Open your Bibles to Matthew 12, please. Matthew 12, verse 38. I've entitled today's sermon, Dangerous Rejection. because what you see in this passage of scripture is a line of questioning, actually not even a line, just a single request that indicates that the the religious leaders at least, among the people who were by Jesus then seen as representative of that entire generation, asking a question that showed that even after everything they had seen and everything they had heard, they did not believe. And Jesus, I would say, As you've gone through the Gospel of Matthew thus far, I would dare even say uncharacteristically, Jesus is very strong in his response to them, as you'll see, saying things like, you know, people in past times that, you know, had really more danger in their lives than you guys did, they're going to rise up and be your judges, you know, and things like this, because Here was the Son of God, actually, visually right in front of them, and they were rejecting Him. And this rejection of the Lord is something that brings perilous, dangerous consequences even in this life. Obviously, with even more gravity, it brings the eternal consequence of judgment and punishment in hell and separation from God and His people forever. And that's a very serious thing. request that they make in the beginning of this passage that I'll read in a moment is actually more than once this happens. Even in the Gospel of Matthew itself, at least twice, you see the Pharisees coming to him and demanding that he show them a sign. And they were always doing this, demanding signs from Him. And what Jesus, of course, knowing everything, was able to do was to see right through the fact that this constant demanding of signs was really a revelation of their heart. It was a revelation of the fact that they didn't really believe. even though Jesus had preached the truth to them, which should have been easy for the religious leaders to understand, easy for the people of Judea, if they had grown up learning these things, to understand. And yet, Jesus is preaching and they're not putting it together. They're not believing it because it wasn't fitting in with their preconceived notion of what Messiah would be. They were hard-hearted towards God. Look, you know, the Lord had performed many signs in their sight, right? And here they are asking him to perform signs. And so even what they had seen, they rejected. They rejected what they heard. They rejected what they saw. And the culmination, not to get too far ahead of myself before I even read it, the culmination of the passages Jesus tells a sort of a parable, I guess you would say, about how when a demon is driven out of a man, he goes and he goes around searching for somewhere else to go. And when he doesn't find it, he goes back to where he came from and he takes seven of his friends with him. And so the guy who had originally had the demon cast out of him actually ends up like seven times worse off than when he started. That's the peril and the danger of rejecting the truth. It's like, you know, you end up really worse off, you know? And this generation that Jesus lived in had Him right there. So it was particularly harsh. It was particularly strong, the rebuke that Jesus gave them. Now, before I pray, fast forward 20 centuries, or 21 centuries. 20 centuries, really. And you look at today's Popular thinking. By popular, I can't scientifically define popular for you, but I would say maybe what is commonly presented in media, maybe what is commonly presented in academia, right? What is commonly presented in the public places of discourse and instruction in our society. More and more, God and his gospel are rejected, insulted, and banished. And I described some of this on Thursday night because I spent a little time just kind of trolling around, is that the right word? Trolling around on the internet a little bit, especially on, you're laughing because I'm probably not using the word right, I do that all the time. Anna's got her face buried in her hands. I'm clearly doing something very anti-Anna's generation here right now. But, okay, surfing around? Is that right? What do you do when you look at YouTube videos? I'm watching and I'm listening to people talk about God. And what I'm listening for is the popular culture and what I've determined and recognize, and kind of knew this already, and you did too, is in the West, in Western culture, and Western culture has been, from day one, a segment of existence where Christianity has had an extremely deep influence, mostly because of the Bible. Right? Obviously. But Western culture has begun to really just turn the page from Christianity, period. Christianity is viewed in Europe, which is kind of the cradle of Western culture, but certainly it's expanded way beyond that throughout the world. where Christianity has had some of its first fruits, all the way back to stories you can read in the book of Acts in the Bible. Macedonia, Greece, Rome, et cetera, right? You can go and you can see today that Christianity is largely viewed as an idea that's run its course. The modern view, philosophically, a lot of these things is that is that, generally speaking, men's ideas about life and about important things come along and they pass and then they go away. And in a lot of popular culture, as I've defined it for you, Christianity is viewed as one of those things. It's viewed as something that's run its course. Right? generations hear the gospel and generations go farther and farther away from accepting it, receiving it. And now it's become very cliche and popular to reject the existence of God and certainly the Christian message wholesale. That's something that people are going to pay for. It's going to be paid for in in life consequences. God's one who the Bible describes as in the book of Romans and Paul's very powerful and telling prologue to the book of Romans describes God as when people forget him, okay, he gives them up and leaves them to the natural consequences of the choices that they make. The consequences for rejecting the Bible, and rejecting God, and rejecting the Gospel, and rejecting the Lord are, in this life, dangerous and extreme. Then, of course, there is the eternal consequence, which is immeasurably more important than the in-life consequence. And the eternal consequence of rejecting the gospel is, not only do you live this life in darkness, but you spend eternity in darkness. And you spend eternity in the torment of hell. Now is the time for those who profess to know Christ to rise up and to be more dedicated, more devoted, more intense and more serious than ever about their commitment to it and expect, expect to be persecuted and rejected for it. That's my duty and it is my sincere belief to report to you and to say to you is that we're speeding towards a time where even in a modern culture like ours I can see that even just simply professing to be a believer in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is going to bring some really hard times into our lives. It's one of the reasons why church is so important. It's one of the reasons why church is so assaulted by the rudiments of men, by the natural thoughts of men, who will always find ways to replace church. But one of the purposes for church is for the edification and the strengthening of the body of Christ, which is what the church is. Right? So what I'm saying to you is that the global moves to reject Christianity, particularly in the West, there are places in the world where Christianity thrives, where maybe in past centuries it is not. But in the West, Christianity is starting to seem like something that is simply viewed as passé, an idea that had its purpose, had its course, but we understand more scientifically now, we understand more philosophically now, we understand more sociologically now, we understand more politically now, and so the purpose for Christianity is viewed as something temporary and not needed anymore. We live in those times and we know that the gospel of Christ is not just a philosophy that has come along. We know because we know Him. If you're in Christ, you know that you know Him. And I'm not giving you some psychological gobbledygook here. I'm telling you that, look, If you've come to the Lord, you know that you've experienced His Spirit coming into you, and you know that you've experienced that radical transformation, that new life. And, you know, Angie was singing that song today, and just the line when she sang it, and I've heard it so many times, but the line when she sang it just rocked me. While I was sitting there, she said, pardon for sin, and a peace that endureth, and Thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide." Wow! We're not people living in the Christian faith because it is something that works in the context of the modern world, and it's just like a belief system that we find comfortable. We have been reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ, and as the hymn writer says, we now enjoy His presence. with us, we ought to be overwhelmed and blown away by His presence. And I'm telling you, the time for Christians to learn to relish and cherish above anything else, God's presence in our lives, in our hearts, is now. You must walk closely with Him. Why do I stand in front of you and admonish and advocate that you devote yourself to fellowship? Because I know that that strengthens the Christian. And now is the time for the Christian to relish and cherish His dear presence which cheers us and guides us. Why do we try to assemble and gather for prayer? Why do we assemble and gather for Bible study? Why do we preach? Why do we go through these ancient words that the world wants to turn the page from? Why are we planning ourselves right on these pages, and making sure we understand them carefully, and believing them, and applying them to their lives? Because His presence is in us, and I can't deny something that's as real as the things that I can see right in front of my own face. Now is the time for Christians to get serious about the Word, and about prayer, and about fellowship, about church, about the Gospel, about their own faith, about being a blessing to others. We don't live in a world that's going to... Here's the bottom line. We don't live in a world that's going to allow it to be easy to be what we are for much longer. And let's face it, in America especially, forget about the rest of the West, in America especially, it's really easy to be what we are right now in this room. You feel like coming, you can. You don't feel like coming, you don't. You come, you sit, you listen, we smile, we relax, we go home. Hey, listen, that's great. But I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I believe I've got my eyes on it. And it's not just what I see trolling, surfing the internet. It's also, it's, sorry. It's also, it's also what I read in the Bible. In the last days, perilous times will come. etc. and so forth. Paul says to Timothy, men will be lovers of themselves, haters of God, backbiters, insolent, disobedient to parents, etc. and so forth. Read it in 1 Timothy chapter 3 for yourself. 2 Timothy chapter 3. So, now is the time. I want you to see, when we read this passage of Scripture, the intensity, the uncharacteristic intensity with which Jesus reacts to this one request that the Pharisees make. And I want you to see how dangerous it is to reject and cast aside Christ. And then you make sure you don't do it. Dear Father in heaven, as we read your word, I pray that these things would be clear to us. You'd help us to be just awake to righteousness. I pray that our faith would be strong and would grow. And I pray that you'd help us to be doers of your word and not hearers only. In Jesus' name, amen. Then, verse 38, did I say that? Matthew 12, verse 38, Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, Teacher, we want to see a sign from you. Now, before I read the rest of it, let me just point out that the fact that that sentence, I think, says, it uses the word answered, the idea of that they answered isn't so much that Jesus asked him a question, but that they're reacting, the scribes and Pharisees are, to what happened in the previous passage. So this is not a spot where, chronologically speaking, the Bible just radically jumps somewhere else. This all fits in with what we've been going over in the last couple of weeks in this passage. 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." Wow! That's quite a reaction from the Lord, right? I mean, going through the Gospel of Matthew, I don't know that there's been quite anything... I mean, there, Jesus has rebuked them. I mean, He just told them about blaspheming the Spirit and everything, but this is quite a reaction to a statement. 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." So that deals with the issue of the signs. But Jesus doesn't stop there. He goes on. The men of Nineveh, speaking of Jonah, right? The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation. Because everybody rises in the end. We sang about it this morning, right? 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, Queen of Sheba, 1 Kings chapter 10, we'll look at that passage if we have time in a minute. The Queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation. She's going to condemn it. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. She had heard about Solomon, but she didn't believe it. So she took herself up to Jerusalem, and you'll see when we go there, she heard about Solomon, and she heard about Solomon's God. And she wanted to know about the Lord, not just about Solomon. She wanted to know about Yahweh, who was the God who had done all these things for and through Solomon. So she went up and she asked him a bunch of hard questions about God, and Solomon answered them all. And she came to the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and when she heard it, she was persuaded. And indeed, a greater than Solomon is here! The interesting effect that that would have had on the Pharisees, because Solomon, of course, was revered in that society. That's pretty strong. The Ninevites? Ninevites was the capital of Assyria? Wicked, wicked empire in history. Wicked. But the people of Assyria repented when Jonah went and preached. And so, in the end, in the judgment, it's going to be good for those who repented. But for Jesus' generation, nope. The queen of Sheba, the Queen of the South, like the Ninevites, she's not a Jew, right? But she's going to make out okay on the Day of Judgment because when she heard about God from Solomon, she believed. That's the implication. Strong stuff. But he doesn't stop there! It's pretty incredible that Jesus went on. This is why Jesus grinds away more. Ready? 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. So he leaves. No, that's not what it says. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself. And they enter and they dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first." Who is he talking about? Next sentence. So shall it also be with this wicked generation. Three clear ramifications for rejecting Christ. Three clear ones. Right? Number one, no sign. You give one sign. And you have to understand that. Because Jesus had performed, He had just before performed two incredible signs. Right? He had healed the guy with the withered hand in the synagogue. Right? But he had done it on the Sabbath, and that's all they could see. Ah, Sabbath, working, not good. And Jesus is like, it's lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Come on! And He heals the guy. They don't even see it. It's like they don't even respond to the sign. Right? Then next time, there's a guy who's blind, and he can't speak, and he's possessed by a demon. And Jesus casts it out, and what's their response? It's Satan's power that's actually allowing Jesus to do that. So, they react to the one sign by saying, it's the Sabbath, he shouldn't be doing that. Forget about the fact that the guy can't even use his hand, and now he can. And then the other sign, oh, that must be Satan's power by which Jesus is doing that. Forget about the fact that the guy can see, no one's heard his voice before. And now he can talk for himself. Forget about that. And then immediately after that, when Jesus rebukes them for all that, what do they do? Show us a sign. Right? I can hear some of you chuckling. Good. You get it. I mean, it's nuts, isn't it? But it shows where their hearts were. And Jesus is so strong. in His response to the fact that they would say this thing, and then they would say it again over in chapter 16. They did the same thing. That Jesus responds by saying, no sign except the one of the prophet Jonah. Right? The people that Jonah preached to repented. The Queen of Sheba repented. These are Gentiles. They're going to judge you in the end because they repented at the preaching and you're rejecting it. And then number three, what? The last, the state that you will end up in because of your rejection. of the truth is going to be worse than the first. I'll explain that more when we get to it. That's what I believe Jesus is describing with that parable about the man and the demon and then being swept up and clean and then the seven more demons come back. He's trying to describe that generation as They were already a mess, but Jesus showed up, and Jesus is showing them the truth, which is, in a sense, straightening everything out. But then when Jesus left, they celebrated Jesus being gone, and so more evil, more demons came back, the ramifications of which can still today be seen in the rejection of Christ by the Jewish people that he first came to. their state of affairs is even farther gone than when it first happened. Strong judgment. Hey! Hey! God owes none of us, none of us, anything. God does not owe any of us again and again and again and again Shining light into our eyes. Revealing truth to those who don't care. Constantly wooing and inviting and calling and cajoling and working in the hearts of people to bring them out of darkness and into His marvelous light again and again and again and again. If life were fair, we'd all die and go to hell. But God is loving and gracious, and God does give people the opportunity to repent and to come to Him. But God has made one way, one, for that to happen. And that way must be treated with the respect and the care and the sacredness that it merits and deserves. The one way for people to come to God involved the willing sacrifice of His Son. The one way that coming to God is possible involves The brutal judgment passed upon the only holy one who ever lived. The one way to come to God involves the fact that when Jesus was on the cross, he was even compelled to cry out, Lama, Lama, Lama sabachthanai. My God, my God, ilo hai, ilo hai, lama sabachthanai. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because he's on the cross, and he senses that separation from the Father. And he's bearing all of the weight of the Father's wrath against him. That is the one way. That deserves attention. That deserves exaltation. That deserves prioritization from us. That deserves the supreme place in our minds and in our hearts and in our lives. Jesus came to these people and revealed himself through miracles and through preaching. And then they asked, show us a sign. May I say to you that this, before I start breaking it down, this generation that we're in is so much like this. You still believe in God in the 21st century? In light of science? In light of Better understandings of sociology? You actually still believe in God? Show me proof of this God!" And the skepticism rises to gleeful mockery frequently. And the pressure that is put on people who either believe or who might be inclined to believe, the pressure that is exerted becomes heavier and heavier and heavier. Show us a sign. Show me proof. Show me evidence of your God. Listen, for those of us who truly have the eyes of faith, and faith! We just sang, you know, we're looking for the day that will rise and our faith shall be my eyes. But while we're here, what? Everything we know is by faith. And what can we see with His Spirit in us? We see His creation. And we see in His creation the obvious, common sense conclusion that nothing could not produce everything. That's pretty common sense, right? We see the diversity in creation. We see the special place that man holds in creation. We see that man, above all of the living things that exist, has conscience and has the ability to reason and to rationalize. And we see that there is something distinct about man in relation to all the complexity and diversity of everything else in creation. And we can see in that the fingerprints of a Creator, of God. And yet, the world, still more vociferously than ever, says, show us a sign! just like this generation did. I'm telling you, and I don't know what expectations are of what you'll hear in church when you go. I mean, it's pretty straightforward for you. You just got to peek ahead a few verses in your Bible from last week and you know what's coming, right? That's how we do it. And that's how we're going to keep doing it. But I don't know if churches are just supposed to stand up and tell how God can make your life better and everything else. And I'm not necessarily mocking that because there are times we need to hear things like that, right? But look, this passage of Scripture is a sledgehammer. Isn't it? I mean, they come and say, show us a sign, right after he just showed them two really powerful signs. And Jesus just brings it out, man. Wham! Wham! Wham! And the result of Christ's sledgehammer was what? Chapter 16, they come back and they ask the same thing. Show us a sign. Let me say something to you about signs. This is what happens in the beginning of the passage. First of all, an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign. What? Why? Why is that evil and adulterous to seek after a sign? I mean, Jesus has just shown them signs. So are signs evil? No. I think it's the seeking, the demanding of a sign that Jesus, who in His sovereignty has revealed Himself to man, man turns around and demands that Jesus do more. There was something about the seeking after the sign that he responds to, right? Teacher, we want to see a sign from you. He does not respond by saying signs are evil. He responds by saying people are evil when they seek signs. God gave many of these miracles graciously. Still, they were making these demands, right? No sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah, which he then goes on to explain, in case there's any doubts about what that is. 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. And that's an obvious reference to what? His death, His burial, and His resurrection. And this is very consistent with other things that Jesus said and other things that the Apostle said. Paul summed up the Gospel in 1 Corinthians 15 by saying, according to the Scriptures, Christ died for our sins, was buried, and on the third day he rose from the dead. And a lot of times people will look at this passage of Scripture and it says that he's in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights and so that means it must mean literally 24, literally 72 hours he was there. And so they start arguing about did Jesus die on Friday? Did he die on a Thursday? Did he die on a Wednesday? And personally I believe all of that is a complete and utter total waste of time and is not the reason why Jesus is saying this. The reason, if you want to truly exposit the Scripture, The reason that Jesus is saying this is He's trying to show these people who are demanding signs from Him, is here's the only sign you're going to get. And by the way, may I say to you that the sign that He shows them, which is the sign of the prophet Jonah, that just like Jonah was in the great fish for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. May I say to you that that is not a sign that any of them ever saw, is it? That is the Jonah part of it. I mean, Jesus would die and then he would rise from the dead, but they had no personal acquaintance with Jonah or the Ninevites, because it happened hundreds of years before any of them lived. So, in order to recognize the value of that sign, they had to do what? Two things. Number one, they had to know the Word of God. They had to know the written Word of God, the prophet Jonah. And number two, they had to believe it. So, I mean, that's where it starts, is that you recognize that God's Word is God's Word, and you believe it, and you trust in it. So he says, a wicked and evil and adulterous generation seeks after Zion. How is it adulterous? How is it adulterous to seek after a sign? Well, what is adultery? In the physical sense, it is a form of sexual immorality whereby somebody goes outside of their marriage. Now, the relationship between God and his people is like a marriage, right? And that's described elsewhere in the Bible. An adulterous generation seeks after a sign because They're going outside of their relationship with God to look for something else. God called them. God gave them everything, including signs. God gave them signs like these healings, and they flatly, utterly rejected them, even ascribing glory to Satan for doing one of them. And then they say, show us a sign. That's spiritual adultery. God had just given them everything they needed to see, gives them everything they need to hear, and then they say what? Not enough. I want more. And they go outside that sovereignly, powerfully ordained relationship between God and people and start to make demands of Him. It's like a husband saying to a wife, Forgive the PG-13 moment here, but it's like a husband saying to a wife or a wife saying to a husband, our relationship is great, but I want something else. What you've given me, okay, but I want more. And so I'll be back. You think of that and it's repulsive and it's disgusting and it's offensive. And why do you think Jesus gives the response that he gives here? A wicked, evil, and adulterous generation seeks after a sign. Jesus and the apostles had come to see the Jewish world and the Gentile world in this respect. the Jewish people, whom Jesus went to exclusively, and then the apostles went to first, they were always demanding these signs, which, as Jesus says, is evil and adulterous. And then, when the apostles were raised up, first Peter and then Paul, and really all of them, they took the gospel to the Gentile world at the direction of Jesus. And what did they find there? They find what you still find in the Gentile world today. I've already described it today. They seek after earthly wisdom. If you can't explain to me and prove to me that this person rose from the dead, I'm not interested. If you can't prove to me, if you can't show me God so that I can see and hear him, I don't believe it. That's the modern philosophical wisdom of the world today. That delineation between the Jews seeking their signs and the Gentiles seeking their wisdom was at work in the lives of the Apostles and they confronted it just as we do today. Right? Look at it. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. There's other places you can go and acts and You see good examples of it, right? But if you see in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 18, for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. Right? That's still true today. Right? The gospel, that's the message of the cross, the gospel is foolishness to those who are dying, right? But to us who are being saved, it's the power of God. And, you know, every now and then someone will ask me, how come I can look at creation and easily, easily, intuitively deduce that it has to have been designed and made because nothing just by natural, unorchestrated, undriven processes would produce so many purposeful and diverse elements of existence that we could see. Right? I mean, you can't explain it any other way. The fingerprints of it are all over the place. How come you can so clearly see that and yet somebody else can look at the same thing and can't even comprehend how you could possibly be seeing that? And you've noticed that before, right? Probably in your own life. How can you look and so easily see God and other people can't? Well, a lot of it just boils down to faith versus non-faith. Receiving by faith the truth of the gospel versus the dangerous rejection of that truth. And that's what it says here. Gospel? Foolishness to those who are dying. Power of God to those of us who are being saved. Could not be any more different. Right? The gospel is either nonsense, or the gospel is mind-blowing power from God to deliver from judgment and death, and give the promise of eternal life. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign and Greeks seek after wisdom. We don't preach either one. We're not giving you signs, and we're not giving you complex wisdom. We're preaching to you, dear world, that God loves you and gave Jesus his Son for you, who died on the cross for you and rose from the dead. And we preach it, and we pray, and we trust that God, by His power, will, listen, open up the minds and the hearts of His elect. We preach Christ crucified. To the Jews, it's a stumbling block. Why? because they're seeking after signs and they're not being given one. So it's a stumbling block. And to the Greeks, foolishness, why? Because they're being given wisdom. You can go to Acts chapter 17 and you can't get any more Greek than Athens, right? So Paul goes to Athens and he goes up there, Mars Hill is it? He goes up to the Areopagus, is that how you say it? And he goes up there, and he begins to speak and to preach. He had already been reasoning with the Greeks in the marketplace every day, just stood there talking. And they said, what does this vain babbler wish to say? And so they grab him, and they take him up to the Areopagus, and they stand there, and they let him preach, and they listen to him. And because it says that the Athenians like to do nothing other but but sit and listen to new things, they want new ideas, new wisdom, all the time, you know? Greek culture is famous for that. And so, Paul starts to preach, and he starts to speak, and he starts right where they are. He doesn't start by telling them about, like, the law and Moses and all these things. He starts by talking about, you know, how he had seen all of their monuments, and he saw one, they did God for this, and a God for that, and a God for this, and a God for that. Then they had a monument that said, to the unknown God. And Paul says, you know what? That's the one I want to tell you about. The one that you don't know. Really, really clever stuff, you know? And he goes there, and he starts to preach to them, and he starts to tell them the truth, and as soon as he gets to what? He demonstrated his power by raising Jesus from the dead. Cut him off. Why? Because that's foolish. Right? So they rejected. It does mention a couple of people were persuaded, but for the most part, they rejected it. I'm sure I've said this before. I've never been there, but if you go to Greece, there's actually like a very old plaque that like, not old like ancient, but that like commemorates the spot where like this, I mean the ruins of this place exist. And you can see like the spot where most likely Paul would have made this speech, I think is very cool. But in any case, let's all go to Greece. Let's go now. So you have the Jews seeking signs. You have the Greeks seeking wisdom. You have God saying, I love you. I love you and I gave my son for you. Repent and believe and I will adopt you as my child. I will wipe away all your sins. I will justify you. I will reconcile you to myself and I will give you eternal life. I myself, the Holy Spirit, will come into you and seal you forever. No sign? Jew's not interested. No wisdom, Gentile world, not interested. But among Jews and Gentiles, as many as believe, they are saved exactly the same through the faith in the same message. Isn't it marvelous? Isn't it wonderful? And so you see why Jesus reacts so sharply when they say to Him, show us a sign. Right? Do you know every month, this really rocked me. I just thought of this that I'm going to say to you this morning. I try to put these things together in advance, but this maybe won't come out so clear because this just occurred to me moments before I came out, sitting in my office. but we do the Lord's Supper every month here. And I read from the different gospel accounts to describe what Jesus did for us. And the one that I lean on the most probably is the Gospel of Mark. I don't know why, but I just go there. Do you know that in the Gospel of Mark, I want to read it right. In the Gospel of Mark, in that passage I always read to you when I read it at the Lord's Supper, at one moment in Mark 15 31, Jesus is on the cross. He's been nailed to the cross and he's suffering on the cross and he's dying for their sins and he's dying for our sins. and it says, this will be familiar to you, it says, likewise the chief priests also, mocking among themselves with the scribes, listen to this, said, he saved others, himself he cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, what's the rest of it? That we may see and believe. Don't you just suspect that some of those religious leaders remembered these confrontations when they said to Jesus, show us a sign. And Jesus came back at them and said, an evil and adulterous generation seeks after signs. Now Jesus is on the cross. Hey, if you're the Messiah, Bring yourself down so we may see and believe. To the bitter end, they are defending their rights to see signs, to demand signs from this One who claims to be the Messiah. Jesus did not descend from the cross because Jesus fulfilled His Father's mission to die. And what's the great irony of it all? Three days later, he did give them the one sign that he promised that he would. Right? Isn't that incredible? Isn't that amazing? Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. I just thought of that this morning. I don't know why, but maybe the Lord just really wanted me to share it. Anyway, back in Matthew. One more thing about signs. You know the little encounter at the end of the Gospel of John? After Jesus had risen from the dead, He appeared to all of His disciples, and one of them wasn't there. Which one? See, bad things happen when you miss church, right? See, it's the Apostle. The Apostle, the disciple, Thomas, didn't show up for whatever they were doing that day, and Jesus showed up! You missed Jesus! That's okay, Jesus had plans for that, right? So Thomas eventually shows up and they tell him what happened. He's like, I'm not gonna believe it unless I see it, right? So eight days go by. We're told that eight days go by. And I don't know if there's any particular significance to eight days other than I can't remember stuff that I said yesterday. less, like you know, some of you know, like you'll come to me and you'll ask me things when you see me in church on Sunday and I'll usually tell you what, make sure you send me a text ahead of time because I don't remember anything that anybody says to me in church on Sunday. Right? Jesus comes back eight days later. Eight days. Now, Jesus wasn't even there when Thomas said, I'm not going to believe unless I see. Then eight days later, Jesus shows up and literally just shows up. He doesn't walk in the door. Right? He just, all of a sudden, I mean, that's a real, you know, way to make a point with your friends. It's just, you don't even come in through the door, through the window, nothing. You just suddenly appear in the room. So, so Jesus appears in the room, right? And he goes straight to Thomas. straight to him and says what? Look at my hands, look at my feet, put your hand to my side. And you know, it's a beautiful one. It gets you choked up, you know, when you think about Thomas's reaction. My Lord and my God. And it's a wonderful reconciliation with Thomas and Jesus, but that's not the really powerful point. The powerful point is what he says next, right? You've seen and you've believed. Blessed are they who do not see and yet believe. Do you see why Jesus must, like when He responds in Matthew 12 so strongly, do you see why? The whole thing about our being in a relationship with God is based on faith. Faith. Faith is, for by grace you have been saved through faith and not of yourselves, it's the gift of God. Faith is a gift from God. been justified by faith. God is just and the justifier of him who has faith in Christ Jesus. And they come and they say, show us a sign. I mean, that remark, show us a sign, was so off from what everything that Jesus was about. And that's why the strong reaction. But now as I pointed out to you, I'm back in Matthew 12, Jesus did not stop there, right? after he talks about Jonah, he makes another point about the story of Jonah. Even little kids know the story of Jonah because there's little pictures, cartoon depictions of Jonah inside the fish and everything. So everybody knows that aspect of the story. But the real point of the story is that God was showing mercy and compassion upon this horrible, wicked place, indwelt by some of the most violent, just nasty, insidious creatures that have ever existed. The way the Assyrian Empire conquered and destroyed societies. I mean, they're known in history to have conquered peoples and completely displaced peoples and split them up and purposely replanted them in foreign lands and put more people and more people, purposely would intermix different nations of peoples that they conquered for the purpose of erasing completely the distinctiveness of those nationalities. That's where the Samaritans came from. Right? So Jonah's told, go preach up there. And Jonah does what he runs. Jonah doesn't want to go to preach the Ninevites. Jonah wants God to wipe out the Ninevites. Right? So, thus the fish. grabs him up, holds on to him for three days and three nights, and spits him up on the shore. Right? That's the sign. That's the sign of the Holy Messiah. Right? But the rest of the story, which Jesus makes reference to here, is what? He goes into Nineveh and he preaches, and they don sackcloth and ashes. They repent! And their repentance staves off judgment for 100 years, about. They, of course, didn't stick with their repentance. They ended up being judged, and another prophet got to go and preach to them, and God did destroy them. That prophet was, someone knows, begins with an N, an A, an AH. Right? Nahum. Yeah, you got it. Nahum. I knew you were going to say that. That's exactly right. As I like to say, Nahum got to preach the message that Jonah wanted to. Right? But Jesus says here, to these people, what? The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. They repented at what? The preaching of Jonah. Jonah preached to them, just as Jesus preached. You're saying, show me a sign. First of all, I've shown you signs. Second of all, I have preached, and preached, and preached, and preached, and you're not listening to a word that I've said. When the Ninevites rise up, that's going to be a generation of people that listened when God spoke to them through preaching. Preaching. This is why preaching is still important today. Preaching has been, always has been, and always will be the most important thing that God's servants do in this world. Preaching is the means by which salvation comes about. Because the gospel is preached, people hear it, people repent and believe it, and they become saved. Jesus dispatched His followers to preach. We are to preach. And Jesus preached. And when Jesus preached, they said, show us a sign. And so Jesus said, the Ninevites are going to judge you, because when Jonah preached to them, they repented. Not only that, who else? The Queen of the South, the Queen of Sheba, she's going to judge you too. Listen, let's not miss the little aside here. We're going to be judged. I said this last week, too. Don't live your life another second as if there is no judgment that you are accountable to. As a Christian, you are accountable to a different judgment than the rest of the world, but you are still accountable for what you do with your life. As the Word said last week, every idle word that men may speak, it will give an account thereof in the day of judgment. Right? So, just a little aside there, because Jesus uses the concept of future judgment to make his illustration here. Turn to 1 Kings chapter 10, just for a short time, but you might not be as familiar with this story if you're not in the Old Testament too much. I know in our preaching we emphasize New Testament, but not because we think it's more important. Kings chapter 10 and verse 1. This is what Jesus is referring to. Now, when the queen of Sheba heard the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, Right? In other words, when the Queen of the South, when the Queen of Sheba, heard about Solomon and everything that the Lord, L-O-R-D, capital letters, it's the name of God, Yahweh, which is used in the biblical literature, not just to name God, but also to distinguish Him from the false gods that other peoples in other nations, like the Queen of Sheba, probably believed in. Okay? So she heard about Yahweh, this God of the Jews. And everything that God, this God Yahweh, had done through Solomon and in Solomon. So she came to Him to test Him with hard questions. And the clear implications were, these were questions about Yahweh. Because she was not familiar with Yahweh. But she was familiar with all of the other gods and the gods of other people. But she wanted to know about this God. and what he had done through Solomon. She came to him with a very great retinue. In other words, she wasn't traveling alone, and she wasn't traveling on the cheap. This is a great caravan that comes. Camels, spices, very much gold, precious stones, came to Solomon. She spoke with him about all that was in her heart. So Solomon answered all her questions. There was nothing so difficult for the king that he could not explain it to her. And when the queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his servants, the service of his waiters and their apparel, his cupbearers, his entryway by which he went up into the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her. She was brought to humility. God resists the proud, but His grace is with the humble. Then she said to the king, it was true, true report which I heard in my own land about your words and your wisdom. However, I did not believe the words until I came and saw with my own eyes. And indeed, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity exceed the fame of which I heard. Happy are your men and happy are these your servants who stand continually before you to hear your wisdom. Now listen, verse nine, ready? Blessed be the Lord your God. L-O-R-D, capital letters. Blessed be Yahweh your God, who delighted in you, setting you on the throne of Israel because Yahweh has loved Israel forever. Therefore he made you king to do justice and righteousness. So she comes and she has all these questions and Solomon answers all her questions and she says, show me a sign. Can you see how stupid that would have been? I mean, she was like noticing the clothes that the servants were wearing. I mean, the guy who carries the dirty dishes out of the dining room, look at how he's dressed. I mean, this is like, all this is like blowing our way. And she's asking all these questions, hard questions, everything that was on her heart. And Solomon has answers for it all. Show me a sign. Can you show me a sign? Can't you see what God has done here? Didn't you see the guy with the withered hand? Didn't you see the guy who couldn't see and couldn't speak and had a demon in him? What are you talking about, show me a sign? You want to, you want to, well, listen, did you hear anything that I said? No. Her response was blessed be Yahweh of Israel. Who's raised you up to do this. Shouldn't that have been the Pharisees response after they saw the withered hand healed. And after they saw the guy, I mean, not, not, Oh, it's the Sabbath, not, Oh, Satan must be no blessed be our God. We don't totally understand maybe who this is, but blessed be our God! Look at what He has done! We need to hear more! We need to know more! No. Show me a sign. And I'm telling you, this world that we live in now is very much like this. You can find example after example, even sitting in this room right now, of people who were one thing before they came to Christ and are something entirely different now. And you can look in your own mirror and you probably know. You know where you were, or you know where you were headed before you knew Christ, and you've come to Christ, and if you're walking closely with Him, you know the effect that He has had on your life. You know how He's intervened in your life. You know how He's blessed you. You know how He's given you understanding. You know how He's given you courage. You know how He's built up your faith. In some cases, you know how He's healed you. You know how He's provided for you. You can show that to people in the world today, and they'll still say, I want proof. Show me a sign. We've come to preach Christ to the world. And at that preaching, people will either stand or fall. And that's it. We have the gospel of Christ. And we have nothing else. It's all we have. It's all we have to offer. Yes, we should be good. We should bless. We should help the poor, the needy, people in difficult situations. We should help. But at the end of the day, what we have for this world is nothing more than what we received ourselves. The gospel of Christ, that message which is preached. And this world is increasingly, as I said, turning the page. It was an idea that served a purpose. Don't need it anymore. Not us. The heels get dug in. You get serious about prayer, about doctrine, and about fellowship. Don't expect it to remain easy. I'm warning you. I'm begging you. Lastly, in Matthew chapter 12, in the passage we're in, then there's this illustration, when an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through the dry places seeking rest and finds none. The idea is that something has happened that has driven the unclean spirit away. I believe there are different views about this passage, but I think that the most important thing to understand about what Jesus is saying here is the last sentence. So it shall also be with this wicked generation. You read this passage knowing that Jesus is using it to describe the generation that He's speaking to. He's not talking about the science of demonology or anything like that. He's using an illustration to describe this generation that He's not done operating yet. So an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes to the dry places seeking rest, finds them, then he says, I'll return to my house from which I came. When he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order, right? Because he was driven out. Listen, when the effects and the presence of Jesus came into that generation and came into that society, there were all these healings going on. John the Baptist had been baptizing all these people, confessing their sins. People were starting to wake up. You know? I mean, people were starting to wake up to the fact that God was perhaps beginning to fulfill His promises here, right? That's kind of like the effect of Christ's presence there among them was like driving the wickedness of spirit out of them. But then they rejected Him. And so that evil spirit that for a season was driven away, it came back. And it came back with a vengeance. And it came back with seven more. so that the state of affairs after was even worse than it was before. May I say to you that the Jewish people that Jesus came to, with the exception of a remnant always, but by and large rejected Jesus as their Messiah, and within less than four decades, After Christ ascended back to heaven, Jerusalem and the temple were completely destroyed. And throughout the history of the centuries since then, you can trace the suffering of this people. Now God, His mercy and grace be praised, has a future for this people. That's another subject for another day. God is not done. God will redeem and elect from Israel in the end. And I still believe there's relevance to, I will bless him who blesses you, curse him who curses you, as God said to Abraham. But I think what you can see is, in this generation, Jesus came to that generation and he spoke with them. and light began to drive the darkness out, but then after Jesus was gone, they went right back to where they were, and the state of their affairs ended up way worse than it was. If you think it was bad when the Romans occupied them and Herod was in charge, or Pontius Pilate was in charge, forget about it when Vespasian was the emperor, and sent Titus and just said, enough, every stone, tear it down. Look at the state of it now. Even now, when you see them restored as a nation, you still see a monument to a false god sitting right where the temple used to sit. The big gold dome, right? Sitting on Mount Moriah, where Abraham took Isaac. From whence comes the great statement, Abraham believed God and was credited with righteousness. the peril, the outright dangerousness of rejecting the truth. Number one, they sought a sign even though they had already been shown many things. Don't you remember when Jesus fed the 5,000 and then crossed the water and they caught up with him the next day? And Jesus says what? You're not coming here because you believe the signs. You're just coming here because of your belly, because you're hungry. So Jesus gave them signs and they rejected the signs that he gave. That's why they asked for more. Number one, no sign was going to be given except the sign of the prophet Jonah and that's still true. By faith we understand that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead and that is it and that is enough. Number two, the message was preached. It was preached to the Ninevites and they responded. It was preached to the Queen of Sheba and they responded. It was preached to them and they rejected it. And so number three, having received the very presence of Jesus himself, they end up worse off than when they even began. Do you see the danger of rejecting the truth of the gospel? Do you see it? Now listen, how can I make application of that in my own life as a Christian? Get serious about your walk with God, about your reading of your Bible, about your time spent in prayer, about your commitment to your church, about your fellowship with one another. Humble yourself. Put spiritual matters first in your life. We're not people who reject Christ. But we are people who can be vulnerable because we still occupy flesh. We are people who can be susceptible to pushing down the importance of our daily walk with Christ in favor of the lure of all of the things that we used to walk in before we knew him. Do you understand that? I am calling us today not only to see the danger of rejecting Christ for those who don't know him, but the danger of suppressing maybe the importance of Christ in our own lives. That's how you can practically apply this in your own life. Examine yourself. Now is not the time to be playing games with this stuff. I'm telling you for the fourth time today, I believe with all my heart that even here in America, the time is coming where it's not going to be easy to do what you're doing right now. If you see that coming, the response is not to roll up your sleeves and fight. The response is to draw near to God, who will draw near to you. The response is to get on fire for the Lord. The response, the correct response, is to be serious about everything that is an aspect of your relationship with God and your walk with Him in this life. Stand up with me and let's close in prayer. Our Father in heaven, thank you for this time that we've had together here today. Help us, Lord, to treat with urgency and to approach with humility everything that you have ordained for Christians in this life. Help us to love your word and to meditate on your word. Help us to be serious, fervent, and diligent in prayer. Help us to be diligent and giving in fellowship, encouraging one another as we see your day approaching. Help us to be strong in the face of a culture that rejects you, remembering that we do not wrestle with flesh and blood. So the people are not our enemies and help us to not treat them like that. But help us to be strong and steadfast and immovable in the faith. And be a light and a witness to each other and to those who are outside. For your glory, we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.