Forecast-Surviving the Storms

Some of you are better at predicting the weather than you are at being spiritually aware!

One day, some Pharisees and Sadducees approached Jesus together to ask Him for a "sign from heaven." They wanted Him to perform some miraculous work to back up claims that He was the Messiah.

Since these two groups of religious leaders often opposed each other, it was a sign of their urgent cooperating to discredit Him.

Jesus pointed out that some signs require nothing more than common sense to interpret. The example He used was forecasting basic weather. Despite their ability to recognize weather patterns, the religious leaders have apparently not chosen to recognize the "signs of the times."

They had witnessed Jesus' miraculous healings and casting out of demons. They had read the words of the Prophet Isaiah and seen them come to life, right before their eyes…how the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

These men were not suffering from a lack of evidence. They are suffering from stubbornness.

They refused to recognize Jesus as Messiah (LORD), and their request is insincere. That is why Jesus refuses to satisfy their request, and immediately warns His disciples to beware of the teachings of these religious leaders. He refused to perform for them, (and neither should we); especially when it wouldn’t matter, anyway. His refusal meant that He already knew that they were stubborn, hard-hearted, and stiff-necked.

Jesus points out to them that since they can read the signs of the weather, but stubbornly, refuse to recognize the signs He has already performed… then their demand for more evidence, when so much was already provided, was a sign of them being spiritually bankrupt leaders, who just wanted a religious show.

Jesus calls them “hypocrites” and “evil and adulterous” generation :

O ye hypocrites, you know how to predict the sky but you don’t know the signs of the times…Jesus declared that the only sign they (and such people like themselves), was to expect is the sign of Jonah, in the belly of the whale.

(ie…after hearing Jonah’s call for repentance in Nineveh, and still choosing to continue in their unbelief; and despite being eyewitnesses to Jesus’s miracles; Jesus was telling the Pharisees that they were culpable for their unbelief!)

How many signs must he do before you will believe? There's no middle ground here. Jesus once said, "anyone who is not with me is against me, and anyone who does not gather with me scatters." (divides).

Where do you stand? Are you with him? Do you love him? Or are you against him? Do you hate him?

The Pharisees and Sadducees tested Jesus; yet he was also putting them to the test; and they were failing that test!

They helped whip up a storm of hate, and it consumed them. Had they listened to Jesus and believed in him, they could have survived the storm.

Satan still hates Jesus (and all of us as his disciples) and he is behind the storms of life that heave against us and hurt us; but if we have faith in Jesus and cling to His words, we will survive every storm. He can rebuke any of your storms and they will not harm you, just as he rebuked the storm on the seas.

QUOTE: “If your ‘religion’ hasn't changed your life, you'd better change your religion,
because Jesus will make a bad PERSON good, and a good PERSON better”