A SIGN I say, Not Feeding 5,000!

Why do Pharisees seek a sign?

In all four of the Gospels (twice in Matthew) we see Pharisees, Sadducees, and teachers of the Law (scribes) coming to Jesus and asking, "Show us a sign." or "What do you do for a sign, that we may believe you?"

If we had someone among us today that did all the kinds of powerful miracles that Jesus was doing, we might be justified in saying, "These things must be a sign from heaven! Surely God is with this person!" But for the Pharisees etc., "a sign" had a special and technical meaning that Jesus was not fulfilling for them.

The most prominent of these occasions lies in Matthew, right after Jesus had fed 5,000 men from five loaves of bread, followed a few weeks later by him feeding 4,000 men from seven loaves of bread. Wasn't that a sign?

Technically, no it wasn't. The technical meaning of "a sign" requested here is derived from Deuteronomy 18:21-22.

You may say in your heart, "How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?" When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.

For this occasion Matthew switches from his usual "Pharisees and scribes" to "Pharisees and Sadducees" to show that the request for a sign had special importance to the officials that controlled the temple and the Sanhedrin--the Supreme Court of the Jews. 

If Jesus had said, "such-and-such will happen next week," the Sanhedrin could take up the question of whether Jesus was a prophet or not. They were the men who "sat in Moses' seat" to take up great questions of the Law and who was a prophet or not. In First Kings 17:1, Elijah said, "As the LORD, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word." Elijah said it, and it happened just as he said. Elijah was a proven prophet.

But we can go deeper here. The Pharisees and Sadducees wanted to exert their authority over Jesus, to determine whether he was a prophet or not. But Jesus was not only a prophet, but also the Son of God. If he had acceded to their request and gave some trivial sign to prove himself, he would be granting their authority over him.

So he resisted. But for the benefit of all Israel, and all his future followers, he gave the single sign, the sign of Jonah: "As Jonah was three days in the belly of the fish, so will the Son of Man be in the belly of the earth." And this came true: Jesus resurrected from the dead some three days after he had been killed.

You and I still have this tool for recognizing a prophet today. Many claim to know what is going to happen, but few are proven correct. The "Late Great Planet Earth" did not produce the second coming of Jesus when the writer of that book said it would. Therefore, we know not to trust the writer of that book. He is no prophet.