Mark 12:24
Often
out worldview limits what we can see. If we don’t believe in pink elephants,
then when a pink elephant walks in the room, our belief system will not let us
enjoy the moment. It will be too busy trying to explain and dismiss what we are
seeing. If we believe in aliens from other worlds, then any unexplainable event
can be evidence of the alien’s existence and interaction with our world. If we
believe that deaths happen in threes, then once we reach three we start
counting over.
Our
view of the world changes our experience of it. I see the clouds here in
Florida every day and I marvel at the beauty and creativity of God. The
infinite variety of shapes, shadows, swooshes and puffs speaks to me of the
LORD’s greatness and majesty and of my humility.
But
for so many, the clouds aren’t even seen. They don’t speak at all, other than
perhaps telling of a coming storm. They are just water vapor and water crystal.
They have no significance. They speak of no overarching story of life.
Jesus
is in the middle of an attempt to trap Him for the second time. His opponents
want to catch Him saying something that could serve as evidence against Him at
trail, evidence that would allow the death penalty as punishment. The Sadducees
don’t believe in the resurrection, or in Heaven for that matter. And yet this
is the topic of their trap.
Jesus
responds that they are wrong on two counts in their presentation of the facts
of their question to Him. Jesus knows that you can’t answer a bad question. If
there are errors in the question, then you can’t give a good answer. This
happens all the time. People ask questions with assumptions that are false
built into the question, thus invalidating any answer you might give. Question
about manmade global warming are a contemporary example. When the questioner’s
worldview accepts man’s role as the primary driver of changes in climate, then
if you try to answer his question, without first presenting the contrary
evidence or challenging his assumptions and conclusions, your answer begins in a place of error. And
you can’t get to truth by beginning in error.
And
because of these two parts of their worldview, that resurrection and heaven don’t
exist, they have missed the Truth. They start in error so they can’t end up at
the Truth. So Jesus points out their errors before He answers their question. He
says that they don’t know the Scriptures. This would have hit at the very heart
of their belief system. They claimed to know the Scriptures better than anyone
else. So Jesus answers using their frame of reference, the Old Testament, and
specifically the only parts that they accepted, the first five books.
They
had read these books their whole lives and yet they had missed some plain Truth
about our essential existence, that we don’t stop existing after our physical
body stops working. And in the process they had placed limits on what God was
capable of doing. They put limits on God’s power. They said He was unable to
raise the dead, that it was out of His scope of practice.
What
are you missing in Scripture because of your view of the world, of God and of
yourself? How are you not seeing God’s power at work in your life and in the
world around you?