Sermon Notes / Transcript

Mark 12:18-27 — Greatly Mistaken: The Scriptures and the Power of God

Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
Date: 09/06/2026

Scripture Reading

Our scripture reading today for the sermon is Mark chapter 12, verse 18. And this continues the challenges that Jesus faced as he was in Jerusalem from one group, one party after another.

So today we're going to hear about the Sadducees, and you don't need to know much about the Sadducees, except that they were like our modern-day skeptics, our modernists.

Have you heard of the Jefferson Bible? Do you guys know what that is? You history buffs? No, the Jefferson Bible?

A little bit. Okay.

So what Jefferson did was he took an X-Acto knife, before there were X-Acto knives, and he cut out all the places where there were miracles and angels and resurrections and anything weird, anything creepy, anything that was out of the normal.

You see, he liked Jesus. He liked the words Jesus spoke. He liked the teachings that Jesus taught. Basically, he was a modern-day Sadducee.

Okay? And we have those all over the place now.

I grew up going to a United Methodist church, and it was not uncommon for people to like Jesus' teachings. They liked the teaching of care for your neighbor. They liked the teaching of be nice, be moral.

Which is funny because we're immoral, right?

Morality and good behavior is an easy sell, right? Everyone wants our kids to grow up and be nice and to be good and to be successful and to be smart.

But then Phil goes and reads about dry bones connecting to bones and sinews growing over them and flesh covering the sinews.

And you tell someone you believe that, and all of a sudden you're not in the running for class president anymore.

You believe that Jesus raised from the dead Himself. He was resurrected. Isn't that a little creepy?

You believe that a flood came down and washed away all but Noah and his family in an ark.

Now, isn't that a little much?

How about angels? How about demons? How about miracles? How about water being turned into wine? How about demons being cast out? Healings?

Isn't that all a little weird?

It's all a little weird.

Thank you, Ren. You're honest. I would take that over anything.

You see, the Sadducees, like us, were very comfortable with moral teachings, goodness, laws, and right behavior. But when you get into angels and demons and resurrections and miracles like that, we like to think that's a modernist view.

It's not.

The Sadducees were right there alongside Jesus. He was doing the miracles, and they were denying that miracles exist. They were denying that the supernatural exists.

And it goes side by side with religion, right?

You want all the good living and the moral decisions, but you remove anything supernatural.

So that's what you need to know about the Sadducees. They're not really as different as we like to think. They're not really as far off.

You have Christian neighbors who are Sadducees, modern-day Sadducees, who deny the resurrection, who view this life as all there is, and like Jesus as a good moral teacher.

And honestly, you and I even tend to sink into that level sometimes. We like to think about just right living, and we forget the messiness of this whole spiritual realm that God has revealed to us through His Word.

So we're going to read the Scriptures now. This is God's Word, and it is eternally true.

Some Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and began questioning Him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves behind a wife and leaves no children, his brother should marry the wife and raise up children to his brother.

There were seven brothers, and the first took a wife and died leaving no children. The second one married her and died, leaving behind no children, and the third likewise.

And so all seven left no children. Last of all, the woman died also.

In the resurrection, when they rise again, which one's wife will she be? For all seven had married her.”

Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?

For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

But regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?

He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are greatly mistaken.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Prayer

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight. O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Desire for Control

Part of the reason why we avoid thinking about things like angels and demons and the resurrection and even death is because it goes outside of our control. We like things that are within our control.

Death is one of those things. It's the ultimate loss of control.

I think this is part of the reason the Sadducees rejected resurrection and angels and miracles and things like that. It's because they couldn't control it. They couldn't study it. They couldn't see it. They had to take someone else's word for it.

It's easier to think about death being just a physical cessation. Like you're alive and then you're no more. And that's easier for us to get our minds around than thinking about the resurrection of the dead.

Resurrection means that someone who dies and is buried in the ground is fully brought back to life.

The Sadducees had developed their own method of studying God's Word. They read it, but they pulled all the power, all the supernatural significance out, and they only focused on the teachings, on the rules and the laws.

They had pulled all the power out of it.

Think about a scientist with a moth board. You can study some parts of a dead moth in very fine detail, but what do you lose when you study a dead moth?

You lose life.

And that's what the Sadducees did. They took all of the life, all of the power, out of the Scriptures.

The Sadducees' Dilemma

They had come up with a hypothetical, a gotcha question.

1. A woman marries a man.
2. The man dies without children.
3. She marries his brother.
4. This repeats through seven brothers.
5. The woman eventually dies.

Then they ask:

“Of the seven brothers, who gets the woman in the resurrection?”

Jesus doesn't take the bait.

“Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?”

Jesus also addresses something assumed by the question itself: marriage is between one man and one woman. The entire dilemma only works because everyone involved already understood that one woman cannot be married to multiple men.

Jesus' Answer

Jesus goes to Exodus 3 and the burning bush.

Key Verse:

“I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

Jesus points to a passage the Sadducees knew well.

His conclusion is simple:

“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

And He also answers the practical question.

In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage.

That's difficult for us to understand because our entire experience of life is shaped by marriage, family, and procreation.

The Tadpole Illustration

Think about a tadpole.

• It lives in the water.
• It has a tail.
• It cannot imagine life on land.

Then it becomes a frog.

• It jumps through the air.
• It lives on land and in water.
• It catches flies with its tongue.

Could a tadpole fathom what that would be like?

No.

In the same way, we cannot fully fathom the resurrection.

We are like tadpoles trying to imagine life as glorified resurrected people.

Understanding the Scriptures and the Power of God

Jesus identified the Sadducees' problem:

They did not understand the Scriptures or the power of God.

How do you approach God's Word?

Do your feelings get to decide what in God's Word is true?

Does your understanding get to decide what in God's Word is true?

That is what the Jefferson Bible did. That is what the Sadducees did.

In contrast, God's Word says:

“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”

All Scripture.

So what do we do when Scripture makes us uncomfortable?

• We receive correction.
• We receive reproof.
• We trust that God knows better than we do.
• We submit ourselves to what God has said.

The Holy Spirit is the One who opens our eyes and minds and hearts to receive God's Word as truth.

The Scriptures are not merely helpful teachings or wise insights.

They are God's Word with divine authority.

We are to:

1. Believe the Scriptures.
2. Obey the Scriptures.
3. Submit to the Scriptures.
4. Place our feelings underneath the Scriptures.

Not the other way around.

A Warning

The Bible ends with a warning in Revelation 22:18-19.

We are not to add to God's Word.

We are not to take away from God's Word.

And there is more than one way to take away from God's Word.

• You can cut it out.
• You can ignore it.
• You can pretend it does not exist.
• You can decide you do not like it and refuse to think about it.

We need to be more careful than the Sadducees were.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I pray that we would have a high view of Your authority, Your love, and Your provision.

But also that we would see Your warnings and that we would not be proud and arrogant, thinking that our understanding and our feelings have more weight and authority than Your Word, the Word of God.

The Word You have given us as Your revelation of who You are and what You require of mankind.

Heavenly Father, with that conviction, I pray that we would take seriously our opportunity to read and hear and study and understand and memorize Your Word, not as a dead moth pinned to a corkboard, but as Your living and powerful Word, given for our correction and our reproof, that we might be equipped and ready for every good work.

Mature men and women of God.

I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.