Mark Part LIII - You are Greatly Mistaken (12:18-27)

One of the challenging things that confronts a study of the Word of God is the power of our presuppositions. One of the most powerful of these assumptions – which one finds frequently in the commentaries – is that of pride or arrogance. The commentator assumes that if he can’t figure out the meaning of the text, or if the argument doesn’t work based on how he’s explained it, then the problem is with the text itself. But it is always possible, is it not, that the problem isn’t the text but the commentator himself?

So take Jesus’ response to the Sadducees. His refutation of the Sadducees is routinely scorned. “Jesus did not know what he was talking about; his argument just doesn’t work.”

Jesus, these commentators suggest, clearly did not know what he was talking about. But to plagiarize from our Lord in the text today, I think we can safely say to the commentators, “You are greatly mistaken.” So let us look at the text and see how Jesus overthrows the folly of the Sadducees and the folly of his modern day critics.