3. The Pharisees and the Sadducees were both legalists. The Pharisees were sad, you see, because they tried, and failed, to trap Jesus with a question about whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not. They figured the plan was foolproof: If the Rabbi said yes, He’d lose the support of patriotic Jews. If He said no, they’d have a reason to have Him arrested – “Heads I win, tails you lose.” But they ended up looking like fools when He said, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” Now it was the Sadducees’ turn. St. Luke writes, “There came to Him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked Him a question saying, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.’” That story might sound ridiculous in the Twenty-first Century, but we shouldn’t say that it couldn’t happen. Life expectancy back then wasn’t what it is now. But the thing the Sadducees found ridiculous was the resurrection of the dead. If there was a resurrection from the dead, what would become of the law they received from Moses? Of all the squabbling sects in First Century Judaism, the biggest squabblers were the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Sadducees were an elitist group that included the priestly class. This made them the liturgical experts. When it came to the Bible, though, they only accepted the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. So they didn’t believe in things these books didn’t specifically mention, like angels or life after death. The Pharisees were a lay movement, but they were closely tied to the scribes, the professional Bible scholars. These were the theological experts. Accepting the whole Old Testament – Genesis to Malachi – they believed in things like angels and life after death. But the Pharisees and Sadducees had something in common: Both groups were legalists. Both groups believed salvation was a reward for good behavior. 2. There’s no greater lawlessness than legalism. St. Paul writes, “Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to Him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.” Not long before Paul wrote these words, the Emperor Caligula got the idea to have a statue of himself placed in the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem Temple. He failed; but if he succeeded, that would have been the second time something like that happened. The first time was during the Inter-Testamental period, when Greek ruler Antiochus Ephiphanes put a statue of the Greek god Zeus in the Holy of Holies and sacrificed a pig on the Temple’s altar. This set off the Maccabee revolt. Paul was predicting that someone would come along, who would do something much worse: He would set himself in God’s temple as a god to be worshipped, even claiming to be the true God. Paul calls this person “the man of lawlessness.” Down through Church history, this “man of lawlessness” has been called the Antichrist. Lutherans at the time of the Reformation identified the Antichrist with the Papal office. Others have identified him with Hitler or some other evil earthly leader. But there’s an antichrist in each one of us. There’s a side of us that fits Paul’s description: “a man or woman of lawlessness.” And there’s no greater lawlessness than legalism. At first, that may seem to be a contradictory statement: How can a legalist be lawless? But let me explain what I mean: Legalism starts with a lie. We look at the Ten Commandments, and we say, “I can do this.” Then we expect God to reward us for our good behavior. We expect God to be in our debt. We try to pull Christ off the cross and put ourselves in His place. By trying make God reward us for our good behavior, we rebel against Him. We become men and women of lawlessness, just as the ancient legalists did. 1. Grace can do what legalism can’t. Earlier I mentioned Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabee revolt. As a result of these events, and of the cleansing of the Jerusalem Temple that followed, our Jewish friend and neighbors celebrate Hanukkah. And, as comedian Adam Sandler says, instead of one day of presents, they get eight crazy nights. The lesson for us is that the false gods, false Christs, and antichrists that have set themselves up in the temples of our souls need to be cleansed. How does that happen? By following more rules? No, it happens by the very thing the Sadducees mocked: the resurrection from the dead. The Teacher says, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now He is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him.” Not long after He said these words, Jesus died on the cross. And on Easter Sunday, He rose from the dead. He didn’t just believe in the resurrection. He was and is the resurrection. And for the sake of Christ’s death and resurrection, God saves us by grace, apart from our works. And grace does what legalism can’t. It raises to life that which was dead. Just as our Master was raised from the dead on Easter Sunday, we also experienced our own personal Easter when we were baptized. That lawless part of us was drowned and died in the waters of Holy Baptism. And a new person rose again. This new person is cleansed and strengthened by God’s grace in His Means of Grace. And it’s about this new person that St. Paul writes, “But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved through the sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this He called you though our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” A cartoon shows a group of people in a classroom, looking at a chart of church history. The leader says, “And here’s where we came along and got the Bible right. Isn’t Jesus lucky to have us?” That’s an attitude we’ve inherited from the Sadducees and Pharisees: We got the Bible right. We’re God’s gift to the world. Isn’t Jesus lucky to have us? God’s gift to the world is our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. In His death and resurrection, our Lord has done what all the laws and rules in the world never could: He saved us. He forgives our sins. He cleanses the temples of our souls from the false gods and false Christs and antichrists. And we’re blessed to have Him. + In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. + - Ward I. Yunker, Pastor
Posted on: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 21:38:12 +0000
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