the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 3 of 5
Matthew 12:38-50
With ch. 12 we come to the end of the first part of this gospel. The Messiah having been rejected by those who should have been the first to receive Him, the Lord Jesus begins to speak of His death and resurrection. It was the great miracle which remained to be accomplished, and of which the Jews already possessed a type – the story of Jonah swallowed by the great fish. At the same time the Lord brings home to these scribes and Pharisees their overwhelming responsibility. They were so much better instructed than were the heathen people of Nineveh or the queen of Sheba in former times! And by how much did He Himself excel Jonah or Solomon! He had come to dwell in this house of Israel, casting out the demon and sweeping away idolatry (cf. Matthew 8:31; Matthew 21:12-13). But He had not been received and the house remained empty . . . ready to house a power of evil far more terrible than the first. This is what will happen to Israel under the reign of the Antichrist.
Vv. 46-50 show that the Lord Jesus cannot even recognise His relatives as such any more. Henceforth He breaks off earthly and natural relationships with His people, and He explains in parables (Matthew 13:1-58) what the kingdom of heaven is and who can be received into it.
