Signs From Heaven

“Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe. It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense. But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.”
1 Corinthians 1:21-25 NLT

Paul set out the response to “foolish preaching” from the various people groups present in his world at that time. He singled out the Jews “ who ask for signs from heaven”, the Greeks “who seek human wisdom”,and the Gentiles who “say it’s all nonsense”. That pretty much encompasses the peoples and nations in the First Century world. The implication, taking this in reverse order, is that the Gentiles, people groups who lacked a Jewish background and education, and who were not Greek intellectuals, discounted the message of the Cross as mere rubbish, considering it deluded messages from this strange and even fearsome, driven man called Paul. I always imagine Paul as being a John Knox type of person, a man so committed to delivering his message that he ended up in trouble with the authorities, beaten and whipped for his trouble. Much later John Knox also ended up persecuted because of his message, even spending time as a galley slave. 

The Greeks were great philosophers and thinkers. Well, the intellectuals amongst them, because they too would have had a population that got on with life eking out a subsistence-based living. But Greek thinking has dominated much of our thought today, with men such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others influencing even Christianity. For example, Aristotle’s emphasis on reason, logic, and the study of the natural world impacted Christian thought. His concept of a universe with an ultimate purpose and a prime mover (God) resonated with Christian theologians. But Paul knew what God knew, that Greek thought was based on human wisdom alone, and by being so rejected what they considered the foolishness of the message of the Cross. We pilgrims refer to a higher power, God Himself, for the wisdom we require. 

But the Jews were a nation much blessed by God and in their heritage they experienced many “signs from Heaven”. Take, for example, all the signs Moses produced before Pharaoh. The shepherd’s staff becoming a snake. The leprous hand, the water from the Nile turning to blood, the plagues of frogs and flies, and others. But then there was the big one, the first Passover, a festival still celebrated to this day by the Jews. God warned Moses that all the firstborn sons in Egypt were about to die, and the remedy for the Israelite slaves was to smear the blood of a Passover lamb on the door posts and lintels of their homes. We can read all about it in Exodus 12. And then we have the crossing of the Red Sea, the water from rocks in the wilderness, the food from Heaven called “manna”. Later on there was the miraculous relief from death for the three Jewish young men in the fiery furnace. Daniel in the Lion’s den is another story much loved by our Sunday school children. And we continue with David and Goliath, the floating axe head, and even the time when the sun and moon stood still in the sky to give the Israelites more time to kill their enemies (Joshua 10:13). But the expectation of the Old Testament Jews for a sign can be seen by the story of Gideon’s fleece, and in my early Christian days, there was one or two church members who claimed to get guidance from God by “laying out a fleece” of some kind. Their prayers went something like, “If You want me to do this God then please let the sun appear from the clouds at 11:15 this morning”. I was never convinced personally, but then it’s all about faith I suppose.

A good example of the Jewish expectation for a sign can be found in 2 Kings 20:8-11, “Meanwhile, Hezekiah had said to Isaiah, “What sign will the Lord give to prove that he will heal me and that I will go to the Temple of the Lord three days from now?” Isaiah replied, “This is the sign from the Lord to prove that he will do as he promised. Would you like the shadow on the sundial to go forward ten steps or backward ten steps?” “The shadow always moves forward,” Hezekiah replied, “so that would be easy. Make it go ten steps backward instead.” So Isaiah the prophet asked the Lord to do this, and he caused the shadow to move ten steps backward on the sundial of Ahaz!” God answered that particular request for a sign, but there were probably many requests that received no response from Heaven. 

In Matthew 16:1, we read “One day the Pharisees and Sadducees came to test Jesus, demanding that he show them a miraculous sign from heaven to prove his authority”. Jesus’ response was very telling, “He replied, “You know the saying, ‘Red sky at night means fair weather tomorrow; red sky in the morning means foul weather all day.’ You know how to interpret the weather signs in the sky, but you don’t know how to interpret the signs of the times! Only an evil, adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign, but the only sign I will give them is the sign of the prophet Jonah.” Then Jesus left them and went away“. It is interesting that Jesus knew what was ahead of Him, and He used the story of Jonah in the belly of a fish as an indication, a type, of His death on the Cross. Jonah 1:17, “Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights“. As we know Jesus died on the day we call Good Friday, and He was raised from the dead on the third day, the first Easter Sunday. But the message of “the sign of the prophet Jonah” went beyond that. After Jonah was vomited out of the fish onto dry land, he proceeded to Nineveh as God requested of him, and we read, “On the day Jonah entered the city, he shouted to the crowds: “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!” The people of Nineveh believed God’s message, and from the greatest to the least, they declared a fast and put on burlap to show their sorrow” (Jonah 3:4-5). And we read the outcome in Jonah 3:10, “When God saw what they had done and how they had put a stop to their evil ways, he changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction he had threatened“. The Pharisees and Sadducees had observed at first hand a demon-possessed man who was both blind and mute being healed and yet they refused to believe this was a miracle from God Himself. What more did they want?

We pilgrims have faithfully believed the message of the Cross. To us it is not foolishness at all, as Paul wrote in Romans 1:16-17, “For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile. This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life””. We believe that Jesus came to fulfil God’s plan for the salvation of mankind, and nothing will convince us otherwise. The “foolishness” of the message of the Cross is the most exciting and life-changing piece of news this world has ever seen or heard. We must shout it out from the rooftops so that all will hear it and experience salvation as well. We don’t need human wisdom, signs from Heaven or anything else. Our lives are focused on Jesus. Forever.

Dear Lord Jesus. We thank You for Your wisdom, grace and love. please help us to stay closest You and Your teaching because through it we grown to be the people You want us to be. Thank You. Amen.