The Challenge

Big-shot Jewish leaders were challenging Jesus with the hotly-contested questions of their day. Pharisees and Herodians brought the first challenge – to pay or not to pay taxes to Caesar. In Mark 12:18-27 some Sadducees brought the second challenge to our Lord.

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead (Mark 12:18) or in angels or spirits (Acts 23:8). That’s why they were so SAD, YOU SEE. They did what men often do. They came up with some off-the-wall scenario to “prove” their position. Their scenario had to do with the Jewish law. If a man died having no children, his brother was to take his widow and attempt to conceive a child for his brother’s name so his brother’s family name would not die out. (I know, it gives me the shivers, too…but this was their society and their rules, given by God.) So the woman married the oldest brother, who died, and so the next brother in line took her in. Let me say, if I was the law in their town, I’d be mighty suspicious. All seven brothers took this woman to wife, and all seven brothers died. Fishy. But that’s not the point. The point is, she had married seven men during her stay on this earth. I dare say there are some women today who come pretty close to this number, unfortunately.

“In the resurrection, when they rise again, which one’s wife will she be? For all seven had married her,” they said (Mark 12:23). They sat back with their thumbs in their suspenders mighty satisfied with themselves for presenting such impenetrable proof against the resurrection. Isn’t it funny how we do the same thing? We put forward some impossible, or improbable, scenario and think we have just disproven the word of God or wormed our way around one of God’s laws! How funny we are. How silly. How stupid!

Jesus’ answer stung, I’m sure. He confronted them on two fronts.

(1) He said they did not understand the Scriptures. What?? They had spent their LIVES studying the scriptures. They were the authority at the time. To tell these men they didn’t understand is like telling Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, or Billy Graham that they don’t understand the Scriptures. That was unexpected.

(2) He said they did not understand the power of God. In our little brains, we think we know what can and can’t happen. But God operates outside of all the rules which bind us on this earth. God is not bound by gravity, heat or cold, time, distance, life or death, etc. How humbling (or humiliating) it must have been for Jesus to tell them they didn’t understand the power of God.

But Jesus didn’t stop with this statement. He backed His answer up with Scripture. We learn a couple of things from His response:

(1) We should use Scripture when we talk about God and what He wants or what He said. It is meaningless to simply assert there is or is not a resurrection unless we have Scripture to back it up. Our word is not the authority – God’s word is the authority!

(2) Many Scriptures have applications beyond what we have traditionally understood. When God spoke to Moses at the burning bush, He said, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Mark 12:26). Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were dead and gone. But God still said “I AM their God.” He used a present tense verb. He was their God at the time He spoke to Moses. Jesus said this meant that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were still living, even though they were dead and gone. “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken,” Jesus finished (Mark 12:27). Even the tenses of verbs in Scripture are important! We should handle the Scriptures carefully.

Is there anything else that made an impression on you in this reading?

God bless,
Nathan