Matt 22:29-32 – Knowing the Scriptures and the Power of God
Main Point of the Text:
Jesus is pointing out that;
(a) God is more powerful than your limited Tradition
(b) There is a resurrection
(c) The Scripture already told you
Specific Objective:
I want my hearers to know that
God has the power,
revealed in scripture,
to resurrect and transform dead lives.
I want my hearers to know how to see the power of God and Scripture in their own lives.
FCF:
Our “common-sense” tradition can so easily blind us to God’s power that we miss out on the Resurrection Transformation, but God has given us his Word (Jesus) to remind us of the way.
Outline:
I. Introduction:
II. A Question (The Context):
a. The People Behind the Question
i. Temple
ii. Torah
iii. Tradition
b. The Motive Behind the Question
i. We don’t believe in the Resurrection
ii. We “know” how God works
c. The Trap Inside of the Question
i. The Trap for Jesus – How can you reconcile the law & the prophets
ii. The Trap of the Sadducees – We think we know God, and we can’t imagine him being any different. If you can’t imagine him being different, you can’t imagine him being powerful either…
III. An Answer:
a. The Power of God
i. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
ii. Abraham & Isaac Led him to a whole new land, Father of three Religions, etc…
iii. My favorite guy: Jacob
iv. Notice how the whole of life is here- The Father, The Laughter, and the Grasper…
b. The Power of Scripture
i. The problem: We think its dead – John 1:1 Who is the logos?
ii. The Solution: Remember its alive – meditate on it, let it talk to you (lectio devina)
c. The Power of Resurrection: Lives transformed by God through Scripture
IV. An Illustration: Pitcairn Island
V. An Invitation:
Some Random Points:
I. Context: “Three Dumb Questions from the Disinvited Guests” or “The Motive Behind the Questions of the Disivited”
a. Matthew 22’s Chapter Title
b. Vs. 1-14: The parable of the Disinvited Guest – Those who were originally invited to the Wedding Feast didn’t value it, so others were invited. But, even among those who came, there were those who didn’t realize how important it was, and they too lost out.
c. Vs. 15 – 23: The Herodians (Render unto Casear). The Herodians care only about Power, and so they try to trip up Jesus by forcing him into a Power Paradox. (Think Power = Money)
d. Vs. 24 – 32: The Saduccees (Resurrection Question). The Saducees, trapped in the Traditions of the Temple and the Torah, think they have it all figured out, and hence toy with Jesus by forcing him into mere Theoretical Talk. (Think Power = Tradition)
e. Vs 33:-39: The Pharisees (The Greatest Commandment). The Pharisees, seduced by the sophistry of the Synagogue, force Scripture to be burden for others to carry, and hence hope that Jesus will solidify their power by adding a commandment.
II. Who are the Sadducees.
a. Who are they?
i. Traditionalists
ii. Temple Worshippers
iii. Torah Only
b. Contrast this with the other main schools of Judaism:
i. Pharisees are the Synagougists: They become modern Judaism
ii. Saducees are the Templist Patry: They die out with the Temple
iii. The Essenses are monks – Dead Sea Scrolls, also die out
iv. The Zealots are the al Qaida of their day: anti-Roman terrorists
v. The “Way” are the Christians
III. The Motives behind the Question
a. The Sadducees think they know all they need to know
b. They don’t think God “does” Resurrection, because its not explicitly mentioned in the Torah. (Note: However, if they had meditated on the story of Abraham & Isaac, they probably would have figured out that Abraham must have believed in Resurrection!)
c. Their religion is stale because it never grows. That which does not grow does not live. It is dead.
IV. I love the bit “He is God, not of the dead, but of the living.”
a. So many of us think that God only becomes important when we die. We think our salvation is a point after we die and are taken into heaven. But, Jesus is all about transforming lives down here as well…
b. Dead People do not move, they do not change– they have no need of a God. It’s the same with people stuck in a tradition. Only Living People need the Power of God to intervene in their lives.
Introduction:
My day job is as a computer programmer . The hardest thing to do as a computer programmer is to stay relevant, and yet, as anyone who has watched the stock market over the last few years knows, if you’re not relevant, you’re as a dead as the Pets.com sock puppet.
Part of my job to stay relevant is to distinguish between technologies that are growing, maturing, and have a long life span ahead of them, and distinguishing them from those that, well, as Jesus says about the Church in Sardis in Revelations 3:4, “have the appearance of life, but in actually are dead.”
For example, I don’t know if there are any other computer programmers here, but there are lots of programs written in a language called COBOL. It was a very lively, popular language, back in the 1970s, but the last time anyone wrote anything in COBOL was December 31st, 1999, as were are all struggling to fix the media hype around the Y2K bug. It’s dead. You don’t get any new features in the language, and hence it’s totally inappropriate for just about any business need today. On the hand, you know about the Internet, you’ve probably heard about “Java,” and you know that if you can program with it, you can buy your own little Caribbean island, much like, oh say, Guy Philippe.
In the passage we’re about to read, we’re going to need to distinguish between things that are alive, changing, and relevant, and we need to keep that mind. But, before we do, I want to tell you another fun part of my job as a Software Engineer, the part that most programmers, frankly can’t handle. You see, ultimately, Computer Programming is all about dealing with Customers, and dealing with their questions. And, sadly, if you just implement everything a customer says, frankly, the program will never do what the customer really wanted. We call this the “DWIM” problem. This is where a customer says; make it “Do what I mean!” As a result, a good programmer has to distinguish between intelligent questions and dumb questions.
Now, I know that my teacher used to tell me that there is no such thing as a dumb question, and I guess to a certain extent she was right. But, Matthew 22 is really a series of dumb questions, by extension, dumb people who didn’t really care about the answers so much as making a point. I don’t mean unlearned people, I mean dumb ones, ‘cause you just have to know that if you’re trying to one up Jesus, you’re really looking for trouble.
Now, as I read the second question in this chapter, I want you notice how the question these Sadducees ask is really so much less about getting information and so much more about betraying the motives of the questioners.
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Let me maybe paraphrase this question a little bit. If you ever taught Sunday School, did anyone ever ask you, “So, can God make a rock so big that even he can’t lift it?” Well, this is sort of the same type of question. It starts from a faulty premise, and hence it comes to the conclusion that there is obviously some sort of inherent impossibility in the thing it questions. That’s why I call it a dumb question. Face it, did the Sadducees really care about marriage, or did they just want to make a point? When we read Jesus’ answer, you should keep in mind that the marriage thing is really just a red herring.
< Well, I guess I should tell you a little bit about the people who were asking this question. You already know from the passage that they don’t believe that there could ever be a resurrection. You can basically remember everything else you need to know about them by remembering three “T’s- Temple, Torah, and Tradition. These were the Jews who loved the Temple more anything else; they thought the Torah (i.e. Genesis – Deuteronomy) was the only part of the Jewish Bible that was really God’s Word, and they were the ultimate Traditionalists. This was the smallest religious faction within Judaism at the time, and when the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D., they effectively ceased to exist. Incidentally, the Pharisees were the Synagogue-ists, and it’s their descendants that make up modern-day Judaism. Anyway, what I want you to see is that the Sadducees are the ones who are so trapped in an unchanging environment, that they can’t possibly hope to stay relevant. I guess if anyone needed to believe in a resurrection, it would be them, ‘cause they’re the ones that are dead, and nobody loves resurrection quite like a dead person. Anyways, I want to dig just a wee bit deeper into the motives behind this question. You, as a Christian, know that the Old Testament is full of hints about resurrection. You might remember that Elijah and Elisha both brought dead people back to life. Probably the oldest book of the Bible – Job, explicitly mentions resurrection, as does Daniel, probably one of the last. But, to be fair to the Sadducees, the Torah doesn’t explicitly mention resurrection. That said; think about Abraham and Isaac for a minute. I don’t think it takes a whole lot of imagination to think that Abraham was probably assuming that God was planning on bring Isaac back from the dead. So, again, let’s see if we can get past the Sadducees’ “Red Herring.” Asking the question betrays their real way of thinking which is “We know how God works. Don’t presume to tell us otherwise. Based on our extensive study and learning, we’ve put God in this neat little box. We know how he works, we know what to expect from him at all times. Don’t rock our neat little box!” I’m so glad that as Christians we never do that. Well, as usual, Jesus likes to answer questions. But, frankly, if you notice, Jesus has a knack for answering the real question. And that’s what he does right there. Let me read his answer, and remember, don’t worry about the marriage bit so much. < In case you’re interested, I think the reason why there’s no marriage in heaven is pretty simple. Remember, how we’re the Bride of Christ? Anyways, Like a good Systems Engineer, Jesus is seeing what the real problem is, and suggests an answer. Lets break it up a bit. First, he sees that the Sadducees have a view of God that is just way too small. They forget that God has power. Second, the Sadducees forget that God is in the present tense. They want to relegate him to a place in history that is long since past. Finally, they forget that God is alive, and that he’s all about life. Its really easy to strip away Power by deny relevance, and what could be more irrelevant than a guy you haven’t heard from for 2000 years, right? Resurrection, Scripture, God’s Power. God is all about transforming dead lives into new life, in his Power through the Scripture to life. After all, God doesn’t care about the dead, and why should he? They’re dead. They don’t change. God loves the living, both those that are here and those that are alive with him in heaven. He’s not God of the Dead, He is God of the Living. So, lets look at his Power, His Person, and his Purpose of Resurrection, in that order. Before I start talking about how God’s power is illustrated in this Scripture, I want to read you a verse I remember reading for the first time when I was in college. It blew me away then, and it still does today. Isaiah 55:8-9 says something that we all know, but that I tend to forget. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, says the Lord; And my ways are not your ways. Likewise my thoughts are higher than your thoughts, And my ways are higher than your ways.” This isn’t one of those “touchy-feel-good-I’ll put it on a Hallmark card” verses, but you know, I think it hits as close to the truth as I can stand. I grew up as an Evangelical Christian, and I am thankful for that. But, one of the things we tend to stress so hard is that God is our “buddy.” I always felt a little strange with that teaching, because frankly, I knew he wasn’t my buddy, I knew he was God. Its like saying “the President is my good friend.” He’s not, and if I were invited into the Oval Office, I know I’d be as scared as the next guy. Proverbs reminds us that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom.” Now, this isn’t to say that God doesn’t love us completely, he wants a relationship with us, and His purpose in life is not to be our own personal “Zap-Thou-Art-Having-Too-Much-Fun” God either. But, I thin if Americans need to re-learn one salient attribute of God, it’s that he is big. We think with all our Science, our Technology, our Computers that we have somehow advanced “beyond the need for God.” We think that Charles Darwin created the universe, that Bill Gates could take on Jesus any day, and that Microsoft Windows is the Second Coming. Well, maybe not Windows, but probably Linux. My point is, that we think that if we were just smart enough we could some how surpass the relevance of God. We think that Christianity is just a crutch for those of us who didn’t have the benefit of a scientific education. After all, doesn’t all our “Progress” show that we can make our lives so much better? You know, atomic power and modern thinking. Yeah, that’ll save us, not! If you need to make a “God & the Computer” analogy, you should realize that the only analogy is that God is the Designer, and we are the stupid computer. He made us, He turns us on, he turns us off, and he gets frustrated when we don’t do what he intends. The point of Isaiah 55:8-9 is not to feel comfort in anything other than we have an Intelligent Designer who stays up at night worrying and fretting over us (and if you don’t believe me, read Psalm 121;4), but who ultimately is in charge of us. He has the design, he has the plan, and he’s pretty good at what he does. But, back to the Scripture at hand: Jesus is telling these Sadducees that they don’t know the power of God, but you might not see how he illustrates that. Look really carefully at verse 32. Notice that Jesus quotes God as saying “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” God is using a present tense. It’s not that he was the God of these dead guys. He is the God of these we-think-they’re dead guys. He is a present tense God. He is alive; he is relevant; he is powerful. Life is a present tense sort of thing. If I say “My goldfish was alive,” What am I implying? I’m implying that he’s dead. So, If I say that Muhammed was alive from about 580 to 644 A.D., guess what I’m saying, I’m saying, “He is not one of those living things.” I guess that makes it really hard when the history teacher asks “When was Jesus alive?” The truth is, his dates sort of go from the start of the World until now…. And, if you notice, the Scripture, by which I mean the Word of God, is the same way. It is alive. If you don’t believe me, you can read John 1:1. En Arche haen ho logos. That’s the only Greek you need to know. “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, the Word was God.” The Word is a person. I tend to call him Jesus, but the Word of God is a live, powerful thing. I know this in my own life. When I was first married, Susan & I had a decent relationship, but it was weak at times. If it had kept on that way, our marriage would have been dead in a few years. But, I’ll tell you, a year into our marriage, I finally did something right. We started reading the Scripture together before going to bed. We didn’t really discuss it, we didn’t have some magical “deep talk,” but we read the Scripture together, and our Marriage got better. We connected through the Scripture, and it strengthened our marriage. You may also find it useful if I take a minute and talk about how to mediate on Scripture. I’m taking a Historical Theology course, and one of the things we cover is Monastic Mysticism. They had a pretty good idea about how to meditate. What they would do is pick out a small bit of Scripture – maybe a paragraph or so, and just wrestle with that one bit of Scripture until they found the fruit of it in their own lives. Let me illustrate. I meditated on the last part of Jesus’ answer for about a week. I memorized it, and I kept thinking about its implications for their own lives until it told them something. Jesus said “He is God, not of the Dead, but of the Living.” You can stress that in a number of ways. He is God. You know, so many of us think that God only becomes important when we die. We think our salvation is a point after we die and are taken into heaven. But, Jesus is all about transforming lives down here as well. Jesus reminds us, God is way more about the Living Life then just some two-second conversation after you’re dead. Just in case you haven’t heard, God isn’t planning on weighing your good works against your bad when die, and that somehow going to Church earns you brownie points. God wants to give you salvation now, and heaven is a natural extension of that life. Dead People do not move, they do not change– they have no need of a God. It’s the same with people stuck in a tradition. Only Living People need the Power of God to intervene in their lives. You see it isn’t hard. It just takes time and thought, both which God already gives us. The point is, the power of God and the power of Scripture is in the Present Tense. If you think its dead, then for you, it really is. God is relevant, God is powerful, because he is alive and he continues to be at work, resurrecting and transforming dead lives. You know, if I were preaching 4000 years ago, this is where I’d just start telling you about Jacob. He was so changed by his encounter with the Power of God and His Word, that his named was changed to “Israel” – “Struggles with God.” If you want a good read, read his story in Genesis. He’s a character, and it’s a fun story. But, I want you to think I’m a little more relevant, and so I want to tell you about a story that was in the headlines just a year ago. Now, I follow very obscure things, so please forgive me if read you the latest news from New Zealand, but its an amazing illustration of the transforming power of God revealed through Scripture, so bear with me a little bit. The headline was “Bounty Outpost Colony faces Extinction.” The immediate facts behind the story are these. Pitcairn Island is a little colony 4,000 miles east of Australia and about 6,000 miles from Chile, smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean – about as far away as you get from anything. That wasn’t an accident. The island was settled by the descendants of the famous ship the Bounty. Now, if you’ve ever heard the expression or seen the movie, The Mutiny on the Bounty, you know about as much as I did before I knew this story. The Bounty was a ship that was exploring the islands of Northern Australia back in the late 1700s, more or less about the same time as the American Revolution. The story goes that one day, the First Officer, Fletcher Christian got fed up with the evil Captain Bligh, and was about ready to abandon ship on a little dinghy. The rest of the crew found out about this, and basically said “Hey, why are you the one getting off? We all hate Captain Bligh” So, they shoved the Captain into the dinghy and took off. That’s where the movie ends, but what happened to them is the amazing bit. < But, here’s the problem. John Adams died in 1838. That Bible was sent off to England for “perseveration,” and it took over 100 years for it to come back. Forty of his descendants still live on that island, but the subsequent generations didn’t hold to the power of that Scripture. Last year, eight of the forty men all raped the same girl. The trial that ensued had to be held in New Zealand. Twelve jurors had to be flown from the Island to New Zealand. Now, if you’re counting, I’ve already accounted for 50% of the population, and the remainder of the people on the Island are really too old to do the work that needs to be done. You can see where I’m going with this. The island is going to die. All because they forgot the Scripture, and the power of God. “As we come to our time of invitation, if the Scripture hasn’t transformed your life, I’d like to invite you, if you feel called to make a profession of faith or join this church, to come forward. Now, if you are a Bible-believing, baptized member of this Church, then traditionally, this is the part where your mind disengages. You start singing the psalm, and generally put the spirit in park. I want to do something different this week. If the Scripture seems dead to you, and the power of God more talk than reality, then this is your challenge for the week. I want you to meditate on this chapter –just this chapter – all week long. I want you to wrestle with it, just like Jacob wrestled with God. Refuse to let it leave until it blesses you. I want you to demand that it bring forth its fruit in your life. I’d challenge you to memorize all of Jesus answer, or barring that, at least be able to bring up this line: “He is God, not of the Dead, but of the Living.” Meditate on that – make it your prayer for one week, and demand the fruit that comes from it. I invite you to ponder that sentence as we sing our hymn of invitation.” ________________________________________ Christian Evidences Contents - Richard’s Homepage - Previous - Next ________________________________________ PITCAIRN’S ISLAND The story of the Pitcairn Bible is a testimony both to the providence of God and to the value of the Bible in saving society from chaos. Ginny Hastings has written of it, "with no law to guide them, the mutineers of the Bounty turned an island paradise into a living hell of sexual abuse, drunkenness and murder. Their society was on the brink of collapse when one of the men discovered an ancient book from the Bounty."1 The story begins with the events described in the well-known book, Mutiny on the Bounty. Fletcher Christian, acting 2nd Lieutenant, irritated at the arbitrary conduct of Lieut. Bligh, began constructing a raft in order to leave the ship by night. Another sailor suggested to him that he may as well take the ship and turn the Captain adrift, since they were all dissatisfied. He followed this suggestion, and the next day, April 28, 1789, more than half the ship’s company joined in the mutiny. The Captain and his party were sent adrift, and after much suffering, reached Timor. Fletcher Christian took the Bounty and the rest of the crew to Tahiti, where they had been previously. In September of the same year, he and eight other men from the Bounty, six Tahitian men, eleven Tahitian women and one child, sailed away from the others, leaving them there at their request. At the beginning of the following year, they landed on an uninhabited island, Pitcairn’s, and burned the ship in order to escape detection. At first, the island seemed a paradise. But then the Englishmen mistreated the Tahitians and stole one of their wives, causing a rebellion. Within four years, all of the Tahitian men and all but four of the Englishmen had been murdered. The only survivors were Alexander Smith, Edward Young, Matthew Quintall, William McCoy, ten women and some children. McCoy learned how to distill liquor from the roots of the ti plant, and eventually the men were drunk almost all the time, living in a continual orgy with some of the women. Fearing for their lives, the women and children fled to another part of the island and build a fort for protection. McCoy threw himself over the cliffs while drunk. Matthew Quintal became drunk and insane, threatening the lives of everyone else. Smith and Young had to axe him to death for the safety of the others on the island. Smith finally destroyed the still and all the liquor on the island, and went through several months of withdrawal from alcohol. Young was taken in by the women because he was dying of consumption. While he was living alone for months, Smith discovered the Bible and a Book of Common Prayer from the remains of the Bounty, but he was illiterate. Eventually, Young and the women returned to the village where Smith was, where he taught Smith to read using the Bible, and died in 1801. Alexander Smith continued to read to Bible in its entirety, and grew to understand it over a period of several years. Seeing the importance of teaching it to others, he began teaching the children how to read, and eventually some of the mothers learned as well. Using the Bible, he taught everyone about the Christian faith and instituted a daily prayer time, grace before meals, and Sunday worship. One of his prayers was as follows: Suffer me not O Lord to waste this day in Sin or folly. But Let me Worship thee with much Delight. Teach me to know more of thee and to serve thee better than ever I have done before, that I may be fitter to dwell in heaven, where thy worship and service are everlasting. Amen.2 In 1808, Pitcairn’s Island was discovered by captain Mayhew Folger of an American ship. The members of the crew were shocked to find that the island was inhabited by thirty-five English- speaking people of Polynesian blood who were practicing the Christian faith. The outside world was fascinated with the news that Fletcher Christian’s community had been discovered. The English instructed every captain sailing to the south Pacific to search for any mutineers so that they could be arrested and deported to England to be punished for their crimes. Later, when two British ships did visit Pitcairn’s Island, they found such an orderly colony that they decided to disobey orders and not report their find of the Bounty survivors to London, although they did annex the Island as a British colony. King George of England later sent Captain Waldgrave to visit Pitcairn’s. Waldgrave wrote: It was with great gratification that we observed the Christian simplicity of the natives. They appeared to have no guile. Their cottages were open to all and all were welcome to their food.3 A Church and a school were later built on the island. Alexander Smith felt a personal responsibility for the Christian nurture and care of the many children on the island. After 1808, as a precaution against the possibility of deportation on charges of mutiny and murder, he changed his name to John Adams in honor of the second president of the United States. Smith (a.k.a. Adams) died in 1829 at the age of seventy, but by 1840, Pitcairn’s Island was still a thriving Christian colony. A visitor at that time wrote as follows: I then walked round and questioned several of the people on the texts, and some of the chief Scripture facts and doctrines, and most of them gave ready and suitable answers. . . . The islanders have prayers twice on the Sabbath; after which Mr. Nobbs reads sermons from Burder, Watts, Blair, or Whitefield. There is also a Sabbath-school, a Bible-class is held on the Wednesday, and a day-school every morning and afternoon.4 Before his death, Smith (a.k.a. Adams), whose eyesight was failing, gave the Pitcairn Bible to Levi Hayden in exchange for a Bible in larger print. In 1840, it was passed on to Rev. Daniel Miner Lord, pastor of the Mariners’ church in Boston, where it became the subject of hundreds of addresses to Sunday Schools, churches, and various religious meetings.5 It was later placed in the Lenox Library collection of old and unusual Bibles at the New York Public Library. ________________________________________ 1 Ginny Hastings, "Ship of Fools: Mutiny on the Bounty," Issues & Answers, Vol. 5, No. 8 (November, 1982), p. 1. 2 Ibid., quoting Thomas B. Murray, Pitcairn: The Island, The People and The Pastor (London: SPCK, 1877), p. 338. 3 Ibid., quoting Harry L. Shapiro, The Heritage of the Bounty (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936), p. 83. 4 Thomas Heath, "The Pitcairn Islanders," The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle 19 (New Series) (October, 1841): 520- 522. 5 New York Public Library, The Pitcairn Bible (New York: The New York Public Library, 1934), p. 12. ________________________________________ Back to Contents - Richard Riss’ Homepage - Previous - Next Last modified on December 1, 1996 Maintained by jennib4@inlink.com © 1996 Richard M. Riss http://www.grmi.org/renewal/Richard_Riss/evidences/10island.html Queen Victoria started subsidizing the Island in 1839.
