Have You Not Read?

The Sadducees were confident that they understood God and His Word. That their interpretations were the only correct ones. Their confidence was based on traditions and study over many centuries. Based on this confidence, some Sadducees approached Jesus, trying to trap Him into saying something incriminating.

Confident that “there is no resurrection,” they posed a hypothetical question, but one with a Scriptural basis. What would happen, they wondered, if a man married a woman, but died before children were born? Following Scriptural models, the man’s brother was to marry her. But in this story, he too died before children were born. Then, the same happened to their five other brothers.

Their question was whose wife would she be “in the resurrection”? We can sense their cynicism. It seemed like a riddle without a solution.

But Jesus responded with a different perspective than they anticipated. He revealed that they had fundamental problems based on a basic misunderstanding. They had drawn the wrong conclusions. In spite of their years of study, they did “not understand the Scriptures or the power of God.”

As evidence, Jesus pointed to Moses’ encounter with God at the burning bush (Exodus 3). They had read this passage many times but never really understood its meaning. There were deeper truths that they had missed.

This is a pattern that can happen to any of us. How easy it can be to read the Bible and simply draw our own conclusions, and miss God’s true message.

Make sure you don’t just read the Word, but seek God to gain His understanding.