The Year of our Lord, Jesus Christ
March 29, 2022
Matthew 16:4
“A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.”
The Lord laid it on the line, did He not. Those who are sign seekers, desiring a sign in order to believe that Jesus is all that He said was, should beware. Not that there is not a sign, but that they might believe the sign. The one and only sign that Jesus gives is the sign of Jonah. As Jonah was in the whale’s belly for three days and three nights, so too would Jesus be in the grave for three days and three nights.
This was not the only time the Lord spoke about this sign. In Matthew 12 the Lord taught the same to a different audience. There He added: “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:40)
The Lord’s resurrection is the sign that He is the Messiah, the Lamb of God, the Savior of the world, the sacrifice for sins, on and on the list goes. This is the only sign. Some believe, some reject, and some others still request, yea demand, another sign. Jesus said the generation that seeks any spiritual sign other than that is wicked and unfaithful.
Many untold thousands, yea millions, perhaps billions, reject the resurrection just as they reject the story of Jonah. After all, they didn’t see it, they can’t prove it, they can’t recreate it, therefore they can’t accept it. To believe the sign of the Lord takes faith. Faith is a gift of God as given by the Holy Spirit. It is having confidence in that which cannot be seen or proven with the eye of flesh, but is believed on with a supernatural knowing in the soul. Faith is belief in the unseen. It is the knowledge of something that is real without the benefit of proof. Many blame Christians for simply believing something on “blind faith.” What other type of faith is there? For if something can be seen, handled, or proven it is no longer by faith it is by sight.
The Christian life is a life of faith and that faith rests on the person of the Lord Jesus proven by one and only one sign, the sign of Jonah. In short, the sign is the resurrection Christ.
Until next time,
William T. Howe, Ph.D.
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