IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 165

YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

We ended yesterday with a saying from the Gospel of Luke calling it a sort of seed thought for our next sayings and parables from the Master. After answering the disciples’ of John the Baptist questions, Jesus is speaking to the crowd concerning John and in the last post we saw what He had to say from Luke’s Gospel. This now is how it appears in the Gospel of Matthew; speaking of the Baptist the Master says:

“And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. But where unto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, And saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children” (Matthew 11:14-19).

As we said, we will use this saying above as a sort of seed thought for our subject verses which follow upon the verses with the praise of the woman and the answer by the Master that we covered over the last days from Luke. Our subject verses appear in both Luke and Matthew but are a bit different in each so we will look at them together. In Matthew they appear just after the verses we discussed prior to the woman, those regarding the good and evil fruit and the good and evil treasures. Today’s verses are:

• From Luke: “And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation. The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation, and condemn them: for she came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineve shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold , a greater than Jonas is here” (Luke 11:29-32)
• From Matthew: “Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold , a greater than Jonas is here. The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here” (Matthew 12:38-42).

On the outside it does appear that there is really nothing here for us to see other than the conversation itself but there are several points to be made amongst the  directed and pointed words of the Master. They asked Him for a sign but He never gives them one that they could understand; one which we see so clearly since it has happened. The rest is telling the scribes and the Pharisees and whomever of how they fail to compare to the people in Jonas’ time or in Solomon’s time and that they will be judged by the by these same “men of Nineveh” and “The queen of the south” who are long time dead and of which some commentators claim that this judgement will be at the end, at the judgement day. What does this all mean to us today?

Let us start with some words that we need to see clearly; the first of these is generation which is used in all three of our saying as well as the one from Luke from yesterday. There is much variety in the biblical translations and understanding of this word for which there is a range of meaning from an age (i.e. the time ordinarily occupied be each successive generation), a space of 30 – 33 years² in which one lives, to a particular race of people possessed of similar characteristics⁶.  Strong’s tells us that this Greek word genea that is translated here as generation means generation, one’s own kind or race, descendant; fig. age, period of time (as in ‘to all generations)³ while Vincent says in one place that it refers to his contemporaries⁴. This is a wide range of understanding to which Webster’s adds: A single succession in natural descent, as the children of the same parents; hence, an age. Thus we say, the third, the fourth, or the tenth generation. Gen.15.16. The people of the same period, or living at the same time. Genealogy; a series of children or descendants from the same stock. A family; a race. Progeny; offspring¹. For us the word should stand in its common understanding and that is ‘the time in which we are and the ‘people’ that we are here with‘ which is a rather fluid idea and this is a adapted version of one of the ideas from the 1828 dictionary. We center on this because it allows the Master’s message the necessary timelessness and universality; when looking at this as race or as family or as an age, His message becomes locked into that particular idea. By Jesus usage of it here we should see our point as well as He address them saying “where unto shall I liken this generation” and “with this generation“.

Our next word is a simple preposition and it is here translated as with. It is from the Greek word meta which we discussed recently in a different context, that of the Master’s saying “He that is not with me is against me” (Luke 11:23, Matthew 12:30). In this saying we attributed it to following the Master and His teachings and not merely being with Him bodily. We said of the meta that Strong’s tells us that it refers to with, among, a marker of associations of various kinds of meanings; (acc.) after, later, a marker of time (goes on there to reference combinations with other words), to, unto, upon, when, along with additional combinations with other words³ and in this we should get the idea that there is no specific reference and that is fits in as to how the thought is framed. Some of the commentary that say here that the Master is referring to the final judgement at the resurrection use this word with to bring us to a point in time in their explanation of “rise in judgment with this generation“.

Our last word to understand is Wisdom which, like Love, is a word of many facets; we have already spoken about it in much depth and should understand that it is a divine attribute and an aspect of God. We have seen how Wisdom is spoken of in scripture as a person to itself saying “Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth” and also “I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me” (Proverbs 8:17, 25) and, let us not forget the idea in our saying above “But wisdom is justified of her children“. There are no dictionary or lexicon ideas that convey properly the idea of Wisdom; we can and should define our meaning in these few sayings though there are many more.

Let us reduce here these sayings by the Master to two and consider each as a combination of the way it appears in Matthew plus the way Luke portrays it. The one we can call the Parable of the Baptist and the other the Parable of Jonas and these for lack of a better way to distinguish them. In the former we have the Master telling the people of their hypocrisy in saying to them the simple and straightforward truth and this truth is so ever apparent even to today. We should be able to see the Master saying these words to our generations today with the same saying “where unto shall I liken this generation?” for ours and every generation can somewhat fit into the Master’s accusation. In the first part is His likening the generation to some sign of that time and it matters not what these words mean but to be clear Vincent tells us that the idea of children should be seen as little children and the marketplace a place of assembly; he says that in Eastern cities the markets were held in bazaars and streets….. In these public places the children would be found playing⁴. The Master’s saying here then is that this generation is like little children that are playing in the bazaar and calling to others saying we have piped (like to musical playing at a wedding⁴) but no one dances. Similarly He tells them that this generation is like, these children, using Vincent’s words, that  have wailed to you but you have not wept⁴. Now the reference here is to the generation, to them all more or less, who have responded neither to the sorrow nor to the joy which is defined, as the Master goes on, as the solemn way of the Baptist versus the joyful way of Himself. His message is that it made no difference in their spiritual response; they reacted only as men who decried both the Baptist and Jesus and did not enough believe that they were from God as to change their ways. They had rather stick with what is the easier way of their doctrines. Can we see any parallel from then to this generation? Do we dance to His music or to the music that we as men have defined as His music? Do we weep at the wailing of our children and our brother’s children or does it fall on deaf ears?

Moving on to the next part, what do we see? Jesus has now been with these people for more that a year; He was teaching in their cities and had already sent out the twelve and the seventy and they returned. What sign would these people need to see after witnessing or hearing of the feeding of the masses on two occasions, the raising of the dead and the healing of the blind? But they ask for a sign as they are still in unbelief that this is the ‘promised one’. The Master gives them none but to tell them of the story of Jonas which, as Jews, they already knew. They could not make a reference here however from that historical event to what the Master was saying in “so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth“; this likely made no sense to them at all. This is the first point for them and for us; that there were then and are now people who just don’t want to believe as they are so wound up in their little lives as there are also those who know the reality, with a knowing that springs from within, but they are not enough convinced that the words of the Master are the words of Life. They go on through their days saying that ‘I know He did this and that and said this and that’ but to follow His way is too difficult; besides, everyone says that what preacher so and so says to do is enough’.

The Master goes on to tell them of Himself in relation to those that came before and the dissimilarity of the times. The “men of Nineveh” repented of their sins at the word of Jonas; not because of the “three days and three nights in the whale’s belly” but because he went to them as a prophet proclaiming their doom. It is interesting to note that in Luke’s version of this the only mention is “For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation” with no mention of the three days nor the whale. Now we can believe this whale story is true or not, it makes no difference as the point here is that the Ninevites did repent at the words of Jonas and the Jews are not repenting at the signs and wonders and the words of the Master. The similar idea goes with “the queen of the south” who was the ruler of a seemingly vast empire and who, hearing of the words of Solomon, traveled “from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon“. This queen traveled far for to hear the words of the one who was given Wisdom above all else by the Lord; this too was understood by the Jews. Here the Master’s point is to say that to the people that they have heard His Wisdom in all the sayings that He has put forth to them and still they look for a sign, not recognizing that the words of the Master could only come from one who was with God.

That He is saying of Himself that “a greater than Solomon is here” and that “ a greater than Jonas is here” to us are statements of fact, we have the history and the Book. To these people in that generation however these were just more words. These people were guilty of the one great thing that has always encumbered man and which is posed here as a question by the Master: “Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember? (Mark 8:18). So being statements of fact to us because of the history and the Book, can we say that we have learned any of the lesson that brings us to repentance as the Ninevites or brings us to the point of understanding and of seeing the Wisdom as did “the queen of the south“? Do we see, do we hear, do we remember.

We will finish with this in the next post and include the additional points that we believe are also included in these sayings and these are the matter of Wisdom and the concept of reincarnation.

Note on the Quote of the Day