The Sign That Condemns Text: Matthew 12:38-45
Introduction: The Lust for Signs
We live in an age that is simultaneously skeptical and superstitious. On the one hand, our educated elites pride themselves on a thoroughgoing materialism that dismisses the supernatural out of hand. On the other hand, our popular culture is saturated with occultism, horoscopes, and a desperate search for spiritual experiences, provided they are not the Christian one. The human heart, you see, cannot live in the sterile, meaningless box of materialism. It craves a sign. It craves a wonder. It wants proof that there is more to reality than just atoms in motion.
The scribes and Pharisees who approached Jesus were not so different. They were the religious elites of their day, and they came to Jesus with a demand dressed up as a polite request: "Teacher, we want to see a sign from You." This sounds reasonable enough, does it not? But we must understand the context. Jesus had just healed a man who was blind and mute, and demon-possessed. He had just declared that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit would not be forgiven. He had been doing signs and wonders all over Galilee. The evidence was piled up to the rafters. Their demand for a sign was not an honest inquiry; it was a hostile challenge. It was the demand of a panel of tenured professors asking God to please perform for them, so they might properly evaluate His credentials. It was the demand of a heart that has already decided not to believe, but wants to justify its unbelief by setting an impossible standard of proof.
Jesus' response is a thunderclap. He does not coddle their supposed intellectual difficulties. He diagnoses their moral condition. They are an "evil and adulterous generation." And then, in a stunning twist of divine irony, He tells them that they will get a sign, but it will not be a sign that confirms them. It will be a sign that condemns them. This entire passage is a solemn warning against the danger of a Christ-less reformation. It is a warning against demanding more evidence when the real problem is a rebellious heart. And it is a warning that to clean house without inviting the King to move in is to prepare a grander habitation for the devil.
The Text
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered and said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation eagerly seeks for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as JONAH WAS THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS IN THE BELLY OF THE SEA MONSTER, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.
“Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation.”
(Matthew 12:38-45 LSB)
The Sign Beyond All Signs (vv. 38-40)
We begin with the confrontation and the Lord's staggering reply.
"Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered and said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation eagerly seeks for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as JONAH WAS THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS IN THE BELLY OF THE SEA MONSTER, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matthew 12:38-40)
Jesus calls them an "evil and adulterous generation." Why adulterous? Because Israel was in a covenant marriage with Yahweh. Their lust for signs, their flirtation with other sources of authority, their refusal to recognize their own husband standing right in front of them, was spiritual adultery. They were cheating on God. And a heart that is cheating on God will always demand more proof, because the real problem is not a lack of evidence but a lack of love.
He says no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah. This is not a refusal to give a sign; it is a promise of the ultimate sign. The resurrection is the sign beyond all signs. It is not the thing that must be proven; it is the ultimate and most glorious proof. A man who dies and comes back to life again in history is the absolute Lord of that history. This is the lynchpin of reality. All of history swings on this one hinge.
The parallel is precise. Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish. This was a kind of death and resurrection. He was swallowed by the sea, entombed in the fish, and then vomited out onto dry land, a man brought back from the deep. Jesus says this was a trailer, a preview of the main event. The Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. He will be swallowed by death, entombed in the grave, and on the third day, He will rise again, victorious over death, hell, and the grave.
This is the sign. This is God's final, unanswerable declaration. As Paul says in Athens, God "has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead" (Acts 17:31). The resurrection is not a proposition to be debated; it is a fact to be submitted to. And for this evil and adulterous generation, it would be the sign that sealed their condemnation. They would see the empty tomb, hear the testimony of hundreds of eyewitnesses, and they would still refuse to repent. The greatest sign in human history would only serve to harden their adulterous hearts.
Witnesses from the Past (vv. 41-42)
Jesus then calls two witnesses from the Old Testament to testify against that generation, and by extension, against all who reject Him.
"The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, something greater than Solomon is here." (Matthew 12:41-42)
This is a courtroom scene. The final judgment is pictured, and Jesus says that pagan Ninevites and a pagan queen will be on the witness stand, and their testimony will condemn the covenant people of God. Why? Because of the principle of greater and lesser privilege. The Ninevites were Assyrians, the brutal enemies of Israel. They were steeped in pagan idolatry. And yet, when a reluctant, grumpy prophet showed up and preached a five-word sermon in Hebrew, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown", they repented. From the king on his throne to the cattle in their stalls, they put on sackcloth and sat in ashes. They turned from their evil way.
And who was Jonah? A flawed man, a pouting prophet who was angry at God's mercy. But Jesus says, "something greater than Jonah is here." Not just someone greater, but something greater. The very presence of the Son of God, the wisdom of God incarnate, the mercy of God in person, was in their midst. The Ninevites repented at the preaching of a lesser man with a lesser message. This generation was hearing the King of Heaven Himself, and they were plotting His murder. Their condemnation would be just.
The second witness is the Queen of the South, the Queen of Sheba. She was a Gentile ruler who heard rumors of the wisdom of Solomon. And what did she do? She undertook a long, expensive, and dangerous journey "from the ends of the earth" just to hear his wisdom. She brought gifts and she tested him with hard questions, and she was overwhelmed. But Jesus says, "behold, something greater than Solomon is here." Solomon's wisdom was a gift from God. But Jesus is the Giver. Solomon built a temple for God; Jesus is the Temple. Solomon was a son of David; Jesus is David's Lord. The Queen of Sheba traveled a thousand miles to hear the wisdom of a man. This generation had the Wisdom of God living next door, and they refused to listen.
The principle is this: greater light brings greater responsibility, and therefore greater condemnation if rejected. We who have the completed Scriptures, two thousand years of church history, and the witness of the Holy Spirit, have an even greater light than the Pharisees did. If we refuse to repent, our condemnation will be even greater than theirs.
The Danger of an Empty House (vv. 43-45)
Jesus concludes with a chilling parable that explains the spiritual state of that "evil generation."
"Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation." (Matthew 12:43-45)
This is a picture of reformation without regeneration. It is a picture of moral house-cleaning that does not include enthroning Christ as King. The unclean spirit goes out. Perhaps the man had a moral awakening. He cleaned up his act. He stopped carousing, started being nicer to his wife, and began putting ten percent in the offering plate. His life is now "unoccupied, swept, and put in order." It looks good from the outside. The floors are swept, the furniture is dusted. It is a tidy, respectable life.
But there is a fatal problem. The house is "unoccupied." The original tenant was evicted, but the landlord, the rightful owner, was not invited in. Christ was not given the keys. The Holy Spirit was not welcomed as the new resident. And nature, especially spiritual nature, abhors a vacuum. The demon, wandering through the dry places of the world, decides to check on his old property. He finds it clean, orderly, and best of all, empty. An empty house is an invitation to invasion.
So he goes and gets seven of his friends, seven spirits more wicked than himself. And they all move in. The man's last state is seven times worse than his first. Before, he was just a run-of-the-mill sinner. Now, he is a man whose house is clean, orderly, respectable, and utterly damned. He is a religious hypocrite, a whited tomb. His very morality becomes a fortress against the grace of God.
And Jesus applies this directly: "That is the way it will also be with this evil generation." Israel had experienced a kind of reformation. The exile had cured them of their gross, overt idolatry. They had rebuilt the temple. They had the synagogues, the law, the scribes. Their house was swept and put in order. But it was unoccupied. They had a religion without a relationship, a law without a Lord. And because they rejected their King when He came, their house was left to them desolate, and it was filled with a demonic wickedness that culminated in the cry, "Crucify Him!" and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
Conclusion: No Neutrality
This passage leaves us with a stark and unavoidable choice. There is no neutral ground in the spiritual world. A life, a family, a culture, a nation will either be occupied by the Spirit of Christ or it will be occupied by unclean spirits. There is no third option. A house cannot remain empty for long.
Our generation is much like that of the Pharisees. We have attempted a great sweeping. We have tried to build a secular society, a house swept clean of religious "superstition." We have tried to be moral without God, just without a lawgiver, and humane without the Son of Man. We have evicted the one spirit of Christendom, and we have found that seven worse have come in to take its place. Our clean, enlightened, secular house is now filled with the demons of sexual chaos, abortion, nihilism, and rage.
The only solution is not another attempt at house-cleaning. It is not more legislation, more education, or more moral self-improvement. The only solution is to unconditionally surrender the keys of the house to the rightful owner. The sign of Jonah, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is the proof of His ownership. He bought the house with His own blood. He conquered its enemies by His power. And He demands to be enthroned as King.
You cannot simply clean up your life and hope for the best. You must be filled. You must be occupied. You must invite the Holy Spirit to not only sweep the house but to move in, to rearrange the furniture, to light a fire in the hearth, and to make it a home for the glory of God. Anything less is simply preparing a more respectable room for the devil.