Master We Would See a Sign From Thee - Matt 12:38-45

The Pharisees are clearly not convinced by the doctrine that Jesus is teaching them, and “then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.” They are saying, “what you’ve said and done so far isn’t enough so do more miracles.” The irony here is that I’m pretty confident that if he were to do some big miraculous thing at their request, they still wouldn’t have believed, because we all know that miracles don’t convert, only the Spirit does that. Jesus answered them saying, “an evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas.” The IM quotes Joseph Smith as teaching, “He who seeeketh a sign is an adulterous person; and that principle is eternal, undeviating, and firm as the pillars of heaven; for whenever you see a man seeking after a sign, you may set it down that he is an adulterous man.” I’m trying to understand the connection between adultery and sign seeking, because they seem unrelated, but let’s think about this. Those who refuse to believe until they have to be convinced are too hard hearted to feel the promptings of the Holy Ghost. Those who commit adultery are also too hard hearted to feel the promptings of the Holy Ghost. That’s a pretty generalized statement, and not doctrine by any means, but it’s a process to get there, in both situations. You slowly justify why it’s ok to cheat on your spouse, the one that you made a commitment to. It takes a lot of time and a lot of “warm up” sin to get to that point. Similarly, it takes a lot of time and hard heartedness to get to the point where you refuse to believe in Jesus unless you have an obvious display of his power, in person. Again, this is very generis and judgmental of me, and I don’t mean it that way, I just had to make the connection for myself that way.

Jesus tells them of the only sign that he will give them, the sign of Jonah, which is, “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” This would make absolutely no sense to someone who didn’t have the context for it. Jesus speaks in the third person, which I feel makes him less confrontational, thus making it easier for others to not feel provoked, if they were so inclined. Looking at it from the perspective of the Pharisees, this guy Jesus is saying that he will spend three days and three nights in the “heart of the earth.” That would make no sense to me whatsoever. I wonder if they knew that it meant that he would be dead for 3 days, because really, if we think about it literally, Jesus was in a tomb/cave not buried underneath the dirt. So it would have had to have been metaphoric. Jesus’ statement also has other implications. First, we have to assume that after the 3 days, he wouldn’t be in the heart of the earth any more. So would his 3 day internment be temporary, such as Jonah’s? I couldn’t imagine that they thought anything else. I would have imagined that Jesus is here telling these people that he would perform some amazing feat like Jonah did, and that would be the sign.

Keeping with the metaphor as Jesus as Jonah, he continues, “the Men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.” This is like the reverse of “Sodom would have repented if they had seen the things that you have seen,” because Jesus is giving examples of times when people who were incredibly wicked repented when called upon to do so by the prophets. Basically Jesus is saying that if Nineveh repented at the words of Jonah, so much more condemned at the Pharisees because they will not repent even when a being greater than Jonah is with them. The IM gives some interesting background on Nineveh saying, “Ancient Assyria, whose capital was Nineveh, was notorious for its brutal treatment of war captives, who were often tortured, beheaded, dismembered before family members, flayed alive, roasted over a slow fire, or sent back to Assyria for forced relocation or public execution.” That is some crazy stuff. What a wild place. And I guess that a lot of that goes into why Jonah didn’t want to preach to them, yes he was afraid, but he also hated them and perhaps didn’t want them to have the opportunity to repent, because from what I understand, the people of Nineveh had captured his city in battle and done that type of stuff to his family. The IM continues, “Nonetheless, the ancient inhabitants of Nineveh, who were not of Israelite descent, responded to Jonah’s cry of repentance.” Jesus also speaks of “the queen of the south” who “came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.” The IM says, “Similarly, the queen of the south (queen of Sheba), also not of Israel, had great respect for Solomon, the Israelite king. The Savior referred to the men of Nineveh and the queen of Sheba while rebuking the Pharisees for failing to believe in Him. He was ‘greater than Jonas’ and ‘greater than Solomon’- yet to the shame of the Jewish leaders, who were of Israel and ought to have known better, they were refusing to honor and hearken to Jesus Christ, the greatest of all.”

Jesus speaks of evil spirits and dry houses, I don’t understand that part at all and there is no insight from the IM.