One thing about human society throughout history is, we love to label stuff…especially people. It’s usually born from a quest of trying to get a grasp of who our fellow human is by generalizing them. It’s easier to interact with someone if we can fit them neatly into our categories. But this is, of course, a broken way to relate to people. In our study of Matthew, we’re going to read a theme that is carried over from last week…that of people trying to get a handle on who Jesus is. We’ll be reading Matthew 12:38-50.

In the last section, Jesus challenged those who heard him to make a decision, one way or the other, and neutrality was not an option. Carrying the theme through, Jesus knew there were a lot of people wanting more proof that he was Messiah via some supernatural sign from heaven, so he did what any self-respecting Messiah would do; he called them all evil. Kinda’ cool if you think about what terrible marketing that is.

Jesus mentions the “sign of Jonah”, which has had a lot of people theorizing about its meaning for the last 2,000 years. There are some obvious parallels between Jonah and Jesus and his resurrection. What do you think the “sign of Jonah” is?

Why would the people of Nineveh and the Queen of the South, both pagan, gentile peoples, have a place to condemn Jesus’ generation of chosen people?

How did Jesus identify who his family of chosen people are? What do we make of that when it comes to understanding our own identity as followers of Jesus?

There is some really profound insight about who Jesus is and who we are in this section – I hope you can join us as we explore this text together!

Click here for a pdf of the teaching slideshow.