Easter Sunday

Amen. He is risen. He is risen indeed. Amen. It is good to be here together on Easter, this Sabbath day. You know, we celebrate the resurrection every Sunday, right? But on Easter, we celebrate it a little more. And I sometimes feel guilty about that, right? It's like, I should be this excited every Sunday. But you know what? Because of the resurrection, it's okay. It's okay to be a little more excited on Easter. So I want to give you the freedom. I want to give you permission to celebrate the resurrection today as fully and as totally as you can because we have freedom in Christ to do that and then you can come back next Sunday and do it again and again and again.

We have been in the book of Jonah. For those of you who have not been with us the last several weeks, we've been doing an in-depth study of that book and it's been really great, really challenging in some ways. And today, we come to a passage in Matthew chapter 12 where our Lord Jesus references the sign of Jonah. And so we're going to look at that today and we're going to allow God's word to essentially fix our gaze on Christ and his resurrection and allow our hearts to be transformed by that.

So let's read God's word together from Matthew chapter 12 verses 38 through 42.

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, "Teacher, we want to see a sign from you." But he answered and said to them, "An evil and adulterous generation craves a sign. And so no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet. For just as Jonah was in the stomach of the sea monster for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South will rise up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon and behold, something greater than Solomon is here." — Matthew 12:38-42

Let's pray together. Oh, Lord Jesus, we recognize that you are so much greater than Jonah and so much greater than Solomon. And Lord, we pray that you would be here with us, that we would see you, that we would be confronted by you, that our hearts would be transformed by your word. And Lord, we pray that we would, by your grace, become like you. Lord, rise us up with you as you rose from the dead. Lord, lift us up through the reading of your word and through our worship time together. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Well, several weeks ago, my dad had a major heart attack. He was in the hospital for another surgery which kind of triggered the major heart attack. So he started to show signs and the doctors rushed him back to the emergency room and they started to examine his heart. And they found that he had a 100% blockage in his main artery. Later, when the doctors were describing this to my family, they kept referring to that artery as the widow maker artery which my stepmother did not really appreciate. That was not great bedside manner. 100% blockage in his widow maker artery. He also had 80% blockage in another major artery and 75% blockage in a different artery. So three arteries, a lot of blockage, right?

My dad said that later, when he was going under from the anesthesia, he heard the doctor say something to the effect of, "Wow, this guy's heart's a mess." And he literally thought, he said, "I thought for sure I'm going to go to sleep and I'm never going to wake up again. I'm going to be with Jesus." That's what he thought. Then he woke up again and now he's like, "Why did God spare me? What's my purpose?" And so he's trying to figure all of that out and talk with us about that.

But he's the second person in my life that has had a near death experience that is on the other side kind of saying, "Why has God left me alive?" And I'm starting to feel a little singled out by God because I'm starting to ask that question myself. Because all these near death experiences, you start to ask that question. And with my dad particularly with his heart health, I was meeting with a friend recently and we were talking about it. He was saying, "When did your dad first have his first heart attack?" And I didn't know until I called Dad and asked him and he said, "I had my first heart attack when I was 47." I'm 45, right? So all of a sudden now I'm like, "Oh, there's a clock on the wall." So my friend was like, "Hey, you can go to your doctor and you can ask to get a CAC test, right?"

They'll look at your arteries and your heart, see how much plaque is built up so you can know how much risk you are at. I thought, that sounds like a good idea. So I called my doctor and I'm scheduling that. Haven't had it yet, but I am suspicious that it's not gonna be good news. There's lots of reasons for that. My dad's health being one, some of my health patterns, my love of cheeseburgers, those sorts of things. So you can pray for me specifically with regard to what that news will hold.

But I tell you this because we've been studying Jonah and I think Jonah is a kind of CAC test for your heart. God loves to do this. He loves to reveal to us truth about our hearts in ways that we don't see coming. He does it through stories. He loves to tell these stories that are definitely not about you. Nathan comes to David. He's like, hey, there's this dude in your kingdom who has done this really horrible thing. You gotta do something about this as king. And David's like, yeah. And then Nathan is like, you're the man. And Dave is like, oh, right? Or like Jesus, he's walking around telling, hey, let me just tell you this really cool story about a prodigal son. It's nothing to do with you. He loves to tell these stories in order to reveal things because they're not about us. And the Bible is full of all these historical figures that when you read about them, you start to realize, I'm supposed to identify with this person and there's some lessons for me here. Well, that's the book of Jonah. The book of Jonah was clearly written in order to get Israel to start laughing at this kind of buffoon of a prophet and then see that really they had the same kind of posture as that prophet.

Jonah's Story

Just in case you missed the series, here's the summary of what happens in Jonah. Remember, Jonah is called to go to Nineveh, the Assyrians—who were terrible people, awful people, kind of the worst people on the planet arguably at the time. They had carried off the ten northern tribes of Israel, totally decimated everything with them. Those tribes disappeared. They resettled that land and intermarried with them, which later produced the Samaritans. So these are terrible people who did terrible things to ten of God's tribes.

Jonah's called to go and call them to repent. But Jonah didn't want to go call them to repent. Jonah wants God to smack them up. He wants them like Sodom and Gomorrah. So he says, you know what? Instead of going and calling them to repent, I'm going the other way. I am going to run away from that call. There is no way I'm going to lead these people to any kind of grace from God.

So he goes the other way. He's so intent on not going that when God brings this whole storm to turn him around, he's like, you know what, that's not stopping me. Throw me into the sea. He's intent on dying rather than going and talking to these people. And in fact, that's what happens. He gets tossed into the sea, and you think he's gonna die, but this fish or sea monster, according to the text, comes and swallows him. Normally what is described here is not a good thing, but it turns out to be a good thing. This fish swallows him, and somehow through that, he's saved. He's led to some kind of repentance and he's begrudgingly talking about how good God is and recognizing things. Finally, the fish spits him out. And even after that experience, he's begrudgingly going to Nineveh. He shows up, goes just inside the city, and preaches a five-word half-hearted sermon. Then the entire city repents, including the animals. They're important. Anyway, he then is furious. He goes outside the city and has this pout fest. God comes to him and starts engaging with him, gives him this plant to provide some shade, and then provides a worm to kill the plant. And Jonah's really mad about the death of the plant. And God's like, what's up, man? You care more about plants than people? Shouldn't I care for this great city with all these people? And by the way, there's also cows in there. As much as I care for the as you care for this plant.

So what's happening is God is essentially trying to reason with Jonah and show him that he has some major blockage in his heart. He has a major heart problem. And in doing that, because the people of Israel would have almost certainly identified with his sensibility of like, those Ninevites deserve to be judged.

They're invited into the story to see themselves. And as we've preached to this, we've said, "So are you. So are you." There's a kind of Jonah test that we've been applying to our hearts.

Fast forward a few hundred years. Now in Matthew's gospel, we see the literal descendants of Jonah—they literally are Israelite descendants of him and theological descendants of Jonah. The Pharisees engaged with Jesus in a conversation in which Jesus must have felt like, "I've done this before. I had this conversation with Jonah. Now I'm having it with you guys."

We're gonna look specifically at how they're so similar. They want a sign, and Jesus says this very peculiar thing. It's clearly a reference to his resurrection. Spoiler alert—this is Easter. We're gonna talk about Jesus' resurrection. But why does he talk about it as the sign of Jonah? That's a very curious kind of response, isn't it?

So here are my three points for today: the heart condition of the Pharisees, we're gonna look at how it's similar to Jonah; the fate of the Pharisees, what this heart condition means for their future; and then the sign of Jonah and its transformative power. The heart condition of the Pharisees. The fate of the Pharisees. The sign of Jonah and its transformative power.

The Heart Condition of the Pharisees

First of all, the heart condition of the Pharisees. The first thing you've gotta see is that, oftentimes as modern readers, we think we know what this means. In the English language, "Pharisee" is a bad word. If you get called a Pharisee, that's bad. You don't wanna be called a Pharisee in the English language—it's just a bad word. So when we encounter the Pharisees in the Bible, we're like, "Oh, the bad guys." What I want you to understand is that the Pharisees and Jesus, on the surface, they should have been okay.

When I was in middle school, my middle school did something—I'm not sure it was a really good idea. But to raise money for the PTA, they gave us all these personality tests and then offered the students the opportunity to buy the personality test results to see which specific students they matched up with. Middle school. They raised a ton of money because all of us were so intrigued.

I remember getting my results and there was this girl on the top of the list. I was like, "This is good, because she got a list with my name on the top of her list. This is gonna work, right?" So guess what happened? On paper, I was like, "Hey, you and me." She was like, "I don't care about that paper. That doesn't matter anything." That's kind of the situation with Jesus and the Pharisees.

I want you to see this: doctrinally, the Jewish sect that was closest in terms of Jesus's theology would have been the Pharisees. The Sadducees were way out in left field. There were other sects that were also pretty different. And yet, Jesus seems to have the most rub with the Pharisees. That should tell us something. We love to be right, but the one thing that this reveals is that you can be right on paper. You can publish books about systematic theology and still be wrong in your heart.

The other thing that probably should have seemed like a connection point for the Pharisees and Jesus is that the Pharisees love to do the right things. You can't say that they didn't try. They tried very hard. In fact, they probably tried too hard. That was part of their problem. But they were concerned with righteousness, with godliness, with holiness. Jesus was concerned with those things. They had similar interests. Just like me and this girl that didn't go out with me. Because she recognized that agreeing on the same things and having similar interests doesn't necessarily mean that you have a heart connection.

The book of Jonah reveals the heart problem of the Pharisees. If we apply that test to them, just looking at Matthew 12, I want you to see how many similarities there are between Jonah and the Pharisees. I'm gonna give you a survey real quickly.

We didn't read all of chapter 12 because we only have so much time. But in 12:11-13, there's this very curious conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees about healing on the Sabbath. Jesus wants to heal this guy, and the Pharisees are like, "That's against the rules. Don't do that." You probably remember—there are several gospel accounts of things like that happening. And then they have a conversation where Jesus is like, "You don't want me to heal this guy, but let me ask you a question."

If there was a sheep stuck in a ditch right now, would you get that sheep out? What conversation does that sound like? Remember Jonah and the Ninevites and God being like, "Hey, there's some cows in the city. Don't you think we should save them?" Jesus is revealing the heart of the Pharisees—they care more about animals than they do about people. You're willing to break the rule for a sheep, but not for a person.

Notice in verse 14 of chapter 12, their response to all of that is they're like, "Let's kill this guy." This guy has taken mercy and grace to people and he's not following the rules. He is not a moral person. He is crossing the line. They're sitting there like, "We are gonna put a stop to this. We're gonna wipe this guy out." Jonah had the same response, remember? He's like, "I'm gonna kill myself." He's the prophet called to preach grace, right? And in the Pharisees' case, it's Jesus that they're gonna kill. Both of them are trying to kill the prophet who's bringing peace to the lost, who's bringing hope to the poor. You see the similarities?

Then, in verses 14 through 21, there's this quote of Isaiah where Jesus is heralded as the hope for the Gentiles. Well, the Pharisees don't like that. They don't like any hope going outside of the nation of Israel. It's like for us: "Jesus, you are supposed to be about liberating us from those jerks, right? We want you to be a Messiah who's gonna rise up in battle and take us into war with them and conquer them. We don't wanna be hope for them. We need hope, right?" You see how that's similar to Jonah?

And then, finally—and this is the real kicker—in twelve twenty-two through 24, the passage right before the one we just read, Jesus casts this demon out of this dude, right? And the Pharisees are kind of like, "Well, let me tell you what that is. That's the devil. Jesus, you're the devil, right?" He's doing all this amazing stuff. They choose to sit in judgment of him. Does that sound familiar? Remember Jonah sitting outside the city, sitting in judgment of God for showing mercy to the Ninevites? "You're just wrong, God, right?" They're exactly the same.

So the Jonah test reveals a very severe heart blockage for the Pharisees. On all the different points, they measure up—blockage, blockage, blockage, blockage.

Applying the Test to Ourselves

Now, here's what I wanna do. I wanna take that and, just like we've done with Jonah, apply that test to us. Do we have any similarities with the Pharisees?

You know, there was a guy named Jeff Foxworthy years ago. You guys remember him? He was kind of a redneck, which allowed him to create this comedy bit where he would go through all these different things and he would say, "You might be a redneck if," and then he would say all these funny things that would make you laugh. Well, we're gonna play that game. We're gonna play, "You might be a Pharisee if."

Understand that the guy who's standing up here—on Good Friday, we had a Tenebrae service, I showed up and there were different readings, and I didn't know what I was gonna be assigned to read. And I got to read the part of the Pharisees. I was like, "Danny, this typecasting, man." So if anybody in here is a Pharisee, it's me. But let's play: you might be a Pharisee if.

First of all, you might be a Pharisee if your performance brings you closer to God in your mind, or if essentially you think you're closer to God than other people because of what you've done. And that might take the form of you thinking, "I'm not a Pharisee. They're the Pharisees."

Let me give you an example. I'm gonna get in trouble for this one. Carolina fans, let me tell you something. You got a little swagger to you. I understand you've won several national championships. I understand you played in the most recent championship game, whenever that was—I fell asleep. But you guys kinda walk around and it feels like you feel superior to everyone. Let me tell you something, I'm kinda tired of it. As a State fan, I've been humbled by a lot of loss. I'm a very holy person. And God has put me here to let you Carolina people know what he thinks of all your pride.

I'm making a point—it might not be the point you think I'm making. Do you see it? You can be a Pharisee about anything. You can take any performance, even loss and a lot of loss, and you can build a platform of righteousness on that and decide that you're closer to God than other people. You can judge them. And if you're doing that, you might be a Pharisee.

Here's another maybe indicator: What if you think about other people's sin a lot more than your own sin? You might be a Pharisee. You guys do that? There's a lot of sin out there to think about. A lot of us are kind of afraid of some of it, right?

What's the sin that you think the most about? Is it the sin out there? Because there's some scary stuff. I'll be honest. But what about the sin in here?

When I was in college, World Harvest did a bait and switch on me. They came and spoke at my church—this missions agency—and they were like, "Listen, the front lines of where the kingdom is advancing is the mission field. You gotta go on the mission field." And then we got on the mission field and this missionary sat down with us and he said, "You know what? Did you guys run out of non-Christians in America? Why do you think you need to be here?"

And that kind of made us think about our savior complex. But apply that to sin. When you start thinking about all that sin that's out there or that sin in that other person, did you run out of sin in here? Because there's plenty of sin in here to think about. And if that's the case, you might be a Pharisee.

There's this quote by Anne Lamont: "You can safely say you've created God in your own image if you discover that he hates all the same people as you do."

Alright, this last one I'm really gonna get in trouble for. I put this one in here just to eclipse the Carolina thing. Here we go: If you have very little compassion or concern for the lost or the poor, but you love cute puppies, cats, gardens, and spend lots of money and time on them, you might be a Pharisee.

Let me press on this a little bit. Some of us have animals—wild animals—that we will invite to sleep in our bed for ten plus years. And we will pay untold amounts of money to keep that thing alive and fed and get all the vaccines and stuff that they need. We'll pay all that money. But the idea of sitting down and having lunch with a homeless person is about as far from us as we can get. So that's you pet lovers. Sorry about that.

Now, what about you garden lovers? There's a guy who wrote a book called The 64 Dollar Tomato. Are you familiar with that book? Well, this journalist decided he was gonna start an organic garden and he tracked all of his expenses and his produce and did the math. He discovered that the amount of money he spent to grow one tomato was $64 each.

I find both of these things convicting because I've spent over $250 just to keep a hermit crab alive for two years. And I just spent I don't know how much at Home Depot on raised garden bed soil and dirt. But how much time do I spend with the lost and the homeless? How much time do I spend cultivating the growth of people? How much do I concern myself with the lilies that I'm drawing right now? I love those lilies.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't have pets or gardens. I'm just saying, what does this reveal about your heart? The Pharisees cared more about their sheep than people. They probably needed those sheep to live. We're mostly talking about pets and hobbies.

I think that if we applied the Jonah test to ourselves, the evidence of blockage is pretty clear. We are, in fact, Jonahs. We are, in fact, Pharisees.

The Fate of the Pharisees

And what is the fate? What is the warning that Jesus gives them? This is the end of the passage where he's talking about the Ninevites and the queen of the South. Let me just briefly explain that.

It's poetic justice. Jesus is saying, you judgmental Pharisees—you love to judge. But let me tell you who's gonna judge you. You love judging the foreigners, those who are far off. Well, I got two of them for you: the Ninevites and the queen of the South.

Let's talk about the Ninevites first. You already know them from Jonah. These terrible people who were far away from God. They were just kind of the opposite of God's people in many ways, and yet, a five-word sermon. God gave them very little. He gave them a reluctant prophet with a five-word sermon and they repented. They were very far and they were given very little, and yet their response was incredible. The whole city, including the cows, repented.

On the other hand, there's the queen of the South—the queen of Sheba, maybe from Ethiopia, maybe Yemen. There's a debate. What's important is she's not from Israel. She ain't from around here. She's a foreigner. And what's her story? It's found in 1 Kings 10. She was attracted to the wisdom of Solomon and she came from far away to see this amazing king and to submit to him and say, "Look, you're amazing."

Solomon was very wise and was given the wisdom of God, but he also made some pretty unwise decisions at the end of his life. Notice this: she's given Solomon. The Pharisees are given Jesus. Jesus is better than Jonah. Jesus is better than Jonah is like the understatement of the Bible.

Jonah is probably the worst prophet. Jesus is, of course, the prophet. Solomon, as the kings went, he wasn't terrible, but Jesus is a greater king with greater wisdom. Yet the Pharisees wouldn't submit to him. They wouldn't listen to the greater Jonah, and they wouldn't listen to the greater Solomon. They wouldn't submit.

Jesus is saying: your poetic justice is on the day of judgment. These people that you have judged, that you write off because you're so much better than them, they will judge you and point out how far off from God you actually are. That's a pretty intense warning.

Let me personalize that for a moment. Just take a minute and think about the absolute worst group of people you know. For different people, it'll be different things. Some of you have experienced some really hard realities from people's sin, and it might be really hard to think about that group of people because they are that horrible. That would have been the struggle of Jonah with Nineveh.

Here's what God is saying through Jesus to the Pharisees: essentially, those people, if they receive Christ, if they hope in the resurrection, they will judge the ones who don't. Those outsiders will judge insiders that have judged them.

The Outsiders and the Insiders

For those of you who are here and you're thinking, "I'm an outsider. I don't fit in here. I don't feel comfortable in this church." You're wearing a suit and tie, you're a preacher guy, you've been here for twenty years, you feel comfortable. This is your church. I hear that a lot. People tell me, "I just don't know if I feel comfortable. The church was really welcoming, but I just feel judged when I'm here."

Here's what I want you to know. If you're like that, if you feel like an outsider and you're thinking about your own sin and you've come to church today, Jesus identifies with the outsiders. He identified as an outsider.

As the preacher boy who's been worshiping at this church for twenty years, there's nobody who's more insider at this church than me. Not even Jeff, who's a senior pastor, because he's a Johnny come lately. I just want to say to those of you who don't feel comfortable here: thank you for letting me worship in your church, because Jesus established this place for you.

For those of you who are like me—insiders who feel very comfortable here, who feel like this is your home—I want to stress to you the warning that Jesus is giving here. Don't start to define your righteousness based on your comfort level here. Don't start to decide that you're in because you feel in here. Recognize the danger of judging those out there as other and less than, or else they will judge you. This is their church because Jesus has made it their church. And it can be your church if you recognize that you have a heart problem that absolutely excludes you from being an insider in the kingdom of God.

We all are outsiders.

What Do We Do?

So we're all outsiders. What do we do? Those of us who are Pharisees, those of us who have the heart blockage—and hopefully by now you've started to realize you have some—you've gotten the test and you're thinking, "Uh-oh, I got problems."

Jesus gives the Pharisees the sign of Jonah, and it's a very peculiar sign. First of all, they're asking for a sign. I've got to say, it's a disingenuous ask. Jesus has done all kinds of signs in Matthew 12. They're asking for a sign as a part of their judgment of Jesus. They're not legitimately seeking a sign.

If you read this and you're one of those outsiders thinking, "I'm legitimately seeking a sign from God"—and Jesus is kind of like asking all gruff with these people—they're not legitimately asking for a sign. Jesus said things like:

Seek and you shall find — regarding the kingdom of God

If you're looking for a sign genuinely, they're all around you. Jesus wants you to see him. He's not trying to hide it.

But what he is trying to do for the Pharisees is highlight the most important sign, the one they can't miss. That is why he says, "This is the only sign I'm giving you. Just pay attention to this one. You can't see any of the other ones. You guys are obviously so blind. Your hearts are so blocked. You can't even see. But don't miss this one sign."

And what is the sign? Of course, it's his resurrection. He's comparing essentially his death and his rising to Jonah getting swallowed by a fish and spit up on the ocean on the seashore.

There's a huge rabbinical tradition of the rabbis and Pharisees essentially seeing Jonah's being swallowed by a whale and spit up on the shore as a kind of death and resurrection. Some of them actually argued that he physically died in there and was risen from the dead and then spit out. So when he's referencing this, the Pharisees absolutely knew what he was talking about. Don't think Jesus is being vague about his death and resurrection here. He's being very clear. If you're here and you wonder about Jesus's death and resurrection, he wants you to see it. He wants to be very clear.

But I think there's more going on here. Why the sign of Jonah? Partially, I think the thing is Jonah's resurrection authenticated his message. That's what they're asking for—a sign that authenticates his message. Some have argued that when Jonah shows up at Nineveh, because he just got spit out by a fish, either he smelled of fish or maybe the word had reached them about what happened with Jonah. So when he preaches that five-word sermon, the fact that he had that experience with the fish essentially meant that they received the message. I don't know if I buy that, but here's what I think: I think the book of Jonah is really about God pursuing Jonah. So the whole fish thing—what it really did was authenticate Jonah's message to Jonah.

Jonah very much wanted to not deliver that message. God was essentially saying, "I will not even let you die in order to prevent this message from going forward. I will not stop by all of your efforts. No matter where you run, I will not stop preaching the gospel. I will not stop this message of grace to the outsiders. You can't stop it." Which is why Jonah at the end of the book is kind of resigned to it. He's like, "Alright, fine." God was authenticating his message to Jonah. Like, "Jonah, when I called you to this, it wasn't just a half-hearted thing. I'm not gonna stop."

Hey, outsiders—those of you who feel like outsiders—that should be encouraging to you. God's not gonna let his people get in the way of his message of grace for you. By the way, Pharisees, that's good news. God's not gonna let you get in the way of his good news for other people.

God's Love for Jonah

But I think there's another thing that Jonah references, that's kind of alluding to. The other thing that God authenticated in the whole fish thing was his love for Jonah. He could have gotten another prophet. He could have gotten another nation, another group of people. He didn't need Jonah. Why did he save him? Because he was saying, "Jonah, you can run as far as you want, but you're not gonna get away from me because I love you. Even in the deepest parts of your pride, you think you can outrun me, but you can't."

If there's one message that you hear today, that's what I want you to hear. There's hope for you if you have blockage in your heart that causes you to be blind and to run from an all-powerful God. He doesn't care. He's not going to stop pursuing you. And the death and resurrection of Christ is evidence of just how far he's willing to go. You go to death, he's going after you and dragging you back up.

The sign of Jonah—what I want you to see in that is absolute access to the love of God. In other words, it's not just a sign, it's a solution to the problem. It removes the blockage. When you start to see and experience the love of God that is so deep that he caused his Son to die for you, it pushes all that plaque out of the way. All of a sudden, all this selfishness—like, "I've gotta be the greatest. I've gotta earn everything. I've gotta hoard everything"—that goes away because you have access to it. The unlimited God and his unlimited love. Suddenly it flows.

As a friend of mine said, the gospel—the sign of Jonah—it brings the outsiders in and turns the insiders out. The blockage is removed and the love of God can flow.

Jonah's Repentance

We talked about Jonah. We talked about evidence that maybe Jonah changed, and the basis of that was we argued like, "Hey, there's this conversation between God and Jonah at the end of the book. How would anybody know that but Jonah? He must have written the book." If he wrote the book, then he kind of repented and he gave his story as a cautionary tale. It's essentially a testimony: "Don't be like me." Like Peter telling the story about his betrayal of Christ.

Now, we don't know that. It's not like rock-hard evidence that I can give you because there's nothing in the book that says, "I, Jonah," or there's no signature at the end or whatever.

And with the Pharisees, I wish I could tell you that there was a book written by a Pharisee that was kind of like a cautionary tale—don't be like me. It'd be really amazing, wouldn't it? It'd be really amazing if that Pharisee saw himself as redeemed for a purpose, but a purpose contrary to his old purposes. Like maybe he saw himself as a messenger to the Gentiles. Wouldn't that be awesome? And maybe it'd be awesome too if he identified his lack of righteousness. It'd be really cool if he was humble enough to call himself the chief of sinners. And wouldn't it be awesome if he cared enough for the poor to travel all around the world to different people to try to collect money for them? And wouldn't it be awesome if he was willing to go so far as to sacrifice his life, like our Savior, in order to see the gospel go as far as it possibly could? It'd be really awesome if there was a book like that.

Well, the truth is there are several books like that. Most of the New Testament was written by a guy named Saul who became Paul. The sign of Jonah has incredible transformative power. Saul was blind, but Jesus broke through his blindness. He tracked him down, made him aware of his blindness by physically making him blind, and then revealed his resurrected self to him. The sign of Jonah transformed Saul into what we know as Paul. And the words that he says about the gospel probably has more than anybody else informed how you understand the gospel. The sign of Jonah turned that insider out. Do you see?

I want to conclude not with any neat illustration that I've come up with, but I just want to let this Pharisee talk to you for just a moment. I've got a couple of passages from Paul's letters that I'd like to read about the resurrection and about resurrection hope. His gift to you on Easter Sunday. Think of it that way. I just want you to close your eyes and listen to these words and be encouraged. This is Paul, the Pharisee.

But the fact is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man death came, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ will all be made alive. — 1 Corinthians 15

His blindness didn't stop Christ from breaking through. He goes on:

Behold, I'm telling you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed. Then we'll come about the saying that is written, "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

Paul was not afraid of death. He didn't feel like he had to hang on to what he had. Heart problems are not a problem for those who are in Christ because our love blockages have been removed and we have eternal life in him.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were making an appeal through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. — 2 Corinthians 5

That's how much he loves you.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but delivered him over for us all—how will he not also with him freely give us all things? For I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything created will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

There's no blockage that can stop him. And finally:

For this reason, I bend my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to all the fullness of God.

That kind of passion was brought from the cold, dead heart of a Pharisee. I don't care how cold and dead your heart is. The love of God is capable of breaking through.

CTK, as we go through this new year—imagine it's a new year, resurrection Sunday—may we spend the year soaking our hearts in the truth of the resurrection, the reality of God's love for us, and may we allow that to serve like Drano to the blockages of our hearts so that we might love like Christ loved. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.