Monday, 7 September 2026 Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. Matthew  “Answering, also, the ‘Jesus’, He said to them, ‘You roam, not having known the Scriptures nor the ‘power, the God’.’” (CG) In the previous verse, the Sadducees asked Jesus which of the seven the woman would be united to in the resurrection. In response, Matthew records, “Answering, also, the ‘Jesus’, He said to them, ‘You roam.’” It is a word already seen a few times in Matthew 18, planaó. It signifies to roam, as if going astray or deviating from the proper path. The word is where our word planet is derived from. This is because planets, unlike stars which appear fixed, roam among the sky. They will even seem to roam off course at times, going into retrograde. These men’s thoughts, and thus their doctrine, had deviated from the sound path. The reason for this is next stated by Jesus, saying, “not having known the Scriptures.” It is the same thing that plagues the world today. Jews, no matter how diligently they study Scripture, roam because they are looking at it from the wrong paradigm. They think the word is about them. It is true, Israel is included in the word in a significant way, but the word is not about them. It is about Jesus. Christians fail to properly evaluate Scripture, inserting presuppositions, biases, agendas, etc., into their reading and teaching of the word. The prosperity gospel, for example, is not found in a proper handling of the word, and yet it permeates churches from the US to Africa to South Korea. Jesus’ point concerning this is that the Scriptures never teach what they have proposed. Therefore, their “either/or” approach to the matter is invalid. They have assumed that marriage in this life extends beyond this current existence or that there is no such thing as a resurrection. Because of a presupposition about the matter, they could not consider any other option. The Sadducees failed to know, meaning rightly understand, the Scriptures. But more, Jesus says, “nor the ‘power, the God’.” Along with their improper handling of Scripture, they put limitations on what God can do. Man was created from the dust of the earth, as recorded in Genesis 2. That means that a particular lump of dust was formed into a man, after which life was breathed into it. It was at this time that man became a living being. Man is set to die. Some people are burned in the fire, some (like Jezebel) are eaten by animals, while the worm consumes others. Some die in the field, and their bodies fertilize the field, from which comes plant life which is eaten for food. The Sadducees may have thought, “It is impossible to regather that same lump which formed our good old friend Schlimey. Therefore, Schlimey is gone forever.” This is putting a limitation on God that does not exist. Nothing in Scripture says man is limited to a single lump of clay.Even if the resurrection was dependent on a lump of clay, we are not the same lump of clay from day to day. We eat things from the ground, and our bodies are transformed by what we eat. Eventually, almost all the cells of a body are different than a few years earlier. If God has formed the body to renew itself in this manner, He can obviously do more than we can even imagine concerning a resurrection from the dead. Life application: Of this verse, Albert Barnes correctly states, “The way in which the enemies of the truth often attempt to make a doctrine of the Bible ridiculous is by adding to it, and then calling it absurd.” Unfortunately, even people who support a particular doctrine may unwittingly or unwisely do this. A good example of this is the doctrine of the rapture. It is clearly taught in Scripture. This is not the same event as is being debated by the Sadducees at this point. A literal resurrection is promised, for example, in Daniel