He Is Not The God Of The Dead But Of The Living

This morning we're carrying on in Luke, and our text this morning is another example of the Jewish leaders coming to Jesus and trying to catch him in something that he says. This time it's the Sadducees who pose the question to Jesus, and they ask him about marriage and the resurrection. As I read the question, you'll realize it's quite a strange question. It seems like it's just an odd question. As we study this text, though, we're going to see, one, who the Sadducees are, and we're also going to see how Jesus exposes the foolishness of their question from the Scripture and learn that this is, by the end of it, my hope is that we're going to see the ways that we're tempted to live as the Sadducees. It's easy to look at other people and be like, well, what idiots they are. And yet they're given to us as an example to help us learn and to grow in holiness ourselves. And so while the Sadducees are quite foolish and their question is a fool's question, they're not so different from us as we might want them to think they are. And so I hope by the end of it, we can see and learn from their error so that we don't repeat it. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word from Luke chapter 20, verses 27 through 30. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. 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 the age and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for 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 called the Lord the God of Abraham, 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. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. We can take our text and basically divide it up into two halves with an introduction. And so we're going to work through it in that order. But we need to start with the introduction. We need to understand who... the Sadducees are because they haven't really shown up so far. And all of the questioning and the persecution of Jesus or the desires to kill him, we haven't found them yet. We've had Pharisees, we've had scribes, we've had elders, but we haven't had the Sadducees. And what I want you to know is that the Jewish religion, such as it was at that time, was broken up into sects or groups who believed different things. And yet together they

they all worked together and all had members on what was called the Sanhedrin, which was the high court. And they would disagree and they would fight and they would argue pretty intensely at times, as we're going to come to see. But one of the unique things about the Sadducees was that they, at the beginning of our text, it says that they came to him and that they were those who said that there was no resurrection. They didn't believe in an eternal life or a life after death. They thought that when you died, you were done. That was it. There are a number of other unique things about them. One of the peculiarities I want to draw your attention to is that they only considered the first five books of the Bible, or the Old Testament, to be Scripture. They rejected the prophets, the wisdom, the history. They believed Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and that's it. And so when they say to him, Moses has said,

They're referring to what they believe to be true, to be what God has said. But they don't believe in the prophets. And so you can understand if someone, in our day, if we were to modernize it, and someone was to say, well, I only believe in the New Testament. And someone else said, well, I believe in the New Testament and the Old Testament. You can understand the divisions that would exist all the way down through with these people. Well, these are the divisions that exist between the Sadducees and the Pharisees. Because the Sadducees reject the resurrection. They don't believe in the vast majority of the Old Testament as being given by God. And the Pharisees do. And so these two groups are always, always fighting. Always, always arguing. You can see an example of this in Scripture in Acts 23. So this is later on after Jesus has died, raised, and ascended. Paul's ministering. And he's in hot water.

He's getting thrown around, and they're trying to arrest him. And what he does is incite a fight, really a riot, between the Sadducees and the Pharisees. I want to read to you what happens in Acts 23 by Paul. He says, But perceiving that one group were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, Paul began crying out to the council. He's at a court, basically, and he's being tried. And so he cries out to the council, made up of both of these men, both of these sects. And he says, Brethren, I'm a Pharisee, a son of the Pharisees. And I am on trial for the hope and the resurrection of the dead. So he cries out in the midst of all this tumult, I'm a Pharisee and I believe in the resurrection. As he said this, there occurred a dissension between the Pharisees and Sadducees and the assembly was divided. So they were united in trying him and then he says this and all of a sudden they divide and turn against each other. For the Sadducees said that there is no resurrection, nor an angel, nor a spirit. But the Pharisees acknowledged them all. And there occurred a great uproar.

And some of the scribes of the Pharisaic party stood up and began to argue heatedly, saying, we find nothing wrong with this man. Suppose a spirit or an angel has spoken to him. And as a great dissension was developing, the commander, meaning the man who was in charge of Paul, he's the chief guard, he's supposed to keep Paul safe, take him from jail out to the trial. So this commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them and order the troops to go down and take him away from them by force and bring him into the barracks. There was great division between the Sadducees and the Pharisees such that this commander, when these two groups got to arguing, they thought they were going to kill Paul, which ironically is what he was on trial to have done to him anyway, but their fighting got so intense that he was just going to be a casualty of their disagreement. And so last week, the Pharisees were questioning him. This week, the Sadducees are questioning Jesus. And these two groups hate each other. They're both intent on killing Jesus. And so they unite with one another.

To see him put to death. Have you ever heard the, there's a couple of quotes that get at the sort of thing that's going on right here. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is a saying that gets at this, right? Or war makes strange bedfellows. Same sort of concept going on. That's what's going on right now. There's no unity actually between the Sadducees and the Pharisees other than they want Jesus dead, all of them. And so they're willing to work together. So he's just embarrassed the, and refuted the men who've come to him that we looked at last week from the Pharisees. And so now the Sadducees are taking their turn and they come asking a question. And there's an interesting thing going on here because when you look at the question that they ask, they're trying to both condemn Jesus and prove their point to the Pharisees at the same time. They're trying to get Jesus to prove their point to the Pharisees. And if he doesn't, then they can turn on him. So then we come to their question. They say, teacher,

Moses wrote for us that if any man's brother dies having a wife and he is childish, 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. Now the question. In the resurrection, therefore, which one's wife will she be? For all seven had married her. Now, what's your initial thought in your gut? about this scenario and the question that's posed. You just kind of want to, what? You say it's wacky? I just kind of roll my eyes and I'm like, you've got to be kidding me, okay? I understand asking hypothetical questions to sort of tease out underlying principles. It's a good thing to do. You're pressure testing a situation or scenario to see what actually happens if you've...

follow it out to its logical conclusion, and that's sort of what's going on here. But really, seven brothers, one woman, no children. It's just incredible. But Moses said, this is what we're supposed to do. What I want you to know at the beginning is that when people ask these sorts of questions, well, what about, and they list off this sort of strange, very hypothetical scenario. These sorts of questions are generally not sincere questions, meaning we're not opened to the actual answer to the question. I've already predetermined what's wrong with you, and I'm asking that question to prove to you that you're wrong. There's an ulterior motive. There's something going on behind the scenes. There's something between the lines to be read. And that's what's going on as they pose this question. And it's important to note also that they cite the Bible in their presentation, just like Satan did when Jesus was in the wilderness.

They take scripture and what they do, it's wicked. What they do is they pit scripture against itself. They pit what Moses has said about the law and this law of remarriage against the resurrection and say, well, if this law is true, which everyone listening is going to say, you wouldn't say it's not true. So if this law is true, this is what they're supposed to do. There's a real dilemma. Because what happens when they get to the resurrection? Whose wife is she? And would any of us be like, oh, I know whose wife she'd be. None of us are like, oh, well, it's the first one. Oh, it's the last one. Well, is it the first one? Is it the last one? Is it the one she was married to the longest? Is it the one that she liked the most? Is it the one that cared for her the best? We could argue all kinds of different answers to the question. But what these Sadducees have done is they've taken two parts of Scripture and pitted them.

against each other. This is supposed to be a question where there's no good answer. And it's meant to disprove the resurrection. Because what you have are two things right now. You have Moses saying, marry your mother's wife and raise up children after her. And you have the resurrection. Well, they have a vested interest in disproving the resurrection. And they acknowledge Moses, the books of the law that Moses wrote as authoritative words from God. And so their aim is to disprove the resurrection. What kind of dilemma would there be in heaven if what Moses wrote was true? Well, of course it was true, so there's got to be a dilemma in heaven, so clearly there's no heaven. This is the rationale behind their question. So either God is wrong in requiring them to marry their brother's wife if there's no child, or there's no resurrection. This is the undercurrent of their question to them, to Jesus. Well, I want to...

for just a second, is the resurrection scriptural? Was it clearly taught that there was a resurrection? Or was there a question surrounding whether there was a resurrection? And we'll see in Jesus' answer, he comes to it at the end when he talks about Moses at the burning bush, talking about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying that he says God is their God. Well, all of those men were dead. And so the logic follows that if those men are dead, God is not their God anymore because they're not here anymore. They're dead. They're gone. But when Moses was at the burning bush talking with God, he says that the God he's speaking to is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and Jacob. And it seems like such an insignificant or small thing that he says he is the God, their God, as opposed to he was their God. Because if you say to them he was their God, what does it mean about them? It means they don't exist anymore. They're gone.

When they were here, he was, but now that they're gone, he's not. But when Moses speaks, he says that God is their God. He is the God of these men who are dead. And so Jesus reasons that since Moses says that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they're still around, at least in some capacity. And in fact, they're awaiting the resurrection. And so we know, as Jesus demonstrates, that The resurrection was taught even in Moses, even in the scriptures that they acknowledge. And it's important that Jesus goes back to Moses because he could go to other places in the Old Testament and demonstrate actual resurrections where people were raised from the dead and given back long before Jesus came to earth. Elijah, Elisha, raising people from the dead. Abraham believing that he would receive Isaac back by resurrection.

All through the scriptures, there's evidence of that being an expectation, a fixed expectation of the people of God that the resurrection was a real thing. It was something they hoped and they looked forward to. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son because he believed so completely that there would be a resurrection, that he would receive his son back. And so the resurrection is scriptural. And so in the Sadducees' minds, there's these two conflicts that are at loggerheads. Now, is this idea of pitting scripture against itself, Still active today. Does it still happen? Do people still do this? Or is this just a trip through the museum of what people used to do? Well, no, it still happens today. I want to read you a couple of scriptures very commonly used today to be set up in opposition to one another. Galatians 3.28 says, There is neither Greek, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for all are one in Christ.

So the import of this verse is that there's no distinctions anymore. Not between Jews and Greeks, between God's people and the heathens, not between freedmen or slaves, and not between men and women, not between male and female. No differences, none. In 1 Timothy 2, and it's worth noting that the same man wrote both of these things. Paul wrote both Galatians and 1 Timothy. 1 Timothy 2, Paul says, I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression. Now, in Galatians 3, there's no distinctions. In 1 Timothy, there's very clear distinctions, differences, in terms of roles and responsibilities, very different. So, can those passages be reconciled? Because one seems to say, no distinctions between men and women, and another one seems to say, no, absolutely distinctions between men and women. How do you reconcile that?

Do you just take one and throw the other one away? Do you decide which one sits better with you? You're like, well, you know what, I like this one better, so that's clearly the right one. We can't handle Scripture this way. We can't take the parts that we don't understand or the parts that we don't like that don't sit well with us and go, no, no. For what it's worth, in terms of how to reconcile these, what you have to know is that in Galatians, this passage about there being no distinctions between Jews and Greeks and freed and enslaved and men and women, The reference or what Paul's talking about is with regard to justification or being saved. There is not a people group who is of more value in God's eyes that gets preferential treatment. The Jews do not get preferential treatment over the Greeks with regard to salvation. The freedmen are not more desirable to God than the slaves. And the men are not of a different tier than the women.

For all are one in Christ. That's the context of that verse in Galatians. That's what Paul's talking about. He's not talking about why they were created, what they're supposed to do, what they're supposed to be like. He's talking about, in reference to their relationship with God, they're all one. God does not show preference. In 1 Timothy, however, he's talking about how men and women ought to relate to one another. what their roles are, what God's intention has designed for them to live out their sex for his glory. He talks about what it's supposed to look like. And he says, this is what men are allowed to do, and this is what women are allowed to do, and this is what they're not allowed to do. And so we still have this problem going on today where people will take Scripture and set it against other Scripture to try to prove some point. And I want you to be aware of it first when it's happening.

And I want you to actually be able to answer from Scripture. This is one of the things we cultivate. This is why we read our Bibles. This is why we study. This is why we pray. So that when these sorts of things present themselves to us, we're not caught flat-footed with no answer. But that we actually have an answer and we actually have an understanding of why is it that way? I don't know how to reconcile these two things. I need to go learn. Ask your small group leader. Ask me. Ask one of your elders. What's going on here? I don't understand. And the reason this work is so important is because Jesus answers them from Scripture. They say, Moses says. And he says, Moses says. When he was in the wilderness and Satan was tempting him, Satan said, Scripture says. And Jesus said, Scripture says. So we have to understand what Scripture teaches and what it says. It's a protection to our soul. And it's a very real danger if we don't have this because consider what the Sadducees are denying.

They deny the resurrection. And we sit here, you know, we can go, well, that's just silly. I mean, the resurrection's a thing. It's real. You know, it's a resurrection. They're just being stupid. But what is it that they're denying? What is the resurrection? The resurrection is the reunification of our souls with our bodies. That's what the resurrection is for us. When we're resurrected, when Jesus returns to this earth and brings all things to completion, That's when we will be raised from the dead. That's when we will be resurrected. And that's when our souls will be reunited with our bodies. And then we will go to be with him for all eternity in heaven. That's what the resurrection represents to us. What did the Sadducees think? Well, they thought that when you died, you were done. And the interesting thing about the Sadducees is that you would expect that if someone said, well, when you die, it's all over.

that you would end up saying, well, then live however you want because there are no consequences. But that's not what they said. They're this weird group of people who deny any sort of resurrection or afterlife or hope to come, and yet still maintain that you ought to keep God's law. And so you're supposed to work and obey, but without the promise of reward beyond this life. And the reason that this is such a damaging and dangerous thing is that Who of us can say we're content with the blessing or the peace or the joy that we experience in this world? Is it not our hope as Christians that when Jesus returns and when we're raised, we will then receive everything that we've looked for and longed for and hoped for that's been delayed? And so when these men deny the resurrection, they say, you don't have any of that to look forward to. You have as much blessing, or as much condemnation as God sees fit for you to have in this life, but once this life's over, it's done. It's done. And so if you don't receive much blessing, God's sovereign sorry. If you receive judgment, it'll only be for a little while, you'll die, and then it'll be over. It's very limiting, and it's very, it strips away all of our motivation. As a Christian, our motivation to live

according to God's commands, is so integrally tied to the resurrection of our bodies and our souls, being reunited with when Jesus returns and going to be with God, that when you take that away, you lose all your motivation to do anything that's appropriate for any lasting amount of time. 1 Corinthians 15, 13 through 19 says, if there's no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching, is vain. Your faith is in vain. Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God, men who lie on behalf of God about God. Because we testified against God that he raised Christ whom he did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. It's worthless. You are still in your sins.

then those who have fallen asleep, meaning died in Christ, as Christians, as faithful followers of Jesus, those who have fallen asleep, who've died in Christ, have perished. They've just, they're gone. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. If there is no resurrection, then we are at the top of the heap in terms of the idiot pile. Every single one of us. Top of the heap. There's no one to be more pitied than you or me if there's no resurrection. You're the dumb of the dumb. Because you've spent your life trying to serve God and trying to do what's right and trying to obey him and love him and all of that. For what? You're still in your sins. When you die, there's nothing good to be had. Nothing.

Nothing. It's interesting. You know, when you look at... You ever see these bumper stickers where people talk about their dogs being like their kids? My kids have fur. My kids have four legs. What are they doing with their animals? They're elevating them to the level of human beings. Right? They're putting them in their family. And they're saying things about them. You know, I remember reading one time about a... A church, someone wanting to have a funeral and a blessing for their dog who had died. They wanted to do the whole thing. And the church was like, okay, they did it. And it's just like, you've got to be kidding me. You're treating this dog like it's a human being, like it has a soul, like it's going to be raised from the dead. The dog, when it dies, is gone.

And the reason is because that dog does not have a soul. That dog is not made in the image of God, nor is any other created thing except us. And so when we take created things and pull them up to the level of us, of men, of human beings, mankind, we lie because they're not like us. A dog is not your son or your granddaughter. It's simply not. It's a pet. And you're welcome to have pets and you're welcome to take good care of them and to enjoy their company and the happiness that they bring you. Go for it. But when they die, it's not like a person dying. And you ought not grieve it like a person dying. You're just an animal. Now, the Sadducees do the opposite thing. We take animals and pull them up and call them our kids. We write them into our wills.

Make sure that our dog is taken care of when we die. Money set aside so Barney's not at the shelter. This is what we do. The Sadducees do the opposite. They take us down to the level of animals. They level the playing field and say, there's no difference between us and the animals. When they die, they're done away with. And the same is true for us. When we die, there's nothing more. And it's wicked. So Jesus answers them. And he says to them, the sons of this age, all in reference to this extraordinary question about seven brothers marrying one woman, having no children. He says, the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age, the one to come, the resurrection, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot even die anymore because they are like angels and are sons of God being sons of the resurrection.

missing from our text, what Luke leaves out, and I don't know why he left it out, but Matthew and Mark both record it, is that Jesus makes a statement, a declarative statement at the beginning of this, before he gives this explanation. And it's worth noting that he doesn't just reject them out of hand and say, you're an idiot, you're wrong. He does say that, that's what Luke leaves out. His response in Matthew, he says, first, you are mistaken, not understanding the scriptures nor the power of God. And then he goes into his explanation of this age and having marriage and the age to come not having marriage. But the first thing he says is you're wrong. You're mistaken and you don't understand the scriptures because they're twisting the scriptures. And the reason that he teaches on it is because the people need to not be left in the dark. If the question was posed to you, well, what happens to marriage when I die? It's a very reasonable question that all of us might have.

So I love my spouse. What happens when we both are resurrected as Christians? Are we married? What is our relationship going to be like in heaven? It's a fair question. Plenty of people have answers to it. Many of them wrong. But we have the same question. And so it's helpful that Jesus is merciful and compassionate and doesn't simply say, Sadducees, you don't understand the scriptures nor the power of God. Period. Full stop. We're done. He actually teaches. And he doesn't teach for the sake of the Sadducees. He teaches for the sake of the people who are listening, who need to know what their hope ought to be. And so he says, in this age we marry, and in the age to come, marriage will be done away with. And the natural question is, why? Why do we marry now and not later? Well, to find the answer, we have to go back to the reasons that God instituted marriage in the first place. Because marriage is a temporary estate. Even when you get married, part of the vows that you take is, till death separates us.

And what we would understand that to mean is, well, it separates us physically. And that's true. But it is actually an ending of the covenant between the two of you that's not to be picked up again when you're in heaven. You're not still married when you get to heaven. And so it's a temporary arrangement. Temporary in that it lasts until we die. And then we're free of it. If it weren't that way, widows would not be able to get remarried. But their commitment to that union is fulfilled and complete through death. So if it's not an eternal covenant or commitment between one man and one woman, what is the purpose of it? Well, there's a couple of purposes. Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 that marriage is to be a reflection or a demonstration or a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church, and that's true.

And it makes sense that when we then are resurrected and we go to be with Jesus, we turn from being husband and wife facing toward each other to the bride of Christ facing our bridegroom, Jesus. And we relate to him then as a member of his bride. And we relate to one another as brothers, sisters, family relating to our groom. So are there any other purposes for marriage other than to be a picture of the relationship of Jesus and the church. Well, there is. Historically, it's been understood for there to be three purposes of marriage, pretty simple, straightforward. The first is companionship. And when God made Adam, when we read in Genesis, he said he made Adam, Adam named all the animals, and he said there was not one found suitable for him. And God said, it's not good for man to be alone. I'll make a helper suitable for him. And so he closed up Adam. Adam fell asleep. He opened up Adam's Side took out a rib, fashioned it into a woman, presented it to him to be his companion because it wasn't good for him to be alone. First purpose of marriage. Second purpose of marriage. They're told to be fruitful and multiply. They're told to have children. That's one of the purposes of marriage. It's important that married couples, in so much as they're able, I realize not all married couples can have children.

But it is one of the purposes of marriage. And if a couple is opposed to having children, unwilling to have children, then they're not being faithful to God. And for my part, I wouldn't marry them. They say, you don't want to get married and do what God's made marriage for. I'm not going to marry you. God said to Adam and Eve, you're to be fruitful and you're to multiply, fill the earth, rule over it and subdue it. Second purpose of marriage. Third purpose of marriage, which was provided for before the fall, but doesn't take effect until after the fall. A third purpose of marriage is help against sin. That you would have someone to help you in your struggle against sin, that you wouldn't be alone. It's hard to be alone. If you're single, you're living in that season. It's difficult. And it actually is easier to fight against your sin in many ways when you have a spouse. And those of you who are married, you remember those days. And so protection against sin is the third, the final purpose of marriage.

Now, if we work through these three purposes and say, why did each one of these need to exist? Protection against sin is pretty obvious. It's a provision that God, you know, saying it's not good for a man to be alone, especially if he falls into sin. I'm going to give him someone to help him with that. That makes sense. Companionship, that also is pretty low-hanging fruit. Makes sense. Who wants to be alone? Really alone with no one. Sometimes you might want to be alone for a little while, but who wants to be alone? And then you come to procreation, having kids, and it's interesting. Why does this need to be a part of marriage? Protection from sin, that makes sense. Companionship, that makes sense. Why does having children need to be a part of marriage? It's because God knew and had ordained before he made anything that sin was going to enter the world, right? He knew that. And that through sin, death would enter and would spread to all men. So what happens to Adam and Eve?

If they don't have kids, they go extinct because they're going to die. In Genesis, it tells us that as soon as God done got pronouncing the judgments against them, the curses, it says they immediately had a child. The first thing they did was have a child. And the reason they had a child is because they knew that they were going to die. They had been told ahead of time, if you eat of this fruit in that day of it, you'll surely die. And as soon as they ate of the fruit and they received the curses, they knew they were going to die and so they had a child so that we would not go extinct. Because every one of us is only going to live for so long on this earth and then we're going to die. And if we don't have children, we'll die out. The whole reason behind these brothers marrying their sister-in-law is so that their name would not die out. It wouldn't go away. You're supposed to get married to your brother's, your former brother's wife.

And you're supposed to raise up children after him. You're to carry on his name, his family, so that it doesn't die out. That's why they were supposed to do it. It's not God's desire that the people would go extinct. And so having children is a very essential part of getting married. And what's this have to do with the Sadducees' question, how does it relate? Well, simply this. Marriage is necessary, especially procreation, because we die. If we don't have children, we're going to become extinct, right? In heaven, though, where there's not marriage, death will have been abolished. Everyone who comes will never leave. And so heaven's role is being filled right now. And we do our part in this age, having children, raising them up to God, to carry on that work when we die. But when heaven is realized, when Jesus returns, everyone who's a Christian is going to come into heaven and no one's ever going to die or ever leave again. And so you don't need to have more people.

The interesting thing about birth rates is unbelievers understand this at a real big level. They understand it in terms of countries and that countries will cease to exist if they don't have kids. And that within countries, the people who have kids end up being the ones who rule it if they train their kids. And so it shouldn't be a surprise to us or a shock to us or offensive to us when we talk about the necessity of Christians having children to carry on the work of proclaiming the gospel. But you would have children, you'd grow up, you would have children, you would raise them as Christians, teaching them what it means to live by faith, with the expectation that they will then get married, have kids, and do the same work. And that they will continue to perpetuate and to grow. Until the time when Jesus returns, when that work won't be necessary anymore. Because in his wisdom, he's going to come back at a time that's hidden from us, and then that work's going to be over. It's going to be done.

All of the people who have their name in the Lamb's Book of Life are going to have been and who are going to be citizens of heaven. And there won't be any more need to have more children. And so marriage is a temporary estate that lasts until we die with the purpose of raising up for God a seed to populate or to fill heaven. When they get to heaven, that need will have gone away. There won't be any more need of that. And the reason is, as our text says, they won't die anymore. Verse 36, it says that in the age to come, they will not be married or be given in marriage for they cannot even die anymore. They can't leave. They won't go away because they are like angels and are sons of God being sons of the resurrection. So our text ends with Jesus saying that God is the God of the, not the dead, but of the living for all live to him. So what do we conclude about those who are dead?

Body and soul separate right now. Are they dead or are they alive? In this sense, we consider them to be alive and waiting. And waiting for what? Waiting for the hope of their resurrection. Waiting for the time when they will be reunited with bodies that don't ache and creak and hurt and fail. Perfect bodies. Heavenly bodies. That are fit for worshiping God in his presence. That's what they wait for. And if we don't believe that, if we live as though this life is all that there is, we need to get what we can. We need to avoid as much toil and trial and hardship as possible. We're living like the Sadducees. We're living as though there's no resurrection. So when Jesus tells us, do not fear man who can kill your body and after that can do no more, but rather, Fear God, who after having killed your body can cast your soul into hell. Fear him. Yes, I say fear him. What he's speaking to is the resurrection. Those who can kill your body, who can separate your soul from your body, only have a temporary power over that separation for Christians. But in God's time, when he brings us back together, our bodies and our souls back together, we'll receive everything that we've hoped for and everything that he's promised.

The most discouraging part of the Sadducees' question and their belief is that God doesn't, he's not interested in lavishing his love and his care and his blessing on his children. Some get more and some get less in this life, and then that's it. And that is what they believe. And it's corrupting. It's discouraging. It keeps you from caring or doing anything that's uncomfortable to you or that takes faith. Because what's the benefit of it? Christians ought to be people who are reward-driven. Not health and wealth gospel, not all of that, because in that way, when do you receive your health and your wealth? Now. And you know what? You're not going to receive your health and your wealth now. And that's as it should be. The vast majority of the blessing that you will receive as a Christian will come after you die. And if you're not willing to defer your hope, and your expectation of receiving those blessings in their entirety, you'll live like the Sadducees. And it's a miserable existence. And I call you, I plead with you, don't live that way. It's easy to live that way. It's natural to live that way. It seems crazy, but it's comfortable to live that way because it's familiar. But I call you, don't live like a Sadducee. Live as though there is a world to come.

Encourage those around you who are suffering in this world to know that this is not all there is. And the blessing that they've received in this life, along with its trial, is not the full payment. That they have hope, and you have hope for them of greater blessing, incomparable blessing, to come for them. And that they need not live like death is the end of them. When you're resurrected, and you see Jesus, and you're perfect, about having been married. It will not be at the top of your list. That's not the right way to say it because I don't want to denigrate marriage in this age. But it will have been done away. It will have been done away. Your love for your spouse, your love for your children will pale in comparison to your love for Jesus. That's your aim and that's your goal. And if that's your aim and your goal, it will sweeten.

Your marriage. It will sweeten your relationship with your kids. Because your hope's not in them. Your hope's not being with them. Your hope's being with Jesus. And your hope's that they would be with Jesus too because there's no better reward than that. No better reward. And if they have a hard life or a life of trial or if the Lord calls them home early or what have you, they didn't lose. God didn't abandon them. He hasn't left them to the side. So I want us to live as Christians, and I want our hope to be opposed to the Sadducees and the way that they live. I want us to live with a sure confidence that there is life to come, and it'll be better than anything you've ever experienced. Words fail us to explain the glory and the blessing that we're to receive, that Christians are to receive. Not all will receive, but Christians will receive.

And so we grasp it and we believe it by faith. And we endure and we persevere and we trust God in this life with whatever it is that comes our way. Many of us have very real trials, very real things, very scary things. Some of us with them ending in death. So I don't want you to shrink back. I don't want you to give yourself to fear. I want you to look forward in hope to the reconciliation of all things. Scripture tells us it's worth it. Jesus came to secure it for us through his death on the cross. Would it be that we would not live like Sadducees who think this world is all there is? Would that we would be people who love God and who aren't afraid of speaking and living and acting as those who aren't afraid of dying or afraid of losing the ones that we love? And I don't mean afraid of it in the way that's like you can't be afraid or have any emotions about it. I mean it in a way that's like

despairing, and you're without hope. If we trust God, we have hope for ourselves and our resurrection. We also have hope for our loved ones who are in Christ. Because God's not the God of the dead, but of the living. And so you and the ones that you love who have died or who are facing death, if they're Christians, Scripture tells us they live to him. They're not done when they die. You're not done when you die. And so we're to live like that. Let's pray.