The Book of Mark #73 chapter 12:18-27
The Book of Mark
Biblical Ignorance in High Places
Mark 12:18-27
 
Mark 12:18-27
 
in verse 18, we are introduced to a group of Jewish leaders called Sadducees.  They are the second of three groups that come to Jesus in an attempt to discredit Him before the people and convince the Roman leaders He must die.
 
First came the Pharisees, accompanied by the Herodians.  They attempt to get Him to appear as a rebel against the Roman government by telling the Jews they don’t have to pay taxes.   And as we saw, that attempt didn’t work. 
 
Now comes the second group, the Sadducees, who are a sect of Judaism who deny the reality of resurrection. In fact, they deny anything supernatural. They denied the the existence of angels.  They denied the existence of spirits. And they denied the resurrection. 
 
Now they are in the minority because of that because Judaism embraced all of those, including resurrection. And oddly enough, even though they were in the minority, the controlled the temple. 
From the High Priest on down through the chief priests was predominantly Sadducees. And eveno though they were in the minority of Judaism, they controlled the majority of the Sanhedrin.
 
And now it’s their turn to try and trap Jesus so they can do away with Him. 
So how are they going to do that? While the Pharisees tried to catch Him in a dilemma, they try by making Him look stupid. That’s their goal. They want to make Him look like a fool. They are very powerful, very wealthy, very influential and aristocratic. They wield the power and they think that they can accomplish what the lowlife Pharisees couldn’t pull off.
 
Matthew tells us they came to Jesus on the same day and remember, their goal is to make Jesus look like a fool because everybody knows Jesus affirms resurrection. 
 
By the way, they are very, very familiar with the fact that He raised Lazarus from the dead just a few weeks before this.  And when He raised Lazarus, He said, “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in Me shall never die.” and Jesus actually said to His sisters, “He will rise again.” And they said, “I know, in the last day.”
 
So they knew that Jesus believed in the resurrection. And their aim is to trap Him in a logical absurdity and turn Him into a fool so that the people would see Him as less able to handle the Scripture than they were. They wanted to show Him up.
 
So let me just point out two things int his text. 
 
1.  Their Scenario
 
Verses 19-23
 
 
 
Now to understand the basis for their question, we really need to know the background from Jewish law.  So let’s back up to Deuteronomy 25 and see what Moses had to say about this situation. 
 
Deuteronomy 25:5
 
 at verse 5. “When brothers live together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man.”
 
So far, so good.  If brothers are living near one another and one of them dies and has no son, the wife then transfers over to the other brother.  That sounds like a pretty good reason not to live near your brother!
 
Verses 6-10
 
Suffice it to say they had some strange customs back in the day, but that was something you didn’t want attached to your door because that means you don’t take up the responsibility to have a child and an heir so that the family estate can continue.
 
And without going into all the why’s and wherefore’s, suffice it to say, all of this was done for the preservation of God’s people and the tribal identity and the lands assigned to them.
 
And it is this law the Sadducees are referencing there in verse 19. They’re quoting right out of Deuteronomy 25:5.
 
 
Now based on that example given by Moses thousands of years before, they come up with this bizarre scenario of seven brothers who kept dying and this poor old gal keeps getting passed along and she never has a male child and finally she dies, I’m assuming from sheer exhaustion!
 
Then here comes their sarcastic joke:  So in the resurrection when they rise again, which one’s wife will she be?”
 
Now apparently they had been listening to their Pharisee counterparts because the Pharisees affirmed  you would be married in heaven as you were married on earth. They said the next life would be exactly like this one and relationships were forever. 
 
 Pharisees said the next life is going to be exactly like this life. The Pharisees said that relationships are forever, they’re permanent.
 
So in fairness, if we had been Sadducees in the day and we had been listening to the doctrine of resurrection according to the Pharisees, then the resurrection would appear to us to be an absurdity also. 
 
And I’ll guarantee you in their culture and certainly in ours if we’re going to be in the same relationships and things are going to continue in the next life the same way they are here, then there’s going to be some things very difficult to sort out and somebody’s got some explaining to do!
 
So their scenario, even though it is hypothetical, is absurd.
But notice how Jesus responds.  Her we find
 
2.  His Solution
 
verse 24
 
The problem you’re having is because of your ignorance.  You’re ignorant of Scripture and you are ignorant of the power of God.
 
In other words, Jesus is saying, “The problem here is not with me, the problem here is with you. You’ve just put your ignorance on display.”
 
So now who’s the fool?  By the way, there is a very interesting word study in this verse in the word “mistaken”.  The verb mistaken is planao from which we get the word planet and it means “to cause to wander” or “to lead astray”.
 
In other words, Jesus says, “You are leading yourselves astray by your biblical ignorance. You’re mentally wandering. You’ve been cut loose from reality. You’ve lost contact with reason. You’re disconnected from truth.”
 
Specifically, they did not understand the Scriptures. And that indictment would fit anyone who misrepresents the truth. You do not understand.  You don’t care to understand the scriptures. You have no ability and you have no interest in understanding the scriptures. You, in reality, are the fools.
 
Now that was especially difficult for the Sadducees to hear because they prided themselves on their knowledge of scriptures, and especially the writings of Moses.
Secondly, he says, you also don’t understand the power of God because the power of God is revealed in the Scripture. How could you possibly not understand that God could create a resurrection any way He wanted to if you really understand the first two chapters of Genesis? 
 
If God created everything in six days with the tremendous intricacy and detail that we see in the physical earth and universe, why do you refuse to believe He could do that with a dead body?
 
You misunderstand the Scripture and you certainly misunderstand the power of God. Had they known the scriptures, they would have known that God promises resurrection. Had they known the Pentateuch, they would have known that God promises resurrection. And had they known the power of God, truly they would have known that God can create any kind of life that He wants. They were spiritually dead. They were spiritually blind. And consequently it was ignorance in high places.
 
Did they think God was only what they could conceive Him as being? Did they think that God was not capable of sorting out husbands in heaven, or creating a kind of life in which their scenario was an absurdity?
 
And then he explains himself in
 
verse 25a
 
In other words, the next life won’t be like this life.  , The whole concept of marriage and sex and reproduction and family as we’ve know it ceases to exist.
That’s why to believe Mormon doctrine and their notion of becoming a God and having multiple wives and populating your own planet is unscriptural.  If you knew the Scriptures, you’d know that is worng.  You’ve got to write your own Bible to validate that doctrine which is what Joseph Smith did. 
 
That’s why the Islamic view of everlasting sex on green pillows with 72 virgins, or whatever they promise the martyrs is wrong. The whole concept of sex and reproduction and birth and family is for this life and is not for the life to come.
 
There is no marriage in heaven. There are no sexual relationships, no families and no exclusive relationships in heaven.  Everything revolves around our relationship with God.  He is our Father.  We are the bride of Christ.  And the satisfaction of that union is enjoyed for all eternity.
 
And just to make it even more clear, notice how Jesus continues. 
 
Verse 25b
 
Notice He doesn’t say we’re going to be angels. And remember, they didn’t believe in angels either.  SO how will we be like angels?  What does that mean?
 
They are glorious. They are eternal. They are heavenly beings. They do not cohabitate. They do not reproduce. They are eternal.  On and on the list could go.
 
So they were ignorant of the Scripture and they were ignorant of the power of God. Then, in verse 26, the Lord throws in a little sarcasm of His own:
Verse 26
 
According to Matthew 22:31, He says, “Haven’t you read about the resurrection?” You’re supposed to be the experts.  And by the way, since you like to quote Moses so much, think about this!
 
That is a serious indictment against those who deemed themselves the experts on the writings of Moses.
 
“Have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him, to Moses, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’”
 
So what does that have to do with anything? That’s Exodus 3:6. “I am the God of Abraham. I am the God of Isaac. I am the God of Jacob.”
 
The impact of this is, I am and they are. Get that? God speaks of His covenant relationship with the patriarchs who aren’t around, who have died. And He says, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I am and they are, not I was and they were.”
 
It doesn’t say, “I was the God of Abraham, I was the God of Isaac, I was the God of Jacob, which He would have had to say if they were out of existence.” He makes an identification in the present tense about living men even though though they were all dead by Exodus 3.
 
 
 
 
In Genesis 26:24, in Genesis 28:13, God calls Himself the God of Abraham after Abraham has died. In Exodus 3 and then again in Exodus ...three times in Exodus 3 and another time in Exodus 4 God calls Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all three, as I said, have died.
 
God says, “I am the God of these men and He is not a God worshiped by corpses. I am the God of Abraham. I am the God of Isaac. I am the God of Jacob, emphasizing the personal reality of each, the personal existence of each.”
 
And then He seals this by saying, at the end, verse 27, Jesus speaking of God, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
 
So who’s the fool? They are.   He is the God of the living. There in the most obvious place in the writings of Moses was the evidence of the afterlife. All those years and years and years of poking around in the writings of Moses to prove there was no resurrection and there, right under their noses, God identifies Himself as the God of those who are living..
 
There will be a resurrection and you will be in it, a resurrection unto life and a resurrection unto death. There will be a resurrection. Every person will live forever.
 
Then notice His final word to them, “You are greatly mistaken.”
 
And the Sadducees fade away, just like the Pharisees did. They were totally frustrated by so simple an answer that the people must have thought, “What kind of fools are they that they missed that?
You really don’t want to get in to this kind of discussion with the Son of God. You can’t win.
 
For us, isn’t it wonderful to think about the resurrection? That this is not the end? That this is not the way we’re going to be forever in any sense, physical, spiritually, we’re going to have a glorified body, perfect in every way in form, and more importantly perfect internally in spirit.
 
We will be perfect lovers of God, perfect worshipers of God, perfect lovers of one another. We’ll have perfect knowledge. We’ll be perfectly motivated to do perfect service, rendering perfect obedience and doing it all with absolute undiminished joy and we’ll do that forever and never ever have to take a deep breath. We’ll never be weary, never be tired, never be bored, never be discouraged, never be disappointed, joy upon joy upon joy upon joy.
 
And when we are raised, just so that we don’t leave anything up to speculation, it says that when Jesus comes, Philippians 3:20, “He will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.” He’s going to give us a form like His resurrection form and a spirit that is perfectly holy. And this is all by grace, isn’t it?
 
Well, it won’t be long before the scribes come and take their shot at Jesus and we’ll look at that next time we gather, Lord willing. 
 
Let’s pray