Matthew 12:38-45

The Sign of Jonah
³⁸Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”

³⁹He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. ⁴⁰For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. ⁴¹The 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 something greater than Jonah is here. ⁴²The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now something greater than Solomon is here.

⁴³“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. ⁴⁴Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. ⁴⁵Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”
Matthew 12:38-45

A number of years ago, I worked for an amazing charity called Interserve. We were the ‘People for the hard Places’ and I certainly found myself in some interesting situations. In this role, I found myself sharing my faith with Muslims who seemed far more prepared for a conversation about God than I was. They would ask me some of the hardest questions:

“Why do you believe in three gods?”
“Did you know that the Bible has been corrupted?”
“If Jesus was God, how could God be killed?”

I felt like I was running in circles trying to answer these questions. No matter how good my answer was, it didn’t seem to help. Until one day a friend said to me, “They aren’t really asking a question, they are attacking your faith.” Their questions were a smokescreen, designed to protect them from having to engage with what I was saying to them. He encouraged me to look for the question behind the question. “Ask them, why this question matters so much to them.”

The same is true in this story of the Pharisees. They were not interested in a sign, they had no intention of changing. They just wanted to create a smokescreen to help to justify what they already believed. Jesus showed them countless signs but their hearts were hard.

I wonder if we do this as well. We say that we need confirmation before we step out in faith, or we get lost in theological questions that we want to know the answer to but we know that Jesus has called us to follow him. Are the questions that we are asking or signs that we are looking for important, or a smokescreen to allow us to justify our inactivity or protect an area of our lives that we don’t want to change?

Faith is always uncertain. We never get 100% clarity and so, by nature, it always feels like trust. In Hebrews 11:6 it says, ‘without faith it is impossible to please God.’ The opposite is also true: WITH faith it is impossible NOT to please God. When you trust him in times of uncertainty, God is honoured and delighted with you. Once you step beyond the smokescreen, the future God has for you is incredible.