In Mark 12:18-27 some Sadducees try to trick Jesus by giving him a puzzle which they think proves their point that there is no resurrection. The puzzle states that a woman marries several men, each of whom dies before she legally marries the next one. The Sadducees ask whose husband she will be in heaven. Base on their assumption that marriage will be in heaven as it is on earth, there is a problem. Whose husband will the wife be married to in heaven? Since the answer to this question is arbitrary, the Sadducees suppose this proves that there can’t be a resurrection. Their problem is two fold, and Jesus addresses both their issues.
First, they assume that there is marriage in heaven. Jesus corrects this by telling them that people in heaven will be “like angels”. The implication seems to be that they will not be married. Second, they do not really know the power of God. They never give thought to the idea that God can do something beyond their comprehension. So they assume their logic proves that there can be no resurrection.
Jesus notes that their lack of thought makes them badly mistaken. Their arrogance is what does them in. They don’t give proper weight to considering the scriptures or God’s power. While they come up with a puzzle that, given earthly assumptions, seems to be irreconcilable with the resurrection, they never actually ask the more important questions. First, how could God solve this issue? Second, are there other indications in the scripture that show the resurrection is real. Jesus points out that they really don’t understand the power of God. In part, at the least, because they don’t know God. He also points out that they are not paying attention to the scriptures.
The scriptures are clear. When God talks about being the God of the patriarchs, he uses the present tense. This means that the patriarchs must still be alive, and since their earthly bodies are dead, they must still exist in some form before God currently. They are still alive.
This must have been a shock to the Sadducees who have built their whole world view around the assumption that life ends at physical death. There is no resurrection. Their intellectual arguments gave them a false sense of security. How could their assumption not be true. Their logic was inescapable. They must have dripped with arrogance and pleasure as Jesus dealt deftly with the Pharisees in the passage before. The Pharisees were rather dumb in their eyes. Who really believes in the resurrection? That is an old idea. We are more enlightened.
I wonder if they thought, “Of course those dumb Pharisees couldn’t out wit Jesus. They just aren’t smart enough. Now, we will show them. We can trap Jesus with our infallible logic.” Then Jesus goes and crushes their argument with a much greater force that he did with the Pharisees. He told the Sadducees they “did not know the scriptures or the power of God” and that they were “badly mistaken”. He didn’t say those things to the Pharisees. It seems to me that Jesus is trying to make a point with the Sadducees, that their intellectual arrogance is ultimately their problem. Their inability or refusal to question their own smarts is what keeps them from seeing the truth.
That is not much different that today. There are a whole host of people who reject the Gospel because they think they are smarter than God. They believe the scriptures are knowledge not worth having. They never really consider that God has communicated through them.
These are people whose ideas should be questioned. The very basic realities of even this world are not seen because they know neither the scriptures or the power of God. Thinking themselves wise they become fools, all the while sounding like sages.
Remember the deceitfulness of the human heart and the corruption of the human mind. All is affected by sin. Remember that the scriptures are our corrective lenses through which we see the world.
My children, never forget this
In Him,
Grandpa
A Grandpa's Musings 
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