Mark 12:18-34

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@Shield> before we pray and get started on our study of Mark, I want to bring a couple of things to your attention
@Shield> Friday, 13 June 2008, author Mary Jo Clouse will be sharing in
@Shield> #Spiritled_Woman at 9:00 pm EST.
@Shield> Her book is "Getting Free From Your Past." This
@Shield> will be an awesome time with Mary Jo and will benefit so many women. If you have any
@Shield> questions, please find Bethel online.
@Shield> Make sure you go and also, tell all your friends
@Shield> it will be a great time for the ladies on the network
@Shield> I also want to remind you that we have a special email list which you are welcome to join
Clark> That's tomorrow
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Clark> Amen, praise the Lord
@Shield> There is a ton of stuff happening behind the scenes
@Shield> I have to tell you, BrianO and BrianB have been working very hard with long hours bringing new features online
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Clark> o/
@Shield> yes?
@Shield> Clark, yes?
Clark> I'm only getting email reminders of the study in #TheChapel,
Clark> I can get more
Clark> ?
@Shield> if you are a registered user on ccnet or forums.christian-chat.net, you should be receiving a weekly email which talks about that and much more
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@Shield> at this time, I would like to open in prayer
@Shield> and then seekHm1st will lead us in another great study
@Shield> Father we thank you for this day.
@Shield> We thank you for your touch on our lives.
@Shield> We ask that you would minister in a very special way tonight to each one here.
@Shield> Give seekHm1st wisdom as he shares.
@Shield> And may our hearts be open to receive from you.
@Shield> Thank you Lord!
@Shield> In Jesus name amen
seekHm1st> Amen
martha> amen
Tigre_siberiano> Amen
Mrs_Tigre> amen
seekHm1st> hi folks
@seekHm1st> Glad to see you all here.
@seekHm1st> In these last couple of chapters, Jesus has been answering questions.
@seekHm1st> I am not sure just how to put this into perspective, but I will take a shot at it.
@seekHm1st> Just two days ago, a man I know fairly well was questioned by the police.
@seekHm1st> One night, the police were acting as his legal advocates.
@seekHm1st> They were doing the job they get paid for.
@seekHm1st> The very next day, the tables were turned.........
@seekHm1st> and he was on the hot seat.
@seekHm1st> He was put in the position of defending himself.
@seekHm1st> He was told that if he lied just once, they would know, and they would be carting him off to jail.
@seekHm1st> Well, they must have believed what he told them.
@seekHm1st> Because they left him where he was.
@seekHm1st> He was scared, quite honestly.
@seekHm1st> His breath became shaky, and his heart was racing the entire time.
@seekHm1st> In the larger picture, and I do not mean to diminish what my co-worker went through......
@seekHm1st> this was very small compared to what Jesus was going through.
@seekHm1st> Sometimes I have a tendency to think that since Jesus could handle anything (and He could).......
@seekHm1st> that the attempt after attempt after attempt by the religious leaders to give Him a verbal drubbing in front of His followers meant nothing to Him.
@seekHm1st> But I know better.
@seekHm1st> These were those who should have recognized Him.
@seekHm1st> These were those who should have loved Him.
@seekHm1st> Who should have bowed at His feet and rejoiced at His presence.
@seekHm1st> He deserved better.
@seekHm1st> And that obviously did not escape His notice.
@seekHm1st> There was question after question.
@seekHm1st> Some of them were trick questions, engineered with the hope of bringing Jesus down.
@seekHm1st> So He went about answering the questions in different ways, and since the beginning of chapter 12, Jesus was speaking to people in parables.
@seekHm1st> The experts in the Law, the religious leaders, had been challenging Jesus, coming at Him from different angles.
seekHm1st> But they were bent, ultimately on challenging His authority.
@seekHm1st> They asked Him outright at one point where His authority came from and they were frustrated by Him because He recognized their hypocrisy.
@seekHm1st> In Matthew 7, when Jesus taught about the coming flood, and the houses built on sand, or upon solid ground, the Bible tells us that the people were astonished at His teaching.
@seekHm1st> They were astonished because He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
@seekHm1st> It was that authority that was being questioned and challenged.
@seekHm1st> His teaching could arguably be summarized by that one word, "authority".
@seekHm1st> I don't mean to belabor the point, but they challenged His authority over Jewish leadership.
@seekHm1st> They challenged His authority over Rome.
@seekHm1st> They challenged His authority over the Law.
@seekHm1st> They were trying to be clever.
@seekHm1st> And as we have seen, especially last week, they ended up looking foolish and rude.
@seekHm1st> Now another sect of religious leaders were about to take a whack at it.
@seekHm1st> They decided to come at Jesus with a dose of His own medicine.
@seekHm1st> They set about trying to trip Him up by using a parable of their own.
@seekHm1st> So let's pick it up in Mark 12, verse 18.
@seekHm1st> 18 Then some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him; and they asked Him, saying:
@seekHm1st> 19 "Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man's brother dies, and leaves his wife behind, and leaves no children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.
@seekHm1st> They went on to start their story.
@seekHm1st> 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife; and dying, he left no offspring.
@seekHm1st> 21 And the second took her, and he died; nor did he leave any offspring. And the third likewise.
@seekHm1st> 22 So the seven had her and left no offspring. Last of all the woman died also.
@seekHm1st> 23 Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as wife."`
@seekHm1st> This was a ridiculous hypothetical question. It was built on two premises.
@seekHm1st> The secondary premise was that the levirate mandates regarding marriage were still binding.
@seekHm1st> The primary premise was that man would be raised from the dead.
@seekHm1st> Verse 18 tells us that they didn't even believe this themselves, yet here they were, asking Jesus a question which put the resurrection in play.
@seekHm1st> He didn't bite. He did what He always did.
@seekHm1st> He let people talk and then went straight to the heart of the matter.
@seekHm1st> 24 Jesus answered and said to them, "Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God?
seekHm1st> 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
@seekHm1st> 26 But concerning the dead, that they rise, 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'?
@seekHm1st> 27 He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken."
@seekHm1st> When people try to diminish God, or to diminish in some way, His word, they often go about doing so by isolating one part of His word from another part.
@seekHm1st> they take the word of the Lord and set it outside of its context to give weight to their argument.
@seekHm1st> Sometimes they just forget about it altogether.
@seekHm1st> Both of those things were going on here, but we serve an all-wise God.
@seekHm1st> In the same way that He dealt with the devil and his temptations in the desert, Jesus quoted what may have seemed to others like a relatively minor statement in the Scriptures.
@seekHm1st> The Sadducees had been trying to be clever, and their little proposal really had more to do with what the Bible says about resurrection than anything to do with marriage.
@seekHm1st> They only believed in the writings of the Pentateuch, the book of Genesis through the book of Deuteronomy, and that included the book of Exodus.
@seekHm1st> So Jesus met them where they were, smack in the middle of their lack of knowledge, with a reference from one of their own books.
@seekHm1st> The Pharisees believed in the resurrection, and they no doubt had parti****ted in many debates with the Sadducees over this issue, but they had obviously missed this verse in Exodus.
@seekHm1st> When God spoke to Moses at the burning bush, He was speaking of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob long after they had died.
@seekHm1st> Yet He spoke about them as if they were still living at that point.
@seekHm1st> The only way that could have been true was if they had been raised from the dead by the power of God Himself.
@seekHm1st> Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had a relationship with Almighty God because they lived.....still.
@seekHm1st> God has power over death, power over the grave.
@seekHm1st> He had made promises to these men, and until that time, those promises had not been fulfilled.
@seekHm1st> Any Jew of the day would have immediately recognized the implications of Jesus' statement.
@seekHm1st> Because resurrection from the dead was a fundamental truth, it became clear that it concerned all men.
@seekHm1st> Everyone will be raised from the dead.
@seekHm1st> Even the Pharisees would admit that what happened to men after they were raised was the material point.
@seekHm1st> Was there anyone among those gathered, who did not reject Jesus out of hand?
@seekHm1st> Let's see.
@seekHm1st> 28 Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, "Which is the first commandment of all?"
@seekHm1st> So it would appear that there was at least one exception to the practice among the religious leaders gathered, of rejecting our Lord.
@seekHm1st> He didn't have a reactionary's resistance to what Jesus said. He thought about His words.
@seekHm1st> perceiving that He had answered them well---- he asked a real question to hear whether or not Jesus' answer would be Biblical.
@seekHm1st> 29 Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment.
@seekHm1st> 31 And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
@seekHm1st> 32 So the scribe said to Him, "Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. 33 And to love Him with all the heart, with all the
@seekHm1st> understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."
@seekHm1st> 34 Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
@seekHm1st> But after that no one dared question Him.
@seekHm1st> The Jews had amassed a ton of commandments by this point, and there were those who would have made distinctions between them.
@seekHm1st> This teacher's question carried with it the possibility of serious contention among those who were listening and challenging Jesus.
@seekHm1st> But Jesus' answer put all of these laws into the correct perspective, and took away the grounds for any argument.
@seekHm1st> God's laws were not meant to be a burden to us.
@seekHm1st> They were meant to be a mirror of our souls, to show us how badly we need a Savior.
@seekHm1st> His laws can be boiled down to two simple things.....
@seekHm1st> Love Him, and love others.
@seekHm1st> When you get the chance, take another look at His commandments in light of the way Jesus summarized them.
@seekHm1st> When we love God first above all others, and when we love other people the way that we love ourselves, we have fulfilled the intent within those commandments.
@seekHm1st> Jesus said that these two greatest commandments summarized all of the others.
@seekHm1st> They should govern the way that not only we think, but what we decide and the way that we act.
@seekHm1st> These commandments should be the daily proving ground for our growth in the Lord.
@seekHm1st> Whenever we are at a loss for what to do, we should place our decision in God's hands, asking ourselves what would best reflect our love first for Him, and for others.
@seekHm1st> And....
@seekHm1st> Let's leave it right there.
@seekHm1st> Let's close in prayer
@seekHm1st> Our Father we come before You with hearts that want to serve You.
seekHm1st> We want to glorify You Lord,
@seekHm1st> and we want to know You more,
@seekHm1st> Give us an insatiable hunger for Your word Lord
@seekHm1st> And help us to use not only the practical tools contained within it to do what we need to do each day........
@seekHm1st> but to remember that it is Your love letter to each and every one of us in this sojourn through this world before we come home to be with You.
@seekHm1st> Help us to have hearts that want to spend real time with You each day Father.
@seekHm1st> And Help us to learn and to grow and to become the men and women that You want us to be.
@seekHm1st> And to share Your love with those we encounter day by day.
@seekHm1st> In Jesus' name, Amen.
martha> amen
Clark> Amen
Tigre_siberiano> Amen
carol> amen
Red> Thank you seekhm1st, great study
@seekHm1st> Thanks very much for coming folks.
Deacon> Amen
meme08> amen