Encounter the Truth

Jonathan Griffiths: Many in our day and age will suggest that the Christian faith is only for those people who are willing to ignore science, who will deny evidence, who will switch off their brains and politely leave them at the door of church on their way in. But friends, nothing could be further from the truth.

The sign, the evidence, it is compelling and profound. It is actually entirely overwhelming if we're willing to see it.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths. I'm Steve Hiller and glad you've joined us today as we begin a new message, The Christ Who Demands a Response. And Jonathan, do you feel like there's maybe an intentional blindness, or at least people are choosing to put blinders on, if you will, as it comes to the person and work of Christ?

Jonathan Griffiths: I think there is something within the human heart that reacts against the person of Jesus Christ, His work and His message. And I think that reaction flows from a desire to maintain our independence, actually. A desire to say, "I will live my way without reference to God, without reference to His word."

And when we meet Jesus Christ in the pages of scripture and realize that He is the Son of God sent from heaven above, who has a rightful claim upon our lives, there is something within us that does react against that. And I think we need to be honest about that. I think we need to work through that. And we need to allow ourselves to hear what Jesus is saying and to recognize the goodness and grace of His message.

Steve Hiller: Well, we're going to look at what Jesus says to us through His word today in the book of Matthew. We're going to be in chapter 16 as we begin a message called The Christ Who Demands a Response. Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: I don't know if you've noticed this, but it seems to me that one of the curious features of art, fine art, perhaps in particular, is the variety of responses it evokes in people. I think it's right to say that if all of us listening to this message were to go to the National Gallery here in Ottawa and were to stand before the same painting, all of us looking at it, we would have among ourselves the full spectrum of responses to that painting. The spectrum from admiration on the one side to barely veiled disdain or even disgust.

And the responses I guess don't always make much sense on a rational level. I'll confess right now that I very rarely appreciate a great deal of modern art. Some here will love it of course, and that's to you if you like that stuff. We can agree to disagree, that's fine.

There will occasionally be an installation here in in our in our gallery in town and I'll look at it and I'll think, you know, how can anyone really view that as art? It doesn't make any sense to me. I had similar feelings when we lived in London and we would go from time to time to the Tate Modern, the modern art gallery. And you know, you'd look at this painting, a circle perhaps on a canvas.

And I would I would stand there sort of gazing at the thing thinking, what's going on here? Why is that in the gallery? Or or there would be, you know, a single metal cord suspended between two white walls. And people would be looking there, you know, in admiration. I'd be thinking, what is this? Anyway, I just I don't get it.

Variety of responses, not always rational. In a far more profound way as we travel together through Matthew's Gospel, as we are traveling together through Matthew's Gospel, we are discovering, aren't we, that reactions and responses to Jesus Christ exist along a spectrum. They are profoundly divided and not always on rational grounds.

In fact, some responses we see to Jesus Christ seem to run entirely contrary to fact and contrary to evidence. Some people will love Jesus, of course, but others will hate Him. Some will seek His destruction, while others will listen in true admiration. Ultimately, the people who have engaged with Jesus Christ will either bay for His blood at the cross or will bow the knee in worship and in adoration.

And as Matthew showcases for us this variety of responses to Jesus Christ, it becomes clear that Matthew is setting before you and before me a mirror. And as we travel through the Gospel, He is exposing our own reaction to Jesus Christ and requiring us, each one, to reckon afresh with Jesus.

The first reaction to Jesus Christ that we encounter in these verses is one of a perverse incomprehension, a perverse incomprehension. And that's where we began. The religious leaders have shown themselves already to be quite blind to who Jesus is and to what He is doing. You remember how after that miraculous feeding of the 5,000 in chapter 14, the religious leaders took the trouble to travel up from Jerusalem with this most bizarre complaint and concern.

You remember it? They had heard that the disciples of Jesus had not been washing their hands properly. And so they made this great journey up from Jerusalem to express their concern. With all that was taking place within the ministry of Jesus Christ, the feeding of the hungry and the healing of the sick, this is the nature of their petty concern. That was back at the beginning of chapter 15.

Now Jesus has done even more miraculous works and we've been tracking with this. He has healed another great crowd. He has fed thousands more people. And once again the religious leaders, you know, right on time, they show up. And we might think by now, you know, they've they've seen the light, they've come to see how silly they were. They've seen the error of their ways and they've come to worship Jesus, right? Oh no, not so. Not these men, not these leaders. No, they have come we are told to test Him. Chapter 16 and verse one. And the Pharisees and Sadducees came and to test Him they asked Him to show them a sign from heaven.

I was trying to I was trying to capture the atmosphere of this. It's like, I don't know, going up to Winston Churchill on the 9th of May in 1945, the day after hostilities ceased in Europe, the day after that great victory and demonstration on his part of a very remarkable leadership. Going up to the great wartime prime minister and saying, look, you know, I'm a little unconvinced by you. I wonder if you could prove your ability for me in some way to lead a nation in war. I wonder if you could do it. I'm not convinced. Here's an idea. I'd like to challenge you to a game of risk or to a round of battleship. Come on, let's bring out the board games. Let's see what you got. Prove it.

The scene in verse one is profoundly absurd. It's silly, right? Consider what's happened in this chapter alone. The daughter of the Canaanite woman has been released from demonic oppression. Crowds of sick people have come to Jesus and have received healing one after another after another. The lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute. Some of the great promises of the scriptures for the age of the Messiah have been fulfilled in their in their presence before their eyes, the eyes of the crowds.

We considered last time the great promise of Isaiah 35 verses 5 and 6, a great promise for the Messianic age. The prophet said, then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap like a deer and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. And all this is happening before the eyes of the crowd. And the implication for all who would hear and all who would see is this, the Messiah is here. God Himself has come among us. And then another feeding miracle, 4,000 men plus women and children, only seven loaves, a few small fish, but everyone satisfied by the miraculous provision of Jesus Christ. All this happens.

And the religious leaders show up and here is their demand, "Show us a sign from heaven." Prove yourself by some miraculous means. And we we read this and we say, what? Excuse me? Have you been have you been paying any attention to the story as we've heard it? Are are you so blind, so unaware, so determined to ignore, worse to deny the evidence that is right before your eyes?

Now Jesus's answer to them is measured, but it is devastating, isn't it? Verse two. He answered them, "When it is evening, you say it will be fair weather for the sky is red. And in the morning you'll be stormy today for the sky is red and threatening. You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times." You can look at the sky and you can make some pretty sound judgments about the weather, about what's going on, what's coming, but you cannot see the sign that has come from heaven, the mighty works that I have done.

Now, the refusal to accept the signs of the miracle miracles themselves, this refusal to accept the message that has come down from heaven already. This this is not a neutral thing. This is not the Pharisees and the Sadducees struggling to keep up. No, Jesus says, this is an evil thing. Verse four. "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but here's the thing, no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah." So he left them and departed. It is a determined hardness of heart toward Jesus to deny the evidence of His miraculous works, to refuse to see Him for who He is.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths, a message called The Christ Who Demands a Response, part of our series In the Presence of the King, looking today at Matthew chapter 16. And while we're pausing for just a moment, stay with us because we'll get back to the message in just a little bit.

You know, I think one of the common experiences of every believer is that over time and as we walk through difficult circumstances of life, our love for the Lord can begin to drift. Our hearts can kind of grow cold and our faith can become more of a formality before we've even realized it. Well, there's an answer to that, and it's the same regardless of your feelings or the circumstances you find yourself in. That answer is to stare long and hard at the cross of Christ because we see His love poured out for us on the cross.

Paul Matler has written about that in a book entitled, An Anchor for the Soul. It's about beholding the cross and resurrection. And this book is our thank you for your financial support this month. You can find out more or give online when you visit our website, EncounterTheTruth.org. Or call us at 1-833-99 Truth. That's 1-833-998-7884. Or again, the website is EncounterTheTruth.org.

Well, if you joined us a little bit late, we're in Matthew chapter 16. As we get back to the message, The Christ Who Demands a Response. Again, here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: There is one profound and public sign that is given, that was given to that generation and that is written upon the pages of the history of the world and it is this, says Jesus, it is the sign of Jonah. Jesus has referred to this actually before, back in Matthew chapter 12. You remember that Jonah was sent as a prophet of God to the city of Nineveh, but he didn't really want to go. He got on a boat heading in the opposite direction and so the Lord sent a storm. Jonah went overboard, was swallowed by the great fish for three days and when he was returned to the land of the living in a great act of divine deliverance, things changed. And in that extraordinary event, he was shown to be actually God's chosen vessel, a surprising one, but nonetheless, His prophet, His true spokesman.

What is the sign of Jonah? How will this generation see it? Well, Jesus, what's going to happen? He's going to go down into the depths of death for three days, the belly of the earth as it were. And on the third day, He is going to rise again. And the world will know that Jesus has been sent from heaven above. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are the great sign. A sign that God has come to save us. A sign that the Messiah is here. That Jesus's word is truth. It's a sign, the sign that death has been defeated, that life has won, that the grave is vanquished, that heaven is now open.

It's a sign for all who will see and for all who will believe. It's a sufficient sign, it's a glorious sign, but Jesus will not engage further with these men of unbelief.

You know, many in our day and age will suggest, will insist, that the Christian faith is only for those people who are willing to ignore science, who will deny evidence, who will switch off their brains and politely leave them at the door of church on their way in. But friends, nothing could be further from the truth. We need to recognize that. We need to be reassured of it. We need to believe it. The sign, the evidence, it is compelling and profound. It is actually entirely overwhelming if we're willing to see it.

The signs throughout the ministry of Jesus Christ, the signs that we've been looking at actually, are are quite extraordinary. And the idea which is sometimes suggested that these stories could be mere fabrications, you know, that none of this took place. It's inconceivable that events of this magnitude could be fabricated and then passed off as fact.

I mean, consider it. In these last two chapters of Matthew alone, we're talking about well over 10,000 people, probably more like 20,000 people, witnessing and being blessed personally by the miracles of Jesus Christ.

But the greatest and most compelling of the signs is truly the sign of Jonah, that is, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His three days in the belly of death before being restored to the land of the living, restored to life, vindicated by heaven above. It's a very great sign. It is the sign of all signs. This is the evidence, the resurrection. It is the evidence that cannot be ignored.

If Jesus did not rise, of course, all that He said and all that He did is entirely discredited. Of course, it is. If He promised to rise and remained in the grave, Jesus Christ is of no account, and we should get on with our lives.

But if He promised to rise from the grave after three days, and He did indeed then rise from the grave after three days, He cannot be ignored. And all His claims are authenticated by the stamp of that great divine miracle and by the victory of life itself. Everything stands or falls on this sign. And we've got to reckon with it, each one of us.

Silly claims are made about this, of course. The Romans hid His body. That's one idea that's thrown around. Well, why would they? Try and explain that. Surely the easy rebuttal to the disciples' claim of resurrection would be the production of a corpse in a timely way. We hid it. Here it is.

Or perhaps the disciples hid it. Sometimes people say that. But consider this, consider the motivation. Who would be motivated to live and suffer and be a social outcast, even a martyr, for a myth of one's own fabrication, a hoax and a lie? No, surely at that point you walk away. You quietly move on.

Now, the New Testament gives impressive evidence of a wide variety of people who saw the risen Jesus Christ in a range of settings, public and private, inside and outside, small gathering, large groups, who remembered their experience and recounted it for others. The early history of Christianity, the witness of a people who would bear great cost in following the rejected and the crucified Savior. It only makes sense, doesn't it, that they would be willing to do so if His promise to rise from the grave proved true. It only makes sense, and of course, it did. This is the sign.

And if it took a profound kind of obstinance for the Pharisees and the Sadducees to reject the signs of Jesus's healing and His feeding miracles in Matthew 16, it takes a greater kind of obstinance for us in our day to refuse to acknowledge the powerful sign of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave.

The sign, the reality, the historical event that has so shaped the subsequent history of the world over the last 2,000 years. The last 2,000 years of world history simply do not make sense without the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There will be all kinds of reasons why people do not believe and will not believe. There may be all kinds of reasons right now why you are hesitating to believe. I don't know, but let me say this, the reason is not a lack of evidence. The reason is not that God has failed, actually, to give you a sign from heaven. No, He has given the greatest sign of all.

What do you make of the signs of Jesus's miracles? What do you make of this greatest sign of all? The sign of Jonah, the sign of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead? You have the evidence before you, but will you resolve to be a skeptic and will you refuse to be satisfied? I hope not.

For us, the people of God, we need to remember that the Lord has given us ample evidence of the claims of Jesus Christ, despite what the sneering onlookers might want to say to us in our day, despite what a skeptical culture might assume, the Christian faith stands on an entirely firm footing of evidence. Friends, ours is a reasonable faith. It's a reasonable faith because God has acted irrefutably in space and time and history to reveal His Son to be the Christ, the promised Savior, the divine Prince of Heaven.

We don't go into the world with a Gospel that is an intellectual embarrassment. We don't go into the world with the facts stacked against us. No. We go into the world armed with a sign from heaven, attested by witnesses rooted in history, the sign of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The facts are not the problem. But nonetheless, some will refuse to believe, a perverse incomprehension. That's the religious leaders and along with so many in our world today. But now we turn to the disciples. And while we might expect to see within the disciples something very, very clear, a crisp recognition and understanding at this point, what we actually see in reality with the disciples at this point is a precarious confusion. Verse five.

"When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread." Jesus said to them, "Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees." And they began discussing among themselves saying, "We we brought no bread."

The disciples, it seems, make something of a habit of fretting about food supplies. In chapter 14, chapter 15, they memorably expressed concern about a lack of adequate food to feed the great crowds that are assembled before them. Now they've traveled on to a new place. They've crossed the Sea of Galilee once more, and having reached their next interim destination, they suddenly realize that they're out of food. They're thinking on a very practical level, in concrete terms. As as it were, they they've got their phone out there on Google Maps. They're searching up bakery and grocery store, bread, and so forth. There's nothing, nothing nearby.

Bread is the theme of their practical discussion, but Jesus's mind is still on the exchange with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He's thinking about spiritual things. And so He picks up on the theme of the disciples' discussion and He turns it in a decidedly spiritual direction. As the disciples talk about the bread supply, He introduces a very significant spiritual warning. "Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees." Leaven, it spreads through dough, as you know, it has a permeating impact. And Jesus is quite clearly warning the disciples of the dangerous influence of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and their way of thinking. Their attitude, their outlook, their refusal to see the truth.

The disciples, of course, they miss this entirely at this point. They think that Jesus is somehow still talking about the bread supply, as they are, verse seven. And Jesus has a word really of rebuke for them at this point. And it's quite strong, isn't it? Verse eight. "Oh you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread?" It might sound like a simple misunderstanding, but Jesus says that there is actually here an issue of faith. There is a lack of understanding that points to a deeper concern. "Why are you talking about the bread supply? Don't you understand who I am?" verse nine. "Do you not yet perceive? Don't you remember the feeding of the 5,000 with the five loaves, all the leftovers? Or the feeding of the 4,000 with the seven loaves, all the leftovers there? How is it," verse 11, "that you fail to understand that I did not speak about the bread? Don't you see that I am more than able by this point to provide bread? That is not our concern here. That is not our big issue. That's not the thing to be fretting about."

The concern is that there are those around, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the religious leaders, who will refuse to see the meaning of the miracles. They will refuse to accept the signs from heaven. They will refuse to draw the obvious conclusions concerning me. "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees." Then the disciples understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of the bread, but the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

Steve Hiller: A powerful point from Jonathan today as we wrap up our message, The Christ Who Demands a Response. Now, it's part of a larger series called In the Presence of the King, looking today at Matthew chapter 16 verses 1 through 20. And we're going to continue this message on our next broadcast, so I hope you'll join us for that.

By the way, if you ever miss a program, come and listen online. Our website is EncounterTheTruth.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. Again, that's at EncounterTheTruth.org.

Well, Encounter the Truth is a listener supported program. We're able to be on this station because of your generosity. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you a book called An Anchor for the Soul, written by Paul Matler. And Jonathan, what's this book about?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, this is a book about walking through trial while trusting in the Lord. It's grounded in Psalm 22, where the psalmist expresses that agony of facing real trial, but it points us at the same time to the Lord Jesus Christ, who entered into suffering for us and in our place at the cross of Calvary.

Steve Hiller: Well, we want to send you a copy of this book as our way of saying thank you for your financial support this month. You can give online when you visit our website, EncounterTheTruth.org or call us at 1-833-99 Truth. That's 1-833-998-7884 or EncounterTheTruth.org.

You can also write to us at Encounter the Truth, P.O. Box 5513, Ottawa, Ontario, K2C 3M1. Or in the U.S. at Encounter the Truth, 215 North Arlington Heights Road, Suite 102, Arlington Heights, Illinois, 60004. For Jonathan Griffiths and our producer Mark Bruda, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time.