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As stated, it is a day of celebration. We rejoice! Our savior is no longer in the grave. This is the most important event in history, in the history of the universe, as Pastor Dan likes to point out. One thousand nine hundred and ninety-one years ago, we're almost there. I actually did some research on that, and there are some likely dates that have to do with when Passover ends up on a Friday. Nissan 14 ends up on a Friday, and 30 year 33 is one of those possible years. Year 30 is also, but 33 we go with for a few reasons. Nonetheless, it was a distinct moment in history, and I think that is the point you're trying to make when you remind us of that, right? This is a real person. In fact, he is the most famous person to have ever lived. He's more famous than any actor, more famous than any athlete, any political figure, king, queen, whomever. Jesus Christ reigns above them all. There are more books written about him, there are more songs sung to him, there are more lives dedicated to him. Jesus Christ reigns supreme. He altered the very course of history. His coming, the whole calendar is based on when he came, BC, AD. Before Christ, Anno Domini, the year of our Lord when Jesus came and was incarnate. We know him by many titles.
He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is the Good Shepherd. What other title shout them out to me? What else? Alpha, Omega, Great, anything else? Way, the truth, absolutely. Prince of Peace, Prince of Peace, awesome. Let's hear it. Come on, shout it out. Anymore? Our Savior, he's Emanuel, our advocate. He is wonderful, he is our counselor, he is the Chief Cornerstone, he is the door, he is the doorway to salvation, the Lamb of God, the true word. All of these things are true about our Savior, Jesus Christ. This is not a myth, this is not folklore, this is a real man. He came as a baby, his mother gave birth to him, his mother fed him, they had to wipe his butt, okay? He had, they had to change his diapers. He grew up and did boy things without sin. I don't know that he pulled on little girl's hair and stuff like that, but he did little boy things. He grew up and he had to go through puberty, and the emotions and the hormones that come with that. He likely learned his father's trade of being a carpenter, and in fact, he didn't enter ministry until John, sorry, Luke says about 30 years of age.
He had a life before the ministry, yet he did it all without sin. This same man who had been born as a baby and had grown up and likely worked as a carpenter, he went on and he was the man who would claim to be the Messiah, the long-awaited Messiah. So, as he entered into his ministry, he made all these claims about himself. He went to the synagogue and read from Isaiah, and he said these things point to me, which filled them with rage, filled the crowd with rage. Many people believed his words; many did not. And of course, he was betrayed. He was arrested. He went through six trials in the course of that Thursday night and Friday morning, six illegal trials, I might add, three before Jewish leaders and three before Roman leaders. Our Savior was flogged. He was spit upon. He was mocked. This man who had done nothing was treated like a common criminal, and in fact, he was hung among common criminals. He was murdered. Our Savior was murdered by crucifixion, a heinous way to die. He was buried in a rich man's tomb, and I saw a great meme on the internet about how Joseph, how could you give up this incredible tomb, these expensive tombs?
How could you just give that up? And he says, I'm just giving it to him for the weekend anyway, 'cause that's the reality. He didn't need it for long. He was only in the grave till Sunday, and he rose again. And that's why we're here. Jesus altered history. People everywhere recognize this fact. You no longer need to fear death. You no longer need to be a slave. You can have a personal relationship with the creator of the universe. And if that doesn't excite you, I don't know what will. This is good news. This is great news. And as followers of Christ, we proclaim this message to the world. We call all people everywhere to believe and repent. So many, though, reject this amazing news. Isn't that astonishing? For those who are called out of a life of sin and ministry, we are bewildered by those who would reject this Christ, this gospel. How is that possible? And the fact of the matter is that our hearts are hardened by sin, and we see how pride has taken over. I can do it my way. I don't need Jesus. John Stot, the great Anglican priest and theologian, said, "Pride is your great enemy, and humility, your greatest friend. Pride is what keeps us away from the gospel. It is what causes us to reject the gospel. We are taught that pride is a virtue oftentimes in this world. We're taught to be self-reliant, to think highly of ourselves. We are taught to think in ways that go against how we were created. First and foremost, we are to consider others better than ourselves, and first beyond that is to worship our God and to give him all the honor, glory, and praise. The sin of Adam has caused us to embellish and live in and love this sin of pride. Both Augustine and Aquinas many years ago, taught on Pride as being the root of sin. And of course, when we go back to the sin of Adam, this is what we identify - that pride is a great sin. And listen to these words - it is the devil's most effective and destructive tool.
Satan will whisper in your ears, "You don't need others, you don't need this Christ, you don't need God." And so, he we have bought into this lie, and so many have. Pride is a poison to Faith. You cannot have faith in Christ and hold on to Pride - it's a breeding ground for wickedness and evil and of course, unbelief. Faith itself is rooted in humility - the opposite of Pride. I want to take a look at a story in the life of Jesus, and we're going to be looking, if you want to take your Bibles, I would encourage you, we do have some Bibles up here, if you raise your hand we will get you a Bible. Matthew - take your phones too if you have a Bible app - turn to Matthew 12.
We're going to see rejectors of Christ. Often times we think of those wicked people in our lives - the thieves, those porch Pirates, the ones that take our packages. We think of robbers and vandals, we think of those scammers that call us on the phone and try to separate us from our money. These horrible, wicked people - liars, people who are abusers and fornicators and adulterers, those who indulge in sexual sin, those who pick fights with others, those who would do violent things, and murderers. Those people must be far off from Christ. Yet, Christ's Ministry was to those people. We see him going and reaching out. There is another category that we often overlook, and that is the religious people. Because religion plays no role in coming to Christ, religion plays no role in our faith in him.
So, if you're in Matthew chapter 12, I want to read this account, and there are some incredible things to learn from. Matthew chapter 12, starting in verse 38, and we're just going to take this short section through ver verse 42 about the sign of Jonah, whatever that is. Here's just for the context - this is Jesus in full swing in his ministry, and he is doing teachings and miracles, and he is just in the midst of it. He's gaining popularity, and then starting verse 38, some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, "Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you." 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. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the Earth. 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." He goes on to say in verse 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." We're going to look at this encounter, and I'm going to put the some of the words up here so we can follow along what's going on in Jesus ministry. He had his antagonists, there was a whole bunch of them, and they were almost all Jewish antagonists - the Pharisees and teachers of the law. Now, these were the respected men - these were the people the people grew up in this Jewish religion, and they looked up to these men - these teachers, these scribes, the Pharisees, and so these men came to Jesus. The people were watching - they were watching their Sunday school teachers - they were watching the people who taught them from the law. Remember, they did not have direct access like we have - the Bible on our phone or just in a book form.
For them, access meant they had to go to a synagogue where hopefully they had a copy there - someone would generally read from it, and that was their access to the law or to scripture. And so, they really relied on what these men had to say. So, here these men come up to Jesus. Just the fact that they asked this ridiculous question, you can see that there was none of that. They say, "We want to see a sign." That seems like a reasonable request, right? Well, just the fact that he had been doing all these miracles and signs and all these supernatural things, the fact that they come up and ask for a sign in addition to that doesn't make a lot of sense. This was embedded into the DNA of the Jewish leaders. From 1 Corinthians 1, it says, "Jews demand signs, and Greeks look for wisdom." That was part of what they would do. In fact, later on in Matthew and Matthew 16, there was a similar encounter with Jesus where they again are asking for signs, and in fact, it may have been why in the early church we see the apostles are given the power to do signs and wonders that may have been for that purpose to bring Jewish people to Jesus Christ, to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, so the crowd might have been inclined to think, "Well, these men whom we respect, they're going up to Jesus asking for a sign", so they might draw a couple of conclusions. One is maybe Jesus hasn't done anything yet to verify that he is the Messiah. They're questioning what they've already seen.
The second thing is that they may assume that there is something in the law that would demand that when a sign is requested, that a sign be shown for the Messiah, and of course, that's not true. Now, of course, he came and did all sorts of things, but what is a sign? By the way, a sign is something that points to something else, right? In other words, we see in here the sign of Jonah. The sign of Jonah points to a reality in Christ. It's typology. Signs point and say they declare something to be true. They were wanting him to verify his claims with something supernatural. So how does Jesus respond to their request? It's pretty harsh: "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah." He calls them wicked, he calls them adulterous. Now, this is not adulterous in the breaking of a traditional marriage, sexual sin. That's not the adultery he's talking about. He's talking about the fact that God made a covenant with the people of Israel and they violated that covenant, and that what they did was seek other gods and they did all these adulterous things in the form of that covenant. These men's hearts were hardened. Pride had taken over. We know the way they were self-righteous. Their own religious lifestyle would not allow them to see the God who was standing right in front of them. They were hard-hearted. Now, he goes on and he says, "I'm not going to give you what you're looking for."
They were looking for some great cataclysmic sign. They wanted to see the stars align in a special way. They wanted to see the constellations duke it out in the heavens, and of course, it's silly. Even if he did something like that, even if he said, "You know, let's say he rearranges the stars to where Jesus is Lord," what would they do? They would get their scientists together to figure out what thing happened by chance to cause these things to align this certain way, like we all tend to do. We explain away the obvious. So we see that there is a sign. There is a sign that's yet to come, the sign of Jonah. Now, we all know the story of Jonah, just a quick overview. I'm not going to read through Jonah. It's four chapters long. It's a great book and a great story. We've all learned it, but the overview is this: Here's this prophet, and God comes to Jonah and says, "I want you to go to this land, to the land of the Assyrians." Now, the Assyrians, they were bad dudes. They were wicked. They worshipped false gods, and they were conquerors. And in fact, eventually, they would conquer the ten tribes of the north. They did that in 722. This happened prior to that. Now, Jonah, probably 50 years prior, was given this command to go to their capital city, huge massive city by ancient standards, Nineveh, and he was going to come and preach this gospel of repentance. Now, Jonah had other ideas, of course. Jonah did not like this idea, so he splits and goes the opposite direction in a ship in the Mediterranean Sea, and he's out of there, right? He's going the opposite way, going to Tarsus. "I don't want anything to do with what you're asking me." And of course, the great storm comes up, and the whole ship is going to be lost.
Eventually, Jonah says, "Throw me overboard, kill me. I will give my life for this ship." And it worked. They threw him overboard, but he didn't die. Okay, that which should have swallowed him should have killed him. Instead, God sent salvation in the form of this great fish. The term for great fish can mean any sort of generic sea creature. I know there's a lot of talk about, "Is it a whale?" We don't know. It may have been something that God prepared specifically for this purpose, and that was the only reason this fish existed. It was big enough to swallow a human being. And so, of course, Jonah eventually gets spit up three days later, and he's on his way to Nineveh, and he gives this simple message of repentance. And of course, the people respond. Now, he is presented here in this way to show a sign. You want to see a sign? Look to Jonah, 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. Now, first of all, so we're not hung up on this three days and three nights. This is not that big of a hurdle. This is not our terminology. This is not American English terminology when they would refer to a morning and an evening they're talking about a calendar day, and we see the creation account, we see there's morning and evening, right? We see days and nights, that is one calendar day.
Now, they would count their days from, I believe, an evening to an evening and some from a morning to a morning, but the point is if you grab a calendar, and you see that today, what is today? Today's the 31st, right? Okay, today's the 31st. So, if something happens today, we would call that part of the whole day. Their terminology is the day and the night. And so, it fits fine with the narrative for Jesus. He was buried on a Friday, that's a Friday. He was in the grave all day Saturday, he rose again on a Sunday. That's three days. For what it's worth, sorry if this language is difficult for us to swallow, but it's really not that hard. It has made people think, "Well, maybe Jesus was actually buried like on a Wednesday," and I understand where they're coming from. If we get hung up on that, we're going to miss the point completely, right? Because that is not the point of this passage. Clearly, what happened to Jonah is close enough that happens to Jesus that it is a sign so that we understand what is going on. Three days and three nights, and what happens? Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of great fish, so will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. He was buried, hey, he was, he was in a grave for that time period before he rose again.
And so, I was trying to think of the parallels. Jonah was thrown into the ocean, and he was the salvation for the ship, right? And Jesus was crucified for the salvation of mankind. Three days in a fish versus three days in a grave. We just talked about that. Jonah emerged, he resurrected from the fish in the form of vomit, probably. Here's Jonah regurgitated, and here comes Jesus in a much more glorified way, I might add, and he is let out of the grave. And what happens in both cases? A gospel of repentance is proclaimed. Jonah goes to Nineveh, the gospel is proclaimed. Jesus comes out, the gospel is proclaimed. If you want to see a sign, just think of Jonah and think of what Jesus did. That is your sign. Now he goes on to say this is where it really, really beats at the pride of these men. This section 41 and 42 would tear them to pieces, and he brings up two things. First of all, he brings up the Ninevites, and second, he brings up the queen of the South, and we're going to talk about both now.
The Ninevites, we know who they are. They're the ones that Jonah went to go preach to, and in Nineveh, they put on sackcloth and ashes, and they were trying to avoid this pending judgment that was going to come within 30 days. God accepted their repentance, God accepted their faith in the salvation of the city. The city itself was spared, there was no judgment that landed on them, and all he said was, "People of Nineveh, believe God and repent." And what does it say? "They did. People of Nineveh believed God and they called for fasting and they put on sackcloth, the greatest of them to the least." So, the leadership of Nineveh called on them to do this. It was a simple message, a simple response, and actually, I said 30 days, it was actually 40 days that they were going to be overthrown. So, we see in this the men of Nineveh or what's going to happen to them. They're going to rise up at the Judgment. Okay, now these are Gentiles to the Jewish people. What's part of their prayer? "Lord, thank you that you did not make me a Gentile." They did not have a high view of Gentiles, so the Judgment, this generation and condemn it, they're going to condemn this generation. What generation is he talking about? He's talking about the people who are standing in front of them, the people who are trenched in their pride, trenched in their religion, who can't see what is directly in front of them.
The Ninevites, a wicked and Gentile Nation, found favor in the eyes of God, and they are going to sit in judgment over Jewish leaders, God's people, right? God's people, and they're going to be rejected by this Pagan Nation. Now, of course, we're not talking about pagans, but that's the way that they were thought of. They repented, and so we have an indication here that some truly believed in the promise that was to come. I was thinking about this for a little bit. There are many people that you probably know, maybe in this room, who grew up in Christian homes. We, you know, I was one of them. I went to AANA, I grew up in the church, I went to Camp every year, I sat under the word, and by God's grace, I was able to see the Light of Christ. But there are so many people, so many young people even today, who have been taught all of these things and have just outwardly rejected Christ, just like these Jewish leaders. Their pride would not let them get beyond what they see.
But there are plenty of others who grow up in faithless houses, Pagan houses, houses where Christ is not glorified, and all they have to do is hear the gospel once, read scripture once, and they believe and what does that tell us? It's not our work. It is not our work to proclaim the gospel, to get it out there, to tell others, to tell them repeatedly and to not give up on them. But it is ultimately the work of God, it is the work of the Holy Spirit on their hearts. So they're going to be judged by this Pagan Nation, the Ninevites, the Assyrians in the last day. Then he goes on with another example and this one's even worse, the Queen of the South. Who is the Queen of the South? It's the Queen of Sheba or SE Saba. It's presented in First Kings. In fact, turn to First Kings, let's read that account. There are some interesting tidbits in there. So, First Kings chapter 10 and the account of the Queen of Sheba is verses 1-13. First Kings chapter 10, starting in verse one: "Now when the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, we'll stop there for one second. This nation was 1,200 miles away from Jerusalem. Now that may not sound like a lot for our day when we can zip around and get 100 miles in a couple of hours, but 1 12200 miles, this is a long, this is a world away and she heard the rumors of what Solomon was like. She had to go see it. So she came. She came to test him with hard questions. She came to Jerusalem with a great retinue, that's basically an Entourage, and a lot of stuff.
So she brings this big Caravan of people and stuff and riches and all sorts of things. So what did she bring? She brought camels bearing spices, much gold, precious stones. She came and she came to Solomon. She told him all that was on her mind. So she's like, 'I have some things on my mind. I heard you're wise. Can you help me with this?' Now she is rich, and she's rich because they were along the sea path to get to India. They were Master Traders, and that's why they probably had spices, probably came from India and they were just rich beyond comparison. So she came, but something was on her mind. She wanted to find out about this wisdom. Verse three, 'Solomon answered all her questions. There was nothing hidden from the King that he could not explain to her.' And when the Queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house and all he had built, the food at his table, the seating of his officials, the attendants and his servants, their clothing, his cupbearers, and his burnt offering that he offered at the house of the Lord, there was no more breath in her. So she comes and sees this incredible Kingdom that's highly organized, that he's got this abundance of stuff that the Lord has blessed him. She's hearing him talk and just is blown away. We're talking about the wisest man to have ever lived outside of Christ. So we would be blown away as well, and that's why we're going through the Book of Ecclesiastes. I'm blown away by Ecclesiastes. I don't know about you guys, I love Ecclesiastes. So she's there, she is blown away. There's no more breath in her. And so what does she do?
Verse six, she said to the king, 'The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom. But I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. Behold, the half was not told of me.' She's like, 'It's even better than I had heard. Your wisdom and prosperity surpassed the report I heard. Happy are your men, happy are your servants who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom. Blessed be the Lord your God.' She became a Believer throughout this. She believed in the God of Israel just on a rumor, just on a rumor of what this man was like. She didn't get to watch a video. There were no books sent, the wisdom of Solomon ahead of time that she could read. She had to see it for herself. 'Blessed be the Lord your God, whose Delight Ed in you and set you on the throne of Israel. Because the Lord loved Israel forever, He has made you King that you may execute Justice and righteousness.' And she just starts pouring out all these gifts. In verse 10, she gave him 120 talents of gold, a very great quantity of spices and precious stones.
Never again came such an abundance of spices as these as the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. Let's skip down to verse 13. King Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba all she desired. So there was an exchange of things, there was an exchange of wisdom, and probably gifts. Whatever she asked beside what was given her by the Bounty of King Solomon. So she turned and went back to her own land with her servants. Did you get the impression she just kind of wanted to stay there? She just wanted to be in his presence.
I love this story. I love this story and how just a rumor and then you come back to and listen to Jesus' words, 'the Queen of the South.' Now we have a pretty good context for who he's talking about. Will rise up at the Judgment, an Arab Gentile woman. Those three things cut right to the heart of these Jewish leaders. An Arab Gentile woman is going to do what? He's going to rise up at the Judgment with this generation and condemn it, it she's going to condemn you. She believed, for she came from the ends of the Earth, 1,200 miles. This probably took months, you know, months of probably a lot of planning. Time travel, stay there? It probably took up much of her year from the ends of the Earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon and behold something greater than Solomon is here, isn't that ironic? Isn't that wonderful?
The Jewish leaders had been studying scripture, and they were the teachers of all of these things. They come to Jesus and say, 'Hey, Jesus, we need to see a sign, you know, we need to authenticate what's going on here.' And he's like, 'Okay, numbskulls! I mean, your pride can't… you're standing right in front of Jesus!' They didn't have to hear rumors and come from a world away. They're standing right in front of him, he's in their midst, and they don't see it. They don't see it!
Brethren, see it! See the Christ! See the Christ presented in this book, this book about him. See what he has done! Like I said, we're celebrating the most important event in the history of creation today because Jesus conquered death. We can conquer death. Because He Lives, we can live. We've got the truth, we've got the Bible. You can close your Bibles, and I'm just gonna close with a couple readings here.
Consider, consider these accounts I'm going to read to you from… um… from the end of Matthew, Matthew 28. This is the end of the book. So, the setting for this… well, you'll pick up on it when the disciples were going… Behold, some of the guards went into the city – this is just after the resurrection – and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taking counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers. Why did they give money to the soldiers who had lost Jesus? Well, it says they said, 'Tell people his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.' They paid money for them to lie about the resurrection. Their pride would not allow them to get word out. These men in this story did not have a noble cause. They came and they were trying to squash the story of Jesus. They wanted to discredit him.
It goes on and says something like it says, 'If this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him.' So, in other words, 'We've got power, we've got clout, we'll satisfy the governor because the governor would kill him, kill the soldiers, right?' So, they took the money and did as they were directed, and the story has been spread among the Jews to this day. Now, that's to the day that Matthew was written, but the lie still exists today. The lies still exist that Jesus is not who he claimed to be. They invented a lie to protect their own pride. It is sickening.
Jewish leaders, they had the sign of Jonah. They saw the death, the burial, they knew about the resurrection, and they refused to believe. And then they sought to hinder others from doing the same. That is a new level of evil. Their lack of faith was not due to a lack of signs. That was not the problem.
In Luke, it says, 'If they do not hear' – these are Jesus' words – 'if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, what does that saying mean? If they do not hear what it says in scripture, they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'
We've been studying in the Book of Ecclesiastes, and um… and so, I think a lot about how Solomon taught his people, taught his children, taught us, taught anyone who would read either Proverbs or Ecclesiastes or Song of Solomon. I came across this in Proverbs, and I just thought it was so fitting, and this is how I'm going to close this sermon. I'll close my own Bible here. I've got it on my screen. 'Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.' Okay, now I know these are familiar words. I'm not reading them as though they're not, but I want you to think of it in light of these men who had rejected Christ, who had had, who had had the Bible presented to them, who had access to the Bible and had it their entire lives. 'Trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, He will make your straight, make straight your paths. And it goes on to say, 'Be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord. Turn away from evil.' This is the gospel. This is the gospel. And what will be the result? It will be healing for your flesh and refreshment to your bones. I'd never read those words in this light before, and to me, that was very helpful and insightful. I hope so for you as well.