Marriage in Eternity
Notes
Transcript
And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question, saying,
“Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.
There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring.
And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise.
And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died.
In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”
Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?
For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?
He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”
Marriage in Eternity
Marriage in Eternity
The most important point about eternity is not who you spend it with but where you spend it.
The most important point about eternity is not who you spend it with but where you spend it.
Introduction:
We can be wrong about things that do not matter, but we can not afford to be wrong about God. - HB Charles Jr.
- Brief Explanation of Text
Problem to be addressed
Solution/Restate Thesis
And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question, saying,
These men came to Jesus - notice it does not say they were sent? Perhaps they came themselves, perhaps someone suggested they take their best shot, we’re not told. But they arrive on the scene.
The Sadducees, much like the Herodians we saw last week, are a very interesting group we haven’t seen too much of yet, which is interesting because they were actually a majority in the religious community, they held the most power.
They were very strict on the law, and they were somewhat literal when it came to the Law, and the held that the Law was the most important part of Scripture, that it superceded all the prophets, Psalms, etc.
They ignored the oral traditions and scribal laws of the Pharisees - in fact they were bigger opponents to the Pharisees than even the Herodians.
Even their name was a taunt of the Pharisees - while Pharisee would mean “one set apart”, the name “Sadducee” seems to mean “one who is right.”
In essence saying, “Sure you can be set apart, but we’re the ones who are correct, we’re the ones who are just, we’re better.”
They were deeply invested in Rome’s rule and used the temple as a means to help enable it - So like the Herodians they weren’t very much loved by the Jewish people. In fact, they are so tied to Roman Rule through the temple that when the Romans destroy the Temple in 70 AD, they are extinguished as a group.
They no longer survive, their policies, their doctrines, their beliefs all go up in smoke in the most literal sense.
But here they come to Jesus, not to set him up for an offense that could get Him arrested, but to make Him look foolish - they want to discredit Jesus. Being the (quote unquote) “more intelligent” of the religious elite, they want to humiliate Him.
Now, Mark points out that they did not believe in any sort of resurrection, and this is true. They also did not believe in angels - which will come up later in the text - nor did they believe much of the supernatural things of Scripture actually happened, they believed most could be written off as metaphor or hyperbole.
Matthew tells us (Matthew 22:23) that this happens the same day the Pharisees and Herodians came to see him, so this likely the Wednesday of Jesus’ “Passion Week”, and on this same day as we’ve seen Jesus has faced down the Scribes, the Elders, the Chief Priests, the Herodians and the Pharisees.
All while sitting in the temple, likely in the court of the Gentiles, or Solomon’s portico.
So we have the location, we have the scene set as these men come to Jesus in their pomp, in their zeal, in their arrogance, to try and make this carpenter/rabbi look silly. In fact, they likely talked about putting Him in His rightful place, setting Him straight, and other such things as they made their way to Him that day.
And when they arrive they begin by asking a question:
“Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.
Again, they begin just like the Pharisees and the Herodians, with fake respect. “Teacher”, teacher of what they don’t say. Good or bad teacher, they don’t say. They aren’t there to have Him teach them, or they’d come to listen - no they came to talk and say their piece.
So they begin with a flattering courtesy of calling Him teacher, and immediately dive into their challenge.
“Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies...” this is true.
They are summarizing Deuteronomy 25:5-6 ““If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.”
This is called a levirate marriage, it was a marriage to a dead husband’s brother, and God had placed it in the Law so that they could preserve families, but more specifically, property: land and inheritances and the like.
This whole thing is a very old Jewish custom and it calls back to Genesis 38 when Judah’s oldest son (a man named Er) was struck down by God, and so his brother (Onan) married his wife, a woman named Tamar. Now, that brother didn’t want to get her pregnant, so God struck him down, and Judah promised Tamar his youngest son as a husband when he (Shelah) came of age.
That didn’t happen, though, and it’s a whole other thing. The point is, it was a tradition that seems to have been around even then.
Moses makes it a standard in the Law, and it became a normal thing in Israel - even up until the time of Ruth.
Ruth, if you recall, meets her husband’s closest relative, a man named Boaz, and she calls him her “Kinsman Redeemer”, but Boaz said there’s actually someone even closer related to her late husband, but if that man won’t take Ruth in, Boaz will.
The man doesn’t, because he doesn’t want to carry on another man’s legacy - which is what this whole law is about - so he lets Boaz have Ruth. It ends up being a beautiful story, we won’t relive it all today.
But the point is Boaz was a Redeemer, and he redeems Ruth by giving her a son, who ends up being the grandfather to David, the ancestor of Jesus.
In fact, in Matthew’s Genealogy both Ruth and Tamar are mentioned by name, as a reminder of this practice.
So what the Sadducees are saying is not wrong. But they do something we see all the time in our modern society, they cook up a scenario so as to find a loophole in the logic of the Law.
They begin with this:
There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring.
Okay, this is the common issue - when we read this we automatically would understand, so the next oldest brother should marry this man’s wife. He is the oldest, and it is his right to do so.
But here’s where things start to unravel for them, and they don’t even seem to grasp it.
This is clearly a fictional account, one made up in their own minds. It *could* happen, but it is incredibly unlikely. Much like the “girl who was raped by her cousin and will die if she doesn’t get an abortion” scenario - it’s tragic, it could happen, it’s unlikely but it could and maybe even has.
But the smallest amounts of incidents shouldn’t change the law, and in the case of the abortion - two wrongs don’t make a right. (Anyone ever wants to know my stance on the issue, there you have it. When in doubt, don’t kill babies. Period. That’s not a political opinion, that’s a Biblical fact.)
So this man dies and he has left no children for his wife to raise. The Sadducees continue...
And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise.
And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died.
One might rightly get a little suspicious of this woman after a time - maybe see how many insurance policies she’s taken out and cashed in on. Maybe she’s just that bad of a cook? We’re not told.
The Sadducees would likely want us to believe they all die of natural causes, but even the hypothetical question is suspicious, isn’t it?
Regardless, the Sadducees have an opportunity here to ask Jesus about doctrine, about the Law, to question Him about Moses, the Torah, instead they use it as an opportunity to test him about the belief that the dead will one day rise again at the end of History.
In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”
Now, here’s the real problem with their question, something Mark has already established - the Sadducees do not believe in a resurrection.
So to them, this whole question is just one big joke - foolishness to trap a fool, or so they believe. They’re asking this because of their opponents the Pharisees, and they’re asking the question through the lens of the Pharisees - the Pharisees by the way believed in a resurrection.
But their idea (the Pharisees’ idea) of the after life was vastly different from the view of Jesus and the apostles.
The Pharisees argued about a lot of things concerning the resurrection, well, they liked to argue about theology in general (always seeking knowledge but never learning), but when it came to the afterlife they got even more contentious.
They’d use the Law to try and prove the resurrection to the Sadducees, likely quoting passages like Deuteronomy 32:39 ““ ‘See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.”
But no matter what they couldn’t convince the Sadducees, and remember the Sadducees had a very narrow view of what was truly Scripture - only limiting Moses to being the only inspired writings.
Otherwise they’d know Psalm 49:15 “But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me. Selah”
Job 19:26 “And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God,”
Isaiah 26:19 “Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.”
Daniel 12:2 “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”
That’s all well and good, but it wasn’t enough to convince the Sadducees. They only would listen to Moses’ writings.
Really, the Sadducees denied more than just the resurrection, they denied all supernatural things - we see them deny the existence of Angels in Acts 23:8 “For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all.”
So we are left to ask then, if these men did not really believe in a resurrection at all, if they gave no heed to the miraculous, what are they really asking here?
Well, in a sense they’re asking the same thing they’ve expected the Pharisees to do, they’re saying, “Can you prove to us the existence of this resurrection?”
We don’t believe it exists, and in this ridiculous scenario we’ve cooked up, you can see why it logically doesn’t even make sense, so please explain to us how this resurrection works - and they don’t expect Him to be able to do it, or they wouldn’t have come to Him for an answer in the first place.
Rarely does anyone go to a teacher and ask a question so they can be told they’re wrong.
Even the Sadducees would agree with us today that it’s not about who you spend eternity with, but where you spend it - and in their mind you didn’t spend it anywhere.
When God told Adam (Genesis 3:18b) “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” They understood that to mean this is it.
So what’s Jesus’ answer?
Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?
This opening remark should have cut them. I mean, Jesus was kind, but Jesus wasn’t always nice. Jesus was blunt and to the point. You realize what He just said to them?
He basically just said, “You’re wrong and you’re stupid.”
The Cambridge Dictionary defines “Stupid as “showing poor judgment or little intelligence” and the Sadducees have done both.
One definition I heard years ago, I don’t know if it’s legitimate, but one of the definitions of stupidity I once heard was “Being ignorant of an important matter and not caring to learn.”
The only thing that can answer their point is a response with good theology and an appeal to the Torah - it’s the only thing they will understand or even remotely want to hear.
If they truly want to hear truth.
Jesus’ answer will do these very things, on top of exposing their lack of knowledge of all the Scriptures - because had they not limited themselves to Moses, but also gave room for the prophets and the Psalms, they’d have a deeper understanding of the miracles of God.
This knowledge would have enabled them to believe in God’s power to raise the dead, but again, they really didn’t want to believe the truth - no matter the evidence. It’s a heart issue, not a knowledge issue.
And that’s when Jesus begins to cut to the chase.
For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
Jesus begins to answer their question in two stages. The first of which He is gong to explain that life in the kingdom of God - in eternity - it is not like this life.
Notice also that Jesus says “When” they rise from the dead, not “if”. Jesus is speaking as though this resurrection is indeed, fact.
It’s not a “it may happen” it is guaranteed.
And when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage. Their question in general is completely wrong, it’s not “who will we be married to,” it should be “is there a resurrection at all?”
And Jesus says yes, and our new life there is definitely not like the life we have now, and he affirms the existence of angels - who do not get married.
Believers will be like the angels, by the way, we do not become angels - that’s Bugs Bunny, not the Bible. In eternity, believers will be like the angels in that we’ll be spiritual, eternal beings who will not die.
Paul, who was at one point a Pharisee, explains it further saying:
1 Corinthians 15:42 “So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.”
1 Corinthians 15:48 “As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.”
1 Corinthians 15:52 “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.”
But Jesus goes on:
And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?
Next, Jesus is going to affirm that Moses did, in fact, teach the doctrine of life after death.
Explain Text
Subpoint A.
Subpoint B.
He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”
Conclusion:
- Call Back to Introduction
Restate Thesis
Solution and Call To Action
Closing Prayer