Matthew 12:4` The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here.
There can be few things in life that can rile up people like being undervalued, unseen, unappreciated. Unfortunately, some people live in this kind of pushed-down state. For some, their whole lives have been one slight after another leaving a giant hole where a swelling of warmth and gratitude should be.
And for those who do the devaluing, what a missed opportunity to reflect the character of God has passed. We are created in the image of God. We bear His likeness to the rest of the world. We should certainly reflect His character of generosity and mercy in the way we treat other people.
Jesus ran into the religious leaders who had made it a practice of devaluing anyone who didn’t think like them. Sounds like Facebook in their censorship practices, silencing any voice that disagrees with their version of orthodoxy. If the religious leaders of Jesus’ day were alive today, they would be on the censorship board of Facebook and loving it!
Our text places two very different challenges to these first hearers. The men of Nineveh were not Israelites. They were Gentiles, a class of people not part of God’s covenant. They were those people over there. They were second or third tier people in the eyes of a good Jew at that time.
It is these second class outsiders whom Jesus places the job of judging the religious leaders who were standing against Jesus. These outsiders, these no-good-for-nothing people whom Jesus says will speak the words that will condemn them.
Imagine the Ghislaine Maxwell’s of this world pulling back the curtain and exposing those in power who participated in the sexual antics. Imagine her testifying at their trial, the guilty pointing out the hidden life of the powerful. We would never expect this turn of events. She calling the kettle black!
This is how the religious leaders might have heard Jesus words. The Ninevites had not moral standing to testify in the eyes of these Jewish leaders. They were dirty from the beginning. How could such “dirt’s” testimony be the one that condemns the ‘clean?” There is a mismatch here.
The second challenge was the reference to Jonah. He was called to go to a non-Jewish people and call them to repentance. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day would be right there with Jonah fleeing God’s call. They would not have wanted to go to the Gentiles with a result like Jonah’s. They would be all in with the condemnation, but not the repentance.
They were God’s ‘chosen people’, after all. If those Gentiles wanted to know God, become like us Jews. We have the inside story, the direct line. But they had polluted the direct line. They themselves had failed to follow the direct line. They had so convoluted the journey to God that they couldn’t even follow it themselves.
Jonah had been a successful prophet, and now someone greater than Jonah was here. Would He be successful with the people of God? Jonah had reached a people he didn’t even want reached. Would Jesus be able to reach those who were so close, the religious leaders?
And the question moves to us. We are so close to the Truth, will we respond like those in Nineveh or like those in Jerusalem? Will we accept Jesus’ claims about Himself, or will be impose our own framework on those claims.
The Arnold Journey 