Exodus 23, Luke 20

Thursday, March 6, 2008 - Brandon Hatmaker

"The pattern continues... truth revealed."

(Exodus 23)

God continues His pattern in Exodus 23 of His concern for how we treat one another. The first 13 verses of this chapter deal with how we treat others and the next 6 address with how we treat Him. He wraps it all up with a reminder that He has paved the way, gone before them, and will be with them.

We hear all the time that “The Lord has a plan for us…” He truly does. He desires for us to treat each other justly, Love Him deeply, and trust His leading in our lives. And the best (Jesus) was yet to come!

(Luke 20)

“Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. "Teacher," they said, "Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?"

Jesus gave the perfect answer. So much that some of the teachers of the law applauded him “well done, teacher!” It was such a great answer that scripture tells us that everyone stopped asking him questions.

That’s lame. Seriously.

Think about it. If their intention was to find truth, and they realized at this moment that Jesus had the answers, wouldn’t they get in line to ask more questions? I mean, I can’t wait to sit under the teaching of Jesus. He’ll probably have to tell me to shut up and let someone else ask a question or two.

But it shows their heart. They didn’t want to know the answers. They wanted to try and confuse the issues. Here’s the check…. So many of us do that today. Many times we don’t really want to know the truth, if we did, I think we’d find it. God knows our heart, and He doesn’t “owe” us answers we’re not truly searching for. Maybe the reason that many of us can't gain clarity about so many Biblical issues is that our search is more about proving our own belief or to defend our stance more than it is about actually finding truth. It becomes about us, not God.

Lord, Help us to seek your truth instead of knowledge. Help us to seek it without selfish ambition. Help us to seek whole-heartedly that we might find your truth and a desire to live it whole-heartedly.