Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,
It was just a few weeks ago that I preached a sermon entitled HEAVEN IS FOR REAL. And we considered Paul’s words in Philippians 1 where he says, “To live is Christ and to die is gain,” and that “to depart and be with Christ is much more betterer!” And in that sermon we looked at what happens when we die and what will happen when Jesus returns. We saw that when we die, our bodies are buried and our souls go immediately either to heaven or hell. And when Jesus returns, our bodies will rise from the ground, and as we read in 1 Cor. 15, they will be changed into eternal bodies, which will be reunited with our souls, and we will live on either in heaven or in hell. This is what will happen to every one of us.
Well, you know as well as I do that not everyone believes this. There are some who have different theories about the after-life and there are some who believe that this life is all that there is. And the Sadducees of our text are in that later group. They said there was no resurrection, as we see in v18; they believed that death was the end. And because there are many people who believe the same thing today, it is worth considering what Jesus declares in these verses.
But while He teaches that there will be a resurrection, we also learn something of what the resurrected life will be like. And what Jesus reveals challenged the ideas of many there that day, and perhaps might challenge the ideas of some of us here today. And I think especially of all those who are happily married or who have been happily married or who one day hope to be happily married. Are we excited by what Jesus says here about the resurrection and marriage? And this same question will apply to many other good areas of the life we enjoy here on earth.
Well, we haven’t met the SADDUCEES in Mark’s Gospel yet. The Sadducees were another of the political and religious groupings of the time. They only recognized the first 5 books of the OT as Holy Scripture. They also rejected anything supernatural other than God Himself. So they did not believe that people could perform miracles, for example. They did not believe in angels. And they did not believe in the resurrection, because, according to them, it was not taught in the first 5 books of the OT.
You can see then why the Sadducees have not paid too much attention to Jesus thus far. What has particularly captured the attention of the Pharisees and the people has been His MIRACLES. But the Sadducees didn’t believe people could perform miracles. But now Jesus is in the temple teaching and He is the focus of everyone’s attention. And they can ignore Him no longer. So they come to Him with this question.
And congregation, it really is a question intended to RIDICULE. They are not seeking an answer to this question because in their minds it cannot be answered. Mark has already told us that they don’t believe in the resurrection. It is likely that they have used this question on their opposition – the Pharisees – in the past, who just have not been able to answer it. So now they trot it out to put Jesus in His place, as it were, and to bolster their own public position in the eyes of the people.
And the scenario they put before Jesus, in their minds, demonstrates how silly the idea of the resurrection is. The law, as we read earlier from DEUT. 25, required a man to marry his brother’s widow, if they had no children, so that children might be born within the family group to secure the inheritance of the land.
And as best as we can tell, this was one of the laws of Moses that had largely been ignored in the history of the Jews. And from a purely human perspective, we can easily understand why. I mean, imagine being in this situation yourself! So neither the woman nor the brothers typically found this an attractive proposition. So many ways to avoid keeping this law were invented or it was just plain ignored.
Nevertheless, in theory, the situation described by the Sadducees could have occurred. So, the eight people involved have died and now wake up in the after-life. Will she be the wife of the first husband; the one she perhaps chose to marry? Or the last one because that was the most recent marriage? Or the one to whom she had been married the longest of the seven, maybe? Or will she get to choose which of the seven she would prefer to be with? Or maybe there will be some sort of heavenly coin-toss to decide the matter? See, they are saying, this resurrection idea is just a nonsense!
And so we come to vv24ff where JESUS ANSWERS THIS QUESTION WITH ASTONISHING RESURRECTION TRUTH. And in terms of Jesus’ answer, we will deal with the two parts of His answer in reverse order. So we first look at vv26-27 and the REALITY of the Resurrection and then v25 and the NATURE of the Resurrected State.
So first of all, the REALITY of the Resurrection
1. And as we begin to consider Jesus’ reply, let’s have a little SYMPATHY FOR THESE SADDUCEES.
A. I have painted them in a pretty poor light so far. But earlier in the service we read from 1 COR. 15. And if you remember our reading there, as Paul worked to reinforce the truth of the resurrection, where did he begin? With Jesus and His resurrection. As a Christian, your certainty about the resurrection of the dead begins with the certainty of Jesus’ resurrection. That was Paul’s point. But as Jesus has this conversation with the Sadducees, His resurrection is still in the future.
B. But we can go further than that; your certainty about the resurrection pretty much hangs on Jesus’ resurrection and the teaching of the Epistles IN THE NT. Look up a theology textbook about the doctrine of the resurrection and you will probably find just NT references. Now, if you have spent some time studying this matter, you will know that there are OT passages and verses that reveal the resurrection. We sung some of them this morning. But the point is that they do that in the light of Jesus and the NT. It is what happened to Jesus and what is plainly taught in the NT that makes it easier for us to see the resurrection ‘hints’ in the OT.
i. This is why John’s Gospel begins by referring to Jesus as THE WORD and describing Him as “full of truth.” It is Jesus and what He says and does that helps us understand the teaching of the Bible.
C. And WHAT JESUS SAYS IN VV26-27 is an example of this. He answers them by pointing to a “the passage about the bush,” which is the story of the burning bush recorded in Exodus 3.
i. And of course, Jesus appeals to EXODUS because it is one of the first 5 books of the Bible. As we have noted, there are passages in the Psalms and in the prophets which are a little plainer on the resurrection, but Jesus will use what they recognize as Scripture to show them that they are wrong.
ii. In Exodus 3, God appeared to Moses and said, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Abraham and Isaac and Jacob had all been dead for some time by then. But God did not say, I was the God of A, I, and J, He says, I am the God of A,I, and J. Death had not ended the personal existence of A,I and J. After death, they continued to be with their God.
iii. In the BOOK OF HEBREWS we are told that because of the promises God gave him, Abraham looked forward “to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” And he and other OT saints, Hebrews continues, “[longed] for a better country – a heavenly one.” Abraham expected to go to heaven.
D. But notice that this makes sense to you and me only because of what Jesus teaches here in Mark and because of what we read in Hebrews. I doubt that any of us reading through Exodus would easily make the connection with the resurrection that Jesus makes here. It is Jesus and the NT teaching on the resurrection that makes it so much easier for you and me to understand what the OT reveals about the resurrection.
2. Nevertheless, JESUS’ POINT here is that these Sadducees, with just the first 5 books of the OT, should have believed in the resurrection. He says to them that they did not know the “Scriptures nor the power of God.” God made promises to A, I, and J. And for those promises to be kept and for A,I, and J to see the fulfilment of those promises, they needed to rise from the dead. For Abraham to see that his descendants were as the “sand on the sea-shore” and that “in him all the nations of the earth would be blessed” required that God raise him from the dead. And these Sadducees would have known this if they knew their scriptures.
A. So brothers and sisters, young people and boys and girls, study the Bible. You boys and girls might remember the story of young King JOSIAH. He became king at just 8 years old. And things were very bad in Israel at that time, in terms of religion. There was widespread idolatry and immorality. But something happened that turned things around in Israel. Do you remember what it was? While the temple of the Lord was being tidied up, the Book of the Law was found. And it was read to the King who then read it out loud to the people and then he had the Levites go and teach it to them. And so, the people began to do as the Lord had commanded.
B. And it has always been that once the Bible begins to occupy a lesser place in public worship or private devotions, false doctrine is sure to flourish. As J.C. Ryle puts it in his commentary, “The churches which are most flourishing are churches which honour the Bible. The nations which enjoy most moral light are nations in which the Bible is most known … The godliest families are Bible-reading families. The holiest men and women are Bible-reading people.”
C. Now, can we study the Bible but not grow closer to the Lord? Yes. The Pharisees and the Sadducees of the Gospels make that quite plain. But Jesus did not tell the Sadducees to stop reading the Bible, did He! If we are ignorant of the Bible, we will fall into error. We must read and study it often, carefully, in private and with others, and listen to it taught in public worship.
So, the OT does teach the resurrection. Death is not the end. God is not the God of the dead but of the living. But thanks be to God that we have the resurrection of Jesus and the teaching of the NT to make that plain for us. And that brings us, in the second place, to the NATURE of the Resurrected State.
Jesus says, “When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”
1. Now, what we have to understand here is that the presupposition or the basic assumption of the Sadducees’ question, which was actually the common understanding of most Jews of that time, was that families simply took up their living in heaven where they left off on earth. So you would have Mum, Dad, and the kids up there just as you had Mum, Dad, and the kids down here. What you did and what went on down here was what you did and what went on up there, but without sin. So to make sure that we are in this passage with those questioning Jesus, let’s begin with a little thought experiment:
A. And we are going to start right at the bottom of the pile, literally. Because of the times we live in many of you will know the teaching of ISLAM in relation to paradise. The popular understanding is that martyrs – those who die for the sake of Allah – will be rewarded by being married to 72 virgins in paradise. The truth though is that this reward is not just promised for martyrs but any Muslim male who enters paradise. And Islam is a growing religion. It is not proving difficult for the Imams and Mullahs to find willing volunteers to blow themselves up. And we can pretend to be all pious and horrified about this teaching but I think that we men, at a very base and coarse level, because of our sinfully lusty hearts, if we are honest, must admit that we get why this motivates Islamic men. This idea appeals to our sinful and fleshly desires. Am I right?
i. This then is an extreme example of how difficult it is for us to understand and appreciate what the Bible teaches about the resurrection. Our feelings and our thinking is so influenced by sin and this life that we are in desperate need of the Holy Spirit’s wisdom to even begin to long for the resurrection.
B. And we see this even as we leave behind the disgusting teaching of that false religion, Islam. Look at Jesus’ words: In the resurrection “they neither marry nor are given in marriage.” Now, if your experience of relationships and marriage is or has been an unhappy one, you might read these words with a kind of ‘good riddance’ mentality. BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL OF YOU HAPPILY MARRIEDS?
i. All of those good aspects particular to marriage, which are really really good, will not exist in heaven. In Luke’s parallel account, he includes Jesus saying that they neither marry nor are given in marriage “for they cannot die anymore.” Angels do not die so there is no need for procreation, which was an essential purpose of marriage from the beginning.
ii. So are you OK with that? Or can you at least understand why the Jews assumed that marriage would continue on in heaven? It was pre-Fall, after all, and it was really really good. I really love my wife. I love being married to her. And I have to tell you that at the human level I am not immediately excited to hear that “they neither marry nor are given in marriage” in the resurrection. It is hard to imagine a happy existence without her as my wife.
C. But congregation, this is precisely the point! It is right that we love marriage. It gives us companionship, it gives us the helper we need, it gives us sexual intimacy, it eases the weariness of our work, and it keeps us from distraction, amongst other things. It is so good that our eagerness to be married and our anticipation of marriage builds up in us as the wedding day draws closer. You see this written on the faces of engaged couples as they count down the days until they are married.
D. But what Jesus wants us to see here is that in the resurrection we don’t lose marriage, we gain Him and we gain an existence that is everything good about marriage but better, and everything good about who we are as individuals but better, and everything good about work but better, and everything good about worship but better, and everything good about relationships with others but better, and on it goes. That is why the Apostle Paul said, “To me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Heaven is gain! In heaven, we wont need the helper that marriage gives us. We wont be distracted. We wont get weary. We will have a perfect companionship. Our experience of Christ and of others will be 1,000,000 times better even than the intimacy of sex that we enjoy here.
E. The Lord Jesus wants you to see that the resurrected state is vastly better than even the very best this life has to offer!
F. Brothers and sisters, young people and boys and girls, in John 14, when Jesus taught His disciples about heaven, He said, I will prepare a place for you and “I will come again and will take you to be with me … that you also may be where I am.”
i. It ought to be then that as you think on the resurrection truths that Jesus has declared in these verses and His promise that you are going to be with Him in glory, that your heart tries to burst out of your chest with anticipation; that you get goose-bumps and your eyes well up with tears of joy and longing. You know how you physically and emotionally react when you anticipate something really good that is soon to come.
ii. There are two things that we lose in the resurrection state – sin and death! For the rest, it is all gain! It is hard for our earthly minds to imagine what it will be like but oh how we ought to long for the day of resurrection!
Well, there is then just one question left to ask and answer. You see, the wonderful things I have spoken of have to do with the resurrection to eternal life. They are the things that await those who believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins. But there is also a resurrection to eternal condemnation for those who reject Him. And that life will be a complete misery and cursed existence. It will be everything bad about this life multiplied 1,000,000 times and with no relief.
So the resurrection will be a great blessing for some and a great curse for others. Which is it for you?
Let us pray.