Ever met a Sadducee? Me neither.
That’s not surprising considering that the last one died 2000 years ago. And even back then, there were never very many of them. It was always a very select group, like a club for the very wealthy.
If you lived in Jericho, you were much more likely to run into a Pharisee than a Sadducee. They were a very select group with some very strange views.
And that’s part of what makes this story so interesting. It starts with a weird question and ends with a very surprising answer. If we just skim it on the surface, we might assume that it has nothing to say to us in the 21st-century. But we would be wrong about that.
Signifying nothing.
So is there life after death?
Thousands of years ago Job raised the same question. “If a man dies, will he live again?” (Job 14:14). That is the question, isn’t it? We all die, but what then?
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”Is that all there is?
And that brings us to our text, an encounter that took place two or three days before Jesus was crucified. It is Tuesday or perhaps Wednesday of Passion Week. Jesus has come to Jerusalem for the final time. Pilgrims crowd the city in anticipation of Passover. Because of his rising popularity with the people, the Jewish leaders have already decided to find a way to put Jesus to death. Knowing that his time is short, Jesus takes every opportunity to confront evil and to present himself to the people so they can decide whether or not to follow him. Everywhere he goes, crowds gather to listen as he debates the religious leaders of that day. Mostly he deals with the Pharisees who were the largest religious group in Judea.
But on one occasion he faced off against the Sadducees who were very much unlike the Pharisees. Luke 20:27-40 tells us what happened when they came to him with an absurd question about a woman with seven husbands. From Jesus’ answer we learn a great deal about life after death.
When you think of the Sadducees, you need to know what they didn’t believe.
They didn’t believe in angels.
They didn’t believe in heaven or hell.
They didn’t believe in life after death.
They didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead.
They didn’t believe in the immortality of the soul.
The Pharisees believed in all those things, which was a major reason why the two groups didn’t get along. In 21st-century terms, the Sadducees would be like today’s religious liberals who don’t believe in the supernatural. It was a rich man’s religion that offered power with no accountability to God. You live, you die, and that’s it.
Jesus was a direct threat to all they believed.
This passage is notable because it records their only direct run-in with Jesus. By definition a Sadducee couldn’t become a follower of Jesus without giving up what he believed. So that’s why they came with a question that seemed absurd in that day and sounds ridiculous in our day.
In order to understand the question, we need to go back to Deuteronomy 25:5-10 which describes the law of levirate marriage. Because of the importance of preserving the family name, the law provided for the brother of a man who died childless to marry the widow and have children in the name of the deceased brother. It was a sacred obligation.
So the question is, after she marries seven brothers, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?
In her case, Jesus’ answer was reassuring. Besides saying in essence, “That’s a stupid question,” Jesus says there is no marriage in the resurrection. She was probably happy about that. Seven husbands is plenty-and probably a few too many. The good news is, she won’t be married to seven men at the same time. The Sadducee framed the question precisely so we would laugh about it.
“Maybe she’ll be married to the first one.”
“Or the last one.
“Or the best-looking one.”
“Or the one with the most money.”
You could imagine the snickers in the crowd. The point is, you can’t say for sure whose wife she will be. The Sadducees used questions like this to show what they considered to be the absurdity of believing in life after death.
But behind the question lay an important (and wrong) assumption that the afterlife is only a continuation of this life. People often wrongly assume that eternity is nothing but the extrapolation of time into the future. They think the conditions in the age to come are the same as the conditions here. But that is not the case. In this life things are so messed up that we can’t imagine how God can straighten them out. But as someone said, “God has an eternity to make right what has gone wrong in this life.”
So the question, though insincere, does raise some important issues regarding what heaven will be like. And the answer is, it won’t be exactly the same as life on earth.
That’s good news-even if we don’t totally understand it all.
“This age” (v. 34).
“That age” (v. 35).
Marriage is a natural part of “this age,” the world in which we now live. It is necessary for the fundamental continuation of the human race. In a dying world, you need marriage and children to replace those who are gone. But where there are no funerals, there are no weddings.
Remember that he is not giving a seminar on marriage. He is answering the Sadducees on their own terms. To be “like angels” doesn’t mean sexless. It means one thing and one thing only. Just as angels never die, in the resurrection we will never die either. Jesus answers this way because the question involved the Hebrew law regarding levirate marriage. And behind that law was the legitimate concern that the family name be continued after death. By definition levirate marriage could only take place when a husband died. If there is no more death, there is no need for marriage itself. Marriage as we understand is thus a temporary condition for “this age.”
To the Sadducees marriage was primarily for maintaining the family name on earth. Jesus is saying, “Your question does not apply to the life to come.” We must not think of the next life in terms of this one. Life there will be quite different because we will be quite different.
This leads to a mystery that has caused some anxiety. We think, “I want to be with my husband or my wife for eternity.” This passage makes it appear as if life in heaven is somehow less than life on earth. But that is precisely backwards. We will not love less in heaven but far more. On earth our love is inevitably mixed with all the baggage that comes from living in a sad, fallen, mixed up, messed up world. And it’s not just the world that’s messed up. We’re messed up too.
On earth even our noblest moments are tainted with self-interest. In heaven with our selfishness removed and our bad habits and irritating mannerisms removed, our love will be deeper than anything we have known on earth.
What, then, of our loved ones? Our children . . . our family . . . our wives and husbands? Will all that be gone? No, but it won’t be the same or even similar. All that we have known will be lifted to a higher plane. We will know then even as we are known now by the Lord.
It will not be less than what my family is to me, but in “that age” my family will be bigger than I can imagine. I will not love my children less but far more. And I will love Marlene with a love that goes beyond anything I have known in this life. It is not less than marriage, it is something deeper and better and beyond our current comprehension.
In that day we will love each other . . .
With perfect understanding,
With perfect communication,
With perfect acceptance,
Free from everything that holds us back in this life. All the relationships that are sacred to me on earth will be sacred to me in heaven. But we will all go far beyond that. I do not know what that will be like, but I know with certainty that it cannot be less than what we know on earth. It must be much more.
Not, “I was the God of your father,”
But, “I am the God of your father.”
“Was” vs. “Am.”
If God “was” the father of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it means they died and are no more. But that’s not what God said. He said, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” meaning, “They are still alive!” That’s the difference between the past tense and the present tense. We talk the same way when we go to a funeral.
“He was a great friend.”
“She was a wonderful wife.”
“He was such a funny man.”
“She was a great cook.”
It’s all past tense to us because death cuts people off from the land of the living.
Or so we think.
We can’t help talking like that when someone dies. Death moves our loved ones into the past tense. We can’t see them, feel them, touch them, and most of all, we can talk to them, hear them laugh, and share life with them. To us death breaks all the human connections, which is why we sometimes go so far as to say, “That’s not Uncle Charlie,” meaning, “The real person is dead and gone.” We can hardly help speaking like that.
Let’s go back to the example of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Remember that the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection or the afterlife. To them, death ended everything. But when God said, “I am” instead of “I was,” Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been dead for hundreds of years. He should have said “I was” if death is the end. If there is no resurrection, then he is the God of the dead, a grotesque thought. But God promised to be their God forever.
Death cannot break that promise.
That’s the meaning of verse 38. “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” I love that last phrase. What hope it gives to grieving parents who lay their children to rest in the grave. “To him all are alive.”
They are alive with him now.
They will be with him in the resurrection.
Note that the text repeats “God of” three times. It means that even after death, the Lord knew them and loved individually. Abraham was still Abraham, Isaac was still Isaac, and Jacob was still Jacob. Here we have the truth underlying the Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead. God will raise the dead because he cannot fail to keep his promise. He who calls himself “the God of the living” will not leave his people in the grave. Our hope for the future rests not in science, not in speculation, not in some proof text, but in the character of God himself!
The question is not, ‘Can we still believe in life after death?” but “Can we still believe in God?” If he is our God and we are his people, death is not the end of the story. A better day, a brighter day, a glorious day of resurrection awaits all the people of God. In the meantime, between now and then, we go to be with the Lord. This is what Paul meant when he said, “To die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Not even death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
All that we believe about life after death rests on the faithfulness of God. We do not trust in what our eyes can see because all that we see testifies to the overwhelming power of death. But thanks be to God, a day is coming-and is not far off-when death will be no more. Those who know Jesus have entered into a relationship that even death cannot sever. Our hope for the future is as secure as the promises of God. For the Christian, death is not the end but the beginning of life forever with the Lord. Amen
original message from www.keepbelieving.com
That’s not surprising considering that the last one died 2000 years ago. And even back then, there were never very many of them. It was always a very select group, like a club for the very wealthy.
If you lived in Jericho, you were much more likely to run into a Pharisee than a Sadducee. They were a very select group with some very strange views.
And that’s part of what makes this story so interesting. It starts with a weird question and ends with a very surprising answer. If we just skim it on the surface, we might assume that it has nothing to say to us in the 21st-century. But we would be wrong about that.
Signifying nothing.
So is there life after death?
Thousands of years ago Job raised the same question. “If a man dies, will he live again?” (Job 14:14). That is the question, isn’t it? We all die, but what then?
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”Is that all there is?
And that brings us to our text, an encounter that took place two or three days before Jesus was crucified. It is Tuesday or perhaps Wednesday of Passion Week. Jesus has come to Jerusalem for the final time. Pilgrims crowd the city in anticipation of Passover. Because of his rising popularity with the people, the Jewish leaders have already decided to find a way to put Jesus to death. Knowing that his time is short, Jesus takes every opportunity to confront evil and to present himself to the people so they can decide whether or not to follow him. Everywhere he goes, crowds gather to listen as he debates the religious leaders of that day. Mostly he deals with the Pharisees who were the largest religious group in Judea.
But on one occasion he faced off against the Sadducees who were very much unlike the Pharisees. Luke 20:27-40 tells us what happened when they came to him with an absurd question about a woman with seven husbands. From Jesus’ answer we learn a great deal about life after death.
I. The Sadducees’ Insincere Question
In order to get a handle on the strange question they asked, we need to know something about the Sadducees. They were not the Pharisees. In fact, the Sadducees and the Pharisees were two different groups of Jewish leaders who had no use for each other. The Sadducees came from a small group of aristocratic families that represented the “old money” of the Jewish nation. As such, they tended to congregate around the temple in Jerusalem. You could find the Sadducees in the priesthood and in the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council. Because they were sticklers for law and order, the common people didn’t like them. And because they collaborated with Rome, they had power and influence.When you think of the Sadducees, you need to know what they didn’t believe.
They didn’t believe in angels.
They didn’t believe in heaven or hell.
They didn’t believe in life after death.
They didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead.
They didn’t believe in the immortality of the soul.
The Pharisees believed in all those things, which was a major reason why the two groups didn’t get along. In 21st-century terms, the Sadducees would be like today’s religious liberals who don’t believe in the supernatural. It was a rich man’s religion that offered power with no accountability to God. You live, you die, and that’s it.
Jesus was a direct threat to all they believed.
This passage is notable because it records their only direct run-in with Jesus. By definition a Sadducee couldn’t become a follower of Jesus without giving up what he believed. So that’s why they came with a question that seemed absurd in that day and sounds ridiculous in our day.
“Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?” (vv. 28-33).This is not a sincere question. It’s obviously a made-up situation designed to trap the Lord and discredit him in front of the crowds that followed him during his final days in Jerusalem. The Sadducees intended to ridicule the doctrine of the resurrection. They often used questions like this to tie the Pharisees in knots.
In order to understand the question, we need to go back to Deuteronomy 25:5-10 which describes the law of levirate marriage. Because of the importance of preserving the family name, the law provided for the brother of a man who died childless to marry the widow and have children in the name of the deceased brother. It was a sacred obligation.
So the question is, after she marries seven brothers, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?
In her case, Jesus’ answer was reassuring. Besides saying in essence, “That’s a stupid question,” Jesus says there is no marriage in the resurrection. She was probably happy about that. Seven husbands is plenty-and probably a few too many. The good news is, she won’t be married to seven men at the same time. The Sadducee framed the question precisely so we would laugh about it.
“Maybe she’ll be married to the first one.”
“Or the last one.
“Or the best-looking one.”
“Or the one with the most money.”
You could imagine the snickers in the crowd. The point is, you can’t say for sure whose wife she will be. The Sadducees used questions like this to show what they considered to be the absurdity of believing in life after death.
But behind the question lay an important (and wrong) assumption that the afterlife is only a continuation of this life. People often wrongly assume that eternity is nothing but the extrapolation of time into the future. They think the conditions in the age to come are the same as the conditions here. But that is not the case. In this life things are so messed up that we can’t imagine how God can straighten them out. But as someone said, “God has an eternity to make right what has gone wrong in this life.”
So the question, though insincere, does raise some important issues regarding what heaven will be like. And the answer is, it won’t be exactly the same as life on earth.
That’s good news-even if we don’t totally understand it all.
II. Jesus’ Surprising Answer
In Matthew’s version of this encounter, he includes a sentence that is not found in Luke’s version. It summarizes Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees. “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God” (Matthew 22:29). Let’s take those in reverse order.A. “You do not know the power of God.”
By asking this trick question, the Sadducees showed that they underestimated God’s power. They started with life as we know it now and simply extrapolated into the future. But Jesus says that the resurrection is not a continuation of this life but a transformation of all that we have known. Note these two key phrases:“This age” (v. 34).
“That age” (v. 35).
Marriage is a natural part of “this age,” the world in which we now live. It is necessary for the fundamental continuation of the human race. In a dying world, you need marriage and children to replace those who are gone. But where there are no funerals, there are no weddings.
Remember that he is not giving a seminar on marriage. He is answering the Sadducees on their own terms. To be “like angels” doesn’t mean sexless. It means one thing and one thing only. Just as angels never die, in the resurrection we will never die either. Jesus answers this way because the question involved the Hebrew law regarding levirate marriage. And behind that law was the legitimate concern that the family name be continued after death. By definition levirate marriage could only take place when a husband died. If there is no more death, there is no need for marriage itself. Marriage as we understand is thus a temporary condition for “this age.”
To the Sadducees marriage was primarily for maintaining the family name on earth. Jesus is saying, “Your question does not apply to the life to come.” We must not think of the next life in terms of this one. Life there will be quite different because we will be quite different.
This leads to a mystery that has caused some anxiety. We think, “I want to be with my husband or my wife for eternity.” This passage makes it appear as if life in heaven is somehow less than life on earth. But that is precisely backwards. We will not love less in heaven but far more. On earth our love is inevitably mixed with all the baggage that comes from living in a sad, fallen, mixed up, messed up world. And it’s not just the world that’s messed up. We’re messed up too.
On earth even our noblest moments are tainted with self-interest. In heaven with our selfishness removed and our bad habits and irritating mannerisms removed, our love will be deeper than anything we have known on earth.
What, then, of our loved ones? Our children . . . our family . . . our wives and husbands? Will all that be gone? No, but it won’t be the same or even similar. All that we have known will be lifted to a higher plane. We will know then even as we are known now by the Lord.
It will not be less than what my family is to me, but in “that age” my family will be bigger than I can imagine. I will not love my children less but far more. And I will love Marlene with a love that goes beyond anything I have known in this life. It is not less than marriage, it is something deeper and better and beyond our current comprehension.
In that day we will love each other . . .
With perfect understanding,
With perfect communication,
With perfect acceptance,
Free from everything that holds us back in this life. All the relationships that are sacred to me on earth will be sacred to me in heaven. But we will all go far beyond that. I do not know what that will be like, but I know with certainty that it cannot be less than what we know on earth. It must be much more.
B. “You do not know the Scriptures.”
Jesus quotes a passage that the Sadducees would have known, one that at first glance seems irrelevant.But in the account of the bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ’the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive (vv. 37-38).Every Jewish Bible student knew the story of Moses and the burning bush in Exodus 3. Why did Jesus quote it here? If you go back and read that passage, God identifies himself this way: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). Jesus is arguing from the tense of the verse.
Not, “I was the God of your father,”
But, “I am the God of your father.”
“Was” vs. “Am.”
If God “was” the father of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it means they died and are no more. But that’s not what God said. He said, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” meaning, “They are still alive!” That’s the difference between the past tense and the present tense. We talk the same way when we go to a funeral.
“He was a great friend.”
“She was a wonderful wife.”
“He was such a funny man.”
“She was a great cook.”
It’s all past tense to us because death cuts people off from the land of the living.
Or so we think.
We can’t help talking like that when someone dies. Death moves our loved ones into the past tense. We can’t see them, feel them, touch them, and most of all, we can talk to them, hear them laugh, and share life with them. To us death breaks all the human connections, which is why we sometimes go so far as to say, “That’s not Uncle Charlie,” meaning, “The real person is dead and gone.” We can hardly help speaking like that.
Let’s go back to the example of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Remember that the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection or the afterlife. To them, death ended everything. But when God said, “I am” instead of “I was,” Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been dead for hundreds of years. He should have said “I was” if death is the end. If there is no resurrection, then he is the God of the dead, a grotesque thought. But God promised to be their God forever.
Death cannot break that promise.
That’s the meaning of verse 38. “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” I love that last phrase. What hope it gives to grieving parents who lay their children to rest in the grave. “To him all are alive.”
They are alive with him now.
They will be with him in the resurrection.
Note that the text repeats “God of” three times. It means that even after death, the Lord knew them and loved individually. Abraham was still Abraham, Isaac was still Isaac, and Jacob was still Jacob. Here we have the truth underlying the Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead. God will raise the dead because he cannot fail to keep his promise. He who calls himself “the God of the living” will not leave his people in the grave. Our hope for the future rests not in science, not in speculation, not in some proof text, but in the character of God himself!
The question is not, ‘Can we still believe in life after death?” but “Can we still believe in God?” If he is our God and we are his people, death is not the end of the story. A better day, a brighter day, a glorious day of resurrection awaits all the people of God. In the meantime, between now and then, we go to be with the Lord. This is what Paul meant when he said, “To die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Not even death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
All that we believe about life after death rests on the faithfulness of God. We do not trust in what our eyes can see because all that we see testifies to the overwhelming power of death. But thanks be to God, a day is coming-and is not far off-when death will be no more. Those who know Jesus have entered into a relationship that even death cannot sever. Our hope for the future is as secure as the promises of God. For the Christian, death is not the end but the beginning of life forever with the Lord. Amen
original message from www.keepbelieving.com
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