Intro: Currently with our church, I am teaching through Matthew’s gospel. This Sunday we are up to verses 38-42 of Matthew 12. This is the passage, “The Sign of Jonah,” that Christ delivers to unbelieving Pharisees and others as he continues His path to Calvary:

Text:

³⁸ Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” ³⁹ But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. ⁴⁰ 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. ⁴¹ The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. ⁴² The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. (Mt 12:38-42 ESV)

The Matter at Hand: Is the Christian faith a call to the abnegation of reason? Absolutely not! On the contrary, it is rooted in the historical realities easily verified empirically by the intellectually honest. The list is long of skeptics who set out to disprove Christianity and ended up becoming stalwart defenders: C.S. Lewis, Lee Stroebel, the apostle Paul, Doubting Thomas, J. Warner Wallace, Josh McDowell, et al.

Encouragement: Jesus predicted His betrayal, arrest, crucifixion, three days in the tomb, and his resurrection. World history has never gotten over it, and never will. Because all of the promises of God find their ‘Yes’ and ‘Amen’ in Him, as the NT makes clear (2 Corinthians 1:20). There’s a reason our calendars’ fixed point of reference is Christ: B.C. (before Christ) and anno Domini (in the year of our Lord). Christianity is the true, historical, redeeming reality of God taking on flesh and ransoming a people for Himself. It is theology made visible. We don’t have to check our minds to believe Christianity; we have to check our pride. Christ refences Jonah’s historicity as a way of teaching the people: the greater Jonah had come. Just as Jonah was the prophet and truth-teller to Nineveh (present-day Iraq), Christ was and is the truth-teller to all who will listen. Churchill wrote that the truth was such a valuable thing that it had to be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies. Exactly.

Because the veracity of the Christian worldview and of the God-man are undefeatable, those who refuse truth reveal themselves as the enemies of all righteousness.

If you sometimes struggle with wondering, “Lord, will the wicked always prosper and the righteous always suffer mockery in this world?” the answers involve the reality that there’s always the cross before the crown. God will set everything to rights, and all will be revealed. Trust the Lord, do good even unto His enemies, and fight the good fight, knowing that this is God’s world, and we all will answer. Press on.