18 Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying,
19 Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man's brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.
20 Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed.
21 And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed: and the third likewise.
22 And the seven had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman died also.
23 In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife.
24 And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?
25 For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.
26 And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?
27 He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.
Introduction
The Church of England once had a great debate over two of the doctrines of our faith—the virgin birth of Christ and the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
The debate started when sometime ago a bishop on television said that the traditional doctrine of the resurrection was nothing but a conjured-up trick with bones. And so the issue is being debated today as to whether the resurrection is a reality or not.
You are not interested in the least of what’s taking place in the Church of England, but let me say to you that you cannot disbelieve the resurrection and be a Christian. The apostle Paul said in Romans 10:9-10, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
The resurrection then is one of those core doctrines of our faith. Now Jesus not only declared the resurrection to us, Jesus demonstrated the resurrection to us. Because he died on Calvary’s cross and he was buried in Joseph’s tomb and on the third day Jesus rose from the grave and it is his resurrection that makes us most assured that he is the Son of God and that because he lives we shall live also.
But Jesus also declared that the resurrection was a reality, that it would take place. He declared it many times. And one of those times when Jesus declared the resurrection is the passage read a few moments ago from the book of Mark. The Bible tells us that a group of Sadducees came to Jesus to question him. The Sadducees were the rationalists of Jesus’ day. They did not believe in the resurrection. They did not believe in angels. They did not believe in the spirit. They did not believe in the supernatural at all. They were the kind of men who wanted a religion without anything supernatural in it. And so they took away the resurrection. They took away angels and the spirit altogether and they reduced their religion to little more than a philosophy.
There are those in our day who fall into the same category. They are rationalists, they see no place in the Christian faith for the supernatural. We believe in the supernatural. We believe that God is alive and that God is at work in the world and that God can do things that man could never ever think of or imagine or possibly do himself. But these men who were rationalists and didn’t believe in the resurrection came to Jesus to question him concerning the resurrection.
Now the fact that they came on the same day that some Pharisees and Herodians had questioned Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar indicates that the leaders of Israel in that day had joined forces to try to discredit Jesus. Their question concerning the resurrection was not a search for information. It was rather an effort to discredit Jesus publicly. They were going to ask him a question that he could not possibly answer. And thus he would lose face with the crowd. And they would realize, so these Sadducees thought, that Jesus is a fallible man like everybody else and he is not worthy of being followed as the Messiah as he pretends to be. And so naturally they would get the most exaggerated kind of question possible to present to Jesus. And so they came to him with this hypothetical case.
They said, “Lord, Moses taught that if a man died without having children, it was the responsibility of his brother to marry the widow and have a child by her. And that that child would become the child of his dead brother.”
You have to understand how much they valued a man’s posterity and his family name going on for generation after generation. And so they had had a law from Moses that would take care of that. If a man died without having children, his brother married his widow and the first child carried the name of his dead brother. Well, this man died and so his brother married his widow and they had no children, and the brother died. So another brother married her until seven brothers had married the same woman and had had no children and then at last she died.
The question is, “Whose wife is she going to be in the resurrection?” And they were absolutely convinced that there is no answer to the question. The strange thing is that Jesus answered the question in an instant. Jesus said, “For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.”
I want you to notice that his answer falls into two divisions. First of all, he talks about the fact of the resurrection when they shall rise from the dead. It was a certainty to Jesus and he is declaring for us the fact of the resurrection. Not if, not maybe, not perhaps, but when. He is declaring for us that it will happen. And when it happens, he says, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Hence he is talking not only about the fact of the resurrection but also about the nature of the resurrected life. There will be no marriage and no giving in marriage in the resurrection. But we shall be as angels in heaven.
What did he mean by that? He simply meant that marriage is essentially a physical relationship where men and women unite their lives together and produce children. And that physical aspect of joining together and producing children will not exist in heaven.
We are going to be like angels. Angels were created beings who neither are born nor die. There are as many angels in the universe today as there were on the day of creation. Not one angel has died. They are all still alive and well, and no others have come into being. And we are going to be like that. Since no one will die, there will be no necessity for anyone to be born and no necessity for marriage.
Don’t carry that to extremes. It in no way suggests that we will not know one another in heaven. Or that we will not have deep feelings for one another in heaven. Whatever good there is in this life will be amplified and extended in the life to come. If we know one another here we shall know one another better there. If we love one another here on this earth, we will shall love more deeply then. And that life will so far exceed this life that there is no way to compare the two. And Jesus was saying, “I want you to understand that you are thinking of the resurrected life as just an extension of this life. We marry and we are given in marriage down here and we have children and all of that. The resurrected life is going to be so far different from this life that you really can’t compare the two.”
Having introduced to us that aspect of the resurrected life, he then quoted scripture to them. He said, “You do err not knowing the scriptures. Don’t you remember what God said to Moses at the burning bush? He said to Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. I am not the God of the dead, I am the God of the living.’” And you err when you do not know that.
I am concerned this morning primarily about the emphasis of Jesus on the fact of the resurrection. And as he underscored the certainty of the resurrection in the minds of those skeptics, those rationalists, those Sadducees, he used three truths to emphasize what he was saying.
He said the resurrection as a fact can be seen in the word of God. You do err not knowing the scriptures. It can be seen also in the nature of God. I am the God of the living, not the God of the dead. And it can be seen in the power of God, you do err not knowing the scriptures or the power of God. Those are the three points I want us to drape our thinking around: the word of God, the nature of God, and the power of God. All three of them declare to us the fact of the resurrection. And the skeptics left empty handed in the face of the word of God and the nature of God and the power of God when it comes to the resurrection.
1. The word of God. The first great truth that Jesus emphasized is the word of God. He said to them, “You do err not knowing the scriptures.” The fact of the matter is that you will be in error in many areas of your life if you do not know the scriptures. Have you heard the story about the church that was without a pastor? They were looking for a pastor, so they appointed a pulpit committee. They went out and searched and they found a young man they thought they might be interested in. So they sat down with him one day and they said to him, “Young man, you are very young. But we still want to talk to you. Young man, do you know the Bible?”
“Oh, yes sir,” he said to the chairman. “I know the Bible well.”
“Well, young man, what part of the Bible do you know best?”
“Well, sir, I know the New Testament best.”
“Well, would you tell us something about the New Testament? Would you tell us the story of the prodigal son?”
He said, “Yes, sir, I would be glad to. There was a Pharisee of the Jews named Nicodemus. And he went down to Jericho by night. And as he traveled he fell upon stony ground and while he was there the thorns reached up and nearly choked him to death.
The next day along came Solomon and his wife Gomorrah. And they picked up the young man and they took him down to the ark so that Moses could take care of him. And as they were going in the eastern gate, his hair caught on some limbs and he hung there for 40 days and 40 nights. And afterward he was in hungered and the ravens came and they fed him. And then in the passing of time along came three wise men from the east and they took him down to the docks and they put him on a ship for Nineveh and when he got to Nineveh he saw Delilah sitting on a wall. And he said to the men, men, chuck her down. And they said to him, ‘How many times shall we chuck her down—seven times seven?’ He said, nay men, throw her down 70 times seven. And so they threw her down 490 times until she burst asunder and then when they began to pick up the pieces they had 12 baskets of fragments left over. Now, whose wife shall she be in the resurrection?”
When he was finished with his dissertation the chairman of the committee said to the other members of his committee, “Men, I think we ought to call this boy to be our pastor. He’s awfully young, but he sure does know the Bible.”
Let me tell you, if you don’t know the Bible, you may be in error in a lot of areas of life. You will be in error concerning what is right and what is wrong, in error concerning the true values of life, the priorities of what ought to be first in your life. You will be in error concerning salvation and the way to be right with God, the way to heaven, and ultimately and finally you will be in error concerning the judgment of God and the resurrection and the life beyond. It is only as we know scripture that we can know that the resurrection is real. So Jesus underscored the importance of the word of God. “You do err not knowing the scriptures.”
The importance of the scriptures is that they reveal to us the nature of God. And so Jesus began to share with them a scripture. He said, “Don’t you know that when God appeared to Moses at the burning bush, that he said to him, ‘Moses, I am the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. I am the God of the living and not the God of the dead.’” And in that verse Jesus quoted that he was underscoring the nature of God.
That verse that was quoted does not specifically teach about the resurrection. What it specifically teaches us is about the kind of God we serve. The kind of God we worship. He is a living God. He is the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead. He is the God of the living. And by underscoring the nature of our God as a living God, Jesus was saying, “All who come into a relationship with him will live forever also.” If God is always alive, then those who are in relationship with him shall live forever also.
The gods all around were of wood and of stone and of iron. They were of substance and they could not see and they could not hear and they could not speak. They were without life and without vitality. And in contrast to the dead idols all around, the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament was always declared as the living God.
He did not say, “I was the God of Abraham. And I was the God of Isaac and I was the God of Jacob” as though they are dead and gone forever. He spoke of them in the present tense. I am at the present time the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as though they were still alive. Even though they had been dead or had died hundreds of years earlier, they were still alive and God was now their God.
And the great truth of scripture is this: that anyone who enters into fellowship with the living God enters into a relationship that will last throughout all of eternity. And there is nothing, no power on earth anywhere that can ever separate us from the love of God and from the life of God that dwells in us.
2. The nature of God. In the Old Testament when he speaks of the death of Abraham and Isaac, he speaks of it in interesting terms. It says they “were gathered unto their fathers” (Judges 2:10). I used to wonder about that phrase. What did it mean?
It didn’t mean that they were taken back to the old family cemetery and the home place and buried there with their family because they were buried in various places throughout the country. What then does it mean when it says that Abraham died and he was gathered unto his people? Or that Isaac died and he was gathered unto his people? Or that Jacob died and he was gathered unto his people? It means very simply they came together again in the very presence of the living God and they were alive there also. And what happened to them will happen to us.
You say that may speak to us of the immortality of the soul, but we are talking about the resurrection of the dead, the resurrection of the body. How do the two fit together? In the mind of the Jew as in the mind of Jesus there would be no separation of life everlasting from a bodily resurrection. For the two to fit together for life everlasting and be complete would also necessitate the resurrection of the body from the dead. God’s victory over sin and the grave and death had to be complete. What they experienced, we can share in also. And to some degree even now.
I love what Peter Marshall said about death. He said, “Those we love are with the Lord. And the Lord has promised to be with us.” Now if they are with him, and he is with us, then they cannot be far away. And some of you who have lost loved ones have sensed their presence as you sense the presence of the living God with you as you go through life. And the great truth of scripture is that the God of the Bible is a living God. He is not the God of the dead.
He could not be the God of the dead. If he is alive, consequently when we come to him by faith and trust, we begin to live forever. He talked to us not only about the word of God, “You do not err not knowing the scriptures.” And the nature of God is the God of the living, not of the dead. But he spoke to us also about the power of God. “You do not err not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God.” When you doubt the supernatural, when you doubt what God can do, like raising the dead, then you do not rightly understand the power of God. The might of God.
3. The power of God. In the book of Genesis 1:1 we are told, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” There are two words in that verse which you need to understand. The first is the word God. It is the Hebrew word “Elohim,” which has a root meaning of power. It is the one who puts forth power. That’s a common name for God in the Old Testament. More than 2,550 times God is called Elohim, the one who has power, the one who puts forth power in the Old Testament. In the beginning Elohim, the one who has power, created the heavens and the earth.
You need to understand also the word created. It is a Hebrew word that means to create from nothing. Now God didn’t take a lump of clay and mold this universe and then fling it out into space. God didn’t take a piece of yellow construction paper and some scissors and cut out some stars and then thumbtack them on the walls of heaven out there someplace. God didn’t start with anything. He started with nothing and from nothing God made everything that is. That’s the kind of power he has.
We can take something and make something. Some of you men can take pieces of wood and make a house. You can take pieces of metal and you can build a car or whatever. You can take a piece of glass and make a light bulb. You can take something and make something. But God took nothing and made everything. And the whole universe that God made is charged with his divine kind of power.
The average life of a hurricane is nine days. In one day there is enough energy produced by the rainfall from a hurricane to supply the electrical needs of every man and woman and boy and girl in America for four months. In the entire life of a hurricane in those nine days there is enough energy produced to supply the electrical needs of everybody in America for three whole years. That’s energy.
When the crew members of Skylab were out in space they photographed an eruption on the sun. And there was enough energy produced by that one eruption of the sun to supply the electrical needs of every man and woman and boy and girl on the face of the earth for a half-million years. That is some kind of energy. And in the beginning the God who has all power energized this whole universe. That’s the kind of God I’m talking about.
If God who made everything out of nothing, then picked up some dust, the Hebrew word really means “a piece of red clay.” He picked up a piece of red clay and shaped that into a lifeless statute that would be called man. And then breathed into that clay statue the breath of life and it became a living soul.
If God could form man out of the dust in the beginning, God can resurrect man out of the dust in the end. It just depends on the size of your God. It depends on how much power you think he’s got. And he has creative power as well as resurrected power. He has all power. When he came to Abraham in the 17th chapter of the book of Genesis he introduced himself as the almighty God. That word almighty is a compound word. A compound of that word Elohim and the word Shaddai. “I am El Shaddai”—God. And the word El and the word Shaddai means “adequate” or “self-sufficient.” God was introducing himself to Abraham by saying, “I am the God who has power sufficient, power adequate, for whatever needs to be done.”
Let me tell you why he introduced himself that way. He was going to make a covenant with Abraham. And he was saying to Abraham, “You are going to have a child, you and Sara, and from that child, you will multiply like the sands of the sea and the whole world will be blessed.”
Well, what’s the big deal about that? The big deal is that Abraham was 99 years old and Sara was 89. And you know what they thought. No way. That can’t happen. We have enough sense to know that. It can’t happen. So God is just clearing the ground. God said, “Look, I am the almighty God. I am the God who has power sufficient, power adequate, to get the job done.” And that’s going to happen.
Abraham laughed at God. Why? He didn’t understand the power of God.
A year later. Now he is a 100 and Sara is 90. He comes back to Abraham and tells him the same thing. Sara over hears the conversation. And she giggles to herself. She knows it can’t happen. No way. God says to Abraham and to Sara, “Is anything too hard for God?” No, not if you know the power of God. And sure enough Sara conceived and bore a son named Isaac. And Abraham’s seeds multiplied as the sands of the sea and through them all the nations of the earth have been blessed through the coming of the Messiah. And what Abraham laughed at, what Sara laughed at, came to pass because they were not dealing with a mere man, nor where they dealing with some lifeless pagan deity. They were dealing with the almighty God, the one who has power to do whatever needs to be done.
And if God could do all that, then he can raise people from the dead. That’s what Jesus is saying. If you just knew your Bible, if you just knew the kind of God we are dealing with, if you knew the kind of power he wills, you wouldn’t doubt that a supernatural thing like the resurrection could take place.
The wonderful thing is that that resurrection power of God can be in your life today. Paul prayed one time that we may know him and the power of his resurrection. The power of his resurrection is the power that makes dead things live again. And his resurrection power can dwell in us and can energize us. And lives that are in the grips of sin can be set free when his power is in you. Marriages that are about to crumble can be made whole and new again when his power is in your life. And hopes and dreams that have been shattered and left in the dust of time can be revived when his living resurrecting power is in you and through faith and trust in Jesus Christ, that same power that raised Jesus from the dead and raised Adam from the dust of the earth and raised Isaac from the womb of a woman 90 years old. That same power is available to you and to me today in and through Jesus Christ. And all around us there are people living sad and defeated and frustrated lives because they know not the scriptures or the nature of God or his living power.
I challenge you today to give your life and heart to Jesus Christ. To enter into a relationship with the living God and let him work in you as he has worked in people of old. He will do it. He wants to do it.
He longs to do it and he waits for you to open your life and heart and to receive him this day. Will you do it? Some of you here today need to take Christ as your Savior. Some of you need a new commitment of life and heart to him. And others need to come and link your life with this fellowship. If you need to come, this is the time to do so.