Understanding Resurrection: Jesus' Response to the Sadducees

Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him saying, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?” He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken.’” [00:13:44]

Beloved, let us never be greatly mistaken in our understanding of the Word of God, which Word you have just heard. Please be seated. Let us pray. Now, our Father, as we come to this portion of the text, once more we plead with you to condescend to our fragile understanding, that as our Lord speaks to us of those things that pertain to heaven, which we on our greatest moments cannot begin to imagine, we pray that You would give us eyes to see and ears to hear. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen. [00:21:52]

Listen to this for a minute, folks, because it’s so easy for us to sit back in the comfort of the twenty-first century and look in judgment at these contemporaries of Jesus of His day and think about how stupid or how arrogant they may have been, where we harbor so many of the same ideas and same attitudes within our own hearts. But Jesus rebukes them for this reason, “You are mistaken because you don’t know the Scriptures.” [00:10:05]

I think 100% of the theological errors that we make are because we don’t know the Scriptures because God has revealed the same things to all of us, and it’s in the same book. We read the same book, but we don’t always agree on what the book teaches, and that’s because we don’t really know what’s in there. And every believer should strive with all of his might to have a sound knowledge of the Word of God, lest we hear that same rebuke from Jesus, “You’re mistaken because you don’t know the Word of God. You don’t know the Scriptures.” [00:10:41]

Christianity, whatever else it is, dear friends, is a supernatural religion. We live in a culture that does everything it can to squelch and to quench any idea of the supernatural. And we say that we believe in God, and yet we live sometimes as if our lives were totally in the grip of the powers and forces of this world. We haven’t begun to understand the transcendent power of God, the God who can say, “Let there be light,” and the lights come on, the God whose power has been manifested throughout the gospel of Mark in the earthly pilgrimage of Jesus who calms the storm, who raises the dead, who heals the sick. [00:11:24]

And so Jesus rebukes these Sadducees who were very closely related to the priestly class and the ruling body of the Sanhedrin, and He said, “You people have no understanding. You don’t understand the Scriptures, and you don’t understand the power of God, so you come with this sophomoric question, trying to trap me about what happens to these men who were married to this one wife. And so He now begins to correct their thinking. He says, “For when they rise from the dead.” Now that’s strike one as far as the Sadducees say, because Jesus affirms resurrection here. [00:12:22]

He is saying to the Sadducees, “You’re mistaken about the resurrection, because they will rise from the dead, but they will neither marry nor will they be given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” Now remember He’s talking to people who don’t believe in resurrection and who don’t believe angels. Jesus said, “There is a resurrection, and when we are raised, we’ll be like those angels that you deny.” [00:13:02]

Now what does He mean when He says there’s no giving… or no marriage or giving in marriage? Now when I read this text to my wife, this is where I’m in jeopardy by saying Jesus says here in clear language that in heaven there is no marriage and there is no giving in marriage, so my dear, that should end the discussion once and for all. And it’s almost like she says to me, “Well if we can’t be married in heaven, I’m not sure I want to go there.” [00:14:23]

And I say, “If you’re not sure you want to go there, then maybe you won’t go there.” Don’t leave, honey. She already heard this sermon once today, so she’s been immunized to it. But I did give her some little grain of hope, and that’s about all it is. It’s an infinitesimal particle of hope that maybe that’s not what Jesus means here, because there are some thinkers who believe that what Jesus is saying is not that there will be no marriage, but He uses this Hebrew idiom of marrying and given in marriage, where in the gospel of Matthew, for example, when Jesus is talking about His coming in judgment, He’s saying of that day no one knows the day and hour, but that His coming would be like it was in the days of Noah. [00:15:00]

Do you realize what that means to us today? That Abraham, dear friends, is still alive. Isaac still lives. Jacob is alive and well, because their lives are in the hand of the God of the living who will not let death end our personal existence. So that we find in this text, dear friends, not only a magnificent philosophical refutation of the views of those who would try to entrap Jesus, but we find from our Master’s lips once again His bold and strong affirmation to the oldest question that man has, which is this, “If a man dies, shall he live again?” And our Lord without hesitation, without ambiguous, answers that question in the affirmative. We have life, and we have it forever. [00:21:36]

Father, we thank You again for the good news that sounds from this teaching of Jesus, from the One who is the power of life and is the resurrection and the life, silencing His critics by His clear affirmation that our souls and our bodies will not be destroyed by death, but that we will live in the resurrection. Amen. [00:23:18]