TUESDAY THOUGHTS – 4/7/20
After Jesus cleaned the Temple in Mark 11, the Sanhedrin leaders came to Him and asked Him what authority He had to do it. The Sanhedrin was the ruling body of Judah (President, Congress and Supreme Court). On Tuesday morning of the Passion Week (between Palm Sunday and Easter) “Jesus was walking in the temple courts, the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” (Mark 11:27-28 NIV). It was a public confrontation that was to trap Him and win the People at the Festival over against Jesus. Jesus trapped them by asking was the baptism of John the Baptist of God or of men, and because even the leaders were afraid of the people they said they didn’t know and He refused to answer them—score one for Jesus.
Next the Pharisees and Herodians came to trap Him (in the Temple and amidst the crowd). The Pharisees probably were the teachers of the law and the Herodians were followers of King Herod. First they tried to flatter Him then they tried to trap Him with the question, “Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? 15 Should we pay or shouldn’t we?” Jesus asked them for a denarius (a small Roman silver coin) and they produced one. Inside the Temple you were supposed to exchange “foreign” coins for the Jewish half-shekel but someone had forgoten to do it. Jesus asked them whose image is on it (Jews were not to make images) and they said Caesars. Jesus said “Render unto Caesar the things that belong to Caesars and unto God the things that belong to God.” They could not answer Him because everyone knew that all things belong to God—score two for Jesus.
Next the Sadducees came (The rich chief priests and their families who actually ran the Temple) and said, ““Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?” (Mark 12:19-23 NIV). The Chief Priests were non-believers except they supposedly believed in the first five books of the Old Testament. They denied life after death, heaven, hell, angels, etc. They believed that God blesses the rich and curses the bad, so they were blessed because they deserved it and had earned it, and that the poor were cursed and poor because they earned it as well. The Sadducees were among history’s most evil and corrupt people.
What they were talking about was a Levirate Marriage from Deut. 25, in which if a brother is married and has no children the next in line brother has to marry the widow. It was for two reasons: First, so that the man who died would have offspring; Second, that the widow would have a provider, protector.
The Sadducees thought they had Jesus trapped with an impossible question and, so, would expose Him for the fraud they took Him to be. Seven brothers each had married the same woman according to Levirate Marriage of Deut 25. Now in heaven whose wife would she be? In other words, who would she “belong” to, because women had to belong to somebody as she was considered “property”? They thought they had proven that heaven cannot be real and therefore expose Jesus’ teachings as corrupt. So they had a double point: Heaven does not exist; Jesus is a fraud.
But Jesus, again, openly defeated them with, ““Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven (Mark 12: 24-25, NIV). Notice that He does not say we won’t be married or know our spouse, but that in heaven we will not marry but be like the angels. All angels belong to God and there are not any second class angels—in Heaven women are exactly the same as men before God—period. So the woman who married the seven brothers does not “belong” to anyone except to God.
And His crowning touch was His proof of Heaven in the first five books of the Bible (what the Sadducees supposedly believed). “ Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’[? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!” (Mark 12:26-27 NIV). Abraham, Isaac and Jacob died on earth but are alive in Heaven! Score for three for Jesus and three strikes and you are out! After that no one dared to ask Him anything. He had silenced the whole Jewish leadership. So all they had left to do was to kill Him, because they could not outsmart Him. And that they did 3 days later!
Jim
