The Sadducees.
I. THEIR CASE OF CASUISTRY.
1. Their doctrine. They held that there was no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit (Acts 23:8). Some of them now came to Christ, asserting their unbelief. They had not hitherto, like the Pharisees, taken a decided stand against our Lord. The chief priests, indeed, who were Sadducees, had been provoked into hostility by our Lord's action in the temple; but we do not read of Sadducees, as such, joining in the opposition against the Lord before this time, except in the one case mentioned by St. Matthew (Matthew 16:1). They were few in number, but rich and powerful through their possession of the chief places in the Church. Their rank, their sceptical tendencies, seem to have led them to regard our Lord up to the present time rather with indifference than with active hostility. They had not hitherto taken much interest in his teaching and miracles. But he had become a power in the land, the most conspicuous Figure in Palestine; they could not go on ignoring him as they had done. Sadduceeism and Pharisaism represent tendencies diametrically opposed to one another, yet sometimes united in opposition to the truth. Philosophic indifference on the one side, superstition and hypocrisy on the other, are the two opposite poles of opinion. Both stand aloof from that simple, loving, earnest faith which marks the real follower of Christ; sometimes they unite against it.
2. Their question. They proposed a difficulty, a possible complication arising out of the institution of levirate marriage. A woman, they suppose, had married in succession seven brothers: whose wife should she be in the resurrection? Some of the rabbis had already decided the question—a woman who had been married more than once would, they thought, be the wife of the first husband in the world to come. So said the rabbis but what was the opinion of the great Teacher from Nazareth?
II. THE LORD'S REPLY.
1. To their question. "Ye do err," he said. They were wandering this way and that, far from the truth; and the cause of that error was:
2. To their doctrine. The Lord turns to the fundamental error of the Sadducees. These men had come to him (according to the reading of several ancient manuscripts) asserting that error, saying that there is no resurrection. The Lord refers them to the books of Moses. "Have ye not read?" he said, in the form of words which he used so often. We mark how he insists upon the duty of searching the Scriptures, how he urges it again and again. He quotes the Book of Exodus. There are more distinct assertions of the great truth of the resurrection in other books of the Old Testament, but the Sadducees regarded the Pentateuch as of supreme authority, and it seems that their rejection of the doctrine was mainly based on the supposed silence of Moses. Therefore the Lord refers them to the Law, which they set above the other Scriptures. He insists upon the revelation made to Moses when the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." The Lord draws out the deep meaning of the sacred words. That relation to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob implies their continued existence. For "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." He is the Eternal, the I AM, the Self-existent One, absolute and unconditioned in his everlasting, infinite Being. He is the Life; he giveth life; he breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life. That gift of life, the gift which he gave to that man whom he created in his own image, alter his own likeness, is not a mere temporary gift, not the gift of a few short years, to be spent, perhaps, in trouble and sorrow. Such a view of God's great gift of life is disparaging to the Almighty, the all-loving Giver. Surely more than this is contained in the relation in which he stands to his people; more than this is implied in the simple words in which that relation is expressed: "their God." Indeed, he himself tells us so in his Holy Word: "God is not ashamed to he called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city." He is the God of Abraham. Then Abraham is not dead. Abraham confessed that he was a pilgrim and stranger upon earth; he desired a better country, that is, a heavenly one; he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God. "Abraham is dead, and the prophets," the Jews said to our Lord. But his life is hidden with God; "all live unto him." God knows, sees, comprehends, in his Divine omniscience, the separate life of each individual soul, that from the time of the creation until now has passed into the assemblage of the countless millions in the spirit world. They do not sleep idly; they live. He knows them every one. The thought is to us overwhelming in its vastness, in the infinite complexity of the problems which it suggests. But with God all things are possible. The Sadducees greatly erred, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. Let us ask him to teach us by the grace of his Holy Spirit the deep meaning of his Holy Word; and let us believe in his almighty power, and walk before him in reverence and godly fear.
LESSONS.
1. Guard against the cold indifference of the Sadducees; pray for faith and love and zeal.
2. Search the Scriptures; pray for grace to understand them.
3. Think much of the blessed resurrection. Oh that we may attain unto the resurrection of the just!