 In Deuteronomy chapter 25 verse 5, the commandment to marry your brother's widow is given for one purpose. To ensure the continuation of life so that the firstborn whom she bears shall assume the name of his dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel. The purpose of the commandment is life so that your brother's wife will not be abandoned so that his household will continue for the generation yet unborn so that in fulfillment of God's law life will continue. For Jesus, this life does not come from men but from his heavenly father. When the Pharisees, the Herodians, and now the Sadducees approach Jesus, their questions betray their personal belief that life comes not from God but from men. They talk about God and they even quote his teaching but their true God is Caesar. They do not hear Scripture in the light of Scripture but according to the light of Caesar which is passing away. This choice leaves them talking in circles about their theology, not only ignorant of God's instruction but actively working against it. Of course the Sadducees do not believe in the resurrection. One need look no further than their mishandling of Deuteronomy to understand this fact. Is this not the reason you are mistaken, explained to Jesus? That you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God? Indeed they are greatly mistaken. Be warned O Caesar, the Lord Jesus Christ who is about to die does not salute you. Richard and I discuss the Gospel of Mark chapter 12 verses 18 to 27. You're listening to the Bible as literature. You are listening to episode 189 of the Bible as literature podcast. Richard and I have had some good discussions since last week's episode about the subtleties of the role of Caesar and the importance of the word render. We had a parable about a landowner looking to those who were tending the land to render the fruit of the land in its due season. We have seen an entire movement in Mark where Jesus was sowing seed, asking others to sow seed and then moving on to expect fruit for example the fruit of the fig tree. And then we came to this parable in verses 13 through 17 where the Herodians who are in effect the corrupt nobility of late antiquity in Palestine and the Pharisees who are the religious leaders try to undermine Jesus by putting him in a corner to either endorse or betray Caesar, alienating him from the people and potentially putting himself at risk. But the question which is based on the false premise that Caesar is a reference deals with once again rendering. They're interested in rendering something self-serving. When you render to Caesar you're rendering to your false God who you give authority to for the sake of your own security, your own profit, your own well-being and what you render unto Caesar are things that pass away like money, like things that you think you control, the title to the land for example, things that benefit you that feed this cycle of fear and anxiety in the struggle for survival. Early on we did some episodes about what it means to be reading the Bible as literature. It means to follow the thread of the story and it's very significant that we had a parable about people who did not want to render fruit. They wanted to keep fruit for themselves and then when they realized that fruit was not going to be enough they wanted to keep the land for themselves and they tried to kill the sun in order to keep the land for themselves and then the next episode they're trying to figure out who they're going to render unto. Do they render unto God or to Caesar? And Jesus has to remind them that there's only rendering to God because it all belongs to God and that there is one landowner to whom we owe our fruit. That forces us then as we come to verse 18 to read it in light of this who are they rendering their fruit to? That's the discussion that you and I were having. We were trying to figure out ways to keep the fruit but because these people are very concerned about appearances they want to make it look like they're rendering fruit to somebody else. This is like Facebook activism where it looks like we're trying to better society but instead we just want to let off a little steam, get a little chemical buzz in our head for doing something new and exciting and then move on with our lives. It's cheap talk and this is the discussion we have here. The Sadducees want to engage Jesus in cheap talk in order to get out of rendering fruit. In the New Testament, Caesar represents the power of death. The power of death is the power that's wielded by the king, the emperor, the son of the gods, which plays into the human being's lust for security in the minor prophets. So when you give yourself over to Caesar, when you place your trust in Caesar, you're placing your trust in the power of death and the power of death is the power of things that pass away, that can't produce life such as money and possession and worldly glory and worldly power. All of the things that human beings associate with their idols, their concept of God. Why do we want our gods to be mighty and powerful and wealthy? Why do people worship Caesar? Why do we still worship our politicians? Yes, we worship our politicians. Whether you're a conservative or liberal believer or an atheist, you pick your guy and you burn incense for him. Let's be honest with ourselves because you worship your own survival. And so now this is coming to a head when we start discussing the resurrection with the Sadducees in verse 18 because the question that's being posed is which seed produces life? What is the life that comes from the teaching versus the false life that comes from Caesar's might? 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 child, his brother should marry the wife and raise up children to his brother. Are the Sadducees going to take this verse out of context or are they going to try to understand it within the context of the scripture that it was taken from? In other words, are they going to use it as a verse in order to spur on their imagination and think about imaginary circumstances and what may or may not happen? Or are they going to see how it applies from the context where it came? We know that there's three things that God is looking for. Faithfulness, loving-kindness, and knowledge of God. So there's a little bit of knowledge of God here perhaps. Will we see faithfulness? Will we see loving-kindness come from it? This is the question. Those are the things that God is looking for. When he's the land odor who planted the field and he comes, these are the fruit that he's looking for according to Hosea 4.1. So what's he going to find? What are we going to see come from the lips of the Sadducees? In Deuteronomy, where this verse is quoted, the law is given to protect the vulnerable. When the law protects the vulnerable, the commandment of God is producing life for his people. This notion of life, which is the life that is realized in the kingdom of God, when the mercy you describe from Hosea Richard has total hegemony on earth, when God's righteousness has total hegemony, then there will be life, true life, not the life that Caesar provides. This is not about marriage. It's about how one performs loving-kindness. This section of Deuteronomy is all about duty. And when the Pharisees talk about it, there is no discussion of duty. And this is how we know that the Sadducees are wrong. It's because they lift the quote from the context and do with it whatever they want. They do with it whatever they want, and what they want is not life-giving. What they want is what Caesar offers them, which is worldly security. And the fact that the Sadducees say there is no resurrection shows that they don't trust that the seed of God's teaching can produce life, which is why their understanding of Scripture is worldly, because for them the whole point is what they get out of the deal. But Scripture is sowing life for the generation yet unborn in the Psalter. 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? The seed produces life. The fact that no one was able to produce a child is reminiscent of Genesis. It's a metaphor. You're not producing life. There is no next generation because no one is following Torah. No one is teaching Torah. In Deuteronomy, when you get up, when you go to sleep, when you walk along the way, you are to explain and recite Torah to your children so that they can produce children. So they want to talk about the resurrection. They want to talk about life. They want to talk about Deuteronomy. But they are not interested in the seed of God. They are interested in their seed, which goes nowhere. It reminds me of the saying of Jesus, you have to leave the dead to bury the dead. There's no life in how many generations? Caesar can't produce life. The teachers in Israel can't produce life. Human beings cannot produce life. Only the seed in the Gospel of Mark can produce life. And we can argue, well, we don't know why there were no children, but Scripture doesn't deal with reasons and explanations. Scripture deals in fruit. Either there is fruit or there isn't fruit. If there's no fruit, there's judgment. In the resurrection when they rise again, which one's wife will she be for all seven had married her? Here they are expressing on a visceral level, their absolute wrongness and ignorance, both of the law and of the purpose of the law. They're not understanding why the law was given because they're still thinking about it in terms of who gets what, like they're divvying up a pile of money. Not only because they miss the point of the law, which is to protect the vulnerable, but because they don't understand the nature of the life that God's teaching produces in the resurrection of the dead. They still understand that life in a very worldly way that pertains to the life that Caesar provides. They're still thinking in those categories, they are not thinking in terms of the coming kingdom in which there is no Caesar and there is no king except the commandment. Their acceptance of a false premise is a way of spinning off into an incomprehensible theological discussion. Jesus said to them, is this not the reason you are mistaken that you do not understand the scriptures or the power of God? You don't understand the teaching and you don't understand the power of God to provide life because you still are looking to Caesar and you are looking to yourselves to provide life. You're not interested in the commandment. For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. And here, it's essential that you understand the function of the word Angulos in Scripture. The angel is the messenger of the king, which means that in the resurrection, everyone is a messenger of God's commandment. Everyone is a preacher, everyone can teach Scripture and if everyone is teaching Scripture, everyone is hearing Scripture and then God's kingdom is at hand. You must always pay attention to the technical language of Scripture. Otherwise, you're going to take verse 25 and produce a hallmark card and your hallmark card will not provide life for the people. The point of the angel, the point of the messenger is for the decree of the king to go out, for the law, the word of the king to go out. We had messengers in the first part of the chapter. The job of these messengers that came to the people who were working the land was to tell them it's time to render fruit. It was the way that the king, the landowner, sent a message to the people it's time to render. And so, when the people are performing the law, this is their job and this is what Jesus has been trying to do throughout the book, is to spread the seed, to spread the seed, to spread the seed, he's been trying so hard to get the disciples to act correctly so that they could listen and then spread the seed once Jesus is gone. And this is what Jesus is saying. The people who act correctly, the people who perform the duty of husband have the potential of then spreading the seed, of being the messenger of the word, so that when God, the landowner, returns to the land, he will find fruit that he can bear and that he can take because he's the owner of the land. Another example, Richard, to underscore the word angel. In Galatians, we've talked about this. I've written about this. When Paul says, even if an angel from heaven were to contradict the gospel, he would be cursed, he would be anathema. He's referring to Peter, Peter, James and John, but especially Peter. Why? Because Peter, as an apostle, is an angel from heaven, a messenger from the king. So we have to understand the technical language. This is not an interpretation. This is a functional explanation of the meaning of the word angel based on its usage in the text. Remember that in Scripture, everything boils down to a showdown with Plato. I hate this expression, platonic relationship. But that's exactly the kind of relationship that you see as they're talking about in their example, because in a platonic relationship, there's no seed and there's no fruit. What good is a platonic relationship? The function of a relationship in Scripture is to produce a child. So the angel in heaven, unlike the angels in your head, produce life, and that's what's at stake in the resurrection. 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. And the key in Genesis, Richard, as you know, is that had not God intervened on behalf of Abraham, there would be no life and no children. And God had to intervene for the sake of every generation to ensure that the seed would continue in the land and that there would be fruit and there would be life. Caesar cannot do for the human race what God does for the human race in Genesis, and that's the message. And if you as a Sadducee don't get it, you are greatly mistaken. The purpose of the resurrection is not marriage and the purpose of marriage is not resurrection. But the point of both marriage and of resurrection is producing the seed. Producing life. Resurrection is about the fruit that comes from the dead seed, as Jesus says elsewhere. And they are conflating these two issues in order to make some abstract, useless, even distracting point. The resurrection is not about who they're married to. It's about their duty. Did they perform the actions they were supposed to? Did God find the fruit that was rendered to him? But when it comes to the resurrection, was life produced? Was there fruit? Do you have fruit to render? The point of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob is not how great a guys these were. The point was that they will produce as much seed as the numbers of grains of sand on the earth. This is the point. It was not about Abraham. It was about Abraham's seed. The resurrection have the same point in common yet when the Sadducees bring them together they make some brand new point that's incomprehensible and that's I think the only way that Jesus can put it is you're greatly mistaken. They just don't understand the point because they not only accepted the wrong premise, they created their own premise and therefore twisted the words of Scripture and twisted God's law. This passage lays everything on the line and brings into absolute focus with absolute clarity the purpose of the ministry of Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Mark. It is to provide life for the people by fulfilling the commandment of God and by spreading his teaching. And what God wants for his people is a community in which the love of God replaces the love of Caesar and which the love of God replaces the love of security and wealth and power and comfort and wherein because the love of God supersedes all of those things the love of his commandment the care for the needy neighbor becomes the priority of each recipient of the seed and aside from making the care of neighbor their priority the passing on of the seed becomes the parallel priority you have to hear the commandment of God do the commandment of God proclaim the commandment of God without end that is what the kingdom of God is. We must absorb the word of God through reading but through careful reading and careful study this is not something that's beyond anybody who's listening read, read in context and try to understand the broader sense do not take one verse and then think of ways where you might be able to apply it. We know that it's about bearing fruit we know that it's about mercy but read carefully because this is the work that will allow you to render the fruit You've just heard the Bible as literature Thanks for listening