Luke 20:27-40 Anastasis
Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 20. Today we’ll look at verses 27-40 and that’s on page 880 in the pew Bibles.
Let’s pray and ask for the Lord’s wisdom and guidance before we jump in.
We’ve looked, over the last few weeks, at different instances in the life of Jesus where different religious groups have questioned Jesus, the chief priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, and their spies had all had a turn.
Today we are going to look at another group trying to get to Jesus, to trip Him up in His teaching. This group is called the Sadducees. The Sadducees were a group that held only to the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, the books of Moses. They didn’t hold very tightly to them because they didn’t believe in any kind of spiritual realm beyond this life. Our text will tell us that they didn’t believe in the resurrection, Acts 23 tells us that they didn’t believe angels or spirits either.
That’s what made this group so sad you see…
This group came at Jesus with a large dose of intellectual arrogance. They weren’t trying to trick Him or trap Him, they were trying to make Him look stupid, and of course, they failed miserably.
The fact that Jesus honored this unreasonable question, one with such dubious intent, is further evidence of His amazing grace, and His answer to these guys is further evidence of His wisdom and love.
Let’s look at the text.
27 There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, 28 and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. 30 And the second 31 and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32 Afterward the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”
34 And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35 but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” 39 Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” 40 For they no longer dared to ask him any question.
Now the Pharisees sided with Jesus in the fact of the resurrection from the dead, a fact that Paul would later exploit in Acts 23 against the Sadducees when he was on trial for preaching the gospel. I encourage you to read that account on your own.
The Sadducees put the question to Jesus regarding what is called the Levirite Law, or the Law of Levirite Marriage. This law is found in Deuteronomy 25:5-7, which says:
5 “If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. 6 And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.
The Sadducees sought to exploit this law to try and make any thoughts about the resurrection look foolish and to make any who believed in such a thing looks foolish as well.
In both Matthew and Mark as they recorded this incident they both recorded something that Luke left out about Jesus’ response: “You are wrong because you neither know the Scriptures, nor the power of God.”
And He could not have been more right.
But what is this resurrection that they didn’t believe in? I think it’s important for it to be clear in our minds before we get any further.
Resurrection is not the continuance of the soul after death, but it is the reviving of the body after death. And this will happen at the return of Christ. It’s not a one by one entry into the next world but an everybody all at once event.
The Sadducees assumed this in their question about the widow with seven husbands. It’s not like they wandered into some heavenly waiting room one by one and finally the wife shows up, but instead they would all be there at once. Imagine the argument that would have ensued!
And who is that will be resurrected? Is it only Christians? No, it’s everybody.
Jesus said in John 5:26-29,
26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.
So the first error of the Sadducees was trying to make Jesus look foolish, but their second mistake is a mistake that many Christians, maybe even some here this morning share. Their concept of the resurrection was completely sensual, meaning, limited to their own senses, it was completely clothed in pride and earthly mindedness.
Often times we consider heaven only through an earthly lens, thinking that it will be all about us getting all of our favorite things, seeing our favorite people that have gone before us, and doing all the things that we love to do.
Listen to a snippet of the lyrics of a song by the country music singer Hardy from 2021:
Yeah, I believe 'em when they say you're in a better place, You had a wild side, but you had amazing grace, I know you're way off up in them clouds, But If you can still hear me right now
I hope you hit those gold streets on two wheels, I hope your mansion in the sky's got a ten-acre field, With some mud and some hubs you can lock in, Make some thunder, make 'em wonder how ya got in, Hide your beer, hide your clear from the Man Upstairs, Crank it loud, hold it down till I get there, And when I do, I hope you got some new stories to tell, Till then give heaven some hell…
We might snicker at that but how far off is it from our own ideas about God’s eternal kingdom?
But the truth is, as it says in 1 Corinthians 2:9, “No eye has seen and no ear has heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those that love Him.”
Things will be different!
Matthew Henry wrote, “There is a great deal of difference between the state of the children of men on earth and that of the children of God in heaven, a vast unlikeness between this world and that world; and we wrong ourselves, and wrong the truth of Christ when we form our notions of that world of spirits by our present enjoyments in this world of the senses.”
34 And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35 but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.
Being called the “sons of this age,” is not a moral judgment, Jesus simply meant, those living at the time, in the pre-resurrection world. Being married and being given in marriage is part of our present condition here on earth. The design was for people to get married and have kids and fill the earth, but in the resurrection having more kids will no longer be necessary, the kingdom will be complete.
Jesus is not suggesting that we won’t recognize each other or know each other, after all, after He was resurrected from the dead, like we will be, those that knew Him recognized Him, He ate with them, and they could touch Him and feel Him. When we are resurrected we will be like Him.
Jesus said that we will be equal to angels. Equal in that we, like they, will be above the danger or even the possibility of dying.
Jesus then goes on to show them their error based on Scripture, not logic, not feelings, Scripture. We should learn to do the same.
37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, (showed, means “revealed,” like something that had been hidden.) in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.”
Moses revealed something hidden that was opposed to the Sadducees point of view, that Yahweh is not the God of the dead, of corpses and ashes, but of the living.
Jesus doesn’t answer the question here about the connection between the uninterrupted life of souls after death and the future resurrection of the body, but He does point out that immortality is not dependent on the nature of the human soul, but rather on the nature of God the Father and our fellowship with Him by faith.
In reference to the Old Testament saints’ understanding of eternal life, JJ VanOosterzee wrote, “If anyone was conscious that God was his God, then he knew also that He would everlastingly remain so, and that whoever had experienced His fellowship might fall asleep in the hope of hereafter beholding His face in righteousness.”
Psalm 17:15 says, As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.
There is much debate about whether departed souls are conscious or unconscious, asleep or awake, but Jesus doesn’t straighten that all out for us here. Let’s be content with what He has revealed to us about the future world. We have enough to go on and we have enough to do.
John Calvin wrote, “Indeed if we consider properly the doctrine of Scripture, the life of the soul, apart from the hope of the resurrection will be a mere dream; for God does not declare that immediately after death of the body, souls live, -as if their glory and happiness were already enjoyed by them in perfection, -but delays the expectation of them until the Last Day… But since the Scriptures inform us that the spiritual life depends on the hope of the resurrection, and the souls, when separated from the bodies, look forward to it, whoever destroys the resurrection deprives souls also of their immortality.”
1 John 3:1-2, and I’ll close with this…
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.
Amen.
