"Jesus, Jonah, Solomon" Matthew 12:38-42 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Well, Matthew chapter 12, uh, this morning, verse 38 through 42.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

Let me read it for us.

Matthew 12, verse 38.

Matthew 12:38

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered to Jesus, saying, Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.

But he answered them, an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign.

No sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

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.

The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it.

For she came to the ends from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.

This is the word of God, and I pray that he would seal it in your hearts.

It is very common for unbelievers to ask for a sign.

It is very common to hear people say, I would believe the Bible, I would believe the gospel, I would submit my life and repent for my sin and all of that if only God would prove himself to me in this particular way.

As you're falling asleep, Lord, if you exist, just wiggle the curtain.

This is the fruit of unbelief because you understand the heart that's asking that doesn't believe God.

And no sign will scratch the itch they have.

You know, if the curtain wiggles, oh no, Lord, I meant that curtain.

Signs and the requesting of signs is merely an extension of unbelief.

Faith is the person who believes the invisible God.

Faith is the evidence of things unseen.

Faith is the confidence that God exists and that he rewards those who seek for him.

Faith is the belief that the invisible God is worth more, has more value than everything in the world I see.

Faith believes in spite of the world, not because of some kind of confirmation in the world.

Unbelief asks for signs and will never have their sign met.

I mean, this goes back to the days of Gideon, remember?

Gideon, he says, I'll believe God if I put out a fleece and the fleet is the fleece is wet.

Okay, never mind.

I believe God if I put out a fleece and the fleece is dry.

Okay, I believe God if I put out the fleece in his permanent press.

That's that's Gideon.

That comes from a heart of doubt.

And God, of course, does give signs in some sense, but he gives signs to believers, believers with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Most of what people call signs, I think, are better described just by the title providence.

That you're, you know, you have this job or that job, and you're trying to figure out which one to take, or this school or that school, where to go to, and God works providentially in your heart or your desires, or closing one door and opening another, or your friend goes to that school.

That's a sign that you should go there, kind of thing.

That's just better described as providence, but if you want to call it a sign, I'm not going to quibble with that.

But that's from the eyes of somebody with faith who's looking to be led by God, submitting his life to the Holy Spirit.

That is very different than somebody who says, I'm going to question God unless he gives me a sign that answers my questions.

That's from a heart of unbelief.

And that's what you encounter in verse 38 of Matthew chapter 12.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

The scribes and Pharisees answer to Jesus and answered here.

What are they answering?

Jesus had just said, You guys are condemned, you clowns are condemned because of your words.

They respond to him by saying, Okay, enough words, give us a sign.

That is from a heart of unbelief.

It is an ironic request, it is an insolent request, it's an insipid request, it's just a hostile and faithless request.

It's a terrible request.

Because if you remember the context here, this whole showdown with the scribes and the Pharisees started the beginning of chapter 12 when a man with a withered hand came into the synagogue where Jesus was and Jesus healed him.

They responded by going to conspire how to murder Jesus.

So Jesus gave them a sign and they said, Let's kill him for it.

Now they're following him around, and Jesus basically asked them which of my good works you're going to put me to death for, and they say, they say that it's not the works he did, it's that he keeps making himself out to be equal to God.

He keeps exalting himself as if he were God.

He's healing people, he's raising the dead during this time.

And they say, Yeah, it could be a demon that's doing that.

That was their conclusion.

Yes, he's healing people, but it's probably a demon that's healing people.

And so Jesus says, that's blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

You're condemned, your words condemn you, and so they revert, they relapse here, they recapitulate back to the start of chapter 12, and they say, okay, fine.

How about a sign then?

That's what started this whole thing.

They want another sign now.

Our request shows their arrogance and their ignorance.

It's trying to reduce Jesus to the level of a circus performer.

Jump when we say jump here.

That's what they're doing.

But Jesus is not going to take their request.

He's not WGTS.

He does not take requests.

Their sign, by the way, it's even more specific than asking for a sign.

In Mark's account of this, Mark says they ask for a sign from heaven.

So there's all kinds of Jewish literature from this time period of so-called prophets and you know, so-called messiahs doing signs to authenticate themselves.

There's stories of one of these prophets leading a bunch of Jews down to the Jordan River and doing miracles there.

There's another story of a prophet around this time period that turned one of the Roman fountains, he turned the water into blood.

And then to back that up, he had the stream that was flowing out of the fountain flow backwards, back into the fountain that was filling with blood.

That's a kind of sign that people were doing.

And the idea here, the protocol, was that somebody presents themselves as a prophet, and the scribes and the Pharisees have the authority to ask a sign to make them prove themselves.

And the whole thing is ridiculous, by the way, because even if you could turn the water into blood, that doesn't mean you're from God.

They're asking for signs that even a false prophet could do.

And that's at the heart of the Israelite religion.

I mean, you go back to the Exodus story, and they're being led out of Egypt in the Exodus story, and it was the false magicians of Egypt that could turn the water into blood.

That doesn't mean they're from God.

They were opposing God.

And now the scribes and Pharisees are asking for that kind of sign, a sign that can, whether I don't know if a prophet during Jesus' lifetime really did turn a fountain into blood.

I don't know and I don't care.

Because even if he did, it didn't mean he's from God.

And they're trying to subject Jesus to that kind of rig and roll.

They have the divine person, Jesus Christ, in front of them, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, raising the dead, and their response is, I'm sorry, this is just standard operating procedure here.

We're going to need you to go ahead and stop this for a second until you give us the kind of sign we want.

And specifically they ask for a sign from heaven, Mark says.

They don't want a fountain kind of thing.

They don't want a stream rolling backwards kind of thing.

They want something, you know, starry.

Could you make the stars spell Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, do what he says.

Like if the stars spell that, then I would listen.

That's their attitude right now.

And of course, you know that's not true.

Because at the baptism of Jesus, there was a sign from heaven, wasn't there?

At the baptism from Jesus, a voice from heaven declared, This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.

It was authenticated by the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus like a dove.

That happens.

They weren't content with that.

They're back to you.

We want another sign from heaven.

And then we would believe.

And so Jesus responds to them in verse 39 by saying, An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it.

So Jesus takes dynamite to his words and blows this whole thing up.

You want a sign, I'll tell you, here's a sign, you are an evil and adulterous generation.

How's that for a sign?

And he's expanding this condemnation.

Earlier, he said, You're blaspheming the Spirit.

There's no salvation for you.

Then he said, your words are going to condemn you.

Now he's making that, if you can imagine, even broader by saying, your whole generation is condemned.

Not just you.

All of your people.

The whole Jewish religion at the life of Christ, you are all condemned because you're evil and adulterous.

They're evil because they're challenging God.

They're selfish because they don't care that Jesus is healing suffering people.

They would rather he not heal suffering people because the fact that he can do it is calling their authority into question.

They're putting their authority above the hurting needs of people.

That is so wicked, so evil, and so selfish.

They are adulterous, Jesus says, which is kind of standard Old Testament language for people that are in a covenant with God that leave him to follow the world.

They were supposedly God's covenant people.

To them was the patriarchs, to them was the word of God, to them was the promises of God, to them was the covenants of God, and they have all of those at their lap and the covenant person of God, Jesus Christ, in front of them, and they say, We want a sign.

He says, You're adulterous.

They're gonna get a sign.

You're committing spiritual adultery by loving your own authority, loving your own works, righteousness, loving the world, bottom line, loving the world over God.

Now, how do you make that in the American world right now?

This is the kind of person that is baptized into the church.

They make a public profession of faith in Christ, they say they're part of the new covenant, part of God's covenant people, etc.

And then years go by, a decade goes by, and they leave the faith.

They fall in love with the world like Demas.

They live for themselves out in the world.

And that's spiritual adultery.

And Jesus says, Your whole generation is that.

He's the light of the world, he came to his own, his own did not receive him.

He was rejected by them.

Imagine, imagine after all they've seen at this point.

Saying, a sign, please.

Well, Jesus says, No.

No more signs for you.

You will have no more signs ever.

Except for one tiny sign.

You get one more sign.

No signs ever again, but one exception.

He says in verse 39, you will get the sign of the prophet Jonah.

The sign of the prophet Jonah.

These people condemn the innocent to sustain their own authority, and they ask for a sign, and Jesus says, No, except for Jonah.

Now that is an interesting sign to choose from.

First of all, Jonah was the prophet to the Gentiles.

He was from the ten tribes in the north.

He was not really a prophet to the two tribes in the south.

He wasn't a prophet in Jerusalem where the line of David was.

That wasn't Jonah.

Those weren't his people.

Jonah was born in probably modern-day Nazareth in that area.

He's from Galilee.

He was born at a period of time where Israel was adulterous.

They were borderline pagan.

Jonah came to them.

They did not listen to Jonah.

So God sends Jonah to the Ninevites, who are wicked people.

They're the Assyrians.

They're the people that are eventually going to conquer the ten tribes and bring them into captivity, and they'll never return from them ever again.

That's the people Jonah goes to.

Dirty, lying, stealing, mischievous, wicked Ninevehes.

That's where Jonah gets sent.

And he goes there, and what does he do?

Preaches the gospel.

Preaches in quotes there.

I mean, it wasn't that good of a sermon, really.

He said 40 days, you guys are going to die, and then he pulled up a chair.

He didn't have an introduction.

He didn't have a three-point sermon.

I mean, come on.

Preaching.

Call that preaching.

You guys are all going to die in 40 days.

That was a sermon.

And what did they do?

They repented.

That's what they did.

They deduced from that a few things.

They deduced that God is holy and is going to punish sin.

And then they deduced that God is a savior.

And you think, well, that's a stretch.

How did they get that God is a savior?

Well, because he said, You're going to die in 40 days, not today.

And so I don't know if they understood that on day one or day two, but it was in the first few days they figured out, wait a minute.

If God's going to judge our sin, but he's giving us time, that means he must want something from us.

Jonah didn't help them.

Jonah didn't tell them what he wanted.

These people didn't have the law.

They had to reason for themselves and say, okay, God is angry with us for our sin.

He's giving us time before he destroys us.

What if we repented from our sin?

And so, based on this limited information from Jonah, these dirty, lying, stealing, mischievous, malcontent, villainous Ninevites repented and were saved.

That's the story of Jonah.

As I mentioned, the Israelites, the Jewish people, don't really embrace Jonah.

They don't often name him.

In John's gospel, they even say Jesus can't be a prophet because he's from Nineveh.

Can any prophet come from Nineveh?

I mean, sorry, from Nazareth.

Can any prophet come from Nazareth?

Well, yes.

Jonah came from Nazareth.

They don't say his name.

He's not quite at the level of he who shall not be named, but they don't want to say his name.

Now the Jews, they read the book of Jonah every year on Yom Kippur.

They read it Thursday, you know, the afternoon of Yom Kipp before leading into the holiday because it's supposed to demonstrate that God loves even those outside of Yom Kippur, even those outside of the atonement that takes place.

That's what it's supposed to demonstrate.

But it kind of stands as a monument for the recalcitrance of the religious people in Israel.

Even today, there's not much about Jonah in Israel.

There's a you know a whale statue in Tel Aviv right along the coast.

It's probably not exactly where Jonah left, but it's in Tel Aviv, and it's a whale statue.

It's called the smiling whale.

It's a whale that's carved and it's got, you know, water in it.

The smiling whale.

No, no name of Jonah there, just the smiling whale.

And if you look at it, you go, that's a smiling whale.

Like that's the monument to Jonah.

He condemns Israel because the Ninevehes repented before the Israelites did.

That's a big picture.

Jesus saying you're gonna get the sign of Jonah, that itself is condemning Israel.

But he's more specific than just the big picture.

He drills down on a very particular part of Jonah's ministry.

Look at verse 40.

Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish.

Now, there's all details in here that people love to talk about.

Jonah, three days, three nights, belly of the great fish.

You remember part of the Jonah story is the traveling downward.

Everything is going down in the Jonah story, down, down, down, down, down.

And even when the word down isn't used, even when the Hebrew word for down is not expressly used, there's still this constant movement throughout the first two chapters of Jonah of everything is trending downward.

The word of God comes from heaven down to earth to tell Jonah to go up to Assyria.

Jonah instead goes down to the coast, down to the dock, into a boat that goes down to Tarshish.

Even on the boat, remember what Jonah does?

Goes down under deck on the boat, goes down to sleep.

Remember what the captain does?

Goes down to Jonah, shakes him, is like, get up! Jonah goes up to the deck and says, Throw me down into the ocean.

Jonah goes down into the ocean.

He then goes down under the ocean.

He then goes down into the fish, and then down into the fish.

Then the fish goes down to the bottom of the ocean.

Everything is down for Jonah.

Down, down, down, down, down.

Now I believe there was a person really named Jonah, a prophet named Jonah, who in this story happened literally.

They really threw Jonah off the side of the boat, officially swallowed him up, and threw him up on the shore of Nineveh three days later.

I think that really happened.

I don't know what kind of fish it is, and I know that many of you have very strong opinions about what kind of fish it is.

I do know that the word in both Hebrew and Greek that is used for it can be a whale, it can be a shark, it could be a sock-eyed salmon for all I care.

I really don't care what kind of fish it is, but I believe it happened.

I don't care if God made a special fish for this one day to swallow Jonah, that fish had a four-day life cycle.

I don't.

Is it Leviathan?

I don't care.

I believe that it happened.

I also believe that Jonah was alive when he got thrown up on the shore, and I believe he was alive when he went down in the water.

And I'm not going to vouch for anything in between.

Because people will say, I can't believe the Jonah story, because how could somebody live in a fish for three days?

I'm not saying he did live in the fish for three days.

He could have died in the fish for all I know.

In fact, he describes himself as going down, down, down, all the way down to Sheol.

I'm not saying he did die.

He was more than likely alive the whole time.

But if he did die, that still accounts for the story.

Because remember, he's going down.

And for the Jews, the ocean represented death.

The ocean represented the unknown.

It represented Sheol.

They don't say that your souls actually go into the ocean when you die, but the ocean represents the place your souls go when they die.

And Jonah understood that.

Look at Jonah 2, verse 6.

Jonah 2:6

I'll put on the screen for you.

This is Jonah saying, I went down.

Notice that word again.

I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever.

He's describing Sheol.

He went low, low, low, low.

He's quoting a psalm that describes Sheol.

And yet, Jonah says, You brought up my life from the pit.

He resurrected him.

Oh Yahweh, my God.

Three days later, Jonah was puked up on the shore, made his way up to Nineveh, preached, and the Ninevehes got saved.

This does not even conclude the ascent of Jonah.

He ascends from the grave, he ascends from the water, he ascends to Nineveh, he preaches, and he goes up to the hill to overlook Nineveh and root for the fire from heaven.

Remember that?

40 days you guys are going down.

This is the word of the Lord.

Sits down, grabs popcorn, wants fire.

No fire comes.

And Jonah's like, oh great, you're forgiving them.

That was the worst case scenario.

This whole thing was that you would actually forgive them.

Jonah ascends to watch over the people he preached to.

This is the sign that Jesus points to.

And Jesus says in the same way, the Son of Man, his messianic title here, Son of Man, speaking here, of course, of his humanity that will die, will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Jesus, when he is crucified, he's lifted up.

Unlike Jonah, Jesus is lifted up to die on a cross, overlooking Jerusalem.

Our sins are given to him.

He suffers and dies for our sins.

His body is rolled into the grave.

His soul descends to Sheol, to the realm of the dead, where he proclaims liberty to the captives.

His soul ascends back up to his body, his body resurrects on the third day, comes out to earth, and then he ascends to heaven after that.

That's the trajectory of Jesus.

And he says that's patterned off of Jonah.

Jesus went three days.

And, you know, people ask, how can it be three days if he was crucified on Friday, buried Friday afternoon, resurrected Sunday morning?

You know, Americans, we count time like the airport counts parking, you know, midnight resets.

That's not the way the Israelites tell time.

They don't have midnight as the center point of their timekeeping schedule.

They don't have microwaves with digital clocks on them.

Their day doesn't, they don't record midnight.

It's hard to do midnight on a solar dial.

You understand that?

Their days, the Romans would start days, you know, in the the watch of the night.

Their Romans would start their day at like 3 a.m., so to speak.

But the Jews, their days started at sundown, what we would call the day before.

And it drives Jews crazy to call it the day before.

No, that's the next day.

We say, you know, Saturday starts on Friday evening, and they're like, no, that's Saturday.

Their Saturday starts what we would call Friday at sundown.

That's the start of their day.

So Jesus is crucified and buried.

On Friday.

That's a big part of the gospel story.

Remember, they wanted Jesus in the grave before the Sabbath started.

That's Friday, day one.

He's in the grave all what we would call Friday night, and they would call Saturday, and then all Saturday day.

Then he's in the grave, what we would call Saturday night, they would call Sunday, and he resurrects Sunday morning.

That is three days.

He's not even cutting it close.

He resurrected 12 hours, we would say, after Sunday started.

He overshot it.

That's pictured in Jonah.

Three days in the grave, followed by a resurrection.

And those in Nineveh believed.

Those in Nineveh believed.

Meanwhile, the Jews of Jesus' lifetime won't believe.

And so Jesus says, that's the only sign you get.

It's just that.

Then verse 41 the men of Nineveh will rise up in judgment against this generation and condemn it, for they repented of the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

This is the first point of my outline.

Jesus is greater than the pictured gospel.

Jesus is greater than the pictured gospel.

Jonah's death, burial, and resurrection, whether or not he actually died, but his whole descent pictures the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That's what the Ninevehes had.

I don't know what the Nineveh knew about Jonah's journey there.

Certainly he's scaly.

Certainly he's grotesque and smells like disgusting things.

I don't know what they knew, but they knew that God would forgive them if they believed in God.

And they got saved, massively saved.

Their sheep got saved.

Do you remember that in Jonah 3?

They're putting on sackcloth and ashes, and the sheep come up and they put on sackcloth and ashes.

I've been to some incredible Billy Graham crusades, but I've never seen dogs get saved.

That's what happened in Nineveh.

What did they know?

All they knew was that God would save them if they turned from their sins.

They had the gospel pictured in Jonah and they believed.

Compare that to what the Jews of Jesus' day had.

They had so much more than Jonah.

They had the Son of God in front of them, doing miracles, teaching, and they wouldn't believe they wanted another sign.

They wanted another sign.

Now what kind of people were these?

What kind of the scribes and Pharisees.

Think in your mind, what would they have been like?

If you knew one of these people, I know in the movies they're like wearing all black robes and ominous music plays when they walk in the set, you know.

Not in real life.

If you knew one of them, what are they like?

Were they good people?

Certainly.

Did they keep the Ten Commandments?

Yes.

In fact, Jesus asks them if they've kept the law.

And the times you get this question floated, remember they say we've kept all these.

They strive to keep the Ten Commandments.

They're what Americans would call a pillar of the community.

They're involved in their community.

They are mentoring young kids, volunteering, so to speak.

They're educators.

They're very religious people, obviously.

But I just make this American language because it can seem so distant to you.

These are the kind of people that, if they died, you would say that was that guy was such a good person.

He always tried to do what is right.

He cared for his family, he sacrificed for his community.

He was very in favor of his nation, obviously.

They're extremely patriotic, these people.

They're patriotic, they love their family, they love their neighborhood, they love their community, they are good people.

That's who he's talking about here.

They keep the Ten Commandments.

When these people die, they're gonna open their eyes before God and say, I should be in heaven because I knew you.

I kept your law.

I always tried to do what is right.

I devoted my life to helping others.

That's the kind of things that are you know this because in Matthew 7 it describes some of their speech.

That's what they're going to say.

I was such a good person.

I tried so hard to keep your law.

God, you knew, you know, I did the best that I could.

I always tried to keep the law as much as I could.

I always tried to keep it.

And these people are going to be sent to hell.

And they're going to protest when they're sent to hell.

They're going to protest and say, Lord, didn't I know you?

Didn't I do these things for you?

And then the Nineveh's voice is going to rise up from the grave.

And the Ninevites will say, Don't let them in.

They don't deserve heaven.

The Ninevehites had less knowledge than them, less gospel than them, so to speak, and they believed.

So these are your two groups of people.

Just to sort this out in your mind.

You have the people that do good, there are pillars in their community, they try to be a good influence in everybody, they mentor people, they keep the Ten Commandments, they try what to do is right in their own eyes.

That's those people, and they're on their way to hell.

And then you have the dirty, lying, no-good, miscreant Assyrians, wicked Ninevites, that repent at the gospel, and they will be the ones who condemn this second group of people.

It's a staggering, a staggering reversal.

Completely the opposite of what they would have imagined.

And Jesus isn't done.

First of all, he says he's greater than Jonah.

Jonah pictured the gospel of Jesus is greater than that.

He is the gospel.

Verse 42, the queen of the south will rise up.

Queen of the South in Greek, it's just Queen South, it's how she was known.

There's no article in the Greek.

The Hebrew is Queen of Sheba.

Sheba, most historians say, is the southern tip of Yemen.

It was a very wealthy, wealthy empire during Solomon's lifetime, perhaps one of the wealthiest nations in the world, one of the wealthiest kingdoms in the world back then.

Led by a female.

She left her kingdom.

This is described in 1 Kings 10.

She left her kingdom to go to Israel because she heard rumors of Solomon's power and rumors of Solomon's wisdom.

And she, this is why we think she was so wealthy and influential, because she heard rumors of Solomon's wealth and viewed him as either a rival or an equal and wanted to go see for herself.

So she sets out.

Yemen is far away.

It's the southern tip of that Arabian peninsula.

So you've got, you know, Israel and then Jordan, then you've got Saudi Arabia going down, and you funnel all the way down to Yemen.

That's where it is.

If she would have gone along the coast, and there's not a lot of excavations along the coast, but it doesn't seem like there's forts or anything or roads really back then.

But if she would have followed that way, that'd be the most direct way.

That would bring her through the wilderness that the Israelites wandered through.

It would bring her into where Sodom and Gomorrah was.

She'd crossed the Jordan River by the Dead Sea.

It would be 1,600 miles.

Not on Air Force One, even though she was a queen, but on Camel One.

What would it take a year to walk through the desert on a camel?

1600 miles basically?

Leaving her country?

And that's if she went that way.

There is a way, a different highway that goes through like modern-day Mecca, Medina, like that part of Saudi Arabia that has a military outpost that have been covered.

If you go that way, that increases it to over 2,000 miles.

That's where she came from.

All to go see Solomon and his wealth and wisdom.

Now I say Yemen, there's all kinds of people in history compete for her.

There's an Ethiopian history that says that she was from Ethiopia, Amarak.

She was American descent, and she came and was seduced by Solomon, and she came back to Ethiopia and gave birth to Solomon's son, who became the first king of the Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia.

That dynasty, by the way, lasted until 1974.

That's like yesterday.

That's one story.

There's in Persia, they say that she had a Persian father and a Chinese fairy was her.

I mean a Persian mother and a Chinese fairy was her father.

You have people from China claiming her, people from Persia claiming her, people from Babylon claiming her.

There's Islamic stories about her.

In the Quran, she's named in the Quran.

Bill Keis is her name in the Quran.

And the, you know, in the Islamic stories, even outside the Quran, it's fascinating.

Adider suggested I not share this one with you, but I have the microphone.

In the Islamic stories, Solomon had a talking bird.

And the bird told Solomon of her beauty, and the bird went to Bilkis and told her of Solomon's wisdom, kind of being a matchmaker.

And so she journeyed to Solomon, but then the bird reported to Solomon that she had hairy legs.

So Solomon devised this thing of making a glass pond that looked like water and having her walk across the pond so she had to lift up her skirt, even though it wasn't really water, and lo and behold, they were hairy legs.

That's not in the Bible, though.

We don't know.

Why do all of these cultured DJ said that wouldn't be helpful, but I disagree.

Why do all of these cultures compete for the Queen of Sheba?

Like why do they compete for the Queen of Sheba?

Because do you understand how amazing this woman was?

She was leading one of the wealthiest empires in the world, and she left it, which puts herself at danger, it puts her country at danger, it puts everything at danger for years to go to another country to learn about their God.

That's never happened before.

It's amazing, is even the shallow word for it.

That's the Queen of Sheba.

And she gets to Solomon.

You remember where she says, Solomon, happy are your people?

Happy is your God, she says.

She said, I heard rumors about you.

The rumors weren't even the half of it is what she says.

She says, This is where the expression, my breath is taken away, comes from.

It comes from her.

She says, My breath is lost.

That's the Queen of Sheba.

She attributes it all to God.

She says, 1 Kings 10, 9, Blessed be Yahweh your God, who's delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel, because Yahweh loved Israel forever.

He has made you king so that you can execute justice and righteousness.

She attributes this to God.

It's incredible.

Despite being wise herself, she humbled herself to receive the wisdom of God.

Now Jesus takes her.

He chooses two stories about Gentiles.

Oh, why didn't he say the sign of Abraham?

You get the sign of Abraham, the father of the Jewish relationship.

Isaac was practically resurrected.

Well, couldn't he use that to make the same point?

No, he's using Gentile expressions here.

The Queen of Sheba, this Gentile woman.

Pharisees, all men, of course.

Scribes all men.

Jesus goes through all of world history to choose a Gentile woman from Yemen to be somebody who will condemn the whole Jewish religion of his day.

What did she have?

Well, all she had, she had more than the, or she had less than the pictured gospel.

She had less than Solomon, less than Jonah had.

All she had is the proverbial gospel.

She had Solomon's wisdom.

That's what she had.

Solomon is writing Proverbs during this time.

Solomon was known for his wisdom.

That's what drew her there.

Remember, she heard of the wisdom of Solomon and went.

She would know about the Davidic covenant, of course, when she got there.

She'd learn about the Davidic covenant, God's promise for Savior through Solomon.

She would know that.

She doesn't know about the Savior's death and resurrection, probably.

She doesn't have Jonah.

She has less than Jonah, less than Nineveh, and she still believed.

She still believed.

Despite how little she knew, despite how far away she was, she traveled all the way there.

Now, what does that say for us?

Jesus says, behold, something greater than Solomon is here.

Jonah brings a picture of the gospel to Nineveh who repents.

Nineveh will judge the Israelites, Jesus is greater than Jonah.

Solomon brings Proverbs of the Gospel to the Queen of Sheba who repents.

The Queen of Sheba will judge the Israelites.

Jesus is greater than Solomon.

It's the same pattern in both of them.

There are so many people today who know so much more than the Queen of Sheba, so much more than the Nineveh.

What do you have?

You don't have the picture of the gospel.

You don't have the Proverbs of the Gospel.

You have the actual gospel.

That Jesus died for your sins, buried in the grave according to scriptures, resurrected according to scriptures, and offers eternal life to all who would believe.

That's what you have.

Imagine having all of that then.

And saying, Yes, Lord, but I need a sign.

I just need a sign.

God, we're thankful that you have given us the ultimate sign through your resurrection from the grave.

You conquer death.

There's no greater sign that can be given.

We know you will rearrange the stars.

It's coming in the book of Revelation.

You will alter all of the heavens and create new heavens and a new earth.

That will happen.

Until then, Lord, the sign we have is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It's his resurrection that authenticates the Word of God.

It's the Word of God we have very near us in our laps, in our phones, in our hearts.

I pray for anyone here today that has never given you their life.

I pray that they would follow the Queen of Sheba's lead, that they would repent from their sins and trust you.

Lord, she left riches untold to seek after you.

She left a kingdom.

An actual kingdom.

She walked away from it to seek you.

We sometimes struggle to part with materialism, to depart with friends, to depart with things of this world to seek after you.

She left all of it.

Help us seek you because you are wisdom incarnate.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, DC area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.