John K. Jenkins Sr - The Danger of Not Knowing

I want you to open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 22. Reverend Pearson has already read this, but I want to read it to you again this morning, beginning at verse 23. Matthew 22:33. Listen to this. It says, «The same day, the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, saying, 'Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.' Now there were with us seven brothers; the first died after he had married and, having no offspring, left his wife to his brother. Likewise, the second also, and the third even to the seventh. Last of all, the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be, for they all had her?»

Verse 29: Jesus answered and said to them, «You are mistaken.» Somebody say, «You are mistaken.» You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. I want to talk to you about the danger of not knowing. Look at your neighbor and say, «The danger of not knowing.» Now, turn to the person on the other side and say the same. Say it again: «The danger of not knowing.»

I want to discuss with you the statement that Jesus made in response to the question raised by the Sadducees. Let me first tell you who the Sadducees are. They were one of three groups of thought within the religious community in Jesus' day. They were known more for what they didn’t believe in than for what they did believe in. They were a religious sect that prided themselves on the fact that they dotted every «i» and crossed every «t,» but Jesus called them hypocrites. Y’all know what a hypocrite is? There 's one sitting near you; see if you can figure out who it is. A hypocrite is a person who play-acts, puts on a show as though they are one thing, but in reality, they are something totally different. He calls them hypocrites.

He says to them they hated Him; they didn’t like Jesus. They sought to stop the apostles from preaching. They primarily didn’t believe in the resurrection. Listen carefully: they did not believe. I believe somebody is about to get fired-that’s okay; everybody is entitled to one mistake, and that was it right there. Where was I? Oh yes, they didn’t believe in the resurrection. They believed that when a person dies, that is the end of it. There was no life thereafter; there was no eternity. They embraced the idea that there was nothing after this life was over. They also didn’t believe in angels.

It 's interesting that they raised this question. By the way, there are some descendants of the Sadducees somewhere on your row; go ahead and look up and down the row to see if you can figure out who it is. Somebody nearby you, maybe in your section, maybe even in your seat, lives a life as though they don’t believe that they will one day have to answer to God, that they will one day have to stand before the judgment seat of Christ, who doesn’t believe there’s a heaven or hell. And yet that was the belief of the Sadducees; that was their posture. They were critical fault-finders who thought they knew everything, and they raised this question with Jesus.

They asked Him a sarcastic question; they were being really sarcastic since they didn’t believe in the resurrection. Here 's what they said: «Since y’all say there’s a resurrection…» I’m putting it in my words, but this is what they are really saying. «When a married man dies, his brother is to take his wife and have children. What if the man has seven brothers, and she ends up with each one of the brothers dying, and she has no children from any of the seven brothers, and then she dies? When she gets to heaven- since y’all believe that there’s a heaven — who will be her husband?»

That is essentially the question they raise, and I thought I should talk to you today because Jesus says in response to them, «You are mistaken.» The King James Version says, «You have strayed from the truth; you’ve lost the virtue of what reality is.» He says, «You are mistaken because there are some things that you don’t know, you don’t understand, you don’t consider, you don’t perceive.»

I thought I should talk about this today because I have discovered that there are a large number of people who just don’t believe. They don’t consider; they don’t know. There are some things they don’t know, and the fact of the matter is some of you have messed up your lives because you’ve made choices, made decisions, done things, gone places, and taken actions that you just didn’t know any better about. I mean, if you would tell the truth, how many of you have ever looked back over your life and come to a place or a spot in your life where you looked back and said, «Now, when I made that decision, what in the world was I thinking?» Yeah, we’ve made those choices, we’ve made those decisions, we’ve taken…