In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus has healed (4:23-24; 8:1-4;
8:5-13; 8:14-17; 9:1-8; 9:27-31; 11:9-14), raised the dead (9:18-26) and cast
out demons (4:24; 8:28-34; 9:32-34; 12:22-32).
His ministry has been characterized by powerful deeds of healing and
rescue as He brings the reign of God into a sinful world.
And yet we read in Matthew 12:
Then 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 the great fish, so will
the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew
12:38-41 ESV).
Jesus has been doing wonders and miracles, and then the
scribes and Pharisees come and ask him for a sign! And this is not the last
time it happens. In the chapters that
follow Jesus heals many (15:29-31) and performs two miraculous feedings of very
large crowds (14:13-21 and 15:32-39).
Then immediately
after he feeds the 4,000 we are told:
And the Pharisees and Sadducees
came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He
answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the
sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red
and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you
cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil and adulterous generation
seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” So
he left them and departed (Matthew 16:1-4 ESV).
This time the Pharisees and Sadducees, two groups
that were opposed to each other on many topics, approach Jesus in order to test
him. They again ask Jesus for a sign –
this time described as a “sign from heaven.”
Since Jesus has been performing various kinds of miracles and they come
asking for a sign, it seems that they have something more specific in mind.
Most likely they wanted Jesus to predict or describe ahead of time some
miraculous act that God would presently do – something that would immediately
be verifiable.
However, Jesus won’t be pulled in to something like that. Instead he twice responds by saying that the
only sign that will be given them is the “sign of Jonah” for just as Jonah was
in the belly of the great fish for three days and nights, so also the Son of Man
will be in the in the heart of the earth for three days and nights. The only sign he will give to demonstrate the
validity of his ministry is his resurrection from the dead.
As it turns out, Jesus’ opponents are so dead set on
rejecting him, that even when the sign of Jonah occurs on Easter and a report
about it is brought to them, they refuse to believe. They invent a story to
cover it up:
While they were going, behold, some
of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken
place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave
a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, “Tell people, ‘His
disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ And if this
comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”
So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been
spread among the Jews to this day” (Matthew 28:11-15 ESV).
I have been working with Matthew recently, and was thinking
again about the fact that Jesus gives this same answer twice, and
that he refuses to give any other answer.
The only proof that he gives them is his resurrection. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that
Christianity stands or falls with the resurrection. The apostle Paul comes right out and says
that: “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are
still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have
perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people
most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:17-19 ESV).
Obviously we know this, but I wonder if we regularly allow
this fact to shape the way we talk to others about the faith. As we bear witness to Christ, do we hold up
the resurrection as the definitive sign that demonstrates how all of
Christianity’s claims about Christ are true?
Do we allow it to be the “sign of Jonah” that it was for Jesus?
There are many topics into which discussions with those who
don’t believe in Christ can wind. They
may want to talk about the nature of the Scriptures, or evolution, or the
problem of evil or any number of other subjects. These are all significant topics that are
worthy of discussion and for which Christians have good answers. But ultimately
they are all merely sideshows; they are diversions from the real issue. The one real issue is the resurrection of
Jesus Christ, because when a person believes in the resurrection it puts all of
those other questions in a completely new light.
The resurrection brings to bear the strength of Christianity
as a historical religion. These are not
events that occurred “long ago in a place far, far away.” Instead they occurred in first century A.D.
Palestine and we have eye witness accounts and historical documents – documents
that if they were about any other ancient historical event would be treated as
primary source material. The available
evidence (including the historical development of the Church and her theology)
only really makes sense if Jesus rose from the dead.
Although a far longer list could be compiled, this evidence
can be summarized for conversation with others under five points. First, the New Testament writings, the Jewish
historian Josephus and the Roman historian Tacitus leave no doubt that Jesus
really lived and was crucified under Pontius Pilate.
Second, something happened to Jesus’ body. The story of Jesus’ resurrection would have
fallen apart if the highly motivated Jewish opponents of Christianity had
produced his rotting corpse. However,
they couldn’t. The fact that the tomb
was empty on Easter is attested by multiple witnesses in the New Testament sources. The primary witnesses were women – exactly
the kind of people you wouldn’t supply as witnesses in the first century
Jewish world if you were making up a story meant to persuade.
Third, the New Testament sources provide evidence for multiple
appearances by Jesus to multiple people in multiple places (both in and around
Jerusalem and far to the north in Galilee).
The sources do not describe these appearances by the resurrected Jesus as
the one time experience of a small group that easily could have been
misunderstood. In fact very early (before
Paul even became an apostle) information about these witnesses was passed on as
a kind of creed. Paul reports:
For I delivered to you as of first
importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance
with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in
accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the
twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most
of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to
James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he
appeared also to me (1 Corinthians 15:3-8 ESV).
Such an account could not have been passed on if the
resurrected Christ had not appeared to these people. At the start of this tradition you are going to
have to be able to come up with more than five hundred people who claim to have
seen Jesus, or else when probed by hostile Jews it will collapse. Beyond this, if Jesus did not rise from the dead,
you are going to have to find a large number of people who are willing to keep the
secret as they perpetuate a fraud. Our
own observations about life demonstrate how difficult this would be.
Fourth, the willingness of these self-proclaimed
eyewitnesses to suffer and die because of the resurrected Jesus requires some explanation.
As it has often been observed, people are willing to die for something they believe
to be true, but no one dies for something that they know to be false. And as the previous point makes clear, the
scope and nature of the witnesses could leave no doubt as to whether the resurrection
was true or false.
The apostle Paul provides a particularly powerful illustration
of this. By his own account, Paul was a
happy and successful Pharisee (Gal 1:13-14; Phil 3:4-6). However an encounter with the resurrected
Jesus (Gal 1:12, 16; 1 Cor 15:8) turned his world upside down so that he came to
count all of those things as garbage (Phil 3:8) and instead he focused on Christ. Paul said that now his goal was “that I may
know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming
like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection
from the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11 ESV).
Finally, the unified theology of the early Church about what
had happened in Jesus has to be explained.
The first Christians did not believe that Jesus had simply come back to
life after dying (though this belief in a bodily existence after death was, in
and of itself, absurd to the pagan world).
Instead they declared that the resurrection of the Last Day had
already begun in the one individual, Jesus of Nazareth (1 Cor
15:20-23). This was a belief that did
not exist in Judaism because resurrection was a Last Day event that involved all
people. What caused the united witness
of the early Church to make this utterly unique claim about Jesus?
The most reasonable way to explain this evidence is that
Jesus did in fact rise from the dead. The
rationality of the argument cannot create faith that declares Jesus to be
Lord. Only the Holy Spirit can do that
through the Gospel – the message about the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ for our salvation (1 Cor 12:3).
But as faith seeks understanding, these facts confirm the historical
accuracy of what is believed and helps to support the life of faith.
In the same way, these facts cannot force the unbeliever to
believe. The report about what had happened at the tomb did not prompt the
Jewish leaders to believe in Jesus. Not
even the requested sign – the sign of Jonah could puncture their unbelief. But what it can do is to demonstrate how
empty the objections to Jesus Christ and his resurrection really are. And in that recognition it may be that the
Holy Spirit uses the sign of Jonah to create faith in the crucified and risen
Lord. After all, it is the one proof
that Jesus Christ provided to the unbelievers of his own day.
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