No God, Know Error; Know God, No Error
Matthew 22:23-33
September 7, 2008
NOTE: THE ME/WE/GOD/YOU/WE FORMAT USED IN MY MESSAGES IS BORROWED FROM ANDY STANLEY’S BOOK, "COMMUNICATING FOR A CHANGE."
Me: There are lots of areas in life in which I’m completely ignorant. Things like farming, construction, power tools, cars.
You start talking to me about that stuff, and you’ll just see my eyes glaze over as I try to keep my face from betraying that I have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about.
But the great thing is I know I’m ignorant about those things. And even though I wish I had more knowledge about those things, it doesn’t bother me a whole lot that I don’t.
I understand that not everyone is knowledgeable about everything.
We: I think all of us know the feeling of getting into a conversation that goes to areas in which we’re totally clueless, right?
And it’s fine when it’s about stuff that we already acknowledge that we don’t about.
Have you ever tried to fake your way through a conversation about something you knew nothing about but didn’t want to let the other person know you didn’t know?
“Oh sure – I handle explosives all the time!” “Great – take care of this for us, will you? We’ll be back in an hour…”
When it gets dangerous, however, is when we start talking about stuff that we think we know something about, but we really don’t know anything, or at least not as much as we think we know.
It might be about the nature of certain relationships, how to drive a big city, what’s behind the conflict between two people, or even how to bake a cake.
Because if you don’t really know what you’re talking about, it could have serious consequences.
You don’t really know what it’s like to drive in a big city and you try to give someone advice on how to do that, you could get someone lost or killed.
You give advice on how to bake a cake and you don’t really know what you’re talking about, you could poison someone!
Would you agree with me that the source of a person’s information is critically important?
And nowhere is it more important than in what we learn about God.
It’s extremely dangerous if we have erroneous thinking about God. If your thinking about God isn’t based on the right information, that can have eternal consequences because it can literally mean the difference between heaven and hell.
So let me ask you – where do you get your information about God?
Our passage of Scripture today gives us a major clue about that.
God: Jesus had already had a full day. This is Tuesday of what we traditionally call “Holy Week” – the last week of Jesus’ life on earth, and just three days before He would be crucified.
Already that day He had debated with the religious leaders about His authority, told three parables that really got those same leaders hot under their fancy collars, and silenced an unlikely group of people who wanted to trap Him in His words by asking Him if Jews should pay taxes to Caesar.
And remember, two days before that, He had that Triumphal Entry, then on Monday He drove out the people who were ripping off the people who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover and healed a bunch of folks.
You know, if there was ever a guy who would have an excuse to just stay at his friends house and rest, it was Jesus.
But here He is, and we pick it up at a point where some others are trying to get Jesus to slip up.
Disciples of the Pharisees & Herodians couldn’t get Jesus to trap Himself, now the Sadducees give it a shot.
Matthew 22:23-33 (p. 699) –
23 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 24 "Teacher," they said, "Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and have children for him. 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 27 Finally, the woman died. 28 Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?"
These guys aren’t looking for answers – they’re looking for a way to discredit Jesus.
And it happens today, too. I hear it all the time. People will come up with questions designed to stump the person they’re asking.
They’re not honestly looking for truth – they’re looking for excuses to not believe.
They want real information about as much as I want a pet spider.
Let’s keep going –
29 Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead--have you not read what God said to you, 32 ’I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living."
33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.
In Scripture, the Pharisees and teachers of the Law get most of the press, but once in awhile, these Sadducee guys get mentioned.
There were a number of differences between the Pharisees and Sadducees, and they both had a great deal of influence in Israel.
We don’t have time to get into all of those differences, but the key difference for our purposes today is that the Sadducees only believed in the first five books of the Bible, the Books of Moses – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
And because Moses didn’t specifically say that there was a resurrection of the dead, they didn’t believe in it.
But since Jesus believed in it, they came to Him with this question about this thing called the Levirate law, which was designed to care for the widow and help keep a man’s lineage alive.
As I mentioned, these guys weren’t really interested in information, but Jesus gives them some anyway, by saying that marriage isn’t an issue in heaven.
And He ends His response by quoting God the Father from one of those books of Moses that they believed in. In this case, it was the book of Exodus, where it says, ’I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’
The importance of that lies in the fact that God says, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” not “I was their God.”
In other words, God still had a relationship with these guys. And you can’t have a relationship with folks who aren’t alive. So they were alive, though not on earth anymore.
But the key is verse 29, and this is where I want us to focus today –
Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.”
If the Sadducees had known what the rest of the Old Testament said, they would have seen that the resurrection is, indeed, taught, and they would have seen the power of God to raise the dead.
Their faulty theology rested on the fact that they didn’t know the Scriptures.
This was pretty ironic in light of the fact that they had off the entire Old Testament available to them.
And because they didn’t know the Scriptures, they didn’t know the power of God to raise the dead, and therefore they didn’t know the power of God to work in the lives of people like you and me.
Being “religious” doesn’t cut it when it comes to knowing God.
The Sadducees here as well as the Pharisees and other religious leaders were a perfect example of this.
They were plenty religious. They worshiped weekly, gave their money, studied the Scriptures, wore the right clothes, made the sacrifices, went to the required festivals, and all that sort of stuff.
They knew something about God, but they didn’t really know Him like they should.
And guess what? That happens all over the world still today, even in Christian churches.
They go to churches, even real good ones, they give their money, they bring their Bibles, and even pray.
They’re “religious,” or “spiritual.” They look good, smell good, and don’t pick their noses in church.
But in reality they’re ignorant about God. And in their ignorance, they embrace error. And that error, depending on what it is, can cost them heaven.
There are countless people who feel they’ve got God or religion in general all figured out. But they get their information from Oprah, Dr. Phil, their favorite actor or actress, or their favorite politician.
They get their information from every place except the primary source – the Bible.
But what does Jesus say? "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.”
You: I’m guessing that all of us here today want to know God, or know Him better, right?
And I’m guessing that all of us want to avoid error when it comes to the things of God, right?
The key is to know the Scriptures. So how can we do that?
1. Regularly take in the Bible.
- Hear (great churches in our area, recordings)
- Read (get an easy-to-read translation)
- Study
- Memorize
- Meditate (think over, chew on)
A second way to get to know the Scriptures is to…
2. Do the Bible.
James 1:22-25 –
22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it--he will be blessed in what he does.
The idea is that if you’re just taking in the Word of God and aren’t doing what the Bible says, you’re only fooling yourself.
When you’re reading the Scriptures and God points out something to you that you should apply in your life, then you do it.
And Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will help you do it.
And then you run the danger of being something that God hates and the world is quick to point out – a hypocrite.
You’re not going to be perfect in “doing” the Scriptures, but the more you do it, the more you’ll see God changing you to be more like Jesus all the time.
Here’s a third way to know the Scriptures and therefore know God better:
3. Watch God work.
What I mean is that when you actually put the Scriptures into practice in your life, you’ll see God do some amazing things – answering prayer, encouraging you when the times get tough, help relationships, all sorts of stuff.
The goal of all that is to help you be more like Jesus while you’re here on earth.
And when you see God doing that in your life, it gives you more incentive to get to know the Scriptures and God better, and the cycle continues.
4. Help others do 1 – 2.
That’s part of what Jesus was talking about when He said in chapter 28 of Matthew to “make disciples.”
We can all have a part in helping other people know the Scriptures and the power of God in their lives.
And the great thing for you is that when you’re helping others, you gain in knowledge and wisdom as well.
I love meeting with people in situations where I’m working to help someone understand the Scriptures better, because I learn more, too. It’s a great thing.
The door is wide open for folks to get involved. If that’s something that you think you’d like to be in on, come talk to me.
I got to thinking after I already had the note-taking guides printed out, but here’s a fifth way to know the Scriptures better, so that you can know God better, and that is to…
5. Ask someone who’s farther along than you.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Asking questions is a good thing.
They may not be able to answer all of your questions, but they’ll probably dig until they find an answer or invite you to explore that question together.
We: Folks, let’s be a church and a people who say that we gain our knowledge of God from our time in the Scriptures.
Let’s be a church and a people who experience the power of God in our lives because God’s Word is living and active in them.
Let’s be a church and a people who because we’re people of the Word, reflect Jesus accurately to those who don’t know Him yet.
And may God be pleased to move in us and through us – individually and as a church – for His glory and the sake of His kingdom.
Let’s pray.
