Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to Hope for Today, a weekly Bible teaching program that will bring you
[00:00:09] Speaker B: hope for every day.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: It is so good to be with you today as we look into the Word of God together, our, uh, goal is to be disciples of Jesus. We want to be like him, thinking like he thinks, responding like he would respond.
We have room for improvement in this, some more than others. But the important thing is that you start this journey. Direction is much more important than perfection.
This program is produced by Heralds of Hope. Our vision is to use media like radio and social media to make disciples. This is accomplished through expository teaching. And today's lesson is from Mark, chapter 12. Here the Sadducees are questioning Jesus about the resurrection. His answer is very interesting.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: There are many people today who deny the reality of a bodily resurrection.
They have the idea that when you die, you die like an animal. They put you in the ground, and that's the end of it.
There were people with that same worldview who lived during the time of Jesus, too.
In chapter 12 of Mark's gospel, Jesus silenced the Pharisees on the question of authority. And when the Sadducees saw that, oh, they were happy. They considered themselves to be smarter than the Pharisees. And so they decided to try to trap Jesus with their question about the resurrection.
So let's see what happened. I've titled our study the God of the Living. And I'm, um, reading from Mark chapter 12 and verses 18 to 27.
Then some of the Sadducees who say, there is no resurrection came to him, and they asked him, saying, teacher Moses wrote to us that if a man's brother dies and leaves his wife behind and leaves no children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.
Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and dying, he left no offspring.
And the second took her and he died. Nor did he leave any offspring. And the third likewise.
So the seven had her and left no offspring. And last of all, the woman died also.
Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as a wife.
Jesus answered and said to them, are you not therefore mistaken because you do not know the Scriptures nor 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.
But concerning the dead that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses in the burning bush passage how God spoke to him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?
He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.
You are therefore greatly mistaken.
This text records the testimony of two witnesses who verify for us the reality of the resurrection.
And ah, the first testimony is the testimony of Jesus.
As I said at the beginning, the Sadducees wanted to trap Jesus with their question about the resurrection.
Well, we need to ask who were the Sadducees and what motivated them to try to trap Jesus?
Most of the Sadducees were wealthy, arrogant and smug.
They denied the supernatural, including the resurrection. And since they didn't believe in life after death, they pursued wealth and status here on earth.
They opposed the Pharisees, they rejected their oral interpretations of the law, and they didn't accept them as binding on their behavior.
The Sadducees held to the first five books of the Law as being the sole authority of Scripture. But they were not literalists. That is, they believed the Scripture should be modified by human logic. In other words, they wanted the freedom to interpret Scripture as they wanted to.
That sounds familiar, doesn't it?
So these men came to Jesus with a hypothetical question that was based on Deuteronomy, chapter 25 and uh, verses 5 to 10.
Our text gives us a basic idea of the law of Levirate marriage.
So they use this impossible situation of one woman sequentially being the wife of seven brothers and having no children.
Obviously, the Sadducees were not serious about the dialogue and engagement with the truth.
Instead, what they were doing was wielding the weapon of ridicule.
The same weapon that's often used today by those who reject the truth.
When you can't refute the message, what do you do? You attempt to destroy the messenger.
So they sneeringly asked Jesus, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?
And Jesus immediately responded, are you not mistaken because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God.
Wow, that hits pretty hard.
Not knowing the Scriptures by experience prevents one from understanding the power of God. And remember, the Sadducees denied the power of the supernatural.
The word that's translated mistaken may be better rendered as deceived or having wandered astray from the truth. Like those who are mentioned in Jude's epistle, verse 13, these men were wrong in their understanding.
This criticism must have stung because they saw themselves as intellectually superior to the Pharisees.
And here was Jesus, a man who, According to John 7:15, the religious leaders knew, had never studied under the famous rabbis.
And here he was telling them they didn't know the Scriptures or the power of God.
The Hebrew Scriptures repeatedly taught A future bodily resurrection.
But remember what I said. The Sadducees felt free to interpret the Scripture according to human logic, so they rejected the resurrection.
Unfortunately, there are many people like them today in the pulpits of our churches and in the chairs of our seminaries.
Now Jesus explains their error in spiritual terms. They could easily understand if they would have received his teaching. It would have led them onward from far beyond their understanding and far beyond the viewpoints of the Pharisees. But we have no evidence that they ever accepted Jesus teaching.
Jesus said, marriage is for this life. Marriage and procreation will not be needed in heaven because there will be no death. It will be defeated.
Jesus said, uh, those who are counted, worthy to reach heavenly existence cannot die anymore.
Their equality with angels consists in their deliverance from mortality with all its consequences.
They are now entirely the sons of God because they are the sons of the resurrection.
Notice Jesus didn't say if they are resurrected. He said when they are resurrected.
Let me be clear. This resurrection is not simply a, uh, reawakening of the old person. It is a transformation.
The world to come is not merely a reproduction of what has passed away.
Why would you reproduce something that was corrupted by sin?
Listen to Paul's words in Romans 8:21,23.
Because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For, uh, we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together. Until now.
Not only that, but also we who have the first fruits of the Spirit. And even we groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.
Furthermore, in Philippians 3, 2021, Paul wrote, For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly await, uh, for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body, that it may be conformed to his glory, glorious body, according to the working by which he is able even to subdue all things to himself.
And, you know, there's another reason why marriage isn't needed in heaven. Marriage was created as a type of Christ's relationship with the Church.
When we get to heaven, the marriage between Christ and his bride, the Church will be consummated. And so marriage as we know it will no longer be necessary to propagate the human race.
When we're in heaven, there will be no sin. There will be no exploitation of women.
There will be no insults between husbands and their wives.
Our relationships with people we hardly know in this world will be more profound, more blessed, more intimate and more fulfilling than Anything we can experience in marriage, in this life, think of it. We will enjoy far richer human fellowship and communion and than the best communion we can ever experience here in this life.
The authoritative testimony of Jesus provides clear proof that he is the God of the living.
And then the second testimony is the testimony of Moses. So we have the testimony of Jesus, and now we have the testimony of Moses.
Jesus was the master teacher.
The Sadducees appealed to Moses law.
They saw, as I said, the first five books of the Old Testament as carrying supreme authority.
They took the command of Levirate marriage and they extrapolated it to an absurd hypothetical situation.
And they were sure they had Jesus caught in their trap.
But to their surprise, Jesus appealed to the same prophet. He appealed to Moses. He pointed them back to Moses experience at the burning bush, he said. The proof that God raises the dead is evident in Moses record of God's Word in Exodus, chapter 3, verse 6.
There, Moses records God speaking these words of identification.
I am M. And that's the present tense. The God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
Now, physically, all those men were dead.
But that did not mean that they ceased to exist.
Look at what Jesus says in verse 27 of our text.
God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.
So if God is the God of the living, then the patriarchs must exist somehow in the presence of God.
And then in Luke 16's account of the rich man and Lazarus, verse 22 shows Lazarus being carried to Abraham's side in Hades, the place of departed spirits.
What value would this picture have if Abraham didn't exist?
But Abraham actually comforts Lazarus, and he also talks with the rich man using God's words. Through Moses, Jesus communicates himself as the God of the living.
Do you realize what that means to us today?
Abraham is still alive, Isaac still lives. Jacob is alive and well. Their lives are in the hands of the God of the living, who will not let death end our existence.
And so we find in this text not only a magnificent philosophical refutation of the views of the Sadducees, those who tried to trap Jesus, but we see from our Master's own lips his bold and strong affirmation to the oldest question that man has, which is, if a man dies, shall he live again?
Our Lord, without hesitation and without ambiguity, answers that question in the affirmative. We have life and we have it forever.
Jesus ends this monologue with a similar yet strengthened rebuke, to which he began. You are greatly deceived I pray that this mistake, this deception will never be found among us because our God is the God of the living.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Thanks J. Mark for sharing this teaching with us. This was the first time I realized Jesus called the Sadducees greatly mistaken not once but twice.
I had to wonder if any of them took his rebuke to heart and made some changes. Surely there were some of them that thought hard about his rebuke. Yet I also know the human tendency to justify our actions.
And from the rest of the story we know that there were many who did not change.
They continued to protect their status and position even though it was wrong.
May God give us a tender conscience to hear him and respond when His Spirit speaks to us.
How do you allow God's Spirit to work in you?
What can we do so we're not deceived?
If you would like to share your response with us, we'd love to hear from you. Here is how you can reach us. Our email address is hopeheraldsofhope.org or you can visit us on our website. Go to heraldsofhope.org there you will find a Contact Us under the Partner tab on the top right. Click on that to message us directly. This brings us to the end of our lesson today. Thanks so much for being with us. Deception is tricky. In 2 Thessalonians, Paul tells us God sent a lie and some believed it because they refused to love the truth. To guard against deception, we must love the truth.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: Ra.
