Show Don't Tell: Mark 12:18-27

Instead of saying "Jesus answered the Sadducees about resurrection," hear the ridiculous scenario. Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, come with a puzzle. Moses wrote that if a man dies leaving a wife but no children, his brother must marry the widow. Seven brothers: first marries, dies childless; second takes her, dies; all seven, then the woman. "At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?" They think they've made resurrection absurd. Jesus: "Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?" Wrong on both counts. "When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven." The category is different. Then the offensive: "Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!" Present tense: I am. The patriarchs are alive.