What ministry did Jesus bring?

“A New Ministry”

(Matthew 23:1-12, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, April 27, 2008)

Matthew 23:1-12 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ² "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, ³ so practice and observe whatever they tell you- but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practice. ⁴ They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. ⁵ They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, ⁶ and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues ⁷ and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. ⁸ But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. ⁹ And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. ¹⁰ Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. ¹¹ The greatest among you shall be your servant. ¹² Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

Introduction – The Extensive History of Proud Religious People

We have been observing the interchange between Jesus and the Pharisees for some time now, but we have never really explored where this religious group came from, and what happened to them in the centuries following the cross even down to the present day. In the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were part political party, and part Jewish religious sect. Their name means “separated ones.” About 100 years prior to the birth of Christ they became quite prominent. During the reign of the various Herods, their political influence seems to have waned some. On the other hand, their religious influence, particularly in the synagogues, was very strong. After the destruction of the temple in AD 70, the temple-oriented Sadducees receded in importance. Therefore, the importance of the Pharisees to the future of Judaism was quite remarkable. In fact, their teaching has continued to have a profound influence on Jewish thinking and religious practice down to the present day. The contest for the hearts and minds of Jewish people in the first century was not between Pharisees and Sadducees. It was between Pharisees and Christians.

Today we begin chapter 23 of Matthew’s gospel. During the next several sermons we will examine Jesus’ critique of the Pharisees and see by contrast the alternative that we are to enjoy in what Christ calls “the kingdom of heaven.” Just as so very many different groups of Christians today believe in and use the Nicene Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer, both the early Christians and the Pharisees were serious observant Jews, and they had many common beliefs. For instance, both groups believed in a coming resurrection of the dead. Eventually many members of the church came from the Pharisees. Nonetheless the Pharisees were frankly critiqued by Jesus Christ. I think that it is fair to say that the Pharisees were a proud religious people. I use the word “proud” in a negative sense, meaning that they were arrogant and self-righteous religious people, who were lacking in the kind of humility that should characterize those who believe in the Ten Commandments, since we should know that we violate them all. Proud religious people are everywhere, even today. Unfortunately, arrogant irreligious people are everywhere too. It should not surprise us that none of us have escaped this disease as of yet. There has been an extensive history of proud religion ever since Adam and Eve tried to make their own clothes as a way of hiding from God. Only God can clothe us rightly. Our pride and self-righteousness will be finished only when we get to heaven.

They sit on Moses’ seat (1-2)

We have mentioned the Pharisees, the religious sect most associated with synagogue life at this time. We should also mention the scribes again, who are the experts and teachers in the law, and were generally a part of the Pharisee group. When we talk about the scribe, we are talking about someone like me. I am a minister of the Word. I am supposed to give you a true presentation of the Bible in the Name of Jesus Christ. The scribes spoke for Moses.

The Law came through Moses. In the synagogues, the messages were delivered by someone who was seated. Moses was thought of as the Mediator of the Old Covenant. God spoke to Him and used Him particularly in the writing of the first five books of the Bible, the books of the Law. When someone took the chair in the synagogue in order to explain the Law of God to the people, He was speaking, in a sense, for Moses. That is why Jesus points out that the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. Our situation is different in some ways today. The law came through Moses, but grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ. I do not sit in Moses’ seat, but I do stand in Jesus’ pulpit. The New Testament gospel and the whole of the Scriptures are now the grace and truth of Jesus Christ. The Bible is understood through the coming of Jesus Christ and through His gift of the Holy Spirit. When I read a passage and give you a message, I should be delivering to you the message of Jesus Christ.

It was a great privilege for the scribes to sit in Moses’ seat, representing such a great figure as Moses – a key figure in the history of salvation. Moses gave the Law, and He also applied the Law to the people. This was a very big job, and he ultimately could not do it alone. Even when Moses was still alive, other people were appointed to speak for Moses. This is part of what the scribes were doing in the synagogues. Beginning at least in the days of Ezra, an established tradition developed of reading the law and then giving people the sense of it. Of course there is a responsibility on someone who would sit in Moses’ seat to accurately present the message as Moses’ Himself intended it. How much more serious is it if I would speak in Jesus’ pulpit and bring you a message that He never would have given. As the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2:15-16, “We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?” To speak for Christ is a fearful thing, but a great thing as well. To do this kind of ministry of the Word is a responsibility, and there is no one who is up to it.

A ministry of disobedience (3)

In this exercise of preaching there is a speaker and there are hearers. If there is a big responsibility on the speaker, it is also true that there is a big responsibility on the hearers. Jesus says that the Jews should do what the scribes tell them to do. He goes on to add that they should absolutely not follow scribal behavior. The Pharisees do not practice what they preach. The point of this verse is not to endorse all of the teaching of the Pharisees. We already know that the Pharisees had a very wrong view of many things. The point is to expose the fact that they do not do themselves what they tell other people to do. In the long run, how a parent lives will be at least as important to children as what he teaches. The ministry that the Pharisees bring sounds like a ministry of hyper-obedience to the Law of Moses. It is instead a ministry of disobedience, and it only leads people to be disobedient.

A ministry of heavy burdens (4)

In their teaching, the scribes opened up the Law of God to their hearers. To be sure, they had mixed it up with the commandments of men, and that caused many problems. What if they had simply taught the pure Law from God’s Word? It was still a heavy burden on the hearers. Peter makes this point at the council in Jerusalem regarding the question of whether Gentiles needed to follow all of the old Jewish laws. He says in Acts 15:10, “Why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?” At the time of the Old Covenant it was right to present the Law of God, but how should a scribe do it? Should he present the Law as if he had kept it, or should he mourn His own sinful failure to keep the weighty matters of the Law, and speak for Moses with humility and sympathy? Could it be that the scribes were energetic preachers of righteousness by Law, but that they never helped people in their struggle with sin? Could it be they did not lift the burden of the Law in their own lives, and then did nothing more than place it on the shoulders of their hearers? If that was the case, then their ministry was like the work of the old Egyptian taskmasters. They brought a ministry of heavy burdens, not for themselves, but for others, and they would not lift a finger to help with sympathy or aid. A ministry like that can never lift people up. It will only weigh them down.

A ministry of recognition (5-7)

It is a very disappointing thing to find yourself committing the very sins you preach against. You would think that scribes and preachers would never want to be seen in public again. Still, needy people want the recognition of others. We like to be called “reverend” or to lead in flowing prayers. Many like to have special clothes that set them apart. I don’t want to criticize anyone’s robes. The problem is that sinful men are being placed in the position of speaking for Moses, or even for Jesus Christ, and it is an overwhelming thing for a sinner to do that. In the case of the Pharisees, the Law was understood as requiring certain holy dress for all the Israelites, as a reminder of the Commandments. That was not good enough for the Pharisees. They needed everything to be twice as big so that everyone could see their commitment to being pure. They wanted the seats of honor, and every form of respect that would set them apart from the common worshipper. Such men would be happy to wear a gilded sandwich board everywhere announcing their humility before God, but it should have been obvious to everyone that they were living out a ministry of self-recognition. They could not feel holy unless they wore a badge that said so. That won’t do any good for anyone. It only creates a special class of people with an overwhelming job of self-promotion.

One Teacher, One Father, One Messiah (8-10)

The problem with this kind of ministry is that the ministers simply never measure up. Christ, the Son of God, did not come in this old way of man’s hypocrisy. He came low, so low that He performed the lowliest task – a sinner’s death on the cross. He sent forth the Holy Spirit as our One Teacher. He brought us the news of the love of our One Father, God in heaven. He Himself is our Master and the One Messiah. He brought us a new kind of ministry.

The Servant of servants (11-12)

He was the greatest man who had ever been born, and He came as the lowest servant. He has now been exalted high forever. We follow Him well, when we follow Him low, as servants of the great Servant. When He died for our sins, He took away not only the weight of our sin. He also relieved us of the unnecessary burden of self-promotion.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. How could Jesus tell people to do what the Pharisees said when the Pharisees were so wrong about many things?

2. Why does it seem so easy to find Pharisaic tendencies in one’s religious opponents?

3. How is the way of Christ supposed to be a different ministry than that of the scribes and the Pharisees?

4. What is real humility and how is it different from false imitations?

The God Man

“A Question for the Questioners”

(Matthew 22:41-46, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, April 20, 2008)

Matthew 22:41-46 ⁴¹ Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, ⁴² saying, "What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." ⁴³ He said to them, "How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, ⁴⁴ "'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet'? ⁴⁵ If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?" ⁴⁶ And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Introduction – He who comes after me…

In the opening chapter of John’s gospel, a saying of John the Baptist is referred to concerning Jesus Christ. John said, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’” The meaning of that statement becomes obvious after the truth of Jesus Christ, particularly His divine eternal nature, has been more fully revealed. At the time when John spoke these words they must have been a great riddle. John says two things that seem to be inconsistent. Jesus came after him. Jesus was before him. These statements are both true. In His birth and public ministry, Jesus comes after John. John was baptizing in the wilderness before Jesus had been noticed by almost anyone. On the other hand, Jesus was before John. Jesus is the Son of God through whom all things were created. He is the great I AM. In His divine nature He existed eternally before John.

In this 22^nd chapter of Matthew’s gospel we encounter a similar riddle about Jesus, this time from His own lips. In His final days before the cross, the Pharisees and the Sadducees ask questions to test Jesus, with the hope that He will fall into some trap. They have been very unsuccessful in their efforts. He has not been taken away by the authorities. He has not been rejected by the crowds. He has not been exposed as a failure. Interestingly, within a few short days all these things will happen. Through the help of Judas, Jesus will soon be taken away by people with swords and clubs. Though the religious rulers were once concerned about the crowds because they had seemed to consider Jesus as a prophet and a king, these rulers will suddenly go to the crowds and will be surprisingly successful in stirring up people against Jesus. Finally, as He is left to die on the cross, it will seem to everyone that He is a failure. At this moment, days before His death, none of these three things seem likely, but they will happen according to God’s plan and schedule. Jesus will willingly submit to these indignities for our sake.

What do you think about the Christ? (41-42)

Before any of that happens, the round of questioning in Matthew 22 ends with a question from Jesus, a question that exposes the mystery of who this Suffering Servant is, this amazing man who cannot be trapped or stumped by His enemies, but who is heading to His death nonetheless. Jesus uses a word here that we have not heard in Matthew’s gospel since the 16^th chapter, when Peter made a most amazing declaration. That word is “Christ.” In that earlier chapter, Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” Peter said, “You are the Christ.” It was immediately clear from the discussion that followed that Peter did not understand much about what the Christ would do. The disciples had much to learn. Perhaps that was why He told them not to reveal His identity. There was no point in being known as the Christ, when people did not have accurate expectations about a coming Savior.

Christ means anointed one. It comes from Greek, the language of the New Testament, but the idea was not only a New Testament concept. The Hebrew equivalent of this word is the source of the word “Messiah.” “Christ” and “Messiah” are the same word but from different languages. They both mean “The Anointed One.” They were the words that came to be used to speak of an expected hero who would save God’s people.

Something anointed in the Bible had oil poured over it. The oil often symbolized the Holy Spirit, and the object or person who was anointed with oil was consecrated or set apart for God’s holy purpose. Priests and kings were anointed with oil. Priests came from the tribe of Levi. Levi was the third son of Israel. On the other hand, like King David and His descendants, kings came from the tribe of Judah, Israel’s fourth son. God promised David that one of his sons would reign forever, but there was no way that someone could be both priest and king. A person could not be a member of two tribes. As time went on in the history of God’s Word, we begin to have hints of an Anointed One who will be both priest and King. Psalm 2 uses the word “Christ” or “Messiah.” The expected “Son of God” of Psalm 2 will be a great King who will judge the nations. Psalm 110 seems to talk about the same figure. He is the mighty scepter who rules, but in Psalm 110 He is also a priest. What is intriguing is that this Priest/King who is full of the Holy Spirit is not descended from Levi. The Psalm announces that this “Lord” will be a “priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” Melchizedek is a mysterious figure who shows up in the time of Abraham. Where did He come from? We have no idea. We do know that Abraham gave him a tithe of the spoils of war. Abraham was somehow acknowledging that this Melchizedek was above Him, though Abraham was God’s key man at that time. This Melchizedek was a priest of God Most High, but He was also the King of Salem which means “peace.” Melchizedek literally means “King of Righteousness.” Who could make sense of all of this? Jesus could. “What do you think about the Christ?” That is what He began to ask them just days before the cross.

Whose son is he? (42)

“Whose son is he?” We all know that the Christ is the Son of God. This came about through a miraculous conception that was announced in Luke’s gospel. The fruit of Mary’s womb would be the Son of the Most High. In Matthew’s gospel, quoting Isaiah 7, an angel tells Joseph that Mary will be the virgin who conceives and bears a Son, and that this Son will be God with us, which is what “Immanuel” means. We are all so used to the Christmas story that we may have the wrong impression that everyone knew about the circumstances of Jesus’ birth. People did not know about the choirs of angels. They did not know what happened to the shepherds. They did not even know that Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem. They assumed He was born in Galilee, where he grew up.

We know that they did not know these things because in John’s gospel, we read about the controversies that came about during the ministry of Jesus, and it was clear that there was no general knowledge about His birth in Bethlehem. This is what John 7:40-42 says: “When they heard these words, some of the people said, ‘This really is the Prophet.’ Others said, ‘This is the Christ.’ But some said, ‘Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?’” Jesus was from Bethlehem. We know the story of the Roman census, but they did not.

Notice that there was an expectation of a great prophet who would come. The people were saying, “This is the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” While there certainly was much confusion about the coming Messiah, there were passages in the Bible that not only supported the fact that the Anointed One would be a priest and a king, but also that He would be a prophet. Moses had said in Deuteronomy 18:15, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers- it is to him you shall listen.” Like kings and priests, prophets were also anointed, but not with oil. They were anointed with the Holy Spirit.” Do you see how complex the question of the Christ really was? Only Jesus fulfilled all the expectations of who the Christ would be?

The son of David (42)

In Jesus’ question to the Pharisees, He deals with just one piece of this complexity. “Whose son is he?” They thought that they knew the answer. Everyone expected that the Messiah was to be the Son of David. God had made an overwhelming promise to David when that king had wanted to build a house for God. God said, “You build a house for Me? I am going to build a house for you?” David was talking about a great temple, but God was referring to an everlasting dynasty. We read in 2 Samuel 7:12-13, “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” This was partially fulfilled by David’s son Solomon building the temple, but that did not explain the “forever” part. As time went by there became a very settled expectation that there would one day come a Messiah who would be this Son of David. This was still very firmly a part of Jewish hopes in the time of Jesus, though no descendant of David had ruled for 600 years! “Whose son is he?” They answered Him without any hesitation. “The son of David.”

David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord (43-44)

They were right. The Messiah would be a descendant of David. The problem is that in Psalm 110 David himself called this Messiah figure his Lord. How could one of his descendants be his Lord? Sons are supposed to submit to their fathers. Fathers don’t greet their sons by calling them lords. Why is David calling the Messiah, who is his descendant, Lord? Furthermore, the words that David wrote, Jesus says, were written in the Spirit. Therefore, it is God who is saying that the Messiah will be David’s Lord. Not only that, what does it mean in the psalm when we read that The Lord Jehovah God is saying something to David’s Lord? There is only one Lord God. Is He talking to Himself? How can the Lord tell David’s Lord to sit at His right hand until He makes His enemies His footstool?

David’s son and David’s Lord (45-46)

The answer is directly in front of them in person. Here is David’s Son going to the cross. Here also is David’s Lord. Here is the Jesus who is going to the cross for sinful people. He is one person of the Triune Godhead. Two natures exist within that one person, for He is fully God and fully man. According to His human genealogy He is a son of David, born in Bethlehem. But the baby who was born in a manger is also Immanuel, the eternal Son of God, and most decidedly David’s Lord. He came to die for David. He came to die for You. The Pharisees gave up on their questions that day before they really found the answer, and He was right there before their eyes.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. Why did the Pharisees continue to bother with Jesus? Why didn’t they just ignore Him?

2. Consider the complexity of the second person of the Godhead. Whose Son is He?

3. What insights come to us from a full consideration of Psalm 110 in light of the New Testament?

4. What was the result of this interchange about Psalm 110? What should the Pharisees have said or done here?

His Obedience and Death - Our Great Comfort in a Life of Sacrificial Love

“With All Your Everything”

(Matthew 22:34-40, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, April 13, 2008)

Matthew 22:34-40 ³⁴ But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. ³⁵ And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ³⁶ "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" ³⁷ And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰ On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

Introduction – A Series of Questions

“Many are called, but few are chosen.” This was the conclusion that Jesus made at the end of the first episode in this chapter of Matthew’s gospel. He had just finished telling a story about a king who gave a wedding feast to his son. In that story, the lawbreakers who were supposed to come to the wedding feast killed some of the servants who were delivering the invitations. Others who seemed less worthy perhaps actually made it into the wedding feast. Just before that He had told them a parable about a King who had a vineyard, and in that story the tenants killed the king’s son. The chief priests and the Pharisees knew that He was telling these parables against them. They wanted to arrest Him, but they feared the crowd. They pursued instead a variety of efforts to trap Him in His words.

First the Pharisees, accompanied by the Herodians as witnesses, asked Him this: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” He said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” Then the Sadducees tried to make Him look foolish with a story of seven brothers. They asked, “In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?” His answer: “You know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” Today we have another question, by a scribe of the Pharisees. Some important people want to be rid of Jesus. Though He is willingly making His way to the cross to give up His own life, He will do this without the aid of any of their evil strategies. It might seem as if any question asked in this hostile environment must be judged entirely insincere, but I wonder.

The Law and “lawyers” (34-35)

The passage begins with a plain statement that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees. On this news the Pharisees gathered together, and one of the scribes asked him a question. The scribes are called lawyers, because they are experts in the Old Testament Law, particularly as it has been interpreted by the traditions that the Jews have received. One of their great problems with Jesus is that He does not hold to their interpretation of the Law of God. The right understanding of the Law of God is not an easy matter. This is not primarily an intellectual problem, but a moral and spiritual issue. People can understand most of the several hundred laws of the Old Testament easily enough, just as children really do know what their parents’ rules are on one level. Our sin nature does not want to obey, so we come up with interpretations that allow us to have our own way while we still pretend to be obedient.

On one hand we hear certain commands of the Law, and we could easily say to ourselves, “I can do that.” There are certain foods that we can eat. There are other foods that we cannot eat. There are festivals to attend on certain days where we are to do certain things. There is a cutting ritual that is to be performed on a baby boy on the eighth day of his life. This all can be done. On the other hand we hear sweeping and uncompromising commands like these: Leviticus 11:45 “I am the LORD who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.” Exodus 20:17 “You shall not covet … anything that is your neighbor's.” Here is one you may not think about. Deuteronomy 12:12 “You shall rejoice before the LORD your God.” These commands are so far reaching, that we immediately begin to think of interpretations that would limit the uncomfortable scope of God’s law. We know that the unrighteous cannot be in the presence of God, and we wonder how anyone could be blessed by God if His Law really means what it seems to plainly say. Therefore we explain away the weightiest matters of God’s commandments, make a show of our strict obedience to the things that are obviously doable, and flatter ourselves by the thought that we have obeyed the Law of God. This, of course, is a deep violation of the Law and the Prophets. Think of Micah 6:8 “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” It is not humble for us to think that we have obeyed the Law of God enough to win His pleasure. It is a great insult against the cross of Jesus Christ. If we are really good (and we are not) than why did God send His Son to face the curse of the Law for us on the cross?

The thing that makes the Law most difficult for us is our accurate sense that we have not kept it. We know that the Pharisees sent this scribe to Jesus in order to test Him. Jesus clearly accused the Pharisees of being serious law-breakers. They thought of themselves as the purest law-keepers. If the Pharisees were to be critiqued regarding their hearts and their lives, who could be saved? There was another half to this dilemma. Prostitutes and obviously irreligious people were befriended by this Miracle Man. Clearly someone was wrong here. Jesus and the Pharisees did not think the same things about the Law. What could Jesus be thinking about the Law? One of the scribes asks Him a plain and fair question.

The Great Commandment (36-38)

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” We get used to the idea that all sins are equal. This is actually not the case. All sins deserve God’s wrath and curse, but some sins are worse than others. That also means that it may be helpful to think of some structure to God’s law. The things we think of as the worst possible sins are those things that would make us ashamed around other people, things that might be especially disappointing to our parents, or our children, nightmares that we could imagine happening that would destroy us.

Notice that when this man asked Jesus about the great commandment, Jesus did not say, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” or “Thou shalt not get drunk.” Drunkenness and adulterous affections and actions are serious sins. He answers with a phrase that every Hebrew child was instructed to memorize from Deuteronomy 6, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” There are various forms of this commandment quoted in the New Testament. As it is originally given in the Hebrew in Deuteronomy, after stating heart/mind, and soul, it says that you are to love God with all your “muchness.” You are to love God with all your everything. This is the great commandment. In that sense it is the first commandment. It is not in that category of laws where anyone should quickly say, “I can do that.” It should never be softened into something less than it is. You and I have not kept this commandment for a moment. And we ought to take a moment and reflect upon the tremendous weight of guilt that we have because we have not kept this great law.

A second is like it. (39)

What Jesus has already stated is a lot to think about, but He adds something that is brilliant. He says that there is a second that is like this great commandment. There is some way in which this second one goes with the first. The man who would truly love God with all His everything would have to live out this love for God in this way, and the man that would not do this second command perfectly, certainly has not kept the first commandment either. The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This is from Leviticus 19:18, and it is a summary of all the duties that we have before God in our relationship with one another as fellow inhabitants of this planet.

Many people imagine that they hate themselves, but you will not find support for that idea in the Bible, so I wonder whether we need to think about this more precisely. When people claim that they hate themselves, they are most likely saying that they hate something about themselves. They hate that they are socially uncomfortable. They hate their appearance. They may even hate their sin, and they do not know what to do about it. They may hate their pain, or their family relations, or their life. It is not a normal thing to actually hate yourself.

The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 5:29 “No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it.” We need to take God at His Word on this, since obsessions of apparent self-hatred may only be a distraction keeping us from dealing with real sin. People don’t hate themselves. You don’t hate yourself. You actually have a natural regard for your feelings and for your person more broadly. What God is commanding you to do, flowing out of Your love for Him, is to love others as You love Yourself, to care for their feelings, their person, their eternal well-being as you do for yourself. Again, no one should quickly imagine that he obeys this commandment.

All the Law and the Prophets (40)

The entire message of the Old Testament, all of the Law and the Prophets depend on these two massive commandments. It is essential for us to see that we do not keep these commandments, but that is not enough. Our failure is not the whole story of the Old Testament. The 39 books of the Old Covenant all tell the story of a coming Messiah, and this one Messiah fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. One of the ways that He did this was by keeping the Law of God for us. He loved God with all His muchness, and there was much muchness in His muchness. This love for His Father perfectly overflowed into a love for His neighbor as Himself, as He willingly suffered pain for us on the cross, pain in His flesh, pain in His whole person. The extent of His obedience is the reason why He could say that He has given us a new commandment, that we would love one another “as I have loved you.”

This is the way for us, and it is very powerful. It laughs in the face of sin, death, and the grave, and springs up again to everlasting life. It is a power of obedience that is so great, that even the vilest offender (even a scribe) who truly believes in this Messiah can find a new and powerful life in Jesus Christ. A scribe came to test Jesus regarding the Law. What he found was the most wonderful simplicity and beauty in the Lord’s answer to his question. His answer came from the One who is Himself the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets and our Helper in obedience.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. What are the events that seem to have happened on this same day, both before and after this question?

2. Why would the Pharisess have asked this question?

3. In what sense is the answer of Jesus an elegant summary of the most wonderful ethical system ever known?

4. What are some of the lies concerning man that could distract us from true ethical progress as followers of Christ?

Do You Know the Scriptures and the Power of God?

“I Have a Question about the Resurrection”

(Matthew 22:23-33, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, April 6, 2008)

Matthew 22:23-33 ²³ The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, ²⁴ saying, "Teacher, Moses said, 'If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.' ²⁵ Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no children left his wife to his brother. ²⁶ So too the second and third, down to the seventh. ²⁷ After them all, the woman died. ²⁸ In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her." ²⁹ But Jesus answered them, "You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. ³⁰ For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. ³¹ And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ³² 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not God of the dead, but of the living." ³³ And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.

Introduction – The Benefit of an Honest Question

A good teacher appreciates an honest question. If someone is confused about something they are hearing, if he is able to state his question well, the answer may be very helpful. Not every question is an honest question. A person may ask a question in order to expose the teacher as a fool or his teaching as impossible. The Sadducees were so sure of themselves and of their superiority to the Messiah, that they decided to use a ridiculous question to expose what they thought was the obvious foolishness of the doctrine of the general resurrection.

By “general” resurrection, I mean the teaching of Christ and of the Bible, that at the end of this age every human being who has ever lived and died on this earth since the creation of the first man will be raised back to bodily life, some to eternal judgment, and others to an eternally blessed condition. When a Christian dies, his body rests in the grave until this general resurrection. His spirit is with the Lord, and he may have some kind of physical appearance in the presence of God according to the Lord’s pleasure, but when Christ returns, we will all have resurrection bodies that shall never die. The best understanding of this condition that we have comes from the resurrection of Jesus, for we are told that as He is, so shall we be. We shall be like Him. As we read in 1 John 3:2, “Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” This is the Christian hope. If you are missing the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of the dead, you are missing something essential to Christianity. We are talking about something that we have not yet seen with our own eyes, so an honest question from the Sadducees could have been very helpful. This, however, was not an honest question, for the Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection, and they considered themselves above the Pharisees, and even above Jesus, who had already proven Himself in many ways.

More on the Sadducees (23)

The Sadducees were an important ruling religious party of the Jews in the days of Jesus. They were associated with the priests and the temple. They paid more attention to the first five books of the Bible, the Torah or Law, then to the Prophets, or to other Biblical writings. They did not subscribe to all of the oral traditions that the Pharisees claimed to have received through Moses. They were looser in their practice of Judaism than the Pharisees, and tended to be wealthier and better connected.

Representatives of the Sadducees came to Jesus that day, after Jesus had upset the plot of the Pharisees to trip Him up with a question about taxes. You may remember that the Apostle Paul found it a very easy thing to set the Pharisees against the Sadducees. On one level they had very different religious beliefs. On the other hand they were united in their opposition to Jesus, and in their rejection of the true relationship between Law and Grace. Jesus, as our substitute, perfectly kept the true Law of God without any defect, and then He died for our sins, so that the grace of God could be known by faith in Him. In this Biblical system, Christ is at the very center of our understanding of both Law and grace. Without His obedience to God’s Law and His suffering the full penalty of the Law for us, there could be no grace. Without the Messiah, the system of eternal salvation taught in the Scriptures would have to be completely abandoned. Both the Pharisees and the Sadducees were man-centered. One focused on their own law-keeping and ceremonial purity to recommend themselves to God for salvation as the purity group within Judaism. The other simply believed that there was no life beyond the grave at all, and they focused on the power and rituals that they controlled in this life. They did not believe in spirits, angels, or the resurrection.

Whose wife will she be? (24-28)

With a great sense of superiority over the Lord, who made and sustains both men and angels, one of their number posed a question based on a story. The story is based on a law for Israel under the Old Testament. It came from the last book of Moses, Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy 25:5-10 "If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. ⁶ And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. ⁷ And if the man does not wish to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, 'My husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband's brother to me.' ⁸ Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying, 'I do not wish to take her,' ⁹ then his brother's wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, 'So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother's house.' ¹⁰ And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, 'The house of him who had his sandal pulled off.'

While such a practice seems very strange to us, it was part of God’s Law for His people in building them up as a nation, and was a matter of charity towards the surviving woman and the memory of her husband. Of course, the Sadducees didn’t have a question about this practice at all. It simply was useful rhetorical tool in order to scoff about the life to come. Combined with the account of seven childless brothers, they thought it exposed the concept of the resurrection as ridiculous. All seven brothers died one by one, followed by the death of the one woman whom they all had as a wife. She never conceived a child. Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?

The Scriptures (29a)

There IS a problem. Someone is thinking about something wrong. While people were used to the idea of one man having more than one woman, the thought of one woman having more than one husband was theoretically out of accord with the way things should have been. Obviously it happened. A man might die, and his wife would remarry. There would be other scenarios that surely were common enough which led to a situation that would make a person wonder what would happen in the resurrection with one wife, and more than one husband. This story just extends the number to seven, all simply trying to obey Deuteronomy 25. Well, what does happen in the resurrection? Someone is thinking about something wrong here…

Jesus has the answer. Lest we be held in suspense, he starts by saying, “You are wrong.” Ouch. That hurts. Watch out. Here come two reasons, both of them exposing the ignorance of people that were very smart. First, He says, “You do not know the Scriptures.” By the way, Jesus knows the Scriptures. Have you noticed that? Do you know the Scriptures? We have lots of help for you on this point. One bit of advice. Don’t make your investigation of the Bible a strictly personal matter. Get involved with other people, and develop daily habits that You keep up as a matter of principle. Make sure you not only read them. Make sure you think about them, especially with other people. The Sadducees did not know the Scriptures, and it led them to reject the resurrection, and to misunderstand what the resurrection was like. Understanding life after death is not an easy matter. We need to ask the Bible honest questions about that topic. What answers are you looking for from the Bible? If You have no questions, I don’t think that you will find many answers. The Sadducees were ignorant about the Scriptures.

The Power of God (29b)

There was a second thing that they were ignorant about. They were wrong because they did not know the power of God. If you do not know the power of God making You a new person in Jesus Christ, if you do not know that the cross took away your sins, if you do not think much about the resurrection power of Jesus, then how can you have a right belief and understanding about the coming resurrection of the dead. There’s more to this. If you have not thought about creation, how will you understand anything of the power of God to make a new creation? If you have not found the power to turn away from sin by the Holy Spirit, how will you know and believe in the power of God to make all things new, and to bring a new heavens and a new earth when Christ returns? To know the power of God, you have to take God at His Word. Obey Him. Follow Him. Watch Him work powerfully in Your life. Don’t make God’s power exclusively about You getting what You want when You want it. Make Your knowledge of God’s power about God getting what He wants in and through You for His own glory. Isn’t He the One who gave You faith by His great power? Didn’t He make You a new person in Jesus Christ? That was a powerful thing to do. You can see His power at work in Your life.

The Astonishing Truth of a Coming Resurrection (30-33)

There is a coming resurrection of the dead. In that new age we will not be entering into marriages with each other, and the ignorant question of the Sadducees will apparently be very much beside the point. There is no point in our trying to say too much more about that life from this text, because Jesus does not tell us very much about that here. What we do need to realize is that the One who went to the cross to die for us knows all about heaven. He is the authority on the life to come. That is why He went to the cross with such faith. He believed in the resurrection. This Jesus says that the resurrection from the dead is very real. He proves it from the words God spoke to Moses in Exodus 3:6. God did not say “I WAS the God of Abraham.” He said, “I AM the God of Abraham.” The point is that God spoke to Moses about Abraham as a living being, and Moses came long after Abraham died. Abraham IS. Isaac IS. Jacob IS, David IS. Someone you know and love IS though a body may now rest in the grave, because Jesus IS and always will be. We believe in the resurrection.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. Compare and contrast the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

2. What do you think about the Sadducees question and their accompanying story? How about Christ’s response?

3. What are some questions people could be reasonable asking of the Scriptures for spiritual profit?

4. How do we know and experience the power of God in this age?