Love to God.—Mark 12:18-44

Notes

Notes on the Lesson.

1. Question 4.—The Sadducees were the higher critics, or religious infidels, of their time. They accepted the writings of Moses, but for the most part rejected the other Scriptures, holding that there would be no resurrection. They brought to Jesus one of their stock cavils, one of the hard theological nuts, so to speak, with which they had so often silenced the Pharisees. Jesus first tells them their error, and shows them that they limit God's power. He then from the writings which the Sadducees professed to believe showed that there would be a resurrection. He takes for the basis of his argument a truth admitted by all that God is a God of the living. It would be no glory to be the God of the dead; for death came by sin. But in the writings of Moses, God calls himself "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Now all knew that these men were dead and buried; how, then, could God be the God of the living in being their God?—For the very simple reason that in God's purpose they still lived, for he would raise them from the dead. He calls those things that are not as though they were (Rom. 4:17), for in his purpose they are. If the souls of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were in heaven, and God called himself their God and the God of the living because their souls were there, the words of Christ were the veriest nonsense. Jesus quoted the Scripture to prove that "as touching the dead, that they rise;" and that he did prove it, the tacit admission of the Sadducees bears witness.