Resurrection Life

Intro

Welcome

Jesus is in the middle of a day I am sure felt like it would never end. This is the week leading up the cross and He currently being bombarded by question after question designed by His opponents to discredit Him.

Now today in our passage we see another one of those questions.

But first, have you ever been in a conversation about a subject where you think you know a little bit about it, and you think you know somewhat of what you are talking about until the person you are speaking with reveals that they by far know more than you do about that subject?

For instance, before community group this past Wednesday, Jerod and Zach were talking about firearms. Now, I thought I knew a little bit about guns. I have shot guns several times before, I have family that are firearm enthusiasts.

But, when Zach and Jerod began talking about their favorite professional competition marksmen, rattled off names and model numbers of guns I have never heard of before, I instantly knew I was out of my depth and just sat there and offered an occasional “mmm”, “mhm”, “totally”.

And when Zach point blank asked me what I had to contribute to the conversation, I panicked and started talking about nerf guns. That’s all I had. In fact I think my exact words were, “Have you ever shot an 07’ N.E.R.F. sniper rifle before?”

Needless to say, anything I said about actual firearms during that conversation would have revealed my absolute ignorance when it came to that subject. And the simple reason I am ignorant is because I have haven’t studied it. I haven’t done research into it.

Now I tell you all of this because this is essentially the issue, the same interaction, that the Sadducees, another group of religious elites, have in our passage this morning. Like the others that came before them, they have a question that they believe will decimate the ministry of Jesus.

But the very question itself revealed their ignorance of the very subject they claim to be their expertise. And it reveals to us that if we are to have good and true doctrine, we must bath ourselves in the Word of God.

Now, before we look deeper into the question from the Sadducees, let us pray.

The Question

Now first lets skip verse 18, and let’s take a look at the question posed by the Sadducees in verse 19-23, “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.”

Now, this sounds like a legitimate question. This sounds like it is a question that was born from actual curiosity of what life after the resurrection will be like.

However, we must not forget the context of this passage! The Sadducees, just as much as the Herodians and the Pharisees and scribes that questioned Him earlier, hated Jesus.

Not only that, but verse 18 clues us in on the dishonesty of this question and lets us know they were not asking it because they truly wanted to know truth about this topic. Verse 18 says, “And the Sadducees came to Him, who say there is no resurrection.”

Sadducee Background/ Why This Question

You see, the Sadducees were a sect of wealthy aristocrats with significant political and temple power. Acts 5 tells us that they actually made up a significant portion of the Sanhedrin (the top Jewish council).

They were also sympathetic to Hellenism (meaning the appropriation of the Greek/Roman culture into Israel), the were also supportive of the Herod dynasty and Roman rule.

But most importantly, they considered ONLY the books of Moses, the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, as authoritative. That is the most important thing to know about them because it shapes their entire theology.

They believed that man had essentially complete autonomy (the sovereignty of God was superceded by man’s free will), and they did not believe in angels or demons. You can actually see that in Acts 23:8. But not only that, but the Sadducees did not believe in the immortality of the soul or in a future bodily resurrection.

Josephus, the ancient first-century historian said, “The doctrine of the Sadducees is this; souls die with the bodies.” This view is what is called annihilationism. That the soul is destroyed or simply dies after the death of the body.

Now the Pharisees differed with the Sadducees on this issue. The reason is because Pharisees included the other books of the Old Testament and believed them to be from God just as much as the Torah.

And Pharisees base their belief in a bodily resurrection after death, with the righteous being welcomed to eternal life with God and the unrighteous being sent away to eternal torment, on passages such as Job 19:25 and Hosea 6:2.

Now the Sadduccees, because of their truncated view of Scripture, only accepting the Torah as from God, they not only refused to believe in a bodily resurrection after death, but they also did not believe in a coming Messiah.

And so this Jesus character here, who claimed to be the fulfillment of the prophecy of a Messiah King, was just another foolish man who was a threat to be dealt with.

And so this was not an honest question. They didn’t truly want to know about marriage after the resurrection, they didn’t even believe in it! What they wanted to do was make Jesus look foolish.

Back to the Question

Now, let’s get back to the question. This question revolves around the so-called leverite law, which God gave to ancient Israel. The leverite law was designed to provide descendants for a man who died childless so that his family line could maintain its property.

It is explained in Deuteronomy 25:5-6: “If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the widow of the dead man shall not be married to a stranger outside the family; her husband’s brother shall go in to her, take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And it shall be that the firstborn son which she bears will succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.”

So, the Sadducees gave Jesus a hypothetical case of seven brothers, right? All of whom married the same woman in succession after the death of the previous brother to continue the brothers line and keep possession of his property within the family, as per the leverite law. However, none of them fathered children by her, and finally, the woman herself dies.

Now the Sadducees believed that Jesus believed the exact same thing as the Pharisees and that the world that was to come after the resurrection will basically be an improved and better version of this world on all accounts, including monogamous marriage!

Marriage in the world to come will simply be a better version of marriage now. That’s what the Sadduccees assumed Jesus believed.

And so they have created what is called a reductio ad absurdum argument that they pose to Jesus. And I know, this sounds like something out of Harry Potter, but it simply means reducing things to the absurd or ridiculous. They wanted to show, using this question, that the belief in bodily resurrection was absurd.

“If the bodily resurrection is real, if there is a world to come, if marriage then will be a better version monogamous marriage now, then tell us, oh wise Jesus, which of her seven husbands will this woman be married to?”

Now the Sadducees of course believe there is no good answer to this question, in fact it wouldn’t be too surprising if this is a go to argument that they used often when debating the Pharisees.

They believe this question, along with the fact that the books of Moses do not mention or allude to it, is the ultimate proof that believing in a future resurrection is utter foolishness! It obviously does not exist!

The Response

Now, take a look at Jesus’ response. It must have infuriated the Sadducees, and you’ll see why! His response begins in verse 24, “Jesus said to them, ‘Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?’”

Now, let’s break this first portion of Jesus’ answer down a bit. He says first that they are wrong. They are in theological error! Now, do you understand what Jesus is doing here?

Imagine walking into a seminary, walking up to a professor of theology and telling him flat out, “You’ are wrong! Everything you seem to be so sure about is wrong.” That is what Jesus is doing here. These are the seminary profs of His day.

And then He tells them that the reason they are wrong is because they do not know the Scriptures. He is telling the theological elites of His day that they are in error in the very area they claim to be experts in!

Jesus is saying the very thing they claim to know the most, the Torah, they actually know the least! They did not know their Bibles! And because they misunderstood the Bible, they misunderstood God, causing them to have a distorted view of Him and erroneous beliefs.

Now before we are too hard on the Sadducees, we often have the same problem! One theologian said that, “100% of theological errors happen because we do not know the Scriptures.”

This is why we can all read this book and not always agree on what it teaches. We disagree because either you are wrong, I am wrong, or we are both wrong. And the error lies in that we simply do not know Scripture enough. And we must continue to grow in our knowledge and understanding of Scripture, which is a life long process, by the way!

Peter in 2 Peter 3:18 tells believers they should grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. As we continue to live our Christian life, we grow in our knowledge of Christ through being in His word.

That is how we grow! And as we continue to grow, doctrinal error will continue to melt away as we are refined by the Holy Spirit revealing truth to us through Scripture and through the expounding of it as we hear it preached.

Now this does not mean that we will, or even can, reach a point in this life where we will be completely free of all theological error. We still wrestle with the flesh and we will, this side of glory, always have holes in our theology. But we should strive as believers, to have sound knowledge of the Word of God.

We should ask Him daily to correct the errors in our thinking and conform our beliefs to the truth of His of the Word.

Now, before you think your post-modern thoughts of, “Well if we will always be an error in some capacity, how can we know that anything we believe about Scripture is true, including the gospel?”

Before you have those thoughts, you need to know a valuable and important doctrine called the “perspicuity of Scripture.”

This simply means that what is needed to know for the salvation of your soul and the fundamental pillars of Christianity are made crystal clear in the Bible and can be known for certain.

Now, the Bible itself proclaims its own perspicuity. Deuteronomy 6:6–7 exhorts parents to teach the Scriptures to their children, indicating that the Bible and its fundamental teachings can be understood by children.

The New Testament confirms this when the apostle Paul encourages Timothy to continue in the things he has known of the Holy Scriptures from childhood in 2 Timothy 3:14–15.

So when it comes to salvation, passages such as John 14:6, or John 3:16, or Romans 3:22 make it undeniable even to a child, that salvation comes through faith alone in Christ alone. No true Christian, no matter the domination, no matter the disagreements between election and free will, disagree that Scripture is clear on the issue of salvation.

However, this does not mean that there are not hard and mysterious teachings in Scripture that we may not have a firm grasp on or that we may even disagree on. Even Peter in 2 Peter 3:16, says that there are some things in Scripture, particularly from Paul, that are hard to understand. But on primary issues, there is absolute crystal clarity.

So again, we should strive to grow in our knowledge of the Lord, strive to know His word, and strive to grow deeper in our understanding of even the hard things in Scripture.

We do not want to be like the Sadduccees.

You Don’t Know the Power of God

Now, the next reason the Sadducees were wrong, according to Jesus in verse 24, is that they did not know the power of God. And this most likely flowed directly from not knowing Scripture.

Many people form opinions about God without seriously studying Scripture, and often without ever even cracking open a Bible at all. This leads to distorted and warped views God that do not match the Biblical portrait of God.

So not knowing the Scriptures caused the Sadduccees to create their only “little g” god that was weak and impotent. They saw resurrection as impossible, even for God. He wasn’t powerful enough to do it!

Now again, even as believers we can have a similar problem. We can sometimes live our lives as if we are totally in the grip of the powers and forces of this world, right? We still fear the unknown, we still fear the chaotic world that swirls us around, not knowing what is going to happen tomorrow or how we are going to deal with whatever it brings! We still even fear the sting of death.

And the reason is because we have not even begun to understand the transcendent power of God. We fail to recognize the complete and utter authority that He has over the entirety of His creation including tomorrow and the next day.

We fail to recognize the immeasurable might of the God whose mere utterances causes galaxies to burst into existence. Whose can direct the hearts of kings like rivers in His hands.

We forget that that is the God in whose hands we are in! That is the God who lives inside of us. Who never leaves us.

Sometimes we lose sight of that, lose sight of the immense power of our God and feel lost in the turmoil of this world. That is why in Ephesians 1:19 the apostle Paul prayed that the people would know, “what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe.”

Brothers and sisters, do not be like the Sadduccees. Know the power of God. Know the exceeding greatness of His power toward you, that is given to you through the Holy Spirit who lives in you!

You feel like the you can’t make through today or tomorrow? You feel like you can’t deal with your kids or your family or your job or your illness or your loneliness or depression or anxiety or addiction?

Well guess what! You can’t! But the power of God that resides you through His Spirit absolutely can! Do not forget the power of God! Cry out to Him to make it known in your life! Pray for the Holy Spirit to pour out His power in you!

And all the problems in your life won’t just magically disappear, but you will be given the strength to have faith in Christ through it all! And you will find a deeper joy and a deeper peace because of it!

Like the Angels

Now, having made the Sadduccees nice and angry by pointing out that they are in error and the reason why they are in error, Jesus began to correct their theology. Not just on the reality of the resurrection, but on the nature of resurrection life.

Look at verse 25, “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” Notice Jesus says when they rise from the dead, not if. This is nothing short of Jesus affirming bodily resurrection.

He also corrects the error of the Sadduccees in relation to the existence of angles by saying that those who rise will be like the angels. The Sadduccees I think get beat up here theologically more than any other group! It is pretty brutal!

Now, this verse can actually trouble many believers today. And the reason is because of Jesus’ description of how believers will be like angels in resurrection life.

It’s not that our new bodies, which as 1 Cor. 15 says will be raised in glory and power, and as Phil. 3:21 says will be like Christ’s own resurrected body, it’s not that our new bodies will sprout wings and have a halo or that we will turn into angels!

But the reason many believers are troubled by this passage and this description of what the resurrection will be like is because we will be like angels in that marriage will be unknown in the resurrection life.

Now this completely takes the teeth out of the ridiculous hypothetical question from the Sadduccees. If there is no marriage in the world to come then it renders their question meaningless. The woman won’t be married to any of the brothers!

But it burdens those who are married believers or even believers who are widowers or widows, because it is painful to think of living for eternity without the bond of marriage they have shared in this life with their spouse! And that is a difficult and understandable struggle!

But I remember hearing a lecture once from R.C. Sproul about the joys of heaven and of the world to come when Christ comes back and we receive our resurrected bodies and live for eternity with God on a renewed earth.

And in this lecture, and I believe it is in his commentary on the gospels as well, he recounts an interaction that he had with his mentor and, at the time professor, Dr. John Gerstner.

During one chapel he attended at seminary, a guest speaker had attacked orthodox Christian theology. After the chapel, the young R.C. ran up to his mentor and said to him, “If John Calvin could have heard that address, he would have turned over in his grave!”

And how many times have we heard that phrase before? Or even maybe used that that phrase before? I have said it of my grandmother! If Mimi heard that I ate on the davenport (which is grandparent for couch) she would have turned over in her grave!”

But John Gerstner immediately stopped and turned to Sproul, looked him dead in the eye and said, “Young man, don’t you know that nothing could possibly destroy the felicity, the bliss, that John Calvin enjoys at this moment?”

Now that might seem an unnecessarily harsh response for a simple turn of phrase, but the lesson is important. We cannot begin to comprehend the joy and delight that God has prepared for His children in the life to come.

So no, there will not be marriage in heaven and when Christ comes again and He raises all of the dead, the unbelievers for judgement and the believers who have been waiting in heaven for eternal life, there will not be marriage after the resurrection.

Husbands and wives, widows and widowers, you will not be married to your spouse.

But brothers and sisters, we can hold onto this promise, and listen close; No one will be disappointed when they get to heaven and no one will be disappointed at the resurrection. No one.

God does not take away joys we experience in this lifetime without replacing them with far superior joys in the next! Try, just for a second, to imagine the greatest possible joy that you will experience in the life to come.

Now try, if you can, to multiply that feeling by a million times. And Christian, even then you still will not have begun to appreciate what God is preparing for His people on the other side of glory!

Our existence in heaven and then the renewed earth promised to us in Isa. 65 and 66, Romans 8 and Revelation 21, will be filled with a joy that will far, far exceed that which the marriage relationship provides in this fallen world.

The grand purpose of marriage, to be the picture of the unification of Christ and His bride, the church, will finally be complete when the great wedding feast of the Lamb of Rev. 19 takes place! The picture of human marriage will no longer be necessary because we will be living in eternal happiness with our beloved Saviour!

Johnathon Edwards says it well; “In the life that is to come for the believer, the glorified spiritual bodies of the saints (saints in the bible refers to all Christians, not “super-christians”) shall be filled with pleasures of the most exquisite kind that such refined bodies are capable of…the sweetness and pleasure that shall be in the mind, shall put your spirit in your body into such a motion as shall cause a sweet sensation throughout the body, infinitely excelling any pleasures here.”

I think Edwards is right.

Dr. Dan Akin says, “It is hard to imagine that our fellowship, our relationship with Jesus and our fellow brothers and sisters will be so intense and filled with love, joy and peace that all earthly marital bliss will seem shallow and small in comparison. But such is God’s perfect plan for His children who have come to Him through His Son Jesus.”

Ignorance

Lastly, Jesus even anchors the bodily resurrection in the Torah, the very books of Moses that the Sadducees thought they knew so well! He beats them on their own turf, so to speak. Verses 26-27, Jesus says, “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.”

Now, I took this conclusion to my sermon straight from the puritan Thomas Manton and mixed it with a sermon from R.C. Sproul, with some Spurgeon sprinkled in, because what they say about this is absolute gold and I believe that I would be doing you all a disservice to not share their wisdom here with you.

It is very significant here that He did not take them to any of the Historical books in the OT, or any of the prophetic books or to the Wisdom Literature. He could’ve have grounded the bodily resurrection of the dead in Job 19, Dan. 12, or even Psalm 16! Any of those would have worked!

But instead, out of grace, He met them where they were at and He took them to the Torrah, to the one section of the OT Scripture they accepted and which they were convinced said nothing about the resurrection!

Specifically He took them to Exodus 3:1-6, the account of God’s appearance to Moses in the burning bush, where God introduced Himself to Moses by saying, “I am the God of your father-the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” the patriarchs of Israel.

But as every commentator on this passages points out, what Jesus wants the Sadduccees to see, what He wants us to see, is that God did not say, “I WAS the God of Abraham and the others!”

What did He say? “I AM the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob!” So He, as verse 27 says, is telling the Sadduccees that, He is not the God of the dead, not the God to those who no longer exist and therefore have no future or even those who will only remain in heaven as disembodied spirits!”

No, to prove that there will be a future resurrection, Jesus simply argued that God would not speak of Himself in this manner if Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were not alive beyond the grave. Their lives were and currently are in the hands of the God of the living, who does not let death end our personal existence!

This text that we have looked at this morning, is far more than a magnificent philosophical refutation of the views of the Sadduccees who were seeking to trap Jesus in His words. As Sproul says, it is a bold and strong answer by our Master to mankind’s oldest question: “If a man dies, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14)

Without hesitation, without ambiguity, our Lord answered that question with a resounding yes! For those who trust in Jesus, we have life and we have it forever!

And we were created as body and spirit, and though our bodies will pass away and decay in this lifetime, save if the Lord comes now, we have the great hope of being reunited as both body and soul, the former being fully glorified and the latter being fully sanctified!

Praise our God of the living.

Pray with me.