Riddles of Grace

And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will 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. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” So he left them and departed. (Matthew 16:1–4, ESV)

Sometimes assumptions blind us from the obvious. For example, consider the following two riddles: First, what are the only two things you never eat for breakfast? Second, there is a word that is spelled incorrectly in every English dictionary. What is it? Off we go looking for some hard answer when the answer is often much simpler than we realize. We refuse to question our assumptions, and so the answer remains forever out of reach. 

In many ways, this was the problem with the Pharisees. The answer stood out like a cockroach on a cheesecake: If Jesus is God’s way to heaven, then they must be on the road to hell? But as is always the case with the wise and prudent, they were too sure of themselves to consider that Jesus might be right and they might be wrong. So hoping to remain in unbelief, they asked for yet another sign.

I wonder this morning, could that be you? Has God been trying to get your attention, but you haven’t been willing to listen? Perhaps it has been a word in your devotions, a word challenging a long-practiced sin, a long-cherished attitude, or a long-ignored pang of conscience. You keep convincing yourself that the Holy Spirit’s repeated corrections are either merely a coincidence, or your own silly heart playing games with you, or perhaps even the voice of the devil. Perhaps, you say to yourself, “Lord, if this really is Your voice, please give me another sign, one so clear that I couldn’t miss it.”

What lies behind such prayers is very often a desperately diseased soul. Asking for more evidence, when enough has already been given, actually represents an attempt to hide from God not find Him. That was certainly the case with the Pharisees. “Show us a sign,” they said, which being translated means, “What you have done so far is not enough!” Really, the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the lame leaping, and the dead living are not enough? No, the Pharisees’ inability to see the obvious says more about them than it does about Jesus. Their question was dishonest and their posture defiant. They were not seeking to find the truth; they were seeking to ignore it.

Just like the Jews in the wilderness, they were testing Jesus, and He knew it. To test God is to ask for perpetual evidence of His presence in our midst (Exodus 17:7). For such a heart, His word is never enough. Each new trial furnishes the hard heart with fresh ammunition to feed its doubt and distrust. To test God is also to ignore what He has hidden in plain sight, to walk right past what all with eyes could see, should see, and would see if only they had the desire. The Jews of Jesus’ day are perfectly able to connect the dots in every other realm, but why can they not in the spiritual realm? The answer, Jesus says, lies in their hearts. Their souls are evil and adulterous. They are not right with God.

This is the way it is with every human heart by nature. It explains the proud man’s unwillingness to receive rebuke, the alcoholic’s inability to consider his “addiction,” and the hypocrite’s blindness to what lies behind the painted mask and the polished veneer. What we won’t see, we can’t see, and what we can’t see, we will never see. As many have said before, the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart. Our hearts are closed to God, and because we won’t open them, only God can. The question, of course, is will He?

In an act of surprising mercy, Jesus promises them one more sign, His greatest sign of all. He will do what no man has ever done before. Plucking His own life from the belly of death, He will return from the grave. There is grace here but also judgment. The heart that desires to see through small miracles eventually gains the skill to see through every miracle. If they didn’t believe when Jesus raised other men from the grave, will they really believe when He raises Himself? Wilful bondage is always the hardest one for men to break by themselves. In the spiritual realm, Jesus says that this is not just difficult; it is impossible (Matthew 19:26). We are after all, dead in our sins. To believe in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, we first need to experience our own resurrection from the dead (Eph. 2:1-10). 

In His conversation with a Pharisee at the beginning of His ministry, Jesus called such a resurrection a “New Birth,” or a “Birth from above.” Without it, that which is born of the flesh will always be flesh (unrenewed human nature). To believe in Jesus, we must also be born of the Spirit. Has this happened to you? Have you ever seen yourself as a hell-deserving sinner? Have you ever come to the conviction that going to the right church, having the right answers, and doing the right things can do nothing to remedy the deep problem of your soul? What you need is not more evidence from the outside. What you need is life bubbling up from the inside. Only then will you open your eyes, question your assumptions, and see what has been staring you in the face all along. 

 Just like the riddles at the beginning. What are the only two things you can’t eat for breakfast? Why it’s lunch and dinner, of course! And what word is always spelled incorrectly in every English dictionary: Why, “incorrectly,” of course! So it is with the sinner, the lights come on when we question our most dearly held convictions. Like the Pharisees, too often we say we want a sign, but what we really need is a Savior. Jesus offers us both, if only we had eyes to see- the truth-or more properly, a heart that wants to see it. We are more wrong than we would ever want to imagine, but Jesus is more gracious than we could ever dare to hope.