7-4-22 The Greatest Miracle

This week’s reading: Matthew 12:38-50

Hi Friends,

     Sometimes our Faith is so small, or lacking all together, that we cry out to God for a sign. I certainly have been there many times, but it is one thing to believe in God and just need a little reassurance, as opposed to not trusting Him and just wanting some kind of proof of who He is. For this week, we will be reading Matthew chapter 12 verses 38 through 50. Listen to how Jesus answers these Pharisees:

“He answered, ‘A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For 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.’” Mt 12:39-40 NIV

     Show me a miracle. These religious men had already made up there minds about who Jesus was. They were not looking for a miraculous sign so they could believe in Him. They were trying to find some kind of allegation to condemn Him. Remember, they were already plotting His death! (Mt 12:14) This lack of Faith, is why Jesus calls them a wicked and adulterous generation. They had no intention of admitting Jesus just might be the Messiah they should have been waiting for. These religious wanted nothing more than to find a reason to be rid of this Teacher, who was turning hearts to God, and away from their own limited influence. They were thinking about their own position, not about God’s Preeminence. They wanted a sign so that they might be able to catch Jesus doing something they considered illegal and unclean. Jesus points them to the greatest miracle any of us will ever know: His Resurrection! He compares Himself to Jonah, who was all but dead in the belly of a whale for three days and nights, but then by God’s Mercy and Grace, was spit out safely onto the shore alive and well. Unlike Jonah, Jesus does experience death for us. By taking upon Himself all our sin, Jesus dies in order to kill death. Now if we just believe in what He has already done, we will live forevermore. Even though our fallen bodies will one day perish, we will live in the next life, whole and complete, with a new imperishable body and everything! 

     The dead will live. Can we really ask for any other miracle greater than that?! Yet, as I mentioned above, sometimes our Faith gets challenged and we need a little help. The issue is not whether God still does miracles or not. The problem is how we are viewing life. If we expect to see miracles, they are all around us. But if like these Pharisees, we have already made up our minds that miracles do not exist, then we won’t see them, even if they are standing right in front of us. Jesus goes on to tell these religious that He is greater than Jonah, who helped the wicked people of Nineveh repent. And He is greater than King Solomon, who was the wisest king of Israel. He warns them that, if they continue to be hard-hearted and disbelieving Jesus, they would be in trouble at the End of Time, and those they considered “unclean” would actually be their judges. Talk about trying to shake them up enough so that they would listen! Imagine if you had an enemy that was so mean to you that you could not even talk about them without losing your temper. These were how the Jews viewed the people of Nineveh. This was the capital of the nation of the Assyrians who took Israel captive and into exile so many years before. The wounds still were deep and unhealed, so to hear Jesus say this people, who in the time of Jonah did repent and turn to God, that these would condemn them?! Yeah, that had to hurt. But Jesus is lovingly trying to capture their minds and hearts in whatever way He can. Whether it is tossing Temple tables over, or forgiving those who do not deserve it, Jesus always acted in Love because that is who He is. Yet these religious want nothing to do with Him. And if they remained in that wicked attitude, they would never go from death to life. They would never know the greatest miracle. How sad…let this be a lesson to us though. 

     A house unoccupied. Jesus then tells those around them a parable about a man with an evil spirit in him. By the Grace of God, the evil spirit leaves the man, but when he comes back to see his condition, he finds this man unoccupied. Everything looks neat and clean, but there is no one home! There is nothing within his heart that could prevent evil from coming back inside of him. This is the same case with these wicked and adulterous generation. When we choose to refuse to believe in God, we have no power in us to stop sin and evil from taking over us. It is this greatest miracle of the death and Resurrection of Jesus alone that can counteract the effect of sin and evil. It is receiving Jesus as our Savior and Lord that cleanses our sin nature, and then helps us live a life imitating Jesus more and more. Jesus is our Savior still because He helps us to stop making the choices that lead to sin. Jesus is our Lord because He helps us make the choices that lead to righteousness instead. As Savior, He helps us kill our old, MMI Person. As Lord, He helps us grow into our New Creation Person. Without Jesus in our hearts, nothing will stop the enemy from taking hold of us. And if we have heard the Gospel and thought about surrendering to Jesus, but never have made the commitment to do so, we can be worse off than if we never heard the Good News in the first place! God in His Mercy will not hold us responsible for what we do not know. But once we know it? We are not only responsible to live by it, we have the privilege to lean on Jesus in order to do so. My Friends, if you have not yet made this decision to follow Christ, won’t you do so right now?

     A member of God’s Forever Family. We read that as Jesus was talking, His mother and brothers, that is His biological family, comes to where He is. Notice they are standing outside. In Luke 8:19, it says that they could not get inside because of the crowd. And in Mark 3:34, he notes that they send someone in to call Jesus to go out to them, in essence, interrupting and stopping His teaching. There are some verses in the Bible that tell how His own biological family did not believe in Him either. In Mark 3:21, we read: “When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’” And in John 7:5, it says: “For even his own brothers did not believe in him.” In their defense, they grew up with Jesus. Even though they knew He was special- I mean who else has ever been born of a Virgin?!- they were so used to having Him around that that closeness would make them slow to believe. Also, it could just be that, Mary especially, was fearful for His safety and was trying to keep Him from the trouble they knew was brewing. And thank God, we do know that Mary was by His side as He gave up His life for the world on the Cross, as well as in the Upper Room at Pentecost with the other 120 disciples. We also know that at least two of His brothers, James and Jude, went on to be pillars of the Church, and wrote two Books in the New Testament. But the point Jesus makes here is that there very well may be a difference between our biological families and God’s Forever Family. Jesus says, “For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (v50 of our reading) He is in no way disrespecting them, He is, as usual, pointing us higher than this world. Our focus, like His, should be in obeying the Father and doing His Will. The first thing we must obey, of course, is to receive this greatest miracle of Jesus, our Resurrected King!

     The greatest miracle. The greatest miracle is that God loves us and has made The Way for us to be with Him forever through the life, death and Resurrection of His one and only Begotten Son. He desires to resurrect us…to transform us from a dead person to one that will live forevermore…and become a member of His Forever Family. We must be internally (in the spirit) occupied with Jesus first, then nothing evil can have access to our hearts. It is not a matter of just putting all our ducks in a row…pretending to be neat and clean on the outside by doing all the right religious stuff. If we are not sincerely His, if we are only pretending to be a Christian, then as Jesus says, our final condition will be worse than the first. We will be judged according to all the words we have said. If our words do not match our hearts, or vice versa, it will not go well for us, at all. Again the greatest miracle is what we should be living for and it centers on the next life, not this one. We live IN this life FOR the next one. We must not be like this wicked generation that lived for themselves, and put God to the side. To them, God was just a religious activity, not the heart and power of their love and life. It is only as we choose to believe in the Love of the Father, the sacrifice of the Son and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, that we can live as though this greatest miracle has changed us and is influencing every thought, word and deed, we think, say and do. This is my goal. How about you? Then won’t you join me?

     Until we meet again, keep lifting your eyes to God, He’s closer than you think.

<>< Peace, Diane