Luke 11:26-36 "Dark Sign"

When Kim and I moved to Houston, we prayed about it, asked God if it was what He wanted us to do or not. I don’t know if we asked for a sign but we certainly wanted direction. 

One Sunday at church, a lady we didn’t know came up to us and said, “The Lord put it on my heart to tell you something—I never do this kind of thing but—and I don’t even know what this means, maybe nothing—You thought about moving somewhere and He wants you to know you should go.” That really happened. Crazy right?

Was it a miracle? Was it a sign? Did God speak to us through her? Or did she just overhear some of our friends talking about us possibly moving to Texas—maybe she just wanted to get rid of me so she gave us a little spiritual shove. 

That same day we were walking around Battlefield Mall in Springfield, Missouri, and two ladies came up to us—same kind of thing: “I’m sorry, you’re going to think I’m nuts but as soon as I saw you I felt compelled by the Lord to tell you something. Do you mind?” She basically said God wants us to move to Texas.

Were these answers to our prayer? Signs? Were the people put up to it by demons? Or maybe that guy at church who owned a music store and couldn’t stand me? Gave them twenty bucks and some new guitar strings to pull a prank on us. Or was it just a wild coincidence?

It happened either way. Kim and I kind of held it loosely as confirmation.

So we moved to Texas. But the place we had lined up to stay fell through as soon as we got here. That put a real damper on the welcome to Texas celebration. 

“God, do You want us to be here or not?”

We had about $100 to our name. No jobs. And nowhere to live.

We went into the first apartment complex we saw—Gaslight Square on Beechnut in Sharpstown. We were so naive. We thought we could walk in with our out-of-state license plates and no money and rent an apartment. 

The lady in the office stood up like she had seen a ghost. “God told me you were coming! You’re a musician, aren’t you? I’m not even going to run a credit check, you probably don’t even have jobs, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know—let me show you your apartment. It’s $200 a month and I’ll give you the first month free. This kind of thing doesn’t happen. Especially in the big city, right?

We lived in that apartment for five years.

We asked God to make it clear whether we should move to Texas or not. Seems like He made it pretty clear, doesn’t it? 

The next day we found out all my musical equipment was stolen. And my drummer quit the band (which was the reason we had moved down here in the first place.) That night we went for a walk in the neighborhood behind the apartment complex and some guys in a pickup truck threw eggs at us. Scared us to death. Welcome to Houston. 

What about all that? Were those signs, too?

We’re not supposed to put our faith in signs. God doesn’t promise to give us signs. He might. He might not. Our faith is only supposed to be in Christ. 

I told you that story because even though they really seem like some miraculous signs, it’s also pretty easy to dismiss as just a bunch of crazy people saying vague Jesus things.

Have you ever prayed for something and when the thing happens, it seems like God answered your prayer, then you almost immediately dismissed it as coincidence? 

Jesus could heal you of the worst thing you can imagine and five minutes later you start thinking you would have gotten better anyway. The medicine fixed it. Your immune system kicked in. Doctors, science. It doesn’t matter how big the miracle is, we’ll try to explain it away. I’ve done it. Lots of time. You probably have, too. 

This week, we’re continuing the story from last week. The response to Jesus casting a demon out of a man who was mute and blind. Some people marveled. Others tried to explain it away by saying He casts out demons because He’s in league with demons. Jesus shut that down hard with His “A house divided will not stand” speech. He warned them that anyone who accuses Him of doing the devil’s work, or says what He is doing is not of God—basically anyone who denies that Jesus came into the world to save people from its slavery to the world the flesh and the devil—those deniers have chosen the wrong side and will fall with it. 

It was a heavy speech. I imagine a complete silence fell over the crowd for a long couple of minutes—and then this lady spoke up. Luke 11, verse 27… 

As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” 

Maybe it’s just me but all of a sudden I get a Monty Python vibe. I can’t help but think she was like 100 years old and spoke with a thick cockney accent. 

She means it as a compliment. Maybe it didn’t sound so strange at the time. “Blessed are the breasts at which you nursed!” 

“You are such a good young man! Your mother must be so proud!” I think there’s some envy in there, too. “What I wouldn’t give for my Jedidiah to be such a nice boy!”

Jesus doesn’t shut her down. He doesn’t Jesus juke her. 

Luke had told us in the Christmas story that all people would call Mary blessed. That’s what’s happening here. Sometimes protestant Christians get so twisted up because other people take their veneration of Mary too far—so they read this passage completely wrong. Jesus didn’t hate His mother. He doesn’t disagree with the woman from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. He comforts her.

“Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” “Dear lady, you don’t have to be my mother to be blessed.” “My Mom is a very blessed woman but you can be, too.” Just like He said in other places, “my mother and my sisters and my brothers are those who hear my words and keep them.” Hear His words and keep them.

What does it mean to “keep” the word of Jesus? Keep. 

It definitely means to not throw away. Not discard. Keep it.

It also means to keep it like you keep a promise. Like you keep your word.

Remember it. Hold on to it. Act according to it.

Verse 29…

When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, “This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. Luke 11:29-30

They wanted a sign. You know, because casting out a demon and healing a blind man—then hearing that person, who couldn’t speak, start talking wasn’t enough of a sign, apparently. They were also wondering if all the miracles Jesus did were being done by the dark powers of the devil. Maybe Jesus could do something really amazing that the devil couldn’t do for Him. Stop the sun in the sky or turn someone into a newt—and then make them better. 

Remember the last person in the Gospel of Luke who wanted Jesus to prove He was the Son of God by doing a sign? “Turn this stone into bread!” “Throw yourself down from the Temple and let the angels rescue you!” Remember who that guy was? These people sound just like him.

They sound exactly like the devil when they ask for a sign. Jesus basically says, “You want me to prove I’m not with the devil but you’re the ones doing his bidding.”

Jesus said they were an evil generation. That’s probably not what they wanted to hear. But they would be the generation that rises up and kills the Son of God who came to save them—so He’s not wrong. He also says the only sign they’re going to get is the sign of Jonah. What’s the sign of Jonah?

Remember him? That fun little children’s story about a man and a giant whale? A guy who was so racist and hateful toward the people of Ninevah that when God told him to go warn them that He was about to blast them like Sodom and Gomorrah—he didn’t want to, so he got in a boat and went as far from Ninevah as he could get. 

Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. The Assyrians were bad news. They were actively attacking and destroying the northern kingdom of Israel. There’s a really good chance Jonah’s family and friends had been murdered, raped, tortured, or violently mistreated in some way by the people of Ninevah. Then God tells Jonah to go to the headquarters of his worst enemies and warn them. Jonah didn’t want to warn them. He wanted God to smite them with all the smiting. He was pretty sure if he warned them that God, in His kindness, would show mercy. So he ran away.

But you probably know the story. The boat that he’s on is pummeled with a storm and Jonah’s thrown overboard and swallowed by a giant sea creature of some kind. Maybe a whale, who knows. Jonah gets blurped up on the beach as close to Nineveh as Sea Monster Special Delivery can get him. He reluctantly stomps into Nineveh like a pouting toddler and gives the worst sermon in the whole Bible: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" Jonah 3:4

Eight words. Five in Hebrew. Talk about phoning it in.

Unfortunately for Jonah, it’s also the most successful sermon in the whole Bible.

“The Ninevites listened. They believed God and kept His word—declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, repented—and it would be a hundred years before God finally destroyed Assyria. Jonah was right. God had mercy.

So, what’s the sign of Jonah that Jesus is referring to? We’re told in Matthew: “Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Matthew 12:40

Unlike Jonah, Jesus came willingly to warn them but they refused to listen. They were going to kill Him but He would rise again in three days. The early Christians were all about some Jonah and the whale as a sign that pointed to Jesus and the resurrection. Early Christian artwork is full of Jonah references.

So, Jesus shuts the ones looking for a sign down by saying they’ll get their sign but they won’t recognize it. Then He tells them a little story about how not recognizing who they’re looking at isn’t going to go well for them.

Verse 31…

The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. Luke 11:31

It would be easy to miss what Jesus is doing here. He said a kingdom divided will be destroyed. The story of Jonah took place in the northern kingdom of Israel. Solomon was the last king before the split of north and south. He ruled from what would become the southern kingdom. They thought of Solomon as the glory days. He was considered to be the wisest man who ever lived. Wealth, power, fame—successful in every way a person would want to succeed. But He also broke every single commandment God had given to the kings of Israel. And his son immediately destroyed everything he had built and the kingdom divided and fell.

Jesus reminds them that the wisdom of Solomon was so well known that a pagan queen from Africa traveled all the way to Jerusalem just to meet with him and hear his wisdom firsthand.

Jesus is like, “You have no idea how foolish you’re being right now. Solomon got his wisdom from me, and he was barely scratching the surface, and yet you didn’t come here to listen to me—you just came to trap me and get all these other people to stop listening to me. You don’t recognize who is standing in front of you.”

The thing about that pagan African queen is once she came face to face with the wisdom of Solomon, the wisdom of God—history tells us that she became a worshiper of YAHWEH. After the resurrection, when the Christians made it to Ethiopia, they found a nation that prayed to YAHWEH—all of the pagan worship had been completely wiped out by her son when he became king. They were the first to accept Christ in Africa.

So, yeah, that African queen is going to stand up and testify against anyone who sees Jesus, the wisdom of God in the flesh, and doesn’t recognize Him. And she won’t be alone… 

Verse 32…

The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. 
Luke 11:32

In the day of judgment, those pagan Assyrians who listened to Jonah’s crappy little sermon in Ninevah are going to stand up and say, “shame on you for not listening to the Lord Jesus Christ when He came to warn you and offer you God’s mercy if you would repent and believe.”

They were probably not too pleased with Jesus saying a bunch of gentiles were going to be their judges. 

Jesus is like, “You want a sign but you wouldn’t recognize a sign if you saw one. I’m living proof of that. You only see what you want to see. And you refuse to see anything that contradicts your narrow-minded view of the world.” 

They’re looking at Jesus, the Son of God made flesh. He just cast out a demon and healed a blind and mute man—but all they can see is someone who threatens their understanding of life. The way they see themselves. So He explains what He’s saying in a different way.

Verse 33

“No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Luke 11:33

We’ve heard Jesus use this image before. The only reason someone would light a lamp is to light up the place. Jesus is the light. The Gospel is the light. Everything Jesus is doing is the light—but they want to snuff it out, cover it up. 

Verse 34

Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Luke 11:34

He’s saying, “the other way to make light ineffective is to close your eyes.” Open your eyes people! Recognize light when you see it. If you keep your eyes closed, guess what? Even in a well-lighted room, you’re still in the dark. He had just healed a blind man—I like to imagine Jesus put His arm around the guy and pulled him in close. “If your eyes are healthy, and you have them open, it’s like your whole body is full of light. Your hands know where things are, your feet don’t trip on the furniture. “

You're looking for a sign but your eyes are closed! You’re deliberately closing them. And even when you do open them, you still can’t see. You’re like this man who used to be blind. It’s like you have blinders on—cataracts. Your sinful hearts blind you. Listen to me. Believe in me. I can open your eyes too. But it’s like you don’t want to see. You refuse to see. 

Verse 35

Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. Luke 11:35

How can the light inside you be darkness? What is dark light? Obviously a contradiction. But it’s a pretty good description of any religious people who have convinced themselves that they’re doing the Lord’s work when they’re really doing anything but. Hypocrites. People who look clean on the outside but inside they’re rotten to the core. They bow their heads to pray in church, sing the songs, drop a tip in the offering bucket, then live the rest of their week like there is no God. Curse people who don’t share their politics. Flip off other drivers. Cutthroat at work. Lie. Cheat. Smile to your face then stab you in the back with gossip—maybe disguised as prayer requests. Disrespect their husband. Dismissive to their wife. Critical and frustrating to their kids. Basically, they think of themselves as Christian but they don’t act like it.

I know I’m that person sometimes. I’ll bet you are too. 

There are two big ways churches do this these days. They either disregard God’s Word and redefine what God calls sin as personal lifestyle choices. That’s one way people make the light dark. Or they’re condemning and critical and hateful toward people who really just need to hear the Gospel.

Jesus says we should be careful lest the light in us be darkness, I think we need to be careful that we don’t fall into either of those traps. Ignoring God’s Word or using it to smash people over the head. How do we do that? How do we live in the true light?

Verse 36

If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.” Luke 11:36

Jesus is the light. He’s standing right in front of you. Open your eyes! Your faith eyes. The eyes of your heart. One greater than Jonah is saying something to you far better than “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" Which to you would be more like when the preacher says something like, “you don’t know how long you have before you stand before God.” Jesus says something a lot better than that, He says, “Believe in me and you will be saved.” “Open your eyes and believe.” Today. “You are a beloved child of the Father because you are a redeemed brother or sister of the Son, which means you are sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own.” You are forgiven because of Jesus. You are offered life and hope. Jesus is the light of the world, open your eyes and let that light fill you—every dark part. 

People who are looking for a sign before they believe will never believe. Jesus proves this when He comes back from the dead and the same religious leaders who are trying to trap Him, lie about the resurrection and pay off the Roman guards on Easter.

It’s not about signs, it’s about faith. Not having faith in signs. God doesn’t promise to give us signs, other than the sign of Jonah. Other than the sign of the cross. Other than the sign of His Word lighting up the darkness of our hearts with the light of the Gospel. The light of Christ. The wisdom of God.

God has worked in your life. You have been changed by the Gospel. You have hope because of Jesus. There’s going to be days when you’re tempted to doubt it, to close your eyes, dismiss everything you believe. You might even be tempted to ask for a sign. Remember what Jesus said to the friendly lady with the British accent, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” Hold on to that. Keep that. AMEN