What happens when you reject Christ?

Published by Stanley Pouw in 2013 · 19 May 2013

The Bible is clear that all men are sinners, separated from God, and on target for divine judgment. It is not easy to determine how sinful man is, because there is, in the world of men, a sort of relative goodness. There are religious, moral, good people who say they believe in God and do good things to others. But ultimately, the sinfulness of man is made manifest when a person comes face-to-face with Jesus Christ; at that point, there can be no hiding it.

Before we continue Matthew 12, I want first to discuss John 15:22-25. Here, our Lord is meeting with His disciples in the upper room. This is the night of His betrayal and arrest, only hours before His death. As Jesus speaks to His disciples, He gives them all kinds of insights that they might be held together by the truth when He is gone. One of the things Jesus promises them is that the world will hate them because they hated Him.

Then He talks about the people who rejected Him, "22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.” Here, He is referring to the Jewish leaders who appeared to be holy, righteous and religious. They appeared to love and obey God, and to keep His laws and no one really knew how vile and sinful they were, because of their mask of religion.

However, when Jesus confronted them with their rejection of the living Son of God, it became clear how sinful they were. The Lord calls them in Matthew 23, "whitewashed tombs, serpents, brood of vipers, fools and blind guides, wicked men with black hearts and poisoned mouths." The evil of their hearts would never have come to the surface, but by rejecting Him and ultimately taking His life, they showed their true character.

In John 15:23, Jesus says, "He who hates Me hates My Father also." The truth about them is now known; they don't love God, they hate God, because if they loved God, they would have loved Jesus. When you come face-to-face with Jesus Christ and you reject Jesus, at that point, the truth is out. No matter what you appear to be on the surface, your heart of evil is known in confrontation with Christ.

That's true today in many ways; there are many religious groups who seem to go along very well with their religious masquerade until someone confronts them with the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and when they reject it, the real truth is made manifest. They don't love God at all.

Take the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses and others cults - who appear so religious, so good, so righteous and so obedient to the laws as they believe God gives them. When you confront them with Jesus Christ, all of a sudden their hypocrisy is revealed. They don't love God; they hate God, because they hate His Son. The same thing happens in liberal churches where people talk about the Bible without really studying it, and adopt political, social and psychological solutions only. When you walk in and introduce the Gospel of Jesus Christ; you will find out that they really don't love God.

So by the time we reach Matthew 12, the Pharisees are hardened in their rejection. They say that Jesus is a Sabbath-breaker, because they're trying to discredit Jesus in the eyes of the people. They want to maintain their power, control, dominance over the people. When the people begin to become attracted to Jesus, they feel they must discredit Him publicly so that they can maintain their place.

But Jesus attacks them. He says, "You don't understand your own Scriptures, You don't understand the Sabbath, and you don't understand that I am the Lord of the Sabbath." So they attack Him a second time in chapter 12. This time they say, "He is not only a Sabbath-breaker, but satanic."

And Jesus says, "That kind of accusation is absurd, prejudiced, rebellious, and betrays your hearts. You are be damned for it, and you are beyond the point of repentance and forgiveness. You will never be forgiven." Each time they attack Him, they lose. But they have one final attack at the end of Matthew 12.

Jesus judges the people who have rejected Him as we see in Matthew 12:38-42, “Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” 39 But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For 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.

41 The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here. 42 The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here.”

They say, "Master," and this betrays their hypocrisy, "We want to see a sign from You." When a scribe came, in an official assembly of scribes and Pharisees, to ask a question like this of Jesus, the question must be what the law requires of Him. So the scribes must have determined from the law that if He is the Messiah, He should do a sign. That was an official question.

So the people were being told that this Jesus had not yet sufficiently proven His claim to being the Messiah, that there was yet a sign that needed to be done. What kind of sign are they asking? He's done healing after healing, cast out demons, transformed lives, given salvation, and forgiven sin; what more could they want than the thousands and thousands of miracles that they had already seen?

They desired that He would show them a sign from heaven. So Jesus says, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah." The Jews were always after a supernatural verification of everything. That's why the Lord gave the ability to the apostles and those who worked with them to do signs, wonders, and mighty deeds, because that was the expectation of the Jews.

They wanted a spectacular display of control over the celestial sphere. They would have liked to have seen Him rearrange the stars, or have clouds gyrate into unique forms and spelling out in Aramaic, "This is Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Messiah." They believed He couldn't do it, and they wanted to discredit Him in front of the people.

His reply is most interesting. Verse 39. "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign." In other words, "If you had been faithful to God, you wouldn't need that kind of thing. You manifest the adultery of your hearts in even seeking such." He says to the entire Jewish nation of His day, "You are an adulterous generation. You have violated your vows and followed false deities."

They had been unfaithful to God and had committed harlotries with their legalism, traditions, self-righteousness, and their own egos. They had abandoned God; their harlotries were no longer attached to the gods of the Canaanites, but to the gods of their own design and devising. Isn't it obvious that they had no relationship with God if they planned to kill His Son? Then Jesus says this, "No sign will be given to you.”

Jesus did not do it, not for the reason they thought. He is able to do whatever, He was the one who created everything, He could have rearranged it any time He had wanted. Look at the book of Revelation and read what He will do in rearranging the universe, because He will.

Jesus then said this, "No sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah." Do you remember the story of Jonah? He took a short ride in a long fish. He was called by God to preach in Nineveh, he said, "I don't want to go to Nineveh," and took a boat the opposite direction. There was a storm, and he told the captain, "The problem is me. Throw me out."

They threw him out, a great fish swallowed him up, and he was in the fish for three days. A disobedient prophet would make anything have a stomach ache, so the fish vomited him up on the shore. He went to Nineveh and preached, the whole place repented in sackcloth and ashes, and God spared His judgment.

Jesus said, "This generation will be given no sign except the sign of the prophet Jonah." Look at verse 40, "For 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." That's the sign. It's a prophecy, brothers and sisters.

Jesus here says the story of Jonah was a prophecy; just as much as the prophecy of Isaiah 53. It was a picture rather than in word, of Jonah spending three days and nights in the belly of the great fish, and as such shall the Son of Man be three days and nights in the heart of the earth.

It looked like the end of Jonah, but it wasn't; it looked like the end of Jesus, but it wasn't. Jonah was buried in the depths; Jesus was buried in the depths. Jonah came out; Jesus came out. It was a picture of the resurrection. It was three days for Jonah; it was three days for Jesus. It was a perfect picture.

Here we see that Jesus believed the story of Jonah. Isn't that good? I read a commentary that said, "Just because Jesus refers to Jonah doesn't mean that He really believed that it actually happened." Well, you may want to believe Jonah was a liar, but it's impossible to believe Jesus was a liar. If Jesus said this is the story, then this is the story. Jesus validates the authenticity of the story of Jonah.

Another note on the 'great fish.' Some people say it's a whale, but the term is simply a great fish and we don't really know what particular kind of fish it was. It may have been a special fish that God created and placed there, and after it did its thing, that was the end of the species. I don't know, but whatever it was, it was a big enough fish for Jonah to get completely all the way inside.

Another thing is that it says three days and three nights. People always seem to have trouble with that because they think, "If Jonah was there three days and three nights, that's a 72-hour period, so Jesus has to be buried for 72 hours. If He rises on Sunday morning, that puts the crucifixion to Thursday, not Friday.”

Well, the phrase 'a day and a night' simply was a phrase referring to any part of that 24 hour period. So when you refer to a period, the Talmud says, "Any part of one is as the whole." So Jonah was in the fish some part of three days, as the Lord was in the earth some part of three days, not necessarily the whole 72 hours.

So this is a picture of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That was His last sign, after that Jesus ceased doing any miracles in His earthly body. But, yes, in His glorified body He came and went with the apostles, and He could appear and disappear instantly, but as far as performing miracles, Christ did no more after the resurrection.

So we come to the last sentence in verses 41-42. By association with Jonah, the Lord spoke of Nineveh, the city to which he went. He says this, "The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.”

Jonah 3:5-6, "So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. 6 Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes." That was the attitude of repentance.

So a Gentile, pagan, idolatrous people, outside the covenants and the law of God got a disobedient, rebellious prophet who came and preached nothing but doom to them, did no miracles, and the whole place repented and believed God. Contrast that to what verse 41 says, "A greater than Jonah is here."

Here are Jews, not Gentiles. These are God's people, those who have the law. One came to them greater than Jonah. Who was He? He was the God of Jonah in human flesh, and He was perfect, sinless, compassionate, powerful, and His message was not of doom but of grace, mercy, forgiveness, salvation. He did miracle after miracle and sign after sign.

But they hated and killed Him. So says our Lord in verse 41, "In judgment, the people of Nineveh will rise up and condemn these people,” for with much less, they believed and repented. They act as a historical condemnation of the unbelief of Israel. He is not done, He recalls another event in their history from I Kings 10. Verse 42, "The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it."

If you read 1 Kings 10, you'd read there about the Queen of Sheba. The land of the Sabeans was in Arabia. These people were very prosperous because they were on the trade route to India. They had developed their trades and skills, so that this queen was literally extremely wealthy.

It says that she would stand in judgment with this generation and condemn it. She is a Gentile, an Arab, a she! A Gentile woman is going to condemn the chosen people. Why? Because in verse 42, "She came from the farthest parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon." She crosses the desert with all of her entourage from a remote land to come without an invitation to seek that wisdom.

You know what happened when she got there? It was more than she thought it would be, and she was so astounded that she started unloading on Solomon treasure after treasure. This was her way of honoring him and thanking him. Think about that.

Look at verse 42, "And behold, One greater than Solomon is here." Jesus is saying, "You don't even have to take a journey! I'm here, and you don't care." Here was a Gentile woman with no invitation who crossed the desert with all this stuff to hear wisdom from the lips of a man who speaks the truth of God, and here they won't even listen when He is in their midst! And He's greater than Solomon.

There are people today who reject the wisdom of Jesus Christ. They may be sitting in a church, and someday Ninevites and a Gentile queen, will condemn them in judgment. What it is saying is that those who are far off that believe, which proves that those who are near are responsible to believe. If you exist within Christianity and reject Jesus, yours is the greatest condemnation. Let's bow in prayer.