Following the miraculous feeding of the four thousand in the preceding passage, Jesus and His disciples set out across the sea of Galilee to the district of Dalmanutha. This is the only mention of Dalmanutha in the Bible, and in fact, the only occurrence of this place in all extant ancient literature. The precise location of this place is therefore unknown, but we are helped by comparing Mark’s account with Matthew’s for Matthew says that they came to the “region of Magadan.” We can infer from this that Dalmanutha was either very near to Magadan, or else was another name for the same place. The underlying Hebrew root of Dalmanutha means “wall,” and Magadan was located directly below the cliff of Arbel, which formed a natural wall overlooking the western shore of the lake.
We don’t know how long Jesus had been there before the confrontation that unfolds in this passage takes place. It may be that He had moved on from Dalmanutha by this time. But at some point the Pharisees came out to confront Jesus once again. And in the brief narrative of this confrontation we see an inappropriate request and an intriguing refusal.
I. The Inappropriate Request to See a Sign (v11)
It is really not so much a request as it is a demand. Nearly every word or phrase in this verse is packed with meaning as to the inappropriateness of their sign-seeking. We begin by noticing …
A. The Makers of the Request – The Pharisees
The Pharisees have been mentioned several times already in Mark’s Gospel, and the picture we see of them is not a flattering one. The party of the Pharisees came into being during what we call “the intertestamental period” of Israel’s history, that 400 year period between the end of the Old Testament record and the birth of Jesus. They were a group of religious and political separatists who strove for purity and uniformity of doctrine by imposing upon the nation the tedious rules and regulations handed down by generations of scribes. The Pharisees considered these rules and traditions as authoritative as the Word of God and were so meticulous that there was no room for differences in interpretation. Whatever the scribes said a text meant was what it meant in their eyes, and there was no debating it. And so, under their influence, Jewish religion ceased to be an internal matter of faith and repentance, and became more of a system of external rituals and regulations.
They first surface in Mark’s Gospel in Chapter 2 where they questioned Jesus’ practice of hanging out with people they considered to be reprobate sinners. Their regulations demanded strict separation from the types of people Jesus with whom Jesus was in regular contact. Then they began to interrogate Him about why His disciples did not fast the way they did, and why He did not observe their meticulous Sabbath regulations. In Chapter 3, they planted a man in the synagogue in order to see if Jesus would heal the man on the Sabbath, and Mark tells us it was “so that they might accuse Him.” After Jesus healed the man, Mark tells us that the Pharisees began to conspire with the Herodians (who would not normally be their allies) about how they might destroy Jesus. We next see them in Chapter 7 when they took issue with Jesus over the issue of ritual cleanness. It was there that Jesus applied to them the Word of God found in Isaiah, saying, “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.” Jesus says of the Pharisees that they set aside the commandment of God in order to keep their own traditions. He says that they invalidate the Word of God by their traditions which they hand down.
Probably still seething from that railing indictment, they now come out to Jesus seeking a sign from heaven. Matthew tells us in his account of this episode that some Sadducees came with them. The Pharisees and Sadducees are not friends. There are deep political and religious differences between them. But, as we saw with the Herodians in Chapter 3, a common enemy can make rivals into cobelligerents for the purpose of eliminating the threat. Now, Jesus has already demonstrated that He does not have to answer to these guys. They think they are the spiritual supervisors of
Then notice …
B. The Method of the Request – The Pharisees came out and began to argue with Him
This was no casual or chance encounter. There is intentionality and deliberateness in their coming. And they came for a purpose – to argue with Him. These were not curious inquirers seeking to have a rational discourse. They came for a fight. There is animosity in their approach to Jesus.
C. The Manner of the Request – Seeking a sign from heaven
What sign would be sufficient to convince such men? Jesus has restored the disabled, healed the sick, cleansed lepers, cast out demons, stilled a storm, miraculously fed the hungry masses, and even raised the dead. He has fulfilled the biblical prophecies of the mission of the Messiah. In Isaiah 61, the Messianic servant announces, “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners.” God the Father speaks to the Messianic servant in Isaiah 42, saying, “"I am the LORD, I have called You in righteousness, I will also hold You by the hand and watch over You, And I will appoint You as a covenant to the people, As a light to the nations, To open blind eyes, To bring out prisoners from the dungeon And those who dwell in darkness from the prison.” In Isaiah 35, we read that when He comes, “Then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer, And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy.” All of this, Jesus has done, and He has clearly demonstrated Himself to be this promised Messiah. But for the Pharisees, this is not enough. They come as if to say, “What else have you got?”
A sign from heaven implies that they want to see something more spectacular. After all, the miracles He has done have been rather earth-bound. They have involved natural processes. He has made the lame to walk by making their crippled legs functional again, sure, but He has never caused new legs to grow where before there were none. He has multiplied bread, but He hasn’t caused manna to form on the ground. He has not caused the sun to stand still. Lightning doesn’t flash forth from his finger tips. Thunder has not clapped in response to His command. They want to see or hear some apocalyptic celestial phenomenon that would be proof-positive that God’s favor rests upon Jesus.
By this request, the Pharisees have rejected all His previous miracles as spurious and unconvincing. Their hearts are hard and their eyes are blind to the truth.
Now notice …
D. The Motive of the Request – to test Him
They are not looking to be persuaded into belief, but rather to persuade others out of belief. Their motive is to catch Jesus in a dilemma. They hoped that He might attempt some mighty deed. If he did, they were confident He would fail, and be exposed publicly as an imposter in the eyes of all those who were putting their hope and trust in Him. If He refused to perform some sign, then it would be regarded as a cowardly admission that He was not the Messiah. Either way, in the minds of the Pharisees, they would win the argument and cause Jesus to lose popular support.
It is interesting that this word translated test is the same Greek word that is used to describe Satan’s temptations of Jesus in the wilderness in Mark 1:13. Mark will go on to use the word three times to describe the opposition of the Pharisees to Jesus (here in 8:11; 10:2; and 12:15). By using this term to describe their motive Mark is clearly trying to show that these who claim to be such faithful servants of God are actually in league with Satan, seeking to thwart to the mission of the Messiah and prevent the salvation of God from coming to those who would receive it.
Now we have gone into such detail to unpack this verse because the Pharisees who approach Jesus here (together with the Sadducees that Matthew mentions) are not unlike many who we encounter today. There are those whose hearts are hard and distant from God, whose eyes are blind to spiritual truth, and yet who believe that they can demand of God their own terms by which they might come to Him. Believing that they have a bird’s eye view of reality, they think they can objectively process the information presented to them and make a sound decision based on evidences alone. They don’t approach Christians to have intelligent dialogue about our beliefs and practices. They come to argue, they come to tempt, to persuade us to their viewpoint. They may say that they want proof, but what they really want is to show that we have no proof for our beliefs.
I was there at one point in my life. I remember one occasion when a Christian girl was trying to witness to me on a high school field trip, and I said to her, “If you really want me to believe, then why don’t you ask God to knock over a tree right now or write me a message in the clouds to prove Himself to me?” Now, I don’t know what I would have said if a tree had fallen at that moment or if words appeared suddenly in the clouds, but I do know this, I would not have believed. I would have come up with another explanation for the sign, because I did not want to believe. I had made a volitional decision that I would not be convinced of God’s existence no matter what arguments or evidence I was presented with. And I remember like it was yesterday that girl’s words to me. She said, “Who do you think you are that you deserve for God to give you a special sign? Do you think you are more important than the rest of the world? Do you think you are so special that God would do all that just for you?” And then she said, “God has given you the opportunity to believe because He loves you. If you reject Him, it is your loss, not His.” And I just laughed and told her that she was copping-out, but the reason that conversation stands out so vividly in my mind is that for the next few years, her words nagged at my conscience. And shortly after I came to faith in Christ, I ran into her at a restaurant and told her that I was a Christian now, and I wish you could have seen the look on her face.
At seminary, I chose Christian Apologetics as my concentration for my Master of Divinity degree. I love studying evidences and arguments for the Christian faith. I love to talk about it and debate with others about it. But I can tell you that Apologetics is not a sledgehammer that we can beat someone over the head with and drag them into the
The Pharisees’ request to see a sign from heaven was inappropriate on many levels, and therefore we are not surprised to see that request was met by …
II. The Intriguing Refusal to Show a Sign (vv12-13)
In the 2003 film Bruce Almighty, Jim Carrey plays Bruce Nolan, a TV news reporter who meets up with a seemingly ordinary janitor played by Morgan Freeman, a janitor who turns out to be God. Because Bruce has so adamantly complained about God and the events of his own life, God offers him the opportunity to try his hand at being God to see if he can do any better. Now, the merits or lack thereof of that film notwithstanding, I am sure that we’ve all had those moments where we thought, “If I was God, this is what I would do.” And I have to confess, if I were Jesus faced with these Pharisees demanding a sign from heaven, I might just have fire fall down and consume about half of them and say to the rest, “Now do you believe?” And because of that, I think we’ll all sleep a little better knowing that God won’t make me the offer He made to Bruce Nolan in that movie.
In Luke 9:51-56, we read that some Samaritans did not receive Jesus into their village. When James and John heard about this rejection, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” Now, see you and I would have probably said, “Yeah, go for it,” even if just to show James and John that they couldn’t do it. But Jesus did not do that. Instead, the Bible tells us that He rebuked them, saying, “The Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” Episodes like that one, and the one before us illustrate clearly that characteristic of Christ which we call meekness. Meekness does not mean “weakness”, but rather strength or power under control. He could have called down fire, He could have shown signs from heaven, but He didn’t. How did He respond to these Pharisees? Three ways.
A. He responded with a sigh.
Mark tells us that Jesus was sighing deeply within His spirit. That wording in the NASB is a very literal translation of the Greek. Other translations use the word groaning to convey the intensity of this sigh. We have here a rare Greek word, used only here in the NT, and fewer than 30 times in all extant Greek literature. The rarity of the word may indicate the severity of the emotion behind this sigh. It is a sigh of anguish from the very depth of being in the Son of God – from deeply within His spirit. The root of the word is used elsewhere, like in 7:34, where Jesus sighs in compassion as He heals the deaf man with the speech impediment. But here it has a prefix attached to it that indicates great intensity provoked by the obstinate unbelief of the Pharisees. This is not a sigh of anger per say, but of dismay, as if to say without words, “I cannot believe, after all I have done, that you would come and ask for another sign!” Though no words are uttered, volumes are spoken by this deep sigh.
B. He responded by speaking.
1. He asks a rhetorical question
“Why does this generation seek for a sign?” This generation, of all generations in human history, have seen enough in Jesus to convince the most devout unbeliever of who He is and His divine authority. If that is not sufficient, what more can He say or do? The words “this generation” remind us of the Exodus generation, who had experienced the miraculous signs of plagues in Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, the miraculous provision of water from the rock, manna in the morning, and quail to satisfy their hunger. Yet they continued to grumble against Moses and against God and run headlong into idolatry and rebellion. In Deuteronomy 32:5, Moses said of them, “They have acted corruptly toward Him, They are not His children, because of their defect; But are a perverse and crooked generation.” He goes on to say in verses 19-20, “The LORD saw this, and spurned them Because of the provocation of His sons and daughters. Then He said, ‘I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end shall be; For they are a perverse generation, Sons in whom is no faithfulness.’” This was the generation spoken of by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:5, saying that in spite of all their spiritual privilege, “with most of them God was not well-pleased; for they were laid low in the wilderness.” The Pharisees demonstrate that they are cut from the same cloth as that generation, claiming to be highly favored by God and receiving many blessings from Him, but never enough.
2. He pronounces a categorical denial
“Truly I say to you, no sign will be given this generation.” You recall, we just said that their “test” of Jesus in asking for this sign is like the “temptations” Jesus faced from Satan in the wilderness. There, you recall that one of the temptations Satan attempted to use with Jesus was for Him to throw Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple and let angels prevent Him from falling, in order that the masses might be convinced of His divine power through this spectacular display. Jesus’ response was “It is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” In this denial to give a sign to the Pharisees, Jesus firmly refused to take a line of action that He had already decisively rejected before at the temptation—that of compelling men’s allegiance by a spectacular sign. Jesus acts in compassion, not compulsion. He draws men to Himself, He doesn’t drag them. The call of Christ in Mark 1:15 still goes forth – “Repent and believe in the gospel.” But to show them incontrovertible proof is to do away with the necessity of faith. Men would be forced to believe based on such a demonstration, and He will not force men to believe. Salvation is offered by grace, and received by faith. This is not a blind faith with no evidence to undergird it, but neither is it a matter of science or mathematics. Enough evidence is given to convince, but Christ stops short of giving so much to compel. He longs that we would make an informed decision of faith to trust in Him. As the writer of Hebrews says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”
Jesus statement here is an incomplete sentence in Greek. Literally, it would read, “Amen I say to you if a sign will be given ….” And then the statement is left unfinished. This would be recognized as an oath by those who heard Him, and they would understand that what is not supplied is some sort of personal consequence, like “If a sign will be given to you, may I die,” or “may God punish Me.” Kind of like we might say, “Over my dead body.”
But in fact, more was said on this occasion which Mark does not include but Matthew does. Mark, writing for Roman Christians who were largely Gentile in population, knows that his audience is unfamiliar with much of the Old Testament at this point, and so he omits the reference that Matthew includes to the sign of Jonah the prophet. Matthew tells us in Matt 16:4 that Jesus says, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah.” Previously in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus had explained that sign, saying in Matt 12:40, “just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” By this, Jesus pointed to the greatest sign of all: His death, burial and resurrection. David Garland writes, “Jesus will offer this generation no noisy sign from heaven, only the wind whistling through an empty tomb after His crucifixion.” It is an undeniable fact of history that this Jesus died on a cross at Calvary and that He was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and that on the third day, that tomb was found to be empty. Those are the facts of history. Now the task of the unbeliever is to explain how that tomb became empty. And no one has ever offered a more satisfactory explanation of it than this: He rose from the dead. His resurrection is the supreme sign that God has sent Him into the world to save sinners, and this task has been accomplished fully in His death and resurrection.
C. He responded by sailing away.
Verse 13 is no mere travelogue. It is not here for us to track Jesus’ geographical progress. His departure is a statement to the sign-seekers. He responded to them by saturating them with His absence. He does not cast pearls to swine, and He will not spend another moment trying to convince the inconvincible that He is who He says He is. Perhaps that great poet of our own generation, Kenny Rogers, said it best: “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run.” The omniscient God of the universe will not waste time. He knows that there is no sign which could be given that would convince these unbelievers to turn their hard hearts back to Him, and so the Messiah sails away. And there is no more tragic testimony ever given than the rippling of the waters coming ashore from the wake of this boat as Jesus, and the offer of salvation, sails away into the sunset.
In 1 Corinthians 1:22, Paul says, “For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom.” The verbs used there indicate that it is their perpetual habit: Always asking for signs; always searching for wisdom. The world of unbelievers around us can be similarly classified – there are those who claim that they want to see a sign to compel them to belief, and others say they want to hear a fine sounding argument that will convince them. But to these, Paul says, “but we preach (again, a verb tense indicating perpetual habit – we are always preaching) Christ crucified.” And to those seeking signs, this is a stumbling block and to those seeking wisdom it is foolishness, but it is our message, and we proclaim it without shame. To believe it or not is up to you, but the offer is there, and one day it will be too late. Hebrews 9:27 says it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment. Will you stand before God on that day and say, “Lord, if only you could have shown me one more sign, if only I could have heard one more argument, then I might have believed”? And you will be pointed to the cross where Jesus died, and the empty tomb from which He arose. What more can He say than to you He has said?
No comments:
Post a Comment