The Sadducees Came to his Baptism – Matthew 3:5-9

 Amongst the common people of Israel who came to hear the preaching of John the Baptist, there were two specific groups – the Pharisees and Sadducees. History tells us that there were at least four sects, or groups, among the Jews in John’s day. There were the Zealots, who molded their theology into ideas about national revolution. These people were ready to try to overthrow the Roman government and establish the Messianic Kingdom – with or without a Messiah. In more recent times, these might be called Zionists. And there were the Essenes, who as nearly as possible rejected the world and everything in it. They lived as monks or hermits away from civilized society. The Dead Sea Scrolls are attributed to the Essenes. Then there were the Pharisees with whom the Lord Jesus very frequently argued doctrine. These people claimed to believe the scriptures, but many of their interpretations were corrupt. Generally speaking, the scribes and lawyers, were a part of the cult of the Pharisees. In Matthew 23, and elsewhere, the Lord Jesus spent considerable time condemning the false faith and corrupt practices of the Pharisees. “Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.” The fourth major sect of the Jews were the Sadducees. These people were the liberals, the modernists of their day. They either rejected or allegorized the scriptures – except for the ceremonial laws of Moses. Unfortunately, many, if not most, of the priests in John’s day were of the sect of the Sadducees. The spiritual leadership of Israel – the priesthood – for several generations had been Sadducees.

Here in today’s scripture (Matthew 3:7) John the Baptist called both the Sadducees and Pharisees “vipers.“ What do you suppose he meant by that? He meant that they were known to attack and poison innocent people. As we read a few minutes ago, even the Lord Jesus called these people “vipers.” To be infected with the doctrines of either the Pharisees or the Sadducees, was to guarantee spiritual death. There was no cure for their bite; death was inevitable; in fact in another sense, death was the only escape.

Have you ever wondered why the Bible spends time exposing the Sadducees and Pharisees, but not the Essenes or the Zealots? It isn’t just because Christ and His Apostles didn’t run into the Essenes or Zealots very often. And it is certainly not because they didn’t possess false doctrine or that they didn’t need to be rebuked. I think that the primary reason that the New Testament spends more time on the Sadducees and Pharisees is because that more than the other two, these were on-going heresies which people in every generation and every culture have to face. There are more Pharisees and Sadducees in our world today than ever before. And they are still as dangerous and venomous.

A similar question might be asked: Why is it that there is more money being spent on finding a cure for cancer than on looking for a solution to the common cold or even polio? It’s not that polio is not a terrible disease, and it’s not because the cold is so common. It’s because polio is no longer the threat that it once was, and colds are not as deadly as cancers.

Pharisaism and Sadduceeism are alive and well and living in the continental United States. In fact there are parts of every human heart which yearn for both of these Satanic philosophies. And there are even parts of every Christian heart which still lean towards Pharisaism and Sadduceeism. But it is a rare thing to find someone wants to shed every shred of the world and become a hermit for God. In fact, to forsake the world entirely is also to forsake our God-given responsibilities toward the world. It’s not other people’s godliness which tends to make Christians run away and hide. It’s personal cowardice, or selfishness, or laziness, or any of a number of other sins. We cannot be the testimonies to the world that God has commanded us to be if we deny that there is a world which needs our testimony.

This morning, I’d like you to notice what it WAS that the Sadducees believed, what it DID and what it MEANS. This is important enough for us to think about, because our world is still filled with Sadduceeism. You not only need to be aware of it, but you need to beware of it. If not for your sakes, then for the sake of your children and grandchildren. There is no Christian, or Christian church, which is not susceptible to Sadduceeism.

What was it that the Sadducees BELIEVED?First, they professed to believe in God. I think that it is important to believe in God. I think that only a fool can be a genuine atheist – denying the existence of deity. I can sympathize with the agnostic, who says that he doesn’t KNOW if there is a God. But the man who says he KNOWS that God doesn’t exist is claiming divine omniscience. I believe that it is important to believe in God; to believe there is a God, and to believe God. But at the same time, for most people who make these claims – their faith is pointless. For example, the Romans and the Greeks believed in god – lots and lots of them. But the gods of the Greeks and Romans were fictions – concoctions of their over-stimulated imaginations. Their imagined gods were unholy, sensual, wicked, mean deified humanoids. The faith of the Romans and Greeks in their imaginary gods was a total waste of religious energy. We could say the same thing about the gods of the Egyptians, Philistines, Babylonians, Hindus, American Indians and thousands of others, until we had a list as long as your arm. The question is not whether or not someone believes in God. The questions are – in WHICH god do you believe, and what has that faith accomplished in your soul?

James dealt very specifically with the practicality of genuine faith in God in chapter two of his letter. “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” The Sadducees believed in god, just like most other human beings, but it was not the God of the Bible, and they certainly failed to properly tremble. Their god was just as much a concoction of their imaginations as the Greeks and Romans.

Despite this tenant of their faith, we are told about a couple of things that the Sadducees did NOT believe. “The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both.” We read those words in Acts 23:8.

Now for a personal question – Do you believe in Biblical inspiration – that the Bible is God-breathed? I certainly do. And I think I Peter 1:21 could be said, not just about the Old Testament, but about New Testament as well. It says, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” That means that Luke’s editorial comment there in Acts 23:8 was directed by the Holy Spirit. But have you noticed the math mistake in this verse? The Holy Spirit said that the Sadducees deny three things: resurrection, angels and spirits, and then He said that the Pharisees believed in both – two things. Once again, what appears to be a mistake doesn’t even come close to being a mistake. The Sadducees refused to believe in life after death, and they rejected spiritual things in general.

They did not believe in resurrections. To resurrect is to raise to life someone or something which was dead. As usually understood, resurrection involves the physical body of a dead person. For example there is the account of the resurrection of Lazarus in John 11. Lazarus was a very real person who had died a very real death and was buried in a very real tomb. He had been in the grave for three days – apparently stinking with death – when the Lord Jesus arrived. Lazarus’ sister, Martha, said, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee. Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Martha believed that Jesus’ power could have saved her brother from death, and that he would physically live once again. Martha was not a Sadducee. The Sadducees did not believe that after people died, they would ever live again.

Do you know of anyone who believes this sort of thing today? People don’t have to be atheists to believe that physical death concludes all human existence. But they are wrong. If there was only one example – the abundantly proven death, burial and resurrection of Lazarus – that mistaken idea should have been washed away in the soapy suds of reality. But Lazarus is just one piece of the evidence that the statement of the Martha was correct: “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” We have testimonies and examples of resurrections throughout both the Old and New Testaments. And because of them – “I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Sadducees are people who close their eyes to such Biblical testimonies and the indisputable evidence. The root of their problem is that they refuse to believe what the Bible tells them. And if that is what defines a Sadducee, then we are still surrounded by them.

Along with denying life after physical death, we aren’t surprised that they also deny just everything SPIRITUAL and IMMATERIAL. Those Sadducees did not believe in the existence of angels, whether good or evil. They didn’t believe in demons, and they probably didn’t believe in the Devil. The 58 references to “the angel of the Lord” they attributed to Jehovah Himself. They probably considered the 2 angels who came to Lot in Sodom as God-sent prophets of some sort. The had explanations for the cherubim at the gate of Eden. They had pseudo-scientific and pseudo-logical explanations for all the miraculous appearances of angelic creatures which weren’t the appearance of God Himself. And for miracles themselves. The Sadducees didn’t accept, as scripture, anything but the Pentateuch, the books of Moses, so they didn’t have to explain the visit of angels to the prophets like Isaiah or Ezekiel, and they didn’t have to explain the conversations between Jehovah and Satan in the Book of Job.

Not only didn’t they believe in angels, but they didn’t believe in spirits. This meant that they didn’t believe that God exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To many of them, God was not a spirit, but some sort of physical being. Neither did they believe that man was a three part being: body, soul and spirit. They believed man to be only what they saw him to be – a body of limited size, strength and duration.

That is what the Sadducees believed, and this is WHAT IT DID in them.Their corrupt belief system made them materialists. Or was it that their materialism and secularism corrupted their faith? It’s impossible to say what came first.

Let’s go back to the Biblical math problem: “For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both.” The word “both” is looking back to their two primary tenants: their denial of physical resurrection and their denial of anything which isn’t physical. As I say, the Sadducees were out-and-out materialists. It was their opinion that life existed between birth and death with nothing more. They believed the best life was the one with the most wealth, most ease, the most joy and the most pleasure. If they were looking for some sort of Millennial or Messianic Kingdom, it was completely material and it would leave them up pretty close to the top of the food chain.

So in the mean time they kept the law as they wanted to understand it. And they did their best to make sure that everyone else practiced all the rites and ceremonies that the law proscribed. They fasted and prayed; they maintained the feasts, and they offered the sacrifices as Moses had taught. They did these things believing that in doing so, they would please the Lord, and that their righteous deeds would provoke Him to bless them with all the best that life has to offer. They tithed and they encouraged everyone else to tithe as well, telling them that they had to pay the Lord in Hebrew currency, for which they charged an exchange fee. As priests they maintained all the sacrifices, and to those visitors to Jerusalem who couldn’t bring their own animals, they sold them all the animals that they needed – at an unseemly profit. Generally speaking the Sadducees were fat and getting fatter. In fact that was a part of their belief system. They lived for the moment; they lived for the flesh; they had no thoughts or concerns for eternity.

Does this sound at all familiar? Isn’t this the society in which we live – including the religious side of that society? Isn’t it this attitude of most Americans – to live life to the fullest, in the sense of having the most pleasure possible? Isn’t it to work just hard enough to buy the toys that they really, really want? For others the purpose of life is to spend a fortune taking care of the body, keeping it strong, keeping it beautiful, keeping it going, because when that body goes there ain’t no mo’. There is no resurrection; there is no life after death; there is no Heaven – and there certainly is no Hell. Sure they believe in god. They cross themselves and pray every time they get up to bat, asking god to let them hit the ball. Sure they believe in god, and when their football team is trailing by 6 points with two minutes left, they pray. Sure they believe in god when there is a Category 5 tornado bearing down on them, but later they either curse him or ignore him, depending on what that storm actually did to them.

The kind of faith that the Sadducees had was worthless, just like the faith of most people today.

But Consider what this Sadduceeism MEANS?When there is no soul, no spirit and no resurrection, it means that there is only a very limited accountability. It means that the only judgment that they will have to face is civil and criminal – not omniscient and eternal. Sure their God may judge them, but if they lay enough good deeds over their evil deeds, even He will be satisfied. Ultimately this boils down to convenient or circumstantial lawlessness. If there is no final accountability, then they are responsible for whatever they do here today – but only if they get caught.

But these Sadducees are wrong; they are heretics. What they believe about God, about the scriptures and about themselves are wrong. We are eternal souls, and we do have spiritual natures. Our bodies are only the tenements in which our real persons reside. And the scriptures prove over and over again that there is a resurrection. Furthermore He has told us that some day after our physical lives end on this earth, there will be a reunion of body and soul in preparation for eternity.

The Apostle John – looking into the future and recording it for us in the Book of Revelation – “Saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” We are eternal beings; we are accountable to God; there shall be a resurrection and there shall be a judgment.

If you die in your sins – unforgiven – as most of the Sadducees did, you shall spend eternity in Hell. But if you repent of your sins, and you humble yourself in love and faith before the Lord Jesus Christ, you will bear proof of having received a regenerated heart from the God of grace. In a sense, those who are saved – who are converted in that way – die to their old self to live a new life in Christ. Throw away your Sadduceeism, and follow the Biblical example into faith in Christ. Repent of your sins. And put your faith and hope for eternity in the work of the Lord Jesus on the cross. Sadduceeism carries with it the poison of the spiritual viper. Ultimately, the Sadducee will die the second death – which means eternity in the Lake of Fire. Both Sadducees and Pharisees must be born again by the grace of God. And so do you and I.