Introduction
As some of you know, I spent most of the weekends in my childhood between March and October every year crewing on my dad’s sailboat on the cold, grey and not particularly sweet-smelling waters of the Thames estuary, downriver from London.
I can’t say I really enjoyed it, but to be fair there were rare days when the sun was out, shimmering on the surface of the water, the air was warm, the sea was calm and the Cornish pasties were for once not soggy with seawater... and a breeze would catch the sails propelling us forward as seagulls flew by overhead. Those days were not so bad really.
For those of you who have never sailed before, there’s no time to sunbathe on deck. There’s always work to do. You have to lean over the side to keep the vessel upright, you have to constantly monitor the flag on top of the mast to check the wind direction, you have to pull in or loosen the ropes that hold the sails accordingly… but in truth the wind does most of the work for you.
By contrast, when there is no wind, and the sail hangs limp, if you have no outboard motor, you have no option but to row. Rowingis hard work. You have to strain every arm and abdominal muscle and pull as hard as you can to get the boat to move at all. You can be miles from shore. It’s backbreaking. And you can’t even see where you’re going, because you’re facing backwards.
I say this to introduce our Bible passage this morning, because the contrast between rowing and sailing highlights the difference in approach between the Pharisees, who are the religious authorities of Jesus’ day, and Jesus who doesn’t see eye to eye with them at all. The Pharisees (and their associates called teachers of the Law) are a rowing boat religion and not a sailboat religion.
Instead of simply trusting God, as Jesus teaches his followers to do, letting the wind of the Spirit fill the sails of their faith, the Pharisees spend all their lives trusting in their own moral strictness, and living by works, and ceremonial rules, and drearily observing every jot and tittle of the religious code, plus a long list of meticulous, man-made rules on top, thinking it will make God love them.
Like rowing a boat, it is all about their effort, their earning, their works, their striving to please God and, because they are so obsessed with being holier than the common person, it makes them very full of themselves.
But, as John Mark Comer says, “The only thing that can effectively keep you from God’s mercy is thinking you deserve it. This is one of the many reasons that religious people are often the farthest from God.”
That’s the Pharisees. They think they are so deserving, so much better than the riff raff, and they look down judgementally on everyone else who doesn’t measure up to their standard.
Four times in our passage, and I’ll highlight this on the screen for you to see, Jesus is going to refer to these rowing boat Pharisees as “this generation” or “this evil generation” twice adding the word “adulterous” to describe them. This is how serious a matter it is for Jesus when people live for religion to try and make God love them instead of living by faith, where God’s love is a free gift of grace.
So with all that in mind, let’s read what it says in Matthew 12.38-50.
One day some teachers of religious law and Pharisees came to Jesus and said, [and just note the arrogance and entitlement here] “Teacher, we want you to show us a miraculous sign to prove your authority.”
But Jesus replied, “Only an evil, adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign; but the only sign I will give them is the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.
“The people of Nineveh will stand up against this generation on judgment day and condemn it, for they repented of their sins at the preaching of Jonah. Now someone greater than Jonah is here—but you refuse to repent. The queen of Sheba will also stand up against this generation on judgment day and condemn it, for she came from a distant land to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Now someone greater than Solomon is here—but you refuse to listen.
"When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none. Then it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’ So it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and in order. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before. That will be the experience of this evil generation.”
As Jesus was speaking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. Someone told Jesus, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, and they want to speak to you.”
Jesus asked, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” Then he pointed to his disciples and said, “Look, these are my mother and brothers. Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother!”
Prayer…
1) What’s all this about Jonah?
So here we have two awkward scenes of tension and confrontation: one between Jesus and his own family, but firstly, yet another clash between Jesus and these self-righteous, rowing boat, religious experts. This is becoming a running theme in Mathew’s Gospel.
Today, they come to him with their demands. “Give us a sign to prove to us you are the Son of God.”
Let’s put this into context. So far in Matthew’s Gospel, it is recorded that Jesus has healed crowds of sick people curing conditions such as epilepsy, high fever, paralysis, leprosy, blindness and haemophilia. He has driven out demons from the shadows of tormented souls. He has calmed a furious storm at sea with a word of command. He has raised a twelve-year-old dead girl to life. And these people say, “Yeah fine, but do a miracle so we can see if you’re legit or not.”
These people are infuriating. They are never satisfied. Always sceptical. No wonder Jesus is exasperated with them.
“Only an evil and adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign!” he says (v39). “But the only sign I will give them is the sign of the prophet Jonah.”
Now then, Jonah; a fishy story beloved by children about a xenophobic prophet who runs away from God. He boards a ship, the ship hits a storm, he gets thrown overboard and is swallowed by a fish that later vomits him up on a beach. That little vacation is not getting a 5-star review on Trip Advisor…
What possible link could there be between that story and Jesus’ legitimacy as a man of God? Jesus himself makes the connection.
“For as Jonah (v40) was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.”
The miracle of Jonah, I want to suggest, is not that he survives for three days inside a fish – which is what I was always told.
Rather, when you read the Bible carefully, what I think you find is that Jonah is swallowed up when he is already dead. So the fish is not so much a lifeboat as it is a tomb.
After Jonah is thrown off the ship, the Bible says that the “water overwhelmed him” and “seaweed wrapped itself around his head.” It says that he “sank down to the very roots of the mountains.” In other words, Jonah sinks all the way down to the seabed.
But it is impossible to descend to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea holding your breath all the way. Try it. Or preferably don’t!
The only way Jonah’s misadventure makes any sense, as it is written down in Scripture, is if he drowns before his body sinks to the bottom of the sea.
Even if by some superhuman feat he were still alive on the seabed, there isn’t enough oxygen in the stomach of even a blue whale for a human to breathe and remain alive for 36 hours.
Incidentally, there’s a lovely little story about a schoolteacher who told her class that it is physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because its throat is too small. A little girl disagreed, saying that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. The teacher told her she was wrong. So the little girl said, “When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah.” The teacher smiled and said, “Ah, but what if Jonah went to hell?” The little girl replied, “Then you can ask him.”
In fact, the prayer Jonah prays which was written down after he was vomited onto dry land, says, “As my life was ebbing away I remembered the Lord...” Jonah remembers what was going through his mind the air in his lungs ran out and he was about to die.
Jonah drowned, which is why he says that he was in the depths of Sheol. That’s the place of the dead, and it’s where Jesus was between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
And he was raised to life inside the fish, from where he prayed his famous prayer, shortly before being ejected onto the seashore.
Now can you see why Jesus points to Jonah to explain what will also happen to him; he will be rejected as Jonah was, he will suffer and die as Jonah did, he will be buried over a three-day period as Jonah was, and he will emerge alive again, though scarred by the marks of death, as Jonah did.
People, of course, like that fictitious teacher, often dismiss Jonah as a fairy tale. And over the years people have tried to rubbish the resurrection of Jesus as well saying it was faked.
The poet Gilbert West did in 1747. Lawyer Frank Morison did in 1930. Investigative journalist Lee Strobel did it in 1998.
All three began their projects as atheists. All three meticulously studied the evidence from every source available. All three slowly changed their minds during the course of their research. All three became Christians. And all three wrote a different book than the one they had planned, in the end defending and affirming the Bible’s assertion that Jesus rose from the dead, just like he said he would.
But unlike West, Morison, and Strobel, and unlike the citizens of Nineveh who Jonah preached to, the Pharisees refuse to repent (v41) because they refuse to listen (v42).
Do you ever find yourself telling God to prove himself to you? Do me a miracle! Show me a sign! As if he has to prove himself to me while I sit back with my hand on the buzzer like a judge in Britain’s Got Talent!
Would Jesus ever say of you, you’re part of a generation that refuses to listen, and that refuses to repent?
2) What’s all this about Evil Spirits?
And now for something completely different. Evil spirits roaming in the desert looking for rest. Bible scholar William Barclay calls it “a compact and eerie little parable about a haunted house.”
Or is it different? What Jesus says in v43-45 certainly feels like a strange and abrupt gear change from what comes before.
What Jesus says here seems at first sight to have been quite randomly crowbarred into this chapter but, as I said earlier, Jesus’ repeated use of the phrase “this evil generation” throughout our passage (including here) shows that it belongs with what comes before and afterwards.
When I was a Church of England vicar, I was once asked to go someone’s house to ‘exorcise’ it because they were experiencing poltergeist activity. Stuff moving overnight. The children complaining about seeing strange shapes at night. The TV turning itself on. The sound of footsteps in the loft…
I went with two colleagues, and we found that the house had been used by mediums for seances and other occult practices.
Without going into detail about that visit, the father of the family had a weird change of voice and he tried to tear some pages out of my Bible, but when he was delivered of two or three evil spirits – and we heard them go - his hostility towards God’s word stopped and the strange phenomena in the house ceased from that day.
But I remember reading this passage to the couple and we invited them to give their hearts to Christ and be filled with the Holy Spirit or run the risk coming under greater spiritual attack than before.
When people are delivered from demonic oppression, it is vital that the dark, spiritual vacuum that creates is refilled by light and life from God. Otherwise, says Jesus, they can end up worse off than they were.
The Pharisees, at the beginning of this chapter 12, have a complaining attitude. But they never let Jesus bring grace and forgiveness and light to their empty hearts. And by the time we get to v14 they are actually plotting to kill him.
For all of us actually, the general principle is the same; it is not enough to be rid of wrong thoughts and attitudes, to tidy up our lives and reform our moral standards, emptying ourselves of lust, and lies and criticism and jealousy; we also need to let the Lord fill us daily with the Holy Spirit.
3) What’s all this about Family?
Well, it’s one thing for the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law to oppose Jesus, but one of the most painful things in Jesus’ life was that members of his own family misunderstood him and even opposed him too.
Mark’s Gospel says that his brothers and sisters confront him and try to take him back home because they think he has gone mad. He’s ill, they think, and needs to come home. John’s Gospel says plainly that his brothers did not believe in him.
This incident at the end of Matthew 12 twice mentions, tellingly, that Jesus’ family are standing outside while Jesus is inside. They aren’t interested in his teaching. They haven’t got time for his ministry. They are unwilling to go into the house. They are literally outsiders.
They have tracked him down to have words with him because he is a family embarrassment. In their honour and shame culture he has disgraced the family name. They want him to follow them – and if you’ve got family who aren’t believers and who are hostile to your faith, you probably know how this feels.
Jesus uses this awkward situation to talk about who he thinks his real family is.
Pointing to his disciples, [we know that he had women followers who supported his ministry; Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Susanna, and his twelve men; the likes of Peter, Andrew, James, John and Matthew…] he says, “Look, these are my mother and brothers. Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Imagine how hurt and insulted and perhaps worried Jesus’ family must feel here. Jesus is all but disowning them and saying that these strangers listening to him are his real family. So his blood relatives leave disappointed and offended.
They say that blood is thicker than water. And charity begins at home. Family first…
But Jesus doesn’t agree. When the family you are born into insists on coming between you and the will God, as it did for Jesus, our nearest and dearest should brace themselves for disappointment.
All through Jesus’ life his family opposed him. Scripture shows that Jesus’ half-brother James didn’t come to faith in Christ until after the resurrection. But some years down the line, James became the spokesman and the leading elder in the Jerusalem church. And it’s this James who writes the letter of James in the New Testament.
And what do you know, by the time he pens that letter, James has totally embraced the very thing he found so offensive a few years earlier.
In the five brief chapters of his letter, James addresses the believers he writes to as his “dear brothers and sisters” no less than 15 times. “Those who do the will of God are my brothers and sisters…”
In all the New Testament letters, not just James, believers are addressed as “brothers and sisters.”
Have you acknowledged who Jesus is and made a settled decision to follow him as Lord and Saviour? Have you done that? That is what makes you a member of the biggest and best family on earth - God’s family.
The Bible often uses family language to describe what happens to us when we come into a relationship with God through Jesus.
Galatians 6.10 says, “Whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone - especially to those in the family of faith.”
God is no longer a remote and unfriendly figure. No, we experience him as our loving, heavenly Father. We are children of God.
Relationships between Christians are given family-like words too. Paul calls Timothy his true son in the faith. In Romans 16, Paul says, “Greet Rufus… and his mother, who has been a mother to me, too.”
Take a look around you this morning. These are your brothers and your sisters! If you’re not a Christian yet, these are your potential brothers and sisters! I don’t know if that makes you want to be a Christian more or less! I hope it’s more…
In our society, there are large families, small families, dysfunctional families, happy families, single-parent families, extended families, weird families, broken families, famous families, tragic families and so on. What sort of family is the family of God?
About ten years ago, the Alpha Leadership Conference took place in the Royal Albert Hall. Over 4,000 people, representing over 900 churches, from over 50 countries gathered for it and the place was packed.
Such was the high demand and limited space, the organisers asked the Queen if she would graciously give permission for the Royal Box to be used to squeeze 20 more delegates in. And Her Majesty granted the request. But here’s the thing; who do you think the organisers arranged to be seated in the Royal Box?
Just to give you a bit of context, former Prime Minister Tony Blair was a speaker at the conference but it wasn’t him or any of his entourage. Rick Warren was there too (his book, The Purpose Driven Life, has sold 50 million copies he led prayers at Barak Obama’s swearing in as US President) but it wasn’t him either. Several prominent bishops and politicians and ambassadors were there but none of them was seated in the Royal Box.
Who then? The organisers reserved the 20 best seats in the house for homeless people in temporary hostel accommodation and ex-offenders. Isn’t that just genius? No other organisation on earth would even think of doing that. But, you see, everyone is a VIP in the family of God - including you.
Ending
So, to close, what is God saying to you this morning?
Maybe you’ve been trying to run away and hide from God, a bit like Jonah. Is today the day to come back to him.
Is today the day for you to put your hope once again in the God who raises the dead from the grave? Is today the day to shut the door in the enemy’s face and be filled again with the Holy Spirit? Is today the day to honour and love and value those seated around you here as your real brothers and sisters?
Do you feel the pain of your blood relatives thinking you’re a bit mad for following Jesus? Is today the day when you bring them before God in prayer and remember that Jesus’ brothers came round in the end to seeing who he really is. Is today the day to stand apart from this evil generation, our generation, and follow Jesus wherever he leads?
Let’s pray…
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 12 May 2024
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