“Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?”
(Mark 12:24)
There are two reasons Jesus gives for the confusion that the Sadducees faced over the resurrection. One was a misunderstanding of the Scriptures. Misunderstandings happen all the time. They are typically caused by people “missing” each other and making judgments without really hearing what the person was saying. Misunderstandings happen when we do more talking than listening. That can certainly happen with the Bible. There are a lot of people with a lot of opinions about God’s Word. We can spend more time listening to those opinions than we do actually reading the text. The Jewish scholars of Jesus’ day were no different than you or me. We all need to spend more time reading the Book instead of books about the Book.
The second reason they were confused was because they didn’t understand the power of God. The idea that people could be resurrected from the dead was just too fantastical for the Sadducees to accept. You can almost see them talking amongst themselves:
How do you raise people from the dead? What about if the bodies had been cremated? Or lost at sea? What about marriage at that point, wouldn’t it be confusing then? How would there be enough room for everyone? This is all just too preposterous!
Their problem was that they were trying to figure out HOW, but God doesn’t need you and I to figure out the HOW. He already has that planned out and He didn’t need to ask our advice! God tells us to trust His power and that His might is enough to do things well beyond our imagination. Isn’t that wonderful? We just need to understand what He says (read the Book) and know that He can make it happen.
Matthew 4:4 #Biblebites