I once was on a plane with ex-president Jimmy Carter, but I did not notice it. Maybe it was just that I did not expect to see him there, but I dismissed what my eyes were seeing. It was not until I came off the airplane and someone told me that I knew I had seen the ex-president. When our minds are preoccupied and when we see the unexpected, our minds are more likely to dismiss what they are seeing than to believe it.
It is amazing how we can look past things monumental and not see them. They almost missed Jesus. That same characteristic causes us to miss Jesus today.
Jesus was preaching and doing miracles. He cast a demon out of a deaf mute. Then they still asked for a sign. Here is what he said in 29-32
"This is a wicked generation. It asks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.
Jesus gave two illustrations from the Old Testament--the story of Jonah and the story of the Queen of Sheba. What do the Queen of Sheba, Jonah, and Jesus have in common? It's a riddle, which Jesus expects them to figure out.
Let's start with the Queen of Sheba—the Queen of the South. She was an African queen in Ethiopia. She had great wealth and power. She traded with kings all over the world.
The one king who impressed her more than any of the others was Solomon. Pharaoh may have had a sphinx and pyramids, but Solomon had wisdom. Sheba traveled to Jerusalem to find out what Solomon had to offer. Imagine being so wise that people come to Jesus just by hearing of your wisdom! Though she knew nothing of his God, she knew wisdom when she saw it.
The amazing thing about this tory is not how wise Solomon was, or how smart the Queen of Sheba was, but how dumb the rest of the world was in not recognizing what Solomon had. It was foolish for the rest of the world not to have come to Solomon's castle.
Jesus thought it was dumb of them, too. That is why he praised the Queen of Sheba.
The people of Jesus' time were not all that smart, either. Jesus began his ministry in about 28 AD. At that time, the whole Jewish nation was preoccupied with a struggle against the Romans. Jesus was a distraction to them, and a potential danger. The real struggle was against the Romans. They did not have time for a man proclaiming the coming of the Lord.
Jesus shook his head at their callous disregard. He reminded his audiences that generations of people past, who knew and understood the wisdom of God.
We do the same thing today—we do not recognize wisdom when we see it. We start programs to eliminate poverty. Yet the majority of poverty comes from broken homes and from sexual promiscuity. Unplanned pregnancies cause many to be poor and many lives to be ruined, but we still proclaim sexual liberation. It makes no sense to condemn poverty and to lift up premarital sex, which is the main reason for it.
We condemn drugs, but condone escapism. We condemn greed and condone commercialism. We condemn gluttony and yet condone excess. We condemn prostitution and condone pornography. We contradict everything we say we believe. Yet the one place we see good sense and wisdom, the good, Bible believing portion of our country, is called behind the times and thought to be ignorant. The wisdom which should draw people to God we overlook.
The second example he give is Jonah.
Like the story of the Queen of Sheba, Jonah's story is about ignorant people who listened to God. The people of Ninevah, repented when confronted by God’s word.
God called Jonah to go preach to the Ninevites. The Ninevites were Israel's chief enemy at the time. They had destroyed most of Israel and led ten tribes into captivity. Jonah hated Ninevites with a passion. So when God told him to go preach, he immediately attempted to run off as far as he could, rather than see those Ninevites saved.
Jonah did not get far. He encountered a great storm at sea. The sailors determined that he was the reason. so they threw him into the ocean. But God sent a great fish to swallow him and regurgitate him up on the shore of Assyria, not far from Ninevah.
I have always tried to imagine what Jonah must have looked like lying on the shore in a pool of whale puke. His skin must have been a ghastly white, from the effect of the stomach acids. His hair would probably been burned off. His clothes were almost gone, and what was left must have been bleached white as well. When this ghastly apparition showed up on the streets of Ninevah preaching that they were about to be destroyed, he must have looked like a ghost from beyond the grave. And the Ninevites repented. They clothed themselves in dust and ashes. The Ninevites may have been bloodthirsty pagans, but they were smart enough to recognize a miracle when they saw it.
The queen of Sheba believed when she heard preaching. Ninevah believed when they saw a miracle. What will it take for us to believe?
Jonah went to a people much worse than the Shebans. But when the Ninevites saw a man who survived three days at sea in the belly of a whale, they believed that the hand of God was in it. The repented and changed their ways. Yet the Jews of Jesus' day had Jesus, healing people, raising the dead, doing miracles--and they did not believe. They were too occupied with worldly things to seriously consider the ramifications of what they were seeing.
So Jesus tells them to look up, pay attention, and see God when He is right in front of their faces.
Then Jesus launches into a lecture about the important of using your eyes.
33 "No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead he puts it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light. 34 Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness. 35 See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. 36 Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be completely lighted, as when the light of a lamp shines on you."
Where do you put hour eyes? Jesus says. The Gospel has not been put under a bushel basket. It's here, in plain sight. This was the generation which saw Jesus rise from the dead, yet they did not believe. They saw Him walk on water, feed the multituces, still storms, and yet they did not believe.
I tell you to use your heads. Look around. Fix your eyes on the truth. Don't let the glamor and glitz of the world fool you into looking away, but look at the Gospel in front of you.
Look at the Bible. See the miracles that Jesus did. See the miracles done in Jesus' name.
Look at history. See how the wisdom of Jesus has transformed the world around us. We are better than the Muslims because we have the gospel of love and forgiveness. We did not get the Gospel by accident. God gave it to us.
We have the lives of the saints. Study about those who have gone before us and see how God led them through their troubles and gave them courage to speak, pray and preach.
We have the lives of the modern saints. In ever church and every town there are those who have been transformed by the good news of Jesus.
Especially, we have the Cross. You can never look at the cross of Jesus and say that God doesn't love you. You can never look at the empty tomb and say that something is impossible. You can never look at Pentecost and say God has abandoned you. And you can never read Revelation and say that you don't know if God will win. He will.
God has set the truth before you. It is up to us to see and to believe.
If Jesus came today in the clouds, the first reaction of most of mankind would be to ignore it. their minds would try and make something normal out of it. They would dismiss the supernatural and seek a natural explanation.
So it was in Jesus' generation. They did not know him because they did not expect him. It is amazing how we can look past things monumental and not see them. They almost missed Jesus. That same characteristic causes us to miss Jesus today.
Jesus was preaching and doing miracles. He cast a demon out of a deaf mute. Then they still asked for a sign. Here is what he said in 29-32
"This is a wicked generation. It asks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.
Jesus gave two illustrations from the Old Testament--the story of Jonah and the story of the Queen of Sheba. What do the Queen of Sheba, Jonah, and Jesus have in common? It's a riddle, which Jesus expects them to figure out.
Let's start with the Queen of Sheba—the Queen of the South. She was an African queen in Ethiopia. She had great wealth and power. She traded with kings all over the world.
The one king who impressed her more than any of the others was Solomon. Pharaoh may have had a sphinx and pyramids, but Solomon had wisdom. Sheba traveled to Jerusalem to find out what Solomon had to offer. Imagine being so wise that people come to Jesus just by hearing of your wisdom! Though she knew nothing of his God, she knew wisdom when she saw it.
The amazing thing about this tory is not how wise Solomon was, or how smart the Queen of Sheba was, but how dumb the rest of the world was in not recognizing what Solomon had. It was foolish for the rest of the world not to have come to Solomon's castle.
Jesus thought it was dumb of them, too. That is why he praised the Queen of Sheba.
The people of Jesus' time were not all that smart, either. Jesus began his ministry in about 28 AD. At that time, the whole Jewish nation was preoccupied with a struggle against the Romans. Jesus was a distraction to them, and a potential danger. The real struggle was against the Romans. They did not have time for a man proclaiming the coming of the Lord.
Jesus shook his head at their callous disregard. He reminded his audiences that generations of people past, who knew and understood the wisdom of God.
We do the same thing today—we do not recognize wisdom when we see it. We start programs to eliminate poverty. Yet the majority of poverty comes from broken homes and from sexual promiscuity. Unplanned pregnancies cause many to be poor and many lives to be ruined, but we still proclaim sexual liberation. It makes no sense to condemn poverty and to lift up premarital sex, which is the main reason for it.
We condemn drugs, but condone escapism. We condemn greed and condone commercialism. We condemn gluttony and yet condone excess. We condemn prostitution and condone pornography. We contradict everything we say we believe. Yet the one place we see good sense and wisdom, the good, Bible believing portion of our country, is called behind the times and thought to be ignorant. The wisdom which should draw people to God we overlook.
The second example he give is Jonah.
Like the story of the Queen of Sheba, Jonah's story is about ignorant people who listened to God. The people of Ninevah, repented when confronted by God’s word.
God called Jonah to go preach to the Ninevites. The Ninevites were Israel's chief enemy at the time. They had destroyed most of Israel and led ten tribes into captivity. Jonah hated Ninevites with a passion. So when God told him to go preach, he immediately attempted to run off as far as he could, rather than see those Ninevites saved.
Jonah did not get far. He encountered a great storm at sea. The sailors determined that he was the reason. so they threw him into the ocean. But God sent a great fish to swallow him and regurgitate him up on the shore of Assyria, not far from Ninevah.
I have always tried to imagine what Jonah must have looked like lying on the shore in a pool of whale puke. His skin must have been a ghastly white, from the effect of the stomach acids. His hair would probably been burned off. His clothes were almost gone, and what was left must have been bleached white as well. When this ghastly apparition showed up on the streets of Ninevah preaching that they were about to be destroyed, he must have looked like a ghost from beyond the grave. And the Ninevites repented. They clothed themselves in dust and ashes. The Ninevites may have been bloodthirsty pagans, but they were smart enough to recognize a miracle when they saw it.
The queen of Sheba believed when she heard preaching. Ninevah believed when they saw a miracle. What will it take for us to believe?
Jonah went to a people much worse than the Shebans. But when the Ninevites saw a man who survived three days at sea in the belly of a whale, they believed that the hand of God was in it. The repented and changed their ways. Yet the Jews of Jesus' day had Jesus, healing people, raising the dead, doing miracles--and they did not believe. They were too occupied with worldly things to seriously consider the ramifications of what they were seeing.
So Jesus tells them to look up, pay attention, and see God when He is right in front of their faces.
Then Jesus launches into a lecture about the important of using your eyes.
33 "No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead he puts it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light. 34 Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness. 35 See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. 36 Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be completely lighted, as when the light of a lamp shines on you."
Where do you put hour eyes? Jesus says. The Gospel has not been put under a bushel basket. It's here, in plain sight. This was the generation which saw Jesus rise from the dead, yet they did not believe. They saw Him walk on water, feed the multituces, still storms, and yet they did not believe.
I tell you to use your heads. Look around. Fix your eyes on the truth. Don't let the glamor and glitz of the world fool you into looking away, but look at the Gospel in front of you.
Look at the Bible. See the miracles that Jesus did. See the miracles done in Jesus' name.
Look at history. See how the wisdom of Jesus has transformed the world around us. We are better than the Muslims because we have the gospel of love and forgiveness. We did not get the Gospel by accident. God gave it to us.
We have the lives of the saints. Study about those who have gone before us and see how God led them through their troubles and gave them courage to speak, pray and preach.
We have the lives of the modern saints. In ever church and every town there are those who have been transformed by the good news of Jesus.
Especially, we have the Cross. You can never look at the cross of Jesus and say that God doesn't love you. You can never look at the empty tomb and say that something is impossible. You can never look at Pentecost and say God has abandoned you. And you can never read Revelation and say that you don't know if God will win. He will.
God has set the truth before you. It is up to us to see and to believe.
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