The Incomparable Christ: Matthew 12:38-45

Good morning. Welcome. Happy Mother's Day. What a blessing it is. We're all so thankful for our mothers and our wives. And so we hope that this is going to be a good day for you, and you'll be blessed as we worship together on video and get the Word of God into our hearts.

So glad you're here with us this morning. Let's open up with the Word of Prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we're thankful for so many things. We're thankful for our mothers and the great blessings they are in our lives.

Our wives who are mothers of our children. We're thankful for all the material gifts you give us and the spiritual gifts you give us. We're thankful for Christ and the grace that we have in Jesus Christ.

We ask that you would bless our worship this morning and bless your Word. And I ask this in Jesus' name,.

Amen.

I have an announcement. Of course, today is Mother's Day. Praise God for that. Amen. We thank God for mothers and the blessing they are in our lives. There's a lot to praise God about, as usual, so I want to mention a few things that we can praise God for.

We are thankful for our church and your love and faithfulness. Thank you for your giving in this time of crisis. God's work will be done by God's people. We are thankful to God for his protection and the health he gives.

We're thankful that God is with us and working everything according to his purposes. We can trust him. Great is his faithfulness. In terms of prayer, pray that our country and state would open up and people will be safe and healthy.

Pray that we will be able to meet as a church soon. Pray for God's blessing and comfort on those working on the front lines of this pandemic and God's comfort for those who are sick and those families who have lost loved ones to this virus.

Pray that God will give us joy to serve him and that we will make the most of the opportunities that God gives us to get the gospel out. This time we are going to have some worship.

The Incomparable Gift of Salvation

Think about an.

Incredible gift that you have received.

To me, I.

Can think about my wife. She has been a great blessing to me, and a great blessing to our children as a mother. And since this is Mother's Day today, how special is that to remember the blessings that God has given us through our mothers, our wives,.

And.

We can all say that we would not be who we are without them.

But,.

For me,.

The most incredible gift that I have been given by the Lord is salvation. There's nothing greater than that. To me, to think about the fact that God has given.

Me.

This treasure in an earthen vessel is nothing but astounding and.

Great.

Paul says it this way regarding our salvation, that it is an unspeakable gift. And so this morning we are going to see that Jesus Christ and the salvation that he has given us is beyond description. That Jesus Christ himself is incomparable.

Nothing compares with him. Nothing is as great as he is. He is the greatest of the great and he is to be desired more than anything. And so we need to ask ourselves a question this morning. What will you give God.

For.

What he has given you? I think the response to that.

Is.

That we should give him lives of surrender and.

Devotion.

So this morning we are going to look at the fact that Jesus Christ is.

Incomparable,.

Beyond.

Compare. We're in Matthew chapter 12 verses 35, 38 through 45. Matthew 12 38 through 45. I'll read. Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered saying, Teacher, we want to see a sign from you. But he answered and said to them, an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

For 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 in the judgment with this generation and condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.

The Queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon and indeed a greater than Solomon is here.

When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places seeking rest and finds none. Then he says, I will return to my house from which I came. And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order.

Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits, much more wicked than himself, and they enter it and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it be with this wicked generation.

Well, quite some words. We're looking at the fact that Jesus Christ is incomparable. And the first point is.

An.

Unbelieving generation. We want to look at an unbelieving generation. Verses 38 through 40. They were tempting the Lord. Verse 38. And what we're going to see this morning is very incredible and very sad.

That this generation of Jews who heard and saw the Lord Jesus standing right in front of them and especially many of the religious leaders rejected him. Rejected his salvation. Rejected his miracles. And this morning he is going to show them and show us that there is nothing better than Jesus Christ.

Nothing compares with Jesus Christ. He is the greatest of the great. And he is to be desired more than anything else.

And.

So we see the interesting thing in verse 38. That the Pharisees came to our Lord and they came in unbelief. Basically as we see in the Gospel of Mark, they came tempting our Lord. Because they were asking him for a sign.

And what that meant is that they were insincere. They came with hard hearts. They came unbelieving. Because often asking for a sign is a mark of unbelief. And so that's what we we see here. The scribes and the Pharisees answered him.

Now they were listening to what the Lord Jesus was saying to them in the midst of the multitude that was listening to him.

And.

They.

Said teacher we want to see a sign.

From you.

Now that's pretty incredible if you think about it.

Because.

They had already seen many signs from him. Jesus Christ had already done many miracles. Incredible miracles. But yet they still didn't believe. So the question is is what miracle would be enough? They want to see another miracle.

What would be enough for them to believe? Nothing really. Because if you think about it as our Lord Jesus teaches that if men don't believe the word of God, they're not going to even believe it if God gave the greatest miracle even raising somebody from the dead.

So.

So we see.

Their.

Unbelief here in verse 38. And what is sad there is we see the depth not only of the depravity of man the sinfulness of man in the scribes and pharisees but we also see the depth of unbelief.

How deep.

Unbelief is in the heart of man.

And.

And how we need the Holy Spirit. So you see as it says in first Corinthians chapter 2 verses 7 through 10. We need the Holy Spirit to convict us as sinners and show us spiritual things so that we can understand who Christ is.

So we can understand spiritual things because on our own it as unsaved unregenerate people we are dead in our trespasses and sins. And I like what what the Lord says. He just kind of puts the finger right on the pulse of the problem here.

And.

He tells us in John chapter 5 and we're going to turn there verse 40 that really that the the big point of the problem in man is unbelief you see that it's unbelief in the heart of a person that causes him not to come to Christ and not to get saved.

And we see that here with these religious leaders. Look at John chapter 5 verse 40. John 5 40 just says it so succinctly here But you are not willing to come to me that you may have life. And the words that say it all is you're not willing.

That's unbelief. Unbelief is a matter of the will. People are unwilling to come to Jesus to receive life. That's so sad because it shows that we are in fact our own worst enemies, right? And so that's what we see.

We look at verse 38 the incredible unbelief of the scribes and pharisees. We see that they are tempting our Lord with that question because that was not a sincere question. And look at the response of our Lord the sign of Jonah verses 39 and 40.

Our Lord answers them in an incredible way. In fact, he shows us that their question reflected unbelief. He shows us that seeking a sign on their behalf showed that they are an unbelieving generation.

And he calls them an evil and adulterous generation. Now they're evil because they have rejected Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And they're adulterous generation because they are not faithful to God. Sounds like our generation today, doesn't it?

Very self-sufficient generation, very complacent generation. We seem to be satisfied with material things, but many people don't want spiritual things. They don't want God and they say they don't need God.

And.

So what we see here is that we need God, okay? He created us and our lives are going to be miserable without him. And so Jesus gives them a spiritual sign and he answers these men who are tracking on an unspiritual level or a natural level.

He answers them in a spiritual way.

Which.

They probably didn't understand. It's an incredible answer. He says, I'm not going to give you a sign except the sign of the prophet Jonah here. Now Jonah is a type of Christ. Now he's a type of Christ in the sense that.

He.

Was in the belly of a great fish for three days and three nights. And that points to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that Jesus Christ would rise again in three days like Jonah. You see Jonah was propelled.

Out of.

The mouth of that big fish by God in a big way after three days and three nights. And Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

After.

Three days by the power of God. So you see how Jonah points to Christ. And so the sign of the prophet Jonah is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I'm going to give you a sign, he says. Now, what is the greatest miracle that we could get?

The greatest sign? Well, it's the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that's, he says, I'm going to give you that sign. Now, I want to say that if you look back in Jonah and when it talks about the fact that Jonah was in the belly of that great fish for three days and three nights, that's emphatic in the sense that he's mentioning that that includes partial days.

Because when we consider what a day is to the Hebrews and the Jews,.

Um.

The day for the Jewish people is a lunar day. It goes by the moon.

Our days.

Are solar days, the Egyptian calendar, when we go by the sun. So a day for the Jews goes from sundown to sundown. And so as we look at the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we see that he was crucified there on Friday before sundown.

That's the first day. The second day was.

Saturday.

And then the third day was Sunday morning, you see. And he rose from the dead. So we see how that applies. Now the sign here given to Jonah, it will be the sign for all men. It was given to this evil and adulterous generation that was listening to Jonah, and it's given for the whole world.

And it is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's the sign. The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the blessed gospel. That is what we need to believe. First Corinthians 15 tells us that the gospel is that Jesus Christ is Lord, that he died for our sins according to Scripture, and he was buried, and he rose again the third day according to Scripture.

That's the gospel. And when we come to believe the gospel by the grace of God and put our faith in Jesus Christ,.

We are saved.

Second Corinthians 5 17 says a glorious thing, that if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. And so once you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you are now saved, and you have a new nature, and we have the Holy Spirit.

Now the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so glorious, isn't it? Romans 1 verse 4.

Says.

That the resurrection of Jesus Christ declares Jesus to be the Son of God with power. Clearly, the resurrection shows that he is the Son. So that will be the sign.

That this.

Evil and wicked generation would be would be given. The second point, as we look at the incomparable Christ, is we want to look at an unlikely witness verses 41 and 42. As we speak of the person, the glory of the person of Jesus Christ, and we see that he is the Son of God and the Messiah who is to come, and that he rose again from the dead, and he died for our sins, we see here that there are witnesses to the person of Christ, witnesses to his glorious nature.

And they're unlikely witnesses. God often uses the weak and the unexpected, doesn't he? And the unlikely to achieve his purposes. And that's what we see here. Verse 41. The first witness is Nineveh. Isn't that incredible?

Well, what is Nineveh?

Nineveh.

Was the capital of Assyria.

Assyria.

Was a fierce enemy of the Jews. They were a pagan nation that severely hated Israel, God's people, and persecuted it. So much so, when God called Jonah to go and preach to the Ninevites, Jonah kind of said, no way, God.

I don't want to do that. And Jonah was basically the reluctant prophet. But Jonah did go and preach after God chastised him a little bit and showed him that he needed to do it. And when this man of God and this prophet preached, guess what happened?

This whole city repented. They turned to God and they experienced salvation. Incredible. I mean, one of the most incredible revivals. Matter of fact, one of the first revivals recorded in the Bible.

And they.

Repented at the preaching of Jonah. Now the word repented here.

Means.

That they turned from their sin.

And they.

Had a different view.

Of sin.

Now.

We need to repent of our sin, turn from our sin by the grace of God, and put our faith in Jesus Christ for salvation. And when we do, we are saved. It's a glorious thing. And he said that this unlikely.

City.

Full of pagans that were idol worshipers, enemies of Israel, they are going to rise up in judgment against this evil generation that was listening to our Lord Jesus when he was here on earth.

Why?

Because they repented.

When they heard.

The prophet, the man of God,.

Jonah preach. But these,.

These Jews who should have received their Messiah and were face to face with the Lord of glory, God himself, and heard him preach and saw him do great miracles, they didn't turn and they didn't repent at the preaching of one so much greater than than Jonah.

In fact, the one who created Jonah, the Lord himself. And in that sense, they are going to condemn that generation in the judgment, Jesus said,.

Because.

A greater than Jonah. Again,.

Incomparable,.

Incomparable. He's greater, he's the Lord of glory, and he's here. What an application that is for us. The Lord Jesus is here. God has visited this sin-sick world. He has come in all of his glory, John.

Chapter one,.

And he.

Tabernacled among us. He put on a tent of human flesh and he was perfect God and perfect man and he dwelt among us and he came into this world because he loves us with the express purpose to die for those he created, for sinful man, and that's why he went to the cross to die for us and he is our substitute for our sin.

And he rose from the dead and so.

He is here.

For you and me and he loves us. And that's the important message that we need to know, that God loves us, he created us, he saved us, and he sent Jesus Christ into this world to die for our sins because he loves us so much.

And I think because we're all struggling so much now during this coronavirus and our lives are turned upside down that we need to hear that good news. We need to know that God loves us and he has a plan for us.

He has a purpose for us and he sent Jesus Christ in and salvation is available and that God is in control of everything. And that's our purpose as individuals in the church is to tell the world the good news about Jesus Christ.

So we also see the second witness. The first witness was Nineveh, the second witness was the Queen of Sheba. The Queen of Sheba sought wisdom, verse number two. Now, she's also an unlikely witness. She's a Gentile.

And she came from a long distance. I mean, think about this. She came close to a thousand miles to come and hear King Solomon because she heard that King Solomon was the king of Israel and Israel was the people of the true God and that God had given this man wisdom greater than anybody and she had a heart for God and she wanted to know more about God and she wanted to hear from Solomon wisdom and about God.

So she took this long arduous hard journey and she came and she heard Solomon and the Bible says that after she saw how God blessed Solomon with so much and heard his great wisdom greater than anybody and heard about the Lord she gave glory to God.

And she.

Magnified the God of Israel. What an amazing thing, huh? It reminds me of a time when.

I heard.

A missionary.

Preach.

And he told about a time where he was a missionary to Africa and they were having a gospel service and he said that the people walked.

Three hours.

At night to go to that gospel service to hear the word of God and I was convicted in my shoes. I was thinking wow how paltry we are here in the United States. How little we desire the word of God. They traveled.

Three hours three hours.

Even in the dark to hear the word of God. And sometimes we are reluctant to travel 10 miles or less just to go to church.

Wow.

How amazing. You see those people in the gospel service, they were hungry for God, you see they were hungry for the word of God just like the queen of Sheba. The queen of Sheba wanted to know God. She was hungry for God and she wanted to hear the wisdom of God and wanted the word of God and for that sense Jesus says that she, an unlikely queen, a gentile queen is going to rise up in judgment against this Jewish generation, this unbelieving Jewish generation who saw the savior, the very son of God, God himself.

They saw his miracles. They heard him preach.

And they.

Didn't want his wisdom. They were going to condemn that generation because Jesus said a greater one than Saul. He's greater than Saul. He's the greater king. He's the king of Israel. He's the king of the world.

He's the king of this earth and the question for us this morning is do we love God? Do we have a desire for his word? Do we know God personally through Jesus Christ? Can we say with the apostle Paul as he says in Philippians 3 8 through 10?

Well, I want to read those words turn with me to Philippians 3 8 through 10 because this should be the desire of each truly born again Christian. This should be our desire. We should have a desire for Christ above all.

We should have a love for God's word and desire for his word. Look what it says here in Philippians 3 8 through 10. Yet indeed I also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him not having my own righteousness which is from the law but that which is through faith in Christ the righteousness which is from God by faith that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering being conformed to his death.

That should be our same desire. The desire of the apostle Paul had above all else. He said my main desire in life is that I may know oh that I may know Christ. Oh that we may know Christ more. Oh that we may reflect Christ more in our lives and he says I count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.

In other words nothing compares.

To Christ.

Nothing compares to the apostle Paul to knowing Christ. That should be the greatest thing for us and the great thing in our lives should be to live for Christ and reflect him in our lives and be witnesses for Christ.

And when we do the world will stand up and look just like they did with the Queen of Sheba. And so we see the unlikely witnesses to Christ to his glory to his person. We also want to look at an unmatched illustration verses 43 through.

45.

An adulterous generation verses 43 through 45. Now, this is a unique illustration this is kind of hard to understand but it's a spiritual illustration. So it definitely would have been hard for them to understand as he was speaking to them because they were looking at things not from a spiritual point of view at all but from solely a human point of view and even us as Christians can do that so often.

Now what the Lord is teaching in these verses is that a man cannot reform himself. Okay that we need salvation. We need regeneration. In other words when we trust in Christ as our Savior and our Lord we're regenerated and that means that we're made new creations in Christ and we have the Holy Spirit.

So what Jesus is saying in this illustration in this parable is that living life without the Spirit of God and without Christ and without regeneration.

Is.

Futile, miserable, and is going to lead to destruction. And that's what he's saying. That's what it means. And when we are living without Christ we are open to demonic, well demonic activity and so forth.

And so verse 43 talks about the demonic possession here. Now these verses go back to verses 24 through 29. Where the Lord Jesus cast out.

Demons.

From.

This man who was demon-possessed praise God and did a great miracle. And we see here that.

The.

Scribes and pharisees attributed his miracle to Satan rather than to God and the Holy Spirit and said that he did that glorious miracle by the power of Satan rather than the power of God. Now what we see.

There.

In those verses is the reality of Satan, right? The reality of demon possession. Okay. And so now we can go back to verses 43 through 45 and understand more of what Jesus is talking about. Now when he's talking about an unclean spirit, he's basically talking about a demon.

There's Satan and there's many demons, okay?

And.

When he says a demon goes out of a man, he's saying the demon was cast out of a man. But this man was not saved. Okay, and he he was it was kind of he goes through dry places seeking rest and finds none.

He kind of looks cleaned up. He looks good for a while. But he doesn't have the Holy Spirit. Okay. And then what we see here is the demon because demons want to inhabit things, they want to inhabit people, animals, or whatever, wants to go back into this man.

And when he goes back, it's much worse because he takes with himself seven other spirits that were more wicked to himself than himself and then they inhabit or dwell in this poor man. And what Jesus is saying here is the result of this was worse than before, the beginning.

So the end was worse for this man than the beginning. And he's applying this as you see to this wicked generation of Jews that was listening to Christ, hearing him, seeing his miracles, but yet rejecting him.

So he's applying them. And so what he's teaching them and showing them is that it is fruitless to live without God and the Holy Spirit and seek to reform yourself. The end of that is worse than the beginning.

We can try to do things on our own, by our own power, reform ourselves. We might look good for a little while, but then we're going to flop out and be worse off in the end. Okay. And this is basically a history of the Jewish people.

And the Jewish people, as we look at the history of the Jewish people, they were idolatrous. They were committing idolatry. They were unfaithful to the Lord. But then at a certain time.

When.

Right here, when Jesus was here, they looked good. They weren't involved with the idolatry outwardly, but they were idolatrous inwardly. They were unfaithful to the Lord and seeking to reform themselves.

And so Jesus is applying this to them and to us. For me, the greatest application here is is that we.

Are.

Fooled and deceived if we think we can live life on our own without God who created us.

And.

Also if we think that we are not sinners and under God's judgment because of our sin. We're just evading ourselves. We're evading God. We're running from God. And we're gonna live miserable lives and we seek vain substitutes.

As Blaise Pascal said that every man has in himself a God-shaped vacuum that he always tries to fill. And he tries to fill that vacuum in his life with everything other than God. And that God-shaped vacuum in our life can only be filled by God and Jesus Christ.

And until we have God and Jesus Christ, we will never be happy. We will be miserable. And we will be seeking all kinds of substitutes. And what Jesus is saying is if you to this wicked generation, if you continue in your obstinacy and rebellion toward God that the end is worse than the beginning.

You can't reform yourself. You need salvation. You need Christ. You need the Holy Spirit. You see the only change that we can have that will have lasting value is the Holy Spirit working in our life and bringing change and transformation in our life through Christ to make us more like Christ.

Yes, we have to do things. Yes, we're responsible to God, right? Yes, we got to work out our salvation with all diligence.

But.

What Jesus is teaching is that reformation isn't going to help us a hill of beans. It's regeneration that we need. We need Christ. We need God.

So let me.

Ask you a question. What do you value? What is most important to you? What is the greatest thing in your life? It's a good question. You can ponder that in your heart. I can ponder that. Is it God? Is it Christ?

Or is it things? Is it the world? Is it success? Is it money? Whatever. What we see is they're all vain substitutes. Because the glorious one is Christ. He's the incomparable one and that's what he's been saying in this chapter.

Verse 6. Look at verse 6 of chapter 12. He says, I'm greater than the temple. That's incredible. I'm greater than the temple. Verse 41 of this chapter. He says, I'm greater than Jonah, the prophet Jonah.

And then he says in verse 42, I'm greater than Solomon. You see, he is the greatest of the great. He's incomparable. There's nothing that compares with him. There's no amount of money. There's nothing we can give for salvation because salvation is a free gift.

And we who have received salvation are debtors of grace. It is the greatest thing. And Christ.

Is.

The greatest.

That's what we're seeing this morning. So the question is for us this morning. Are we living for Christ? And the word of God and are we seeking his glory? Have we received Christ and salvation? If not, we are missing out on the greatest thing in life.

And on what God created us for. To magnify, to reflect him in our lives. At this time, we want to end.

With.

Worship.

But before we do that, I'm going to close with a word of prayer.

Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we are astounded this morning, but we also are challenged and perhaps.

Convicted.

Of the glory of Jesus Christ. The fact that he's incomparable. Because he's Lord and he's without sin and he's the only savior. And we pray God that I pray that if there's anybody that hears this message and that is away from you or is out of fellowship with you that they would come back to you and receive your grace and just be living for you.

And I also pray Father that if there's anybody who doesn't truly know you as their Lord and Savior and has never received Christ and been saved and made a new creation in Christ that they will come to know him even today.

And bear fruit for him and live for him. And for all of us Lord, I just pray that you will help us to.

Count.

All things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.

Our Lord.

And to make it personal my Lord. I pray Father also for the blessing on each person as we are living in such hard times and we need you. That you will bless each and every one in our church all those hearing this message with your presence with your comfort your blessing with your wisdom and that you will keep us by your grace.

And help us to in fact live for you and glorify you and may this be the chief end of our lives and may this be the great purpose in our lives. And we ask all this in Jesus name.