Matthew 12:38-50
Some leaders of the people asked Jesus “to show them a sign”. They seem to have meant that He should do some wonderful miracle to prove to them that He had come from God. Jesus had already shown them His power by many great miracles. They could not do one of the many cures which He had done, and what greater miracle should they ask, than dead persons to be raised to life, as He had done?
Those men also had read God’s words in the Old Testament scriptures about the Messiah to come to earth, and about what He would do to bless the people. They should have believed God’s promises, but they had not believed the signs already done for them.
Then Jesus told those men who asked for a “sign”, that there would be one sign given them: He said that it would be the sign of the prophet Jonas (Jonah), that as Jonah had been three days within the great fish, so should the Son of Man (Jesus) be three days and three nights in “the heart of the earth.” We know that Jesus meant that He would be in the grave.
The men Jesus spoke to, knew the story of Jonah, and that God had caused a great fish to keep Jonah from drowning in the ocean; they believed it was true, and they knew how the people of the city of Ninevah had been sorry for their sins when Jonah told them of God’s punishment to come. Yet these men had not been sorry for their sins, although God had sent His own Son to speak to them, and He was so much greater than Jonah.
Perhaps afterward, when Jesus was buried in the grave, some of the men who had heard Him, remembered His words about “the sign to be given.”
Sometimes people now say that the story of Jonah could not have been true, but it is plain from Jesus’ words that He knew it was true.
Jesus spoke to the men, also, of the Queen who came a long journey to learn if what she had heard about the wonderful riches and wisdom of King Solomon were really true. And Jesus said to the men, “Behold a greater than Solomon is here.” Jesus was the One with them, “greater than Solomon”, yet the men would not listen to, or believe His wise words. Instead, those men were trying to find cause to have Jesus killed.
About this same time, while Jesus was inside of a house, or the synagogue, His mother and His brothers came wanting to speak to Him. Someone told Jesus that His mother and brothers were ouide, wanting to see Him. The answer of Jesus shows how very much He loveci and valued those who believed that He was from God, for He pointed to the disciples and said that they were as dear to Him as though they were His mother and brothers. At that time the brothers of Jesus did not believe that He was froni God (John 7:5), but the disciples had left their work and homes to stay with Jesus, because they loved Him and believed God had sent Him.
Later on we find that the brothers of Jesus believed that He was the Son of God, and not like themselves; they stayed with the apostles after Jesus’ death, and shared all things with them (Acts 1:14). Two of the brothers, James and Jude (or Judas) were the men who wrote two of the short books of the New Testament, and called themselves “servants of Jesus Christ.”
ML 04/18/1943