This rebuke by Jesus to the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy was the harshest treatment that He ever gave to any group. He did this publicly before the multitude, the people the hypocrites most wanted to impress.
Jesus had faced many prior battles with the scribes and Pharisees. On this particular day, the encounter started with the chief priests and elders challenging Jesus' authority. Jesus stunned them by replying with a question that challenged their authority. He then used three parables to illustrate that the leaders of the Jews had rejected the rule of God in their lives, despite their pious religious acts. They "perceived that he spake of them."
The Pharisees countered by tempting Jesus with a question about paying taxes to the Roman government. Then the Sadducees tried...
Jesus took an apparent contradiction in scripture and through combining these paradoxical statements (concerning the humanity and deity of Christ) brought forth the truth that Christ is God in human flesh. Both assertions (the fact that Jesus was David's son and yet David's Lord) were right at the same time.
It was correct that Christ was David's son and it was also correct that Christ was David's Lord. This meant that Christ also was God. However, Christ was not exclusively David's son nor was He exclusively David's Lord. These two truths had to be combined to arrive at the whole truth. No truth of God's Word stands independent of the other truths in God's Word.
A lack of balancing truth with truth is usually the cause of much contention among men when interpreting scriptures. Some argue...
Jesus repeatedly made reference to His deity for which the Jews had sought to kill Him, and yet He quotes from Deuteronomy 6:4, that "The Lord our God is one Lord." There are not two or three Gods and yet Jesus claimed to be God just like God the Father. This union is a great mystery that defies human understanding but can be accepted and believed.
Jesus in His pre-existent state was in the form of God. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Jesus is God manifested in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16). However, Jesus did not demand or cling to His rights as God. He laid aside His Divine rights and privileges in order to take the form of a servant and be made in the likeness of man. He further humbled Himself by...
EVERY YEAR, AT THIS TIME BEING THE JEWISH NEW YEAR, I FEEL BAD FOR ALL THE JEWISH PEOPLE AND WONDER WITH ALL THE PROPHECIES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT ABOUT JESUS BEING THE MESSIAH, WHY THEY CAN'T SEE THIS. IT WOULDN'T BE SO BAD EXCEPT THE PROPHECIES ARE SO SPECIFIC. I THINK, AND THIS IS JUST ME, THAT THEY DON'T EVEN READ THE NEW TESTAMENT SINCE THEY DON'T BELIEVE THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS. I HAVE BEEN IN A JEWISH CHAT ROOM AND TO MENTION JESUS WAS A MISTAKE. SOME OF THEM GOT VERY HOSTILE.
Jesus revealed that all of the Old Testament laws were designed to instruct us how to love God and love others. Therefore, the two commands that dealt directly with loving God and others (Lev. 19:18 and Dt. 6:5) were the most important.
The religious leaders had become so obsessed with keeping every minor detail of the law that they had lost sight of its ultimate purpose. They neither loved God nor their fellow man, yet they thought they were keeping the law.
The same thing is happening today. Some of the cruelest acts of men towards their fellow men have...
It is very doubtful that the situation that the Sadducees were relating ever took place. It is more probable that they were stating a hypothetical case to complicate the understanding of the resurrection and thereby discredit it.
If you accept their basic supposition (marriage continues in heaven), then their reasoning was correct. It would not be possible to administer marriage in heaven with multiple mates as their story described. Their reasoning wasn't flawed, but rather the "facts" that their reasoning was based on were not scriptural.
The scriptures speak of two becoming "one flesh" in marriage, and angels are not flesh. Paul said, "Flesh and blood cannot...
