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This verse is taken from:
Matthew 12. 38-45
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“search the scriptures” John 5:39
The stubborn unbelief of the Jewish leaders had been manifest. They had been guilty of hypocrisy, and blasphemy. They had been described as a ‘generation of vipers’, and ‘evil’, v. 34. Now, as if to justify their intransigence, they ask for a sign, some action that would prove to them the claims of the Lord as their Messiah. This request indicates that they had rejected all the previous miracles of the Saviour. They required something greater.
The use of Jonah’s experience together with that of Solomon is a sad reminder of how low the nation had sunk. In Jonah’s day the great city of Nineveh had repented at the preaching of Jonah. An idolatrous city, without the blessing that Israel had experienced or the knowledge of God that Israel could boast, had repented because of the message of a mere man. Israel now had its Messiah in their midst, had listened to His words of authority and power, and observed His miracles and yet still refused to believe. What a condemnation!
The Queen of Sheba had witnessed the wisdom of Solomon and the glory of his kingdom. This was enough to persuade her of the reality of the God that Solomon worshipped. For Israel, the One ‘in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’, Col. 2. 3, was now resident in their midst and yet they were not persuaded.
The picture that forms a part of today’s reading foretells the events that will follow in a future day. Israel is the man or house once occupied by the unclean spirit. They had been delivered from that demon possession and restored to their land. Rejecting the Saviour, they were left with a vacuum - ‘empty, swept, and garnished’, v. 44. The future sees them occupied once more, not now by one spirit but by that one spirit plus seven more. The idolatry that had been put away during the Lord’s time amongst them will return in a more fearful and wicked form when the nation shall ‘see the abomination of desolation … stand in the holy place’, Matt. 24. 15, and, apart from the godly remnant, will bow before it. ‘The last state … is worse than the first’!
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