The Weekend Word
Matthew 22:23-33
Sadducees Ask About the Resurrection
23 The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question,
- Different opposition group – same challenge … trap Jesus.
24 saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’
- Don’t you just love it when opposition groups address Jesus as teacher?
- What, are they now here to learn from him? – do they want to sign up as one of his disciples?
- It is important to note that here is a group that says there is no resurrection, yet they will use the resurrection for their own purpose.
- They are like the atheist who proclaims “there is no God, and I hate him.”
- Their purpose – as all the other groups – to trap Jesus.
- Just as the Pharisees would use their enemy the Herodians, if it means getting rid of Jesus, all is fair. So they use a resurrection they do not believe in.
25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother.
26 So too the second and third, down to the seventh.
27 After them all, the woman died.
28 In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.”
- Could they have come up with a more off the wall challenge?
- OK Jesus, we have a real mess here – what are you going to do? I can imagine, with an unsavory grin, they are asking – ‘teach us’.
29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.
- The answer by Jesus is brilliant – “you are wrong.”
- Can you imagine saying this to someone in conversation today? To tell someone on a point of debate that they are wrong is considered not tolerant.
- What is the standard of right and wrong here? The scriptures!!
30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
- Note – We do not become angels. In this example we share a feature that the angels also have.
- We need to make that clear to people we have contact with. We do not get our wings when we die. People unwittingly deny the resurrection with that kind of thinking.
- So what is the similarity? No marriage in heaven – we are all married to the bridegroom.
- Nice try guys – there is a resurrection – but you are asking the wrong question – in other words as Jesus said in v. 29 ‘you are wrong’.
31 And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God:
- What has God said about the resurrection of the dead – there is one!
- And who is at the front of this – your heroes
- Again he is pointing out “you are wrong by saying that God “said to you.”
32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.”
- Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not dead – so they must be living.
33 And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.
- And all the Sadducees said “well shut my mouth!”
- Oh how great the church would be today, if only we were still astonished by God’s word.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not dead – so they must be living.<<<<
And they take prayer requests.
“you are wrong…” FWIW – i like MLD’s observations on that
those words, how we react to them, can tell us a lot about ourselves… it seems to me that we pew sitters today are best described as the children of Eph 4:14 “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”
yes, we need humility, we need to be teachable, but we need to give ourselves permission to be discerning, also… and that is difficult to achieve without arrogance creeping in … or so it seems to me (we truly do live in and confront in so many ways daily “a body of death”)
Colossians 1:9-10 … do our pastors pray this way or do they pray that they, themselves will be successful? i don’t know, i truly don’t know…
sorry, i seem to be in what my kids used to call my “preacher mom mode”
“Oh how great the church would be today, if only we were still astonished by God’s word.”
Amen!
praying that the MLD family’s move isn’t much impacted by the heat wave there
God keep
Em, thank you for the thoughtful concern. I have been up there 9 of the past 10 weekends, but we are making the final move Saturday.
123 degrees today, but I am in SoCal.