Are You Looking For A Sign

Are You Looking For a Sign?

Matthew 12:38-45

So many people are looking for signs. Lord give me a sign to show what you want me to do. Lord give me a sign to show me what you want me to do. Lord give me a sign to get out of bed this morning. We are so busy searching for signs we can’t see the truth.

There is frequent evidence of Christians blindly following their impulses and feelings under the claim of following “the Lord’s leading.” The classic illustration is the apocryphal story of a farmer who had become restless at his work. One day he saw a strange cloud formation that spelled out the letters “GPC.” He took this as a message from God: “Go Preach Christ!” So he sold his farm and took to the road as a traveling evangelist. After several weeks his wife wondered whether he had been mistaken. “Perhaps,” she suggested one morning at breakfast, “GPC really meant ‘Go Plow Corn.’” How often have I heard people say I have prayed to God to reveal himself to me if He was real? I have prayed that He will give me a sign if I need His salvation. Why people use the excuse that there is no God since He want show signs. People have built religions and cults around supposed signs from God. People who seek signs will follow those who say they have a special method of communicating with God and that they see signs from. Some people are so desperate to see a sign from God they see Mary in a stain on a wall or a piece of cheese and think it is some miracle.

People convince hundreds even thousands that they are a prophet of God because of signs they supposedly are able to perform or have witnessed. People flock to them because they seek some sign. The can not accept that faith and faith alone saves. They can not accept the fact that what is required is absolute faith in something you can not see, touch or hold but for us who know something about this faith we know that you can feel it. They want physical assurances that Jesus can do what He claims to do. They deny Christ and His deity. They deny His sacrifice on the cross because they call for a sign.

Even today just as in the time of Jesus we have people want to see a sign. Why? I don’t know. It is a mystery to me. Maybe they refuse to believe in something that they can’t see. If they can’t touch it, taste it, or see it, it is not real in their thinking. Now I did not say that can’t feel the Holy Spirit dealing with. At sometime during their life I am sure the Holy Spirit called to them but they denied the call because they could not see, touch, or taste it.

Satan tries to discourage us so that we will not see the truth. The devil decided to have a garage sale. On the day of the sale, his tools were placed for public inspection, each being marked with its sale price. There were a treacherous lot of implements: hatred, envy, jealousy, deceit, lust, lying, pride, and so on.

Set apart from the rest was a harmless-looking tool. IT was quite worn and yet priced very high.

"What is the name of this too?:" Asked one of the customers, pointing to it.

"That is discouragement," Satan replied.

"Why have you priced it so high?"

" Because it is more useful to me than the others. I can pry open and get inside a man’s heart with that, even when I cannot get near him with the other other tools. It is badly worn because I use it on almost everyone, since so few people know it belongs to me."

The devil’s price for discouragement was high because it is still his favorite tool, and he is still using it on God’s people.

38Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. 39But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: 40For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. 42The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here. 43When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. 44Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. 45Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.