The Life of Christ

• •

Has tasted the heavenly gift

Became a partaker of the Holy Spirit

• Has tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come

SECTION 80

Mt. 12:38-40 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered Him, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” 39 But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign shall be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; 40 for just as JONAH WAS THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS IN THE BELLY OF THE SEA MONSTER, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

To count a “part of a day” as a whole day was a common Jewish reckoning of time.

• Lk. 24:21 illustrates this when the two on the road to Emmaus said to Jesus, “It is the third day since these things happened.”

• The “third day” they were referring to was Sunday. Saturday was therefore the second day; Friday was the first day — the day of Jesus’ crucifixion.

• Jesus was not in the tomb for three 24-hour periods, but He was in the tomb for at least a portion of three individual days.

• We conclude that Jesus died on Friday and rose on Sunday.

Mt. 12:41 “The men of Nineveh shall stand up with this generation at the judgment and shall condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”

There were three similarities between the life and ministry of Jonah and that of Jesus:

• They both spent three days in the heart of something dark and distressing.

• They both emerged out of the darkness and into the light.

• They both presented a message of repentance to a sinful generation.

Prior to Jesus’ resurrection, it would have been Impossible for the scribes and Pharisees to understand the similarities between Jesus and Jonah.

• Jesus offered them such an ambiguous sign because of the hardness of their hearts.

Mt. 12:43 Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places, seeking rest, and does not find it.

For some reason demons prefer “waterless” or dry places. As spirit-beings, not susceptible to natural elements, we’re not sure why this would be.

• This stated desire points some possible light on why Jesus may have dismissed the legion of devils into the herd of swine, which later ended up in the water below.

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