How to Make a Sadducee Mad
Jesus answered and said to them, “Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God?”
Listen to the "Verse by Verse" episode covering this scripture.
The Sadducees of Jesus’ day were known for their devotion to the first five books of the Bible, the only part they accepted as Scripture. They were sure they were experts on these books and experts about God.
So they tried to trap Jesus to either make Him agree with their conclusion that there was no resurrection or make Him look foolish. Their story of a woman marrying seven brothers who each died after she married him was quite elaborate. If there was such a thing as a resurrection, “whose wife will she be?” they asked (verse 23).
Jesus didn’t pull any punches. He used a passage from the book of Exodus—one of their approved books—to demonstrate that God would not call Himself the God of Abraham if Abraham would remain dead forever. He is the God of the living—and thus God has the power to bring back to life Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the others called by His name.
Before God’s power “a thousand such difficulties vanish” (Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary on Mark 12:24). And the difficulty of their question was eliminated by the fact Jesus presented, that “when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (verse 25).
God wants us to know the Bible and His power.
Learn more about God’s power and the resurrections in “What Are the Resurrections?”
