This generation is an evil generation;
it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,
except the sign of Jonah.
Like the generation that wandered in the desert after the exodus from Egypt, Jesus's own generation had seen miracles of deliverance and ought to have put their trust in the leader sent to them by God. The desert generation had experienced enough and knew enough to realize that they should cut their ties with the idols of Egypt. But instead of doing so they continued to make demands of Moses, putting God to the test by the way they failed to respect his chosen mediator. So too had those in the time of Jesus seen and heard enough to understand what their next choice ought to be. They knew they ought to make a break with sin and live for Jesus and his Kingdom. But rather than doing so they continued to press him signs. It was clear to Jesus, as it should have been clear to them, that if what they had already seen was not enough then no sign would suffice. But sometimes people ask for signs more as a distraction from what they know they need to do than from any genuine need. We are sometimes quite intense about these requests, as though they stemmed from actual desire to set our minds at ease. But the intensity is more often a result of our desire to avoid the changes we know we need to make, or the course to which we know we are being called. Our discernment is not infrequently a charade to avoid the obvious answer we don't want to hear.
Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites,
so will the Son of Man be to this generation.
Jonah didn't want to preach to the people of Nineveh. He was basically forced to do it. And he didn't exactly proclaim a message full of hope. Yet the people there found within the dire message of a reluctant prophet sufficient motivation to repent of their ways and to turn to the Lord with all their hearts. How much more ought Jesus's own people to have responded to his own preaching, which was motivated by the compassion he had for them, whom he saw as sheep without a shepherd.
the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation
and she will condemn them,
because she came from the ends of the earth
to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
and there is something greater than Solomon here.
If even a foreign ruler was motivated to travel and show honor to the king of Israel because he possessed much wisdom, how much more so ought God's own people respond to this new Son of David, who was himself the wisdom of God and the power of God (see First Corinthians 1:24)? Whatever wisdom Solomon displayed, even if it was promised that there was never and would never be the like, it was still something less than what was contained in the power of the words of Jesus, for, "No one ever spoke like this man!" (see John 7:46).
The voice of Truth itself had spoken, and the beauty of the life of God had been revealed to the world by every word and gesture of Jesus. Rather than turning to face the light people sought excuses to delay. There may well be many genuine seekers in our world who could potentially benefit from seeing signs and wonders. After all, we read of the disciples that, "the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs" (see Mark 16:20). But the world may be deprived of some of the signs it genuinely needs if we remain hung up on those we don't. Let's learn to appreciate the beauty and the wisdom of the message we have already heard. There is enough here to nourish us for the entirety of our pilgrimage of life, all the way to the true promised land of eternity.
John Michael Talbot - Exodus XV
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