Passion week day 3: Sadducees and resurrection; Question from a lawyer followed by a question from Christ. Matt 22:23-33; Mark 12:28-34; Matt 22:41-46 Part 2

Day three of the Passion week:

 

While walking along on Solomon’s porch His authority is questioned:

 

Matt 21:23-27

 

Question of tribute to Caesar: Was Jesus a nationalist?

Matt 22:15-22

 

Mark 12:13-17

 

The widow’s mite:

 

Luke 21:1-4

 

Mark 12:41-44

 

Greeks seek to speak to Jesus and Jesus’ last appeal to Israel:

 

John 12:20-36

 

The Sadducees and the resurrection:

 

Matt 22:23 On that day some Sadducees (who say there is no resurrection) came to Him and questioned Him,

 

Matt 22:24saying, "Teacher, Moses said, 'If a man dies, having no children, his brother as next of kin shall marry his wife, and raise up an offspring to his brother.'

 

Matt 22:25"Now there were seven brothers with us; and the first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother;

 

Matt 22:26so also the second, and the third, down to the seventh.

 

Matt 22:27"And last of all, the woman died.

 

Matt 22:28"In the resurrection therefore whose wife of the seven shall she be? For they all had her."

 

Matt 22:29But Jesus answered and said to them, "You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures, or the power of God.

 

Matt 22:30"For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

 

Matt 22:31"But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read that which was spoken to you by God, saying,

 

Matt 22:32'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living. " 

 

Matt 22:33 And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.

 

I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This means far more than just stating that He is the God of Israel or that He is the God of grace over liars, deceivers, and scoundrels, although it includes that.

 

/This name is prophetic as revealing that God will fulfill His promises to Israel and for that fulfillment there must be the resurrection of all born again Israel.\  

 

But like all so called scholars of our day, whose minds are mired in the materialistic and whose head is full of knowledge only, all of these passages could be explained away by the false interpretation of other passages, the application of empirical science, and just good ole fashioned stubbornness of their own point of view. This is the issue with the Sadducees.

 

Since Christ’s resurrection is still in the future, to speak of that would have just confused them and it would have probably confused the disciples as well.

 

When we just simply look at their question, it is clear that they believe heaven to simply be a resuscitated earth of the same format all over again.

 

/To them eternity is just a restored earth with the same issues that man has now. This is nothing more than a materialistic view and really a short sighted one.\

 

Matt 22:29 But Jesus answered and said to them, "You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures, or the power of God [He is not bound to the earth like you suppose].

 

If God is going to destroy the earth, why would He simply make it again just like it was? Isn’t it destroyed because of the evil it is saturated with?

 

Was it commanded to marry your sister-in-law if your brother died? It was and obligation but it was not commanded. If you were the brother you could refuse to marry your sister in law, but you would be known as a man who would not sustain your brother’s property and name and so it impugned your character.

 

We find the same situation in the book of Ruth where Boaz who was not the closest kinsman to Ruth had to ask another kinsman of Ruth if he would marry her. When he refused Boaz became her kinsman redeemer, being a type of Christ.

 

This was done not because of the loneliness of the widow, but so that the land owned by your brother would not fall into the hands of a creditor. Also, the first born son of the new union was to be named after the dead brother and so his name was preserved in Israel.

Ok, so now that we’ve cleared that up, what gives with this question?

 

Most likely, such a practice would only occur once. It would be pretty rare that a woman would see her husband die and then her betrothed brother in law die in her lifetime.

 

/But putting all that correct interpretation of the law aside, the Sadducees evoke a completely ridiculous example, which might be real, but even if it is, one doesn’t interpret an eternal policy of God, like lifestyle in eternity, from such an obscure reference. \

 

However, again, to the Sadducees eternity was just a reproduction of time; that the unseen was just like the seen. This is a grossly materialistic view of eternity.

 

Here in lies the principle:

 

/God’s work in eternity is not just a re-awakening, but a complete transformation to which no one has any empirical experience.\

 

I have heard believers belittle heaven because of this principle of non-marriage in heaven for the only reason that they want to have sex in eternity. If you are thinking about this, let me give you some counsel, “what is in store for your physical gratification in eternity is nothing like you’ve ever experienced before in any realm, even in great sex with your spouse. Yes, it’s a billion times better.”

 

Fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and all forms of sensual immorality are the result of man’s OSN. Tell me, what was the marriage ceremony in the Garden of Eden? Was a commitment made between Adam and the Woman? And was a lack of commitment made because they were the only ones there or was it because in perfection there is no need for laws governing mankind’s conduct in the right man/right woman relationship?

 

They could have spoken their commitment but it wasn’t necessary because it was understood. Adam was given Ishshah and Ishshah was given to Adam and even if there were a million other people around they would have been completely committed to one another.

 

Not so with OSN’s involved.

 

It is my firm belief, of which I have no scripture and only inference that right man and right woman have compatible souls that reach maximum capacity for report’ and that these souls will have such a report’ for all eternity. Christ is our only bride and He is always our top priority on earth, even if we are married to our right one, and it heaven it will be the same but there will be no need for laws of marriage.

 

So simply put by Christ, “You do not understand the scriptures, or the power of God. He is not the God of the dead but of the living, of which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are.”

 

Matt 22:33 And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.

 

 

And now we have a lawyer, a scribe, who, along with the Pharisees, was elated to see the Lord gag and muzzle the Sadducees.

 

Matt 22:34 But when the Pharisees heard that He had put the Sadducees to silence, they gathered themselves together.

 

Matt 22:35And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him,

 

Matt 22:36"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"

 

Matt 22:37And He said to him,  "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'  

 

Matt 22:38"This is the great and foremost commandment.

 

Matt 22:39 "The second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 

 

Matt 22:40 "On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."

 

/Comparing this with the account given in Mark we see that this scribe is testing Him, but after hearing our Lord’s reply and the quickness of that reply caused this Scribe to rethink his purpose.\

 

Mark 12:28 And one of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, "What commandment is the foremost of all?"

 

Mark 12:29 Jesus answered, "The foremost is, 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; [Adonai Elihenu, Adonai Echab] 

 

/The command is to hear. Perceive the infinite integrity and love of God.\

 

Mark 12:30and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.'

 

Mark 12:31"The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." 

 

Mark 12:32 And the scribe said to Him, "Right, Teacher, You have truly stated that He is One; and there is no one else besides Him;

 

 

Mark 12:33 and to love Him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as himself, is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."

 

Mark 12:34 And when Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently, He said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And after that, no one would venture to ask Him any more questions.

 

The Lord is not teaching them or us to order the commandments from greater to smaller as if some of them could be set aside or neglected, but that all commands sprang from these two.

 

/Personal love for God and impersonal unconditional love for your neighbor are the foundation or root cause on which all other commands are based.\

 

/John 14:15

"If you love Me, you will keep [tereo = guard] My commandments. \

 

/It was teaching similar to that concerning the Resurrection; that, as concerning the promises, so concerning the commandments, all Revelation was one connected whole; not disjointed ordinances of which the letter was to be weighed, but a life springing from love to God and love to man.\

Here again we see the relationship between the heavenly and the earthly.

 

/You cannot love your neighbor until you have personal love for God. God emphasis must come before people emphasis.\

 

Did the sacrifices and burnt offerings have real redemptive power? No!

 

HEB 10:4 or it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

 

HEB 10:5 erefore, when He comes into the world, He says,

"Sacrifice and offering Thou hast not desired,

But a body Thou hast prepared for Me;

 

HEB 10:6  whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast taken no pleasure.

 

HEB 10:7 hen I said, 'Behold, I have come  

(In the roll of the book it is written of Me)

To do Thy will, O God.'"

 

HEB 10:8 After saying above, "Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast not desired, nor hast Thou taken pleasure in them" (which are offered according to the Law),

 

HEB 10:9 then He said, "Behold, I have come to do Thy will." He takes away the first in order to establish the second.

 

HEB 10:10 By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

 

/So noble was the answer of Christ that for the moment the traditionalism of the scribe lost its sway over him. This is the power of truth.\

 

Truth cuts through the fog and the falsehoods of religion and man/earthly based religion.

 

Hearing the word of God is an opportunity to hear from heaven and like the incarnation, personal perception of the word of God is Christ coming into the world from heaven.

 

He for once recognized the spiritual beauty of the Law looking past the letter of the Law.

 

/The word of God makes you see your need and then it fills it. \

 

Whether or not he became a believer is unknown.

 

 

/The Lord question to the Pharisees about David’s Son and Lord.\

 

Matt 22:41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question,

 

Matt 22:42 saying, "What do you think about the Christ [the Lord’s anointed One], whose son is He?" They said to Him, "The son of David."

 

Matt 22:43 He said to them, "Then how does David in the Spirit call Him 'Lord,' saying [Psalm 110],

 

Matt 22:44 'The Lord said to my Lord,

"Sit at My right hand,

Until I put Thine enemies beneath Thy feet"'?

 

Matt 22:45 "If David then calls Him 'Lord,' how is He his son?" 

 

Matt 22:46 And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day on to ask Him another question.

 

The Scribe had originally come to ask his question with mixed motives, partially inclined towards Christ from His answer to the Sadducees, and yet intending to subject Him to the Rabbinic test concerning the first commandment.

 

The effect of Christ’s answer now circled through his mind causing him silence as well as all the rest of His would be questioners.

 

This induced Christ to follow up the impression that he had made with a theological question that they were all familiar with, that of the descent of the Messiah. Whose Son was He?

 

And when they replied: ‘The Son of David,’ He referred them to the opening words of Psalm 110, in which David called the Messiah ‘Lord.’

 

The argument proceeded, of course, on the two-fold supposition that the Psalm was Davidic and that it was Messianic. Neither of these statements would have been questioned by the ancient Synagogue.

 

Therefore, we again have light shown on the difference between heaven and earth, which is the hidden theme of the Lord’s third day.

 

Taken verse by verse no one could argue that this Psalm was not of David [that is its title: “A Psalm of David] nor could they argue that it wasn’t Messianic.

 

No one else besides the Messiah could fit the description of “Lord” in this Psalm.

 

/The question is to open their minds to what the Pharisees and Sadducees were not teaching for hundreds of years - the higher truths of the scriptures. \

 

All questions put up to Him have been idiotic. His answers have dumbfounded them, silenced them, amazed them, and now with that clear in their minds He’s entreating them to look at what they have been doing or rather not doing with the scripture - actually understanding it.

 

 

 

They have continued to confuse the earthly with the heavenly. Well, here’s the connection fellas, the heavenly (God) came to the earthly (became a man) to clear up your ignorance of the heavenly and to save you from the earthly.

 

/The Lord is pointing out their utter incompetence to teach the higher truths, but more importantly He is attempting to open their hearts to this truth.\

 

If you say, “The Lord is our God, the Lord is One [unique],” if the Messiah is Lord and the Son of David, then who is He?

 

If you shall love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength then what is the connection between the Lord’s love for you and your love for the Lord?

 

/The connection is the hypostatic union of our Lord. He is undiminished deity (Lord) and He is true humanity (son of David) in one person forever and He is the Passover Lamb.\

 

Trained in the NT doctrine we would naturally and easily say, “the cross.” But being so uneducated in anything besides the letter of the Law, none of these Jews were making any connections in the word of God.

 

/Rather than seeing the word as one seamless flow of revelation that is all connected to one great mission of God towards man, they saw individual doctrines as disjointed and unconnected.\

 

Viewed separately, the two statements, that Messiah was David’s Son, and that David owned Him Lord, would seem incompatible.

 

But in their combination in the Person of the Christ, how harmonious and how full of teaching He is concerning the nature of His Kingdom and His work that will make that Kingdom possible.

 

This is not only to Israel of old, but to all men.  

 

The Lord is taking them down a path of discovery that the leaders should have been doing for centuries. And though most will not believe we do read that many of the leadership did believe, but were unwilling to admit it. I can guarantee that our Lord’s answers to these questions were the tipping points to their belief.

 

It was but one step from this demonstration of the incompetence of Israel’s teachers for the position they claimed to a solemn warning on this subject.

 

And this appropriately constitutes Christ’s Farewell to the Temple, to its authorities, and to Israel and it wasn’t a pleasant farewell.

 

As might have been expected, we have the report of it in Matthew’s Gospel - the Gospel of the King.

 

The Lord presents a regular series of charges against the representatives of Judaism, formulated in logical manner, taking up successively one point after the other, and closing with the expression of deepest compassion and longing for that Jerusalem, whose children He would fain have gathered under His sheltering wings from the storm of Divine judgment. But alas, it was not to be.

 

Free will baby, free will.

 

Matt 23

Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, 2 saying, "The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; 3 therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things, and do not do them. 4 "And they tie up heavy loads, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. 5 "But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men; for they broaden their phylacteries, and lengthen the tassels of their garments. 6 "And they love the place of honor at banquets, and the chief seats in the synagogues, 7 and respectful greetings in the market places, and being called by men, Rabbi. 8 "But do not be called Rabbi; for One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 "And do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. 10 "And do not be called leaders; for One is your Leader, that is, Christ. 11 "But the greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 "And whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.

13 "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from men; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. 14 **["Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows' houses, even while for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you shall receive greater condemnation.]

15 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel about on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.

16 "Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obligated.' 17 "You fools and blind men; which is more important, the gold, or the temple that sanctified the gold? 18 "And, 'Whoever swears by the altar, that is nothing, but whoever swears by the offering upon it, he is obligated.' 19 "You blind men, which is more important, the offering or the altar that sanctifies the offering? 20 "Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears both by the altar and by everything on it. 21 "And he who swears by the temple, swears both by the temple and by Him who dwells within it. 22 "And he who swears by heaven, swears both by the throne of God and by Him who sits upon it.

23 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. 24 "You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!

25 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. 26 "You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also.

27 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. 28 "Even so you too outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

29 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and say,' If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. '  31 "Consequently you bear witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets [they have wanted to kill Christ for over a year]. 32 "Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers. 33 "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the sentence of hell? 34 "Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, 35 that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 "Truly I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation.

37 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. 38 "Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! 39 "For I say to you, from now on you shall not see Me until you say, ' Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!'"