A couple of mistakes you’ll want to avoid …

Tommy Bolt became a professional golfer in 1946 after serving in the Army during World War II. A story is told of how, when playing in Los Angeles, he had a caddy that had a reputation for constant chatter. Before they teed off, Bolt told him, “Don’t say a word to me. And if I ask you something, just answer yes or no.” During the round, Bolt found the ball next to a tree, where he had to hit under a branch, over a lake, and onto the green. He got down on his knees and looked through the trees and sized up the shot.

“What do you think?” he asked the caddy. “Five-iron?”

“No, Mr. Bolt,” the caddy said.

“What do you mean, not a five-iron?” Bolt snorted. “Watch this shot.”

The caddy rolled his eyes. “No-o-o, Mr. Bolt.”

But Bolt hit it and the ball stopped about two feet from the hole. He turned to his caddy, handed him the five-iron and said, “Now what do you think about that? You can talk now.”

“Mr. Bolt,” the caddy said, “that wasn’t your ball.”

We’ve all had moments like that, when confidence gets ahead of clarity, when we act boldly and skillfully, but on the wrong assumption. These kinds of errors happen more often than we realize. According to current behavioral research, the average person makes anywhere between 50 and 80 mistakes every single day. That number might seem high until you start counting all the little moments: forgetting where you put your keys, responding to a text too quickly and sending it to the wrong person, misunderstanding a friend’s tone in a message, leaving your coffee on the roof of your car, or making a purchase you instantly regret. Most of these blunders are minor. They cost us a few dollars, a little time, or maybe just a tinge of embarrassment.

Other mistakes carry more weight. A careless word to your spouse can create hurt that lasts for days. A moment of distraction behind the wheel can change your life — or someone else’s — forever. A decision made in pride or fear can close off opportunities you didn’t even realize were there. Some errors fade quickly. Others linger for years.

But there are a couple of mistakes that Jesus says are so deep, so consequential, they distort everything about how we understand God and His purposes. And unlike spilling coffee or sending a risky email, these mistakes are common among even the most religious people.

“Jesus replied, ‘Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God,” Mark 12:24.

Jesus said these words to the Sadducees, a religious group known for their denial of the resurrection and for limiting their beliefs to only the first five books of the Old Testament. They came to Jesus with a question designed not to seek truth, but to trap Him with a riddle about the afterlife. Their hypothetical situation about a woman who marries seven brothers in sequence wasn’t just odd, it was disingenuous. They didn’t believe in the resurrection at all.

Jesus saw through their trickery and answered not by playing along, but by pointing out the foundational errors at the root of their entire belief system: “…Your mistake is that you don’t know the scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God.”

He didn’t accuse them of ignorance in a general sense. He identified two specific deficiencies:

1. They didn’t know the scriptures.
2. They didn’t know the power of God.

Not knowing the scriptures
The Sadducees had access to scripture. They had read it. Some had even memorized it. But Jesus said they didn’t know it. This isn’t about a lack of exposure, it’s about a lack of understanding, belief, and submission.

Many today fall into the same trap. Bibles gather dust. Verses are pulled out of context and misapplied. Sermons are sampled like snacks instead of eaten like bread. People nod at scripture but don’t obey it. And when we don’t know what God has truly said, we invent beliefs that seem sensible to us — beliefs about relationships, truth, morality, heaven, and even God Himself. We become functional Sadducees, creating our own theology without consulting the Author.

Jesus once said to another group of people: “Jesus said to the people who believed in him, ‘You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” John 8:31–32.

The truth found in scripture doesn’t bind us, it liberates us. But if we don’t know it, we stay locked in the prison of our own error.

Not knowing the power of God
The Sadducees didn’t just misread the scriptures, they also underestimated what God could do. To them, resurrection sounded impossible, absurd. So they denied it outright. Their God was too small. And many today, even while claiming to believe, live the same way.

We claim God can do anything, but panic as if He can do nothing. We read of miracles but doubt that He can intervene in our own lives. We quote promises but don’t expect them to hold in our hardest moments. We proclaim the resurrection, but act like this life is all there is. This is what it means to not know the power of God. And Jesus calls it a mistake — a tragic, soul-harming mistake.

The Apostle Paul understood this danger. That’s why he wrote about his personal pursuit not just to know about Christ, but to truly know His power: “I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead …” Philippians 3:10a.

When we truly know the power of God, it humbles us and fills us with awe. It gives us courage to walk through suffering, faith to believe for the impossible, and hope that transcends death. But if we don’t know it, we default to anxiety, unbelief, and resignation.

Mistakes are part of life. We’ll forget passwords, miss turns, spill things, say the wrong name, lock our keys in the car, and botch more tasks than we can count. But these mistakes of not knowing God’s Word and not believing in God’s power misshape everything about how we see Him, whether we trust Him, and how we live before Him.

You don’t need to be a scholar to know the scriptures, you need to be hungry. And you don’t need to be emotionally expressive to know the power of God, you need to believe. Jesus didn’t condemn the Sadducees for not having all the answers, He rebuked them for ignoring the truth that had already been revealed.

The good news is: these mistakes have a remedy. The same Christ who exposed them also invites us to come and learn.

Scotty