Greater than Jonah

Jesus came into our world to bring hope and peace, but unless you listen to him, repent of your sin, and give your life to him, you’ll never experience it.

[00:00:00] Well, as I was studying the portion of scripture that we’re going to look at this morning, a couple of things occurred to me about the timing. First, we’re just a week and a half out from Christmas. That’s right men, we have entered the present shopping panic window. So get on that. Being so close to Christmas, though, this is the time when we generally think about Jesus birth and why he came. Usually we focus on the joy that Christ has given us through his forgiveness, which results in hope and peace. And if you come back next Sunday, that’s exactly how we’ll approach the  advent of Christ. But this week, our passage also covers the reason that Jesus came into the world. And it does so in a way that’s pretty far from the usual Christmas discussion that we have. And I know that you’re thinking right now, Kyle did we just brave the elements on a Sunday morning to come out and hear you preach a negative Christmas sermon? Yes, but it’s what you’ve come to expect right from me. That’s the first thing that stood out. And the second thing that occurred to me was that because it’s Christmas time, we are probably going to have a number of folks attending our services this morning who don’t typically come to church on Sundays. Christmas and Easter tend to draw a number of people to church because to some extent, our culture is still something of a church tradition, background, culture concerning those those two holidays.

[00:01:46] If you are joining us today, mostly because it’s Christmas, we’re glad you’re here. Thank you for celebrating with us, but I want to invite you right up front to pay careful attention today to Jesus words, because what he says here is a direct warning to those who are interested in Jesus but who are not committed to him heart, mind, soul, and strength. God is not interested in being the Lord of your Christmas and Easter. He’s not. He’s either the Lord of your life or you don’t know him at all. And as we will see today, to not know the Lord is to be in a very dangerous place. Jesus came into our world to bring hope and peace. But unless you listen to him and repent of your sins and give your life to him, you’ll never experience it. You’ll never experience that hope and peace. We’re going to be in Luke chapter 11 today, beginning in verse 29. You can turn there if you want to. It’ll also be up on our screens. Jesus is going to take his crowd of listeners back to two Old Testament examples of faithfulness. And he’s going to call us to listen to his wisdom and to repent of our sin. First, we’ll see what Jesus says to the crowd. You’ll notice that they’re not really all that different than the people that we have today in our community.

[00:03:13] And then we’ll look at the Old Testament examples and see what we should be doing with Jesus, and the consequence for rejecting him or ignoring him or marginalizing him. So let’s begin with the crowd. When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, this generation is an evil generation. Really, Jesus, that’s how you’re going to start your next sermon with the crowd. This is how you’re going to do it. Let’s start by alienating everyone. Let’s throw everybody under the evil bus right from the start. By the way, this opening here, this opening line from Jesus, for some of you, might be confirmation of your assumptions about Christianity in general. You might be thinking that Christians are always judgmental. Christians are always so negative. Christians are always pointing out the worst in everyone. And look, here’s the top Christian doing it himself. You don’t get any higher on the reporting chart in Christianity than Christ himself. It’s right in the name. So you might think, why are Christians always talking about evil, always talking about sin and how bad things are? I’ve heard people say these things before. Why not concentrate on the good in the world? I think those are legitimate questions. I think it’s a fine thing to ask. And as we unpack what Jesus means by calling this generation evil, I think you’ll agree with Jesus more than not.

[00:04:40] Let’s start with that word generation. Who is he talking about here? A generation to a Jewish person is roughly 40 years. Our culture segments generations into much smaller periods of time, much smaller groups. We have Generation Alpha. Have you ever heard of that one? Those are the people who have been born since 2010 up to right now. Next year marks the beginning of Generation Beta. Can you imagine being generation beta? Under Alpha? That’s going to be rough for them for the rest of their lives. But before that, of course, we had Gen Z and then the millennials, Gen X. That’s my team. Baby boomers and before that the builders. So our way of thinking of generations is it has more to do with technology and culture than it does with age. But in Jewish culture, it had to do with adults and children. If you place death at around 80 years, you have the older generation, you have the 40 year olds, and then you have the children. Right. That’s what it’s mostly about those age groups. And you can see this in the Old Testament very clearly, when God told Moses that his generation would not enter into the promised Land. You remember that? And then they go out and they wander in the desert for 40 years. So all of that generation passes away, even including Moses. He never even got to go into the Promised Land himself. So for 40 is a rough number for a Jewish generation, and they didn’t have any fun names for them either. Jesus is saying that the adults of his day. Okay, so that’s who he’s referring to when he says this generation. He’s saying the adults of this day, the ones who are in charge, the ones who call the shots, they are evil. Now, what he means specifically by evil is what the rest of this passage is about. But I think it’s a legitimate question to ask. Does this even apply to us? If a generation to a Jewish person is only 40 years or so, maybe Jesus is just addressing a particularly bad generation. Perhaps it would be wrong of us to extend this out to every generation, including our generation. I think it’s worth noting that throughout the history of the Bible, which spans thousands of years between both Testaments, every generations evil is called out both within God’s nation and outside of God’s nation. Check out the opening chapters of of the of the Book of Amos, sometime the Old Testament prophet Amos, where the nations are all called out, they’re all named, called out for their evil. And Amos works his way to all these foreign nations, and he works his way down. And eventually he ends with Judah. He ends with God’s people. Check out the Book of Judges sometime, where the evil nations come and they attack Israel because of Israel’s evil.

[00:07:38] And we have this constant refrain there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Check out the whining that Israel does in the wilderness. Check out Noah right after the flood. I mean, my goodness Cain killed Abel in the fourth chapter of the Bible. It starts very, very early. It did not take long for the wheels to fall off humanity. And moving forward from the cross into history, things do not get better. Ancient Rome was a cesspool of debauchery. Have you ever noticed that when we all learned history in school? It basically was a list of wars and people conquering each other. That’s how we measure history, is who’s in charge and who took over and who beat whom. The past 2000 years since the cross have not been a tale of joy and peaceful progress. It’s been a history of technological advancement, but with our worst impulses curbed only by Judeo-Christian ethic that still shapes everything we do here in the West to some degree. There’s a common grace, a common grace that comes from the Lord, that keeps us from being the worst people we could possibly be. But we are very much in line with all of humanity before us. We are self-focused people looking out for our own best interests. We are willing to cut other people off and out of our lives. Our culture is filled with with pleasure seekers who care very much about our own happiness, and very little about the concerns of other people. So when Jesus addresses the group of people in front of him and says, you are an evil generation, it doesn’t exclude us. He’s addressing every generation that has been thoroughly ravaged by humanity’s fall into evil. He is talking about us. And here’s what he says. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. So right away you can see the only way to make sense of what Jesus is saying here is to be familiar with the story of Jonah, which his listeners would have been very familiar with it. Maybe you’re not. So let me take you very quickly through it. Okay, very, very fast. We’ll see how quickly we can do this. So Jonah was an Old Testament prophet of the Lord, which means it was his job to hear from the Lord and then go and to tell people God’s Word. That was his job. And he is famously terrible at his job. You might be terrible at your job. You don’t want to be famously terrible at it. And he is. The Lord tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and to call out against the Ninevites because of their evil.

[00:10:48] And Jonah doesn’t want to because he’s racist and he wants Nineveh to be destroyed by God. And so he gets on a boat heading the other way. God causes a storm, which gets Jonah thrown overboard into the sea. Jonah is then eaten by a fish and then projectile vomited out onto the dry land again, where he brushes himself off and heads off to Nineveh. That’s about as fast as I can make that part of the story. But in chapter three, Jonah goes to Nineveh. And here’s where the relevant part begins for us, because it’s the part that Jesus references. Jonah goes to Nineveh, which is a non-Jewish city full of people committing all sorts of atrocities, and he tells them, in 40 days, Nineveh is going to be destroyed. Jonah doesn’t doesn’t even tell them to repent. He just he just says judgment, God’s judgment is coming to you. And God uses that message to open the hearts of the people and to open the heart of the King and all of the Ninevites, who then repent, and they cry out to the Lord for mercy. While Jonah sits outside the city, waiting for God’s judgment to rain down on them and destroy them like Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord saves a repentant Nineveh. Now back to Jesus. This crowd is gathered around him, and you might remember from last week that everywhere Jesus goes, there’s a part of the crowd that is constantly wanting him to do a sign from heaven. They’re always asking, how can you give us more signs from heaven? What they’re doing is they’re asking for more miracles. They want more healings, they want more spectacular works. And this happened in so many places that Jesus went. You probably know the story of Jesus feeding the 5000 with five loaves and two fish. There was a group the next day after that happened that found Jesus on the other side of the lake where they had been before. And they say, hey, Jesus, how did you get over here? We lost track of you. We couldn’t find you, but. Oh, here you are. Okay, great. Hey, uh, could we get another sign from heaven? Could we get some more? And Jesus says you’re not looking for a sign from heaven. You’re looking for breakfast. That’s what you want. You want more food. You want me to provide more things for you? They didn’t want Jesus. They wanted what Jesus could provide for them, but they didn’t want Jesus. And at the end of John chapter six, after Jesus said the bread was a sign that was pointing to himself, everybody left because they didn’t want Jesus. For the last 2000 years, there have always been people around Jesus and around the church who are there only to get something from him.

[00:13:49] Not to listen to him, not to submit to Jesus, but to try to get something from Jesus. Try to get something from God. See, signs are supposed to signify. They’re supposed to point. They point the way. If you see a sign over 52 and it’s pointing east and it says hospital, the sign is not the hospital. The sign is meant to get you to the hospital. You haven’t arrived at it yet. If people started pulling off 52 and staying at the sign, then there would be a big problem because you need more than the sign itself. You don’t need more signs at that point, we wouldn’t say, oh, look, there’s a problem. People aren’t making their way. Let’s put up even more signs. You wouldn’t say that. You’d say people don’t know how signs work. We’ve got to fix that. We got to give some instruction on how signs work. There are people in our Western culture likely here this morning, maybe this is even you who are happy to receive from God, who are happy to receive from the church some kind of blessing. If you’re one of our Christmas and Easter folks, let’s be honest. Let’s just be honest. You like how Christianity blesses your holidays. You like checking in with the church so you feel spiritually connected. But there are people regularly around the church who are also just here for the blessings. You’re here for the friendships or you’re here for the morals because you like the morals or you’re in the hope that God will bless you here in some way. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting any of those things. But there is everything wrong, if that’s all you’re seeking, if that’s all you want. If the blessings are not signs pointing you to repentance and new life submitted to Jesus, then the signs are actually hurting you. They’re not helping you. The stuff that you’re seeking from God has become an idol to you. What was meant to point you to God has become God for you. That’s why Jesus calls the sign seekers in front of him evil. That’s why he says, you guys are you’re evil. We think of evil as something scary or sinister, but evil is just the rejection and replacement of God. And Jesus is calling you out of this self-seeking, evil generation that has no regard for the Lord. And if all you want is stuff from God, then it’s the stuff that needs to go. That’s why Jesus says this self-seeking, self-serving, God ignoring generation. All you’re going to get is the sign of Jonah. You need the harsh message of God that interjects into your life and says the way you’re going leads to destruction. That’s what you need to hear. If you’re just after God’s blessings, after stuff, after a better life, maybe God can give that to you. Maybe you can get that being around the church. What you need is for all that to be put away so that you can hear the sobering, clear headed message that it’s not God’s agenda to give you things. You don’t need blessings. You need reality. The message of the gospel is to turn from sin, to trust in Jesus, to follow him, and to be made into a new man or a new woman. Because waiting for you at the end of this life, a life that’s probably going to end much sooner than you think it’s going to, is judgment of your sin. And if Jesus has paid for your sins, if Jesus has died for your sins, as evidenced by your open confession and trust in Jesus and a life lived walking in the Holy Spirit and given completely over to his service you have nothing to fear of that judgment. Nothing. Your sins are paid for. But if Jesus hasn’t paid for them, then you are condemned by the judgment of your sins. That’s what’s waiting. Jesus offers two witnesses that will testify against you. Each one gives us a different look at what it means to respond appropriately to the gospel. The first one is the Queen of the South. Says the Queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with men of this generation and condemn them.

[00:18:24] For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And behold, something greater than Solomon is here. Now, you may not be familiar with this Old Testament story that Jesus is talking about here. It’s recorded in First Kings chapter ten and also Second Chronicles chapter nine. David’s son Solomon has been made king of Israel, and the Lord gave him great wisdom to be able to rule over the nation. Everything Solomon does with his godly wisdom makes the nation prosper. And you can read in those accounts about the great wealth and blessing that God brought to Israel through that wisdom and the fame of this wisdom and success reaches to other nations. And this mysterious figure, identified as the Queen of Sheba here, talked about as the Queen of the South. She comes up from the southern Sinai Peninsula to see if all the rumors are true, that she’s heard about Solomon and his great wisdom, because she just had to know. She was compelled to go all the way to Jerusalem to see if this was true. She had to know and see for herself the famous wisdom that comes from Israel’s God, and she’s blown away by what she sees. In fact, it says that when she talked with Solomon, when she heard from his wisdom and saw his wealth, it says that there was no more breath in her. That’s the phrase, took her breath away, what she saw. Now Listen to her response. Listen to what she says to Solomon in return. She says, blessed be the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel. Because the Lord loved Israel forever he has made you king, that you may execute justice and righteousness. Do you see what she’s done? She has looked past the stuff to the source of the stuff. She’s an outsider to Israel. But when she sees the wealth and the wisdom, she knows to bless the God who provided that to Solomon. Here’s Jesus point. There’s this non-Jewish person who seeks the message. She seeks the message. the wisdom of the Lord she’s seeking out, and she travels from the ends of the earth to come and to hear it from Solomon. Standing right in front of this crowd of Israelites is wisdom that is greater than Solomon. The very Word of God incarnate, Word of God in flesh is standing in front of these Israelites, and they don’t want it. Why? Because they just want stuff. They don’t want it. They want to be happy and filled. They want to be wowed and entertained. But they don’t want Jesus or his wisdom or his guidance.

You know, in over 20 years of pastoral ministry, I have encountered so many people in exactly this spot, especially if things aren’t going very well for them. They need God to turn their lives around. They need a new blessing. They need something. They need some kind of some new opportunity. There’s something to be fixed in their lives. But the suggestion that what they need more than anything is to hear from the wisdom of God’s word, to listen to Jesus, and to walk in step with the Holy Spirit that’s met with with criticism or with doubt. Ironically, following Jesus faithfully is the way to fix their lives, but they don’t want it because it seems hard. The road seems too narrow to them, or they already know exactly what they need. And what they really want to do is just wait for God to give it to them. They’ve figured out what they need. They know how things would be fixed. They know what blessing they need. They’re just going to wait until God gives that thing to them, instead of listening to God to learn what they really need. They don’t want to hear God’s wisdom. They don’t need God’s wisdom. They’re convinced of their own wisdom. Jesus says, the Queen of the South will rise up in judgment against people who reject the wisdom of Christ. Now, this might be a reference to the role that believers will play in the final judgment of sins. I’m not sure of that. I’m not sure exactly what that’s referring to. But what is certain is that this foreign queen, this non-israelite queen, traveled a long way to gain the wisdom of Solomon, and that is a testimony against those who have Jesus right in front of them. They have the greater Solomon. We have the greater wisdom right there like we do today. The other witness are the Ninevites. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And behold, something greater than Jonah is here. So imagine standing before God one day at the moment when he will judge you for your sins. And for all of us that day is coming. And you think you know what, I’ve been a pretty good person. I went to church. I come from a good family. I avoided the worst possible sins. I said nice things about God during my life. I sought God’s blessings. Surely I’ll be accepted. There’s a lot of people that are just thinking that’s generally what I think will get me accepted with God. God will look and see how good a person I am. Imagine just at that moment, as you’re thinking through that argument that the worst people you know, who did the most atrocious, shameful things in this life walk past you and are accepted by God, and in the next moment you receive condemnation for your sins. That’s the scenario. That’s the scenario that these Israelites listening to Jesus right now, they just heard that scenario come out of his mouth.

[00:24:33] The Israelites hated the Ninevites, and it’s because the Ninevites were torturous murderers to Israel. That’s why Jonah didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to see them repent. It’s not that he feared them. He didn’t fear them. He just didn’t want them to repent, because he knew that if a merciful God heard them repent, that he would be merciful to them, and he didn’t want them to be saved. And that’s exactly what happened as I mentioned earlier. God and His compassion and in his sovereignty chose to save this murderous nation. Jesus now says, the evil people of that generation are going to be the judges of the evil people of this generation, right in front of me. How can that be? How can that be? Well, it’s because even though the message was incomplete and it came from a deeply flawed man like Jonah, the Ninevites repented and called on the name of the Lord to save them. And yet, just like with that last Old Testament example, these Israelites standing in front of Jesus right now, the greater Jonah, the ultimate prophet, the one who’s come to save them and give them the message of salvation. They got him right there, and they refuse to repent of their sins. See, it’s repentance and trust in Jesus that makes the difference between those who are condemned by their sins and those who are saved from their sins.

[00:25:59] God doesn’t care how good you’ve been by comparison to other people. That’s not the gospel. You won’t find that in the Bible. God doesn’t care about that. We are all part of an evil generation, and there are plenty of people in our culture living for themselves, walking around with notions about God that don’t derive from His Word. The majority of those who believe in God in this world turn to him when they need him, and when they need something, they ignore him when they don’t, and they blame him when they don’t get the thing that they want. Let’s not delude ourselves. Let’s not tell ourselves lies. We live in a generation just as evil as the one that Jesus spoke to that day, and the way to escape, the way to escape the evil of our generation, and to escape both judgment and eternal condemnation, is to put your full trust, your full faith in Jesus, who on the cross was condemned for you so that you would be set free. It’s Christmas, so we ask, why did Jesus come? He came to bring joy and hope and peace. Your Christmas cards are not wrong. Those are all true. That’s exactly right. But let me ask you something. Who will receive that? Who will receive the joy and hope and peace? It’s not everyone. It’s not everyone. It comes to those who seek his wisdom, who repent of their sins and who trust in him. Let’s pray.