Jesus and the Pharisees
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The Saviour knew just what answer would meet the exigencies of
the case. He gave no advantage to either the Roman or Jewish power.
His answer to the intriguing Jews, “Render unto God the things which
are God’s,” was a severe rebuke to them. Had they answered the claims
of God and faithfully fulfilled their obligations to him, they would not
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have become a broken nation, subject to a foreign power. No Roman
ensign would have waved over Jerusalem, no Roman sentinel would
have stood at her gates, no Roman governor ruled within her walls.
The Jewish nation was then paying the penalty of its apostasy from
God.
But no sooner were the Pharisees silenced than the Sadducees
came with their artful questions, seeking to entrap the Saviour. The
Sadducees were a sect of the Jews that differed materially in faith
from the Pharisees. The only bond of union between the two seemed
their mutual opposition to the Saviour and his teachings, and their
desire to him to death. The Pharisees placed their traditions on a
level with the law of God, and frequently made them take the place
of the law. Jesus had declared that they made void the law of God
by their traditions, external ceremonies, divers washings, fastings and
long prayers, ostentatious alms-giving and rigorous seclusion from
the Gentiles. These constituted the main features of their religion. In
superstition and formality they resembled the Roman Catholic church
of the present time. But among them were some of genuine piety who
received the teachings of Christ.
The Sadducees had no respect for the traditions of the Pharisees.
They professedly believed the greater portion of the Scriptures and
regarded them as their rule of action; yet they denied the existence of
angels, and also the resurrection of the body, in which the Pharisees
firmly believed. The Sadducees rejected the doctrine of a future life,
with its rewards and punishments.
They believed in God as the only being superior to man; but they
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claimed that, having created man, God left him to pursue his own
course. They argued that an overruling Providence sustaining the
machinery of the universe, and a foreknowledge of events would
deprive man of free moral agency, and lower him to the position of
a slave. They therefore disconnected the Creator from the creature,
maintaining that man was independent of a higher influence; that his
destiny was in his own hands. Denying as they did that the Spirit of