We're just gonna read the text, Matthew 12, 38 through 50, and then sort of explain the context then. Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, Teacher, we want to see a sign from you. But he answered and said to them, An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For 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. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and indeed a greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the south will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and indeed a greater than Solomon is here. When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places seeking rest and finds none. Then he says, I will return to my house from which I came. And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself. And they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation. While he was still talking to the multitude, behold, his mother and brothers stood outside seeking to speak with him. Then one said to him, look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak with you. But he answered and said to the one who told him, who is my mother and who are my brothers? And he stretched out his hand toward his disciples and said, here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. As we jump back into our study of Matthew, it's gonna take a few minutes to put the text into context, so let me just give you the takeaway up front. If after all of this, if I go through all the points in my notes and they prove to actually be pointless, here's a sentence that you need to take away from this. Trusting Jesus brings profound and permanent change. Trusting Jesus brings profound and permanent change. Now I do think we need to begin by putting the text into context since it's been almost a month since we've been here in Matthew chapter 12 because we had our, you know, Psalm 119 service and a Thanksgiving sermon and a new song Sunday, but we're back, it's waited for us. We do need to remember what's happening in this chapter from the, basically from the start of chapter 12 so that we can get to the end of the chapter and make the right kind of sense out of it. And I say the right kind of sense because the danger is just reading a passage that you can make sense of and assume because I think I understand it, it must be right. without looking at the context and making sure that you're making the right kind of sense out of it. So here's what's been happening so far. If you follow along in this chapter, we're not going to read it all, but I just want you to look as I point some things out to you. At the beginning of the chapter, a controversy about Sabbath keeping led to increased friction between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees had seen in verses one through eight, the disciples eating handfuls of grain as they walked through the fields on the Sabbath day. And Jesus defended his disciples and even claimed the title, the Lord of the Sabbath. That controversy continued. Verses nine through 13, Jesus goes into the town and into the synagogue, and he healed a man with a shriveled hand on the Sabbath day, an act which the Pharisees dubbed so immoral that they started to plot his murder. You can look at verse 14, and it says they plotted how they might destroy him. Now Jesus, knowing their intentions, verse 15, withdrew from that place, but he continued having crowds around him. And the end of verse 15 says he healed them all. So he kept healing, including the crowd. When you get to verse 22, there is a demon-possessed man who, because he was demon-possessed, was blind and mute. He could not see, he could not speak. Jesus cast out the evil spirit so that the blind and mute man was able to both see and speak. And as a result, the crowds start thinking, well, Jesus might be the Messiah. In verse 23, could this really be the son of David? To which the Pharisees make an accusation, don't be fooled, the power that you see in him is actually the power of Satan. He's casting out demons using the demonic power himself. And so their rejection of the Holy Spirit's work in the life of Jesus, Jesus says is unforgivable and it reveals the wickedness of their hearts. They are wicked in their heart. Now I want you to read along back before our text in verses 33 through 35 to get a sense of how Jesus scolds them. telling them good behavior comes from a good heart and evil comes out of an evil heart. Verse 33, either make the tree good and its fruit good or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad for a tree is known by its fruit. Brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, brings forth good things, and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, brings forth evil things. What's been revealed in this chapter up to this point is that there is a fundamental difference between Jesus and the Pharisees, specifically in regard to moral behavior, right? Good morals, moral living. Now, I want you to hear me out on this because it might challenge how you think about moral behavior. Jesus and the Pharisees see things very differently. But there are things that they also agree on, and we need to understand this. The differences are gonna come up again in a couple of chapters. In fact, you can glance over at Matthew 15 if you want to. Jesus is gonna say in Matthew 15 verses 18 and 19, those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart and they defile a man for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. Now I want you to just think about that list for a moment. Here is where Jesus and the Pharisees agree. Wouldn't the Pharisees agree that that list that Jesus made is a list of bad things? Wouldn't they see evil thoughts, murder, adulteries, fornications, theft, false witness and blasphemies, wouldn't they see those as bad? Well sure they would. In fact, if you made a list of behaviors, just start listing off things that human beings can do and ask Jesus and the Pharisees to start categorizing them as those are good and those are bad, Jesus and the Pharisees would agree on the vast majority of them. Adultery, bad. Prayer, good. Murder, bad. Tithing, good. Stealing, bad. Giving charitably, good. They agree about these things. It's seldom those kinds of issues that Jesus and the Pharisees disagree about. What they would agree about, they would agree about what counts as moral behavior, what good things, and they would agree about what counts as bad behavior, bad morals. But here's where they disagree. The Pharisees believed that their standing with God was a result of their good moral behavior. In other words, in their view, good morality is the starting place and that good morality takes you into a relationship with God. Jesus insists this actually flows the other direction. that you have to have a genuine relationship with God as the starting place. And when you have that, that genuine good relationship with God will flow out into good moral behavior as a result of the inward change that has happened. Now, do you understand the difference here? There is no amount of right living, no amount of being a good moral person that is going to change your heart. And so Jesus says in verse 35, a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings out good things and an evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth evil things. Or he says in Matthew 15, out of our heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. This is the fundamental disagreement Does good moral behavior take you into a right relationship with God? Or does a right relationship with God come first and it produces good moral behavior? Jesus says, without a right relationship with God, there is no good morality that can save you. That message infuriates the Pharisees. because they're certain that their good morals is what makes them right with God. Jesus has come to set sinful hearts right with God, and faith in Jesus is the only way to be right with God. trying to reform yourself, to start living a good life, to have good behavior, right? Cleaning up your life on the outside is never gonna change your heart on the inside. Only trusting Jesus brings profound and permanent change. This truth unfolds in this text in sort of three phases. First, Jesus is the greatest prophet of change. Look at verses 38. Some of the scribes and Pharisees answered saying, teacher, we want to see a sign from you. But he answered and said to them, an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. Since Jesus had just called out the Pharisees' hypocritical views, including telling them that their rejection of the work of the Holy Spirit is absolutely unforgivable, they issue a challenge in return. Teacher, and you can imagine how sarcastically they said that. We want to see a sign from you. Get this, if you're really from God, prove it. Give us some kind of a sign. What do you suppose it is they want to see? Is there any sign Jesus could do that would be adequate to pass their self-righteous standards? Is another miracle really going to help? In this chapter alone, just in this chapter, Jesus has healed the man with a shriveled hand in their synagogue. He has went out and he's healed the multitudes in the countryside. He is fulfilled in verses 17 through 21. He's given the sign of fulfilling Old Testament promises. He has cast out a demon in verse 22 so that a blind and mute man could see and speak. And their reaction is still, okay, but can you prove it? How? What else could Jesus do to satisfy them? Demanding a sign is proof positive that regardless of the outward appearance of good morals, they were in fact immoral in their hearts and estranged from God. So Jesus calls them an evil and adulterous generation for demanding a sign. He is not gonna play the game where he produces miracles on demand for skeptical bystanders who are just watching for a show. He's not gonna do that. Now, there will be signs, and Jesus confirms this, But it will be those that are already evident in the work he has done, and it will be those that are already determined in the sovereign plan of God. So he says, the only sign you're getting is the sign of the prophet Jonah. Verse 40, for 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. Jesus is pointing them to the Old Testament prophet Jonah, Jonah's experience of being swallowed by a great fish or whale as a symbolic signpost to a greater prophet, Jesus himself. Jonah, as you remember, was sent to the city of Nineveh. He did not want to go. And you might think, taught in Sunday school class, he didn't want to go because he was scared. It wasn't because he was scared. He didn't want to go because he hated those people. He hated them. And ultimately, God sovereignly intervenes to take him there so that he would declare the word of God to that wicked city, and the people of that city, whom Jonah hated, were saved when they repented of their sin and believed Jonah's message. They believed the message of a anger-filled foreign preacher who hated their guts. Jesus has come as a greater prophet of change. And he is the truthful, complete revelation of God's message of salvation. And yet Jesus is rejected by his own countrymen. The ones who are plotting to murder him here, they're going to accomplish their plan by the time this gospel is done. But just like that whale swallowed up Jonah and Jonah was still delivered from death, the grave is going to swallow up Jesus and it is gonna be forced to spit him back out again. Jesus will rise from the grave, delivered from death, an evident token of God's pleasure in him. If these hypocritical Pharisees really wanted a sign, if they're really willing to believe a sign, The resurrection is coming. And if they're being honest, then when we get to the end of this gospel, we're going to see the resurrection of Jesus and we're going to see them repent and believe. Don't hold your breath. They're still not going to believe. They are wicked and adulterous. They are sinful and estranged from God. Jesus not only delivers this sharp rejection of their demands for a sign, but he warns them that there is another sharp rebuke coming. When they reject Jesus' symbolic fulfillment of the sign of Jonah, it's not Jonah that they're gonna have to answer to. Jonah is not going to rise up in judgment and accuse them. Instead, Jesus says there are two witnesses waiting at judgment day to testify against you. First, there are the people of Nineveh. Look at verse 41. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah and indeed a greater than Jonah is here. All right, Jonah preached judgment to the city of Nineveh, but we know he did not really want them to repent. You can go back and read Jonah. When they repented and God relented of his wrath, Jonah was angry about it. When you look at the message recorded in Jonah, you will see when he went into the city, he starts going to the streets preaching, but it wasn't like he was trying hard. He was doing what he had to do. He starts going through the streets of Nineveh, and this was his sermon. Ready? I'm gonna deliver the whole thing. In 40 days, Nineveh's gonna be overthrown. That was it. I wouldn't say that was a very well done message unless we're in a real big hurry to get home. Jonah hated the people of Nineveh, after all, In his defense, they were Gentiles, they're the looming threat that is soon going to attack his nation of Israel. They were more wicked and more cruel than anyone on the face of the earth that we know to that point. Jonah tried to evade God's command to preach to Nineveh, not because he was scared, but because he hated them. By contrast, Jesus has come, willingly, Lovingly. Compassionately. And he did not restrict himself to a pathetic one-sentence message that he screamed through the streets. He engaged with people in compassion. He interacted with them in truth. Jesus is far greater than Jonah. And if the people of Nineveh heard Jonah's message and repented of their sins, then the rebellious people in Jesus' day have no excuse. for rejecting the complete and compassionate message of God through Jesus Christ. You can almost imagine judgment day. If these Pharisees dare complain when they are condemned to hell, the people of Nineveh are ready to be sworn in as witnesses to point over at Jonah and say, hey, we listened to that guy. You got Jesus. What excuse do you think you have? Yet there's a second witness standing by to condemn the Pharisees as well. Verse 42, the queen of the south will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon and indeed a greater than Solomon is here. 1 Kings 10 tells us this story of the Queen of the South, of the Queen of Sheba. who heard about the glory and the wealth and the wisdom of King Solomon of Israel and essentially said, I have got to come see this for myself. And so she came and she met with Solomon. She quizzed him for his wisdom. She marveled at his kingdom. And then she says in 1 Kings 10 verses six and seven, It was a true report that I heard in my own land about your words and your wisdom. However, I did not believe the words until I came and saw with my own eyes, and indeed, the half was not told to me. Your wisdom and prosperity exceed the fame which I heard. In other words, Solomon was even greater than she imagined. But Jesus, greater than Solomon. Solomon was a king, Jesus is the king. When she heard about how great Solomon was, she came running. If she had her come-to-Solomon moments, you need to embrace that you need to have a come-to-Jesus moment. In one way, these two witnesses are ready to testify to the same truth from two different perspectives. The people of Nineveh heard the warning of God's wrath and believed it, and they ran from their sin to a relationship with God. The queen of Sheba heard the appealing words about Solomon's wisdom and came running to him. Both of these are valid reasons for us to move and essentially to come to Jesus because maybe you want to come because you need to escape God's wrath. Maybe you want to come to Jesus because you want to see the beauty of his wisdom. I'll tell you, you won't be disappointed for either reason, but for whichever reason, you need to come to Jesus. He's greater than Solomon. He's greater than Jonah. Jesus is the greatest prophet of change. The second phase of this text shows trusting Jesus brings permanent change. Verses 43 through 45. When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, He goes through dry places seeking rest and finds none. Then he says, I will return to my house from which I came. And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself. And they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it be with this wicked generation. Writers throughout history have found this to be one of the more puzzling teachings of Jesus, but that's often because we'll read this and approach it like Jesus is trying to teach a systematic theology class on demonology, right? We want to find out more about these evil spirits. What is it that makes an evil spirit seek a dry place? How is it that evil spirits rest? That's not what Jesus is trying to teach here. Remember the context, Jesus had just expelled a demon from a blind and mute man and the Pharisees said he did that through the power of Satan. Jesus is bringing that recent experience into the conversation in order to make a point that unless you trust Jesus for permanent change, you're likely to end up worse than where you started. It's hardly the spirit intended meaning of the text for us to sit here and puzzle over what demons think dry places are, how it is that demons find rest. I think all we need to know about this evil spirit is that it's obvious he is not happy unless he is causing harm to somebody. And so imagine a possessed man, Jesus comes along, he casts out that demon, he banishes the evil spirit, and that man is now, according to Jesus, empty. Then what? What next? Well, apparently, the man can go to the library and get some self-help books, he can go through a real reformation. He can suddenly be in control of himself again. After all, he just doesn't have to do all the twisted, wicked things the demons let him to do. He can start behaving like a good, upright, moral citizen. Yes sir, things sure are looking up. He has really turned himself around. And after all, living a good, moral behavior, living that kind of life, that is going to make a person right with God, right? Well, in Jesus's story, whatever made that evil spirit leave the premises does not remain there in order to keep him off the premises. Because the wicked spirit returns in verse 44, and when he gets back to this man who he describes as his house, this formerly demon-possessed man, the demon finds it swept and put in order. In other words, Jesus is describing, look, his life is all morally cleaned up, it's all tidied, it's all neat, but it's empty. The end result in verse 45 is the evil spirit finds seven extra friends. They all move in and the man's worse off than when he started. Jesus does not in this story explicitly say, here's the solution and how that could be avoided. And yet the answer seems obvious. It does not matter. that this man who gets described as a house by the demon, it doesn't matter that the house is painted and the fence is whitewashed and the leaves are raked and the garden is all weeded and everything is set in order in the house, whatever is happening on the outside does not mitigate the danger of being empty on the inside. The man in Jesus' story, once the evil spirit was expelled, needed to trust Jesus and be indwelled by the Holy Spirit of God so that in unity with Christ, he wouldn't be empty anymore. Now did Jesus tell this story because that's what's happening to the man he just healed? Is he saying the man he just healed, the demons are gonna come back and enter him? Maybe that is what's gonna happen, but that's not why Jesus is telling this story. it's more likely a parable for the people in front of him. He ends that in verse 45 with, so it shall be with this wicked generation. Right? Jesus himself had come to this generation. He had a positive spiritual impact on his society beyond anything we could imagine. And yet when he's done and he leaves, the ones who remain empty of faith in him are going to be even worse off than when it started. All of those like these Pharisees who think that they've tidied themselves up by living good lives with good morals and empty hearts will face a grim future. And the same is true for you. If it was possible, Listen, if it was just possible for someone to come into your life and just sweep in, remove all the past problems, vacate every outside influence, and leave you to your own devices to clean up your life, you might, if you try really hard, experience a reformation that is genuine but brief. Until your heart is filled through faith in Jesus, you are as bad off as you can be. Trusting Jesus brings permanent change. Third, trusting Jesus brings profound change. Verse 46 through 50. This is while he was talking to the multitudes. Behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside seeking to speak with him. Then one said to him, look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak with you. And he answered and said to the one who told him, who is my mother and who are my brothers? And he stretched out his hand toward his disciples and said, here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. Okay, y'all, I am the youngest sibling in my family. Most of y'all know that. I have older brother and sisters. So my parents had plenty of experience by the time I showed up. And apparently I used my status as the youngest child to constantly underperform on their expectations. Because whenever I would invariably misbehave, you know, every 15 minutes or so, my mother would shout out, using my full name, including some middle names that never made the birth certificate, and end with, why can't you be more like, fill in the blank with your better performing older sibling? I say this as my way of trying to cut the family of Jesus a little bit of slack. I can't imagine what it would be like to grow up with a sinlessly perfect older brother. Now let's just point out that Jesus having siblings does throw a wrench into that Roman Catholic perpetual virginity of Mary weird idea that they have. It's silly. They attempt to get around this by saying, well, maybe these are the children of Joseph from a previous marriage, but if that's it, they've really violated the New Testament because then whoever that oldest son of Joseph is, he's the one who should be king. Some of them try to get by it and say, no, these are essentially cousins. They are children of Mary's sister, who also based on other scriptures would have had to have been named Mary. And while it is not impossible that a family would name their daughters Mary one and Mary two, it seems really unlikely. And in fact, if these are not the literal brothers of Jesus, then this passage loses its force. The whole passage requires them to be closest relationship for this to make sense. While these siblings were not hostile toward Jesus, they clearly didn't truly grasp his mission. John chapter 7 verse 5 tells us that at that point in time, even his brothers did not believe in him. And in Mark 3, early on in his ministry, the family actually comes and tries to take Jesus away from the crowds, saying he is beside himself. Or the way we would say it is, he's gone just a little bit crazy. On this particular day, we don't know why it was they came to see Jesus. It simply says they wanted to speak to him, and instead of trying to push through the crowds around him, they simply pass words, probably through one of his disciples, asking him to come aside and talk to them. You could read this story then as Jesus ultimately rejecting his family, but I would warn you against that because he does not reject his family. Jesus seems to be using this divinely appointed interruption as an opportunity to further enrich the message he's been giving. The implication of your mother and your brothers are standing outside is to say, look, I know you're busy here doing really important stuff, things that you care about with these people, but the very most important people to you are out there and they want you to leave and go talk to them. And Jesus' response is to essentially ask, what people do you think are the most important people to me? A mother and brothers would be the closest relationship a person can have, but for Jesus, he points to his disciples and says, no, here's the closest relationship a person can have. And then he opens the offer of that relationship to others when he says, whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother or sister or mother. Trusting Jesus brings such a profound change that the closest relationship you have ever or would ever experience in your life through faith in him, It is exceeded, right? Even the family you grew up with is not as close as you are to Jesus when you have faith in him. You may well experience some time at which you will be at odds with your family for the sake of the gospel, for biblical truth. In fact, I know some of you have experienced that. In the process, you love them as best you can, but you hold fast to the primary relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. Now, just step back from this for a moment and try to think about this the way the Pharisees in this text would have been thinking about this. Imagine the impact that this familial lesson would have had on them. What do the Pharisees think ensured their position as the people of God? Oh, we have Abraham for our father. We can even work it out on paper. Abraham is our great, great, great, great, and you don't want me to go through all of them, depending on who would have been talking at the time of Jesus, somewhere around 75 to 80th generation great grandfather. And so they could look at their fellow Pharisees with confidence and say, look, we're all descended from Abraham and now here's Jesus and he refuses to recognize the Pharisees as the people of God just because they're all what? 32nd cousins 87 times removed? There is a relationship to be had which is much closer than any relationship you would claim as being a child of Abraham. There is a relationship to be had which is much closer than the relationship you've had with siblings or even your own mother. Jesus is simply saying, look, I'm the son of God and that makes me the loving elder brother of every person who believes and has faith in me. When you trust in Jesus as Savior, you are adopted into the family of God. So I am going to spend eternity with a sinlessly perfect elder brother, and I'm gonna be thrilled about that. I'm gonna be thankful that a good moral life flows out of a relationship with him. trying to tidy up your life and using good morals in order to get into a relationship with God will never work. You need the change that only Jesus can bring. He is the greatest prophet of change. He is better than Jonah. He is better than Solomon. Trusting Jesus will bring permanent change like sweeping out all of the evil and filling your heart and your life with him forever. Trusting Jesus brings a profound change where it will make us a part of the family of God that is closer than even our own earthly family. If you aren't living in a loving relationship with God through faith in Jesus, then your life is not what it should be. And the worst news is you don't have the power to make your life what it should be. Only Jesus can do that. That's the good news. Trusting Jesus brings profound and permanent change.