Mark 12:18-34 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Mark 12:18-34

• Mark 12:18-27
• 18 Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and questioned him: 19 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife behind but no child, that man should take the wife and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 There were seven brothers. The first married a woman, and dying, left no offspring. 21 The second also took her, and he died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. 22 None of the seven left offspring. Last of all, the woman died too. 23 In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be, since the seven had married her?” 24 Jesus spoke to them, “Isn’t this the reason why you’re mistaken: you don’t know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. 26 And as for the dead being raised—haven’t you read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God said to him: I am the God of Abraham and 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.”
  • This is the only time in Mark that the Sadducees appear and their appearance is entirely characteristic of them
    • They were not a large Jewish party. They were aristocratic  and wealthy. They included most of the priests; the office of high priest was regularly head by a Sadducee
    • Being the wealthy and aristocratic party, they were not unnaturally  collaborations, for they wished to retain their comforts and their privileges. It was from them that there came those who were prepared to collaborate with the Romans in the government of their country
    • They differed very widely from the Pharisees in certain matters
      • They accepted only the written Scriptures and attached more importance to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the OT, than to all the rest
        • They did not accept the mass of oral law and tradition, the rules and regulations which were so dear to the Pharisees
        • It was on the written Mosaic law that they took their stand
      • They did not believe in immortality, nor in spirits and angels
      • They said that in the early books of the Bible there was no evidence for immortality, and they did not accept it
  • The Sadducees came to Jesus with a test question designed to make the belief in individual resurrection look ridiculous
    • Jewish law from Deuteronomy 25:5-10
      • 5 “When brothers live on the same property and one of them dies without a son, the wife of the dead man may not marry a stranger outside the family. Her brother-in-law is to take her as his wife, have sexual relations with her, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law for her. 6 The first son she bears will carry on the name of the dead brother, so his name will not be blotted out from Israel. 7 But if the man doesn’t want to marry his sister-in-law, she is to go to the elders at the city gate and say, ‘My brother-in-law refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel. He isn’t willing to perform the duty of a brother-in-law for me.’ 8 The elders of his city will summon him and speak with him. If he persists and says, ‘I don’t want to marry her,’ 9 then his sister-in-law will go up to him in the sight of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face. Then she will declare, ‘This is what is done to a man who will not build up his brother’s house.’ 10 And his family name in Israel will be ‘The house of the man whose sandal was removed.’
      • If a group of brothers lived together—a point that the Sadducees omitted from their quotation of the law
      • Theoretically this would go on as long as there were brothers left and as long as no child was born
      • When a child was born, the child was held to be the offspring of the original husband
      • The whole point of this law was to ensure two things
        • The family name continued
        • The property remained within the family
        • As a matter of fact, strange as it seems to us, there were certain similar regulations in Greek law
        • The whole thing, again, is designed to maintain the family and to retain the property within the family
  • The question that the Sadducees asked may have presented an exaggerated case, but it was a question founded on a well-known Jewish law
    • If in accordance with the regulations governing this law, one woman has been married in turn to seven brothers, if there is a resurrection of the dead, who’s wife is she who that resurrection comes?
    • They thought that by asking that question they rendered the idea of resurrection completely ridiculous
  • Jesus’ answer really falls into two parts
    • He deals with what we might call the manner of the resurrection
      • He lays it down that when a person rises again, the old laws of the physical life no longer obtain
      • The risen are like the angels (Not angels), and physical things like marrying and being married no longer enter into the case
      • Jesus was saying nothing new
      • Jesus’ point was that the life to come cannot be thought of in terms of this life at all
    • He deals with the fact of the resurrection
      • Here hi meets the Sadducees on their own ground
      • They insisted that the Pentateuch showed no evidence of immortality
      • It’s from the Pentateuch that Jesus draws His proof
        • Exodus 3:6
        • 6 Then he continued, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.
        • If God is the God of these patriarchs even now, it means that they must still be alive, for the living God must be the God of living people, and not those who are dead
        • And if the patriarchs are alive then the resurrection is proved
        • On their own grounds, and with an argument to which they could find no answer, Jesus defeated the Sadducees
  • This passage show two eternally valid truths as well
    • The Sadducees mad the mistake of creating heaven in the image of the earth
      • There has always been a tendency to create in thought a heave to suit human desires
      • We do well to remember that Paul was right when he took the words of the prophet Isaiah (64:4) and made them his own
        • I Corinthians 2:9
        • 9 But as it is written, What no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human heart has conceived—God has prepared these things for those who love him.
        • The life of the heavily places will be greater than any conception this life can supply
    • In the end, Jesus based His conviction of the resurrection on the fact that the relationship between God and a good man or a good woman is one that nothing can break
      • Psalm 73:23-24
      • Yet I am always with you; you hold my right hand. 24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me up in glory.
      • It is inconceivable that a relationship with God can ever be broken
• Mark 12:28-34
• 28 One of the scribes approached. When he heard them debating and saw that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, “Which command is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. 31 The second is, Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other command greater than these. 32 Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, teacher. You have correctly said that he is one, and there is no one else except him. 33 And to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, is far more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And no one dared to question him any longer.
  • There was no love lost between the expert in the law and the Sadducees
    • The profession of the scribes was to interpret the law in all its many rules and regulations
    • Their trade was to know and apply the oral law, while the Sadducees did not accept the oral law at all
    • The expert in the law would no doubt be well satisfied with the defeat of the Sadducees
  • This scribe came to Jesus with a question which was often a matter of debate in the Rabbinic schools
    • There was a tendency to expand the law limitlessly into hundreds and thousands of rules and regulations
    • But there was also the tendency to try to gather up the law into one sentence, one general statement which would be a say of its whole message
      • Rabbi Hillel was once asked by a convert to Judaism to instruct him in the whole law while he stood on one leg. Hillel’s answer was, “What you hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole law, the rest is commentary.”
      • Rabbi Akiba had already said, “Go and learn, you should love your neighbor as yourself”; “This is the greatest general principle of the law”
      • Simon the Righteous had said, “On three things the world stands; the law, the worship, and works of love”
      • Sammlai had taught that Moses received 613 laws on Mount Sinai, 365 according to the days of the sun year, and 248 according to the generations
      • David reduced the 613 to 11 in Psalm 15
        • Lord, who can dwell in your tent?Who can live on your holy mountain? 2 The one who lives blamelessly, practices righteousness, and acknowledges the truth in his heart—3 who does not slander with his tongue, who does not harm his friend or discredit his neighbor, 4 who despises the one rejected by the Lord but honors those who fear the Lord, who keeps his word whatever the cost, 5 who does not lend his silver at interest or take a bribe against the innocent—the one who does these things will never be shaken.
      • Isaiah reduced them to six (Isaiah 33:15)
        • The one who lives righteously
        • and speaks rightly,
        • who refuses profit from extortion,
        • whose hand never takes a bribe,
        • who stops his ears from listening to murderous plots
        • and shuts his eyes against evil schemes—
      • Micah reduced them to three (Micah 6:8)
        • Mankind, he has told each of you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you:
        • to act justly,
        • to love faithfulness,
        • and to walk humbly with your God.
      • Isaiah again brings it down to two (Isaiah 56:1)
        • This is what the Lord says: Preserve justice and do what is right, for my salvation is coming soon, and my righteousness will be revealed.
      • Finally Habakkuk reduced them to one (Habakkuk 2:4)
        • Look, his ego is inflated; he is without integrity. But the righteous one will live by his faith.
  • It can be seen that Rabbinic ingenuity did try to contract as well as to expand the law. There were really two schools of thought
    • There were those who believed that there were lighter and weightier matters of the law, that there were great principles which were all important to grasp
    • But there were others who were much against this, who held that every smallest principle was equally binding and that to try to distinguish between their relative importance was highly dangerous
    • The expert who asked Jesus this question was asking about something which was a living issue in Jewish thought and discussion
  • Jesus took two great commandments and put them together
    • Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
      • That single sentence is the real creed of Judaism
      • It had three uses. It is called the Shema. Shema is the imperative of the Hebrew verb to hear, and it is so called from the first word in the sentence
        • It was the sentence with which the service of the synagogue always began and still begins
          • It is the declaration that God is the only God, the foundation of Jewish monotheism
        • The three passages of the Shem were contained in the phylacteries, little leather boxes which devout Jews wore on their foreheads and on their writs when they were at prayer
          • As they prayed they reminded themselves of their creed
          • This is founded in Deuteronomy 6:8
        • The Shema was contained in a little cylindrical box called the Mezuzah, which was and is still affixed to the door of every Jewish house and the door of every room within it, to remind Jewish families of God as they went out and as they came in
    • Love your neighbor as yourself
      • This is a quotation from Leviticus 19:18
        • Jesus did one thing with it. In its original context it has to do only with fellow Jews. It would don’t have included the Gentiles, whom it was quite permissible to hate. But Jesus noted it without qualification and without limiting boundaries
        • He took an old law and filled it with new meaning
  • The new thing that Jesus did was to put these two commandments together. No Rabbi had ever done that before
  • No one until Jesus put the two commandments together and made them one
    • Religion to Him was loving God and loving one another
    • He would have said that the only way to prove love for God is by showing love for others
    • The scribe actually willingly accept this, and went on to say that such a love was better than all sacrifices
      • I Samuel 15:22
      • Then Samuel said: Does the Lord take pleasure in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? Look: to obey is better than sacrifice, to pay attention is better than the fat of rams.
      • Hosea 6:6
      • For I desire faithful love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
  • But it is always easy to let ritual take the place of love. It is always easy to let worship become a matter of the church building instead of a matter of the whole life
    • The priest and Levite could pass by the wounded traveller because they were eager to get on with the ritual of the Temple
    • This scribe had risen beyond his contemporaries, and that is why he found himself in sympathy with Jesus
  • There must have been a look of love in Jesus’ eyes, and a look of appeal as He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Will you not come further and accept my way of things? Then you will be a true citizen of the Kingdom.