Thursday, July 9, 2015

New Testament- Lesson 95

Matthew Chapter 12- part 8

Jonah & Nineveh, Queen of Sheba & Solomon, Jesus and God's own people- (Read Matthew 12:41-45)

Nineveh was a wicked gentile nation that had no knowledge of or affinity for God Almighty, yet when Jonah (prophet of God) preached to them, they repented of their wickedness. Here was Jesus, the son of God, greater than Jonah, in the midst of his own people but they would not listen or accept what he had to say for their salvation. The Queen of the south (Queen of Sheba), undertook the challenge of travelling far and through difficult terrain to come and listen to Solomon's wisdom, but here was God's own people rejecting the wisdom of God,  Jesus Christ, one greater than Solomon, though he was in their midst. Jesus compared the Jews of his generation (Israel as a nation) to a person who had been delivered of an impure spirit and it was so for they had almost forsaken idolatry and now free. The driven out spirit, not finding rest because it had lost the one it possessed, decides to return to the person/house (Israel as a nation), but finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order, so it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person/house (Israel as a nation) was worse than at the first. God's own people had become a wicked, adulterous and rebellious generation, which would be condemned by the men of Nineveh and the Queen of the South at judgment time.

No comments:

Post a Comment