Have We Arrived?

Mark 12:18-27

18 And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question, saying, 19 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. 21 And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. 22 And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died. 23 In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”

24 Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26 And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”

Pray

If we look from last week, the two groups that came to test Jesus were the Pharisees and the Herodians. Today’s passage has a different group called the Sadducees. It almost seems like there is a line of people that want to challenge Jesus. He has just finished showing the Pharisees and the Herodians that they are no match for the wit and wisdom of God, now we have this other group.

18 And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection.

There are a lot of topics in this passage that make us ask questions. The first question prompt is why does this specific group of religious leaders do not believe in the resurrection? This is a good exercise for us. We should always ask ourselves why we believe what we believe. Are we believing rightly the things that the bible teaches? Not just something that you heard from one person or from me or from your own reading but it needs to be tested by lots of different angles to make sure that your thoughts on a subject are orthodox and have a foundation in historical Christianity. This helps us believe and understand the bible in a right way about the right things. Jesus will have these very same questions for this group of religious leaders.

The Sadducees were a Jewish sect of socio-religious leaders. They performed political, social and religious tasks like maintaining the temple. They came about sometime in the second temple period around 200 BC and disappeared shortly after the temple was destroyed in 70AD. They followed the maxim, “Be not like the servants who serve their masters for the sake of the wages, but be rather like those who serve without thought of receiving wages." They interpreted this to mean that they serve God just out of obedience and did not expect a reward so they denied the idea of resurrection and an afterlife. Basically, God said to do it, so we do it and then we turn to dust when we die because we do not expect anything for serving him.

Jesus puts this thought to death several times in the bible by telling the parable of the wages for the day laborer, the thief on the cross going to be with him in paradise, Him going to prepare a place for us in his Father’s mansion, those that believe in him will not perish but have eternal life, etc. Not to mention, he has mentioned His own resurrection three times. We know that Jesus believed and taught an afterlife, it is likely that the Sadduccees know that Jesus believes this.

These are the lawyers of the religious elites. They are the smartest. They have all of the degrees and Jesus doesn’t so they want to discredit him by making an absurd point about the resurrection so that all of His followers will hear. Let’s look at the question.

And they asked him a question, saying, 19 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.

The Sadduccees did not believe like the Pharisees did in the traditions of their father’s but on the writings of Moses alone. That is the first five books of the bible. Here they are quoting Deuteronomy 25:5. This isn’t a bad thing to always go back to what the Word of God says, but they started with an incorrect assumption. If we start from a place where God can only do this or can only be that, then when we read Scripture, our brain and our hearts will limit Him to the box that we came to Scripture with. The Sadduccees continue with their inquiry.

20 There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. 21 And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. 22 And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died. 23 In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”

What the Sadduccees are actually saying is, “See how ridiculous this idea of a resurrection is?” This is an argument that reduces things to the absurd or the ridiculous. If the afterlife was just a little better version of this place, as the Pharisees believed, then people would be running around in the afterlife trying to figure out who the woman belongs to. The Sadduccees came to the Word with a limited understanding of who God is and how big God is. Because they could not understand how that system could be, they used all of their theological gymnastics to just disregard the notion all together.

This happens today with various cults and unorthodox teachings from people that, because they cannot understand how one God can be three persons, deny the Trinity or someone cannot except a judgement that last for all eternity, deny the existence of Hell. They are coming to the text with their preconceived notions and not letting the Word say what it says. Jesus has harsh words for these so-called “learned” individuals.

24 Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?

He tells them, “You are dying on this hill and you don’t even have a basis for your battle.” They refused to learn anything about it because that wasn’t the way the god they had created in their mind would operate. I think this is a good time to parse out the difference in knowing, not just the words but the meaning.

Do you think the Sadduccees knew the first five books of the bible? The answer is yes. They had those five books memorized. It was part of the requirements of their education. They could quote them and argue them and teach them, but there is a big difference between knowing what they say and knowing and applying what they mean. I have met a lot of people that could quote a lot of Scripture and their hard was harder than granite. That is the difference between knowing the Word and being transformed by the word. Because they knew what the bible said, they felt like they had arrived. They felt like they could learn no more, when you get to that space you limit God to what your own brain can comprehend. That leads to self righteousness and ultimately away from God. It makes your heart hard and you don’t think God can move through anything that you don’t understand or is not in your own picture of what God can do.

Have you ever been there? I served under a pastor for some time and I did not like how he taught and I thought that the way he viewed and handled Scripture, in some ways, was incorrect; but I felt that God had me at that church for a reason, so I stayed and I served. I remember multiple Sundays I would leave church and feel like I didn’t get anything out of the message. I would blame the pastor’s teaching style and his lack of learning for why this was, until one day I prayed about it and had a realization that the reason I wasn’t gaining anything from the sermons is because my heart was hard and my pride was keeping me from hearing what God had to say through this man. When we do this we are not better than the Sadduccees that think they have it all figured out. Anything other than their way of viewing Scripture was wrong because they knew what it said, but they didn’t know what it meant.

Jesus goes on to explain what would happen in the hypothetical situation that they posed to Jesus.

25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

He is telling them that their idea of the resurrection is false and it is nothing like what they think about it. While Jesus corrects their false doctrine on resurrection, he also puts his finger in another false assumption they also had. The Apostle Paul helps us to understand more fully the beliefs of the Sadduccees Acts 23:8, “For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, NOR ANGEL, nor spirit.” Jesus brings up angels to show them again just how wrong they are in their entire presuppositions that they are bringing to the bible.

Side note here. We all come to the Bible and to God with our own understanding of the world, culture and different backgrounds. In other words, we all have our own ideas about who God is. To illustrate this, you could go around town and ask people, “Who is Jesus to you?” and they would give you as many answers as people that you asked. No one is excluded from this. We come to the bible with our likes and our dislikes and things that we can never think that God would do or understand why He does what He does. All of that is baked into the cake, but what we must always work to do is to let our hearts and thoughts be molded to the Word and not the Word molded to fit into our understanding.

This angel reference is a particularly interesting response. Notice he doesn’t say that “if” the resurrection occurs but “when” and he doesn’t say that the we turn into angels but we are like the angels. This brings to mind all sorts of questions. What are the angels doing up there? What is that like? If we are not given in marriage in the afterlife, will I know my spouse? Will I know my children?

Let’s answer the angel question first. Like the angels, there is no need for procreation in heaven, therefore there is no need for procreation acts that make two one. We will be eternal which means there will be no death which means there will be no need to continue the human race.

So what about our relationships in heaven? We will meet and be with millions of people worshipping God for all eternity, but what about these people that the Lord has given us here? I was listening to a pastor this week talk about this and I want to share what he said about this question.

“For every good thing will be better in heaven than on earth. If God has given you a Christian husband or wife, parent or child, brother or friend, you can be sure that, whatever the parameters of your future relationship with them may be, the friendship will be closer there than it is now. You will know them more intimately, love them more intensely, delight in them more fully. It is impossible that we should lose anything good in that place where good abounds. We can look at Christians whom we love especially and praise God that we will continue to love them, more and more, for ever and ever.”

The good Father with his perfect gifts for His children will never disappoint. Jesus further unravels the Sadduccees misunderstanding of the meaning of the Scriptures, he tells the men,

26 And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”

“How could you miss it?” Jesus is asking the Sadduccees, these great knowers of all things. They wanted to challenge Jesus by quoting Scripture, so Jesus says, “While we are in the book of Moses, have you ever read the story of Moses?”

Some of you may not know, but by the time Moses stands before the burning bush and God calls him to be the one that will lead His people out of Egypt; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have been dead for around 400 years. If you notice the text, it says, “I AM the God not I WAS the God. So what is Moses saying? Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are still, in some form, alive! Jesus is telling them, “You are trying to prove something wrong that you have no idea about.” The last sentence in this text is, “You are quite wrong.”

Is this you? Are you so hard hearted that regardless of what the bible says you stand in a spirit of stubbornness? Are there things that God says that we should not do in the bible that you reject because of what the culture says or because of what you THINK? I was speaking with a pastor friend of mine this past week and his denomination is going through a large split. On his side of the split they are standing on biblical morality and on the other side they want to shape the church to more fit the culture with ideas of sexual identities and same sex relationships. On my friends side of this debate they want to continue to dig into the word and historical church tradition and try to be more closely aligned with what Jesus would have them do and the other side, hard hearted, is trying to make the bible fit what they think the god they created in their mind should look like. They are coming to the text with a certain cup and when you pour the water into the cup, the water takes the shape of the cup.

While the Sadduccees would never say that they were influenced by tradition, they were steeped in it. The real problem with the text today is authority. Where do we find our authority? Is it with the traditions of men or is it in the Word alone? The answer to this question shows what you worship. If it is power, status, wanting to be seen, wanting to LOOK good then you worship the god you have created in your mind, but if our authority is the true God, then we live as Romans 12:1-4 says that we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, we are not conformed to the world but are transformed by the renewing of our mind, that by testing we can discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

We should be constantly reforming, never arriving but always testing our ways to make sure we are aligned with Christ.