All right, signs of the Messiah. Matthew 16, 1 through 4. The Pharisees also with the Sadducees
came, and tempting desired Him that He would show them a sign
from heaven. He answered and said unto them,
When it is evening, you say, it will be fair weather. for
the sky is red, and in the morning it will be foul weather today,
for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, you can discern
the face of the sky, but can you not discern the face of the
times? A wicked and adulterous generation
seeketh after a sign. And there shall no sign be given
unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah, and he left them
and departed. Look at the last part of verse
three again. But can ye not discern the signs
of the time? Now in Luke, chapter 12, and
we read a few passages in this place. Luke chapter 12, and verse
54, 5, and 6. And he said also to the people,
when you see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway you
say, There cometh a shower, watch this, and so it is. And when you see the south wind
blow, you say, there will be heat and it comes to pass. You hypocrites, you can discern
the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it that you
do not discern this time." And watch that carefully. How is
it that you do not discern this time? Now, our text and its context. Once more, we find the pesky
Jews troubling our Lord that he might give unto them a sign. Some sign they desire, a great
sign, or signs as it were in the plural, and notice something
else. They request that such signs
be, quote, from heaven, unquote. Notice that very carefully. We
have it in Mark 16 and 1, from heaven. We have it in Mark 8,
11, from heaven. and Luke 11 and verse 16. And in all of those places, they
add that qualification from heaven. Now, we know, do we not, that
the Jews believed very strongly that when Messiah came into the
world that signs and wonders and miracles in great abundance
would be present from the hand and the person of Messiah. And these would stand as confirming
proof that he was come from God and as a confirmation and credentials
of his messiahship when he appeared among them in the world. They would be attesting miracles
as to the person of the messiah when he appeared among men. And
they constantly pestered our Lord about Zion. For example,
In Matthew 12, 38, Master, we would see a sign from thee. Show us something wonderful.
Matthew 27, 42, they said, while the Lord was upon the cross,
if thou be the king, then come down from the cross and we will
believe you. Even though Thomas, one of the
disciples of our Lord said, in John 20 and 25. The other said
to him, we've seen the Lord. Thomas wasn't there. And Thomas
said then, except unless, if not, I can put my fingers in
the wound, the nails, the hand, and the side, I will not believe,
unless I see it with my very own eyes and examine it with
my very own hand. And yet though the Lord was approved
of God among them by miracles, by signs, and by wonders without
number, Acts chapter 2 and verse 22, yet they believed not. All kinds of miracles and signs
and wonders our Lord did in the presence of them, and yet they
did not believe because their mind and their eyes were blinded. Now the Lord told some in Luke
22 and verse 67, if I tell you that I am the Christ, you will
not believe. You remember that passage and
that parable of the prodigal in Luke chapter 16 and down in
verse 31? They said, look, send someone
to our brother's house. that they might believe and not
come to this awful place. And our Lord answered them, neither
will they be persuaded, though one rose up from the dead and
went about witnessing and preaching. Not even if one came again from
the dead. Now, Lazarus, you remember, was
brought back from the dead by the power of our Lord in the
11th chapter of the Gospel of John. And they, they being the
chief priests and the leaders and the rulers of Israel wanted
to kill Lazarus in John chapter 12 and verse 10 and 11 because Because of him, some Jews believed
on the Lord Jesus Christ for raising Lazarus from the dead. Now, sign seekers are ever with
us and probably forever will be. But let's settle in to our
text and see What it is that is brought before us here concerning
the Lord and signs, and particularly the request for signs that be
from heaven. And what our Lord in Matthew
calls the signs of the time. Now we read two accounts of this,
Matthew 16 and Luke chapter 12. And please note, if you might,
of the two, that Matthew tells us this is or was the result
of a question or request from the Jew, two of the worst, the
Sadducees and the Pharisees, that he might show them a sign. But notice, Matthew said, the
purpose of their request was not sincere and genuine. It was that they might tempt
him. that the sign might fail and
therefore he be discredited somehow in the eyes and the mind of the
people. They had already proved back
in chapter 12 of Matthew, that they would not credit his miracles
to him, saying that they were done in the spirit or the power
of Beelzebub, the prince of devil. And the Lord declared that to
be an unpardonable sin to attribute the works of the Spirit unto
the devil. Then let us note, they ask not
just for a common sign, but that such a sign, again, be from heaven. Now, they were asking, therefore,
I suggest unto you, more than healing, more than straightening
out a withered limb upon a man, or giving sight unto the blind,
or curing leprosy, or turning water into wine, or curing an
issue of blood in a poor woman, or casting out demons out of
people, stilling a storm feeding 5,000 with but a boy's lunch,
raising the dead and such like, for all of these the Lord had
done and they had seen. So are they making a difference
now between the things done on earth with material things and
those done from heaven without a question? Signs which could
be said to be from heaven above. I was reading Spurgeon here.
Spurgeon mused like this. Possibly, he said, a marvel of
some kind in the sky. That is something that had come
down from heaven. Perhaps they have in the back
of their mind such marvels from old time as the rainbow in the
cloud back in the days of Noah, or the fire on Mount Sinai and
the smoke and such like in the giving of the law, or the manna
and the quail from heaven in the time in the wilderness. Or Elijah the prophet calling
down fire upon some of the enemies of God. Or Elijah again calling
down fire upon the wet wood and the sacrifice and licking it
all up. First Kings chapter 18, for it
was a sign to determine the true God as opposed to the false God
of the heathen. Now Gil was kind of of the mind
of Spurgeon that much like that. some very unusual and uncommon
sight in the heavens as proof of his mission from God, unquote,
the words of John Gill. Now, to their request, the Lord's
answer might at first reading seem unrelated at all to the
subject at hand and to the request of those people. Show us a sign
from heaven. And the Lord starts talking about
the weather and weather prognosticators. He responds by referring to their
ability to look at the sign of the heaven and therefore to predict
the weather by the signs they saw in the sky or in the heaven
or in the earth, by the face of the sky, and by observing
these they would prognosticate the weather. and they did so
correctly. By discerning the sign in the
sun, in the sky, in the clouds, they would say, it will be fair,
or it will be stormy, it'll be hot and dry, or it will be windy. And these things, they deduce
from reading the signs in the sky, the weather patterns in
their area at a particular time. Now, with that, I thought about
our weather predictors in our time. You know, they're getting
pretty good at it with the technology that they have. They predict
what it'll be next week on one of the day. But with all of their
technology and the radar and the jet stream and the highs
and the lows and All of that, they therefore predict the weather,
and sometimes they are right. But let's read again how Luke
describes it in the Gospel of Luke, of the reading of the earth
and of the sky. That would be Luke chapter 12
again, and verse 54 and verse 55. And we read it, and the Lord
said, and it was so. Now, here again. As in Matthew,
there is a comparison and the two manner of sign that are to
be discerned and what to make of them both, the signs in the
sky and the signs of the Lord or the Messiah. Number one. The signs in nature,
or the weather pattern, if we call it that, signs in earth
and sky, told them, was to them a sign of what was to come. And secondly, and we're interested
here, the signs clear and plain that Jesus Christ of Nazareth
is the Messiah and that he came from God. For none could do these
mighty works that he did except and unless God be with him and
he came from God. Now, the first that they could
discern, fair and foul weather. wet or dry, hot or stormy or
steamy. How often they were right in
Luke 12 and 54 and 55. Twice, as we pointed out, it
is said, and it was so, and it came to pass. It happened. It
become. It turned out as they said. They
had read the signs. in the earth and the sky, a lowering
sky, rolling dark clouds, indicated to them foul weather of some
kind was on the way, while a bright and a clear or a high sky portends
for them a nice day that will come. A south wind will bring
the warm and the hot and the heat weather, maybe scorching
heat in the summer and a dry spell. But the Lord called them
hypocrites for that and not discerning other signs. Now why did he do
that? We will consider this later in
our study of the morning. First of all, forgive me, if
you will, for a digression, and I pray that it might not break
our flow of thought until we come back unto our text again. But this will take us back into
the Old Testament, and it will show us something about men who
are wise as to the things and the signs of their time and of
their day. And it concerns the benefit,
if you will, of having men as leaders who understood and who
could discern the time in which they lived. And therefore, they
knew what was good for the people and what was good for the nation. Ecclesiastes chapter 8 and verse
5. A wise man's heart deserves both
time and judgment. But Ezekiel 8 and verse 16 said,
Then I sent for men of understanding, that is, to go up from Babylon
into Jerusalem and build up again the worship in the restored temple
of God. Men of understanding are needed
for this great work. For some know not the judgment
of the Lord." Jeremiah 8 and verse 7. They cannot or they
don't recognize the judgment of God. And perhaps the judgment
of God is upon them and they do not even realize it for what
it is. But my favorite passage of scripture
along this line is from 1 Chronicles. chapter 12 and verse 32. And it concerns when they were
to make David the king of Israel and put Saul out of the office. And in verse 32, would you listen? The children of Issachar were
some that were there. They had understanding of the
times to know what Israel ought to do. They had understanding
of the time to know what Israel ought to do. Matthew Henry wrote,
they know three things. Number one, these men knew the
natural time. They knew the natural time, the
signs of the time and the need and the direction. of the nation
and the people. Number two, they knew the ceremonial
time. They knew the days, the month,
the time, the season, and the years. And number three, they
knew the political time. They were statesmen among the
people. They knew public affairs. They
had their finger on the pulse of the people and of the nation. Or to quote more from Brother
Matthew Henry, quote, they knew or understood the temper of the
nation and the tendency of the present events, unquote. They knew where they would lead.
They knew the consequences of good or of bad. They knew what Israel ought to
do. in order that it might prosper
and that it might bask under the blessings of Almighty God. For example, in Esther 1 and
verse 13, then sent the king to the wise men which knew the
times. They knew it. They studied it.
They kept up with it and understood it. Now concerning these things,
Solomon wrote something that I think is amazing, and it's
found in Ecclesiastes, the 10th chapter, and verses 5 through
7. He said something like this,
there is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and that
is that folly is set in dignity. That is, foolishness is dignified
and the rich sit in low places. I have seen servants, he said,
up on horses and princes walking as servants along on the earth. In other words, fools are made
to be leaders and respected and the wise are being treated as
if they were fools. But back to the rebuke which
the Lord gives to those who demand of him some kind of heavenly
sign. He called them Matthew 16 and
4, a wicked and adulterous generation seeking after a sign. And over in Luke chapter 12 and
verse 56, hypocrites. And this from their request to
show them a sign from heaven. And we particularly notice again
in Luke chapter 12 and verse 56, how it is that you do not
discern, you do not test, You do not know, watch this, the
signs of this time. He's talking about a particular
sign and particular era or event. Now, they saw or read, they tested
the signs in the sky of the natural, and they came to a right and
plausible conclusion. It would be good, foul, fair
weather, whatever, because the signs were plain and evident. They knew, therefore, what was
happening and why it was happening and the significance of it. And
yet, our Lord's question is this, how did they not discern What
was happening in Israel right before their very own eyes. How is it that they were not
able to discern the times they were living in? Concerning the
person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Who He was. Now again, note. How Luke phrases it, this time. How is it that you understand
not this time? Linsky renders it this way, this
season of time, unquote. this present time, meaning the
appearance, the works, the sign, the miracles done by Christ in
their very presence in the middle of them and seen by them and
they could not deny them and yet they cast them aside as being
through the spirit of Beelzebub They said, oh, he's doing that
by the spirit and leadership and help of Yeezlebub. Or they
consider them to be invalid because they were done on the Sabbath
day. Ah, this man breaks the Sabbath. These miracles, therefore, are
not to be attested to. And the Lord said they were blind
hypocrites because they saw clear, evident signs and proof of his
being Messiah, and yet they rejected the mountain of evidence that
piled up before them time after time, not just the layman. in Judaism, not just the people. But the leaders were blind guides,
our Lord said in Matthew chapter 23. They knew not the time of
their visitation. Now, I want to flip to Luke 19
and read three verses. And if you want to turn there,
I'll give you just a minute. Luke 19, verse 41 through verse
44. and look at it. And when he was
come near, he beheld the city, that be Jerusalem, and wept over
it. Say, if thou hast known, even
thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto
thy peace. But now they are hid from your
eyes. For the day shall come upon thee
that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, compass
thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay
thee even with the ground, and their children with thee. And they shall not leave in thee
one stone, upon another," watch this, because you knew not the
time of your visitation. And there is a strong, strong
word from our Lord. Something is coming. It will
be awful. and because you knew not the
time of your visitation." And here the Lord is making the prediction
of the doom and destruction of Jerusalem that came in 70 AD. And in verse 42, they did not
know. They did not recognize the things
that tend to peace. They did not recognize the one
who was himself the very Prince of Peace. And in verse 44, they
did not recognize the day or the time of God's great visitation
unto them in the person of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the
Jewish Messiah, this one long promise of old and awaited for
with great hope by the faithful in Israel. He is called the hope
of Israel, the things that tend to peace and a day of visitation. It went right by them, and they
neither recognized it nor considered it. Now, with that in mind, remember
what we read in Hebrews chapter 1, verse 1 and 2. It said, concerning Jesus, who,
God rather, who in former times, and in different ways and manners,
dreams and vision, and such like, spoke unto the fathers by the
prophet, has in these last days spoken unto us in his son. But as they persecuted, and stoned
the prophet, so they rejected and they crucified the Messiah
that God sent into the world. Same thing, basically, in the
parable of the vineyard in Matthew 21, verse 33 through about verse
46. The Jews were the overseer of
the Lord's vineyard in that parable. And when his servants were sent
to receive the fruit of the harvest of the lamb, the overseers beat
some and killed others. that were sent unto them. Then
the landowner said to himself, I will send mine own son. They will reverence him. But
when the son came in the name of the father, then they seized
the son cast him out of the vineyard, said, this is the heir. Let's
kill him and take it for ourselves. And so they did. They seized
the son of the landowner, and they killed him. Now, what would
their punishment be? Well, they pronounced judgment
upon themselves. They would be utterly destroyed,
and the oversight of the vineyard was taken away from them and
to be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." And
that, of course, would be the Gentile. They lost the oversight
of the kingdom of God because they recognized and honored not
the Son when He appeared. We can read in Genesis chapter
28 something I think is not only interesting but pertinent to
our subject. You remember Jacob traveling?
He had fled from Esau. And he found him a place to camp
and spend the night out in a remote place. And he put him down a
stone, a rock for his pillow. And during the night he had a
dream. And in that dream the angels of God ascended and descended
on a ladder coming into heaven. And in verse 16 is what I wanted
to point out. Jacob said after he saw that
and woke up from his dream, you know, God was in this place and
I didn't even know it. God was in this place and I knew
it not. I'm kind of the mind of John
Gild. He thought the meaning to be this. Jacob did not at
all expect a work or present or visitation from God in that
particular place. Who would expect, for example,
to meet Messiah sitting by Jacob's well, tired, and thirsty and
asking a drink of a Samaritan woman. Even so, the blind Jews
did not expect Messiah to be a despised and a suffering man
of sorrow and full of grief, and they did not expect that
He would be a person in which there was no beauty that they
should desire Him, as Isaiah 53 has said. They did not expect
Him to be acquainted with grief or to be put to death upon a
Roman cross in the way that he was. But let's read the words
of our Lord again in Luke 19 and 42. They knew not the things
in this day which belong unto peace The very Prince of Peace
was among them, and they knew it not. And in this day refers
not to a certain 12-hour day or period of time, or a week,
or a month. but to the time or the day of
Messiah. In John chapter 8, Jesus calls
it my day in referencing Abraham. Abraham, he said, rejoiced to
see my day and he saw it and was glad. He was glad what Abraham
saw by faith the day of the Lord, and rejoiced in, the Jews saw
it virtually, and yet were filled with unbelief, and did not recognize
and acknowledge their Messiah. Hear the words of the Lord, and
now They are hidden from your eyes. You didn't realize it,
you didn't know, you didn't recognize the day of visitation, and now
these things are hidden from your eyes. Your eyes are closed
to them, and they are blinded. Meaning, of course, that they
were judicially blinded, and that's in the Aorish tense, I'm
told. So your eyes are blinded. Then again in verse 44, because
they did not recognize the time of God's great visitation, and
it was a visitation, their temple, their city, would be ravaged
to the ground by the marauding Gentiles who came among them
because They recognized not a great visitation from God on high. God visited them and that time
and generation in the person of His Son. He spoke unto them
in His Son. He sent them His only begotten
Son, and they believed it not. Now, we learn in Scripture that
a visit from God may be either punitive or it may be a great
blessing and benefit. For example, of the first, Exodus
34 and 7, I will visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
until the third and fourth generation. Also, Numbers 14 and verse 8. Psalm 89, 32. I will visit their
transgression with a rod." Amos 3 and 14. In the day, I visit
the transgression of Israel upon him. There is a visitation of
judgment. But secondly, there is a gracious
good visit. of God to bestow help and to
do good unto a people, to relieve and to deliver. And we have such
a case in Exodus 3.16, I have surely visited you. I have seen what was done to
you in Egypt and am come to deliver you." And we know not every Jew
without exception failed to recognize the great visitation from God
by the incarnation of the Christ. Here, for example, is the unction
of Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, who in Luke 1 and
verse 68 and 69 said then, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up
a horn of salvation for us in the house of thy servant David."
Unquote. John 143, the witness Philip to Nathanael come we have
found him that Moses and the prophets wrote about in John
4 29 from a very unexpected source the woman of Samaria who went
back to her city and And she said to the men and the inhabitants,
comes here a man who told me all things that ever I did. Is
not this the Christ? For she said, when Christ comes,
he will tell us all things. Now you see, some were given
ears to hear. And some were given eyes to see,
and some were given a heart to understand the things of God
and of Christ when he appeared among them. And still, we see
here that they asked for a sign from heaven of the blessed Lord
Jesus. Now, as to a sign to that generation
that he was who he claimed to be, show us a sign, and we will
believe you, that he was equal with the Father, for he had claimed
that. Show us some sign that will confirm
that, that he came from God, that he was the great I Am, the
true Shepherd. He was the object. of Abraham's
faith, but he would not work miracles simply to please their
curiosity or to fall under their animosity. when pressed for a
sign to authenticate his claims to be from God, the Son of God,
Messiah, and such like, the Lord reduced, and I want you from
here to the end to pay particular attention, the Lord reduced all
signs to one. The Lord summed up all signage
in one great sign. The great sign, the sign of all
signs to that generation and to any generation. And that sign
is what? It is the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead. This is the sign that will be
given. And there are at least two passages
where this is the only sign that our Lord mentions under them.
And all is made to hinge, therefore, upon his dying and coming back
again from the dead after a specified time in death and the grave. All signs are summed up in this
one. And the two passages are Matthew
chapter 12 and verse 38 through 41. and John chapter 2 and verse
13 through verse 22. Now, let's consider Matthew 12
first of all, where he declared the sign to that generation. But first, the gospel tell us
that the Lord raised up three people from the dead during his
ministry. Now, those three people, one,
a 12-year-old daughter had just died and the Lord raised her
up, the daughter of Jarius. Secondly, a man died, the only
son of a widow of Nain, and was being carried to the grave as
the Lord came upon the possession, and he raised that one back to
life. And the third one, of course, is Lazarus, dead, buried three
days. and the Lord raised him to life
and declared to them, I am the resurrection and the life. That's
in John chapter 11. Now in Matthew 12, 38, some again
ask for a sign, some sign extraordinary, a sign from heaven to confirm
it, that it is from God. The Lord's response is instead
not a gracious help, but a sharp rebuke. He calls them sign seekers,
an adulterous and evil generation who would not believe no matter
the sign. They were immoral religious hypocrites,
and that's why the Lord answered them as he did. They were blind
leaders of the blind, and the Lord, as we say, read them the
riot act. He would leave them with one
great sign, however. There would be one great sign.
And the sign would be not in someone else, but in himself.
The sign would be in and through him, not in others. It would be the sign of Jonah,
as he said in the Matthew 12 passage, just as Jonah was three
days and three nights in the bowels of the great fish. in the depths of the sea, Jonah
1 and verse 17, then restored to life again, Jonah, and belched
out. by the great fish upon the shore
without being digested or consumed or destroyed in the belly of
that great fish. So would the Son of Man be three
days and three nights in the heart of the earth and live again. Now the Lord taught this repeatedly. He often said to his disciples,
I will be crucified and the third day I will rise again." Here's
some verses, Matthew 16, 21, 17, 23, Luke 9, and verse 22.
Now in John chapter 2, And verse 13 and following, they
asked a sign to justify his disturbing the temple as he had. Why? He's not a Levi priest. He's
not the great priest. Who is he that he comes in and
turns over the money changers table and drives them out of
the temple? Show us a sign for your authority
in doing these things. What was the Lord's answer in
verse 19? Destroy this temple, and in three
days I'll raise it up again." That's in John, the second chapter. The thought of their material
temple. They thought, he's talking about
this material temple in verse 20, and that thing was over 40
years in the making, and he's going to build it again in three
days. The Lord, however, spoke mysteriously
to them, so they did not understand, referring to the temple of his
body. John 2 and verse 21, he spoke
of the temple of his body. Destroy this temple and in three
days I will raise it up again. He would be put to death but
he would live again after the third day. Now this is a stupendous
claim made by the Lord himself and it is A deviation, if I may,
don't misunderstand me, but it's a deviation from human experience
because what do mortals do? They die and they lay in the
grave and they waste away as Lazarus had begun the process. But the Son of God died and was
buried in a grave and was raised again after three days without
seeing any corruption. And that fulfilled the prophecy
of Psalm 16, verse 8 through 11, and stated by both Peter
and Paul in the New Testament as they both refer to it. Peter
stated in Acts 2, 25 through 31, David did not write this
about himself, for he's dead, he's buried, his grave is with
us under this day. David fell asleep, said Paul,
and saw corruption in Acts 13. But Jesus saw no corruption,
Acts 13 and 36. But him God raised up. And he saw no corruption. Acts
13 and verse 37. Acts 224. It was not possible
that he be held by the pangs of death beyond the appointed
time. Three days and three nights.
Neither death nor corruption. Not a sealed tomb or a guarded
tomb. by the soldiers of Rome could
hold him in that grave, and God loosed on him the bands of death. And the Apostle, in their preaching
enact, pressed this very hard in the hearing of the Jews. You
killed him, God raised him up again. You killed the Prince
of Life, but God has raised him up again. And again, And again,
you find that in the book of Acts in their sermon. They strongly
emphasize the resurrection and that the Lord was not only alive
from the dead, but ascended to the right hand of God the Father
in heaven and made Lord and Christ, made the sovereign overseer. He's alive forevermore. He's
raised for our justification, Romans 4 and 25. Now let's close
with a great verse, Romans 1 and verse 4, that by and after His
resurrection, as Birkhoff wrote, was the culminating proof of
the deity of Christ, that He came out of that grave exactly
as He said exactly on the day of prediction, fulfilling the
sign of Jonah, that he was the very son of God, and this resurrection
was very well witnessed for a reason. The Father's seal on the saving
work of Christ. was the resurrection. Had he
not raised from the dead and before was cast in doubt, all
before was cast in doubt concerning his claims and all of those things. But he is ever living, alive
from the dead. The resurrection overthrows Every
argument and every objection raised against the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Every objection that might be
made and every argument falls down by the resurrection of our
Lord. We know that the Jews tried to
prevent the resurrection. Then they would denounce Christianity
as a fraud. If he's not raised, he's nothing
but a fraud. And they, therefore, would rejoice
in that evidence, as they might consider it. But the resurrection
of our Lord put the final seal of authenticity upon Jesus as
the Messiah. If they can keep him in the grave,
if the grave can hold him, if the grave and death can bring
him to corruption, then all evaporates with it. But our Lord did raise
the third day and ever lives. at the right hand of God, the
great sign, therefore, that he is indeed the Messiah sent from
God. And we thank God for that, that
we have that. And that verse in Romans chapter
1 and verse 4, and declared to be the son of God with power
according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the
dead. That put the final seal upon
him as work, his ministry, his person, and all by the resurrection
from the dead.