Today’s reading: Jeremiah 11; Matthew 16
As long as you have pre-determined that you won’t believe in God or in what He has done, no evidence will ever be sufficient to change your mind.
When the Pharisees and Sadducees come to Jesus at the beginning of Matthew 16 and ask for a sign from heaven, I think a lot of people can relate to that sentiment. If Jesus really is God in the flesh, then it shouldn’t be too much to ask that He prove it by some kind of miraculous work, should it? I would say no, that’s not too much to ask. In fact, I would say that if someone is showing up and making such a bold claim as to be God incarnate, he better be backing that up with bold enough evidence to match the boldness of the claim.
The problem here though is that the Pharisees and Sadducees already had exactly that. Jesus wasn’t running around making bold claims without backing them up. Jesus was healing the sick, casting out demons, giving sight to the blind, making the lame walk, etc. They had plenty of signs from heaven already, but they evidently weren’t good enough for them. This is why Jesus responds telling them they know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but they don’t know how to read the signs of the times. All the evidence is in front of them, but they are willingly blind to it.
This is not all that different from people today. Yes, we do not get to see Jesus walking around performing miracles today, but God has given us significant evidence for His existence and activities in human history, if we are open to what He has to show us. But too many people will look at the evidence available to them and dismiss everything, not because none of the evidence is good or convincing, but because they have already decided that they will not believe it.
If we really want to know what the Lord has for us, we cannot be like the Pharisees and Sadducees, who decided ahead of time what they wanted, what they were looking for, and what they would accept, and then rejected a mountain of clear evidence because it didn’t line up with what their expectations.
The Lord has incredible things for us if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
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