Denial of resurrection as a sign of mental mood.
"The Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection." It does not appear how their question helped the entanglement scheme. Possibly the design was to secure a statement that could be declared to oppose Moses' Law. This would discredit him with the people; and it might be made the ground of a formal condemnation by the Sanhedrin, which the temple officials would have to execute, and so Christ would be got rid of. The point before us now is, that these Sadducees are described to us in one sentence. One thing suffices to reveal them to us. One opinion told the class of opinions they held. You may know the men by this, "they say that there is no resurrection." And when you know that is their opinion, you see at once the hypocrisy of the question they came asking Christ.
I. THESE SADDUCEES WERE CRITICAL. They wanted a reason foreverything. They received nothing they could not understand. They failed in receptivity. About everything they asked questions. Whatever was presented to view, they persisted in getting to look at it on the other side. Explain that the critical temperament and faculty are Divine gifts and endowments, but they are perilous because they so easily become masterful and absorbing, destructive of some of the finer and gentler qualities and faculties. Criticism, like fire, is a good servant, but a bad master.
II. THESE SADDUCEES WERE UNSPIRITUAL. We should call them "materialists." They were not sensitive to anything that did not appeal to the five senses. They were deficient in imagination. They were, in their way, scientific. Angels they could not do with, for they had no substance. Resurrection they could not do with, for it was a dream, and had, and could have, no verification. There have always been such men. We may be sorry for them; for the unseen is the real, the Divine is the abiding, the spiritual is the true; and he only lives indeed who can respond to the environment of the spiritual, the Divine, the eternal.
III. THESE SADDUCEES WERE CONCEITED. Not in the common and familiar ways of conceit. They were intellectually conceited, and that is the most hopeless kind of conceit, and, indeed, the most offensive kind. The "superior" man, who is always wiser than everybody, and smiles supercilious smiles, is the most aggravating of mortals.—R.T.