The Lamp on Its Stand

Mercy on the Sabbath and True Family · Matthew 12

Story guide: Jesus teaches attentive listeners beside a small clay oil lamp burning on a wooden stand in a shadowed first-century room. This shared image is not a scene-for-scene rendering of Matthew 12:38-45.

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38Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”

39But he answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.”

40For just as Jonah was in the belly of the sea creature three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.

41The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and will condemn it, because they reoriented toward God at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

42The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and will condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.

43When the unclean spirit goes out from the man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it.

44Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came out,’ and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order.

45Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. So it will be also with this evil generation.

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