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a sign, some miracle to prove that He was the Messiah. They were not honest seekers after truth, if they had really desired a sign, He had already given abundant signs that He was “a teacher sent from God” (cf. John 3 :2). Many today like the Pharisees of old claim to be seeking proofs while they are deliberately shutting their eyes to the proofs that are round about them on every hand. Their seeking a further sign was a revelation of the wickedness of their own hearts and that they were an “evil and adul terous generation” (v. 39). To such a gen eration Jesus would give no sign but the one great and all conclusive sign, that of the resurrection. Incidentally our Lord here endorses the story of Jonah (v. 40). He tells us that it was actually historic and not a mere allegory, that Jonah really was ‘three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish.” If the story of Jonah being three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish was an allegory, then according tfo our Lord Himself His own resurrection was an allegory. Jesus antici pated by centuries the theories of the inod- ern destructive critics and exposed them. Infidels have made merry over the story of Jonah and the great fish, trying to show how impossible it was for a whale to swal low a man. But the Bible nowhere says that it was a “whale” (see R. V. marg.) But even if the Bible had said that it was a “whale,” there would have been no scien tific impossibility in it; for it has been con clusively proven in recent years by actual observation that a certain species of whale can swallow a man alive. This objection, like all infidel objections, is founded upon ignorance and not upon knowledge. The men of the past who repented at the preach ing of the lesser prophets will rise in judg ment with this generation who reject the great Prophet. “It will be more tolerable in the day of judgment” for those who have sinned against great light in the old dispen sations than for those in England and Amer ica who reject Him who is the Light of the World, the incarnate Son of God. As wicked as Nineveh was, Nineveh repented
scatter abroad. All sins but one are par donable. No matter how often a man has sinned ,or how grievously he has sinned, he can still find pardon if he will only receive the One who has borne our sins in His own body on the tree (v. 31 cf. 1 Peter 2:24; Acts 10:43; 13:39). The one sin, the only sin, for which there is no pardon is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. The context clearly shows that the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the deliberate attributing to the Devil what we know to be the work of the Holy Spirit. One who does this will become so hardened in sin and so blinded that he will never come to Christ and thus will never find pardon. If any one will come to Him, He will receive him (John 6:37) and therefore if one does come to Jesus, it is proof positive that he has not committed the unpardonable sin. The world is full of men and women who are torturing themselves with the fear that they have committed the unpardonable sin, but the very fact that one is troubled about it is proof that he has not committed it. And the emphasis should be placed upon the fact that all sins but the one will be pardoned, and riot upon the fact that there is one of a great multitude that cannot be pardoned. But Jesus’ statement that there is one un pardonable sin is proof positive that the doctrine that all men will ultimately be for given and saved, if not in this age then in some future age, is absolutely untrue. The heart is the real spring of what men say and do. No amount of attempt at mere outward reformation in our actions or !n our speech will avail anything. If we get our hearts right, our words and acts will be right. What the man whose words and acts are wrong needs is not reformation but regeneration. But our words are the test of what we are at heart, and, therefore, by our words we shall be judged, being justi fied or condemned according as .our words shall be. Tuesday, February 16. Matthew 12:38-42. The Scribes and Pharisees now demanded
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