Mark 12 (Part 3)
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
If you have your bibles and I hope you do we are moving through the final attacks on Jesus on the last Tuesday of His earthly life
The religious rulers are sick of His claims of authority and want Him dead
So all in one day they are sending in waves different groups to trap Him is controversy so they have a reason to kill him
Last week they sent a strange coalition of the far right and far left,
Pickens and Asheville joined forces to use politics to get him to say the wrong thing so they could get the other side to kill him
It didn't go how they thought
So they are sending more waves of controversy in a life or death game of cat and mouse to trap him
Today we are going to witness the trap set through a new controversy
It is the trap of answering the bible wrong when it comes to the scandal of Hope
It is the scandal of Hoping in Him
We are going to see We All Long for Hope , The Arrogance of the Trap, The Scandal of Hope
We All Long for Hope
We All Long for Hope
There was an author who once said: There have been civilizations who didn’t use the wheel but there have never been civilizations who didn’t have religion
Not all of them are right no matter what the Subaru with the Coexist sticker says
But we have always longed for something transcendent
We all hope for life in the face of death
Every civilization has had to look for hope in a broken world
deal with sadness and questions about why there is evil and pain in the world
We all wrestle with the questions around what happens when this life is over and how we can have hope
The bible is clear on why we all do this in Ecclesiastes 3: 11
He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also put eternity in their hearts, but no one can discover the work God has done from beginning to end.
It is the image thats on you and why we all long for something more
It is the Hope we all long for and we are desperate to find
Children even know it is written on our hearts and we are searching to make sense of sadness
We were on our way back from the YMCA and Beau asked some heavy questions out of no where
Where is the devil right now, why is He mean, and he got to the point he asked where uncle Ronnie was
Easy stuff to knock out in an 11 minute drive home
Children are pure and simple in their questions
We still ask the questions like kids do but we are more cynical
The Message of the bible is the answer we all long for
I can answer with hope in the face of bad things to Beau because of the Hope of our God
I can show him the scandalous hope of having Jesus at the center of it all
Hope is a dangerous thing
Its even more dangerous when you tell people its found in this Jesus not in anything we can control
At its core this trap centers on the Questions Beau asked
How is He still good when death makes it seem like He has abandoned us? and What does the Real Jesus have to do with it?
The Arrogance of the Trap Mark 12:18-23
The Arrogance of the Trap Mark 12:18-23
Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and questioned him: “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife behind but no child, that man should take the wife and raise up offspring for his brother. There were seven brothers. The first married a woman, and dying, left no offspring. The second also took her, and he died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. None of the seven left offspring. Last of all, the woman died too. In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be, since the seven had married her?”
Makes sense right? seems to apply to the rest of my afternoon
But it does if we work to see it
Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and questioned him:
Here is the new group set to trap Jesus to destroy Him
The Sadducees were the A list politicians aristocratic crew
they lived in wealth and influence tied to the temple royalty and Rome
and had no idea how the other half lived
Let me put it this way…we do most of our grocery shopping at Costco and get some things from whole foods…these are the kind of people who do all of there grocery shopping at whole foods
They were better and smarter then the rest of us … especially when it came to the bible
they were arrogant and ultra conservative they rejected all of the hebrew bible except the first 5 books
the first 5 books of your bible are all they beleived were the real ones
The only truth to them was what Moses wrote
To them the additions like Ezekiel and Daniel that give us the Old Testament basis for the bodily resurrection were fake news
to them nothing in what Moses wrote pointed to resurrection hope
so they were really Debbie Downers and beleived when you die that is simply it your done no hope live laugh love yall bc this is all there is
To the Sadducees, God was the creator of the world, but He was now distant from the affairs of living people.
They had it all figured out so they propose an absurd case study based on what moses wrote
It was called the provision of levirate marriage
We saw this when we studied Ruth it was to protect widows and the family line and property of God’s people
According to the levirate law if a married man died and left no children, his brother was obligated to marry his widow and raise up a child for him who would continue the first brother’s family line
It was a provision to protect the vulnerable widows like Ruth we saw
So here is the absurd and arrogant trap they set
the Sadducees construct a scenario where a woman has been married to seven brothers in hopes of having children. Each husband dies without the woman conceiving, leaving her a widow to seven brothers. The Sadducees then ask Jesus whose wife she will be at the resurrection
Their intention is to expose a belief they find absurd because they know more then anyone
Of course they know Moses better then Jesus
they don’t know the one who Moses himself pointed too was standing right in front of them and here comes the scandal of hope straight from Moses’ own words
The Scandal of Hope Mark 12:24-27
The Scandal of Hope Mark 12:24-27
Jesus spoke to them, “Isn’t this the reason why you’re mistaken: you don’t know the Scriptures or the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised—haven’t you read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God said to him: I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead but of the living. You are badly mistaken.”
it is easy to never miss a bible study and totally miss the message of the bible and what it calls us too
It is easy to study theology and never know the power of God
that is where the Sadducees have missed it all …
SO Jesus does a body blow then right hooks them to the ground…intellectually and theologically
They miss the revelation of who God really is in His word…and they completely miss His power on display to the universe
Their first mistake is that for all their bible studies they dont know the story
Jesus spoke to them, “Isn’t this the reason why you’re mistaken: you don’t know the Scriptures or the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven.
Its all about Eden…the Eden Moses himself wrote about in Genesis
The once upon a time we long to get back too
The promise He will keep forever no matter how dark the night seems is that he is out to take back all that sin has stolen
he is not out to simply place us on a cloud with a harp forever if youre a good person
he is out to take back all of Creation and make it all new …His is waging a war to make it better then Eden
I was on a walk with Baker a few days ago and a smell of a summer grill hit me from a neighbors
you know how a smell can bring back a memory?
I was immedately taken back to Litchfield Illinois on a summer day at my grandma and grandpas house
I could smell my grandpas grill with ribeyes on and the faint smell of an Old Milwaukee beer
Cancer took my grandpa…and as a middle schooler I couldn’t make sense of any of it
Years later i found the hope i long for in the epic of the bible
What we miss is the scandalous hope the great redemptive drama of the bible holds out to us
It is the epic of the God who never fails to keep his promise to defear sin and cancer and death
It is about the covenant love of our Prodigal God
That is what the bible is all about from cover to cover
What is sad is that its right in front of them
The sadducees books of Moses hold that very hope…they are just to arrogant to see it
My grandpa was saved by the blood of Jesus
What the bible says is that he will be raised again in a physical body because the great redemptive drama of the bible is the victorious epic of redemption…the promised one has come to crush death with his death
He will be cancer and death free, I will be free of whatever takes my earthly life
That is what he means by “But are like the angels”
Resurrection bodies will not be “spiritual” bodies like a ghost they will be real physical bodies ,
Resurrected and transformed bodies that are not subject to death and that are fit for joyful participation in the life of the age to come
Paul says in 2 Cor 5:1-5
For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.
I long with Paul for the burden of cancer and injustice and mistakes and regret to be gone…and it is promised if we are His
My grandpa repented and believed, so have I and that new life is the deposit on whats to come
I will play catch with my grandpa again with my savior in resurrected bodies where i can hug and hold and run experience
With every throw stopping to cry out worthy is the Lamb who made good on His promise
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain in my place to bring me to life
We will be with the King of Kings all of the bible points too
There will be meals we cannot imagine, beer better then an Old Milwaukee and we will be on this very earth made new forever
You may know all the answers in sunday school but do you miss the hope the bible is about
Resurrection isn’t simply coming back to life it is for the first time being truly alive
Every page points to hope
That hope is a person
it was the person standing before them that tuesday afternoon
They missed the point of Moses’ words first and they miss the Power of God second
I love how Jesus never leaves the Books of Moses to crush this trap
They miss the power of God to make good on His promise to us in Genesis 3:15 that one will come to kill the dragon and get the girl
Moses wrote that and he now draws from Exodus that Moses wrote
And as for the dead being raised—haven’t you read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God said to him: I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead but of the living. You are badly mistaken.”
This is from Exodus 3:6
Then he continued, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.
Remember we saw: To the Sadducees, God was the creator of the world, but He was now distant from the affairs of living people
The promises of all things new, evil gone, restoration of all things to the happily ever after we long for were a wish dream
God only meant them for the patch of ground called israel, They are like the rest of Jesus’ enemies
They simply believe the world is right when Israel can be great again.....the epic of Eden is a wish dream for the simple and uneducated
They miss the power of God to be the covanent Keeping God no matter how it looks
they had a weak God only concerned with their happiness in this life and incapable of anything after it
Remember it is all about the land to Jesus’ enemies
God made promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob they are called the patriarchs of the Jewish faith
God had promised Abraham and his descendants a country of their own.
When God appeared to Moses, that promise was renewed.
The Sadducees expected God to do the same thing for them.
There were Romans in the land God had promised them, and a Roman governor held the reigns of power.
The Sadducees believed that God would act again to set them free. Their hope for the future was tied to the land
In self serving bible reading we miss the power of God in the whole story…we miss his bigger plan to set us free from our bondage to death and slavery to sin …not simply make Israel great again
Tim Gombis says: Jesus doesn’t argue for the resurrection he speaks from it. He lived from it
The power of God to keep his covanent promise of life from death is all over this little verse he hits them with from Exodus
Look at Abraham and the power of God …it was promised that from the seed of Abraham the savior would come (not the savior of a patch of land in the middle east but the savior of God’s people from death and pain and sin)
When the promise looked good as dead God brought life from death
God brought forth a child of promise through Abraham and Sarah’s “good as dead” baby making ability
He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body to be already dead (since he was about a hundred years old) and also the deadness of Sarah’s womb.
the power of God revealed in Gods ability to vanquish death and give the gift of life
Life from death in the very patriarch they thought was simply promised to have some land
And to all the patriarchs we see this in the tenses of the words
God tells moses I AM the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob
basic english here
Is Am the same as Was?
the patriarchs were long dead when God met Moses in the burning bush
But what does God say He is ....I AM
Still at that moment and even today
God tells the Sadducees Moses As as I am the guide and helper and sustainer of your fathers I am to you I will be to you and will never fail to be
He is using their own arrogant error against them
If the death of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was the last word on their history God is a liar
Jesus says it is simply because God is the great I AM that it is in faithfullness to His promise that God will resurrect the dead
He is the Great I Am not the great I was …He is the Great I Am not the Great Good Luck Out There
And the Great I am in right in front of them
Here comes the scandal of the universe
It was on the Sunday coming after this tuesday in Jesus life
Paul says in 1 Cor 15:12-19
For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But this is what we hold true burst out of a real tomb in a real resurrected body on a real sunday
Life from death
In the death of the Great I Am
7 times in the book of John Jesus makes I Am statements
How does he secure our resurrection Hope for those in Him-
I AM the bread of life - we will know life from death because he was ripped in pieces like a loaf of bread
I Am the light of the world - We will know pure light of life forever because he was covered in absolute darkness for us
I AM the door- We have access to covenant hope of the Living God because he was cast outside the city doors to die in our place
I AM the Good Shepherd - He has led us to eternal life by becoming the shepherd who laid down his life to save his sheep
I AM the Resurection and the Life - Because He is raised we know we too will be raised to Life with Him
I Am the way the truth and the Life - there is no other way to the forgiveness of sins and the life everasting outisde of Him, His way, Him defining ultimate truth, and the giving of His life
I am the True Vine - we are grafted into the covanents of God he will never fail to keep because he was the one cut off from life in the vine
I dont have all the answers but I know one answer to the question from the beginning of this sermon : Where is God is the Pain? He was on a cross to absorb deaths power now he is raised to life making a place where happily ever after will be our forever
He is making all things new and making good on the promise that I will play catch with my grandpa and My King in a new body on a new earth soon
Where I will shout forever WORTHY IS THE LAMB WHO WAS SLAIN WORTHY OF THIS KING THIS PROMISE KEEPER
WORTHY IS THE GOD OF OUR SCANDALOUS HOPE