WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: How have you seen God’s power at work? Do those experiences affect your ability to trust him now? Resurrection riddle 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 (v 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 so-called fundamentalist 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? Knowing God’s power Just like many of today’s critics they hadn’t done their homework, and Jesus spotted that immediately. They didn’t know enough of their scriptures (vs 24,25). If they knew them better they would have realised that there would be no marrying at the resurrection. They would also have known that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were still alive (vs 26,27), which assumes resurrection. The parallel condemnation from Jesus, however, was that they did not know the ‘power of God’ (v 24). If God is powerful, as the Scriptures teach, resurrection is not only taught by the Scriptures, it is perfectly possible. Respond: Do you have friends who struggle to believe? Pray that they may see God at work in your life and be helped to trust him. http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-11-19