Mat 22; 23;33 23 The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, 24 saying: “Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. 25 Now there were with us seven brothers. The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother. 26 Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh. 27 Last of all the woman died also. 28 Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had her.” 29 Jesus answered and said to them, “You are [f]mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. 31 But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” 33 And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.
January 4 was my mother’s memorial day, which fell on a Tuesday. It has been 12 years since she died. When we went to her graveyard, this time I was noticing so many graveyards as we walked by. This world is, in a way, full of graveyards. Like we see in the Genesis chapters, “He begot so and so, and he died,” lived, died, lived, died. All die and get buried. All of us, within 100 years, will be buried; our sons or daughters may visit our graveyard and remember us.
Living with that bleak prospect of death, our only blessed hope is that we will rise again in Christ. Even without special revelation in God’s word, there is within man a belief that there is life after death. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says God has put eternity in our hearts. Man feels the pull of the afterlife. You see that in different forms in different cultures and religions. The Jews, who had the Scriptures, strongly believed in resurrection. The oldest book in the Old Testament, Job 19:26, says, “But I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end He will stand upon the earth. Even after my body has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.”
Then there is a key passage in the Old Testament about resurrection, Psalm 16:10, “Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will rest in hope. For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You will show me the path of life.” Daniel 12, verse 2, says, “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Though Old Testament people didn’t have full revelation as to how it will happen, as we have in the New Testament, they believed in resurrection.
But there was one group among them, one group that didn’t believe in resurrection. That is the group we will see today coming to question our Lord. Verse 23 says, “The same day came to Him”—“the Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection.” The phrase “the same day” in verse 23 indicates that this was an orchestrated effort to trip him up. One group after another took their turn. He exposed their hypocrisy and coming judgment with three parables, and they came together with three attacks.
First, as we already saw, the Pharisees and Herodians tried to trap him with views on taxes, a subject of intense and sensitive debate at that time. Their question was about paying the taxes to Rome, but in his glorious reply, the Lord not only answered them wisely, but his answer became the foundation of all subsequent teaching about the relationship between church and state.
The second attack is what we will see: these Sadducees sought to confound him with what they thought was a clever trick question concerning the resurrection, a doctrine they knew he believed but which they did not. The passage again reveals the beauty, the wonder, the majesty, and the wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 Headings: Who asked this question and why? What is their question? Our Lord’s answer? Everyone’s reaction.
Who asked this question and why?
Verse 23 says, “The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him.” Sadducees. Who are they? They were a political and religious sect in Israel at Christ’s time; they were different from the Pharisees. They were not many in number, a small group. What is special about them? Passage verse 23 says they very strongly say there is no resurrection. They were noted for a grand doctrine of denial. It is a terrible thing to be noted for what you don’t believe. Their great teaching they were spreading everywhere when they opened their mouth was to deny the resurrection of the body at the last day.
Acts 23:8 expands for us the inevitable consequences of denying resurrection: “For Sadducees say that there is no resurrection—and no angel or spirit; but the Pharisees confess both.” Not only resurrection, they also deny angels, spirit beings who do the work of God and praise God in heaven, and also deny the existence of any spirit or soul as a distinct entity that could continue apart from the body. These were three great pillars of their doctrine: no resurrection, no angel, no spirit. Human beings are only physical, and when the body dies, that is the end. No life after that, so no resurrection. Death ends everything without any future rewards or punishment.
A small child was trying to help someone understand Sadducees and remember what they believed. “Well, Sadducees, you see, they must be sad, you see, that is why they are called Sadducees.” Because they believed no angels, no spirit, no resurrection. In this life, where all die, filled with vanity, is anything calculated to bring utter sadness, and just live for things of this world. No resurrection, no angels, no spirit. Sadducees were sad, you see, for not believing in these things.
But the rival group, the Pharisees, believed in resurrection very strongly and believed in spirits and angels. The Pharisees believed where people who died would come back the same way they died, in the same form, with the same relationships, in the same conditions, so they were both continually fighting, always debating this topic.
Now, how can someone say they believe the Old Testament and deny resurrection? We saw Job, Daniel, and Psalms talking about resurrection in the Old Testament. It is like a dispensationalist now. They split the Bible into pieces and said this is applicable to us and this is not, this is inspired by God and this is not. Though they professed belief in the Old Testament, it was not the entire Old Testament; they believed only the five books written by Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The five are the only authoritative Scriptures. The supremacy of the Pentateuch caused them to deny the resurrection.
Their argument was, “Where in the five books of law does Moses directly talk about resurrection? Show us where Moses talks about resurrection, and we will believe.” The Pharisees really struggled to prove that. They used some weak verses—one silly verse, Deuteronomy 31:16, “This people shall rise up”—and the rest of the verse says—“and go a whoring.” So that verse doesn’t really do it. Another, Deuteronomy 32:39, “I kill and I make alive,” but all that means is that God is the author of life and death. So this debate went on and on. The Pharisees were definite about resurrection; the Sadducees were definite that there was none.
Often they argue; we see that in Acts 23:8: Paul, knowing that as a Pharisee, he is stuck in a trial, and both groups accuse him. Sensing that, he very subtly cries out, “I believe in resurrection, and that is why they put me in chains.” Oh, that topic, as if he lit a big cracker, makes them fight, almost a physical fight on this topic, about to tear Paul to pieces for this. So this is a hot topic for both.
Though the whole nation believed in resurrection, they are an odd, unusual group in the Jewish nation, against the general belief. They believed that the promises of “rewards” from God in the Bible were only ‘temporal,’ and were only concerned with matters of life on this earth. Well, if you don’t believe anything after this life, you will do everything to enjoy this life, right? Grab it all here because this is all there is. They believed that the body and soul went out of existence at death, with no penalties and no rewards, no future, nothing, just nonexistence. Therefore, they filled up their life with anything and everything they could to fulfill them. They were extremely wealthy and very influential. They were the aristocratic ruling class in Judaism. Amazingly, because of Rome’s political power, even the chief priest, the high priest, the noblest of the priests, were Sadducees. They who ran the temple concessions, the money changing, the buying and selling and all sorts of things that went on there, were under their power. They were pro-Rome. They had political power, money power, and hierarchy structural power given by Rome. Their authority was a delegated permission from Rome. They did everything they could to maintain Rome’s peace, confidence, and favor. Among the common Jews, they were very unpopular. People liked the Pharisees, but not the Sadducees.
Though the Pharisees and Sadducees had social animosity and political animosity (Pharisees anti-Rome, Sadducees pro-Rome), and theological animosity on resurrection, there’s one thing they agree on, and that is we must get rid of Jesus Christ. But in John 11:47, after Jesus resurrected Lazarus from the grave, it says, “Then gathered the chief priests and Pharisees a council.”
So the Sadducees and the Pharisees got together and they said, “What do we do? For this man does many miracles. If we let Him thus alone, all men will believe on Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” Now you see the heat? They’re afraid that He’s going to start a revolution, He’s going to lead the whole of the people after Him, attracted by His miraculous power. Rome’s going to come in and destroy them and their temple. If that happens, there is no meaning for their life. If their power, prestige, wealth, position, and money go away, with no hope of resurrection, there is no reason why they should live, right? They will do everything to save that. And one of them, named Caiaphas, who was a Sadducee and was the high priest, says instead of all suffering, He has to die. So verse 53 says, “From that day forth, they took counsel together to put Him to death.”
Now they see him coming in a triumphal entry with crowds, calling him Messiah, and cleansing the temple. So all gather to attack him. We already saw the last attack was from a combination of Pharisees and Herodians asking a question about tax, trying to get him killed through the Romans. Now that failed. “If we can’t get Him in trouble with Rome, then let’s discredit Him with all of the people, and let’s put Him in a position where He comes off a fool for what He believes and teaches, and the crowd will immediately dissipate and see Him for what He is.” And so the attempt here is to discredit Him as a teacher.
Now, here’s their plan: They want to ask Jesus a question that will make Him look like a fool, to discredit Him with the people. You see, if you can just discredit Jesus with all the people, then He’s lost His influence, then it doesn’t matter what He teaches anymore, and then it’s no threat with the Roman situation because if nobody listens to Jesus, He’s no threat anymore, right? So if they can discredit Jesus with the Jewish people, they’ve accomplished their goal.
And they approached Him with what you could call a logical absurdity. They asked Him a question that no doubt they had asked the Pharisees a myriad of times and made the Pharisees look like fools. If they can’t silence Him as an insurrectionist, they’ll silence Him as a fool, and so they come to this absurdity. Sadducees watched and saw that the Pharisees failed to trap the Lord, they stepped in. And if they can prove their point on the doctrine of resurrection, ah, what a victory for them.
So we have seen who asked this question and why. Now what is the question?
What is their question?
Verse 23: They start with “Moses said”—and you can know they’d quote Moses, right? The question comes in verse 28. Before that, they tell a story using a law which Moses had commanded in the Old Testament.
Verse 23: “The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, saying: ‘Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.’” This is a law found in Deuteronomy 25:5-6, here giving the law to govern the nation of Israel. “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.”
Now, the law said this: If a man marries a woman and he has no child, no male child, and he dies, that man’s name and family is not passed on. So an unmarried brother is to take over his widow, to marry her, to raise up a child, and that firstborn son will be considered the child of the dead husband. That was the law. God gave that law in those ancient times to preserve the land in its tribal inheritance, to preserve the families, maintaining the twelve tribes and their land.
This is a practice that was followed in Israel. Not just here. Even before this became a written law by Moses, it was a custom in Genesis 38 in the household of Judah, and you will remember he had Er and married a woman called Tamar. When Er died, he had a second son, Onan, and told him to marry Tamar, the widow. He refused to give a child to his brother’s wife because the child would not be in his name. And it says God killed him, Genesis 38:8 to 10. We see Boaz beautifully fulfilling that by marrying the widow Ruth. That was what was known as the levirate law, L-E-V-I-R-A-T-E, from a Latin word, levir, having to do with brother-in-law. This is levirate law or practice.
They use this and tell a story and tell it in a way that it actually happened to one of their brothers.
Verse 25: “Now there were with us seven brothers. The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother. Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh. Last of all the woman died also.”
Wow, what a sad story. There is an old classic musical movie, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” Well, here’s a new twist: “Seven Brothers for One Bride.” This group of seven brothers. And the first one, he married a wife, died. Having no child, left his wife to his brother, according to the levirate law. The second died, left it to the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, left it to the seventh—and I’ll tell you right now, if I was the seventh, I would write a letter before the day of marriage and run away as a fugitive. I mean, that’s a dangerous killer bride. I’m not sure what’s going on, but everybody’s dying real fast. This may not be a real story, it must be definitely an imagination, but they are lying. Once, twice, third, okay. Even third, and to the seventh. If this is real life, this must be either the dumbest set of brothers in all of history or the craftiest “black sorcerer widow” that ever lived. For our relief, verse 27 says finally, “And then she died”—much to the relief, I suspect, of some nephews who may have been next for consideration. Died swallowing seven.
See, if they said two or three brothers, it would be enough for their point, but they stretch it to a long seven to make the resurrection look really stupid. They are oozing out triumphant excitement in their eyes: “Ah, we are going to make this resurrection so stupid and show ourselves so smart.” Make Jesus a fool before the crowd.
So their great question comes in verse 28. So after they set out, this little smirk on their face when they say in the verse: “Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had her.” “Ha, ha.” You see the stupidity of that? If you say there is a resurrection, see the logical consequences. It was reduced to the level of absurdity. They’re all going to come back the way they were when they died, right? So this girl is going to come back and be everybody’s wife, and you’ve got polygamy in the righteous, eternal, resurrection life. What an idiotic thought.
Not one of them was able to make a child, so in the resurrection, everyone will have an equal claim over her. See, if the seventh one had borne a child for her, he would have the place of precedence because the union was blessed with a child. But they were very careful to set the thing in such a way that there was only one thing for Jesus to do: Swallow his spit, clear his throat, look at this complex question and say, “Maybe I should go back and re-think about resurrection and give you an answer about this tomorrow. Nobody asked me like this,” or he will have a flush of red, tension, and change the subject. Then in the victory, they will put Jesus to shame and discredit him before the crowd. “Maha people, see your Messiah, cannot answer this question, talks so much about resurrection, eternal life, Kingdom of God. What Messiah?”
They must have asked this question to the Pharisees, confused them, shamed them many times, and always won. None in the past or this generation so far has been able to explain this question to them, their favorite puzzle question. And they think they’ve got Him because they believe He’ll answer like the Pharisees. So they are sure they are going to shame Jesus.
So the atmosphere is electric. They ask the question and wait for the answer. One can kind of imagine some Pharisee winking at the crowd.
Our Lord’s Answer
He starts with a straight hit on their forehead. Verse 29: “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.'”
I like that direct approach. A straight hit on the forehead. “You are wrong. You have just put your ignorance on display.” Lenski says, “The bubble blown by the Sadducees is punctured.” They wanted to shame Him; He shames them before everyone. They always prided themselves on being right. Upfront, He says, “You are wrong.” He really discredits them. “You are mistaken,” and it means you went wrong in your thinking and deceived yourself, and wandered away from the truth, going astray. You are leading yourself astray from the truth. You are mentally cut loose from reality. You have gone far away from the truth. The idea is that they were “deceived” in their thinking, which led to going astray in their life from truth and God. It is a symptom of a disease; you are victims of that. The root cause, the disease that caused this deception and going astray, are two things: “not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God” (v. 29).
Can you imagine their reaction? They come saying they are right, quoting the Scriptures, and claiming to know God’s power, saying as experts, “How can this be logical? We are great thinkers.” No where in the five books of Moses does it teach resurrection.
He says, “You are wrong in your thinking itself.” Because, firstly, you do not know the Scriptures. Knowing in terms of true perception—you quote, talk, read, but you do not know the Scriptures. You are ignorant of the Word of God. You don’t have an experiential knowledge of the Word. It refers to reading and knowing a thing so valuable that you have an attitude of deep respect, love, and esteem that it is of great worth. You have not read and known the Scriptures in such a way that you realize it is of great worth. You read it daily, and it is part of your lifestyle, part of your thinking, and renews your mind and affects your thinking. You understand Scriptures in its context, its big picture, and the spiritual meaning of passages. You don’t know the Scriptures like that, and because of that, you went astray in your thinking and life.
It is not innocent ignorance; it is willful ignorance. The Scriptures are given to them, but they choose not to know them in their fullness and want to cut them to pieces, saying, “Only five books we will believe.” They refuse to make it part of their lifestyle because the truths of these things would have been a light shining on their sin and hinder their sinful lifestyle, and affect their priorities and commitments in life. They want to go this way, but the daily effect of Scripture will turn you, so you chose to “disbelieve” some things at the very start—they were led astray in their thinking and were “mistaken.”
What a surprising rebuke that must have been to the irreverent and disrespectful attitude toward the things of God these Sadducees were displaying! He exposes their heart condition: this question arises in your heart because of this ignorance of Scriptures. Before answering the question, He points to the source of this question: not knowing the Scripture.
Not only that, you do not know the power of God. You think God’s power cannot raise dead bodies from the grave. See, the doctrine of bodily resurrection is a favorite topic for accusing the Bible. That the body, after being laid in the grave, eaten by worms, will be raised one day. Yes, suppose one dies in the sea, and fishes and sharks eat it, bones decompose at the bottom, and snails and crabs eat it. From eating that flesh, their body of fish and crab grows, into flesh and bones, and then that fish or crab is cut and eaten by men and animals, they die, and on and on. Cells go through thousands of transformations. How many forms? You say all those cells will come back and rise from the dead. What a joke.
The second problem Jesus says is, “You do not know the power of God.” Because Scripture again and again highlights the resurrection of the body as one of the most amazing displays of God’s power in God’s redemptive activity. Romans 1:4: “and declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead.” God, who could speak everything out of nothing, how easy it is to restore them back, even if they have gone through a million transformations. God’s great display of power is not creation, it is going to be resurrection. If Creation is so glorious, how much more glorious will resurrection be, when He makes all things new.
“You do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God”—two reasons for your mistaken thinking and life. Now He will demonstrate how they don’t know the Scriptures and the power of God. He gives illustrations.
The First Illustration: Ignorance of God’s Power
Verse 30: First, for their ignorance of the power of God: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven.”
For in the resurrection, He has not shown one moment of doubt. He doesn’t say if they rise, or suppose. No, when God asserts, we should assert.
Look at His glorious answer. They asked about resurrection, but He will give such an answer, and not only an answer about resurrection, but crushes every doctrine of the Sadducees, those three pillars, remember: no resurrection, no angels, no spirit. Just with this answer, the whole sect of Sadducees has to repent or die. They don’t have any scriptural authority to live anymore or believe what they believe. He brings in angels and says there are angels, too. You say no angels. They will be like angels.
How does this relate to the power of God? The Sadducees’ thought of resurrection assumed that dying is a worse state, and bringing dead bodies back to this state is something impossible, even God cannot do. Right, they don’t know God’s power. He says, “You don’t believe God has the power to bring them back to this worldly state. I am telling you God’s power is so infinite that God in the resurrection is not going to just institute things as they are in the present state, but He, in His power, is going to elevate us to a more glorious state with a glorious body and soul.” Where they will be like angels, so perfect, not requiring marriage.
It doesn’t say they are the angels, it says they’re like them. In what sense will we be like angels? The explanation in Luke 20:34-36: “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; Why? Nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.'”
Angels do not marry or have children. It was never God’s purpose to populate heaven with angels through marriage and children. But in the present world order, marriage union and having children are part of this order. But in the age to come, there shall be no more pain, crying, or death. Former things are passed. If no death, we become immortal. The need for marriage and procreation is done away with. We are raised to a state like unto angels in that specific area. 1 Corinthians 15, Paul talking about resurrection, says this corruptible will put on incorruption, this mortal will put on immortality.
Marriage is necessary in this life for reproduction, preservation, and propagation of the race. In heaven, it’ll be as unnecessary for us as it is for angels. The fixed number of elect are already born and redeemed. So nobody is going to die. Like angels, we will be spiritual beings, eternal beings, who do not marry and do not procreate. Why not? Because they have a fixed number, and since none of them ever die, you don’t need any to replace them.
“Well, why do you have sex, marriage, and reproduction and childbirth in this life?” To keep people populated because everybody dies, and it’s given to us for the perpetuation of the race. But the next life doesn’t need that because nobody’s going to die over there, so if nobody’s going to die over there and it’s a fixed number of the redeemed, nobody needs to be replacing anybody.
No marriage in the next life, folks. None.
Now, that hits people in this world two ways. Some people say, “Praise the Lord, wow, that is heaven. I mean I’ve had all I need.” It’s unfortunate, but some people do feel that way. Other people’s anxiety is a little different. They’re in a big hurry to get married before the Second Coming because they’re afraid they’re going to miss something really wonderful, and that’s true. Some whose married life is so joyful feel sad, “Oh, no marriage.” That’s true. But comparatively speaking, we have to realize that the best of this life can’t even begin to touch the life to come. Intimacy and love with one another will be so divine and glorious. We’ll all be perfectly close to each other and all perfectly intimate with the living God Himself.
We will be so perfect in resurrection, all the reasons for which marriage was instituted will not be there. God saw it is not good for man to be alone, and made Eve as a helpmate. We will never be alone; we will be perfect, not needing any helpmate. The married state in this world is a composition of joys and sorrows, cares; those that enter upon it are taught to look upon it as subject to changes, “richer and poorer, sickness and health”; and therefore it is fit for this mixed, changing world, but not in the eternal world of increasing joy.
We will be “like” angels in that we will have none of the limitations and needs that we experience now in these unglorified bodies of ours. “Marriage” is something that God made for temporal life on earth. It was required for our fleshly desires, deficiencies in this nature. In the resurrection, in glorified bodies, there will be no lack of any of these.
Luke, in his parallel passage, says, “We will be equal to the angels.” Equally deathless, equally spiritual, equally glorified, equally eternal, who have no longer any need to reproduce. The point is, “You Sadducees show nothing but your ignorance.” Nothing but your ignorance that you can’t believe in a God who could create a body for a resurrected life that would be greater than the one He created in this world. You have a weak, small, inadequate view of God. Now, what kind of a God have you got who cannot resolve a messed up relationship here?
You say there must needs be confusion, and strife, and unseemly disorder, if, after death, men and women were to live again. And how can you be so ignorant of God’s power as to demand that God is unable to produce anything more than people as they are? And so we’re going to come back in a unique and marvelous, transformed way.
You are ignorant of the power of God. They didn’t allow themselves to truly “know” just how great God’s power is to transform His people from the state of humility and fallenness, which characterizes us now, into a state of heavenly glory that is like that of the angels! The arrangement of marrying a brother-in-law is not applicable in the age to come. That is your assumption. God said that rule for this life, and you have taken that and, not knowing the power of God, you are projecting it into the glorious age to come after the resurrection. The power of God can affect that change in terms of bodily experience, but we will be fulfilled and complete even without sexual intimacy.
He then illustrates that you are not only ignorant of the power of God, but you’re ignorant of the Scripture. You’re even ignorant of the Pentateuch, verse 31. Watch this: “But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying,”
Just so sarcastic: “Have you not read that which was spoken to you by God?” Haven’t you been reading your Scripture about the resurrection? And He quotes in verse 32: “‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?” Stop there. You know where that’s from? Exodus 3:6. That’s the Pentateuch.
You say, “Well, wait a minute. Is that supposed to be a statement about resurrection?” It is. It is indeed a statement about resurrection. He quotes Moses because that’s what they demanded, and the statement is an emphatic statement. In the Greek it’s ego eimi, I am, present tense, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. And the argument here is an argument of the verb tense. He doesn’t say, “I was the God of Abraham, I was the God of Isaac, and I was the God of Jacob.”
You see, in Exodus 3:6, Abraham was dead, Isaac was dead, and Jacob was dead already more than 400 years ago. How, then, can He say, “I am the God of Abraham, I am the God of Isaac, I am the God of Jacob,” which is exactly what the Hebrew of 3:6 implies?
And His point, then, at the end of the verse: “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” So if God says, “I am the God of these people,” they must be alive—alive. God uses the present tense and says, “I am now God of these men.” He is a living God and communicates vital influences to those to whom He is a God. If, when Abraham died, there had been an end of him, there would have been an end likewise of God’s relation to him as his God; but at that time, when God spoke to Moses, He was the God of Abraham, and therefore Abraham must be then alive, which proves the immortality of the soul in a state of bliss; and that, by consequence, infers the resurrection of the body. For there is such an inclination in the human soul to its body, as would make a final and eternal separation inconsistent with the bliss of those that have God for their God.
The Sadducees’ notion was that the union between body and soul is so close that, when the body dies, the soul dies with it. Now, upon the same hypothesis, if the soul lives, as it certainly does, the body must sometime or other live with it.
Jesus, in the use of the passage, is asserting the living of the souls of the physically dead. God is not worshiped by corpses. He’s not the God of people who don’t exist. Who wants to be the God of people who don’t exist? Now, note that each is individually singled out there, “I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,” and He’s talking about the personal, intimate relationship of each of them.
Notice He goes to the book which they regard as authoritative and quotes from there. God says not “I was Abraham’s God,” no, “I am God of Abraham.” “I am the God who continues to have an intimate relationship of life and worship with these though they are dead,” which means they still must be, what? Alive. Profound, absolutely profound. He is not the God of dead men; He’s the God of the living. And if He said after they were all dead that He was their God, present tense, then they were still someplace.
You know the genius of this answer? I cannot get to the bottom of it. There is another aspect. Why did Jesus pick the incident of the burning bush? What was God doing? He was coming down to inform Moses He was going to redeem His people from Egypt. He will make a covenant. The language of “I will be their God” is covenant language. It is redemptive covenant language.
The language of “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” is language of the redemptive covenant. When God created man, He created body and soul. Their identity, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is body and soul. When I revealed Myself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they were body and soul. If I am identifying Myself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as body and soul, then it is God’s own pledge that He will be forever their God and will ultimately bring their full redeemed identity with body and soul, when Abraham will rise with a glorified body and spirit.
Two things are stated by this: 1. Abraham’s soul exists even now. 2. Sometime in the future, the body must rise again and join, that is the redemptive covenant promise I have made to these people.
Our Lord says, “Have you not read God said to Moses in redemptive covenant language: I will be to them all that I am, and use my power to redeem them to a glorified and perfect state?” Hebrews 11:10: Abraham understood his ultimate fulfillment was not just a physical land in the world, or a state of floating spirit in heaven, “for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”
If you read their history, which will be part of your Bible reading, you will notice they believed God and obeyed God, and took great risks, but all their life didn’t enjoy extraordinary happiness in this life. God never fulfilled His promises while they were alive, right? They were strangers in the land of promise, wandering, pinched with famine; they had not a foot of ground of their own but a burying-place, which directed them to look for something beyond this life. What was there in this world to distinguish them and the heirs of their faith from other people, anywhere proportionable to the dignity and distinction of this covenant? If no happiness had been reserved for these great and good men on the other side of death, that melancholy word of poor Jacob’s, when he was old (Genesis 47:9), “Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been,” would have been an eternal reproach to the wisdom, goodness, and faithfulness of that God who had so often called himself the God of Jacob. The charge which the dying patriarch Joseph gave concerning their bones, and that in faith, was an evidence that they had some expectation of the resurrection of their bodies.
Therefore there must certainly be a future state, in which, as God will ever live to be eternally rewarding, so Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, will ever live to be eternally rewarded. That of the apostle (Hebrews 11:16) is a key to this argument, where, when he had been speaking of the faith and obedience of the patriarchs in the land of their pilgrimage, he adds, “Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; because he has provided for them a city, a heavenly city,” implying that if He had not provided so well for them in the other world, considering how they sped in this, He would have been ashamed to have called Himself their God; but now He is not, having done that for them which answers it in its true intent and full extent.
“I am that I am,” when I made a redemptive covenant with them when they had both body and soul. I will not let their body rot in the grave, but will redeem them and by rising them from the dead.
Had you known the Scriptures, with proper understanding, you would have known God promises resurrection and even in the book of Moses. Had you known the power of God, you would have known that God can raise people in a glorified state where the number of marriages here, or the problems of this life, are not going to be a problem there.
Cannot God raise and create us in a glorified state better than what He created us in creation? You don’t know the power of God and think as if God has spent all His creative power on the way we are and can’t improve on it? If you knew the power of God and if you knew the Scripture, you wouldn’t be wrong.
The unchanging, eternal, covenant-keeping God who made His promises to His chosen will bring them to fulfillment, and they are alive now as spirits, and as He made a covenant to them while they were in body and soul, He will raise them and restore them and make them enter the fulfillment of the covenant blessings. They are alive to inherit all that was ever promised to them.
He devastated them. He’d done what the wisest rabbi had never been able to do. He’d done what all the masterminds and the Pharisees could never do. He came up with a verse—came up with a verse, more than one verse, right out of the Pentateuch. He was no fool; He made them look like fools. There will be a resurrection—there will be a resurrection. They were about to see the first fruits of it, by the way, on Sunday. It was coming pretty fast.
So we have seen who asked this question, what was the question, and the glorious answer of our Lord.
Reaction of Everyone
It’s interesting that we don’t read here of the Sadducees’ response. Instead, we read of the multitudes that listened.
I suspect that the multitudes had heard this kind of debate before; don’t you? They had probably heard the Sadducees whip out their favorite “perplexing question” and watched them stump the scribes and Pharisees with it. They probably wondered many times how they themselves would answer it; and concluded that they weren’t able to. But when they heard the Lord’s answer, we’re told that the multitudes “were astonished at His teaching” (v. 33). The word that is used literally means that they were “struck out of their wits” by it. They went out of their minds. It blew their minds.
And what’s more, Luke, in his Gospel, tells us that the scribes—the experts in the Scriptures—answered and said, “Teacher, You have spoken well” (Luke 20:39). Amazing, this group of scribes was always together with the Pharisees. His dead enemies appreciate Him for His glorious answer. This new rabbi from Galilee answered the unanswerable question, gave the passage that none of the Pharisees or all of the Pharisees could discover, and it says they were astonished.
But more to the point, we don’t hear of the unbelieving Sadducees saying anything further! Amazing, astounding, marvelous, this Jesus Christ, hailed as King, hailed as Savior, hailed as Messiah, confronted by hate-filled religious leaders who wanted Him discredited and dead. He’s unaffected by their pecking assaults. And He only manifests greater glory, produces greater wonder, and confounds His enemies. They’ll be back for another shot in the next passage.
Applications
Though our time is up, let me briefly bring some applications.
1. The Source of Unbelief: Ignorance and Pride
Just like people came to attack the Lord, people have attacked the church and believers, and may attack us to shake the foundations of our belief. Resurrection is a foundation, so they try to shake that. This is a timeless technique people use to shake Christian foundations—two things they do: they always pick up mysterious doctrines and exalt their mind more than the Word of God. That is church history. When the church gives room to that, it results in liberalism. That is what happened in church history.
They attack mysterious things, raise their mind, and attack foundations. Jehovah’s Witnesses try to do this with the Trinity. Liberalists do this with the person of Christ, and the miracles of Christ, and the creation of the world. Arminians do this with God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility, and Christ’s atonement.
Some questions are genuinely wanting to know. We should attempt to help them with kindness if it is honest. But when we realize they are asking questions to us to make us look stupid because we believe in God’s word, when they are committed to unbelief, and whose motive is to discredit the faith, I believe our Lord’s example teaches us not to simply jump to the question first—as we’re so easily inclined to do. The Lord didn’t insult them or adjust with them. The Lord exposed their spiritual condition of unbelief as going astray, and the reason is not knowing the Scriptures and not knowing the infinite power of God. In today’s passage, 2 Peter 3, scoffers will come. Peter said some things are difficult to understand, which the ignorant twist.
It must never surprise us if we meet with like objections against the doctrines of Scripture, and especially against those doctrines which concern another world. I am amazed with how many pastors ask questions about which the Bible clearly doesn’t talk, like “Where did Christ go for three days after dead?” or “What does it mean Christ went to spirits in Noah’s time and preached?” or “How will the Second Coming come?” They will ‘intrude’ into things unseen, and make imaginary difficulties their excuse for unbelief. Supposed cases are one of the favorite strongholds in which an unbelieving mind loves to entrench itself. Such a mind will often set up a shadow of its own imagining, and fight with it, as if it were a truth. Such a mind will often refuse to look at the overwhelming mass of plain evidence by which Christianity is supported, and will fasten down on some one singular difficulty, which it fancies is unanswerable. The talk and arguments of people of this character should never shake our faith for a moment. For one thing, we should remember that there must needs be deep and dark things in a religion which comes from God, and that a child may put questions which the greatest philosopher cannot answer. For another thing, we should remember that there are countless truths in the Bible, which are clear and unmistakable. Let us first attend to them, believe them, and obey them. So doing, we need not doubt that many a thing now unintelligible to us will yet be made plain. So doing, we may be sure that ‘what we know not now we shall know hereafter.’
So when the unbelieving come and question us, the Lord’s example teaches us that, first, we should lovingly but resolutely—in the power and authority of the Holy Spirit—expose the unbelief in the heart of the one asking the question. We should be bold and honest, saying, “You are mistaken, friend. You are led astray by the fact that you have chosen to begin in the wrong place. You have chosen from the outset to neither rightly esteem God’s power nor His revealed word as you should. You have chosen to begin in disbelief in these things; and then to reason from your disbelief. And because you’ve begun on the wrong path, you’ve ended up in the wrong place.”
Then, the Lord’s example teaches us that we should lovingly but resolutely—and again, in the power of the Holy Spirit—affirm what God’s word says. We’re to put His revealed word forth to them plainly, and let it speak for itself. They may hear it and repent. Or they may hear it and harden their hearts against God even more. But the outcome is not our business. That’s up to the Holy Spirit. Our job is to simply give them God’s truth from God’s word, and let it do its work.
2. The Necessity of a “Doctrine of Ends”
Our faith in the doctrine of the end things must be clear and strong. One preacher said, “He whose doctrine of ends is not strong, his journey will not be right.” C.S. Lewis called it a “doctrine of ends.” Is our doctrine of ends strong—the doctrine of the end of the world, of the world to come, of the connection between this world and the next? That was the Sadducees’ problem. They had no doctrine of ends, or, better, they had a false doctrine of ends, and that false doctrine prevented them from a true understanding of this life and this world.
The problem is people have no doctrine of ends. They do not see the present in terms of an eternal future. They measure the present by the present only, and that changes everything, distorts everything, corrupts everything. You cannot know the truth about today, about your life today, unless you connect today to tomorrow, the eternal future. You cannot rightly measure anything in the present unless you measure it in terms of eternity, your life after death, your existence that continues forever in either heaven or hell.
This is, in fact, the problem of our entire world in a way. It explains all political and religious problems in our country, why there is so much injustice, it explains so much about crime and divorce and television and the internet and the worldliness of ordinary human life; why? They don’t believe in resurrection, they have a wrong idea of death and after death. Not just the world.
What about churches? We can today write that more than 75% of churches are churches of Sadducees. What is the teaching? It is all this life, this life, the best life now, prosperity, prosperity, blessings for this life. Where is the doctrine of ends taught, and that we should live our life looking for that life? Why are churches so worldly, prosperity gospel spreading like fire? All are converting to Sadduceeism. That is not the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Look at all men, what is so special about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Hebrews says they lived for the future. That is true faith. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen… without faith it is impossible to please Him.” All that Abraham did—left his own nation, went to Canaan, lived in tents—for what? “for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” Verse 13: “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God.” They joyfully gave up this world. “By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward.”
What about us? There is the Sadducee in everyone of us. We do not openly confess like the Sadducees’ naked unbelief in life after death, but, at the same time, we make their mistake every day we live. Too often we also live as if we had no doctrine of ends. Too often we live as if there were no world to come, as if we were not to continue our lives after we died, as if heaven and hell were not real, or, as if heaven were not to be as glorious as Holy Scripture says it will be.
We just want to entertain vague ideas of heaven, but it doesn’t seem like a real place for us. In this passage, the Lord hits us, saying positively, it is going to be so glorious, so real; there will not be required the greatest joy of this life, which is marriage. That is how real heaven is.
If we really believe in resurrection, and that we will rise, and we will be glorified in heaven, what an absolutely inexpressible difference it makes, it must make, to believe that. Really to believe that! How can your life or mine remain the same, how can the daily round of our existence not be supercharged with meaning, with purpose, with gladness, with expectation, with living hope when we know, really know that we will rise with a glorified body and heaven awaits, and that when we come there we will be there forever.
Perhaps we are not often tempted to doubt the truth of a resurrection, and a life to come. But, unhappily, it is easy to hold truths theoretically, and yet not realize them practically.
How much spiritual benefit we will get to daily meditate on our future resurrection and life. Remember one sermon, “Filled your whole with so much…” Maybe listen to it.
Are we ready for this life? Should we enjoy it, if admitted to take part in it? Is the company of God, and the service of God pleasant to us now? Is the occupation of angels one in which we should delight? These are solemn questions. Our hearts must be heavenly on earth, while we live, if we hope to go to heaven when we rise again in another world (Colossians 3:1-4).
Why don’t we have that excitement? You know why? You know what hinders that joy and living for the future, bubbling and living with blessed hope? The Sadducee in us.
What is his problem? He errs not knowing the Scriptures. Isn’t that our problem? We hear Scriptures, and read, but like them, we are making the Scriptures part of our lifestyle, daily washing our mind, soaking our mind in the Scripture.
Then we don’t know the power of God in our lives. We don’t believe God can resolve the small problems in our lives, and get all worked up. How will we believe God will raise us when we are fully dead and buried? How much faith do we have?
May God help us to always kill the Sadducee in us by constantly knowing the Scriptures as part of our life and believing in the power of God who can raise the dead.
Just in two days, Christ is going to be put to death so cruelly, but He kept over and over teaching His disciples, “That is not the end; do not let your hearts be troubled.” In the following chapters, He will teach about the end of the world, judgment, hell and heaven. This life is not all there is. Don’t just live for this life. Live in the light of the future.
He not only taught that, but by His example, He showed, the reason He came into the world, that kept Him going in the teeth of so much opposition, so much hatred, so much blind misunderstanding and attack upon attack, in spite of all the suffering He went to the cross for and died. There is a world to come. There is life after death. He showed that by rising from the dead.
Unless you live for that world, live in the hope of that world, your life here will be meaningless and empty, and there will be terrible beyond words. It is that fact that must make you take me seriously and believe in me and follow me.
May we not err like the Sadducees, not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God.
3. See the Majestic Deity of Christ
See the majestic deity of Christ. This should fill us with confidence and hope. Oh, it’s so exciting to me to see Christ come up with things that no one else could ever come up with, answer questions that can never be answered. Why? Because this is the infinite mind of God, this is proof positive that this is God in human flesh. And so I see majestic deity revealed here, and that’s a confident thing to see. I mean, I know in whom I have believed, right? And He is none other than Christ the Son of the living God. I see His deity in His profound wisdom. Instead of them discrediting Him, He discredited them and exposed Himself in all His majesty one more time.
4. His Commitment to Scripture
The second thing I see is His commitment to Scripture. Oh, how He loved the Word—oh, how He knew the Word, just exactly the right one for the right situation. I bless God that He put His confidence in the Word because if Jesus leaned on the Word, that’s a great confidence builder for me to lean on the Word, isn’t it? How much we should learn the Word. What encouragement this should be for people struggling to read the Bible calendar. Can you answer scriptural questions like Christ? How will you ever become like Christ?
Finally, those of you who have still not come to Christ. Do you see what glorious future awaits when you put your faith in Christ? They will rise and be like angels, be so glorified, the highest joy of marriage and sex may not even be needed there, but it is millions of times more joyful. Do you have this hope?
Christ says nothing of the state of the wicked in the resurrection, but if God’s children will be like angels, by consequence, what will those who don’t trust Christ be? They shall be like the devils, whose lusts they have done. That is, they will be thrown in the lake of fire prepared for the devil. Come to Christ today, believe in Him, and He will give you this hope.
Let us settle it in our minds that the dead are in one sense still alive. From our eyes they have passed away, and their place knows them no more. But in the eyes of God they live, and will one day come forth from their graves to receive an everlasting sentence. There is no such thing as annihilation. The idea is a miserable delusion. The sun, moon, and stars—the solid mountains, and deep sea—will one day come to nothing. But the weakest babe of the poorest man shall live for evermore, in another world. May we never forget this! Happy is he who can say from his heart the words of the Nicene Creed, “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”
The Bible mostly talks about heaven in negative—what is not there. We shall hunger no more, nor thirst any more. Sickness, pain, and disease, will not be known. Wasting, old age, and death will have no place. And, to pass from negatives to positives, one thing we are told plainly—we shall be “as the angels of God.” Like them, we shall serve God perfectly, unhesitatingly, and unweariedly. Like them, we shall ever be in God’s presence. Like them, we shall ever delight to do His will. Like them, we shall give all glory to the Lamb. These are deep things. But they are all true.
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 