Eternity Under Fire

I’ve entitled the morning message,
Resurrection Under Attack. And it has a ring to it that
seems to present that the resurrection is just now coming under attack,
when in reality, the resurrection has been under attack from the
very beginning. Who, perhaps you wonder, could
ever of a sinful people desiring to see eternity. Sinful people
don’t want to see eternity. And that is the very reason and
core for the attack upon it. Some 30 years ago, the eminent
anti-theologian John Lennon penned the following words. Imagine
there’s no heaven. It’s easy if you try. No hell
below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living
for today. It’s not by accident that those
words have been embraced as essentially the national anthem of the Association
of Atheists. No heaven, no hell, just live
for today. And that has been the attitude,
the mantra of sinful people from the very beginning. They don’t
want to face God, an eternal God or a holy God in eternity. It’s the thing most hated in
their minds. And therefore, they have attacked
this doctrine. We come to a passage this morning
where we see the doctrine attacked and ridiculed. We’ll consider
it in full, if you would, I want to go to Luke chapter 20, beginning
in verse 27, where we meet with a new group called the Sadducees,
another religious sect that advances a new problem for Christ to contend
with. Now, there came to him some of
the Sadducees who say that there is no resurrection. And they
questioned him, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a
man’s brother dies having a wife and he is childless, his brother
should marry the wife and raise up children to his brother. Now,
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 died also.
In the resurrection, therefore, which one’s wife will she be? For all seven had married her.
Jesus said to them, the sons of this age marry and 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. But they cannot
even die anymore because they are like angels and are sons
of God being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised. Even Moses showed in the passage
about the burning bush where he calls the Lord, the God of
Abraham and 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 courage
to question him any longer about anything. The resurrection has always been
under attack. And in this case, not by the
ungodly, but by those that professed godliness. In fact, the Sadducees
were among the most conservative. They held to the Scriptures with
great tenacity, more accurately than the Pharisees. with less
human addition than the Pharisees, as we’ll see in a moment. And
still, the idea of the resurrection was to them an odious thing,
something to be rejected as a fanciful notion of Pharisaic invention. It’s not the first time the resurrection
has been under attack. That’s funny sometimes how God
works. I just happened to glance at
one of the news channels this week on the Internet,
and it mentioned that Barbara Walters was doing a special.
A special on heaven. And can’t you just wait? I’m
not even going to tell you what time it is, because as I began
to read this thing, it turned my stomach. The title of it is Heaven. Where
is it? How do we get there? And you know who she’s going
to go to. She’s going to go to all these nutcase sources that
are going to give us all kinds of varieties of opinion of what
heaven is like and how do we get there. In fact, even the
little blurb that advertised it says Walter speaks with everyone
from his holiness, which I would have put in quotes, the Dalai
Lama, to failed suicide bombers in Israel, which, you know, you’ve
got to get their opinion from evangelical leaders to atheists. And, you know, any time they
tap into an evangelical leader, with one exception, Larry King
never calls anybody with any real sound biblical opinion.
From Muslim scholars to Jewish rabbis, as well as Richard Gere,
I mean, So glad they talked to Mr. Gere. They even go on to say that they
tap into some scientists and their opinion about our need
for a belief in the eternal life. And one guy has even surmised
that it’s because we have this gene, a gene that longs for eternal
life, an eternal life gene somewhere wound up in your DNA. Okay, so here’s what some of
them said. And the sad thing is they start with the Baptist.
The Baptist, the Reverend Calvin Butts, pastor of New York’s famed
Abyssinian Baptist Church, who said he’s seen heaven. And you
see, if you can’t belittle it, then you just add all kinds of
fanciful, ridiculous things to it. And in a sense, you belittle
it just by your description. So, he’s seen heaven. And he says that heaven is eternal
joy and happiness because you are at one with God, which couldn’t
be more inaccurate. I can’t even
call Him His holiness. The Dalai Lama said that the
purpose of life is to be happy. Did you know that? And that you
can accomplish that by warm heartedness. I don’t know what that had to
do with heaven, but apparently if you live this path, then that
is. In fact, Richard Gere sums it up. Richard Gere interprets
the Dalai Lama’s comments. I guess that’s his job now. I
don’t necessarily think heaven and hell happen somewhere in
some other life. I think it’s here right now.
And that that is the most common. That essentially is what the
Sadducees position was. This is heaven. This is heaven
and hell. There is no other place. What
we live and how we live here is all. And it’s the all in all. The atheist says there is no
heaven, that doesn’t surprise us. Heaven and hell don’t exist.
We weren’t alive before we were born. We’re not going to exist
after we die. I’m not happy about the fact,
but that’s the end of life. And I can accept that and make
my life more fulfilling now. And in a very real sense, that
too echoes the Sadducees position. They said, this is life. This,
what you make of it in the here and now, determines God’s blessing
upon your predecessors. And in a sense, that is the atheist
position. The Muslims, in case you’re interested,
says that there is going to be marital relations in heaven,
only they won’t be marital. if you adults would read between
the line, the real life is the next life. And based upon how
we live in this life, it determines where we will be in the next.
Comfortable homes, reclining on silk couches, delights of
marital relation, delights of wine, delights of food, without
all the positive things, without all the negative aspects. And
people, isn’t that Even among your Christian or professing
Christian friends, isn’t that pretty close to the Christian
or the so-called Christian concept of heaven? All the good things
without all the negative. Haven’t you heard people talk
about all that food and I’ll never gain an ounce, right? All
that wine and no drunkenness. All this bliss. And that’s what
people envision heaven to be like. This self-indulgent period
of existence that never ends. Walter’s study, as I said, goes
on and touches upon scientists. One, as I mentioned, the author
of the God gene, Dean Hamer, who said that a God gene exists
and that’s what basically prompts our desire for some kind of spiritual
experience. And of course, they tap into
those, as I said, so often the best way to belittle this concept
is to tap into those who have had near-death experiences who
described heaven for us so that now we can have this vision of
exactly what heaven’s going to be. They interviewed one Diane
Morrissey who said she felt the white light of God, whatever
that is, when she was electrocuted. Yeah? That would do it. My near-death experience changed
everything about me. Probably her hairstyle, for one.
There’s not a single experience on earth that could ever be as
good as being dead, she said. And that summarizes Barbara Walter’s
take. So you don’t need to tune in
this week at all. The resurrection, heaven, eternal
life, the eternity of the soul. Those kinds of concepts have
always been under attack. And it’s understandable that
they would be under attack by the heathen, by those who don’t
know God or don’t believe in God and don’t live godly lives. The last thing they want to do
is face God for eternity. But the surprising thing is that
there are those who say that There is no immortal soul. And
they claim to be godly people and such were the Sadducees.
Let’s look at them briefly. I want to look at three developments
on this assault on eternity. The passage is there with place
for notes in your bulletin. Three developments in the attack
on the resurrection here just in the passage before us. First
of all, I want to look at the rivals of the doctrine, the rivals
of this doctrine. And for that, if you go back
to chapter 20, verse 27, it says there came to him some of the
Sadducees. And almost everything that we
know about the Sadducees is encompassed in one of just a very few places. They weren’t voluminous writers,
as were so many of the Pharisees. They weren’t particularly popular
and therefore didn’t garner a whole lot of attention from historians. So what we have, we get from
scripture and from a few historical sources, most notably Josephus. How the party even originated,
we don’t even know. We don’t know where really they
came from. We do know that they had this tendency to trace their
history back to Zadok, the priest who shared the high priestly
office during David’s reign. Remember? And then Solomon appointed
him exclusively the high priest. And so they say that they can
trace themselves back to the high priesthood of Zadok. And
from there, somehow they do this mental gymnastics where they
get from Zadok to Sadducees. They made it up. I didn’t. Acts
23 points out the only one of the few other places that the
Sadducees are mentioned, and it points out that the Sadducees
say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor a spirit, but
the Pharisees acknowledge them all. And so they are in set off
immediately in Scripture in contradistinction to the Pharisees. They were a
religious sect. But they were by no means related
to or in association with the Pharisees, and they’re not so
in this passage. They’re not teaming up with the
Pharisees. In fact, in my opinion, well,
we’ll see where they’re going here in a moment. But in my opinion,
they seized the opportunity, seeing the Pharisees fail. Now
they’re going to take down Christ. They were an aristocratic party
among the Jews. They were extremely rich. And
because of that, not because of their theological influence,
they were tremendously powerful. They were well known for their
arrogance and their harshness. And even though they were few
in number, they still were tremendously powerful. Because of their harshness,
because of their attitudes, they never gained popularity among
the people. Not like what the Pharisees enjoyed.
Josephus spoke this way of them. He said, they only gained the
well-to-do. They have not the people on their
side. The Sadducees were the aristocrats. They were the wealthy. They were
the persons of rank among the priesthood. Politically speaking,
they supported the status quo. And in that sense, they were
very much like the Herodians. They didn’t want to rock the
boat. They wanted everything to just continue on as it was.
They were satisfied to have matters continue just as they were. They
weren’t a popular party like the Pharisees. Regarding doctrinal beliefs,
I’ve tipped my hand to a few of them already. This comes,
their opinions, their views, their particular theological
leanings came specifically from the fact that they only believed
in the written word. And in that sense, they’re very
much like us. If you set us apart from, say,
Roman Catholics who hold to not only scripture, but tradition,
the Sadducees, I would say, are more like us or we’re more like
them. as opposed to the Pharisees who
held to this oral tradition. Again, Josephus, the historian,
said this of the Sadducees. The Sadducees say, only what
is written is to be esteemed as legal. What has come down
from tradition of the fathers need not be observed. And see,
now you have a sharp division between them and the Pharisees,
because the Pharisees had this entire system built on tradition. The Sadducees, as such, were
very rigid in judging others. They strictly adhered to the
very letter of the law, even with regards to the whole doctrine
or teaching of retaliation. Remember, eye for an eye? They
held that to be literally. And they said, if someone has
offended you, then you have the right, in fact, you even had
the responsibility to inflict similar suffering upon them.
The Sadducees didn’t regard all the Pharisaic traditions as binding
with regards to the clean and unclean, the things that Jesus
himself criticized. And so they made fun of the Pharisaic
traditions because of their oddities and their inconsistencies. And
so they were, in a very real sense, enemies with the Pharisees. And the bottom line for them
They could not see the teaching, any teaching related to the resurrection
in the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. And so they basically rejected
this whole idea of resurrection and eternal life and ultimately
the immortality of this soul. They rejected that as a Pharisaic
invention. They refused, as one said, to
see any proof of the doctrine of the resurrection in the books
of Moses. And to the rest of the prophets in the other books,
they only attached a subordinate importance. So here they’ve got
the five books of Moses. They don’t see the resurrection
in there. And so they dismiss it out of hand. Want nothing
to do with this idea of the immoral soul. And that had tremendous
impact on the way that they lived. They still know that there is
a God. They believe that there is a God. They believe that there
is a law. They believe that there were
punishments and rewards, but they’re all for the here and
now. They live only for the moment. Just like John Lennon urged us
to do. Only they do it for the purpose
of procuring for their heritage some blessing from God. Now,
don’t get me wrong, there is an element of truth to that.
A foolish man brings dishonor upon his whole household. He
brings harm and foolishness to his own household. And in that
sense, that’s true. But the Pharisees, it’s interesting,
too, The Pharisees believed wholeheartedly in free will. What is known in
our day and age as free will. They rejected any idea of predestination
or providence. Your life is what you make it. And they were tenacious in holding
to the ability of themselves to make their life better for
their heritage, for their children, for their grandchildren, for
their ancestors on down the line. Here’s how one described it.
They insisted that man was placed at his own disposal and rejected
the thought that divine cooperation takes place in human actions.
Pharisees accentuated God’s preordination. Sadducees accentuated man’s free
will. They made man’s choice of evil
or good to depend entirely upon the exercise of free will and
self-determination. Do you hear where the Sadducees
are going here? They have got to believe in free
will because it’s all up to them. All the choices they make. All
the things that they do. It goes on. It says, both the Sadducees
and Pharisees tried to obtain their feeling of security by
their own efforts. And they are in good company. Both are working towards a goal,
a cause. Both are working with the hopes
of somehow succeeding or adding to their success. Whether this
sense of ease and salvation, he says, was based on material
possessions on this side of the grave, and that is entirely the
Sadducees’ position. They felt the harder they worked,
the more they would be blessed in this life, and the more they
would have to pass on to their heritage. spiritual possessions on the
other side of life is with the Pharisees. And it didn’t make
what the Pharisees did right. But at least the Pharisees were
looking to eternal life. The Pharisees were looking to
another world and they believed that they had in heaven an anchor
and they had those possessions in heaven and they longed for
that day when they would go and embrace those things which they
had earned. Both of them were working. The Pharisees were working for
only the here and now, only to enjoy the here and now while
the Pharisees were looking to heaven. We’ll look at the second point,
second development on this attack. That is a brief introduction
to the Sadducees. We really have little other biblical
data to even consider. That’s a thumbnail sketch of
the Pharisees. The rivals of the doctrine. Let’s
look at the ridicule of the doctrine. Let’s look at this case that
they present before Christ. As I said a moment ago, they
were probably just tickled, they were probably standing in audience.
Attending the temple faithfully. But standing in audience, listening
to the Pharisees and watching their bumbling attempts to trap
Jesus. And they were probably just overjoyed
to see that they stumbled and failed miserably. They were opposed
to the Pharisees. They hated one another. But they
also opposed Christ. And with the Pharisees now vanquished,
as it were, the way was open for somebody else to try. And
here was their golden opportunity. What they present before Christ
is not a serious argument. They’re not looking truly, genuinely
and sincerely for Christ to give a logical, reasoned answer to
them. What they wanted to do was stump
Him. If they had gone and directly
persecuted Christ, they knew that they faced the opposition
of the people who held Him to be Everything from the Messiah,
to a prophet, to a good teacher. But he was tremendously popular
with the people and that wasn’t what the Sadducees were ready
to take on. If they had openly opposed him,
the people would have been prepared. But to come, as one said, with
this icy politeness and philosophic calm, by a well-turned question
to reduce the well-known teacher to silence. That was their goal.
They wanted to come to Christ and ply their wares this little
trick question that was going to make him look just silly,
to show the absurdity of his teaching. And that, they thought,
would produce a fatal blow to Christ. This whole argument was
not new. This was a very common question
bandied about between the Sadducees and the Pharisees. And this,
they thought, was the coup de grace. This was the ultimate
argument against a resurrection is take the case of Moses himself. And what do you do in heaven
when they get there and they find multiple husbands? It was
mockery. It was the way that the Sadducees
mocked the Pharisees. And they know that Christ holds
to a resurrection. They know that Christ holds to
an immortal soul because he’s spoken of it many times already.
But they felt themselves to be above Christ, superior to him,
and they intended to expose this inadequate and foolish teaching
that they considered. They wanted to discredit him
before the people and demonstrate the position that they had on
the resurrection. The Sadducees themselves had
no design, no ultimate design to bring Christ to the cross. But the intention of their inquiry,
as you begin to get into it, is clear and plain, they wanted
to heap contempt on Christ and on his teaching. The quotation that they turn
to is the substance. It’s not a direct quote from
Deuteronomy 25.5. Where the purpose, if you look
at the passage, God had ordained it for the preservation of the
inheritances of the tribes. Let’s look at their argument. They question him saying, teacher,
respectful greeting. They start out, you know, they
want to give honor to whom honor is due. Teacher Moses wrote for
us. And this was their book, right?
This they only believed in the five books of the Pentateuch.
This is their source. Moses taught us that if a man’s
brother dies, having a wife and he’s childless, his brother should
marry the wife and raise up children for his brother. This was all
due to the need for preserving the name, preserving the inheritances,
preserving the possessions of the brother. It was a gracious
provision of the law. And yet in our day and age, I
mean, can we even conceive of such? Not in my family. So it held that the brother,
if his brother died, the next brother would step up and marry
the wife and bring up children for his brother. And so there
is the scene. That’s the passage that they’re
pointing Christ back to. And they come up with what is
now the rest of it is hypothetical. This is not Moses. This is Sadducee. Now, there were seven brothers.
And don’t you just see from the outset where this thing’s going?
The first one took a wife and died childless. That was the
provision for the second marriage, that the woman had to be childless.
And the whole cause, the whole driving force behind this was
that the man would have a son to carry on his family name.
The wife died childless. And the second, it doesn’t even
say what happened to him. I mean, You know, if I’m the
third brother, I got to at least wonder. But certainly by the fourth,
you know, now I want an investigation. I got the cops involved now,
but says the third married her. And in the same way, all seven
died. I mean, you talk about making
a mockery of a situation. This is their mockery. John and
I just briefly spoke beforehand and John wanted to know why seven.
Well, seven, most commentators said was the number of completeness.
This was completely absurd that seven brothers would take the
same life and all of them would die. And it says, I mean, as
if they even needed to add this. Finally, the woman died also.
No wonder. No wonder. And so they think that they’ve
really got Christ here with this question. In the resurrection,
therefore, which one’s wife will she be? For all seven married
her. As I said, the whole point of
the Mosaic law here was to keep the family line from dying out
and to preserve the family inheritance from being broken up. It was
a gracious provision of God. And yet, this argument at least
had the potential to resonate with the common sense of the
multitude. Because it was based on this
crass physical view of eternity. Oh man, you can imagine that
the rumbles through the crowd. Man, I never thought of that. That’s a good question. What
do you say to that, Jesus? And so you have this mockery
set up. The doctrine of the resurrection
just ridiculed. Christ is totally untouched by it. Christ isn’t
ruffled. Christ isn’t disturbed. In fact, even the way that He
responds isn’t anything like how He responds to the Pharisees.
This is almost gentle, gracious. Matthew’s Gospel says that He
tells them point blank that they err in their treatment of the
Scriptures, but He doesn’t call them hypocrites. He doesn’t call
them whitewashed tombs and all those other things. I want to look at the third development.
Not only the rivals and the ridicule of the doctrine, but look at
the restoration of the doctrine. Christ just gently goes about
setting straight their error. Look at the restoration of the
doctrine. Jesus said to them, the sons of this age marry and
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. And this is the you know, the
passage that when you’re in college and you begin dating, you know,
and everybody sits around and panics. especially after you’re
first married, all this wedded bliss, and then all of a sudden
you think of an eternity, it’s not going to be that way, and
what do we do? Will you still talk to me? The bottom line here is the Sadducees
thought of the resurrection only in present terms, earthly conditions,
just as life always was. They didn’t see that God and
His power could make a whole new world and a whole new realm
and all kinds of differences and yet make it better. The foundation
of the Sadducees argument was erroneous. God could not only make a resurrection
of bodies, which was one of their problems. They didn’t see how
God could raise up physical bodies again after they had died, forgetting
all the while that God had made the first ones, forgetting all
the while all of God’s miracles that they claimed to hold to
in the Pentateuch. But not only could God do that,
but he could make a world that was better and different. Sadducees were assuming that
if there was a heaven, it would be much like life here, except
all the difficulties would be taken away and all the good things
would be multiplied, much like many people’s concept of heaven.
But that was their error. They assumed that it would be
just like this world. They didn’t even realize how
different It would be they couldn’t even conceive of how different
heaven could be. And Christ begins to explain. that the sons of this age are
married and are given in marriage, but those who are considered
worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the
dead. In other words, Christ points out point blank that don’t
even assume Sadducees, Pharisees or anybody listening in that
you’re going. It’s not axiomatic. But those who are worthy, neither
marry nor are given in marriage. And Jesus tells us point blank,
I mean, this would have calmed the college Bible study right
down. Because Jesus tells us why there is no marriage in heaven.
For they cannot die anymore, and that points us to the very
specific purpose of marriage. The primary reason for marriage
was for the propagation of the species. Humanity. It was so that we could have
children and be fruitful and multiply the earth. There are other blessings to
marriage, but that from God’s standpoint was the primary one.
And he says there is no marriage because they don’t die anymore.
We don’t need to replenish the earth. We won’t need pardon me
to replenish heaven. There will be no death and therefore
the population is fixed. There will be no adding to the
population. There’s no need to add to the
population. They cannot die anymore because
they are like angels and are sons of God. In other words,
he says marriage was an institution for this world. And it is to
continue no longer than this world. And when either the world
passes away or the people in it pass away, the institution
of marriage passes. We won’t need it for the state
of propagation. Being in a state of perfection,
said one, we won’t need it for mutual help. Do you know what
he’s saying there? What a blessing a wife is. I’ve told people many
times if it weren’t for my wife, I wouldn’t be in the ministry.
I would not do it. I wouldn’t even consider it. Paul did. And that was Paul. He had something I don’t have.
But in heaven, we’re not going to be beset by those kinds of
difficulties that life brings us. The cord of three strands
is not going to be necessary in eternity. We’re not going
to need a life partner in order to sail through the difficulties
of life. It’s just not going to be necessary. Neither is it going to be necessary
for the third element of marriage, not just propagation and not
just help in the life here and now, the very purpose that God
gave Adam, Eve, but for a remedy against passion. Neither will
that be an issue in heaven, because there will not be sinful passion
in heaven. And if you want to advance to
the next question, I’ll tell you, I don’t know. And if you don’t know what the
question is, I’ll tell you later. Christ’s words suggest an answer
to the yearning questions which rise up in our minds. Christ
goes there for us and He takes us right to heaven’s gate. We all wonder those things. Is
there not going to be any continuance in even the most precious relationships
that we have? I think there is. Is there going
to be no individual recognition? Am I going to know you and you?
I think there is. I think the relationships are
going to exist. They’re just going to be in completely
different conditions. It’s not going to be all this
marriage and all these relationships and certainly no strife. And
that’s why Jesus adds, like the angels. Well, how? You mean wings? White robes and wings and all
that other stuff that we see in pictures. Is that what we’re
going to be? The subject here is death and
the resurrection, and you don’t have to take it any further than
that when you say that we’re going to be like angels, like
angels with regards to death. We’re not going to die anymore.
We are going to be just like the angels are in their immortality. We’re going to be perpetual.
One said it this way, that they will be as angels, not in all
things, but they shall not die anymore and they shall not marry.
And somehow some people I know, they look at that and they say,
oh, well, that not married, that in and of itself will be heaven.
Well, there are others that would say, I can’t imagine heaven without
my wife. You know, somehow there will
not be marriage in heaven and God says it will be better. It
will be better. The relationships will be purer.
The intimacy will be greater. And everyone will be before their
God. Hebrews 1.4 says we’re not like
angels in every realm. Hebrews 1.4 says that having
become much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent
name than he. Christ is not like an angel.
We are not going to be like an angel. 1 John 3 says, Beloved,
now we are children of God and has not appeared as yet what
we will be, but we know that when He appears, we will be like
Him. Because we will see Him just
as He is. We’re not going to become angels,
but we will be as angels in heaven. will be free from death, will
be free from disease, will be completely delivered from the
condition that marriage and birth by which they were necessitated.
We won’t need it. Jesus says, lastly, they’re sons
of God and sons of the resurrection. What does He mean by that? It
means that they are those who are birthed into a new existence
by virtue of the resurrection. The words, the sons of the resurrection
there to be understood, not of the general resurrection of all
mankind. Everybody is going to be resurrected.
Do you realize that? Everybody who ever dies is going
to face God in eternity. Do you realize that? But when he says that we are
sons of the resurrection, he’s pointing to us who have named
the name of Christ who come to the resurrection
of life as Christ’s eternal purchase. What a blessing. What a blessing. And how can we so crassly reduce
it to worrying about whether, you know, we’re going to see
Grandma in heaven and whether we’ll recognize her as such.
She’ll be there. It’ll be the most glorious meeting
of all. Meeting those who have died and
gone before us. But that’s not going to be our
focus. Christ not only restored the
doctrine of the resurrection by this revelation in a sense. There’s no other passage that
you can turn to other than the harmony of the Gospels. And in
that sense, this is revelation even to the Sadducees and to
us. But then he takes them back to the Scriptures that they pointed
him to. Look at verse 37. He takes him
by scriptural reminder to restore this doctrine. And he says in
verse 37, but that the dead are raised, even Moses showed. In
the passage about the burning bush where he calls the Lord
God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He’s
not the God of the living or pardon me, he is not the God
of the dead, but of the living for all live to him. This to
me, I mean, this is just This is divine genius here. This is
only God knowing the Word as only God could. No theologian,
no commentator could explain the Word the way He does here.
He takes them back. The Pharisees had never thought
of this argument in seeking to refute the Pharisees’ error. He said it was their whole concept
of the Old Testament is warped and misunderstood. This denial
of existence after the death or after death. They said the
Scripture was silent on it, and Jesus said, oh, that’s just not
the case. Dead things, one commentator
said, can have a creator. Dead things can have a possessor.
But only living things can have a God. And that is essentially
what Jesus points them to. That if Abraham and any of the
patriarchs had seemingly ceased to exist, been vaporized and
back to dust, no soul, no eternal soul, no resurrected body, if
that was the case, then God would not have said, I am the God of
Abraham. I am the God of Isaac. I am the
God of Jacob. But that’s the tense that you
have. And this is exactly the point that Christ makes. He is the God because He continues
to be their God, which means they continue to exist, which
means they have an immortal soul. God is not going to can’t show
good to a dead man other than to his heritage. But Jesus points out that the
tense here is important. Neither the Sadducees or anybody
else ever spoke of God having been the God of Abraham. They never said God was the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God is. God is the God. There is an afterlife. There
is a resurrection. And Jesus says Moses pointed
to it quite clearly. Among with the dozens and dozens
of passages in the Old Testament that point to it as well. There
is a resurrection. There is a life after. There
is a soul that is going to answer to God. And the argument resonated
not only with believers, but it resonated even with the Pharisees. The Pharisees rejoiced in this
and they used this very argument for hundreds of years afterwards
in trying to refute this error. No wonder some of the scribes
in verse 39 said, Teacher, you have spoken well. I mean, this
kind of flattery Jesus could see right through. for they did not have the courage
to question Him any longer on anything.” Jesus restored the
doctrine of the resurrection. And it isn’t something that we
need to be afraid of. Paul says that we will all be
changed in the twinkling of an eye. We’re going to be changed.
It’s going to be totally different. It’s going to be so much better.
Let’s pray. Our gracious King, We bow before
you and we thank you for the gracious and thorough way that
you dealt with this question. Those who had such poor motives
and attitudes as to come and to bring you shame, to bring
shame upon a precious doctrine of Scripture, to advance their
own ideas and agendas, Father God, help us to be equally gracious
with our own damage. Lord, we know that many deny
the existence of a soul. The thought of eternity. Lord, we know that they’re troubled
by the very thought of having to answer to a holy God. God,
grant us grace to reach out to them as Christ did to these.
With no question in our mind, No doubt as to the goodness of
what the future holds for us in heaven for eternity. Lord,
we thank You for Your Word. We ask Your blessing upon it
in Christ’s name, Amen.