A Jewish sect called the “Sadducees."

    Sadducees – A Sad View, You See!        b

    A “classic” is defined as “an author or an enduring literary work of first rank, judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and most outstanding of its kind.” Mark Twain knew a thing or two about literature.

He once said, “A classic is something everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” We go too far to say “nobody” wants to read the Bible, but the case can be made that far, far more people want to have read it than actually have. Pollsters regularly report that the Bible is a revered but unread Book. The result is widespread ignorance of and / or confusion about the Holy Bible. How well do you know the Bible? Take a little test – how many of the following statements are in the Bible.

* “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”
* “Money is the root of all evil.”

* “God helps those who help themselves.”
* Man is saved by faith alone.”
* “Cleanliness is next to godliness.”
* “This too shall pass.”
* God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”
* “Hate the sin, love the sinner.”
* “Eve took of the apple and ate, and gave one to Adam.”
* “The whale did swallow Jonah.”
* “Three wise men came from the East.”
* “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.”
* “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
* “Jesus wept.”
* “Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.”  The correct answer is that only the last three statements are actually found in Scripture (see Matthew 22:39; John 11:35; Acts 22:16). Others may be taught in principle in Scripture, but none are found in the Bible as stated. So it is – “It ain’t so much what folks don’t know; it’s that they know so much that just ain’t so.”

    Jesus encountered a group like that in Matthew 22:23-33 – a Jewish sect called the “Sadducees.” Matthew says they “say there is no resurrection.” After a vain attempt on their part to discredit Jesus and the doctrine of the resurrection, Jesus spoke words that must have jarred these so-called experts of the Law (who accepted only the first five books of the Old Testament as inspired) with this blunt statement – “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God” (vs 29). The Lord went on to ask them, “But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Amazing! 

To discredit these sophisticates and expose their false notion of no resurrection, Jesus quoted only one verse from Exodus 3:6. There God had appeared to Moses in a burning bush and declared the words Jesus quoted. Amazing, indeed. Fourteen centuries after the actual incident, Jesus quotes that verse of Scripture, fully confident in its inspiration, asserting that in that verse the Sadducees could still read “what was spoken to you by God”! 

Do you view Scripture as highly as Jesus did? The claim of Scripture is that God continues to speak to us today through what He originally spoke (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Jesus was confident God speaks through Scripture! Behind His confidence in the word of God was confidence in the God of the word. Unlike Jesus, the Sadducees didn’t know God’s word and they didn’t trust God’s power to raise the dead.

The Sadducees had a sad view, you see. All because they hadn’t read their Bible carefully and correctly, with faith in God. How are you reading yours?

--Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN