In 1 Corinthians 1:22-24, Paul writes to the Corinthians, “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.”
I’m preaching this morning from Matthew 12:38-45, not 1 Corinthians 1:22-24. However, I think 1 Corinthians 1:22-24 speaks to us in a very clear, understandable form the truth that saturates the narrative that we find in Matthew 12:38-45. In fact, I think that if you’re going to study our text from Matthew this morning and then move to think in terms of application, I think you need to run your thinking through 1 Corinthians 1:22-24. So, I’m going to come back to that text again and again. “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.”
Now, let’s look at our text this morning. Matthew 12:38-45 concludes a section in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus has had constant confrontation with the Pharisees. At the beginning of the chapter, the Pharisees had attacked Jesus with the charge that he and his disciples did not obey the Sabbath, and Jesus answered in such a way that he shut their mouths. But rather than whimpering and walking away, they simply became enraged and conspired how they might kill him.
Instead of forcing things to escalate or destroying his enemies, however, Jesus simply withdrew from them, showing his gentleness and patience. However, the Pharisees weren’t equally willing to walk away. Rather, as Jesus heals another man, casting out a demon that had made the man mute and blind, the Pharisees attack him again. This time it’s because the crowd is starting to wonder aloud whether Jesus might be the promised Messiah. The Pharisees, of course, don’t want that. They would like to keep Jesus’ popularity at a low and discourage any thought that he might be the Messiah. Therefore, though they absolutely know better, they charge Jesus with casting out demons by the power of Satan.
And Jesus knows they know better. In other words, this isn’t the case of the Pharisees simply being mistaken, failing to see something that is complex and hard to figure out. The Pharisees know better. They know who is standing in front of them as they confront Jesus. But they have settled in their hearts to oppose him. Therefore, Jesus warns them about judgment in 12:31-32 and in verses 33-37 he forces them to come face-to-face with the fact that the problem is nothing he has done or not done, nothing he has said or failed to say, nothing that he has made confusing or unclear. The problem is that they have evil, wicked hearts. They don’t need anything more. Not only is the proof there, but there is no other plausible explanation. Jesus is obviously the God-man, God’s promised Messiah and savior. That’s how our text ended, as we looked at it last week.
So, how do the Pharisees respond? In an almost perfectly fitting way, Matthew tells us that they respond by saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you” (v. 38). That is, after Jesus makes perfectly clear that the problem is not that they need any more proof, any more argument, any more evidence; the problem is their hearts. They ask for greater proof. They demand a sign.
Of course, then, this episode isn’t going to go well for the Pharisees, as we’ll see in the verses that follow. But I don’t think this text is given to us for a mere historical lesson concerning the hardness of heart that the Pharisees had in that moment of world history. Rather, I think that the Pharisees represent the natural response of mankind to the evidence and teaching about who Jesus is, which is why Paul can write years after this incident, “Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom.” Therefore, this morning, I want to craft the points of this sermon in terms of present-day realities about mankind, about Jesus, and about our need for the gospel. First, this story reminds us that:
This is one of the most obvious truths about this text in its own context. There was sufficient evidence and reason for the Pharisees to bow the knee to Christ, repenting of their sins and placing their faith in him. I mean, we don’t know exactly at what moment this text comes chronologically, but Jesus’ ministry is full of miraculous works from the get-go. He’s healing, casting out demons, multiplying fish and bread, turning water into wine, and raising the dead, and Matthew tells us in verse 38, “Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, ‘Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”
You would think that Jesus would just laugh. This would be like walking up to a man after he lifts a semi-truck over his head and saying, “Okay, but now show me a feat of strength.” And sure enough, Jesus doesn’t jump on board with their request. Rather, Matthew tells us that Jesus says, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign” (v. 39a).
But let’s ask a question here. Is this always the way Jesus responds to us asking for some kind of sign or confirmation? I’ll shorten the story because I’ve told it multiple times in multiple settings, but when Lili and I were praying about whether or not we should adopt a child, I said to the Lord, “I think you want us to adopt, but this means, as far as I understand it, that you’re saying that you want us to ask you for tens of thousands of dollars to pay for this, and you’ll provide. So, if that’s not what you’re saying, then stop me. And if it is what you’re saying, would you please give me some kind of sign of confirmation?” Then, I took about twenty steps and ran into a friend of mine who proceeded to tell me that he and his wife had just been praying that the Lord would give them an apartment or house to live in for free so that they could pay school debt, and out of nowhere a man had contacted them who owned an apartment complex, wanted them to do some work for him, and wanted to pay them with a free place to live. Of course, I then said to the Lord, “If you didn’t mean for that to be a sign of confirmation, then you need to make that clear because that’s how I’m taking it!”
And my guess is that many of you have similar stories. So, why is the Lord pleased to do that for us, but his response to the Pharisees is, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign”? I think the difference is that the Pharisees weren’t asking from a position of wanting to trust and obey the Lord. That is, when I asked the Lord to confirm his will in my life that day as I prayed about adopting, I asked thinking, “Lord, I just want to make sure I’m obeying you. That’s my heart. I want to obey. I just want to make sure that I’m indeed doing what is pleasing to you, what you’re asking me to do.” The Pharisees are not asking for a sign because they’re saying, “We believe, but help our unbelief.”
They refuse to believe. They have been given sufficient proof and sufficient evidence. This is their attempt to excuse their unbelief one more time. They ask Jesus to do one more thing because they want to be able to shift the blame for their unbelief from themselves to him. They want to be able to say, “See, he didn’t do enough for us to believe.” But Jesus isn’t going to jump at their demands. They were already without excuse. They didn’t need to see more.
There was already sufficient evidence and sufficient reason for them to believe. They were just refusing because of their hard and unrepentant hearts. Now, Paul takes this reality and tells us about mankind in general that this is a typical response from people when confronted with Jesus Christ. He says, “Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom.”
That is to say, mankind’s default response is to not believe what the Lord has made clear. Now, their response may look a bit different. As Paul says, “Jews may say, ‘Give me a sign to prove it,’ and Greeks may say, ‘It just seems foolish,’” but the default denial is across the board. And where this really has implications for us is in evangelizing our neighbors, co-workers, etc. In those situations, where you’re trying to share the gospel with your neighbor, and he says, “Well, if you can just answer this question for me,” and you are stumped, don’t walk away and think that you are incompetent to witness. Don’t sit at home and fail to evangelize because you’re afraid you’ll be asked for an answer or some proof you don’t know how to provide. In the end, those things are smokescreens. God has made himself known, he’s written the law on their hearts, and their problem is their moral rebellion against their Creator. Nothing else. There is sufficient reason and evidence for all of mankind to bow the knee to the Lord. As Paul says in Romans 1, all are “without excuse.” Second:
Interestingly, after saying, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given,” Jesus says, “Except …” That is, there is one sign, and the sign he mentions is the “sign of the prophet Jonah” (v. 39). What does he mean by the sign of the prophet Jonah? Well, Jesus expands in verse 40, saying, “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.”
In other words, what Jesus is saying is that there was sign already given that you should have paid attention to because it points to an amazing reality to come. That is, Jonah was a type or shadow of what would happen with Jesus. So, what happened with Jonah? Well, he was swallowed by a great fish so that he spent three days and three nights inside of that fish until he was vomited out so that he went and preached to the people of Nineveh as a man who had virtually come back life after being dead and buried for three days. Jesus, however, says that he will spend three days and three nights not in the belly of a fish but in the heart of the earth. That is, he will die, be buried, and then be raised from the dead on the third day. And it would not be that he came back to life from being virtually dead and buried, he would literally die, be buried, and rise from the dead back to life on the third day.
And that’s exactly what he did. Now, just for clarification, the Jews would have counted any part of a day as a whole day. So, the fact that Jesus died on a Friday, was buried that evening, and rose Sunday morning is not problematic. Each part of that day counts as a full day – a day and night. Jews count days the same way that professors count late work. Getting it in ten minutes late counts as a whole day late.
Jesus rose from the dead on that Easter Sunday morning. That was his greatest sign concerning his identity. If he had not risen, you would have every reason to doubt what he said about who he was because the Messiah had to live forever. But he did rise. Paul says that he rose, appeared to the twelve, appeared to Paul, appeared to more than five hundred people at one time, most of whom were still alive and could vouch for his appearing.
Jesus is therefore who he said he was. And he makes clear in our text that he’s greater than Jonah and greater than Solomon. That is, he didn’t just almost die but live; he actually did die and was raised. And he didn’t simply get great wisdom of God to reign over Israel; he is the wisdom of God who reigns over the entire cosmos. Also, keep in mind that he has already said that he’s greater than the temple and is Lord of the Sabbath. It’s hard to miss that Jesus understood clearly who he was as the God-man, God’s promised Messiah and king. But the resurrection made it unmistakably clear.
The problem with the Pharisees is that even the resurrection wouldn’t convince them. Jesus makes clear in his story of the rich man who died as an unbeliever and wanted someone to go back and tell his family the truth, that resurrection wouldn’t convince them. He said, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31). The unbelief in our day, on this side of the resurrection, is proof of that.
For this reason, Jesus notes that the people of Nineveh would condemn them on the day of judgment, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, but the Pharisees wouldn’t repent at the preaching of Jesus, who would rise from the dead and is greater than Jonah. And the Queen of the South would condemn them for she flocked to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and they refuse to hear the wisdom of Christ, who is infinitely greater than Solomon.
The resurrection is the greatest sign of Jesus’ identity, and there’s more than enough evidence that it happened. And there was a day, prior to Christ’s coming, dying, and being raised that the Lord would overlook a certain amount of ignorance. But now, he commands everyone to repent, trust in the crucified and risen Jesus, and follow him. Paul says in Acts 17:30-31, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Jesus has made clear his identity and his saving work by his resurrection, and all men everywhere are commanded to bow the knee to him by repenting and placing their faith in him; otherwise, they will face his wrath.
And this brings us to one final point, namely:
Jesus ends this section we’re looking at by using an odd illustration. He is showing what the generation that he is speaking to is like. We know that from his last line: “So also will it be with this generation” (v. 45). But here’s what he says before that. He says, “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first” (vv. 43-45).
This story takes on added meaning when we consider that Jesus just cast a demon out of a man according to verse 22. And what he’s saying is that if someone has a demon cast out, then that’s a good thing. However, there’s then an expectation that this person doesn’t simply remain empty, if you will, unwilling to receive the Spirit of God through faith in the Lord Jesus. If that’s the case, that’s like leaving the room of your body empty for that demon to come back and take up residence with his friends.
The point is, it’s insufficient to clean up your life and not bow the knee to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith. In fact, it’s more than insufficient. It’s dangerous. And the reason this was such a key warning in Jesus’ day is that many were seeing and experiencing the power of the kingdom. People were being healed, having demons cast out, even being brought back to life. However, there were a number who received healing, never placed their faith in Christ, and went to hell because they never became genuine followers of Christ. There were a number who were freed from demons, never placed their faith in Christ, and went to hell because they never became genuine followers of Christ.
And this reason this is a fitting warning for us is that as we go out and speak the gospel to our neighbors and the nations, we will frequently get a response from someone who feels conviction about their sin that they need to straighten up. They might say, “You’re right. I need to quit doing drugs. I need to love my spouse more. I need to be a better parent to my children. I need to restore the relationship with my parents. I need to work harder. I need to start going to church again.” And all those things are good, just like someone having a demon cast out of them is good. But it’s insufficient. Their great need is to repent, believe, and receive the Spirit of God, who changes hearts. Straightening up one’s life only will end in condemnation.
So, in our text, Jesus gives us a clear message. There is sufficient evidence and reason to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord. His clearest sign of his identity is in his resurrection. And responding to him by cleaning up one’s life is unacceptable and dangerous. We must actually be converted, repenting and believing in him.
But I want to end with great news. Jews demands signs and Greeks seek wisdom. Your neighbor may say, “There’s not enough proof” or “That just seems foolish” as you share the gospel with him. But some will hear in that gospel message you speak the call of God. And to them, they will see the wisdom of God and the power of God as you tell them that there is hope in trusting in the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they’ll be saved. As Paul says, “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.” Therefore, let us be faithful in preaching this message and watching Jesus show the power of the kingdom in this age as the Spirit brings people to saving life. Amen.