In our study of Mark we are in Mark 12:18; where the next group to attack Jesus is the Sadducees.
Last time we noted that the Sadducees were the aristocrats that were taken primarily from the Levitical priesthood whereas the Pharisees were recruited from the scribes.
The Pharisees are religious, the Sadducees are rationalist and political and they run the land with one of their objectives as having Judea be independent of both Herod and the Roman Empire.
The Sadducees have rejected the authority of Old Testament scriptures. They do not believe in any kind of an after life nor do they believe in angels or resurrection.
So they have come to Jesus and in an attempt to discredit Him just as the scribes, the chief priests, the elders, the Pharisees and the Herodians had. They all had tried and they had all failed under the principle of 2Cor 13:8; and Isa 54:17;
The parenthetical phrase "who say there is no resurrection." is mentioned because they are going to come with a question about resurrection and they are going to try to use it to ridicule and discredit Him.
The Old Testament scriptures clearly teach resurrection. Passages including Dan 12:2; Isa 26:19; Isa 53:10; Job 19:26; and Psa 16:10,11 clearly teach it so they should have known better.
The pseudo-intellectual Sadducees are going to approach Jesus with the idea that the resurrection introduces unsolvable problems so it cannot be true.
This is the same rationalistic stunt that the so-called "intelligent people" try to pull today on such topics as world peace, world hunger and global climate change.
Their position is that we can't accept the truth of the resurrection because it has problems that are unsolvable and since the problems are unsolvable it cannot possibly exist. They are also going try to use erudite ridicule to discredit Jesus.
They are also afraid of the people so if they had come and taken an open stand against Jesus the people would be against them but if somehow they can show their hostility and opposition with their typical philosophical erudite calm and their aristocratic snobbishness while at the same time using ridicule then they may be able to keep the people on their side.
They seek to solve man's problems by politics and by-pass the real answers that are contained in the Word of God. These are the same techniques that the atheist freedom hating tyrannical global warming, climate change crowd uses today and the stupid politicians fall for it, overreach their authority and use their power to establish tyranny.
Apostate leaders who represent apostate citizens who have rejected the truth of God's Word in Jesus' day as well as ours violate their oath office and spend all of their time and energy destroying freedom rather than protecting it.
Mark 12:19; "Saying, Teacher" Notice that each one of these groups addresses Jesus Christ with, "Teacher," indicating they have not accepted Him as Savior. They recognize Him as having academic status but they do not accept Him as the unique God-Man who is their Messiah.
They go on to quote the Old Testament, that they have rejected: "Moses (used for the first five books of the Old Testament) said." They are going to quote from Deut 25:5,6; that addresses the resurrection.
They did not believe in resurrection and therefore they are going try to use this passage to refute it. "If (third class condition, introducing a hypothetical case) a man dies, without having children, his brother shall marry his wife, in order to raise up children on behalf of his brother."
This brings us to a brief look at the doctrine of posterity that applied to the perpetuation of every original family that escaped slavery in Egypt and traveled into Israel for the purpose of providing a biological line for the seed of the woman, the Messiah Jesus Christ.
If the husband died without a male heir, it was the responsibility of his brother to have sex with the widow, so that his genetic line would not die out, Gen 38:6-10.
The Sadducees are trying to use the law of posterity to trap Jesus on the subject of resurrection, Mark 12:19.
The law of posterity is ultimately related to inheriting land in the Millennium under the Abrahamic covenant, Deut 1:8, Deut 11:9.
In Ruth 4:1-10; Boaz fulfilled the responsibility under the law of posterity and as a result ended up being in the line of Messiah. Ruth is one of the two gentile women in the genetic line of Jesus. The other is Rehab.
It is ironic that God rejected the genetic line of closer relative who refused to fulfill their responsibility because they wanted their genetic line to be unblemished. This is a clear demonstration of priority of God's grace policy instead of rote ritual legalism. Mark 7:6;
The law of posterity was a civil function in Israel during the Age of Israel it does not apply in the Church Age.
Mark 12:20-22; The Sadducees set up their hypothetical scenario and then pose a question based on their hypothetical.
Mark 12:23; This is their question that they use try to discredit God's Word and ridicule away the doctrine of resurrection and thereby by extension discredit Jesus who has been teaching exclusively from the Old Testament and rejecting the oral traditions.
"In the resurrection when they rise again whose wife shall she be for all seven had married her."
They think they have Jesus in a bind with their question but it really just reveals how the blind arrogance of unbelief has caused them to be uninformed and ignorant. 2Cor 4:4;
Mark 12:24; "Jesus replied is this not why you keep on being deceived." This is a present passive indicative that means you're always wrong and you never have been right because you keep on deceiving yourselves.
Then he explains why; "not understanding the scriptures" the reason they are never right, "or the power of God."
It is impossible to understand the power of God until you know the Word of God because you have to understand God's Word before you can understand God's power because God's Word is God's power.
Since they have rejected the Torah (Moses) and the entire Tnach and substituted their own teachings they will never know or understand because they have rejected the only means of understanding.
People who reject God's word are never right because they have rejected the one and only truth. John 7:17;
There is no hope of finding truth for those who persist in rejecting the truth that is exclusively revealed in God's Word.
The so-called "progressive" political leaders of this country have the same problem. They will never "get it" because they keep on rejecting Divine Establishment and Bible Doctrine that are the only means of "getting it".
Locked in negative volition never "gets it"