Unbelief
The Gospel of Luke
Vol. 5 (Luke 10-12)
Luke 11:29-36
The Text
When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, “This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.
Introduction:
I’m old enough to remember the beginnings of the internet. Back in those days you had to borrow the house telephone line, plug it into this screeching device called a modem which everyone over 40 can still hear. If someone picked up the kitchen phone, the session died. You paid by the hour, so, you’d connect, send your email, and disconnect.
Now, in those ancient yesteryears, there was enormous optimism about the internet. Free networks that would break information monopolies and put the facts out there in the open for everyone to see. We assumed that everyone would now have free access to information and with that free access, we’d arrive at truth.
Decades later, we have more access to more information than any people in the history of the world— yet there has never been a time of greater unbelief.
In fact, if you want to gain influence online today; if you want to build credibility as a truth seeker—the fastest way to do so is to demonstrate doubt and disbelieve.
Think about it—the biggest and most influential—sadly, even some of the most trusted people are those who chronically question.
As a culture we don’t like people who claim to know the truth. We don’t have trusted sources of truth. We don’t trust believers—we trust doubters. And what this means is that by-and-large, we’ve become a nation of unbelievers—about everything. In our culture, unbelief is a virtue.
Which makes this passage so shocking. Jesus speaks to a crowd of unbelievers and calls them evil, foolish, and blind. The entire passage is one long speech in which Jesus criticizes and mocks unbelief.
But if we’ll listen to Jesus, we’ll learn:
1. What Unbelief Isn’t
2. What Unbelief Is
3. How Unbelief is Overcome
1. What Unbelief Isn’t
First, Jesus tells us what unbelief is not. It is not a lack of evidence.
A great crowd gathers and Jesus calls them as an “evil generation” because they will not believe him. Instead, they demand signs from him.
He’s not scolding anyone who wants evidence. Christianity is a historical faith. If Christ were not raised, then we should all walk away.
He’s criticizing those who say there isn’t enough light when the room is already lit.
This is three years into his ministry. Jesus is now on the road to Jerusalem to die—he’s already performed hundreds of signs. They had all the evidence they needed.
So, Jesus reminds them of two famous Old Testament stories: the queen of the South and the story of Jonah.
First, the queen of the South. You can read about this in 1 Kings 10. There was a pagan queen who had no prophets or access to the Scriptures—but she hears that King Solomon in Israel is full of divine wisdom, so she travels across the desert and prostrates herself before him.
In other words, she had far less evidence than the crowds of Jesus day, yet she humbled herself before Solomon. This is why Jesus says, “Something greater than Solomon is here.
Second, the story of Jonah, which you can read in, you guessed it, the Old Testament book of Jonah. Jonah was a Hebrew prophet God sent to the pagan city of Nineveh. He tried to run from God’s mission, threw himself into the sea and was swallowed by a big fish who spit him out on the shore where he needed to go.
Jonah marches into Nineveh and preaches a one sentence sermon: “Forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” And upon hearing this one sentence, the entire city humbles itself in repentance of their sin.
Jonah only preached a message of judgment—Jesus Christ, the greater Jonah preached a message of God’s mercy and grace because he had come to bear God’s judgment against our sin and unbelief at the cross. A greater than Jonah stood before them.
Jesus turns to the crowd and says, the queen of the South and the men of Nineveh will rise up against you in the judgment because they had far less information than you, far less evidence than you, and yet they believed.
And, therefore, unbelief is not for lack of evidence. The problem is not that we don’t have evidence. It’s that if God gave us 1,000 pieces of evidence, we’d want 1,001.
Friend, if you are not trusting and resting in Christ—it’s not because he has been unclear, or that he hasn’t provided you with enough evidence.
Our age treats unbelief as sophistication, but Jesus calls this kind of unbelief evil. People with far less evidence and information than you have come and believed.
You have the Scriptures, the apostolic witness to Christ, and you have the sign he said he would give—just as Jonah was in the fish for three days—Jesus Christ was in the earth for three days and he was raised. That is enough to believe. It’s also enough to leave you without excuse for unbelief.
2. What Unbelief Is
In verses 33-36 Jesus shows us what unbelief is.
First, in verse 33 he says:
No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light.
Only a fool would light a lantern and cover it with a trash can. God has not done that. He has lit a lamp and set it on a stand—and unbelief covers it up. Unbelief is suppression of the light we can see.
Throughout the Bible we’re told that God has made his existence known to us in unmistakable unmissable ways.
For instance, Psalm 19 says “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”
The rest of the Psalm details the way that God has spoken through his work of creation to testify of his own existence. It’s unmissable. It’s unmistakable.
Or think of Romans 1:19, 20
The Apostle Paul says, 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
You see—”without excuse.” The lamp of truth has been lit by God. We see evidence of him in the light of nature—and we’re constantly covering it up.
This is why the Apostle Paul would say we don’t cover up the light because we’re ignorant—why do we cover up the light? Because it reveals something we don’t want to see.
Our house faces North, and most of the day I love looking out our back windows toward the woods. But there’s one time of the day that I don’t like looking out those windows. From about 10-10:15 AM the Sun shines at just the right angle to show every speck of dust floating in the air. The dust is always there—but the beams of light reveal what I otherwise would never see. So, for that 15 minutes, I leave the room.
When God’s light does that to us, to our lives—we leave out of the room. We don’t see it because we don’t want to see it.
Aldous Huxley famously wrote in his book Ends and Means, that he didn’t want the world to have meaning, he didn’t want there to be a “T” truth—because it would interfere with the way he wanted to live his life.
In other words—he wasn’t an unbeliever because there wasn’t enough evidence—rather he chose unbelief so he wouldn’t have to change. He would not see the light unless seeing left him in charge.
Then Jesus says the eye is the lamp of the body. This is an easy illustration to understand. We’re in a room full of light. If your eyes work properly, they receive the light and you can easily navigate around the room. But if your eyes don’t work properly, if they don’t receive the light, then no matter how much light is in the room, you’re body is still, as it were, in the dark.
There are two reasons we sit in the dark. First, we cover up the light we can see. Second, Jesus says the eye itself is bad. Because we are born as fallen sinners—we’re born blind.
John Newton alludes to this in the hymn Amazing Grace: “I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.”
It’s at this point that Jesus begins highlighting our utter need of God’s mercy and grace. The only way a blind person can see is if someone restores their vision. There’s nothing they can do to help themselves.
In the same way, you and I will never see the truth of God, the truth of Jesus unless God heals our blindness.
This is why you need more than evidence and arguments. Listen—you can’t be saved without knowing the truth about Jesus—but mere knowledge of the truth doesn’t save anyone.
So, if you are not a Christian, hear what this is not saying. It’s not that you are stupid. It’s not that you haven’t tried. Many of you have listened, read, sat through funerals, watched people you love pray, and felt… nothing. Or worse: irritation.
The claims Christians make sound too sure. The songs they sing feel like a language you have never heard. You leave thinking, “If this were true, I would feel it.” Jesus’ answer is harder than that.
He says the lamp is lit, but you don’t have eyes.
Some of you have made every human effort to attempt Christianity. You’ve tried attending church faithfully, going to Bible studies, cleaning up bad habits.
You’re like a man sitting through a film in a language he doesn’t understand, watching the faces of the crowd so you can clap when they clap. But you can’t understand what’s actually going on.
In 2 Cor 4, the Apostle Paul says the gospel is veiled, it’s cloaked to those who are perishing. They cannot see it. The god of this age, Satan, has blinded the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel in the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Unbelief therefore is both the rejection of the light you do see and blindness to the light you should see. It’s a choice and a condition.
A choice: God has made himself plain, and we cover the lamp. A condition: we are not both as truth seekers, but as truth-fugitives, and we cannot give ourselves sight.
We’re not born beholding the truth, we’re born blind.
3. How Unbelief is Overcome
If unbelief is both a choice and a condition—light we cover and eyes that cannot take it in—then nobody in this room talks himself into belief.
No one gets the light of God through human effort or competence. There aren’t enough arguments I could stack up in front of dead eyes.
If it’s true that we reject the light and we’re blind to the light—then the only way any of us will ever come to the light is by sheer unmerited grace.
This is why Jesus ends with both a warning and a promise. Verse 35:
Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness.
This is a warning for churches like ours. This room is full of Bibles. We recite the Creed. Some of you spoke the words of the Creed with us, but they had no effect on you because you don’t believe them. Saying the words doesn’t open the eye; reciting them out loud doesn’t make you a Christian.
Our homes have more Scripture on a shelf than Nineveh ever heard. We have discipleship studies, equipping hour classes, and a loaded book stall.
You can have all these things and the light you think you have is still darkness. That’s the warning.
But then, there’s a promise.
If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright.
Jesus says, though you are born blind, you can be cured. Though you began in darkness, your entire body can be shot through with light.
This is not a clever person who gained more facts.
This is a healed person who has been brought into the light by God’s grace and who God’s light has penetrated to the depths. United with Christ, his light becomes theirs.
You say, “If I’m born in the dark, how does Christ’s light become mine?” And the answer is that your darkness must become his.
Jesus Christ—the True and Greater Jonah—hung on the cross and in the middle of the day—the skies went dark as the Son was made the darkness of our sin and God’s wrath was unleashed.
The Light of the World died in the dark, so that he could transfer us from the domain of darkness into a kingdom of light.
How do any of us come to the light? Only because he was plunged into the darkness on the cross for us, in our place. We get the light because he lost the light!
When you see him going into the darkness for you—it opens your eyes and you come out of the dark to him.
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night.
Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray.
I woke! The dungeon flamed with light.
My chains fell off my heart was free
I rose went forth and followed thee.