Saturday, July 25, 2026
Matthew 12:38-42
The Sign of Jonah
38 Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”
39 He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 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. 41 The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. 42 The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now something greater than Solomon is here.
They must have really irritated Jesus for Jesus to say that the Ninevites and the Queen of Sheba would condemn them. Yikes!
The story of Jonah would have been a core story of God’s power and deliverance that regular people in the first century would have known. It would have been nothing short of a miracle that God could cause a man to live for three days in the belly of a fish.
What Jesus is getting at here is that in his death and resurrection, God is about to do something even greater than that! Unfortunately, not even his resurrection would be enough to change the hearts and minds of the temple leadership.
It breaks Jesus’ heart.
Living this far from Jesus, and Jonah, it can be easy for us to lose sight of the miraculous nature of God’s power in those moments. We are not that dissimilar from the temple leaders in that way, especially when we consider the fact that part of the issue was that the leaders wanted Jesus to do the miracles that mattered to them (overthrow the Romans). They were less interested in all the healing, and food, and whatnot.
Thanks be to God then, that the effect of Jesus’ resurrection isn’t contingent upon our being wowed by it. It works because it works!
If you have ever been loved by someone when you were difficult to love, then you know the feeling here. Don’t ever forget that “God so loved the world…” “while we were still sinners…”
It was true when the words were written and it is true now.
– Pr. Jason
God, thank you for loving me when I don’t love you back. Let this good new overflow in me to the people I love so that the whole world might know you better. Amen.
