The God of the Living

Introduction

One thing I often say at the funerals of believers who have gone on to be with Jesus is the fact that here, those of us who are on this side of eternity, we are in the land of the dying. That fact is inescapable. It’s a scientific fact. Studies have shown that 100% of people die.

“But,” I always say about the brother or sister in Christ who has died, “they have gone to land of the living.” And I say that, not just to comfort the family who’s grieving the loss of that loved one. I say it, because it’s true. Those of us who trust Jesus for salvation, we have the hope—the guarantee—of eternal life in Christ.

Scripture promises that “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord,” that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” It promises that when Christ returns, “the dead in Christ will rise, we all be caught up together with the Lord in the clouds, and so we will always be with the Lord.”

And even if you don’t believe the Word of God, even if you’re just checking things out and haven’t come to trust the authority of Scripture yet, there’s likely at least some part of you that knows that this can’t be all there is.

And the reason that’s there, the reason your reason can’t convince you that this broken life is all there is, is because it’s not. You and I, we were created in the image of an eternal God, and we were created to be eternal creatures. And as such, as people created in the image of God, even though there’s a lot of evidence to the contrary—again 100% of people die—we have this craving for eternity written on our hearts.

And that’s where the gospel comes in, the GOOD NEWS that Jesus Christ came to address the problem of death. Jesus put it this way in probably the most famous verse in the Bible…

John 3:16 NASB 2020

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.

Eternal life! That’s the gift that you and I receive when we believe, when we believe and trust in the sacrifice of Jesus for our sin.

But, yet, many of us, I think—if we’re honest—many of us would have to admit that death—physical death—even though we have this eternal life in Jesus, death still worries us—maybe even a lot. Maybe it’s the fear of the unknown. We don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like or what it’s going to feel like. Maybe it’s something else, but whatever the reason is, it doesn’t make sense, because we worship a God who conquered death!

Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that you should want to die. It’s not healthy to want to die. Life is gift from God, and we want to extend it for as long as we can out of service and obedience to Him. But if we had to die, if we were put in a position where we had to choose to either die or give up our faith? Oh, dear friend, God should win every time. Because He is SO much bigger than death.

So, how do we get there? As followers of Jesus walking in eternal life, how do we take the fear out of death? That’s what I want us to think about this morning, as we dig into that passage that we read together earlier, Luke 20:27-44. This is the fourth message in this series that we’re calling King Jesus, where we’re thinking about the authority, sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus from death, and today we’re thinking about how the authority of God’s Word can give us comfort even in the unknowns of death.

Let’s start at the top, Luke 20, starting where we left off last week, verse 27:

Luke 20:27–33 NASB 2020

Now some of the Sadducees (who maintain that there is no resurrection) came to Him, and they questioned Him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife, and he is childless, that his brother is to marry the wife and raise up children for his brother. So then, there were seven brothers; and the first took a wife and died childless; and the second and the third married her; and in the same way all seven died, leaving no children. Finally the woman also died. Therefore, in the resurrection, which one’s wife does the woman become? For all seven married her.”

Now, remember what’s happening here. Jesus is in Jerusalem. He’s extremely popular with the people, but the powerful religious elite are threatened by Him. The Sadducees are some of those people. These guys were religious, but they denied everything about their religion. They denied the supernatural—all the miracles of scripture—and the thing here they were trying to prove, they denied the resurrection.

That’s why they approach Jesus with this ridiculous scenario that they conjured up based on the law of the kinsman redeemer. The kinsman redeemer law was a practice instituted by God designed to take care of widows, who would otherwise have no means of support. And this is how it worked. If a woman’s husband died, that husbands next of kin was responsible to marry and care for his widow.

So, again, the Sanhedrin, who again, don’t take the word of God seriously at all, they dream up this scenario where, during her life, a woman has had 7 different husbands, each husband fulfilling his cultural obligation. And, in an effort to stump Jesus, to prove that he’s wrong about the resurrection, they come at him with this question:

“In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?”

But as we’ll see in Jesus’ answer, just the fact that they asked this question shows that they don’t take scripture seriously. In fact, according to Mark’s gospel, Jesus tells them that directly. “You don’t understand the Scriptures!” He says.

And that brings us to the first fact that I want us to take home today to apply to our lives. Again, the question, as God’s people having received eternal life in Jesus, how do we take the fear out of death? Here’s the first answer:

Own the authority of God’s living Word.

Don’t be like the Sadducees. Stop reading God’s Word through the lens of your own assumptions. That’s what the Sadducees did. They made assumptions about eternity based on their experience rather than what was clearly revealed to them in Scripture.

Here’s what I’m going to tell you. Heaven will be more wonderful than anything you know, than anything you can wrap your head around here. I hear people say things like this, “He’s up there fishing in God’s bass pond,” or “She’s up there crocheting with the angels.” Here’s what I’m gonna tell you. I love to fish, but our experience in heaven will be INFINITELY better than fishing.

Some old boy is thinking, “Is that because the fish are gonna bite a lot better in heaven?” No! It’s because in eternity, you get to experience God in His fullness, and I’ll just tell you, the goodness of God cannot be matched by anything we experience in this life—not fishing, not crocheting, not golf, or basketball or any other hobby that we use to divert our attention from the pain of this life.

And as you learn and surrender to God’s Word, seeing everything that God has done for you, you can’t help but be captivated by Him, so much so that the thought of being with Him forever, being in His presence, overshadows everything else. But you have to dismiss all the unhelpful and unbiblical theories about what heaven will be like—those silly images of angels playing harps on clouds, the image of a boring church service for all eternity.

Here’s what I’m going to tell you. When we describe heaven according to our own understanding apart from the revelation of God’s Word, we fall way short. And it’s no wonder that some people have no interest in going there.

So, don’t be like the Sadducees. Make a commitment to own the authority of God’s Word, God’s revelation of Himself to you. That’s where it begins.

Pick up in verse 34.

Luke 20:34–36 NASB 2020

Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and the women are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; for they cannot even die anymore, for they are like angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

So, Jesus answers this ridiculous question from the Sadducees. And the first thing He does is He explains to these jokers that they really don’t know what they’re talking about. Like I just explained, you can’t use the reality of this life to make assumptions about the reality of the next.

The legal contract of marriage is not binding in heaven. Jesus explains that our post-resurrection bodies can’t die anymore. There is no more sin and death for those of us who are glorified in the same way that Jesus was after His resurrection, so we don’t have the same kind of contracts.

And that brings us to the next key to working through the fear of death, for those of us who walk in the resurrection.

Own the authority of God’s living Word, and second…

Work to understand God’s living Word:

As you grow in your understanding of Scripture, you’re going to fall more and more in love with the God who gave you the Scriptures. And as you fall more and more in love with Him, the idea of seeing Him and knowing Him fully, again, that overshadows everything else. And then, as you wrap your head around what the Bible actually teaches about eternal life and the resurrection of God’s people to new life, again, you’re not anxious to get there necessarily, but you’re sure not afraid of it.

Now, in the rest of this passage here, as Jesus answers these Sadducees, He shows us some specific facts about death that will help take the fear out of it. The first one, we’ve already seen. Work to understand God’s living Word, and specifically…

Understand that this age is not like the next.

It’s going to be different for those of us considered worthy to attain to that age. Marriage will be different in that the legal contracts of marriage in this life will be irrelevant.

We won’t have the same kind of intimacy, and it’s not that our intimacy is less than it is this life. No, it’s infinitely more! We are infinitely closer, because in eternity, free from sin and death, there is no more shame.

There’s no more hiding who we are out of the fear of rejection, because the only way we’re considered worthy to attain to that age is through the sacrificial blood of Jesus! DESPITE who we are, Jesus has received us and made us His own!

That’s not to say that we won’t recognize each other in eternity. Jesus was recognizable in His post resurrection state. He ate with His friends, taught His friends, comforted His friends. Our friendships will be better, infinitely better. Our relationships will be better—everything will be better, because in eternity we have access, the closest access to the King, King Jesus.

This age is NOT like the next. The next age is SO. MUCH. BETTER.

Pick up in verse 37:

Luke 20:37–40 NASB 2020

But as for the fact that the dead are raised, even Moses revealed this in the passage about the burning bush, where he calls the Lord the God of abraham, the God of isaac, and the God of jacob. Now He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to Him.” Some of the scribes answered and said, “Teacher, You have spoken well.” For they did not have the courage to question Him any longer about anything.

Jesus drives His point home. When Yahweh revealed His name to Moses at the burning bush, He didn’t say, “I WAS the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” He used the present tense. His name, in fact, is the present tense! That’s what Yahweh means; it means “I am.”

No Jewish person would have denied that the patriarchs lived with God. Dead people don’t have gods. If you don’t exist, you can’t worship a god. But our God is not a god of the dead. He is the God of the Living, and if we live, we live to Him.

And that’s another fact to understand from God’s Word to help with this fear of death. Understand that this age is not like the next, and second…

Understand the promise of eternity.

Our God is the God of the Living, and what that means for us is when we receive eternal life through faith in Jesus, that life never dies. It never expires, so that “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” When we exhale our last breath here on earth, we inhale in the very presence of God.

Now, what does that look like? What does that feel like? I don’t know. We don’t have a lot of details in Scripture about what it’s like after we die before the resurrection. But here’s what I’ll tell you. If we get to be in the presence of the Lord, it’s gonna be just fine.

And then one day, one glorious day, when the clouds part and Jesus returns just as He left, those of us who are asleep in Jesus, as Paul describes in 1 Thess 4, we will rise to meet Him in the air and be with Him forever.

That’s the promise, that’s the hope that we have in Jesus.

Look at the rest of the passage, picking up in verse 41:

Luke 20:41–44 NASB 2020

But He said to them, “How is it that they say the Christ is David’s son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms, ‘the lord said to my Lord, “sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” ’ “Therefore David calls Him ‘Lord,’ and so how is He his son?”

As one commentary I read said, with His last argument, Jesus already shut the Sadducees up. Now, He’s shutting them down. He says, “Tell you what, I’ll ask you a question. You’re so into Bible trivia, answer this one for me.”

And then He asked this question about their understanding of the Messiah. They expected the Messiah, the Son of David, to conquer, to push back their enemies—the Romans—and to reclaim His rightful place on David’s throne. That’s what they had in mind, when they referred to Messiah, the Christ, as David’s Son.

But Jesus says, “How can the Messiah be that kind of son, a political king, like David, who will one day die like David, when David Himself said in Psalm 110:1…read it for yourself:

Psalm 110:1 NASB 2020

The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”

How could a political king sit at the right hand of the Father, and if that’s all the Messiah is, why would a great king like David call Him his Lord?

What Jesus is doing is He’s drawing their attention to the kind of Messiah He was, the kind of Messiah that the Scriptures actually anticipated, the kind of Messiah that, instead of being a cheap political revolutionary, would actually give His life as ransom, a sacrifice for the nations.

That’s the Messiah that the Scriptures prophesied. He’s the Suffering Servant, pierced through for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. It’s by His wounds that we are healed.

And that’s the fourth fact that we need to work to understand from God’s living Word. Understand that this age is not like the next, understand the promise of eternity, and third…

Understand that Jesus is the only way to find eternal life.

He is the only option. He is the only Savior anticipated for centuries by dozens of human authors in several different genres, all in this book of 66 books written over the course of fifteen hundred years, every page of which points to Jesus.

He is the only perfect man to ever live, the only one to give up His life, the only God to ever die for His people. That’s Jesus.

And He is the only one to ever come back.

Jesus Christ conquered death, and because of that, we don’t have to be afraid anymore. Jesus has taken the fear out of death, but it’s only through Him, it’s only WITH Him that that fear is gone.

I told you one thing earlier that I often say at funerals. there’s something else I often reference, and it’s this word that we have in Scripture about comfort. It’s in that passage that I referenced earlier, 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18. Look at it with me. Again, this is Paul writing, and He’s writing to encourage this church at Thessolonica that had begun to wonder about their loved ones who had died. Paul encourages them not to grieve like people without hope. It’s okay to grieve, good even, but as Christians we grieve differently, because we know that this isn’t all there is.

But he encourages them there, and then he says this:

1 Thessalonians 4:16–18 NASB 2020

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who remain, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore, comfort one another with these words.

I used to wonder about that last bit of instruction there. Comfort? I mean, I don’t know about you, but I have more questions! The Lord descending, trumpets, shouting, dead people rising, being caught up with Jesus in the air—flying! There’s a lot there, a LOT to unpack. We could describe it a lot of ways—excitement, joy, intimidation, maybe even confusion—what is all this going to feel like? We could describe it a lot of ways, but…comfort?

How are these comforting words?

And then it caught me. The last phrase right before the instruction:

“So we will always be with the Lord.”

We will always be with Him. When you receive Him, when you receive the gift of salvation that He is offering you, that only He is qualified to give, you can be certain that He will always be with you, and you will always be with Him.

Even in death. And, brother, sister, once you understand that…you realize that there really is nothing to fear.

So, let me ask you, do you know the Lord, the only one qualified to forgive your sin? The only way to eternal life, the only cure for death?