Among the sects found in opposition to the Lord during His earthly sojourn, the leading ones were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The former regarded themselves as "orthodox," but Paul, after his conversion, spoke of them as "the narrowest sect of our religion." The Sadducees were the "Liberal" or "Rationalist" party. But what is more irrational than unbelief? And this is what marked the Sadducees also, though it took a different form from that of their more religious antagonists. If the Pharisees "added" to the Word of God, making it of "none effect through their traditions;" the Sadducees were hardly less guilty by "taking away" from that same Word-even as many, alas, do now.

In spite of the great divergence and animosity between these parties, at times they joined in the attempt to overthrow the authority and teaching of the Lord. A striking instance of this is found near the end of the Lord's public ministry (Matt. 22; Mark 12; Luke 20). The Pharisees made a crafty attempt to involve the Lord in either disloyalty to Moses, or treason against Caesar. But they were put to shame and silence by the Lord's reply to their question as to the "tribute," when He said, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

It was then that the Sadducees, instead of learning by the confusion into which their opponents brought themselves, made their attempt to bring the Lord, and the Pharisees too (who believed in the resurrection), into contempt in connection with that doctrine. They did this by bringing forward the supposed instance of the woman who had seven successive husbands. But their effort exposed both their ignorance and their enmity to the truth.

The Sadducees denied the resurrection of the dead. And by the instance they brought forward to support their denial, they intended to put ridicule upon the doctrine. They created a difficulty for themselves, and then denied the truth because they saw no way out of the difficulty they had made! In this how much they resemble many today who reject the Word of God for similar reasons! The resurrection of the dead supposes miraculous or divine power. But since the Sadducees virtually denied God's existence, it was consistent for them, in this respect, to deny the resurrection. They denied God's own existence when they said there is no "spirit" (Acts 23:8), for "God is a Spirit" (John 4:24), but it is probable that they thought of God as having some kind of material form and existence. In fact the Sadducees were "Materialists" of the grossest type who stated that all existence ends with this life. For if the body is not raised, and there is no spirit to outlive the body when death overtakes it, there is nothing left.

This is exactly what the Sadducees desired. They lived for this life alone. The fact that man shall live again, when he shall have to do with the God whom he had denied all his lifetime, was very distasteful to them. We can see in this, the moral reason for their unbelief in the resurrection. They did not want to admit that they would live again to answer to God, who "shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil" (Eccles. 12:14). This was the "conclusion of the whole matter" as to this life, to which the wisest of earth's race arrived in his striking survey of human history. And his "conclusion" demands the resurrection of the dead. For otherwise how can God "bring every work into judgment?" But the Sadducee desired nothing less than to meet and to answer to God for a mis-spent life. This was the basic reason for his denial of the truth.
It is both instructive and encouraging to witness the manner in which the Lord met the denial of His adversaries. In it we may behold the long-suffering grace and mercy of our God toward His enemies, which reaches out in the effort to recover man from his enmity, and bring him into a true knowledge of Himself, that thereby he might be saved. For what man needs most of all is to know that sinner though he is, yet God loves him and longs for his salvation from sin. The Sadducees, like all who are walking at a distance from God, needed to know God in truth. And it is this to which the Lord sought to bring them.

In answer to their question, the Lord replied:"Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels of God in heaven." They were wrong in supposing that if there be a resurrection, man must live just as he now does according to nature. The Lord shows that the relationships in the future life are not as they are here; for the natural relationships end with this life, being displaced by those which are spiritual and eternal. The Scriptures would have enlightened these men if they had but appealed to them for light and knowledge as to the future life. For while the Old Testament, to which they could then go, does not speak with the same plainness as the New Testament, yet, as the Lord was about to show them, there is abundant inference found therein of the truths which they were denying.

The Lord therefore calls attention to what was said in the well-known instance when Moses heard the Voice of the Lord out of the midst of the "burning bush," as proof that the "dead are raised." But it is important to note that the Lord appeals to that which is learned by inference, not by direct statement. "But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken to you by God, saying, / am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living!" The Lord shows here that the patriarchs are spoken of by God as living men, even though not living on the earth. "God is not the God of the dead," in the sense in which the Sadducees regarded the dead- that is, as non-existent. Speaking reverently, it would have been foolish to say that God is the God of Abraham if the latter no longer existed.* *That which the Lord here cites sets aside the notions held by some as to "soul sleep." For it is evident that the patriarchs are here regarded as consciously living, exterior to the body. Unconsciousness in that state would be equal with non-existence, which the Lord denies.*

The fact thus shown that the patriarchs continued to live, though for the present not in the body, implies that they shall sometime resume life in the body. For the Lord shows that Jehovah's words to Moses indicate that the "dead do rise." And when He pointed these facts out, as borne witness to by this scripture, the "multitude," trained in that age to think, "were astonished at His doctrine." They saw that if Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were still living men, although they were not then in the body, it must be in order that they might rise from the dead to have made good to them all that Jehovah has promised to them.

But why did the Lord refer His enemies to this particular scripture? Are there not others which might as easily have shown that which He here pointed out to them? No doubt there are. But in this we see the desire of the Lord to win from their enmity those who were bent upon self-destruction. Though the Sadducees rejected the doctrine of the resurrection, as we have seen, because they feared to meet God, yet their refusal of this truth was the closing of the door of mercy in their own faces. In fact, the Lord was about to prove the truth of resurrection in His own Person. It is thus that He spake to comfort Martha, when He said to her:"I am the Resurrection and the Life," etc. (John 11:25). It is not only that it is given to Him of the Father to raise the dead, whether it be the "just (or) the unjust;" but He Himself was about to go into death for man, not simply to remain there, but to rise again the third day according to the Scriptures, In His own Person, through death and resurrection, the Lord was to manifest Himself as "Lord both of the dead and of the living," that to Him "every knee should bow, and every tongue confess Him Lord to the glory of God the Father."

Did the Sadducees remember that when God spoke to Moses, declaring Himself the God of their fathers, it was when that people were in the lowest extremity, under the heel of a foreign lord, even as they were themselves at that moment? The truth they were denying and seeking to bring into ridicule was that by which Jehovah sought to encourage the faith of His people that the promises made to the fathers were not forgotten by Him! He was not only their fathers' God while they lived on the earth, He was their God still, and was about to fulfil all that He had spoken to them while they yet lived here as pilgrims and strangers on the earth.

The deliverance effected through Moses at that time was symbolic of a far greater deliverance yet to come. But it was necessary for Moses and his brethren, afflicted as they were, to realize that their God was indeed the God of resurrection. Although the nation then was at the lowest ebb, He who was the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, was also their God, and was about to act in almighty power for them. That which seemed at that moment impossible-as impossible as to raise the dead-1:e., to deliver that stricken and helpless people out of the hand of their powerful oppressors, was about to be accomplished by the God of Abraham. And so He said to Moses, after declaring Himself as the God of their fathers, "I have surely seen the affliction of My people Israel…. and I am come down to deliver them" (Exod.3:7,8).

He who then came down for His people's sake, for their temporal deliverance from Pharaoh's oppression, had now come, in His own blessed Person, for a far greater deliverance. And only through His own death and resurrection could man, oppressed by sin and Satan, find true deliverance. But the Sadducee, in denying the resurrection, was ignorantly rejecting the only door of hope for himself or for anyone. For "if there be no resurrection, then is not Christ raised. And if Christ be not risen, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." Thus the Lord took the deniers of the power of God back to their own Scriptures, which they professed to believe, in order to show them that all blessing, whether past, present, or future, was bound up in the truth of that which they denied. The God whose power they denied was their fathers' God, and if they themselves denied God and His power to raise the dead, how unlike were they to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who "died in faith," looking beyond the life here to the life in resurrection in order to receive the promises! What divine wisdom we see therefore in the Lord answering the unbelievers of His day from that Scripture which bore such abundant witness not only to God's power, but to the glory of His goodness and grace. -Wm. Huss.