Mat 16:1-3 | KingComments | STEP | When people come to the Lord, they can have very different motives. In Matthew 15 people come to Him ( ), but with very different motives to the Pharisees and Sadducees here. There He helps, here He leaves them and goes away ( ). Pharisees and Sadducees are enemies of each other, but here these natural enemies unite in their resentment of Christ. They close ranks to stand strong to test Him. The Sadducees are the free thinkers of their day, while the Pharisees are the advocates of the statutes and authority of the law and especially of their own statutes and laws. Together they come to Him and long for a sign from heaven, while the greatest Sign ever given by God from heaven stands in front of them. In His answer, the Lord points to the signs of nature. When they observe certain natural phenomena, they know exactly how to interpret them. In the evening they can see from the color of the sky that beautiful weather is coming. For those who can see spiritually, there is beautiful weather coming. The “Sunrise from on high” ( ) has visited them in Christ. Similarly, they can see from the color of the sky whether a storm is coming. From a spiritual point of view, however, they cannot discern that bad weather is coming, that is, that God’s judgment will come as a result of their rejection of God’s Sign from heaven. The Lord Jesus calls them “an evil and adulterous generation”. They are “evil” in their hearts, in their minds. They are “adulterous” in their actions, their actions of unfaithfulness to their God. He gives them a sign. The sign that He puts before them is what happened to Jonah. It is the sign of someone who disappeared from the earth, who disappeared from the Jewish people by death, as it were, and was given back to them after a while. It is the picture of death and resurrection. The Lord Jesus will act accordingly. He will go into death, but he will also rise out of death and then bring the message that Israel has despised to the nations. That is what Jonah did, and with that he is a picture, a sign, of what Christ will do.

‏ Matthew 16:1-3

The Request for a Sign

When people come to the Lord, they can have very different motives. In Matthew 15 people come to Him (Mt 15:30), but with very different motives to the Pharisees and Sadducees here. There He helps, here He leaves them and goes away (Mt 16:4). Pharisees and Sadducees are enemies of each other, but here these natural enemies unite in their resentment of Christ. They close ranks to stand strong to test Him. The Sadducees are the free thinkers of their day, while the Pharisees are the advocates of the statutes and authority of the law and especially of their own statutes and laws. Together they come to Him and long for a sign from heaven, while the greatest Sign ever given by God from heaven stands in front of them.

In His answer, the Lord points to the signs of nature. When they observe certain natural phenomena, they know exactly how to interpret them. In the evening they can see from the color of the sky that beautiful weather is coming. For those who can see spiritually, there is beautiful weather coming. The “Sunrise from on high” (Lk 1:78) has visited them in Christ. Similarly, they can see from the color of the sky whether a storm is coming. From a spiritual point of view, however, they cannot discern that bad weather is coming, that is, that God’s judgment will come as a result of their rejection of God’s Sign from heaven.

The Lord Jesus calls them “an evil and adulterous generation”. They are “evil” in their hearts, in their minds. They are “adulterous” in their actions, their actions of unfaithfulness to their God. He gives them a sign. The sign that He puts before them is what happened to Jonah. It is the sign of someone who disappeared from the earth, who disappeared from the Jewish people by death, as it were, and was given back to them after a while. It is the picture of death and resurrection. The Lord Jesus will act accordingly. He will go into death, but he will also rise out of death and then bring the message that Israel has despised to the nations. That is what Jonah did, and with that he is a picture, a sign, of what Christ will do.