Resurrection Polygamy

The Sad-You-Sees create a ridiculous “heavenly” scenario by projecting the concerns of this life over the concerns of the next: who will I be married to in heaven? Jesus dismantles their ridiculous picture and drops truth about resurrection: it isn’t all about marriage, but all about relationship and interaction with God. We will “be like the angels.” Jesus, and all the Scripture, shout about what is important in this life and what will last into resurrection: treasures, fruit, love, and above all, Worship and Enjoyment of God.

Preparing for the After-Life

Last week the esteemed Doctor Ralph Mackintosh, Church Elder Extraordinaire, preached Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. A picture of hell, or the great chasm between the righteous dead and the unrighteous. And the rich man wishes he could go back, give warning, of what things were like, what matters, what makes the difference.

And Jesus is clear: they have the Scripture, the prophets, they have the message. But they haven’t listened.

Throughout history people have had different theories of the “afterlife” and what we can do now to prepare.

Greeks believed you would go to Hades, and you had to have a coin to pay Charon (not Karen) to cross the river styx. And then, in Hades, you would live according to your works in life. So, works righteousness, and better have that coin!

Norsemen, aka Vikings, buried with weapons and treasure, sometimes with a living horse, and the whole burning boat thing… because the afterlife is a glorious ever repeating battle. So be a warrior, die a warrior, and prepare for the fight.

The Egyptians believed you CAN take it all with you, so you need your body preserved (hence mummies). Maybe even slaves buried with you. So amass insane amounts of treasure, build the most insane gravestone ever in the Pyramids, and take it all.

Finally, weirdly, but it will make sense later:

Mormons teach that if you are “good enough” you will one day get your own planet (in its own universe) to rule as god, and you will populate that planet with the kids you have with the wives you are “sealed to” in this life. So priority #1 is to be “good enough” in this life and get “sealed” to a lot of wives. With or without their permission, by the way, that’s creepy.

What you believe about the next life can shape what’s most important in this life.

I take my notes from the one who has been there and back. The one who rules over heaven, who made it up, made us up, and has prepared a place for us in whatever the “afterlife” is.

So I take him seriously when he gives us hints, as in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man my Dad shared last week.

And this week, even as the religious leaders of his day try to make him look stupid or foolish.

The Pharisees and Herodians took their swing with the whole “should we pay taxes” question. Jesus shut their mouths with his response “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, to God the things that are God’s” and “they marveled.”

Now the Sadducees are up to bat.

The Sadducees

The Sadducees are the party largely in power in the temple. All the high priests, part of the Sadducee party. They are all about cooperation with Rome, they brought Herod in and Herod and the Herodians are the biggest syncretists, Hellenists, but the Sadducees are right behind them. Vying for local power, trading with Empire to get it.

They only accept the Torah as Scripture, the first 5 books of the Bible. Prophets, don’t count, the Writings, the Histories, the Psalms, the Proverbs, all of that… it isn’t that they didn’t know about them or read them, but they didn’t count as Scripture. Torah only: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

So when it comes to a question like “what happens to us after death?” they refuse any answer that comes from outside the Torah. Here’s a clear verse that the Pharisees might quote out of Daniel:

Daniel 12:1–3 ESV

1 “At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. 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. 3 And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.

That last bit has some voice in the “what is hell” question, doesn’t it? Again, not definitive,

The Sadducees don’t hold that as Scripture. They want to go all the way back to the Torah only, so Daniel doesn’t count.

The Sadducees’ Question

So they are going to construct the craziest scenario they can think of. Really to mock the idea of resurrection.

Matthew 22:23–28 ESV

23 The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, 24 saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’ 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. 26 So too the second and third, down to the seventh. 27 After them all, the woman died. 28 In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.”

This is a weird cultural practice to us, but it was the Jewish law. When “legacy” is all about children, and your line living on, it was a heartbreaking tragedy when anyone died without heirs. So, again, hard for us to get our head around culturally, but this was expected and honorable to them: if a brother died with no heir, a good brother would marry the widow and the child of that union would be considered the brother’s heir.

It was also an act of love to the widow, to not abandon her outside the family, but to keep her safe and cared for, protected, provided for. It is this story that gives us the weird Judah and Tamar story… and that is part of Jesus’ ancestry.

But this, it’s a crazy hypothetical constructed scenario. But it leads to the “conundrum.”

They are making quite a few assumptions here. In argument this would be called a “scarecrow” argument. Dress someone up as your opponent, then take it apart or mock it.

Jesus calls them on it:

Matthew 22:29 ESV

29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.

WRONG! Just… you are wrong.

You are “lead astray”, or you are “deceived” he says. Same word as the one sheep led “astray” from the 99.

It’s passive here, he isn’t accusing them of leading others astray with this, they have been fooled. Bamboozled! Lost. Why?

Because they don’t know the “Scriptures.” Not just the bulk of the Old Testament Scriptures that they deny, Jesus is going to answer from what they do know, I love that. His counter example in v32 is from Ex 3:6, which is Torah. They reject most of the Scriptures, and what they don’t reject, they don’t know, they don’t understand.

And they don’t know the power of God. They limit it. The underlying assumption is that God can’t solve their little conundrum, God can’t make resurrection work, because they can’t imagine it or understand it, God therefore can’t do it.

How often do we do that?

Because we can’t see it, can’t imagine it, can’t understand it… therefore God can’t do it. Ludicrous.

Thankfully, God is bigger than the box we put him in. And if we read the Scriptures with an open hand, open mind, open eyes, we would see more.

I’ll skip to Jesus’ answer, just from what they should already know:

Matthew 22:31–32 ESV

31 And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 32 ‘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.”

This is wild. He argues from the present tense of the language. God is the God of Abraham. Not was. Not “used to be.” Not “when they were alive God was their God.”

God is their God. Which says something about the present state of God… AND the present state of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

If I say “I am the Pastor of Next Step Christian Church”, I am saying something about my position in relation to the church, but I am also make a present claim about myself… and the church respectively. It would be SO weird to say that if I wasn’t a Pastor anymore… or if the church was gone, rubble, or had fired me.

Note that Jesus says this was true all the way back when God said it in Exodus. The picture we see before Jesus’ death and resurrection were the dead in Sheol, some kind of waiting place, and Jesus visited that place in the dead to preach the gospel of his death and resurrection.

That may be what part of the context of Jesus’ parable about Lazarus and the rich man. Lazarus goes to “Abraham’s side” or “Abraham’s Bosom”. Sounds lovely.

So Jesus makes the case for present ongoing existence of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob… it sounds like conscious non-physical existence. You could still stretch and argue for some kind of soul sleep or time travel to the future resurrection thing… but Jesus says Abraham and Isaac and Jacob are alive.

And if they are alive, all are alive… and resurrection is coming.

To be clear, any non-physical existence in some kind of spiritual bodies is a temporary existence, and the ultimate destination of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, you, me is the destination Jesus demonstrated the first fruits of:

Physical resurrection in physical bodies on a new perfected physical Earth and Heaven is ON earth. The best immediate translation of “heaven” is the presence of God. Wherever and however He is, that’s heaven.

And Jesus gives us a bonus peek of what that will be like. The Master, the King of Heaven, the one who has been there as it is and knows what is intended for it at every step, he tells us a bit about what it’s like.

Matthew 22:29–30 ESV

29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

What???

It is natural for us to project life as we know it here on earth and imagine it will be the same then. And marriage, created by God, one of the places in life we can learn how to love one another intimately and selflessly… OF COURSE that will be part of heaven, right?

Right?

Nope.

Does it say anywhere in Scripture that you will be married in heaven? Nowhere.

Now, looking closely, Jesus doesn’t actually say there won’t be “male” or “female.” We get there only by this line of reasoning: if there is no marriage, there is presumably no sex, and that is the primary meaning of “male” and “female” so… maybe there is no gender in heaven?

Maybe “gender” is too small a thing to define who you are forever as a person? Think that will preach in our modern society?

We are “like the angels in heaven.” Interestingly, angels, when clothes are described, always appear masculine, and masculine pronouns are used, but Jesus’ point here is limited to marriage.

We should NOT conclude from this passage that people become angels when they die. That is some common mythology, that is not what Jesus is saying here.

The beings God appears to send as angels are spiritual beings, we don’t know much about them, they get sent as messengers, they sometimes appear as humans, and sometimes as terrifying beings that (I think) break our minds and get represented as symbolic images with wings and eyes.

So, we are left with a lot of questions. Has Jesus given us a full description of the details of our state in heaven before or after resurrection? No. A tantalizing hint.

The fullest revelation of resurrection is in the Resurrected Jesus. That’s where we should look.

But here, just hints at what is to come.

But has he fully answered the question of the Pharisees? Yes, no marriage in heaven. And the deeper question, life after death is ABSOLUTELY a reality. Presently, for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc… and ultimately in the coming resurrection.

He answered so profoundly that, again, they were astonished.

Matthew 22:33 ESV

33 And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.

The Most Important Thing

Are you ready for the afterlife?

But he is building towards a much bigger question. The question that underlies all of these things.

What is the most important thing?

When I left the house last week for a road trip, what did I HAVE to have with me? My wallet, it has my ID, my credit card, a little cash. Everything else I can figure out.

Everything else was a “Nice to Have.”

So, what is the most important thing as we approach death?

Is it the temple, or the religious power the Chief Priests and Scribes have been building? Nope.

Is it the power of Caesar, of Rome, of taxes? Nope.

Is it marriage? Gender? Sex?

How our world would like to tell you that is the ultimate question and answer, the maximum pleasure and achievement.

Even in our evangelical circles, one can get the idea that who you marry, who you “choose”, or even “finding the One” is the most important thing. It isn’t.

Very important, if you are called to marriage, very important who you choose as a spouse? Absolutely. Very important.

NOT the most important thing. Not a forever thing. Till death do you part.

But the eternal question, the forever matter, that is something else. And Jesus is building towards it in the next coming question. Sneak peek.

Someone asks straight up, “Which is the greatest commandment?”

And Jesus answers. The most important thing, the most important commandment, Word, from God to His people.

Love God. with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.

And the second is like it, love others, your neighbor, as yourself.

The most important thing is not whether you were “good enough” or did the right “temple stuff” or paid your taxes, or even knew your Scriptures… or married the right man or woman, and were sexually faithful all your life.

Those are all important things, but they aren’t the most important things, the forever things.

The most important thing is your relationship with God. Do you love Him? And, we will unpack that next week, that isn’t just a vague fond feeling towards the little-g god you’ve invented. That is actual love, as an action, towards God as He actually is, complete with shaping your life to doing things that delight Him, honor Him. Which is why it leads always to the second, loving those He loves, loving your neighbor.

And that will always and necessarily inform and transform the way you love others.

So, are you ready for heaven?

Ready to meet the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? This world is but a brief intro, the trailer to the movie, the seed to the oak tree, the shadow before the reality.

And in that reality, the center of it, the glorious burning heart of it, is our Savior, Jesus, who entered this world as a man, lived a perfect life, and laid down that perfect life as a sacrifice for everything you and I ever got wrong and ever will get wrong.

And God, the Father, raised him from the dead, the firstfruits of the resurrection… so that we could be resurrected with him, like him, made new and perfect, like the angels, to dwell with God and worship Him forever.

All who call on Jesus as Lord and Savior, we look forward to that day, to heaven and Resurrection. In the words of Paul, the Pharisee,

Listen to the courage of those with absolute confidence that they are ready for heaven:

2 Corinthians 5:6–9 ESV

6 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.