Okay. If you turn in your Bibles to Mark
chapter 12, let me just pray for us all. Our Father in Heaven,
we thank You that Your Word is living and active. And we pray,
Heavenly Father, as we come to look at Your Word again this
morning, that You would take Your Words and make them living
realities in our lives, our Father, that we might see the Lord Jesus
afresh in His glory, in His majesty, in His sovereignty. and that
because of who He is and what He's done in our lives, Heavenly
Father, we would be able to rest in faith in who He is and what
He has done for His people. We praise You for the glory of
Your dear Son, our Father. We thank You in His name. Amen.
Okay, if you turn in your Bibles, Mark chapter 12. As I've said so often, the Lord
Jesus is just living out the truth of what the Scriptures
say about Him. And as He comes to Jerusalem,
He comes to the camp of the enemy, to the very centrepiece, to the
very stage of where those who were about to kill Him stand
as one against Him. And our Saviour says in Psalm
22, many bulls have surrounded me, strong bulls of Bashan have
encircled me. They gape at me with their mouths.
like a raging and roaring lion." He's not talking about the physical
bulls that come from that lush country of Bashan anymore than
when Paul said that he fought wild beasts. In Ephesus was he
talking about fighting wild beasts. He was talking about the beasts
who stood opposed to him as God. And so far we've had the Lord
Jesus examined as a lamb, examined about authority. The chief priests
and the scribes and the elders examined him about his authority. The Pharisees and the Herodians
examined him about his understanding of taxes and duty to society. And now the Sadducees come. and
they examine him about the resurrection. And all of them are examining
him ultimately about the Word of God. And as we know Him to
be God, we ought to be duly horrified by the way men were prepared
to confront Him. As we've seen before, that this
city of Jerusalem was the centrepiece of man's religion. the centerpiece
of where man's glory in man's religion reached its pinnacle
in that age. And as we've seen before, the
Lord Jesus each evening goes over the hill down to the little
town of Bethany, and the church meets in Bethany. But here in
Jerusalem is nothing but strife and contention for our Master. And so these Sadducees. It says,
then some Sadducees. So immediately following these
attacks come one upon the other upon the other. All of this may
have happened in the space of a few hours or even less. Ultimately these men have evil
in their hearts. Their intention is to kill the
Lord Jesus. But because they have something
left of a conscience, they want to be able to have a reason for
killing him. So these Sadducees were members
of the powerful elite in Jerusalem. Their power centered on the temple,
their control of the temple. which they had turned into a
marketplace rather than a place that honoured God. They were
the prominent people in the Sanhedrin and most of the high priests
came from their number. And they come to the Lord Jesus
to ask him about resurrection. They really come to test him
about resurrection, what is going to happen to people after they
die. These men were the theological
liberals of their day. Many of them had taken on Greek
ways of thinking and some even had Greek names. And even though
these were men who would have known the Old Testament, huge
parts of the Old Testament, off by heart, these men denied the
fact of the resurrection. They denied the existence of
angels. They denied the existence of
a spirit that lived on after the death of the body. And you
can read about the disputes they had which continued long after
these days in Acts 23 when Paul is hauled before their council
again and has to explain. He sees that the group before
him comprised of Sadducees and Pharisees. And so he says that
he's a Pharisee and it's because of resurrection for the dead.
that he's there, and immediately it works. There is such a disruption
amongst them that they no longer can contend with Paul because
they're so busy squabbling with each other like wild dogs, biting
and devouring one another. But as we saw earlier, there
were chief priests and scribes and elders, pharisees, Herodians
and Sadducees. What was it that bound all these
people who in so much of their religious lives were enemies
of one another or had strong and serious differences? What was it that caused the Lord
Jesus to be the common enemy of them? What was it that caused
Pharisees who hated Herodians and Herodians who were fearful
of the self-righteousness of the Pharisees? What was it that
caused them to stand together and stand against the Lord Jesus
together? Ultimately, what joins them together is what
joins all religious people together. If they all join together as
a group, there is one thing that unites them, that salvation,
their relationship with God, is somehow dependent upon the
activities and the works of man. The Lord Jesus came to these
people. For three years He had preached to these people. For
three years He taught everywhere and at every opportunity that
salvation, that eternal life, is God's Word, based on God's
power. And it's for those whom God had
chosen from before the foundation of the world. It's based on God
getting glory for himself and man being left in his right and
proper place. But these men, all were men of
privilege. They enjoyed the privileges of
wealth. They enjoyed the privileges of status in that community. And they saw, these people, that
Jerusalem and this huge and magnificent temple was actually the thing
that gave them power, earthly power. And the Lord Jesus came
and said to them, this is my house. I have the right to rule
here. This is my city. I am the king. I march into this as king. I
go to the temple and cleanse it as my house. And so these
enemies stood opposed to him. For these men, and for men throughout
all ages, their religion was a matter of convenience. For God's servants throughout
the ages, from Abel to the last one lives upon this earth, for
God's servants it is a matter of conviction. There is the difference
between heaven and hell in those things. people who conduct their
religion to be seen by men, to be pleasing of men, to make men
in somewhere, in some part, the author and the perfecter of his
own salvation. They will always be men who compromise. May God protect us from compromising,
because once the door of compromise is open, it just becomes easier
and easier to open it further and further and further. And
the more it's open, the more man will be in the mix, the more
the fear of man, as these people we have seen over and over again,
they fear man. For God's servants, like John
the Baptist, like the Lord Jesus, he came sent from God. a man of conviction. Men who
are led by conviction, they are not swayed by what they see. It doesn't matter how impressive
the man appears to be. It doesn't matter what credentials
he has in this world and in particular in this religious world. It doesn't
matter how many people follow him, how many people he joins
with, how big the club is. God's people are not swayed by
those things. There is one thing that drives
the Lord Jesus, and one thing that drives His servants, and
that is the glory of God, the honour of His name, the honour
of His Word. So for three years these men
had been gathering their questions together, and they fired them
like bullets at the Lord Jesus, one after the other. They had
three years. And then they come to him with
pretended reverence for him. They called him teacher, could
be translated master. Moses wrote to us, They actually
acknowledged Jesus as a teacher. They actually saw that Moses
had written to them. The Bible was given to nation
Israel, a sign that God's word would go to God's Israel, and
it didn't go to the rest of the world. And then they quote a
passage, or they allude to a passage out of Deuteronomy 25, And then they do what people
who really in their hearts despise God's word do. They take what
God had written for the good of his people. They take what
God had written to reflect the gospel and the promises of God. They take this issue of what
happens if a man dies. The whole purpose of it in Deuteronomy
was that the tribes of Israel must be preserved, because out
of the tribes of Israel come the Messiah. You can read about
it in Genesis when you have the remarkable story of Judah and
Tamar. The whole purpose of that story
was that the line of Judah must be preserved. Why? King David came from the line
of Judah, but someone much greater than David came from that very
line, our Lord Jesus. And so now there were seven brothers,
verse 20. The first took a wife in dying, he left no offspring.
The second took her and he died, nor did he leave any offspring.
The third likewise. And so the seven had her and
no offspring. And last of all, the woman died. And the question, the question
is, What is going to happen in the resurrection? These men who
don't believe in resurrection ask a question which really at
the heart of it is a mockery of God's law. It's meant to entrap
the Lord Jesus. Just as was promised in Psalm
55, 21, talks about these men, describes them. The words of
his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart. His words were softer than oil,
yet they were drawn sores. The Old Testament. is full of
stories of resurrection, pictures of resurrection, pictures of
life beyond the grave, pictures of the wonder and the power of
God in creation. Enoch was taken and he was no
more. There wasn't a body of Enoch
corrupted in that soil. Elijah was taken directly to
heaven. On your sheets there you have
a number of Old Testament passages which speak of resurrection.
There are hundreds more. The one the Lord Jesus refers
to is at the top of the list, but Job 19 is a well-known verse,
isn't it? This is Job, a man who had lost
all of his family, the man who had lost his status, the man
who had lost his health, the man whose wife said to him, Job,
it's hopeless, curse God and die. Job says in Job 19.25, For
I know that my Redeemer lives, I know that the Lord Jesus lives,
and He shall at last stand on the earth, and after my skin
is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God. Job knew about resurrection. Psalm 17 is a wonderful, wonderful
psalm of David's. And he says, As for me, I will
see your face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied when I awake
in your likeness. Psalm 49, 15, But God will redeem
my soul from the power of the grave, for he shall receive me. over and over again. Daniel in
his prophecy says, and many of those who sleep in the dust of
the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame
and everlasting contempt. And so these men really at their
heart did not believe the word of God. And here they are disbelieving
the word of God, coming to trap the Lord Jesus. Therefore in
the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as a wife. Their question is designed to
ridicule God's holy law, even though they claimed it was given
to them by God. So the Lord Jesus in His response
shows us how we are to deal with those who want to mock God's
Word and have debates about contentious issues rather than focusing on
Jesus Christ, who He is and what He has done and what He is doing
now. Paul at the end of his life writes
to Timothy and says, Avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing
that they generate strife. And a servant of the Lord must
not quarrel, but be gentle to all, able to teach patience,
in humility correcting those who are in opposition. And this
is why we can be gentle and stand firm for the Gospel. He says,
If God perhaps will grant them repentance. It must come from
God, so that they may know the truth. Only when God works in
people's hearts will they know the truth, and that they may
come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having
been taken captive by him to do his will. We don't need to
be contentious with people about things that are not at the heart
of the Gospel. We contend for the faith which
was once delivered for the saints. And once an argument starts,
God's children need to just walk away, because we will never win
an argument. We might be theologically correct,
But we will never win. We don't have to win the argument. God will do it. And so here we
have this wonderful answer from the Lord Jesus. Jesus answered
and said to them, verse 24, Are you not therefore mistaken because
you do not know the scriptures nor the power of God? When Satan came at the beginning
of Jesus' ministry to attack the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus
answered him from God's Word. Always, he just answered him
from God's Word. And so ought we. And what's happened here, as
we've seen before, again and again, is that when the Gospel
comes along, when the Gospel is revealed by God to people,
it exposes people's hearts. It exposes people's hearts in
a way that absolutely nothing else would be able to do. It strips away from man his self-righteousness. It elevates God and puts him
on a throne, and it allows no place for man on that throne
outside of perfect union with the Lord Jesus. All men All human
beings will be stripped by the Gospel. They wear these masks. They pretend that they are righteous. They, like these men, pretend
that they are religious. They, like these men, come pretending
that they have serious things to debate. But the Gospel will
strip them. It always strips people. Everyone who is opposed to God
is a blind man. Everyone who stands above God's
Word is a blind man. They are blinded by their sin. They are blinded by Satan, and
only the light of the Gospel, only when God's sovereign power
comes into a man's life, When God brings life and God brings
light, will people be able to see who the Lord Jesus is? And when they see Him, they'll
see who they really are. And God's children will be caused
to bow, they'll be caused to surrender to God's Word. They will not keep fighting God
about things that He has said. Man left to himself lives out
what the Lord said in John 3 to Nicodemus. Flesh gives birth
to flesh, all human carnal activity. All human activity is fleshly
activity and all it ever does is give rise to fleshly activity. And the worst kind of fleshly
activity is religious fleshly activity. that names the name
of Jesus and then dethrones him as God, that talks about man
and enthrones his mighty will, enthrones his wonderful works,
as if God is going to respond to people on the basis of what
they have done. These men had for centuries cultivated
a religion. which they were passionate about
sharing with other people, that they passionately defended, that
it was a religion of man. Flesh gives birth to flesh. Let me say it again. Flesh gives
birth to flesh, but spirit gives birth to spirit. This word power, that the Lord
Jesus says here is a word which means mighty ability, violent
strength, abundant might. That is the power of God. When that sovereign power comes
to a person, things will happen. Have you encountered God in power? Has He come and dealt with you? Many of you here can bear witness
to the fact in this last few years that a time at a time of
God's choosing and by a method of God's choosing, the proclamation
of the Gospel, something happened in your lives. The scriptures
became alive and became powerful. What had happened? It was not
just a doctrine that people believed. It was actually a person that
they met. The Lord Jesus came and revealed
Himself to people, and when He does, These scriptures, which
are just words and just ink on pieces of paper, became living
things, became vibrant things. They became things which put
what seemed like a jigsaw of the Bible together, and it became
a beautiful picture, a picture of the Lord Jesus. As he says,
to his apostles, you will receive power from on high. That's what happens when the
Gospel comes. It is the power of God, the same
word, the power of God unto salvation. The wisdom of the world that
I hear again and again these days is one that is a word of
tolerance. Again and again and again, I
hear a little bit of compromise, a little bit of tolerance is
really not a problem. We can get along with people
who deny the deity of the Lord Jesus, they say. They're still
preaching about Jesus. They're still opening a Bible
to people. They still claim to be the ones
who really lead people to God. These men gathering together
need to be a solemn, serious warning to all of us here. If all religion gathers together,
and we've seen many gatherings together in this last few years,
they gather together and they can dwell together because they
can walk together because really at the heart of their message
they have the same message. There is somewhere in the mix
the esteem of man, whether man contributes to his new birth,
whether man contributes to his repentance, whether a man contributes
to his faith, whether a man contributes to his ongoing life with God
in sanctification, whether a man contributes in works, whether
a man contributes because the evangelist has a power, whether
a man contributes because he can gather people together and
whip them up into some emotional experience. Just look and you
will find man in the mix somewhere, and therefore they can all join
together. These men all had a religion,
all of these groups all had a religion that seemed to be about Jesus,
seemed to be about Jehovah, seemed to be about the Word of God.
And yet they all gather together. When the gospel is revealed,
they gather together as one. with one intention. They cannot
stand God being absolutely sovereign. They cannot stand the Lord Jesus
being truly, truly God in human flesh. They cannot stand the
fact that salvation is entirely, entirely dependent upon God. They must have man in it. And
so they will gather together like Psalm 2 says, they set themselves
and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against
his anointed, saying, let us break their bonds in pieces.
Let us break the bonds of God. Let us break the absolute sovereignty
of God and cast away their cords from us. They really are saying,
as these men are saying, we will not be ruled by this sovereign. We will not have this man as
God. The real enmity here is against
God's sovereign power and against His holy word. Because this book
has one message. This is a book about Christ. The message of this book is the
Gospel of the Lord Jesus. The message of this book is His
sovereignty in power, that there is a resurrection coming for
every human being. Every time you walk down the
street, every person you see will rise from the dead, because
the Lord Jesus is sovereign. As He said, to the men walking
on that road to Emmaus. Beginning at Moses and all the
prophets, He expounded unto them all the Scriptures, the things
concerning Himself. And when the Lord Jesus had spoken
to them, their hearts were burning within them as He opened the
Scriptures to them. And He reminded His apostles
when He went back to Jerusalem that all things must be fulfilled. These men search the scriptures,
says the Apostle John of the Lord Jesus, for in them you think
you have eternal life, but they testify of me. The resurrection is more than
a doctrine. The resurrection is a person.
Jesus said to Mary, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live. The gospel is more than a doctrine,
a set of truths. The gospel is a person. Salvation is more than knowing
a bunch of facts. Salvation is knowing a person. John 17.3. Jesus Christ is our resurrection
and He is our life. What a wonderful thing to have
our lives hidden in Him. And the Lord Jesus having explained
to them the fact that they had wandered from the truth. These
men had heard the truth Their ancestors had heard the truth.
Isaiah preached the gospel. Ezekiel preached the gospel.
Jeremiah preached the gospel. Daniel preached the gospel. Malachi
preached the gospel to these people. But the Lord Jesus takes
the attacks of his enemies and gives us some beautiful gospel
truths to comfort his people. In verse 25, for when they rise
from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but
are like the angels in heaven. The Sadducees didn't believe
in the angels. We can read about it in Acts
23 verse 8. That God's children will be like
the angels in heaven. Angels created by God, never
to die. Elect angels see the face of
God. Elect angels are willing servants
of God. They are sent to watch over God's
children while they live on this earth. They are, according to
1 Corinthians 11, they are here today witnessing to what goes
on. They who see the face of the
Lord Jesus in heaven love to see His face lifted up before
His people here. And so when people do rise from
the dead, when believers rise from the dead, the relationships
that we have are going to be superseded by something remarkable. As much as believing husbands
and wives love each other here, when God's children rise from
the dead, the love that we see as Norm gazes upon his dear wife
Beth, in heaven is it going to be any worse? God says that when
we get to heaven in the new creation, we will be like Jesus. The relationships that we have
with each other are going to be so infinitely better than
what we have here, that marriage is not a good enough word to
describe it. Our marriage to the Lord Jesus,
to see Him as He is, to see His face, to have Him personally
come and wipe every tear from our eyes, to have Him, to live
with Him forevermore, No matter how sweet marriage is here, nothing
here is going to compare to what we will be in the future. Angels
of God live in constant, full assurance and perfect knowledge
of God's smiling approval on them. What will it be to live
in a place where there is no sin, where there is no possibility
of ever having any sin? To live like angels, gazing upon
the Lord Jesus, complete security, perfect assurance, perfect uninterrupted
communion with our Redeemer. We will see through wonderful
eyes as we look upon the new creation and all of its beauty,
everything will reflect the Lord Jesus and reflect Him back to
us in ways that cause us just to live in perfect delight. And like the angels, worshipping
Him, singing His praise, serving Him, celebrating His wonderful
works, just doing His will, will be just a delight. And in the
midst of that, we will rest. God's children will finally rest. That fight between what's in
our flesh and what the Spirit is doing in our lives will finally
be over. We shall see His face. And the
Lord Jesus reminds these people who didn't believe in resurrection
and didn't esteem the rest of the Old Testament as they did
the Law of Moses, He takes them back to the Law of Moses and
says, Have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the burning
bush passage, how God spoke to him saying, I am the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. This is a remarkable place to
take people to talk to them about resurrection. These men represent
God's eternal covenant. These men represent God's elect
people. These men represent God's relationship
with His people. He chose Abraham and no one else
in that land of Babylon. He chose Isaac and not Ishmael
and all the others of Abraham's children. He chose Jacob and
not Esau. He chose all of them. And He
says, I am their God. Right now, Abraham is in heaven
with me. Right now, Isaac is in heaven
with me. Right now, Jacob is in heaven
with me. They are alive. They will sometime
very soon come back and have their bodies back again. He is not the God of the dead,
but the God of the living. He's a God whose people are infinitely
and eternally alive. They have never been anything
else than alive with Him. When they close their eyes and
their body dies, they will be more alive at that moment than
they have ever been through all of their earthly lives. Instantly,
perfectly alive in a way which would make us envious of the
journey that they have taken, getting rid of this body of sin.
And then they will be people like us, who look forward to
that great day. When Christ, who is our life,
says Paul, appears, you also will appear with Him in glory. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are
in glory now, but there will come a time when they will appear
with Him in glory. This Saviour Jesus Christ, this
great God who is our Saviour, has abolished death and brought
life and immortality to light. How does He bring it to light?
He brings it to light, according to God, through the Gospel. So children of God need spiritual
life and spiritual light to see the Gospel, to see the Lord Jesus
as He is. They are alive. These men are
greatly, greatly mistaken. All of their religion, all of
their religious activity with all of the others had just brought
them to a place where they really hated God. And when they could
get their hands on Him, they sought by malicious and deceitful
ways to kill Him. And if it wasn't for the grace
of God, so would we. And so the Lord Jesus meets His
enemies, and He meets our enemies And in dealing with them, He
gives us great lessons, great lessons of comfort about the
reality of our resurrection, great comfort about the reality
of His resurrection, and the triumph that was happening in
Jerusalem at that time. And one of the few places in
the Scriptures where we hear of the Lord Jesus rejoicing in
His earthly ministry He says, At that time Jesus answered and
said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you
have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have
revealed them to babes. even so, Father, for it seemed
good in Your sight. All things have been delivered
to Thee by My Father. No one knows the Son except the
Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and
the One to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Come to Me, all
you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. take my yoke upon you and learn
from me. For I am gentle and lowly in
heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is
heavy and my burden is light. When the enemies of Christ and
the enemies of his gospel and the enemies of his people have
done their worst, they have just brought upon God's children showers
of blessing, sweet promises to darken, to brighten the darkest
days. And he says to us, the battle
is the Lord's. stand still and see the salvation
of the Lord. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you
for the Lord Jesus.