Message: In Matthew 22 the Sadducees were taking their turn to challenge Jesus as the Pharisees watched. Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead and this had been an ongoing debate with the Pharisees so they used the words of Moses in their attempt to disqualify Jesus. They probably thought they had him pinned to a corner until he blew their minds by explaining to them that they didn’t even have the right understanding of heaven to bring any validity to their question. Verse 34 says that when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees they came together, and an expert of the law came forward to try to test Jesus by asking him which command was the greatest. It didn’t seem they had a response to that so Jesus did a little testing of his own by asking them whose son the Messiah would be. They told him David and Jesus instantly flipped it on them by challenging them why David, who was inspired by the Spirit, called the Messiah “Lord”. He said if David calls him Lord, how can the Messiah be his son? Nobody had an answer and verse 46 tells us that from that day, nobody dared to question him anymore. What I really pulled from this is that although God doesn’t shame us for having honest questions and asking them, he knows the heart and motive behind our questions and he understands the faulty thinking behind the questions we have. He doesn’t just answer our questions. He adjusts the faulty thinking behind our questions. Often times the questions we talk about are not really the root of our real questions. They are a result of deeper things that we don’t understand. We get frustrated because we want Jesus to answer basic questions, but he digs at the root to identify the real problem. The digging doesn’t make sense to us but if we will allow him to show us what we don’t know he will answer our questions in a way we never expected. We often criticize what we don’t understand. The Sadducees didn’t understand the resurrection so they didn’t realize that their challenge had no grounds. The Pharisees were right in the fact that the Messiah would be born from the lineage of King David, but they didn’t understand that the Messiah would come from God the Father in Heaven. What I really took from this is that we have to be careful with our frustrations and challenge the questions we have. The times I have asked Jesus legitimate questions he has shown me the error of my thinking behind it and changed my understanding. Some of our beliefs are not necessarily biblical at all. They are religious beliefs that man has attached as doctrine. We often get frustrated with people who challenge those things, but we ourselves need to challenge why we believe what we believe and make sure we are in line with the word. If we will surrender our questions and our thinking to God, he will always have the last word- after all, He IS the word!
