Matthew 22:23-33
They just would not let Him rest. After all the attempts to trap Him and trip Him up in His teaching and knowledge of the scriptures, the religious “authorities” would not leave Jesus alone. He had bested them at every turn, clearly and beautifully laying out the truths of scripture in answer to their every question. But they could not accept that His knowledge and wisdom were far higher than theirs lest they be forced to acknowledge (as many of the people were coming to do) that this Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Christ.
So the attacks continued. Now it’s the Sadducees with their cute little “what if” question about marriage in the next life (in which they did not believe) designed to support their doctrinal position. Jesus responds with a crushing blow to their meager view of God and a powerful thrust to their poor understanding of holy writ.
Don’t you know that in the resurrection people will be like angels and not be married? And regarding that resurrection, haven’t you read God’s words to you: ‘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. The Sadducees were silenced by this penetrating response. And so, we chuckle to ourselves seeing them with “egg on their faces.” But are we any better off than they when it comes to knowing the word of God? Let’s suppose we could ask our Lord some of the most serious and perplexing questions in our hearts, not to trap Him but just to get answers. For how many of those do you suppose He would say: “Have you not read...?”
Are we not very much like these Sadducees who failed to thoroughly investigate the holy writings to find the truths of God and just relied on our memories of what we heard long ago? How often are our Bibles opened? Read for meaning? Studied? Pored over in depth? Do we hunger and thirst for righteousness and the knowledge of God and His Son? Or is something like this our usual response: “I really do want to study God’s word, but...”?