Setting the Trap: Part II

All right. Well, again, welcome to Hope. And if you're checking out Hope or checking out Christianity, just want to welcome you, Brian. I'm the lead pastor here and excited to continue in the Gospel of Mark. But just a quick heads up, we are going to be kicking off kind of a summer in the Psalms. And so we're going to be just taking a psalm, kind of choose your own adventure to the elders that'll be preaching. And we'll just kind of pick a psalm and go through those, and then we'll pick Mark back up in the fall. But we're still in Mark. This is actually week 40. We've just been inching our way through Mark. We're not inching today. We got a lot to cover, and so just wanna. I've been doing this every week, 40 weeks now that we've been doing this. Just starting off with verse one in the beginning of the good news. Good news just means the gospel, and it's about Jesus. There are all kinds of good news. We read about good news all the time. That's gospel. That's what the gospel means. This is the gospel. This is the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the anointed one, the Promised one of Israel, the son of God. And we see that two different times, that God, the voice from heaven calling out, this is my son, whom I love. We've already read that. And so here we are. And I've been quoting Ed Sanders, last couple weeks of this. He's just a historian about. About Jesus. And we've. We've kind of been in this temple area that there's this triumphal entry. Jesus comes in and everyone's saying, that's Hosanna. This is the Savior. This is the Messiah. And then he goes into the temple and he starts flipping tables over and he starts causing some kind of ruckus. And people don't like it. And so Ed Sanders says this. The gun may already have been cocked, but it was the temple demonstration which pulled the trigger. And we're still kind of in the midst of that as people are asking questions about who he is. This is a lion. This is why I was asking about zoo animals. Anyone pick a lion? Anyone pick the lions? Okay, a few of you. Yeah, lions are cool, right? They're. They're terrifying, though. And. And I've. I've never encountered one in the wild. Anyone, like, been on a safari and seen. I knew you. I knew if someone was going to raise their hand. Okay. Anisha, too? Oh, yeah. All right, three. Three of you, right? I Can't, I just can't even imagine. I don't even know why you would want to do that. I, I have no desire to see an animal like that in the wild. But what we're going to see is that when you, when you want to approach a wild animal like a lion, you only have two options. One is you domesticate it, you shrink it down and you make it something that can sit on your lap and still wants to eat you when you die. I don't understand the cats. Or you can put a pane of glass in between you, right? A big thick plexiglass type thing and you can observe it in the zoo and stay at arm's length and stay safe away from that lion. And we're gonna, we're going to see that we're going to see. And I've already read the passage and we're going to see the, the Pharisees and the scribes, they're going to, they're going to get close, but they want to keep Jesus at arms length. And so I've titled this Setting the Trap, Part two. We looked at part one obviously last week and yet again we're going to see Jesus being put into a high stakes verbal trap, if you will. But he's going to teach all who hear really about the true power of God and his own authority that he has in himself. And so last week we looked at Jesus talking to the Pharisees and the Herodians. This week I think I said Pharisees, but this week will be the Sadducees and the scribes. So again, Jesus is in what's called the court of Gentiles. It's just kind of that bigger out surrounding area. Kind of the bottom of those stairs, there's a little fence that ran along the bottom that we have stones that say, we have from, from archeology that say, if you are a Gentile and you cross this line, we are not responsible for your death. If you were a Gentile, you were not allowed into the building proper. So there's this huge area, about 20 acres, and Jesus has been there and this is where he was overturning tables and he was getting mad at people that weren't allowing people to go to God and meet God. And he didn't like that. This is my Father's house. Not a temple or not a den of thieves and robbers because they were huge interest rates that were going on to exchange their denarius for a shekel. So that's what's going on. That's the scene, if you will. So let's jump into this. The Sadducees question, verse 18, says, the Sadducees came to him who asked that there is no. Sorry. The Sadducees came to him who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked them a question. This is interesting, right? The Sadducees. And in case you ever want to remember this because you're weird like me, the Sadducees are sad, you see, because there's no resurrection. See, you'll never forget it. They don't believe in a resurrection. There's a lot of things they don't believe, though, right? There's a lot of different things that differentiated the Sadducees from other Jewish sects of their religion. And so this was just one of them. Why does John do it? Or to maybe quote Benjamin Franklin Gates, it's a clue, right? There's something here that John, or excuse me, that Mark is trying to point out. They don't believe in the resurrection because then this question doesn't seem so out of place because you might read their story, this hypothetical situation, and say, what's going on with that? Right? But we don't need these cool glasses from. What was the name of this movie? National Treasure. Thank you. All right, I brought this up last week. I won't spend a ton of time, but within the Jewish religion of the first century, there were five sects. There were the Zealots and the Baptizers, the Essenes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees. And then last week I added the Herodians. But they weren't a sect necessarily. They were just colluders with those that were kind of part of the Herod dynasty of Herod, but they collaborated with Rome. The Sadducees, you'll see, is very close. They are the elite religious Aristocrats, Aristotle, aristocracy. There it is. And they, they. They were part. They were the temple crowd, but they were the Roman powers. If Rome is out of power, they lose their power. They lose their influence, they lose their money. The Pharisees, though, aren't as political. They want to be a little bit more conservative. And yet what's interesting, that when we see this, the Pharisees are actually theologically progressive, if you will. They said, yes, we have the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. That's our scriptures. But we also have the Mishnah and the Talmud, this extraordal law that helps us interpret that. And so they were theologically progressive, but they were conservative when it Came to politics. They didn't want Rome there. It's the exact opposite for the Sadducees. They were theologically conservative, where they said, no, it's only the Torah. That's all we have. We just have the first five books of the Bible. That's what we have. So let's stick to it. But they were politically very progressive. So let's get into this question. They ask him. Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, they're gonna@deuteronomy25. We're not gonna take the time to look at that. But if a man's brother dies and leaves his wife and leaves no offspring, then his brother is supposed to marry him, right? And it goes on seven times. This is again, this kind of gotcha, right? This is why this clue matters, because they're gonna bring up the resurrection and we're only interpreting the Torah literally. And so if we interpret the Torah as law and nothing else, then that's what we have to go back to. In other words, why in the world would God write this law In Deuteronomy, chapter 25, about if a man dies and doesn't have an heir, that he should be remarried? If there is a resurrection. Why would this matter? This becomes completely asinine. There's no reason to have this law. If there's a resurrection. This again, this question, as called it last week, this Newman effect, or this reducto ad absurdum, it's designed to make the resurrection look ridiculous. We've all experienced this in some way, shape or form. If you've ever been pulled over by a police officer and they walk up to you and they say, all right, what's the question? They all ask, do you have any reason. Do you have any idea why I pulled you over today? Well, what am I supposed to say? Yes, I do, and then I admit to it? Or I say no, and I look like I'm a complete incompetent idiot because I have no idea. Right? Which is it? That's what it is. It's just this got you question. If there is a resurrection, then why the law? If there is a law, why resurrection? We can't believe in that. Again, this Levirite marriage was a practice whereby a man was obliged to marry a childless widow of his brother. And the whole point of it was to preserve. Preserve the name and the memory of the deceased brother, but then also the establishment of their property. Make sure that their properties and their. All their possessions was passed on rather than distributed somewhere else. And it would Stay in the family line. But then Jesus says to them, is this not the reason you are wrong? Because you know neither the scripture nor the power of God? There's a lot of audacity in Jesus in asking this question to the Sadducees. This would be like claiming maybe to John Hess, our famed bass player over there, and saying, john, you don't know anything about how to play the bass. You don't know anything. What are you talking about? This is what I do. This is my job. This is my life. I study this all the time. And Jesus is doing that. You don't know the scriptures, you don't know the Torah, and you don't know the power of God. And they're like, no, no. I went to school. I have my master's on this. This is what I do. You can't tell me I don't know. There's a little bit of power in what Jesus is doing. These are the two matters in which they. And yet Jesus again, is going to acclaim, is going to claim his authority, and he's going to assert that what the Sadducees claim to know best, they actually know least that they're vulnerable. Not at their weak points, but at their strong points, that they've gone astray. And again, not at the periphery, but at the heart of their faith, of what they. What they claim. This is our thing. This is what we're known by. And Jesus says, let's think about that a little bit here. I don't think you fully understand what's happening. And I do think maybe just to pause for a little bit of self reflection, there's something to be learned here. Are we so sure of ourselves on a particular topic? Could be theological, could be political, could be anything. Are we just so sure of ourselves that when anyone has an opposing view, we just cast them out as ridiculous? I can't listen to you. If you have an opposing view. Ah, no, no, no. You see, I've studied this, I've researched it, I've looked at the stats. Maybe we shouldn't be so sure of ourselves unless it is explicitly stated in Scripture. And how do we do that? We keep Jesus the main thing. I think last week I quoted C.S. lewis, or maybe it was a paraphrase, but he talks about this, that when we keep the main thing, the things of first importance, of first importance, then the secondary things, we can also do. And so we can put any other thing, maybe even our theological convictions, as a secondary importance under Jesus. Jesus is of first importance. He is on the throne. My political views are of second importance. But CS Lewis says, but when we take the secondary things and make them equal to first things, we lose both first and second things. We need to keep Jesus seated on his throne. And again, Jesus, I love this going after the scriptures, the power of God. He doesn't stoop to their level. He doesn't try to got you them. He doesn't try to answer their yes, no, left, right, binary. He diagonalizes it. He says, no, it's not either or, left or right, yes or no. There's something else here. And actually I'm going to answer that question better than you could ever answer it yourself. You think you're getting me, but let's look at what God actually says. Let's see what's actually going on. And what he tells them is that God is bigger than you could ever imagine. And the scriptures that you're using to get me are telling a much bigger, grander story than you could ever understand. And even about God and the resurrection. What the Pharisees do here is they try to domesticate God. They try to say, no, no, no, no, there's this God that I'm reading about, but. But that's too much. It's too big, it's too grand. I can't wrap my head around that God. And so I'm gonna figure out how to domesticate this animal so it can sit on my lap and eat fancy feasts off my finger. They've got a God that's small enough to fit in their categories. A God too domesticated to raise the dead. Can't do it. That's not a powerful animal. I'm not afraid of cats. Not anymore. I used to be till I got bigger. And maybe to quote the theologian that I think I quote the most, Mr. Beaver from Chronicles of Narnia. He's not safe. Aslan is a lion. He's not safe. He's not supposed to be domesticated. He's not supposed to be pet on our lap. And Jesus then says this. He's going to go after here the power of God first. When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven. A resurrected life is not just a prolonged earthly life. It is entirely on another dimension. It is a lion coming face to face with a domesticated house cat. It just doesn't fit. This doesn't work. Marriage is an institution that belongs to this age, this one. And again, this law was weaponized, this Levite law was weaponized itself as a Death management law, again, as a way to keep a man's name alive until and against the erasure of death. Death is the final thing that's ever going to happen. And once you die, that's it. So this is a way to keep their name and their heritage, their generations going. Then you're thinking too small. That's not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible isn't about physical descendants. Their imagination of God is too small to picture a genuinely new order. And he says, just because this is the way things are here and now doesn't mean that is the way things will always be. And then he goes after their view and understanding of scripture. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses and the passage about the burning bush how God spoke to him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? He's not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong here. Jesus argues from the Torah itself. He argues from the thing that they're using on the grounds that they most accept. He uses their textbook. I remember when I was like a sophomore in high school. So what would that be? 15, 16? I started driving that year. Yeah, yeah. There was some kid in my class. I don't remember his name because he wasn't there long. He was 14. I do remember that. And I remember we took a history test. And I remember he raised his hand and he said, Mr. Bell. I remember my teacher's name. Mr. Bell. You marked this wrong, but on page 186 it says. I just quoted it. And Mr. Bell was like, yeah, yeah, you're right. Right. This kid used the text. He wasn't there long because I'm pretty sure the school system was like, yeah, I think you're done. I think you. I think you're good, man. And he just moved along, I guess. I don't know what happened to him. This is what you do. You go to the text. That's what Jesus does. And what does he say? He says, at the burning bush. This is in Genesis or the Exodus account. At the burning bush, God says, what does he say to Moses? This is hundreds of years after Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have already died. God doesn't show up in a burning bush and say, I was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He says, I am, am. I am the. Is in one. I am the self sufficient, always one. I am. It's present tense. I am currently the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That's why Jesus says he is not dead. He's not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. God's covenant faithfulness is the guarantee of resurrection. And Jesus, his resurrection is the proof that this is all real. If God binds himself to love a person, then death cannot dissolve it. It's too domesticated. There might be those in this room who have lost loved ones. This should just be a phrase of comfort from the words of Jesus. He is not the God of the dead. He is the God of the living. There is more to come, and we know that because that's who God is now and always has been and always will be. Let's look at the second part here. The scribe's question. And what we're going to see the scribe do here is he's going to keep. He's going to keep this line at arm's length. I'm going to see the lion. I'm going to experience the lion. I'm going to figure this thing out, but I'm not going to get close to it. And if I get close, it's going to be safe. There's going to be some protection there. In between that and me, I remember back in high school, I had a. There, we had a large deaf ministry at our church. And one evening, our deaf pastor, he was preaching through a translator, and he told this story about going to a zoo. And he said, my whole life, I thought I was deaf. And I stood with my back to a lion cage, back when it was bars, I guess. And the lion roared. And for a split second I thought I could hear because I could just feel this thing. But he stayed at a safe distance. So the scribe comes up. You can hear the tone. You can hear. There's a difference here between the Pharisees, the chief priests from the week even before, and the Sadducees. And now the scribe. The scribe seems to genuinely be asking. And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, which commandment is the most important of all? I think he's genuinely asking Jesus, you seem to know all 613 laws in the Old Testament. Which one's the most important? And Jesus answered, the most important is, love your God and love your neighbor. There's no greater commandment than these. I'm going to skip that. And the scribes said to him, you are right, teacher. You have truly said that he is one and that there is no other beside him, and to love him with all your heart. And with all understanding, with all strength, and to love a neighbor as oneself as much more than whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. Whoa. Where did that come from? He kind of added that on there. Jesus said, love God and love neighbor. And he says, yes, love God and love neighbor. And matter of fact, that's more important than burnt offerings and sacrifices. That's what the whole system is built around. It's built around animal sacrifice and the shedding of blood to cover my sins, to atone for my sins. But you're saying that loving God and neighbor is more important than that. And the scribe sees it, he starts to get it. And Jesus says, you are so close. You are so close. You're at arm's length. You're keeping me at arm's length. And you are starting to see clearly, but you don't see me yet. You don't see me as that ultimate atonement for our sins. For your sins. This man has impeccable theology, yet he's outside his. The right answers about God, or, excuse me, right answers about God are not the same as surrender to God. There might be some in this room who are holding the kingdom of God at arm's length, might say, man, I really like this community thing. I don't have a lot of friends, but you guys seem to accept me. I seem to kind of fit in. We seem to get along. I like going into people's houses and having a meal together. I like going and singing music together. It's not really my thing, but. But I like hanging out. And I get this community. I love it. But this whole faith in Jesus to, like, save me from my sins. Yeah, I'm gonna keep that at arm's length. I'm gonna hold that out. This scribe knows the answer. And the answer standing right in front of him, it's Jesus. All he needs to do is believe what he sees. All he needs to do is accept what he's seeing right in front of him. The facts are there. The evidence is there. The evidence is in front of you. The love of Christ is right here. Believe. Be saved. This is hard because it is faith. There is a belief that needs to happen. I know that. My wife loves me. I know it. But if you were to say, Brian, prove it. All right. I can show you some love notes she writes me every day, just joking. I can find love notes that she's written me. I can find gifts that she's given me. I can show acts of affection that she does for me. And a million things she could be faking it I could just be super handsome dude that she just. How do I prove that again? I can give you all the evidence in the world, and I can say, yeah, this is here and this is it. But at some point, I'm choosing to believe and know that my wife loves me. I know that there's no doubt in my mind that I know that my wife loves me. And so we do with Christ. I see all the evidences and I go, yeah, I think he actually does love me. I want that. I want to accept that. Some of you, again, need to weigh that evidence and believe today. Matter of fact, you can be baptized. Baptismal is full. Stephen, when he was preaching to the Ethiopian eunuch, and he says, hey, yeah, you're reading a passage about Jesus. And he's like, yeah, I repent. I want to believe. And he says, look, there's water. What's stopping me from being baptized? And I go get baptized. So if that's you today and you want to get dunked, we'll dunk you. We got extra shorts and shirts, towels. I'm serious. Take me up on that. We'll just have to end now. Okay, hands all across the room. All right, last point here. Just an application of looking at the kingdom of God. I just want to kind of reiterate what Jesus is saying here. And he says, the kingdom is not far off. This is a loving phrase that he says to this man. This man is genuinely seeking. And he's saying, you're right there. You get it. But I'm right here. You need to quit holding me away from you. Jesus is the one who loved God perfectly and loved his neighbors all the way to the cross, doing the surrender that we can't, so that not far can become brought near, that we can be added to his family. Phrase that I say often here is that no one anywhere at any time is beyond the reach of the gospel. No one is. He's not too far off. And for those of us who might say, yeah, I've been in. I've got the badge that says, I work at this zoo, and I'm allowed to go in with the lions. All analogies break down. But I'm allowed to go in there, and it is not safe. This lion knows me. I've seen the proof and the evidence, and he loves me, and I'm in. And yet, even when I'm in, do I still hold that lion at arm's length? Am I afraid of the things that come with the line? Where are the areas that we close off? Where are the Areas that we are unwilling to surrender fully. And the beauty of the gospel, the good news, the freedom that we have in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The answer is not do better, try harder. The answer is not try harder to be nice to the lion. Try to domesticate it. Try to build a wall to keep you safe through legalism and rules or going to church and reading your Bible and praying every day. It's not about that. It's not about answers and trying harder. It's about full surrender. Surrender that this is the way I see the evidence. I see that he loves me and now I can believe. And I see that this thing that I've been putting off, this thing that I've been hiding, this thing that I don't want to be exposed, this thing that I've just been pushing off, we can surrender that today. And Jesus, he loves us. I mean, loves us. I'm sure there's some of you can think of in this room that you. Maybe not in this room, some of you in this room. I do love this way. Then I just, I. I'd give anything. That is the way the Father thinks about you all the time. All the time. The second point, maybe just an application, is the position. It's the position, not the person. This was the same kind of point that I made last week as we kind of put these two sermons in tandem, that we don't attack the people. Jesus doesn't do that. Jesus doesn't say, you are a moron. He goes after their position. It's very different. Last week it was Caesar not paying taxes. This week it's resurrection. You don't hear Jesus saying, oh, you think politics are going to fix this? An idiot. Oh, you think the law is going to save you, you legalist. Point them and yourself to Jesus and how he answers our questions better than we can ever imagine. We can lead with the question when we're talking with somebody with an honest, sincere question of help me understand. Most people, most, and I mean this, are not idiots. They really have thought through some things. Can I just say, even flat earthers, okay, just to maybe get to extreme now, when somebody's a flat earther, no offense, if you're a flat earther, you probably have a reason for why you are a flat earther. I'm looking at you, Patrick. No, I'm trying not to make eye. I'm trying not to make eye contact with anybody, not anybody I know of, but they probably have a reason. And you can say, help me understand. Okay, now let's look at the other evidence that we have, let's talk about this. Let's dialogue without demeaning the person. There's ways to do that. Help me understand rather than, oh, that's what you believe. You believe that one is interested in the person, the other is interested in winning and making the person look foolish. So just the Gospel application this morning. How can we respond differently with those who are not far off? How can our attitude change? How can our thinking change towards these individuals? Because the scripture says this over and over again. We were also that way. It doesn't make any sense. Maybe just to make a quick analogy, that would be like some of you, which has happened in my lifetime, I've witnessed it happen. Some of you have gone from Vikings fans to Packer fans, seen it happen. Well, your position there, you're very different. You're off and you've become a Packer fan. You've seen the light. You've got reasons for being a Viking fan. But now I want you over here and you do that. How can we respond differently to those who far off. We all were Vikings fans at one point. See, that analogy did not break. No. But again, this isn't just about our enemies. I said this last week. It's not just about our enemies. Isn't about people that we just vehemently disagree with. These are people that we love and care for. And we might arrive at different conclusions. That's okay. Applications are going to be different. Again, the illustration I gave last week is that we, as a church and as elders, we have decided that we are going to support local church planting. It doesn't mean that we don't care about global church planning. We do care about that, but we're choosing to put our eggs in this basket. We can arrive at different conclusions. They're not necessarily our enemies. There can be two people who love God with all their heart and care for their neighbor differently and who arrive at different conclusions and applications. And then secondly, but tied into that is how can we respond differently in areas where we are not far off? Where are we looking at God through a pane of glass? Where are we trying to domesticate God? Where are we trying to shrink God's influence in an area in our life and we want to keep them? And again, the answer is not try harder. Yeah, I don't think. I don't think you can breed a domesticated house cat into a lion. I don't think it works that way. We need to let him in. We need to surrender. We need to believe we're Going to have a time of communion here. We do this every week at Hope Lowertown, and I love it. It's an opportunity to reflect on what Christ has done. He's the one that allows us to approach the throne. He's the one who brings us near because of what he accomplished on the throne. And so we take this cracker that represents his body that was broken for us. We take the juice that represents his blood that was shed for us, and we take those elements in remembrance of him. As long as we are able to gather together. We confess sins, we pray for ones that we know and we love that might be far off. We pray for own areas in our own heart, and we confess those. And he's faithful and just to forgive us. He paid the ultimate price that we could never pay. You don't need to be a member of this church or any church, but if you're a follower of Jesus, I would love for you to partake of this meal with us this morning as we remember the finished work of Christ on the cross. He is not safe, but he's good. And he asks us to remember him by eating this meal together. The worship team's gonna come back up, they're gonna sing two songs. And if you're a follower of Jesus again, I'd like you to take these elements with us as they sing. And take your time. You can sit, stand, sing whatever you feel led to do. And after the end of the closing end of those two songs, I'll come back and close. Let me pray. Father, thank you for our time again to gather this morning. Thank you. That you are not far off. Even though humanly speaking, at times it feels like you are. It feels like you're far, but you're not. Jesus proves that. Your love proves that. Would we accept that? Would we believe that? Pray now as we take these elements, that we would just take this time to reflect on who you are, what you've done, your love for us. So much so that you sent your son to die for us. What wondrous love is this? We love you, and it's the name of Jesus. I pray. Amen.