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Manual for life - The sign of Jonah
you can hear a MP3 recording of sermon here
Matthew 12:38-50
Sunday, 17th February, 2013

Three separate sayings that may well have been spoken at different times. Jesus, as the rabbi, would have been careful to rehearse his saying regularly as there was no radio, TV or even papers to spread the message. Each town and village would get some of the teaching. The disciples would have heard it often enough to quote it verbatim.  But Matthew brings together these three saying.

The first is our headliner The sign of Jonah.

The second is about our inability to save ourselves.

The third is about the revolutionary values of the Kingdom of God.

 

It all starts with  what seems a reasonable request “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”

But what we discovered last week is that even when faced with evidence of the kingship of Jesus, the Pharisees rejected the evidence and accused Jesus of being evil. So wanting miracles to authenticate our message is not new. There are Christians who rush to every reported spiritual event, whether it was healing services, people falling over, people laughing in the spirit or what. We want to have more proof  so that faith is less faith and more entertainment. But Jesus is on their case and ours immediately.  At the heart of their thinking was not wanting to believe. If you keep asking long enough, looking long enough, then you will find a reason not to believe. God is working miracles in our community. We praise the Lord for them and where prayers have not been answered we pray on until God’s answer is clear.

 

When God heals, we do not analyse the detail too closely because in doing so we become obsessed with the mechanism not the healer.  Our atheist friends can explain away miracles and therefore dismiss God. We, however, see the both in the unexpected and the skill of doctors, God is about the business of healing.

So Jesus sees through them. They are wicked because they wont excuses not to believe, they are adulterous because they would like godliness without faith in God. Jesus then uses a familiar story, that of Jonah, to prophetically announce that he would die and rise again three days later.  That is a miraculous sign that is coming. Will they believe Jesus then, No! They denied the facts and still do.  The Babylonians repented and turned to God but the Pharisees would not repent!

 

Then he refers to the Queen of the South which is not a reference to a Scottish Football team but to the Queen of Sheba.  Jonah is one o the minor prophets and has a book all about him that you can read.  The Queen of Sheba is found in 1Kings 10:1-13, page 348 in the church Bibles.  The ends of the earth is though to be Yemen. Hollywood’s version turns it all into a grand romance, but the facts are that hearing of Solomon’s wisdom, which he describes as the fear of the Lord being the beginning of wisdom,  she travels to see and listen and learn about this great God whom Solomon is blessed with wisdom from. The Pharisees had travelled from Jerusalem to Nazareth at most. Yet Jesus is the source of Solomon’s wisdom and he is talking to them but hat is not enough.

So we have two examples here one of a city turning from sin because of the sign of Jonah. The second of a queen who sought out wisdom from God.

 

What is missing in our community are those two things. We lack the repentance and we lack the seeking after the truth. So we don’t even want to clean the house out, we hang on to the bondage of sin, the excuses that God does not really love me or listen to me. We prefer the risk of judgement in the face of grace because we are arrogant enough to think we don’t need saving, our life isn’t that bad. We don’t look for truth, we explore shallow lies about science being the answer to our knowledge, and we swallow the philosophy of the Metro and the BBC, Disney and every other media mogul that informs our casual seeking after truth. 

 

Jesus calls us to turn from our own ways and follow him. To recognise that our ways are wrong and he is the way and the truth and the life.

 

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.”

 

The second saying is a comment on the emptiness of religion without Jesus. Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and much of so-called Christianity is good at telling to clean the house, make yourself acceptable to God, whether by Good works or Good Karma or achieving enlightenment. It may well be a comment following up the healing we spoke of last week. Jesus has broken into the strong man’s house and rescued the prisoners. He has driven out the demon, but if the healed man simply puts his house in order, he is in danger. You and I are in a war between heaven and the forces of the Devil whether we like it or not.  And we cannot just make ourselves clean and tidy and think we are safe. We need to invite the Holy Spirit into our hearts and fill us so that the evil spirit does not return to find it empty and clean.  Castles cannot be impregnable. Few are taken by frontal attack, some by siege. Most are most vulnerable to an insider who opens the door and lets the enemy in. It is the enemy within that catches us out. We think we can protect ourselves from the evil around us; we are vulnerable to the evil within. Jesus’ generation is just like our generation,  we think we are evolving upwards and yet the evidence is we are worse off than we were. We are richer but it brings no peace, we are healthier and live longer but we do not know what to live for. This saying is pretty grim. Jesus was not in the business of saying what pleases us and makes us feel good, he wants to transform our lives. So we need to face up to the fact that without him we are vulnerable to even demon possession.  But the solution is not rocket science, it is opening ourselves to God asking for Jesus to be our Saviour, to ask the Holy Spirit to enter to heal and to enable us to resist the devil. There is a promise in James 4 but let me read it in context:

4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble.”7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

It is not just resisting the devil, we must draw near to God otherwise we are at risk.

Then we have this scene as Jesus’ family arrives to see him.

This is a shocking scene even to our sensitivities. Family is a key unit in society and all attempts to change that have failed. But society keeps on trying!

God’s way is always better, At the core of a godly society is marriage as defined by Genesis 2:23-25.

 

23 The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”

24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

 

I hope you wrote to your MP recently over the government’s change in its definition of marriage. Nick Hurd abstained and John Randall voted against the idea of same sex marriage. John Randall deserves thanks for voting against the government even though he is the Chief Whip. But Parliament voting overwhelmingly for change. We must pray that in the committee stages some semblance of sanity returns and at least we will be free to practice our beliefs rather than forced to choose between government and God.

 

Based on godly marriage, the family is the core unit of society, the primary responsibility for its members care housing and feeding, the education and social, emotional and spiritual development of children.

Still, we must return to the family of Jesus as they are waiting to speak to Jesus.

 

First note that Jesus has brothers and sisters. The Roman Catholic Church because the deify Mary, insists that Mary had no other children. Here they argue that brothers and sisters mean cousins.  While that is possible, Matthew 1:25 is quite definite that Joseph and Mary had sex after the birth of Jesus. Then there is no mention of Joseph. After the incident in the temple he is not mentioned and the assumption is that he died which makes Jesus going off to be a rabbi a matter of question.

 

So Jesus, having left the family and gone off to be a rabbi, now upsets our sensitivities further by being somewhat dismissive of his family.

It is in the context of what we have just read that we see what Jesus is doing. His authority has been questioned and he is accused of being of the Devil, Now the Pharisees are demanding more proof , a sign, he has told a very pointed story about the impossibility and risk of DIY religion, so he wants to make a very big point about the Kingdom. It is not about rules and evidence, it is about relationship. In the kingdom whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.  The evidence is that the family thought Jesus had gone off his rocker but his mother is at the cross and after his death and resurrection we find James the brother of Jesus among the disciples, taking a lead in the church. So the offensiveness of this situation was not taken seriously by the family.

 

The point is that the Kingdom is about a relationship with God. When we are taught by Jesus to say “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” he is expecting us to seek his will and do it in our own lives. Our relationship with God is based on obedience. God’s will is not monstrous demands, it enables us to live at its best. We were created by God and his will is what we are designed to do.  

 

But we fail and fail again. Our situation is hopeless without Christ.  This brings us back to Jonah . Unless we turn around and seek forgiveness, there is no hope. Our only hope rests in Christ alone. Because he always did the will of his Father we discover grace unexpected and unasked for. God in his mercy made a way for us to live in a restored relationship with him by sending his Son, Jesus, to die on a cross for our sins. Our sins are atoned for. God expresses himself in rescuing us from death at the greatest cost. Without the Holy Spirit being poured into our hearts and minds we cannot keep the house clean. Because of our bent towards evil, we still fail and need to turn away again and again and seek forgiveness, discovering a God who never gives up on us. He returns to fill our lives, if we allow him and enables us to reflect his glory in our lives producing love, joy, peace, endurance and self-control. We need to pursue the wisdom of Jesus as fanatically as the queen of Sheba because a greater than Solomon is here, Jesus the wisdom of God in live and salvation. Seek him and be found in him. All other ways are empty at best and  liable to be filled with evil.

 

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