18a And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. Mark 12:18

We recently considered the story of the Sadducees challenging Jesus in Mark 12 and saw how Jesus showed their error in neither knowing Scripture nor the power of God. I also wanted to give a word about the Sadducean presence today because I believe there is a growing influence of their mindset in the worldwide visible church in our modern time.

There is a growing movement called Progressive Christianity. It isn't really Christianity at all because it eventually denies the Bible's core doctrines and replaces them with naturalistic secularism. Like the Sadducees, they are atheist-ish, are ruled by emotions, and veil themselves with Christian terminology and practices. They deny the Scriptures and the power of God. And they are eerily similar to the Sadducees of Jesus' time. Here are some similarities.

Modern progressive Christians are like the Sadducees in that they will try to prove their points with riddles. Rather than wrestle with the Bible, they think they can defeat biblical doctrines by asking skeptical questions. Theirs is the wrong kind of skepticism; there's no real, honest search for answers on the pages of Scripture. Instead, they ask challenging questions and scoff at the Bible, but there is no honest intellectual pursuit for the answers. And the answers exist.

Modern progressive Christians are like the Sadducees in that they will try to debunk the Bible with the Bible. These Sadducees mocked the biblical doctrine of the resurrection by appealing to a passage in Deuteronomy. In our modern-day, it's common to hear a progressive Christian denounce hell because "God is love." God is love, it's in the Bible, but so is hell. And we must work to see how both doctrines coexist and even complement each other. I think God's love requires eternal judgment.

Another example would come from society's emerging views on sexuality. When Barack Obama was championing homosexual civil unions, he said, "If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans." This was his way of pitting one Scripture against another. But all Scripture is God-breathed. You can't be a Jesus'-words-only Christian; all of God's word must be embraced and balanced and studied together.

Modern progressive Christians are like the Sadducees in that they want to delete the supernatural. They don't know the power of God. So they eventually reject Jesus' resurrection, the pillar event on which Christianity rises. And when they talk about the miraculous in Scripture, they excuse it away. Jesus didn't walk on water, but on a sandbar mixed with a mirage, so the disciples thought he was walking on water. Nevermind how Peter started drowning on a sandbar, but that's one explanation. Jesus didn't miraculously feed the five thousand. Instead, when the boy produced the five loaves and two fish, everyone was convicted of hoarding their lunches, and everyone began sharing with everyone else. Slowly, all the supernatural events which require the power of God are eliminated. Creation, the parting of the Red Sea, Jonah -- all of it is explained away because they don't know the power of God.

And modern progressive Christians are like the Sadducees in that they never produce life, but must hijack life. They come into communities of faith, disguising themselves like believers, in an attempt to upset the faith of existing Christians. They have no evangelistic campaign. The unbelieving world would have no interest in debating the inerrancy of Scripture with a progressive Christian. So they sneak into churches and put on an air of spirituality.

They use Christian terminology, but those terms carry different definitions. The Sadducees would do this. There's some evidence that they said they believed in the resurrection so they could fit in, but they thought of resurrection as your children living after you die -- a totally different idea than what the Bible teaches. But they had to manipulate and twist Scriptures in order to hijack the life of the believing community. They cannot produce life, but must hijack it. And to hijack life, pretension is required.

Encouragement for Mark's Original Readers

So, in this passage, Jesus responded well to the Sadducees’ challenge that the Bible is a silly book filled with silly teachings. And we must believe Jesus and the conclusions he taught.

The reason this is all so important is because it's a life or death issue. To get life after death, you must believe Jesus is the Son of God (God the Son) who became a man and died for the world's sins and then rose from the dead. And once the Sadducean error begins to creep into your heart, you will eventually doubt Jesus who bought you, bringing upon yourself swift destruction (1 Peter 2:1). Let us not be a people who mock the word, but honor the word, for it has come from the God who saved us.