But again, what kind of God would be able to give life and have no power to care for life after this life? What kind of God would that be? You'd have to worship not the unknown God, but the itsy bitsy God. And that's who they bow down to because it was a God of their own creation, a God no larger than themselves. That's what an idol is.
It is a creation of something no larger than yourself. Today's study is called Immense Fools, and Pastor Rick will be teaching in Mark Chapter 12. So they claim to uphold the authority of the written law. Is that not odd? No, not for the religiously faithless, and there are many that are religious. They like religion. They love ritual. They liked all the things that go with religion, except obedience, except conforming and submission to God's word, the revelation of God. And true obedience has little value in their lives. We see it when the high priest, Caiaphas, is conspiring to hire people to come against Christ. Even if they're lying, he doesn't care.
And that speaks much to us. Matthew, at this point in his account, a parallel account of this event, says that Jesus said to them out loud that they were hypocrites. In other words, he was accusing them of living their lives on a stage, that the way they lived was not what you saw as far as how they lived was not real. It was rehearsed. Now there are some that can live on a platform, and they can be real. Incidentally, where I am standing on this elevated platform, it is not a stage. It is a platform.
It could be called a chancel if you want to be fancy, but it is not a stage where there is no acting going on. Some attempts at humor have been attempted from here, and sometimes successful. Anyway, verse 19, teacher, now here they are. They're getting their religious face on. Moses wrote to us that if a man's brother dies and leaves his wife behind and leaves no children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. Well, this is part of the Mosaic law. The brother is not obligated, though there is some social shame that accompanies it if he denies. Deuteronomy 25 is where they're drawing this from. And the idea is that if your brother marries someone, and you could be married also, and your brother dies, how is she going to survive? And to keep it in the family, your brother's possessions and his name, and even it connects to the line of Messiah, because the two events we have in this scripture from Genesis and Ruth have to do with Judah and the messianic line. But other than that, just in the social benefits to this, what was she supposed to do?
There was no welfare program. She could not always go back to her home where her father was. They were trying to survive themselves. They married her off.
Okay, we have one less mouth to feed. And so this law existed. The firstborn that she would have if she remarried to one of the brothers was to take the deceased brother's name. And this, of course, would preserve his name in Israel. His property would transfer to his son, and it would not be lost on someone else. So there were great merits to this in that economy.
We can't look back from how we live now and sneer at them. This system goes back even before Moses. As I mentioned, it was found with one of the sons of Jacob and Judah and Tamar. And so the story of Ruth is based on this law.
And so they're trying to bring this law up to him, and we have much to say about how they're doing it. Verse 20. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife and dying. He left no offspring. Verse 21. And the second took her, and he died, and nor did he leave any offspring. And the third likewise. So seven had her and left no offspring.
Last of all, the woman died. Leave it to these miscreants to come up with such a distasteful conundrum. I mean, this is just, this never happens. But they created it anyway, and you're supposed to answer things, you know, hypothetical questions. Well, I can answer them hypothetically, but he's going to take them to the scripture. But wouldn't there be an ominous regularity going on with this that would arouse suspicion and say, you know what, how many of my brothers have died marrying you?
Yeah. That's why this would never happen. Their twisted story, it would take courage to be husband number three. Half a dozen of them die. I think the townspeople need to investigate. So, I do not believe for a moment that this is based on a true story. One or two husbands, maybe, in the family.
But, you know, you start moving down. The guy is saying, I'm not marrying her. No way. This is a black widow kind of a thing. Verse 23, so here comes their punchline. Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be?
For all seven had her as wife. What a low view of women and cynicism towards the resurrection, life after this life. That is what is coming out in this. And it's seated in their disdain for accountability to God. Unbelievers have a reason for rejecting the truth.
And these men are no different. Do people really think that the resurrection means life continues where it left off after you die? I mean, do you think there's going to be a Chinatown in heaven? Or Little Italy? I mean, there'll be nice restaurants. I mean, do you really think that? It's insane.
Like, maybe I'll come visit you in your neighborhood. This is going to be something so glorious. Paul said it would be a crime to try to describe these things to you.
I caught a glimpse of it, Paul said. It's just amazing. And that's it. I can't say anymore. So, verse 24, Jesus answered and said to them, Are you not therefore mistaken? Because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God. And he's not impressed with their grotesque scenario.
He's not like, whoa, that's a hard one. It marked their insensitive way of thinking. We see this in some other religions, you know. You'll get 70 virgins when you die if you blow yourself up killing other people. What kind of twisted, sick stuff is that? That should be twisted and sick to anybody, not just Christians. Just saying, would you like that to happen to you?
Would you like that to happen to your daughter? To be stuck with somebody who blows himself up when he gets up to the next life? The whole thing is madness.
But they'll blow you up for saying that. Anyway, this insensitive thinking of theirs out in the open before them, and the Lord must have, this hard part of it must have broken and another part was just like this. This is so ridiculous it doesn't happen and you know it. But the dunce committee, they have to be answered.
And that's how it is in life. You just can't always ignore the dunce committee and they thought this successfully disproved the resurrection. You ever talk to an unbeliever and they smugly think they've got you and then you shoot that down? But they don't repent still.
They go back to the drawing board like Wile E. Coyote, blueprints under their armpits and try to figure out another gadget instead of just saying, you know, maybe I better dress like a rabbit and just change sides. Anyway, the sick things human beings will believe once they reject the truth of Christ. He says, are you not therefore mistaken? So he has a question for them. You know, what is going through their little heads?
Who cares pretty much? He says, because you don't know the Bible. Are you not wrong because you don't know the scripture?
If you knew the Bible you wouldn't be wrong like this, but you don't know the Bible and you consider yourselves custodians of the Bible. And so his reply is biblical. It would be like saying to Einstein, is that your theory?
And you call yourself a scientist? Pretty dim-witted. It's right in their faces.
It's pretty heavy stuff to say to this group. They had no excuse for their ignorance. They were what we call today liberal theologians. They picked and choose what to believe from the Bible. And we have them today. They're in universities. They're in seminaries. They're in churches.
They're in pulpits. And they tell you, well, that part of the Bible is not true, but this part is. Well, how did they become the way, the truth, and the life?
How did they become the Holy Spirit? Whatever you don't like in the Bible, just edit it out. We have them trying with this with homosexuality.
Well, Jesus never came out. Yeah, he did when he said, don't think I came to destroy the law and the prophets, but to uphold them. And the prophets and the law, they condemned that kind of behavior as they did many other kinds of behaviors. But yet, of course, they are drunk with their brand of religion. And so, in their case, as mentioned, they accepted the writings of Moses and no more. And they were very proud about this. And they argued with the Pharisees and the scribes over these things, two different schools of thought.
And that leaving out, believing only the books of Moses leaves out a lot of scripture. So Christ called them ignorant. Why? Because they were. That's why. It's not meant to just, I'm just going to strike back at them. I'm going to call it like it is because I want my disciples to know these men, regardless of how they dress, regardless of what claims they make, regardless of what credentials they have, they are ignorant, not because of the credentials and the dress and the claims, but because they reject the scripture. That's why they're ignorant. Get up in my face telling me I'm such a good boy, and then give me some sick scenario like this, and you can't even back it up with truth from your own Bibles, the sections that you will accept.
So he's, again, going to take them to task on that. Willful ignorance of scripture, willful ignorance of scripture is the cause of this. And it is intolerable with God. Why should God tolerate willful rejection of what he has said? It's one thing to say, Lord, I'm trying. I agree with you.
I just can't seem to get it done. And a whole other thing where you say, no, I don't like that, and I don't want that, and that's wrong. This is, this dumbification of the religious leaders, it is a joint venture of devil and man together. He says, nor the power of God.
What kind of God did they worship that did not have power to resolve such a problem as what they were presenting? You would think they would say to themselves, well, look, he shot down those guys about the coin. I think we shouldn't ask him any more questions.
Let's just go home. But no, they don't do that. They come at it from another angle because they think they were smarter than the first group to begin with. Their question would catch him. But again, what kind of God would be able to give life and have no power to care for life after this life? What kind of God would that be? You'd have to worship not the unknown God, but the itsy bitsy God. And that's who they bowed down to because it was a God of their own creation, a God no larger than themselves. That's what an idol is. It is a creation of something no larger than yourself. Psalm 115 verse 8, those who make them are like them. So is everyone who trusts in them. Point blank, nothing to add to that. It says what it needs to say. The God who can give life to the universe is not stopped or halted by death. And yet they don't believe that.
Would you want to be these people's neighbor? I mean, the way they think. Is it any more remarkable that we should live again than we should live at all? It's a miracle that we have life at all. And all of the complexities that encapsulate us, that come from us, that go into us. We are very complex in a positive and a negative way. And yet, God is in total control. Has it all under his control. And he, no matter what, we know. See, again, they wanted to avoid accountability at death. So they just factored it out. Verse 25, for when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven. He does not say if they rise from the dead, but when they rise from the dead.
He's not giving them an inch. The whole idea of procreation. You know, in Adam and Eve, they were told to be fruitful and multiply. A good principle. Be fruitful, then multiply.
In that order. And, of course, there was no hurry to have children because there was no death. What changed everything?
What accelerated everything and twisted it at the same time was the sin. Now humankind had to replace humankind because people were dying. And this is the purpose in heaven.
There will not be that need. God is populating heaven now with humans that have come to him. And when he gets the quota that he has assigned to it, then comes the end. And then he'll even get more from the millennial reign.
He knows what he's doing. We accept that. So verse 26, he says, but concerning the dead.
In other words, I want to get back to this with you guys, that they rise. Have you not read in the book of Moses? See, the book that they claim to believe in. In the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him saying, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
So he goes to the Bible, part of the Bible that they accept. The burning bush passage, which is a direct experience of Moses. Just to shut them up, Exodus 3, Moses, he said, God speaking to Moses, moreover, he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face and was afraid to look upon God. Too bad they didn't have that same reaction to the scripture, that sense of high reverence. He's saying, I am the God of Abraham.
Present tense, again, I am the God of Abraham, not I was the God of Abraham. The Bible is clearly teaching this. I'll get into some figures of how long these men had been dead when Jesus said this in a moment. So maybe you're not, you're listening to this and you're saying to yourself, well, where else was the second witness in scripture? Well, Daniel chapter 12, and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt. We look at this and we say, that's God's word. God is saying that there is going to be a judgment after this life.
They rejected the book of Daniel because these things kind of shot them down. Job's brilliant reply to Bildad, Bildad, is that a sentence? Hey, Bildad, you know, get dad to pay for it.
Okay, anyway, I thought it was kind of funny actually. I just saw that and I'm going to write that down. Bildad is sneering prediction, Job, you're going to die. You're going to die very soon.
That was Bildad. Job answers him. This is Job's reply to that prediction. We know it, most of you know it, Job chapter 19. I know that, verse 25, I know that my redeemer lives and he shall stand at last on the earth and after my skin is destroyed, this I know that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself and my eyes shall behold and not another, how my heart yearns within me.
You want me to die, Bildad? I can't wait for it because then I'll see God and I'll be rid of this life and the curse and this flesh. So we who look at this and we say, well, we disagree with the Sadducees, we believe all of the Old Testament as the word of God, Daniel and Job alike, as well as Genesis. But the Lord doesn't quote Job or Daniel because these men would have said, ah, they were scoffed. We don't believe in those books. Paul, when he writes later, he's still dealing with their teachings.
It's so influenced the Jews and even some Gentiles in the churches outside of Jerusalem. And so he writes the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians saying, look, if Christ is not risen, then our faith is in vain. But he goes into the whole thing about the resurrection. In Galatians 3, he says the law that Moses received was given also by angels.
Angels were involved in the revelation of the law of God, details withheld. And then to the Thessalonians, many of them, their views of life were less than what God wanted them to be, as the Sadducees taught. He writes this, I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep.
A euphemism for those who have died. Lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. But Paul is saying, we have hope.
We're not ashamed of our hope. These were sophisticated fools, these men, professing to be wise. They became fools, as Paul said. Verse 27, he is not the god of the dead, but the god of the living, and you are therefore greatly mistaken. See, it kind of loses some of the punch when we just hear, you're greatly mistaken.
You made a big mistake. It's like you are a buffoon because of your position to tell a man of this stature in society and religion. To tell them they are greatly mistaken is a heavy hit. It goes back to like telling Einstein, is that your theory, relatively?
It's moronic. Not that I'm saying that was true of Einstein, but imagine saying that to him. When he spoke these words about the burning bush and he references these men, Isaac, or Jacob, had been dead for 200 years. Isaac for 225, Abraham for 330 years, and yet God still says he's the god of the living, not the dead. Those centuries did not take away their life.
It just relocated. That's what death does. For the righteous, we get tucked in.
When we die, Jesus made it very clear, he who believes in me shall never die. You transition. I mean, I just can't wait. I have some fears.
I've said them before. I don't want there to be orientation. I don't want to get to heaven and have a notebook and wearing a rookie hat. I want to go in imparted, that I know where to go, I know where my bed is, and just things, not that there's going to be beds in heaven, but I want to know where I put my stuff, and I don't want anyone to tell me. I don't want anyone to say, do whatever you do. Do not go through that door.
I just want to know what to do. I mean, now don't get me wrong, if there is orientation, I still want to go, but I just don't want it, and I think this is a gift. Anyway, I get back to the you are greatly mistaken. This you is what stands out. It says you. I'm talking to you, not that guy over there. You.
This is directly to them. You don't have a clue. Because you're ignorant, and you're ignorant by choice, and that makes it immense. You are an immense fools. You've seen what I can do, and you look the other way, as though it doesn't count. God does this to this day. He does things even for unbelievers, and we say to them, God has demonstrated his presence in your life, and you still look the other way, and you think he's supposed to be fine with that, as you trample his word? He will not be fine with that. He will be insulted with that. He does not excuse them. The evidence for the resurrection was available to these men from their scripture, and they turned their nose up to it, because after he hits them with this, they don't say, whoa, that is really Bible teaching.
I want to come under that. No, no, they're not going to do that. They're insulted that he's right, and they're wrong. What is so-called rationalism against God really is dishonesty before God. It is not rational. It is not a mental problem. It is a moral problem. It is not a head issue.
It's a heart issue. It's, I will shut my heart down and instruct my head to spend the rest of its life coming up with arguments against the truth that I know is in my heart. And that God says, I'm not good with this.
I will have none of this. This is the greatest era of them all, and God is filtering out through this life those who love Him from those who don't. Two verses and a closing comment. Matthew 25, all the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats, and He will set the sheep on His right hand but the goats on His left. Everybody knew what He was talking about when He preached that. Chronologically, He's not yet said that. Matthew captures it.
It's after the events we're considering, but He had said it earlier. And so they were immense fools, but treating Him as they did, and He pointed it out to them, and so do we. And when we point it out to people, they will either convert or attack in some form. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.
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