Matthew 12:38 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Matthew 12:38

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They seem respectful, they seem polite; they call him Master, but it is a sham; they hate him and are looking for a way to attack him. This is evil. They had already had seen many signs, and if they were making a genuine enquiry, they would not have dismissed these. This is a proud response to his indictment of them: ‘If we have had a sign, we would have been all right.’ They had seen the dead raised, the blind given sight; what sort of sign did they want? They wanted a ‘sign from heaven’. Perhaps they were asking for manna to come down, or for the sun or moon to stand still, for fire to come down from heaven. We mustn’t forget that they knew the Old Testament. Possibly they were thinking of the prophecy of Joel, ‘I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. ³¹ The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come’ (Joel 2:30-31). Then they would believe. They were choosing their own signs. That was their pride, their arrogance. They wanted to put Christ to the test, and they wanted the test to be so difficult that they could be sure that it could not be done. They were trying to turn the Scripture against the Lord. It was repeated blasphemy.

Application

Some who hear the gospel do this today. ‘Prove it. Give me such and such a sign. If God were to come down and do a sign in front of me, then I would believe.’ They don’t want to believe, and the demand for a sign is a means of preventing them from having to believe. How outrageous it is for us to demand signs from God. How insulting it is to him to say that he has not already given us all the evidence we need to believe. It is an excuse of unbelief. Actually, the unbeliever has very little insight into his own unbelief. Would he really start to believe if he saw a sign? No. The problem is not lack of evidence but deep prejudice in the heart that refuses to believe. With true belief comes repentance. True faith means a complete re-evaluation of what we are. It will lead to acknowledgment of our sin before God and turning away from it in repentance. That was what the Pharisees were not willing to do. They could not humble themselves before the Lord Jesus Christ, and neither can many others who hear the gracious message of the gospel.

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Matthew 12:38 Commentary and Bible Study