Question for You (Part 3)

The second question I asked a few days ago (March 29) concerned linking the Burning Bush of John 11 with an encounter Jesus had with religious leaders in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke). I should have included, “during Holy Week”, because that is what I was thinking about – there may be more than one answer to my question, but I am particularly thinking about the following passage which occurs during Holy Week:

And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died. In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”

Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘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. You are quite wrong.” (Mark 11:18 – 27, ESV).

Note that the Sadducees quote Moses to Jesus and that Jesus quotes Moses right back to them. The Sadducees are using Deuteronomy 25:5ff to buttress their belief that there is no resurrection, and in doing so they are failing to consider the broader Biblical context which includes Exodus 3:10 – 22. However, there is more than contextual failure, in fact Jesus doesn’t give them a lecture on considering context, instead Jesus tells them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?”

In my blog Mind on Fire, I’ve been working through 1 Corinthians chapters 1 – 4, with a focus on Chapter 2; I haven’t been frequent in this writing, perhaps because I’ve been pondering this for well over a year and I am still exploring it – or it is still working in me. I am challenged by Paul’s insistence that only the Holy Spirit can reveal our Lord and His Word to us. I am challenged by Jesus revealing Himself to His disciples through what we call the Old Testament in Luke Chapter 24. 

This is more than looking at OT passages here and there, this is beholding Jesus Christ holistically in and through the OT – this is “seeing” Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God, including the Body of Christ, as a complete whole in and through the Old Testament. (We struggle with the NT book of Hebrews because we lack this vision, this way of seeing, this way of hearing.) Like the ancient Jews, we may hear the prophets read in church but we do not hear their voices (Acts 13:27). Paul says in this verse that it was because of this that the people of Jerusalem condemned Jesus – I wonder if we also condemn Jesus because of our deafness and blindness?

Well, Martha and Mary in John 11 were looking to the past and the future and not “seeing” that Jesus IS (I AM) the Resurrection and the Life; but at least they were on a pilgrimage of faith and relationship in Christ – our Lord Jesus brings us along as, by His grace, we respond to Him. Our Father was graciously opening the eyes of Mary and Martha and I imagine that they got quite the eye-opener when their brother Lazarus came out of the tomb.

But the Sadducees? They may have been able to quote Scripture but they did not “know” either the Scriptures or the power of God. They could not “see” the Burning Bush, not when they read about it in Exodus or when the Burning Bush was speaking to them during Holy Week.

What about us?