Bad Question
Opening Prayer
Mighty Lord, how great You are and how wonderfully great Your power! You are truly and only God! I praise You.
Read Mark 12:18-27
[18] Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. [19] “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. [20] Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. [21] The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. [22] In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. [23] At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?” [24] Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? [25] When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. [26] Now about the dead rising-have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? [27] He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!” Scripture taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION
Reflect
Why was this question so "off the mark"?The pressure on Jesus just keeps growing. Every powerful group in Judaism has challenged him: the chief priests and teachers of the law (11:18), the elders (11:27), the Pharisees and Herodians (12:13), and now the Sadducees (18). This time the challenge is a hypothetical question about the resurrection, something which the Sadducees didn’t believe in anyway! Like many of today’s atheists, the Sadducees thought that they had a killer question, which was, in fact, nothing of the sort. According to Deuteronomy 25:5, a childless widow should marry her husband’s brother, so that his line continued. If this happened six times over, they asked, whose wife would she be when it came to the resurrection? Just like many of today’s critics, they hadn’t done their homework, and Jesus spotted that immediately. If they’d known their scriptures better (24,25) they would have realized that there would be no marriage at the resurrection. They would also have known that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were still alive (26,27), which assumes resurrection. But Jesus’ parallel condemnation was that they did not know the “power of God” (24). If God is all-powerful, resurrection is perfectly possible.
Apply
Do you have friends who struggle to believe? Pray they see God in your life and be helped to trust him.
Closing prayer
Lord Jesus, may Your powerful work in me be so obvious that others will see it and be drawn to You.
Click here to sign up to receive the EXTRAs via email each quarter.
© 2024 Scripture Union U.S.A. All rights reserved. Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents without written permission is prohibited.
Discovery is published in the USA under license from Scripture Union England and Wales, Trinity House, Opal Court, Opal Drive, Fox Milne, Milton Keynes, MK15 0DF.