A Generation of Unbelief
Guest Article- Joshua Ensley
Matthew 11 is a chapter in the Bible where Yeshua responds to a question posed by John the Baptist while John is in prison. John’s concern, which prompts the question, is that he now doubts who Jesus/Yeshua claims to be—namely, the Messiah of Israel. The opening lines of the chapter have John sending messengers to Jesus/Yeshua asking if he really is who he says he is.
Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”
(Matthew 11:2-3 ESV)
Through the remainder of the chapter, Jesus/Yeshua responds to this question and then further explains the idea of unbelief to the messengers of John and to the crowds surrounding him. He begins by comparing that current generation to that of children who play games in the marketplace and then proceeds to denounce the cities in which he performed most of his miracles.
16 “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates,
17 “ ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’
18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ 19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”
20 Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. 21 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 22 But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 23 And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 24 But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”
(Matthew 11:16-24 ESV)
It is clear to me that this passage of Scripture is focused on one key issue: unbelief. John the Baptist, the man who heralded the coming of Jesus/Yeshua as Messiah, has now begun to doubt that very coming. And in response to this unbelief from John, Jesus/Yeshua teaches us three important things:
What unbelief is.
How unbelief operates.
How we can overcome unbelief.
What Unbelief Is
If I were to ask you to define unbelief, you would probably say something like, “It’s when you lack faith in the trueness of someone or something.” That definition is accurate, but unbelief, as Jesus/Yeshua demonstrates in this passage, is far more than simply denying the truth of someone or something.
Right in the middle of the passage, Jesus/Yeshua breaks into a rather quick and seemingly random statement concerning wisdom.
Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”
(Matthew 11:19b ESV)
Wisdom is different than knowledge; wisdom is knowing what is real. The older I grow, the more I understand that with age comes wisdom. I may not be as sharp as I was when I was in Bible college in regards to knowledge, but I grow a deeper understanding of the realness and trueness of life as I age, mainly due to my experiences and extended time of exposure to various things in life. Jesus/Yeshua is asserting here that those who reject him reject him because they are not wise. Jesus/Yeshua shows by his denouncing of the three cities Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum that they lack wisdom, even though they have seen sufficient amounts of empirical evidence through his miracles. These three towns were where Jesus/Yeshua did the most of his public miracles, and there are many recorded in our Bibles where Jesus/Yeshua performed various mighty acts in these cities. At the end of John’s gospel, he tells us that only a fraction of what Jesus/Yeshua did was ever written down (John 21:25), so surely there were plenty more miracles performed in these cities than we are told in the Gospels.
Jesus/Yeshua essentially says to the people around him that he went into those towns and gave them all of the evidence they needed to believe he was who he says he is, yet they still did not believe. What we can see here is that unbelief is not simply the absence of faith due to a lack of evidence, but the presence of something else which causes us to reject the message of Jesus/Yeshua as Messiah, and no amount of evidence in the world could overwhelm the force pushing out of our hearts against his message.
We never see Jesus/Yeshua in the Gospels walking up to a group of people saying, “Believe that I am the Messiah” without providing evidence for that claim. Rather, he overwhelmed people around him with the evidence of his claim to be the Messiah and even reasoned with them through the Scriptures as to why he was the one to come. Even after his death, Jesus/Yeshua walked around for weeks and appeared to the Apostles numerous times to demonstrate to them that he really did rise from the dead. One time in particular, he appeared to the Apostles, showed them the wounds on his hands, ate a broiled fish in front of them, and read Scripture with them to prove that he was not just an apparition appearing to them (Luke 24:36-49).
However, even though the people of these three cities had been given enough evidence for the validity of his claims, they remained in unbelief. This shows that unbelief is not caused by a lack of evidence, but by the presence of another force within a person’s heart which works in opposition to the Gospel.
In a debate against Dr. William Lane Craig (American analytic philosopher and Christian theologian), Keith Parsons (Associate Professor of Philosophy, Univ. of Houston) once said, “If tomorrow morning immediately after breakfast suddenly there was an earthquake and a silvery light shown in the sky and the leaves dropped from the trees and I dashed outside and there, towering over us like a hundred Everests, was this giant figure with lightning playing around his michaelangeloid face and he pointed down saying, ‘Be assured, Keith M. Parsons, that I do in fact exist and I’m sick of your logic chopping,’ Dr. Craig, I would join you in the pew of the church the next Sunday.” Craig shattered Parsons’s entire argument in the following remark, but that’s for another time. What is relevant, though, is that this kind of mentality is found in millions of skeptics to the Christian faith throughout our world. They often make this sort of claim that if they were able to witness first-hand a miracle or have Jesus/Yeshua appear before them and tell them who he is, they would immediately believe. But Jesus/Yeshua did just that in front of thousands of people in these three cities and yet they still did not believe.
If we truly think that the only thing hindering our belief in Jesus/Yeshua as the Messiah is a lack of empirical evidence, we do not know our own hearts. We must recognize that Jesus/Yeshua teaches that we do deserve and need evidence of his existence and claims, but we must also recognize that Jesus/Yeshua teaches that our unbelief cannot be justified solely on the basis of a lack of evidence, because that will never overwhelm the force pushing from our hearts.
How Unbelief Operates
Now that we recognize that there is a force present in our hearts that causes unbelief, I want us to see what that force looks like and how it operates. This is the same force that caused the people of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum to see miracles and still question if Jesus/Yeshua truly was the Messiah.
In verses 16-19, we see Jesus/Yeshua liken the people of those cities to children who play in the marketplaces. To a contemporary audience, this likening might seem a little strange or confusing, but a cultural understanding of first century Jewish marketplaces will help bring out the meaning. In the small villages of Jesus/Yeshua’s time, adults would go to the marketplaces six days of the week (they would rest on Sabbath) and the children would gather to play games while their parents were buying or selling. There were two popular games that these children would play based on two big events that would often take place in the villages: weddings & funerals. The wedding game was the happy and joyful game where children would play flutes and dance as if they were at a wedding; the funeral game was the sad game where children would sing a dirge and mourn as if they were in a funeral procession. The wedding game represents Jesus/Yeshua because he was the one who came happy and joyful, “eating and drinking” with those around him. The funeral game represents John the Baptist because he was the one who “came neither eating nor drinking” preaching repentance and the coming Kingdom of God.
Jesus/Yeshua compares his current generation to that of children who refused to partake in either game. Imagine a little boy as the ringleader of the group of children in the marketplace. He announces to everyone that he is going to play a wedding song and that everyone is to dance as if they were at a real wedding, but over in the corner is a group of children sitting with their arms crossed and their lips puckered saying, “We don’t want to play wedding!” The boy says, “Ok fine, let’s play funeral!” and yet the group of children in the corner still refuse to play, maintaining their crossed arms and puckered faces while screaming, “No! We don’t want to play funeral!” This surely perplexes the little ringleader because he knows that his friends like both of those games and yet, they refuse to play either one. In reality, the problem isn’t that the tunes or games are being played; it’s that these children in the corner are not in control. They would be more than happy to play if they were the ones playing the flute or singing the dirge, but because they do not have control, they refuse to do what they love to do.
Even our modern culture demonstrates that children behave like this. Have you ever given your child something you know they love and yet they look at you with a puckered face and act as if the world is coming to an end all because you offered to take them to the park and play? And I’m sure that you’ve tried to reason and argue with the child, explaining that he or she loves going to the park, though I’m sure that never works, right? It’s because children sometimes lie to themselves about what they love or what’s happening around them; they choose to convince themselves that they hate it all because they are not the ones in control. Likewise, unbelievers in Jesus/Yeshua’s time and even today, even when the Gospel is presented in the most logical and rational way, will continue to reject it as long as they wish to remain in control. No amount of evidence can ever convince a person to surrender to God when that person wishes to remain lord of his own life.
How We Can Overcome Unbelief
Now that we see that unbelief is a resistive force in our hearts that wants to maintain control of our lives, it becomes a little easier to see how we can overcome it.
Remember, Jesus/Yeshua demonstrates that the antithesis of unbelief is wisdom (11:19b). For us to overcome unbelief, then, we must become wise; but how does that work? First, we must recognize that we do not have the capabilities to lead our own lives and that only by surrendering to the will of God are we able to dance and mourn to the tunes that are being played. Second, we must recognize that Christianity is the saddest of funerals and the most joyful of weddings. Christianity’s intensive pessimism says that we are broken, damned, and hopeless on our own because we can never obey God’s law enough to be right with him, but Christianity’s amazing optimism inversely says that we are totally and completely saved by grace alone because of the blood of Christ.
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:2)
Wisdom is recognizing these two truths; wisdom is recognizing that we are completely and utterly unable to save ourselves, but that God has made a way for us to find peace with him through FAITH, which is believing his message, and regardless if we choose to surrender to this beautiful balance, wisdom—Jesus/Yeshua—will be justified by his deeds.
