Sadducees

Day 103 – Matthew 22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-40

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Intelligent, But Ignorant.

Matthew 22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-40

Jesus replied, “Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God.” – Matthew 22:29 NLT

Jesus is facing yet another confrontation with the religious leaders. This time it is the Sadducees. They were the religious liberals of their day who refused to believe in the afterlife, the doctrine of the resurrection or the reality of angels. For them, this life was the only life and it was to be lived in strict adherence to the written law as found in the Torah. They were elitists who rejected the oral law of the Pharisees, the “traditions of the elders” that contained hundreds of additional laws or expansions of the written law. But while they were not exactly bosom buddies with the Pharisees, they shared one thing in common with them: their hatred for Jesus. So we see them coming to Jesus posing a question that they intended to use to expose Jesus’ heretical views on the resurrection. Their question is a lengthy one, in the form of a short story. It’s a fictitious scenario involving what was called the Levirate Law, part of the Law of Moses found in the book of Deuteronomy. This law ruled that when a man died, leaving a wife as a widow with no children, one of the deceased man’s brothers was obligated to marry the woman so that she might have a son by him and so that son might carry on the name of her deceased first husband and inherit his land.  The law states, “If two brothers are living together on the same property and one of them dies without a son, his widow may not be married to anyone from outside the family. Instead, her husband’s brother should marry her and have intercourse with her to fulfill the duties of a brother-in-law. The first son she bears to him will be considered the son of the dead brother, so that his name will not be forgotten in Israel” (Deuteronomy 25:5-6 NLT).

These Sadducees create a highly unlikely scenario where the woman ends up marrying seven different brothers, each one dying before they could father a son with her. Then finally, the woman herself dies. And at last they ask Jesus their question. Matthew makes it clear that the real point behind their question is the resurrection. They are not really interested in Jesus’ interpretation of the law, but in His views on the resurrection. So they ask, “So tell us, whose wife will she be in the resurrection? For all seven were married to her” (Matthew 22:28 NLT).

They think they have Jesus trapped. Because the Torah did not teach explicitly about the resurrection, they did not believe in it. Their little story was designed to expose the ridiculousness of the whole idea of the resurrection. In their minds, they had shown that the very concept of the resurrection would conflict with the law itself. How could a woman have seven husbands in heaven? But Jesus exposes the flaw in their thinking and the problem in their lives. He simply states, “Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God” (Matthew 22:29 NLT). This would have been like a sucker punch to the stomach. Jesus had caught them off guard and wiped the smug look of satisfaction off their faces with one simple sentence. They prided themselves on their knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures and here was Jesus telling them they didn’t really know them. They were intelligent, but ignorant. In all their study of the Word of God, they had missed out on the power of God. They had relegated all they know about life to the here and now and rejected the idea of a hereafter. So Jesus shocks them by letting them know that in the resurrected state there will be no marriage. Their whole scenario is pointless and irrelevant. The woman will not be married to any of the brothers, “For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage” (Matthew 22:30 NLT). This may be just as shocking to many reading these words right now. Your concept of heaven has always included marriage. You have assumed that if you are married here on earth, you will be married in heaven. But what would be the purpose of marriage in heaven. As an institution, it was designed to illustrate the relationship between Christ and His bride, the Church. It was intended to be a physical representation of the spiritual reality. In heaven, the union of Christ and the Church will be complete. There will no longer be a need for a symbol of that union. And while we may find that idea disturbing and possibly disappointing, we have to remember that our condition in our resurrected state will be one of perfection. We will be like Christ and have perfect fellowship with God the Father. Our primary relationship will be with Him. There will no longer be the need for another person to complete us.

But Jesus knows that the real issue behind their question is their view on the resurrection, so He cuts to the chase and takes it head on. “But now, as to whether there will be a resurrection of the dead—haven’t you ever read about this in the Scriptures? Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, God said,‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’So he is the God of the living, not the dead” (Matthew 22:31-32 NLT). Once again, Jesus questions their knowledge of the Scriptures, letting them know that in spite of all their study, they had missed a key point. When referring to His relationship with the great patriarchs of the Hebrew people, God had spoken in the PRESENT tense. He said, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” These words were spoken long after all three of these men were dead and gone, and yet God refers to them in the present tense. Jesus makes it clear that this is not a grammatical error, but a theological truth. There is an afterlife and there will be a resurrection. The problem of the Sadducees was that they studied the Scriptures with a biased view and a limited understanding of the power of God. The idea of the resurrection was impossible to them. It was inconceivable. So they simply refused to believe in it. In establishing their doctrinal views, they had unknowingly limited the power of God. Because they couldn’t understand something, they simply eliminated it from consideration. But Jesus made it clear that the resurrection was not only possible, it was undeniable, because of the unlimited power of God.

For the Sadducees, life had become all about what they could see and explain. Their view was limited and restrictive. They had no room in their theology for an afterlife, because they couldn’t explain or control it. So they put all their eggs in basket, concentrating all their efforts on making the most out of this life. In doing so, they had missed the whole concept of the afterlife, of heaven and the resurrected state. For them, this earthly life was the only life. Nothing more, nothing less. And yet, there are many who live that way today. Even those who claim to be Christ-followers live as if there is no eternal life, focusing all their attention and energies on making the most of this life. They ignore what they can’t explain or understand. And yet, we are encouraged throughout the Word of God to run the race of life with the end in mind. We are to set our affections on things above, not the things of this earth. We are told to consider ourselves as strangers here, and to remember that this world is not our home, we are simply passing through on our way to somewhere better. There is an afterlife. There is a heaven. This is not all there is. And we should live with that reality in mind.

Father, it is easy to begin to believe that this really is all there is. The ever-present reality of this world can easily overshadow the idea that there is something more. Don’t let me lose sight of the fact that heaven is a real place, the resurrection is a future reality and not a myth, and that You have much more in store for me than what I can see or even understand here. Amen.

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org

Day 63 – Matthew 16:1-4; Mark 8:10-13

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How Much More Proof Do You Need?

Matthew 16:1-4; Mark 8:10-13

“When he heard this, he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, ‘Why do these people keep demanding a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, I will not give this generation any such sign.’” – Mark 8:12 NLT

Rarely did the Pharisees and Sadducees ever agree on anything. They were both religious parties of the Jews, but they disagreed about a number of things and disliked one another very much. But they shared a common enemy: Jesus. And on this occasion they joined forces in order to trick and trap Jesus. Their life ambition was to eliminate Jesus as a threat to their way of doing things. His arrival on the scene had disrupted their way of life. He had stirred things up with His message about the kingdom and his constant use of miracles. The people were flocking to Him in droves and they didn’t like sharing the spotlight with anyone. And Jesus hadn’t done Himself any favors with the way in which He talked about these men. He was unrelenting in His criticism of them, exposing them as hypocrites, charlatans, and unworthy of trust or admiration.

But the one thing that meant more to these men than anything else was the concept of authority. In their religious world, you had to have authority to say or do anything. And authority was passed down from one influential rabbi to another. They put high stock in tradition and deemed it necessary for anyone who wanted to make a statement about anything, to have received authority to do so from someone other than themselves. As far as they were concerned, Jesus had no authority. He had sat under no one’s leadership or tutelage. He had not apprenticed with any known rabbi or religious expert. Much of what He was saying and teaching was heresy to them because it was new information. He was teaching things they had never heard before. And He had no authority to do so. That’s why you see them constantly confronting Jesus about where He got His authority to do what He did. And that’s what was driving them on this day. Mark tells us that when they arrived, they “started to argue with him. Testing him, they demanded that he show them a miraculous sign from heaven to prove his authority” (Mark 8:11 NLT).

It is interesting to note that Jesus had already claimed to be the Messiah. He also claimed to have been sent by God, His own Father. He had healed the sick, cast out demons and raised the dead. But that was not enough proof for these men. They had already attributed Jesus’ powers to Satan, not God. They considered Him a blasphemer for claiming to be the Son of God. The healings he performed were not enough for them. They wanted more. They wanted a sign from heaven. More than likely, they were looking for signs like Moses had given the Israelites in Egypt. They probably wanted to see Jesus bring down fire and brimstone on the Romans. They would have loved to have seen Him strike dead all the firstborn males in all the Roman households. They wanted a sign from heaven – from God Himself. Then that would prove Jesus’ authority. But they really never expected Him to be able to pull off such a feat. Because they didn’t believe He was who He said He was. Honestly, Jesus had already done more than enough to prove who He was and to demonstrate His authority. And He wasn’t going to do anything more. He would not give them the kind of sign they were looking for because that is not why He came. He did not come to set them free from Roman rule. He came to set men free from slavery to sin. And for that to happen, Jesus had to die. And the amazing thing is that even after Jesus had died and was miraculously raised back to life by the power of God, these very same men would deny the veracity of the disciples’ claim that Jesus was alive. They would go out of their way to disprove it and discredit the disciples.

Jesus refused to give them the kind of sign they were looking for. And the one sign that should have proven to them once and for all that He was the Son of God – His resurrection – they would eventually choose to ignore and deny. To their own detriment. Refusing to recognize Jesus’ authority is a dangerous thing. Denying His God-given right to rule and reign in the lives of men is an unhealthy game to play. But like the Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ day, there are thousands upon thousands of people doing just that today. They refuse to acknowledge Jesus’ authority over their lives. They can’t bring themselves to believe that Jesus has authority over sin and death. They struggle believing that Jesus alone has the authority to set them free slavery to sin. “So he got back into the boat and left them, and he crossed to the other side of the lake” (Mark 8:13 NLT).

Father, it is so hard to understand why so many still reject Jesus’ authority over their lives today. But I know it happens. Their hardened hearts blind them to the reality of who He is. They stubbornly refuse to acknowledge His God-given authority and His power over sin and death. And as a result, they remain in their sins, unforgiven and unrepentant. Open their eyes Father. Help them to see. Give those of us who know Your Son the courage to speak openly and honestly about what we know and what we have seen. But only You can open the eyes of men and soften their hearts to see the truth. Amen.

Ken Miller

Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org