Luke 20:27-40 | In a ditch

The Gospel of Luke  •  Sermon  •  Submitted
0 ratings
· 62 views
Notes
Transcript

Luke 20:27-40

Then came to him certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there is any resurrection; and they asked him,

28 Saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If any man’s brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.

29 There were therefore seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and died without children.

30 And the second took her to wife, and he died childless.

31 And the third took her; and in like manner the seven also: and they left no children, and died.

32 Last of all the woman died also.

33 Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them is she? for seven had her to wife.

34 And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage:

35 But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:

36 Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

37 Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

38 For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.

39 Then certain of the scribes answering said, Master, thou hast well said.

40 And after that they durst not ask him any question at all.

Puffed Up

Engage

Diverse Influences

Early in my life as a Christian I started heading for a ditch. I had become armed with a new life and with it a new perspective. A new world had opened up to me, and in that world were a great many influences to choose from.
On one hand I have a Bible. In itself it is a book comprised of 66 books; 783,137 words on about 1500 pages.
But then, I went looking for influences. Books to help me understand and so my library of systematic theologies and commentaries grew along with books on best practices and history. I began listening to messages from sermonaudio.com so then on top of the 783,137 words I could heap on almost 2 million sermons that I could listen to. 2 million attempts for man to bring understanding to people on the subject of God and religion.
And so with all of this input I began to formulate my own understandings. You have heard the expression “There is a ditch on both sides of the road” this expression illustrates a point that we find in the Proverbs 4:27

Turn not to the right hand nor to the left:

Remove thy foot from evil.

On one side of the road is the ditch of liberalism but I was heading towards the other ditch, the ditch of legalism. As I brought to myself influences and understandings I tended to gravitate to the religious ideas that allowed me to look down my nose at every other group of Christians, and that allowed me to feel superior.
My wife would from time to time accuse me of being judgmental. She annoyed me with that, but in hindsight she was right. I had gained a great deal of theological knowledge in a very quick amount of time and I fell into the trap warned of in 1 Corinthians 8:1

8:1 Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.

I was allowing myself to be puffed up, and without charity. In other words; I was was getting a big ego about my religion. It is amazing how far off I was on this as I can reflect now on the past. I wanted edification, I wanted to grow spiritually. I like this word edification in the Greek. οἰκοδομεῖ. Oiko-Domei It’s the word for house οἰκο combined with the word for building δομεῖ. Essentially the same word we get translated build in Matthew 16:18

18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Knowledge is a good and needful thing, don’t get me wrong. But what is more needed is Agape love, charity. If you want to be spiritually built up, if you want to mature as a Christian what we need to do is learn to increase our ability to love and care for one another.
This mornings message is entitled ‘In a Ditch’
Pray

Gotcha

Tension
The Pharisees and the Sadducees were in this ditch. They had heaped up so much of their own knowledge on top of their religion that neither side looked much like what God had intended. And neither side did anything with a heart of love.
The fundamental difference was that on one side of the argument, the Pharisees believed in a resurrected life after death and the Sadducees did not.
So then most of their differences grew up out of this division, and most of the Sadducee doctrine was born our of their understanding that the life they were living was completely over once they died. There was no threat of eternal consequence, there was no promise of eternal reward.
At the end of the day they were skeptics. They believed in a system a lot like karma, where if you did good then you got good back in return. The evidence that they had that they were in the right is that adherents tended to be the well to do. And as they examined their wealth the concluded that they must be right with God.
So when the Sadducee’s level this question against our Lord, they were attempting to ensnare him in a theological trap, centered around an instruction given in Deuteronomy 25:5

5 If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband’s brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband’s brother unto her.

It was God’s purpose that the Israelite family names continued, and so this law ensured that the name of the family would continue.
So, the Sadducees take this piece of the law and use it as their theological gotcha in a question that they think is going to both trap Jesus and make their point against the Pharisees.
And it is a good question. If a woman marries 7 brothers because they keep dying and this idea of resurrection from the dead is true. Who will this woman be married to after the afterlife.
And so after setting this trap, they sat back and waited for Jesus to trip over himself.

Ye do err

Truth
Matthew records this exchange in the Gospel he penned. And he records the beginning of the response Jesus gives, quoting in Matthew 22:29

Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

The problem that the Sadducee’s had is that they had an idea, and they even had a proof text that they could go back to. But in that they were so fixated on proving their idea correct they didn’t take into account the whole council of scripture.
Today we call that Eisegeses which means to interpret scripture based upon our own ideas and biases contrasted with a word you are probably more familiar with, Exegesis, which requires us to modify our ideas and biases based upon the council of scripture.
Jesus handles the Sadducee’s using what they were unable to argue with, at least not without showing their true color. Because he argued from Scripture. He didn’t appeal to human wisdom, he went to examples from the Word of God to make his point in v34 & 36

And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage:

35 But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:

And he backs up his point leaning on scripture. Exodus 3:6 begins with God addressing Moses out of the burning bush saying:

I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

Jesus calls back to the old Testament here and says... God does say that he WAS (Past Tense) the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, but that he is and continues to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob even after their bodies were placed in the grave.
And continues:

For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.

How to Lean

Application
Proverbs 3:5 reads:

5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart;

And lean not unto thine own understanding.

It’s probably not likely that you are going to have to weigh, in a practical sense this concern over a woman having 7 husbands. But, the heart of the Sadducees in even asking this question is another matter.
They held to a belief. And they were going to make every scripture they could find point towards backing that belief up.
People do this today all of the time. It is amazing at how far of a stretch people will make to back up a pet beliefs.
Very often there are other passage that contradict or warn against their belief that are clear unless scriptural gymnastics are employed to contort the passage into meaning something that was never intended.
I heard John MacArthur once in a sermon relate a story of a young man who went to preach at a conference. The man just mutilated the scripture, pushing into it the understanding that he wanted the scripture to say. When the man came down he was proud of himself and asked MacArthur what he thought. MacArthur’s response was “I have never heard anyone get that out of that passage before”. The young man took it as a complement but it was not.
It is extremely important that we take the meaning of scripture and apply it to our theology and not the other way around.
1 Timothy 4:7 reads

7 But refuse profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness.

“Old wive’s tales" is probably not a politically correct term anymore but it is a thing that can still be seen today. Older women passing down superstitions to younger women.
I have seen at family gatherings today where someone will dangle a ring or a pencil over a pregnant woman to determine the gender of the baby. So politically incorrect as it may be, we know that there is some truth in this, still today.
Timothy is being instructed to avoid fables, μύθους (mythos) in the Greek, specifically the ones that are profane, or worldly or are superstitious.
The Sadducee’s had their superstitions. They rejected the resurrection. They believed that their reward was given to them in this life and it was the only life they had.
Today we see this ranging from very common understandings to things that are pretty far out.
There is a thinking that some hold to today called Equidistant Letter Sequence Method in which some people attempt to decipher secret meaning from the Bible. The idea is that if you skip every so many letters in a passage, or maybe even read it backwards you can gather a secret meaning. This idea was taken seriously enough that computer software has been created to crack this code, peer review articles exist and there are books that have spent time on the New York Times best seller list that champion this method of biblical interpretation. It is, in fact, silliness. I wonder often, if these people spent as much time chasing truths that are evident and clear in the word of God instead of looking for hidden meanings how much more beneficial that would be.
If you and I today were to make a list, and brainstorm all of the things that we believe. And then, we took that list and started categorizing things. Column A would be things you can confidently go to scripture and say, I believe this because I can point directly to a passage in scripture that clearly backs it up. Column B would be things that you have no scripture to back up, or the evidence is kinda flimsy. I wonder what that list would say about us if we were being dogmatic about things that show up in Column B?

Luke Warm Response

Inspiration
Our passage this morning concludes in Luke 20:39

39 Then certain of the scribes answering said, Master, thou hast well said.

40 And after that they durst not ask him any question at all.

It is no surprise that when men try to trap God with theology and the Bible they are going to lose, every time.
This all comes back to how we find in, Luke 19:47-48. Jesus had just cleared out the temple for them making it a den of robbers and the chapter concludes:

47 And he taught daily in the temple. But the chief priests and the scribes and the chief of the people sought to destroy him,

48 And could not find what they might do: for all the people were very attentive to hear him.

They were looking to destroy him. They wanted to find something they he would say that would trip him up.
At the beginning of Luke 20 it was the Pharisee’s turn. They tried to trip Jesus up, questioning his authority in his teaching. Then they tried to trip Jesus us by asking if they should be giving tribute to Caesar.
Now it was the Sadducee’s turn. Surely they would trip him up where the Pharisee’s had failed. But they were just as mistaken and Jesus brought their entire system of thinking to the ground with a single reference to Moses and the Burning Bush.
And this brings us to v40:

40 And after that they durst not ask him any question at all.

The dared not. They knew if they put Jesus to the test in any way, he was not just going to win the exchange, he was going to make them look ignorant in the process.
You can rely on this. Any time you rely on scripture to back up your point you are going to win. Now don’t be fooled: Just because you win the argument doesn’t mean the person on the other end is going to start being on your side.
Dale Carnegie wrote in his book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”
Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right. You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. Why? Well, suppose you triumph over the other man and shoot his argument full of holes and prove that he is non compos mentis (meaning not in their right mind). Then what? You will feel fine. But what about him? You have made him feel inferior. You have hurt his pride. He will resent your triumph. And - "A man convinced against his will  "Is of the same opinion still."
it might not make you the most popular person in this life to answer only with scripture, but this exchange was never about this life, was it.

Truth or Consequences

Action
We need to be wise. Proverbs 9:8 reads

8 Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee:

Rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee.

And 15:12 follows up with

A scorner loveth not one that reproveth him:

Neither will he go unto the wise.

I don’t suggest that you pick a fight with everyone who holds to doctrine that you might find in error. Especially if those people are like the Sadducees and have proven themselves already to be of a bad spirit.
But we govern ourselves, and we should evaluate every doctrine that we are going to hold to against what the Bible says, not because of the convincing words and sincerity of the one speaking. But, because that is what the Word of God tells us.
I decided a long time ago that the louder something was being shouted the more imperative it is to go study the subject myself. The 16th century writer Samuel Johnson pointed out:
You raise your voice, when you should be reinforcing your argument
Jesus’ rebuke to the Sadducee’s was pretty strong. in Matthew 22:29

Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

To a religious leader that is a pretty strong attack.
Everything has to be weighed against scripture and against the full council of God. And there is just no way you can adequately come to a spiritual decision if you haven’t read all of the word of God.
A decision I made years ago before I was ordained as a Deacon. I wouldn’t accept being ordained until I had read all of the Bible. How could I help give biblical council if I didn’t know the entirety of what the Bible had to say.
That doesn’t mean that I am without misunderstandings in some places, I am sure that I am. I am human.
But, How could I even be qualified, if I didn’t at least familiarize myself with the whole council of God. Without that foundation you could fall into all sorts of error.
You could be like the Sadducee’s and deny the resurrection, or like some today who deny the very triune nature of our God. Or even those who believe that we ourselves will be gods in the life after. A firm grounding in scripture keeps us out of those traps.
But in that we must place a priority on agape love, charity as 1 Corinthians 8:1 words it. If we do we will find ourselves being built up as Christians and will naturally navigate away from getting ourselves into the same types of error that the Sadducee’s made in this mornings passage.
pray
Related Media
See more
Related Sermons
See more
Copyright 2024 Logos Bible SoftwareFeatures|Pricing|Privacy|Terms of Use|Support