No God, Know Error; Know God, No Error

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.