SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 16, verses 1 through 4.
SPEAKER_00: And the Pharisees and Sadducees came and detest him, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They asked him to show them a sign from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered them, When it is evening, you say, It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.
SPEAKER_00: In the morning, it'll be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.
SPEAKER_00: You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.
SPEAKER_00: An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: So he left them and departed.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: We are starting now in Matthew 16.
SPEAKER_00: This is about the halfway point of Matthew's Gospel.
SPEAKER_00: It's not necessarily the center of it as far as word count goes, but it's the center of Matthew's Gospel as far as the theme goes.
SPEAKER_00: So Matthew 16 kind of functions like the continental divide of the Gospel of Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did the Sermon on the Mountain, Matthew 5 through 7, and then Matthew 8 and 9 start the miracles, which keep going through Matthew 10, where he sends out his disciples, Matthew 11, Matthew 12 is healing on the Sabbath, and the men with withered hands.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, the cumulative effect of these miracles is that the scribes and Pharisees turned against Jesus and purposed to put him to death.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus switches his open teaching to parables in Matthew 13, but continues the miracles through Matthew 13, 14, and even 15.
SPEAKER_00: Our text last week, he fed the 4,000.
SPEAKER_00: Before that, he had fed the 5,000.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of Matthew 15, he was healing everybody around the Sea of Galilee on both the Gentile and the Jewish side, miracle after miracle after miracle.
SPEAKER_00: Now Matthew 16 here, you have this kind of division.
SPEAKER_00: You have two instances in Matthew 16 of the most radical forms of unbelief imaginable.
SPEAKER_00: And then you have two wonderful pictures of the precious belief, saving faith.
SPEAKER_00: You see the worst unbelief and the highest mark of saving faith.
SPEAKER_00: They're both paired in Matthew 16.
SPEAKER_00: And then after Matthew 16, you kind of feel this gravitational pull.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is going to be really drugged by his own momentum, is going to take him from the Sea of Galilee up to the Mount of Transfiguration and then all the way down to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening in Matthew 16.
SPEAKER_00: It's the continental divide.
SPEAKER_00: We were building this point, and from this point forward, Matthew 16, it's just kind of catapulting us to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: The passage this morning we read is one of those pictures of the destructive power of unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to talk about unbelief this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief can ruin a person's life.
SPEAKER_00: There's a corrosive power to unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: It can destroy a heart.
SPEAKER_00: It robs you of joy.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief can make a person bitter and antagonistic.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief wears down in a person's mind.
SPEAKER_00: It corrupts their ability to think logically or to even use reason.
SPEAKER_00: The kind of person who's given over to unbelief becomes belligerent, wicked, depressed, moping around.
SPEAKER_00: That's because unbelief roots itself into this antagonism against God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, unbelief is different than you know somebody who comes across the gospel for the first time and might ask some questions about it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you're first confronted with the gospel, you might have some questions about it, you don't understand what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: That's just being inquisitive.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus commends the person who hears about the gospel and counts the cost.
SPEAKER_00: So the Bible never condemns people for asking questions, it never condemns people for weighing the benefits of following the Lord and tallying up your own sin and seeing if you're worthy to repent of it.
SPEAKER_00: That's not unbelief, that's just due diligence.
SPEAKER_00: But at some point, that kind of due diligence and that kind of inquisitive mind gives over to unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: The person who goes from hearing the gospel for the first time and just having a few questions about it to learning more about it, eventually they reach a point of decision where they're going to come to faith or they're going to keep fighting against the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where it becomes unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: And when the unbelief takes root in the heart, it chokes out any kind of joy.
SPEAKER_00: It chokes out any kind of happiness.
SPEAKER_00: It chokes out the ability to even think clearly.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we go any further, I do just want to mention the opposite of unbelief is not blind faith.
SPEAKER_00: So don't pit those two against each other.
SPEAKER_00: It's not as if the Bible gives you two options: either be antagonistic and have unbelief, or just blindly accept whatever the Bible says and leap without looking, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: The opposite of unbelief is saving faith.
SPEAKER_00: Not blind faith, but saving faith.
SPEAKER_00: And as you think through what unbelief is, you see how saving faith is its opposite.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief is a resistance to God.
SPEAKER_00: Saving faith is an acceptance.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief casts doubt on the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Saving faith doesn't just blindly accept the word of God, but saving faith submits itself to the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about blindly accepting it, it's about submission.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief is a rebellion against God.
SPEAKER_00: Saving faith is a humbling before God.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief elevates itself and says, I am the judge of right and wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Saving faith humbles itself and says, God teach me how to live.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief says any kind of morality or goodness that is virtuous is found in me.
SPEAKER_00: Saving faith says any kind of virtue or morality that's in me is not my own, but is given to me by Christ as a free gift.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief resists God, saving faith submits to God.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens when a person is first confronted with the gospel, if they give in to unbelief, they start to hold tighter to their own sin, they start to see their own identity in their sin.
SPEAKER_00: They become so associated with their sin they don't want to let it go.
SPEAKER_00: And that's just not sexual, sexually immoral sin, but that's also just works righteousness and moralism, where the person is confronted with the idea that there's nothing good in them.
SPEAKER_00: And they refuse to accept that.
SPEAKER_00: They believe that they have the discernment between right and wrong, good and evil, that they are virtuous, and so they refuse to submit themselves to the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That becomes unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: And unbelief becomes a shield to defend their own sin, to defend their own so-called happiness.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, if you know people that give into this kind of unbelief, you recognize that it never produces happiness.
SPEAKER_00: Living that kind of unbelief for months or years or decades makes the person depressed and miserable.
SPEAKER_00: The more they search for happiness in their sin, the less they find it, the worse off they are.
SPEAKER_00: As Jesus says, their second condition is worse than their first.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps you have known people like that.
SPEAKER_00: I know I have.
SPEAKER_00: People that when they were around the church, they had a joy in their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: When they were around the church, they they had friends, they had relationships with people, they knew people, people knew them, they had some kind of apparent relationship with the God of heaven and earth, and that seemed to give them a sense of joy.
SPEAKER_00: And then they give into unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: And they cut themselves off from the church and from the fellowship of the saints, and they end up depressed, they end up lonely, they end up isolated.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, for us, it seems obvious.
SPEAKER_00: You want to tap the person on the shoulder and say, Do you recognize that when you were following the Lord, you had joy?
SPEAKER_00: And now that you've stopped, you seem to be miserable.
SPEAKER_00: And while they might think that, they're they're just as likely to blame Christianity for their misery now.
SPEAKER_00: They don't this is what I mean by they they lose the ability to think logically.
SPEAKER_00: They don't connect the dots to when they were following Christ, they had joy in their life, and now that they're not, they only have darkness in their life.
SPEAKER_00: They don't see that.
SPEAKER_00: They become intellectually arrogant.
SPEAKER_00: That turns into a hatred towards God.
SPEAKER_00: The bottom line: unbelief is a refusal to believe what God has said.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason for unbelief is simple: a love of sin.
SPEAKER_00: Saving faith, on the other hand, is a repentance from sin, an em humbling, an embracing of God's definition of right and wrong, of God's virtue, of God's righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief trusts self, saving faith trusts the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But trusting the Lord is a bridge too far for many people.
SPEAKER_00: They simply refuse to let go of their own identity.
SPEAKER_00: They hold on to their own righteousness so fast, their trust in their own moral goodness so hard.
SPEAKER_00: And so unbelief takes root and it becomes poisonous in their mind and in their life.
SPEAKER_00: You get a picture of that this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you some different descriptions of how and why unbelief poisons people.
SPEAKER_00: First, unbelief is belligerent.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief is belligerent.
SPEAKER_00: So these Pharisees and Sadducees came to test Jesus, is what it says here in Matthew 16.
SPEAKER_00: Mark's gospel says they came out to argue with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They're being belligerent towards Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Jesus, if you recall, had been away for several months doing ministry in the Gentile world.
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, he had done miracle after miracle.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew 12, the Jews turned against him and decided they were going to kill him.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish leaders did.
SPEAKER_00: They decided they were going to put him to death.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus went out to the wilderness for a while.
SPEAKER_00: They were hunting him in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: So finally he leaves Israel and goes and does ministry in Tyre and Sidon, which is modern-day Lebanon and Jordan, Syria.
SPEAKER_00: He comes back into the Decapolis.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at that at the end of chapter 15, verse 39, the Megadon, part of the Decapolis, which is the ten cities of the Gentile culture.
SPEAKER_00: That's where Jesus was doing ministry and miracles with the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: Now he had made little stops back at the Sea of Galilee in his time away, but always on the Gentile side of the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: He hadn't re-entered into Israel yet.
SPEAKER_00: But now he does.
SPEAKER_00: Months have gone by with him ministering to Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: Now he crosses the Sea of Galilee and he immediately runs right into the scribes and the Pharisees, the Sadducees.
SPEAKER_00: They were patrolling for him.
SPEAKER_00: He had been gone for months, and they were on patrol.
SPEAKER_00: Absence did not make the heart go stronger.
SPEAKER_00: And so when Jesus finally does come back into Israel, they're ready and they come out to fight him, to pounce, to test him, like I said, Mark's gospel to argue with him.
SPEAKER_00: And they ask him for a sign.
SPEAKER_00: In Greek, there's a different word for miracle than there is for sign.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the word for miracle.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted some kind of performance.
SPEAKER_00: The dictionary definition of the word that's translated sign here is compelling evidence.
SPEAKER_00: That's the shortest definition, compelling evidence.
SPEAKER_00: It is used often in Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: What's interesting is most of the time it's used, it's used to describe things that Jesus would not do.
SPEAKER_00: They keep asking him for signs and he won't do them.
SPEAKER_00: You recognize that these are not good faith questions.
SPEAKER_00: It's not good faith looking for evidence.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the person who just hears of Jesus for the first time and just is asking some questions.
SPEAKER_00: They have seen miracle after miracle after miracle.
SPEAKER_00: Their last encounter with Jesus, if you remember, he had fed the 5,000 men, including all kinds of countless women and children.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus crosses the sea.
SPEAKER_00: Not because you believe God, but because you want more bread.
SPEAKER_00: And they said, Yes, guilty.
SPEAKER_00: They knew he could do miracles.
SPEAKER_00: He multiplied the fish and the loaves and fed them.
SPEAKER_00: And still they accost him.
SPEAKER_00: They want more signs, more signs.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the problem with unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief might have this pretense of, I'm just looking for evidence.
SPEAKER_00: I would just like a few questions answered.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm telling you, when that heart becomes unbelief, that heart never gets its questions answered.
SPEAKER_00: It never finds enough evidence.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I would believe if you cause the curtain to wiggle.
SPEAKER_00: No, not that curtain, Lord, the other one.
SPEAKER_00: I would believe I'm going to put a bucket outside of my house.
SPEAKER_00: And I would believe if the bucket was filled with water and the ground was dry.
SPEAKER_00: And then the next day, all right, Lord, I would believe if the there was a flood in my yard and the ground was wet, but the bucket was dry.
SPEAKER_00: There's always something else.
SPEAKER_00: And you see that right here.
SPEAKER_00: We want a sign from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what kind of sign do you want?
SPEAKER_00: We would like you to feed us like Moses, divide us into groups of 50, and appoint rulers over us like Moses did, and feed us supernaturally, bred from heaven like Moses did.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus does that.
SPEAKER_00: We would like another sign.
SPEAKER_00: Would you want to raise the dead like Elijah raised the dead?
SPEAKER_00: Because he did that also.
SPEAKER_00: It's sign after sign after sign, and they're never satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: And you recognize that same temptation is in us, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: We sometimes might demand that God does a certain thing to prove that he really does love us or that he really is true.
SPEAKER_00: You recognize if that's your motive that reduces God to the level of a genie in the bottle, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: God, I would believe it.
SPEAKER_00: If you answer to my beck and call, listen, if God brings you what you order, that makes him a waiter and you the customer.
SPEAKER_00: God is not a vending machine for miracles.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll sometimes try to sanctify that by calling them prayer requests.
SPEAKER_00: We know it's wrong to say, God, prove you really love me by doing this, but we'll say, God, I'm praying for this so that I know you really love me.
SPEAKER_00: And those prayers can sound the same on the outside, right?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that this person gets healed of their cancer so that I know you're the real God.
SPEAKER_00: Or Lord, I pray this person gets healed from their cancer according to your will, so that we can, we're praying for the will of God to be done, because that's how God calls us to pray.
SPEAKER_00: God calls us to pray for his will to be done.
SPEAKER_00: So the prayer on the outside might sound the same, but you know it is the motive in your heart so that I know that God is real and that he really does love me?
SPEAKER_00: Or am I praying for my will and God's will to correspond?
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, our motives are mixed all the time anyway, but like I said, it's hard to tell on the outside.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews gave themselves entirely over to this, always searching for signs for proof that God is who he says he is, for proof that Jesus is who he says he is.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is they just wouldn't repent from trusting themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Because if Jesus is the one prophesied by Abraham, if he is the one that comes through the line of David, if he is the fulfillment of all the prophecies that the Jews had diligently written down and passed down throughout the centuries, if Jesus really does fulfill all them, then their religious authority and power is voided as they submit themselves to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So they will not have that.
SPEAKER_00: And so they sanctify their belligerence by saying they're looking for a sign.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says it this way in 1 Corinthians 1 22.
SPEAKER_00: For indeed, Jews ask for signs.
SPEAKER_00: That was Paul's experience in his own evangelism.
SPEAKER_00: The Gentiles were always after more logic, more reasoning, more rhetorical polish.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews were always after another sign.
SPEAKER_00: For compelling proof.
SPEAKER_00: But like I said, no amount of proof works for someone who lacks faith.
SPEAKER_00: Person who says, I would believe the gospel if only I knew how did all the animals fit in the ark?
SPEAKER_00: Would a diagram help if I showed you a diagram of how they fit in the ark?
SPEAKER_00: Would that lead you to saving faith?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: If you told God that you'd believe if he answered your request and God did, you probably still wouldn't believe.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the nature of evidence.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's not that the desire for evidence is unreasonable.
SPEAKER_00: If this book is true and God made the world like this book says he did, then you would expect there to be mountains of evidence in the world backing it up.
SPEAKER_00: And there are.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the problem with this person who still says, I'm looking for evidence.
SPEAKER_00: The world does correspond to how the Bible describes it.
SPEAKER_00: The world does point to the God who made it.
SPEAKER_00: You are made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: He did give you a conscience to convict you of right and wrong.
SPEAKER_00: He did give prophecies that were fulfilled by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That stuff did happen, just like the Bible says it did.
SPEAKER_00: And so for you to then hear all that and be in the image of God and breathe the air that he gave you and said, I would just like one more sign, it's a little bit like the scribes and the Pharisees here.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the best sign, the best evidence of the truth of the gospel is the changed life, is saving faith.
SPEAKER_00: That's the one piece of evidence that they will not tolerate.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees asking Jesus for a sign is kind of like me asking you to prove to me that sugar is sweet.
SPEAKER_00: How would you convince me that sugar is sweet?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could talk about the chemical composition of sucrose and how the molecules interact with the nerve endings of my taste buds, but ultimately the only way I'm gonna believe sugar is sweet is if I taste it.
SPEAKER_00: And then there we go, hmm.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what if I tasted it and said, is it still sweet?
SPEAKER_00: Let me try it one more.
SPEAKER_00: One more.
SPEAKER_00: One more, I'll believe it one more.
SPEAKER_00: That's the nature of the Pharisees asking Jesus for a sign.
SPEAKER_00: They will never believe.
SPEAKER_00: And if you taste sugar and you don't find it sweet, that's a you problem, not a sugar problem.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: If you encounter the truth of Jesus and you don't find him sweet and precious, it's a you problem.
SPEAKER_00: Not a Jesus problem.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the request for signs is so misleading.
SPEAKER_00: The devil can do signs, angels can do signs.
SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh's magicians could do wonders in the Nile.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't mean they were true.
SPEAKER_00: This goes all the way back to Deuteronomy 13.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 13.
SPEAKER_00: God warns Israel if a prophet arises among you and gives you signs and wonders, and the sign or wonder comes true concerning what he spoke, and then he says, Let's go after other gods.
SPEAKER_00: Don't listen to him.
SPEAKER_00: So God saw this coming.
SPEAKER_00: If the Israelites were to say, you know, we would believe a prophet who did this or that, and a prophet does this or that and then says, Oh, and follow me to this God over here, do not go.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if you can part the Red Sea.
SPEAKER_00: This is totally how Mormons work to this day.
SPEAKER_00: Mormons will knock on your door and convince you to take a book of Mormon and say, just go to your room and read a chapter or two and then close it and pray to God and say, God, if this book is true, would you give me a warm feeling or a feeling of contentment?
SPEAKER_00: And then if you feel that, that's God telling you the book is true.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a pretty low-level sign and wonder, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: But still, that's how it operates.
SPEAKER_00: And gullible people fall for that, or people that are desperate fall for that.
SPEAKER_00: And God warns you against that and says, if somebody comes, and even if they can do the sign or the wonder, but they say, follow this other God, or follow this other gospel, if an angel himself preaches another gospel, let him be accursed.
SPEAKER_00: Later on, Deuteronomy 18, 18.
SPEAKER_00: God tells Moses, I'm gonna raise up a prophet from among the Israelites like you, and I'm gonna put my words in his mouth, and he will speak to them all I command him.
SPEAKER_00: So God tells Israel, a second Moses is coming.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna feed you manna like Moses did, divide you like Moses did, speak God's word and God's law powerfully like Moses did.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus comes and does all of those things.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what the test of the true prophet is.
SPEAKER_00: Does he speak the word of God?
SPEAKER_00: And notice what the Jews did.
SPEAKER_00: They closed their ears to Jesus' preaching and demanded more signs, the very thing that wouldn't work.
SPEAKER_00: So, bottom line takeaway: do not trust signs, do trust God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Faith that depends on proof is not faith but veiled doubt.
SPEAKER_00: A husband who believes that his wife is faithful because the private investigator he hired didn't turn up evidence to the contrary is not a faithful husband himself.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly.
SPEAKER_00: Is myopic.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief is myopic.
SPEAKER_00: That leads to verse two.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered them, When it's evening, you say, It'll be fair weather, for the sky is red.
SPEAKER_00: In the morning, it'll be stormy today, for the sky is also red and threatening.
SPEAKER_00: The idea that the sky is red at night, sailors delight, or whatever the expression is.
SPEAKER_00: Red in the morning, foreboding.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: There's some expression.
SPEAKER_00: Not a sailor.
SPEAKER_00: I'm from New Mexico.
SPEAKER_00: But there's an expression.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees, they did not have the weather app.
SPEAKER_00: And the world without the weather app, it's important to know the weather.
SPEAKER_00: In our world, it's important to know the weather.
SPEAKER_00: How many times a day do you check the weather app?
SPEAKER_00: 50?
SPEAKER_00: 10?
SPEAKER_00: And you check it far out, too.
SPEAKER_00: Far out.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're we're having people over at our house a week from today, and we'll check the weather app today to see can we eat outside?
SPEAKER_00: What does the weather app say in seven days the weather would be like?
SPEAKER_00: And I personally believe that it's the opposite.
SPEAKER_00: So if the weather app today were to say it's going to be rainy next Sunday, I would say yes.
SPEAKER_00: Clear skies.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews studied the sky.
SPEAKER_00: They could discern the pigment of red in the sky and say, oh, that will be clear skies tomorrow, or bring a rain jacket tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: And yet they couldn't recognize the one who made the heavens and the earth walking in front of them.
SPEAKER_00: And this has been throughout the book.
SPEAKER_00: They have these intricate laws about the Sabbath, hundreds of laws about the Sabbath, all deciding about the Sabbath, can I do this?
SPEAKER_00: Can I do that?
SPEAKER_00: If you have this occupation, you can carry this amount of ink and a pen.
SPEAKER_00: If you have that occupation, you can carry this kind of fig on a spoon.
SPEAKER_00: All of these rules.
SPEAKER_00: So that when Jesus comes and says, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath, they say, No, you're not, because you don't follow our rules.
SPEAKER_00: They became experts in the intricacies and blinds to what is obvious.
SPEAKER_00: He heals the man with a weathered hand on the Sabbath, and they say, Oh, you're a healer, that's work, and you did on the Sabbath doesn't count.
SPEAKER_00: They were experts on the weather, but not the one, they didn't know the one who made the weather.
SPEAKER_00: One commentator says, they're like the English professor who knew all six forms of the subjunctive but can't read poetry.
SPEAKER_00: The car mechanic who can't drive.
SPEAKER_00: You get the idea.
SPEAKER_00: They pretend to be so aware of the world they are blind to the one who made it.
SPEAKER_00: When I was in Los Angeles, the popular radio station was Star 98.7, and they did a contest one month where they had the four weathermen from the local TV stations on every morning to predict the weather for the day.
SPEAKER_00: And I get in Los Angeles that's a pretty, you know, pretty easy task.
SPEAKER_00: But they tracked them by the temperature, and at the end of the month, they ranked the four weathermen who was the most accurate all the way to the least accurate.
SPEAKER_00: And then this is what they did.
SPEAKER_00: They made the least accurate one their weatherman for the rest of the year.
SPEAKER_00: So it could be an ongoing joke every morning on the air.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees knew the weather better than the th theology.
SPEAKER_00: And they were terrible at the weather.
SPEAKER_00: They pretended to be experts of what was right in front of them, but they were blind about what mattered.
SPEAKER_00: Third, unbelief is obstinate.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelief is really deliberately obstinate.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus calls us out in verse 4 an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees and the Sadducees, their questioning here, reveals how evil and wicked they are.
SPEAKER_00: Time would escape us if we tried to go through the differences between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, but no, they don't have anything in common.
SPEAKER_00: But they're willing to partner together to take down Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so in this sense, they are representing all of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, there are some Israelites that come to faith and give their lives to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's the 12 apostles who are Jewish, of course, but by and large, the Jewish culture is represented in these Pharisees and Sadducees.
SPEAKER_00: They speak for their whole generation.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says they're so wicked because they refuse to believe him.
SPEAKER_00: What evidence would have worked?
SPEAKER_00: As the hymn says, what more could he say than to you he has said?
SPEAKER_00: He has done everything.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, this is a wicked and evil request.
SPEAKER_00: Their hypocrisy has been brought on full display.
SPEAKER_00: They reject Jesus, and now Jesus rejected them.
SPEAKER_00: They claim to be the religious experts.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't know anything that was true.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus makes their unbelief permanent.
SPEAKER_00: He delivers them over to themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 1 describes the Gentiles getting delivered over to themselves.
SPEAKER_00: They pursue sexual immorality and maybe their conscience restrains them, and at some point God just gives them over to their own desires and they lead a life of immorality.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Jewish equivalent of that.
SPEAKER_00: There's so much evidence for Christ in front of them.
SPEAKER_00: They've eaten the bread he made.
SPEAKER_00: They refuse to believe, so now Jesus just gives them over to themselves.
SPEAKER_00: He says, You'll get no more signs.
SPEAKER_00: He says no more signs, or Mark's gospel says no more miracles, there are still a few more miracles coming.
SPEAKER_00: There's still, by my count, three more in Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: But it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Up until this point, even at the end of chapter 15, the miracles were Jesus healing every sick person.
SPEAKER_00: Remember verses 29 through 31 of chapter 15?
SPEAKER_00: He healed everybody.
SPEAKER_00: No more.
SPEAKER_00: The three miracles that come all serve the same purpose of showing how blind the Israelites are.
SPEAKER_00: The next miracle is the demon-possessed boy after the Mount of Transfiguration.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he comes down from the Mount of Transfiguration and that the apostles are there and they've got the demon-possessed boy, and then they're experts in how to cast out demons, but they can't get this kid.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus asks them a question Did you pray?
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
SPEAKER_00: I knew we forgot something.
SPEAKER_00: Bartholomew, you were supposed to pray.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, man.
SPEAKER_00: They're experts in how to cast out demons, but they forget to pray.
SPEAKER_00: Then the two blind guys outside of Jericho get healed.
SPEAKER_00: Really representing how blind Israel is, but even in their blindness, Jesus can still heal people that come to him in faith.
SPEAKER_00: And then the final miracle in Matthew's gospel is the fig tree that represents Israel.
SPEAKER_00: It should produce fruit, it won't produce fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus curses it, it dies.
SPEAKER_00: So there are a few more miracles, but they all underscore how blind Israel is.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus says, you will get one more sign that'll help.
SPEAKER_00: One more sign.
SPEAKER_00: No more miracles other than those three.
SPEAKER_00: And this one more.
SPEAKER_00: The sign of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: You want another miracle?
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you the miracle of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Jonah, of all of the prophets, Jonah embodies the hard-heartedness of Israel more than any other one.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the Israelites killed many of the prophets.
SPEAKER_00: They rejected all the prophets, but Jonah is unique.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah came to represent how stubborn Israel was because Jonah spent his life ministering to the ten tribes, the northern tribes of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: After Jonah died, those ten tribes got exiled.
SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't listen to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: They get kicked out of the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: But Jonah is known for a particular short-term mission trip he went on.
SPEAKER_00: God sends him to Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah goes to Nineveh, which is in Assyria.
SPEAKER_00: It's like not even a port city.
SPEAKER_00: It's in the middle of the country.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah goes there, Gentile land, preaches the gospel, and you know, he'd spent decades preaching to Israel and nobody repents.
SPEAKER_00: He spends 20 minutes preaching in Nineveh and everybody gets saved.
SPEAKER_00: The sheep get saved, remember?
SPEAKER_00: The sheep put on sackcloth and ashes.
SPEAKER_00: It stands to embody how hard-hearted Israel was that Nineveh repented like that.
SPEAKER_00: But other things happen in Jonah's ministry, not just the repentance of the Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah 1, if you remember, describes how Jonah went down, down, down.
SPEAKER_00: Everything goes down in Jonah 1.
SPEAKER_00: The word of God comes from heaven down to earth, down to Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah goes down to the port.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah goes down to the boat, in the boat.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah goes down to the bottom of the boat.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jonah is brought up really, really quick.
SPEAKER_00: It looks good for a second.
SPEAKER_00: Then he's thrown down into the ocean.
SPEAKER_00: Then he gets swallowed by a fish and goes down, down, down to the bottom of the sea.
SPEAKER_00: Everything is down.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jonah dies.
SPEAKER_00: At least he thought he was dead.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah 2, verse 6 describes him as getting choked up by the gates of Sheol, the grave.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying he literally died, although he may have, or if he just figuratively died, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But it was like he died, and then three days later he gets resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: Yaked back up onto the sea, onto the shore.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, that's the sign of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: That's the sign that you get.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah's death, burial, and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: This is a prophecy of Jesus' own death, burial, and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus will die bearing on the cross our penalty for sin.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah had to die so the Ninevehit would get the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus dies so that our sins can be forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah's death may have been figurative.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus will die a literal, actual death.
SPEAKER_00: As God pours out the wrath for our sins on him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is buried.
SPEAKER_00: As Jonah was taken to the gates of Sheol, so to speak, Jesus' body goes into the grave, the stone is sealed, guards are posted, and Jesus' soul descends to Sheol, the realm of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, everybody who died went to Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus goes down to Sheol, faces every aspect of human death as a human would, because Jesus is truly human.
SPEAKER_00: He releases the souls that died in faith from Sheol.
SPEAKER_00: He goes up, grabs his body, resurrects from the grave, and ascends to heaven, bringing with him all those who had died in faith before him.
SPEAKER_00: So much so that death itself is reoriented.
SPEAKER_00: When you die, if you die with faith in Christ, you don't go to Sheol, you go to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus reoriented death around himself.
SPEAKER_00: He changed the whole nature of death by his own death.
SPEAKER_00: And he gives us the hope of the resurrection by his own resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: That was prophesied hundreds of years earlier by Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus does it exactly that and calls it too, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: This wasn't some trick shot, as if resurrection could be a trick shot.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus calls it and says, I'm going to reenact Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to die, I'm going to descend, and I'm going to resurrect.
SPEAKER_00: Think the Jews will believe then?
SPEAKER_00: Think then they'll have enough evidence?
SPEAKER_00: He reenacts Moses, he reenacts Elijah, and he resurrects from the actual dead.
SPEAKER_00: The end of verse 4 is perhaps the saddest verse in the whole gospel.
SPEAKER_00: So he left them and departed.
SPEAKER_00: Left them and departed.
SPEAKER_00: That's redundant, it's intentionally redundant to make you slow down and see it.
SPEAKER_00: Left them and departed mean the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: They were offered the kingdom and they didn't like the king.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus walks away from them.
SPEAKER_00: This is a less dramatic version of Ezekiel chapter 10.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Ezekiel chapter 10, the priests and the leaders of Israel, the founders of the scribes and Pharisees, so to speak, had polluted the temple with idols.
SPEAKER_00: And so God sends angels, cherubim, with their, it's a crazy scene in Ezekiel chapter 10 with the spinning wheels and the hands coming out of the wings and burning coals, and a guy who looks like a man dressed in white linen.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot going on in Ezekiel chapter 10.
SPEAKER_00: And everybody gathers up everything and leaves the glory of God, leaves the temple.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: It's out in Galilee, but it's the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus offers them the kingdom, they reject it.
SPEAKER_00: God said the kingdom's going to come to the descendants of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites come from Abraham to guard the promise, to have an ethnic distinction, the laws given through Abraham, and then through Moses.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus fulfills the law from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: The promise of the Savior goes to David, so the Savior will be a king.
SPEAKER_00: And here comes Jesus from Abraham, just like Moses, from the line of David, and they reject him.
SPEAKER_00: He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody asks, what would have happened to Israel had they received Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: You know, that John the Baptist was like Elijah had they received him, they didn't receive him.
SPEAKER_00: What would have happened had they all repented and believed?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a little bit like asking what would have happened if Adam didn't sin, or what would have happened if Noah didn't finish the ark in time.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't heard anyone actually ask that, but I wonder it sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh it's this is all according to God's plan.
SPEAKER_00: This was God's plan, that he would come to his own, and his own did not receive them, so that they would be broken off, the Gentiles would be grafted in, he would launch the church, the the growth of the church would provoke the Jews in jealousy, and at the end of this age they'll return in faith and believe.
SPEAKER_00: But for now, he departs.
SPEAKER_00: Why did God's people reject the Savior?
SPEAKER_00: One word, unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: They refuse to believe.
SPEAKER_00: Never has a larger forest been missed for smaller trees.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus goes up on the tree to die to bring us to him.
SPEAKER_00: What's the weather prediction from this?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus gives them one more prophecy, too.
SPEAKER_00: Your temple's going down.
SPEAKER_00: Because you rejected me, your temple will be destroyed brick from brick.
SPEAKER_00: Exile is coming.
SPEAKER_00: We know our sin makes us guilty.
SPEAKER_00: We deserve wrath, and yet you offer forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for anyone here today that doesn't know you, that has never given you their life.
SPEAKER_00: I pray today you would be at work in hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Turn people from darkness to light.
SPEAKER_00: Help people taste and see that you are good.
SPEAKER_00: Help people shed their unbelief and cling to faith.
SPEAKER_00: We're so thankful for the preciousness of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name that we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.