in the church. There is such thing as academic corruption, and sadly, it's found in many places. And what you learn reading the Gospels is that Jesus is conservative. In fact, He's very conservative.

He believes all the Old Testament stories, even the ones like this that seem the most unlikely. Now, it's interesting. I don't know if you watched the news this week. Jason and I were talking about this yesterday.

There was a man off the coast of Massachusetts that was swallowed by a whale. He was scuba diving for lobsters. All of a sudden, everything turned black. Whales swallowed him for 30 seconds and then spit him out.

So it happens. And it can happen because God can do whatever He wants. But it's interesting what Jesus does here. He takes these so-called experts in the Old Testament to this very well-known story in the Old Testament.

And this might be kids' favorite Bible story.

Jonah and the whale.

You learn it from a young age. The Hebrew in Jonah literally says, great fish. But there's really only one fish that can swallow a human, right? It's a whale. So it's okay to say Jonah and the whale. Now, we know the story of Jonah and the whale.

God commands His prophet Jonah to preach to a people He strongly dislikes. A people He hates. The people of Nineveh. A Gentile people. Jonah's a Jew. He's sent to these Gentile people. He doesn't want to do it.

He flees from God. He flees from His task. And what happens? A storm comes. A huge storm comes on the sea. There's nothing they can do to get out of it. And he tells the captains of the boat, he says, the reason this storm is happening is because of me.

If you throw me overboard, the storm will cease. And that's exactly what happened. He's thrown overboard. He falls into the water. A whale comes and swallows him up. Jonah spends three days and three nights in the belly of the whale before he preaches to Nineveh.

And they repent. Can you think of a more interesting three days than anybody in human history? Three days and three nights in the belly of a whale. Now, when we hear the words three days and three nights, this should ring a bell in our heads.

What does this sound like? Jesus tells us in the second half of verse 40. He compares His experience to Jonah's. Jesus says, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Now, in the Old Testament, there are two types of prophecies. There's predictive on one hand, and then there's analogical on the other hand. Another way to say analogical, it's a picture. It's a picture of something.

Predictive prophecies say something very specific and literal about Christ and His work. For example, Micah 5 .2 said that He would be born in Bethlehem, and He was born in Bethlehem. On the other hand, an analogical prophecy or a picture prophecy is when a person or event foreshadows Christ.

The story of Jonah and the whale teaches much, but one thing it teaches is pointing the head to what Jesus would experience. Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the tomb.

Now, Jesus was put in the tomb on Friday and rose early Sunday morning. As we think about the chronology of Jesus' time in the tomb, you might say that's not technically three days and three nights. It's not.

But what we must understand is that the Jews have ways of talking just like we have ways of talking. I was at a track meet on Tuesday. Sierra, are you here? Yeah, I think I see you there. She was at a track meet too on Tuesday.

We left at 12 .30. We didn't get home until 11. So when I'm telling people I was at a track meet, I'll say, I was at the track meet.

All day.

But technically, it wasn't all day. It was only half the day. But we'll say that. We'll use that in language. Nobody says you were wrong.

Right?

In the Jewish world, if one described parts of three days, they would use the full expression three days and three nights. But what Jesus is saying here is that what happened to Jonah is similar to what is going to happen to me.

And this is the only sign you need. Jonah spent three days in the whale and Jesus spent three days in the tomb. Jonah was spit out on the shore and Jesus was raised out of the tomb. Nineveh listened since they knew Jonah was a prophet from God.

And people are to listen after Jesus' resurrection knowing that He is the greatest prophet and Messiah from God. You see the similarities? What Jesus is telling the Pharisees,.

Everyone in the world.

And everyone in this room, is this is the only sign you need. You need to believe the testimony of Scripture. He would die and rise again and the people would come to know what the sign of Jonah was. The sign of Jonah is the Gospel.

That Jesus died and rose again. What everyone needs to do is believe this sign and be saved. It is the reliable testimony of Scripture that needs to be believed. As we think about the testimony of Scripture and the bearing that the Bible must have on every human's life,.

No exception,.

This brings to mind a parable that Jesus told in Luke 16, the story of the rich man and Lazarus. In this story, the rich man enjoys all the luxuries of life and a poor man lived near his gate and he ate the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table.

Both men died. Lazarus, the poor man, was taken to heaven while the rich man was taken to hell. As Lazarus was in heaven and the poor man in hell, there was a chasm that could not be passed between the two men.

And they were able to speak with each other. And as the rich man is in hell, he is able to speak with Abraham. Abraham and Lazarus are together in heaven. And the rich man asked Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to his family.

And what he says, if he preaches to them and tells them about this horrible place and how not to come to this horrible place, they will believe. And what Jesus says is so piercing. He says this, they have Moses and the prophets.

Let them hear them. Then the rich man responded, no, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. Abraham said to him, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

The amount of facts is not the problem. But what is the problem? As my old pastor used to say, the heart of the matter is what? The heart is the matter. Why do people who believe in God even debate atheists?

It's almost a futile cause. Because you're not addressing the main issue. Okay, you want to talk about does God exist? Let's not even talk about that. Let's talk about your heart. Let's talk about why you're not believing that God exists.

That should be the debate. If one does not believe the testimony of Scripture, then he or she will not believe even if a dead person appears. Think about how many people in the world do not believe the Bible.

The Bible tells of a dead man who was raised from the dead, who lives forever, and his name is Jesus. And any time someone sees the symbol of the cross, it should remind them of this. It should tell them.

It communicates this. And yet, most of the world does not believe. Sometimes you hear people say, just give me an audible voice. Just show me a sign from heaven. Just send a dead man to tell me about the afterlife.

And yet, their Bible sits on their shelf collecting dust. And Jesus is saying to them,.

I'll give you something.

Open up this book and start reading. Jesus answers these people. No sign will be given except the sign of Jonah. No sign will be given except for the testimony of Scripture. If one doesn't believe the very credible testimony of the Bible, then one's heart is where the Pharisee's heart was and the scribes.

The people he's talking to here. This person will not believe and to say there is not enough evidence is a lie. When I was working security while going through seminary, a man I worked with was always learning about the big questions of life.

His family were Christians, but he delayed and delayed and delayed at becoming a Christian. When I stopped working there, he still wasn't a Christian. He was always learning about the meaning of life.

But to that point, he had not yet committed to Christ. And it made me think of this verse from 2 Timothy 3 .7 that some people, that describes many, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

Always learning. Never able to arrive at the knowledge of the truth. At some point, you have to make a decision. If you understand the smallest piece of truth, you know enough. And that small piece of truth is to believe the Gospel.

That Jesus died and rose for sinners and whoever sincerely believes in Him has eternal life now and forever. As Acts 16 .31 says, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. There is much to learn in the Bible, yes.

Think of how much we're scratching the surface reading this book. And we should always be learning and growing. But to enter heaven, what you need to know is I am a sinner, I need a Savior, and Jesus is that only Savior.

A child can understand that. My four-year-old daughter is learning this. She can communicate the Gospel to a certain extent. She understands the sign of Jonah. When she hears the name Jesus, she knows the main idea about His life.

And she often says the words, Jesus died for our sins. She hears it from Brianna and myself. She hears it from Children's Church. She knows the sign of Jonah. As we live in this world long enough, the fact that the Bible is true is undeniable.

The fact that we need Christ is undeniable. And many of you understand this. But if you don't, my plea to you is that you would. And that you would believe. At this point, Jesus had done numerous miracles to the Jewish people.

But the sign of Jonah would be the last miracle. This is the message that He wanted to communicate to the world. But that was not the sign the Jewish leaders wanted. They explained away His other miracles as satanic.

And they were looking for any excuse to say He was a false Messiah. And the fact that He did not do what they wanted led them to remain in their unbelief. But if they were sincerely seeking Him, they would not have asked for another sign.

But would have humbly considered what He had already done. And that would have been the road to repentance. But they didn't want that. But as they asked this question, their heart is very hard. And we know from our last sermon.

Remember Jesus told them, your sins will not be forgiven. Their hearts are at the point of no return. It's unpenetrable at this point. And by asking questions like this, they're showing where their heart is.

No way is Jesus granting their evil requests. And even if He did perform a sign, they still wouldn't believe. Understand that you have all the information you need to believe. The first instruction why from Jesus is that the testimony concerning Christ is enough.

So the first point was much longer today than the second point. But here's our second point. The second instruction why from Jesus we must understand that you have all the information you need to believe is this.

The example of the eager puts the hard-hearted to shame. The example of the eager puts the hard-hearted to shame. Now the second point is much shorter than our previous point, but here Jesus drives home our main idea that we have all the information we need to believe.

But He does something very interesting in verses 41 and 42. He points to two examples from the Old Testament of Gentiles. Gentiles and non-Jews. Two examples of Gentiles who put these Jewish leaders to shame.

Let's read this. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the south will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it.

For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon.

Is here.

Okay, so these two parties, Nineveh and the queen of the south, also known as the queen of Sheba, do the opposite of the scribes and Pharisees when truth is put right before their eyes. What Jesus does is first point to Nineveh.

I already explained to you briefly the story of Jonah. After refusing to go there, the Lord sent Jonah back to Nineveh to call them to repent. And what we remarkably see in that story is this Gentile city, when preached to, repents.

They repent at the preaching of Jonah. And what Jesus says here is that the final judgment will go well for Nineveh because they repented. But it won't go well for you because you will not repent at my preaching.

They repented from the preaching of an ordinary Old Testament prophet.

Jonah.

I mean, frankly, a pathetic one a lot of times. They repented at his preaching. But now the Messiah, the Son of God, the One who has eternally existed, the One who will rise from the dead, the One who will return to the earth, He stands before them.

And what do they do? They reject His message. That's why He says, something greater than Jonah is here. They repented as something far less than Me. And they repented. But I'm far greater than Jonah, and they won't repent.

Jesus also mentions in verse 42 the Queen of the South. In Scripture, she's known as the Queen of Sheba. And her story is found in 1 Kings 10, verses 1 -13. The Queen of Sheba was very wealthy. Yet she traveled 1 ,200 miles to the north.

She was from Arabia. She traveled 1 ,200 miles to the north, to Jerusalem, to see Solomon, his greatness, and God's wisdom that came from Solomon. By the way, 1 ,200 miles? That's here to New York City.

Before planes. Before trains. Before vehicles. It took her weeks, maybe months, to get to Solomon. But she wanted to see this man for herself. And one greater than Solomon was in their midst, and they would not listen to Him.

Jesus is pointing out the folly of these hard-hearted Israelites and commending these Gentiles from the Old Testament who responded the right way when the truth was put right in front of them. The hardness of heart of the scribes and Pharisees is a sad story.

But there were some Jews who were willing to listen to Jesus and His message, and some believed. They were not unwilling like these were. They did not keep asking for signs like these Jews. But chewed on the truth that was put before them.

In the first entry, the evidence that one was truly following God was simple. Does one believe in Jesus? Clearly, as we've just seen, the scribes and Pharisees did not. But other Jews were much more willing.

For example, in Luke 2, Simeon and Anna were Jews who believed in Jesus. John the Baptist. We know about his story. The Twelve Disciples minus Judas. There were other Jews as well, most clearly seen in the book of Acts where thousands believed when they were called to repent and believe in Jesus.