Matthew 12:38-45
38 Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”
39 He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41 The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. 42 The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now something greater than Solomon is here.
43 “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44 Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45 Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”
Questions:
ReplyDelete- What is the sign of Jonah?
- Will we or various people rise and condemn others at Judgment Day?
- When Jesus talks about unclean spirits here, is He telling us the way things work, or is He using a figure of speech to get across the main point?
http://www.gotquestions.org/sign-of-Jonah.html says:
ReplyDeleteThe phrase “sign of Jonah” was used by Jesus as a typological metaphor for His future crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.
To fully appreciate the answer that Jesus gave, we must go to the Old Testament book of Jonah. In its first chapter, we read that God commanded the prophet Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and warn its people that He was going to destroy it for its wickedness. Jonah disobediently ran from the Lord and headed for the city of Tarshish by boat. The Lord then sent a severe storm that caused the crew of the ship to fear for their lives. Jonah was soon thrown overboard and swallowed by a great fish where he remained for “three days and three nights” (Jonah 1:15–17). After the three-day period, the Lord caused the great fish to vomit Jonah out onto dry land (Jonah 2:10).
It is this three days that Jesus was referring to when He spoke of the sign of Jonah. Jesus had already been producing miracles that were witnessed by many. Jesus had just performed a great sign in the Pharisees’ presence by healing a deaf man who was possessed of a demon. Rather than believe, they accused Jesus of doing this by the power of Satan. Jesus recognized their hardness of heart and refused to give them further proof of His identity. However, He did say that there would be one further sign forthcoming, His resurrection from the dead. This would be their final opportunity to be convinced.
Jesus’ paralleling of the Pharisees with the people of Nineveh is telling. The people of Nineveh repented of their evil ways (Jonah 3:4–10) after hearing Jonah’s call for repentance, while the Pharisees continued in their unbelief despite being eyewitnesses to the miracles of Jesus. Jesus was telling the Pharisees that they were culpable for their unbelief, given the conversion of the people of Nineveh, sinners who had received far less evidence than the Pharisees themselves had witnessed.
But what are we to make of the phrase “three days and three nights”? Was Jesus saying that He would be dead for three full 24-hour periods before He would rise from the dead? It does not appear so. The phrase “three days and three nights” need not refer to a literal 72-hour period. Rather, according to the Hebrew reckoning of time, the days could refer to three days in part or in whole. Jesus was probably crucified on a Friday (Mark 15:42). According to the standard reckoning, Jesus died at about 3:00 PM (Matthew 27:46) on Friday (day 1). He remained dead for all of Saturday (day 2) and rose from the dead early on Sunday morning (day 3). Attempts to place Jesus’ death on Wednesday to accommodate a literal 72-hour period are probably unnecessary once we take into account the Hebrew method of reckoning of each day as beginning at sundown. So it seems that the expression “three days and three nights” was used as a figure of speech meant to signify any part of three days.
The “sign of Jonah” would turn out to be Jesus’ greatest miracle of all. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead would be God’s chief sign that Jesus was Israel’s long-awaited Messiah (Acts 2:23–32) and establish Christ’s claims to deity (Romans 1:3–4).
http://www.meetingwithchrist.com/E066%20No%20sign%20shall%20be%20given%20but%20the%20sign%20of%20Jonah%20-%20Mt%2012(38-42).htm says:
ReplyDeleteIf a miracle is performed in front of you, then that miracle can serve as a sign. But who has seen the resurrection? Then how can the resurrection of Jesus be a sign?
He was talking about this evil generation, those who did not believe in Him. The disciples saw Jesus after His resurrection, but this evil and adulterous generation never saw Him. What this evil and adulterous generation do not see cannot be a sign to them.
And just as Jonah became a sign after the event, so Jesus becomes a sign to us after the resurrection. . . . How can Jesus be a sign after the resurrection?
Notice that He didn’t just say, ‘I will be a sign.’ He said, ‘The Son of man will be a sign.’ When you read the book of Daniel, you will make this unusual observation. You will notice that this title sometimes refers to one person and sometimes it refers to many people. This is where the mystery is. We have a similar situation in the NT with Jesus’ teaching on the vine. Does the vine refer to one person or to many persons in John 15? The vine is both one person, Jesus, and all the churches together.
How is Jesus present in the world today? In His body. And we are that body. The church is the body of Christ. The indwelling of Jesus in His people is often expressed by Paul with the expression ‘Christ in you’
Now we begin to see the meaning of the sign of Jonah. The Lord Jesus is telling us something wonderful. He is saying, ‘I am going to give you a sign. And that sign will be the expression of the power of the resurrection.’ The power of the resurrection did not just raise Jesus from the dead 2000 years ago. The power of the resurrection is here and now operating in the world. You and I can experience it as Christians. It is not something that we experience only when we first become a Christian. We never cease to know the power of the resurrection in our daily experience as we become a new person, a person who is more and more conformed to the image of Christ.
When we become Christians, we begin to experience the divine power that raised Christ from the dead in our own resurrection from spiritual death to a new life. As we walk in newness of life, the power of the resurrected Christ is now operating in our lives. And the change is drastic. We no longer live according to the things of the flesh. We live a life of holiness in Christ. People can see the sign of the resurrection in our lives.
Now we see what the Lord Jesus promised to this generation. The sign of Jonah is the sign of the resurrection. It is the sign of changed lives. This is what the power of the resurrection is about
This doesn’t mean that he becomes perfect. Here we see the point of the comparison with Jonah. The sign was not just Jesus Himself. We cannot really compare Jesus, in His perfect self, to Jonah, a sinful man. That would be no comparison. The comparison is to Jesus and His new community. The sign is to be seen in His church. Notice that even after the transforming experience that Jonah had in the belly of the fish, he still had much of the old character in him. Similarly, Christians are far from being perfect, even after experiencing God’s transforming power. Now we begin to see the beauty of the sign of Jonah. The sign of Jonah is the sign of the Son of man which is the sign of the church.
Becoming a Christian is not simply a matter of being baptized. It is a matter of spiritual transformation. And that is the point that is emphasized when we talk about the power of the resurrection. We become dead to the world, to sin, and alive to God.
http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/1434/what-did-jesus-mean-by-the-queen-of-the-south says regarding standing up at the last day judging:
ReplyDeleteAnd though he is standing right in front of those who should know best, they do not recognize him. Even the ignorant, unbelieving foreigners understood a true representative of God! In the judgment, these ignorant foreigners will put this "evil and adulterous generation" to shame with their belief.
Looking for a future reference other than these people's condemnation misses the point. They are the point. These gentiles are the example of faith. Note the scripture quotation just a couple paragraphs before, in 12:15-21. The Gentiles, who should not have recognized Jesus, did. These Israelites, that should have recognized Jesus, did not, and they will be judged for it.
My 2 cents on people condemning each other on Judgement Day:
ReplyDeleteWe really don't know how Judgment Day will work. Jesus may or may not be giving a clue to how it works - but we don't know.
Which brings us to wider questions: How much did Jesus know? If He did know how things really work, how much did He really tell?
First, there are different views in Christendom about how knowledgeable Jesus was on earth. Some people think He was omniscient while He was here on earth. Other's (and I probably lean this way) think Jesus had no more knowledgeable than anyone else - except for what the Holy Spirit taught Him (the amount of which could have ranged from need to know to almost omniscient).
The point is that if Jesus was not omniscient, His parables, stories and examples could have been based on current Jewish thought. It could be that His example of Nineveh rising at the Last Day to condemn this generation was based on Jewish tradition and not on how it will actually work. Therefore, we should pay attention to the main point of Jesus' stories and side questions (like this one) become moot.
Perhaps, Jesus was omniscient (or at knew how the judgment worked) and He didn't stop to explain how it worked to people - because it wasn't that important. Perhaps, Jesus used Jewish tradition to make more important points - knowing that they were wrong, but not thinking it was important enough to argue for a truth that didn't matter that much.
Or, of course, Jesus could have known and gave of glimpses of how things really work.
I point out these three possibilities for completeness sake. I believe that any of the three possibilities are possibilities, and because of that, the question of whether people rise at Judgment Day to condemn others is not answerable (since no other place in the Bible addresses that question).
https://bible.org/seriespage/19-sign-jonah-matthew-1238-45 speaks of the matter of the demon:
ReplyDeleteThe Lord pronounces a sentence on those who refuse to accept Him (43-45).
The point of the story is this: to cast out the unclean spirit is of no lasting value unless there follows a new possession by the clean Spirit.
The point Jesus was making here and elsewhere is that His presence and mission had broken the power of evil, and His casting out demons was evidence that He was sweeping the house and putting it in order so Satan could not break in (the house is the implied metaphor for the soul). While Jesus was present, the whole underworld of evil spirits was under His power and He was able to drive it out and control it so that He could offer to people much better things. But once Jesus had driven the evil powers away, it was up to the people to respond to Him and His power. He had cast out the evil spirits, swept the house and put it in order--meaning, their lives and their world. Now the King, Jesus the Messiah, was able to possess the swept and ordered houses so that they should no longer be empty, but possessed by goodness and purity. If they received Christ into their lives, they would be protected from evil by one who was far greater than Satan or his forces. But since they had refused to believe in Jesus and did not receive Him or allow Him to control their lives, they would soon see that the house that was swept clean would be inhabited again by more evil forces, and they would sink to a far lower level of life. They would be hardened in unbelief, comfortable with corruption and vice, and living in a world controlled by wickedness and violence.
This is a solemn sentence, but it is true nonetheless. People may try to clean up their lives or reform in some way. But unless they are possessed and controlled by the Holy Spirit as they turn their lives over to the Lord Jesus Christ, they will be worse off than before because they will only be available for greater attacks from Satan’s devices. The Bible warns people to seek the Lord while He may be found, and not to refuse the convicting work of the Spirit. Resisting brings a hardening, thanks to the strengthening of the influence that evil spiritual forces have on people without Christ.
The Gospel message is not simply that Jesus Christ has the power to defeat Satan and cast out unclean spirits, but that He does this in order that He might take possession of peoples’ lives and defeat opposing forces through them. But without Christ within, there can be no victory. This is why it is dangerous for people to be nominal but unbelieving “Christians,” present in Christian events but not in Christ by faith. Christ’s presence always loosens the bonds of evil, whether people confess it or not, or whether they are even conscious of it. People will “feel better” for being in church, and may even clean up some things in their lives. But we must be aware that “swept and orderly ‘houses’” are attractive to unclean spirits, who are ready to take possession if the Holy Spirit has not. Unless people are possessed and controlled by Christ, the last state of such church-goers (or “moral” non church-goers) may be worse than before, as they find themselves hardened in self-righteousness and unbelief. It happened with those in Jesus’ day who liked to hear Jesus talk, but rejected Him as Savior and Lord.