Have you ever noticed that Jesus tears into the Pharisees quite a lot in the Gospels, but the only time he goes after the Sadducees is when they come to question him. Why is it that he takes the Pharisees to task and says next to nothing about the excesses and wrongs of the Sadducees?

I think I might have an answer, but I admit it is all pure speculation. I have absolutely no evidence to support my proposition. But I think the answer lies in the prophets of the Old Testament. Most of them shows God trying to bring Israel back to him the same way a father disciplines an unruly son. He still sees hope and promise in ancient Israel and hasn’t written them off, as he has done with many of the surrounding nations. Like a father forced into tough love to restore a son, so was God forced into tough love against Israel because he still saw a glimmer of hope within them.

I have a feeling it was the same way with Jesus and the Pharisees. He saw that they were truly making the effort to do God’s will and to be pleasing in his sight, but they were getting it wrong. They did believe in the resurrection and angels and that there was more to the world than just what they saw, but they were forgetting justice and to care for the destitute. They also had the bigotry of seeing salvation for them alone and not for the Gentiles. I belief this is why Jesus got after them so much. He was hoping to bring them around, and for some, it worked. Don’t forget that Nicodemos was a Pharisee, as was Paul.

The Sadducees saw this physical world as all there was. To them there was no spiritual world and no afterlife. For them, worshiping God was a way to gain blessings in this life. The saw their wealth as the sign of God’s favor, and since they ran the Temple, they had no problem running it as a business for profit. In a way Jesus could have been indirectly condemning them when he spoke of the hypocrites making a show of their giving and prayers, and when he said they have their reward.

Unfortunately, today we have our own Christian Sadducees. They are the preachers of the prosperity gospel, which no gospel at all. The talk about giving only as a seed to gain more money from God. Talk for the “word of faith” to gain wealth, power, prestige, and to even end aging. They’ve turned their back on the spiritual world for the material world. Listen to the preachers of this false gospel and all they talk about is wealth and how they think they are manipulating God to gain more. They are seeking to gain their reward now, by way of money and notoriety. I pray those preachers, and most importantly their followers, will have their eyes opened and turn to God asking forgiveness, but I fear it is a forlorn hope. For they seem to be the fulfillment of II Timothy 4:3, “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

#Pharisees, #Sadducees, #falsegospel