Mark 12 -- More In There Than We'll Ever Know

The Jewish leaders kept coming up with questions for Jesus.  But they weren’t trying to learn from Him.  They only sought to trap Him with His own words.  “They were not asking ‘What is true?’ or ‘What is right?’ but ‘What is safe?’  This is always the approach of the hypocrite and the crowd-pleaser,” my commentary said.  In the same way, it’s often tempting to water down the gospel so as not to offend.  But Christ never did this.  Because His time on earth was short, the urgency of His task propelled Him forward and led Him to ask the hard questions that would cause people to decide for or against Him.

 

The Sadducees did not believe in resurrection, yet they asked a hypothetical question about resurrection designed to discredit Jesus.  They only accepted the law of Moses as their scriptural authority, and they’d not found any evidence of resurrection there.  But Jesus showed them otherwise.  When Moses was meeting God at the burning bush, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been dead for around 400 years, but God said, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”  If they were truly dead, God should have said, “I was…”  So that meant they were alive even though they’d died.  The Sadducees thought they knew God’s word, but they’d never considered this.

 

Our pastor was telling about a man who was asking about the length of time needed to earn a seminary degree.  He couldn’t believe that someone could actually take 4 to 6 years to study one Book!  Yet the Sadducees had studied the first five books by Moses for hundreds of years and they’d failed to see the truth that God revealed through Christ!

 

Father, Your Word speaks to us on multiple levels and even in different ways at different times as You bring us to it and direct our lives.  Help me to keep my heart open to what You have not yet shown me, and keep me from turning off my mind when I think I’ve already heard it all on any subject.  For if I did that, I’d be just like the Sadducees.  I want to keep hearing from You every day.  Keep it fresh, Father!

 

Your Brother In Christ,

 

Gary Ford