Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction:
If you have your Bibles let me invite you to open with me to the book of Mark chapter 12.
As you are turning their let me remind you of what is happening at this point in the story.
Jesus has made it to Jerusalem.... the place where he has very clearly said he will face rejection and death.
On Jesus’ first full day in Jerusalem he entered into the temple
The temple was God’s design.
It was his plan for his glory among all the nations.
It was the place where his people could draw near to God in prayer.
It was the place of worship.
It was the place where the nations might come to know the one true God.
But when Jesus entered this place…
He found a very different scene.
Religious people worshipped themselves in the name of God.
In the place built for drawing near to God...
God’s name was being defiled.
In the place built to draw in the nations,
the nations were being exploited.
The religious leaders were not shepherding the people.
They were getting rich off of the people by a corrupt money exchange system.
God’s temple was home of the hypocrites… all in the name of God.
and Jesus was enraged.
He flipped tables,
He drove people out,
and He exclaimed for all to hear…
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers.”
Jesus by no means entered Jerusalem quietly trying to avoid the death he predicted.
And what follows in the story are a series of 7 confrontations between Jesus and the religious groups there in the temple.
In chapter 11:27-33 they challenge Jesus by questioning his authority.
Last week Drew showed us In chapter 12:13 the Pharisees and the Herodians trying to trap Jesus with a trick question about whether people should pay taxes to Rome.
Jesus handled the question and his opponents had to go back to the drawing board.
This morning we find another attempt to trap Jesus from a different group with in the temple.
This time its the Sadducees.
In contrast to other groups, the Sadducees rejected certain doctrines as well as a large potion of the Old Testament.
They only viewed the first five books of the Old Testament as authoritative, but rejected the prophets.
They rejected any concept of eternal life.
They taught that the soul died with the body.
They also rejected the sovereignty of God .
They taught that all of life was a matter of doing good or evil and reaping the effects of those choices in this temporal life.
They rejected most supernatural things.
They did not believe in angels.
As the old children’s church song goes… the Sadducees were Sad you see.
They lived their life with no hope of the eternal promises of God.
All of this stands in contrast to another group in the temple called the Pharisees.
The Pharisees believed in an after life and a future resurrection of God’s people.
They believed in God’s sovereignty over history
And they believed in the inspiration of the whole Old Testament including the prophets.
The Pharisees simply put an over-emphasis on good works to bolster their own pride and position.
So there was a great debate between these two groups.
But again… the thing that united the Sadducees to the Pharisees was their hatred for Jesus.
Jesus contradicted their view of the world and their way of life.
Jesus had to go.
So lets read how they try to trap Jesus this time and then lets pray for understanding.
Lets Pray
The Sadducees think they have it figured out.
They are going to ask Jesus a question that will both make Jesus look foolish and make the Pharisees look foolish as well.
Either Jesus will reject that there is a future resurrection, and the Pharisees will hate him even more.
Or he will be stumped by the question and thus be discredited.
Either way, the Sadducees come out on top, and both the Pharisee group and the Jesus group look foolish.
The question is a simple one but the Sadducees take it to the extreme just to drive home the point.
They don’t believe in life after death.
But if there were life after death.
What about people who get married multiple times in this life?
Whose spouse will they be in the next life?
The question isn’t really supposed to be answerable… The Sadducees are trying to say that life after death… is a ridiculous concept.
This question is meant to make their point.
What say you Jesus?
Woman is widowed 7 times and marries 7 times, whose wife will she be in the resurrection when they all rise again on the last day?
Here is at least the beginning of Jesus’ answer.
Jesus' position is pretty clear.
“you are wrong...”
But before providing an argument for how they are wrong.....
before providing any logical debate for how the Scriptures actually teach a future resurrection.
Jesus actually addresses the heart of the issue first.
He addresses why they have missed all this in the Scriptures in the first place.
“you neither know the Scripture nor the power of God”
Why did they have no hope for eternal life?
Why did they refuse to believe in future resurrection?
Why were they refusing Jesus, God in the flesh, right before their eyes?
It is not that they had never read the Scriptures,
It is not that they never spoke of God,
It is not that they never performed religious acts,
They were very serious about obeying particular commands found in Torah, the first five books of the bible.,
But despite all of their reading,
despite all of their religion…,
their reading yielded no fruit,
their religion, though about God in theory, had nothing to do with God in reality.
Remember that each of these confrontations with Jesus really have speak to two realities.
In Jesus’ responses we will learn a lot about Jesus, his promises, and plan.
But in Jesus’ opponents, we see glimpses of the sinful heart into which every one of us is prone to wonder
So this morning, we will see two warnings and two truths.
Warning#1 : Beware of Godless Religion
These Sadducees were religious.... but somewhere along the way their religion became more about them then God.
Perhaps if they were to have read the fullness of their Bibles, they would have seen this pitfall in Old Testament Israel.
The Sadducees rejected the prophecies of Isaiah....
but maybe they should have read his warnings.
Listen to Isaiah’s primary indictment of Israel in the very first chapter.
God is wearied with religious practice performed by people who do not know God and do not seek to know him.
God had commanded sacrifices,
he had commanded feasts of remembrance.
He had commanded the holy assembly of God’s people in Israel...
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