[Machine transcription]
Now Jesus says, “Now God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” You may be seated. In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear saints, the text today takes us to Holy Tuesday, to just the week of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, and to the Lord’s last public teaching in the temple in Jerusalem, where he’s confronted by the Pharisees first and then, in the text that we have today, by the Sadducees, who were always arguing with one another. We’ll remember that the Pharisees and the Sadducees themselves didn’t get along. The Pharisees were the lay theologians; the Sadducees were the priests that served in the temple. The Pharisees had Moses and the prophets; the Sadducees just had Moses and kind of discounted the prophets. The Pharisees believed in the angels; the Sadducees did not.
But most relevant to our text, even though angels come up — Jesus says you’ll be like the angels — the most relevant point is that the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the body, while the Sadducees didn’t. They think that they’ve got Jesus just, I think, you know, I at least imagine how it was the night before, on Holy Monday, when all the Sadducees were sitting around talking about how they’re going to get Jesus the next day. They’re talking about what trick question they’re going to use to try to expose his ignorance. And they finally settled on this one: This will get him. None of the Pharisees are able to answer this question about the man who was married and then died, and his brother was married and died, and so on and so forth until all seven brothers die, and then the wife also. Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?
And I just think that, you know, one of the Sadducees who’s asking the question is acting serious, but the rest of them are kind of snickering. We got Jesus! He’s not going to be able to answer this. It’s important for us to see that the question is not a legitimate question. They’re asking the question because they don’t believe in the resurrection. They’re asking the question to mock the resurrection. But Jesus is going to answer the question not just for them but also for us, so that we would not only know that God is the God of the living and not the dead, and that the resurrection of the body is a true thing, but that we would look for that resurrection, long for that resurrection, and set our hope in that resurrection.
And that’s the goal of the sermon today, that we would be there and rejoice in these gifts that Jesus gives. His response to the Sadducees is twofold. His first is… He kind of cuts through their mockery: Whose wife will this woman be in the resurrection? He cuts through that by talking about how the resurrection is a completely different kind of life. He uses beautiful language here. He talks about sons of the resurrection, those who are worthy to attain to that life. And he talks about that life being a life where there’s no death and therefore there’s no marriage or giving in marriage.
The reason is because what Jesus is saying is that in the resurrection, there’s no babies. And that’s how we’re like the angels, because there’s no — even though the hallmark cards show all these little baby cupids floating around and everything — there are no baby angels. The Lord created all the angels at once, and they all exist and go forward in this way. And so it is in the resurrection that all who attain the resurrection are there. So there’s no getting married, and there’s no having children in the resurrection. Once we’re there, we’re locked into that number.
Now, the ancient Fathers talked about this, and even the early Lutherans would talk about this, about how that was really what the Lord had designed in the very beginning. Now, I want to just be careful because it’s dangerous to speculate and to go off the Scriptures. So just know that that’s what we’re doing. And if you don’t like this, then just forget about it. But the idea was that even in the beginning, when God created Adam and Eve, they were not supposed to be husband and wife forever and ever and have children into all eternity. But that at some point, Adam and Eve would attain to this angelic life. They would grow in glory and wisdom and grace until they attain to this resurrection life.
The way that the church fathers like to picture it is like Jesus in the resurrection, where he’s radiant with glory and life is just flowing out of him. That was the intent also for all of us. Now, Adam and Eve took a detour, and we’re in the middle of that detour. But part of the Lord’s work is to restore us to that angelic, glory-filled, never-dying life that the Lord intended for us in the first place.
Now, this passage does lead to a lot of questions, and I’ve been getting these questions, especially recently, from a lot of the couples who are engaged to get married, thinking about the life that the Lord will give them together. And this text seems like a hard text, like there’s nothing better than being a husband or being a wife, but what does that mean in heaven? Does it mean we’re not married anymore?
I found a quote that I want to read to you that I think is helpful in this way. When Jesus refers to the words of the Lord to Moses, “I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” he’s teaching us that our names and our personalities and our relationships endure through death into the life to come. That’s what it means: God of the fathers and of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, even after death and even into the resurrection, and that they’re still the fathers of Moses then.
We continue. It’s the effects of the fall and the necessities of this mortal life that are removed by the glory of the resurrection. All else remains purified and made perfect. This means that in the resurrection, your parents are still your parents. Your grandparents are still your grandparents. Your children are still your children. And even in some ways, your spouse is still your spouse, at least the spouse that the Lord gave you in this life.
And this also answers this question that I get all the time, which is, “Pastor, are we going to know each other in the resurrection? Are we going to recognize each other in the resurrection?” And the answer to that question is finally, yes! That all of whatever this nonsense of sin is that clouds our being able to know one another and even to know ourselves, that all of this is taken away.
It’s also at this point that we have to confess clearly that the resurrection, well, that eternal life is a bodily existence and that the resurrection of the body is the resurrection of this body — your body that you have now is the body that will be resurrected on the last day. Now, this also brings up a couple of other questions like this: “Pastor, what if I don’t want this body? Could I upgrade?” The answer is that yes, you will be upgraded.
The body that you have now is stained with sin, is corrupted by sin. The body that you have now is dying. The body that you have now is weak and corrupt. The body that you have now is getting sick. The body that you have now is, again, full of all of the effects of sin. And in the resurrection, those are removed, right? So that your body will be purified and made perfect, without sin, without sickness, without weakness.
Paul talks about it like this. He says, “Our bodies are sown mortal; they’re raised immortal. They’re sown in dishonor; they’re raised in honor. They’re sown in mortality; they’re raised in immortality. They’re sown a natural body.” And then listen to this: Paul says, “They’re raised a spiritual body.” There’s a natural body and a spiritual body. It’s a wild thing to think about, the spiritual body, but that’s the body that’s completely free from any of the effects of sin. So it’s this body, but it’s this body like you’ve never had it before — this body completely free from sickness and weakness and everything else.
This also, I think, has to do with the question of how old will you be in the resurrection. I think the reason that matters is because getting old — I’ve been told — is difficult. It seems like the body doesn’t work as well as it used to. Your eyes don’t work as well; your memory doesn’t work as well; your hair doesn’t work as well. Everything is getting worse. Well, this is because — now think about this — again, here’s a little bit of my own speculation, but I think I’m on pretty safe ground in this area, that for us, aging is getting closer and closer to death. But in the resurrection, aging is getting further and further from death, so that I can’t help but imagine that as we age in the resurrection — whatever that looks like — that it’s your sight that gets better, your memory that gets stronger, your body itself that gets stronger, your wisdom grows, your graciousness; all of these things are getting better and better.
In other words, it’s not getting closer and closer to dying. It’s getting farther and farther from death. Now, there’s one other point to the fact that this body is the body that’s raised. And the way we know that, not only is from the testimony of Scripture, but just from the resurrection of Jesus. So we can say it just this clearly: your grave will be as empty as the grave of Jesus. This is how we know this.
But the question is, “Well, what happens if something horrible happens to our bodies? You know, what happens if we die in a house fire and our bodies get burned up, or we die at sea and we just disintegrate?” Or all these, what happens then to the body? The answer is given to us by St. Paul, who writes to the Philippians that Jesus will remake our body so that it would be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to hold all things together. So that the almighty power of our Lord Jesus is at work on the last day to rebuild our bodies from whatever material that we have when everything ends. He’ll rebuild our bodies so that our bodies will be restored, our souls joined to them, and we will live forever.
And here’s the main point that we need to take away: that we will live forever also in our bodies. That’s what we mean when we confess, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” Now, what is that life like?
The Bible has a difficult time. You see the prophets and the apostles straining by the power of the Holy Spirit against the capabilities of our own imaginations to describe that life to us. It’s so wonderful that it’s beyond our asking, even imagining. So it mostly describes it in negative ways. Like this in the Revelation, for example: there’s no more sin. Can you imagine that? In the resurrection, here’s one of the things that I’m excited about: in the resurrection, it won’t even be possible to sin. It won’t even be possible to want to sin. It’s amazing! There’s no more sickness. In other words, all the corruption of this life is gone. There’s no more death and dying. Time is no longer constrained by that endpoint. It’s called the new heaven and the new earth where the righteous dwell, so that everything there is good and holy.
The picture that we get of the new heaven and new earth — and we’ll get a lot of these passages in the next few weeks as we get to the end of the church year — is one of this garden city where there’s abundance and joy and bliss beyond our imagining. We will be glorified. If you can imagine yourself reflecting the glory of the Lord Jesus, like his own body was radiating in the Transfiguration, and Moses and Elijah were reflecting that glory, so also we will be reflecting that glory.
And there’ll be different degrees of glory. And here’s something wonderful to think about: Daniel says it like this: those who bring many to righteousness will shine like the stars in the heavens. And so the picture of the resurrection is that just like the different stars have different degrees of glory, so we will have different degrees of glory.
And we hear that now; just think about this, and maybe we’re kind of winding down with this idea, that we think, “Oh man, I wish that I could have the most glory in the resurrection. I don’t want to be the kind of dim star. I would like to be the bright star.” And we kind of get jealous about that idea that different people will have different degrees of glory. But how about this? In the resurrection, your joy will not come from your own glory, but from the glory that the Lord gives to other people. There’s no jealousy. There’s no competition. There’s no striving. No. There’s just rejoicing in the gifts that the Lord Jesus gives, in the hope of the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.
This is what Jesus argues to the Sadducees that day and what he gives to us. Jesus takes them back to the burning bush, and he says, “Remember how the Lord says to Moses, ‘I’m the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,’ and I’m not the God of the dead, I’m the God of the living.” Right? The Lord didn’t say, “I was the God of Abraham,” but “I am the God of Abraham,” which means Abraham is and will be forever.
And that is also, dear saints, true for you. God is your God, your creator, and more, your redeemer, the one who laid down his life for you to forgive all of your sins. And this one who was dead and buried and raised on the third day, this one — our Lord Jesus — has claimed us, which means that we also not only will but must live with him forever in the glories of the world to come. Your God is the God of the living, and all who live, live in him.
May this be the confident promise that carries us through the troubles of this life and gives us hope and joy and peace. May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.