This sermon explores Jesus' teachings on resurrection, emphasizing that He is the God of the living, and offers hope for life beyond the grave, using scripture to challenge our understanding and provide comfort in our daily struggles.
Welcome church! I want to begin today’s message by affirming how wonderful and perfect the scriptures are. The Bible is the written word of God and when we read it, listen to it, and put it into practice, our lives will be changed, our minds washed, and our hearts refreshed.
Does the Bible answer every question we will ever have in life? Actually, no. It does not. It does not give us specific guidance on which job to take, what name to give our baby, where to take vacation, which car to buy or which apartment to rent. The Bible gives us wisdom in those areas but not specific answers.
The Bible is the written word of God and when we read it, listen to it, and put it into practice, our lives will be changed, our minds washed, and our hearts refreshed.
We’re going to look at a story today from the Gospel of Luke where Jesus is questioned by a group of leaders who cherished the scriptures, or at least part of the scriptures. The Sadducees were a group of people who believed only in the first five books of the Old Testament, called the Pentateuch, also called the Books of Moses. These books are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Anything that fell outside of these five books, or anything these books did not teach nor affirm, was to be discounted or dismissed. That’s what they believed.
Here we read how the Sadducees try to trap Jesus with a trick question.
Luke points out that the Sadducees believe “there is no resurrection.” Why did the Sadducees say there is no resurrection? Because resurrection is not taught in the Books of Moses, the first five books of the Old Testament.
So when the Sadducees approached Jesus with this question about marriage in the afterlife, they aren’t asking a sincere question. They are setting a trap. They don’t like Jesus very much and they resent how much the general population liked and followed him.
Just a few passages earlier in Luke 19:46, Jesus went into the temple courts and caused an uproar. He drove out those who were using the temple for business purposes instead of for worshiping God. Jesus exclaimed, “My house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers!”
Now, the Sadducees were the group in charge of taking care of the temple. The temple was theirs, it was in their care and custody. When Jesus caused that scene, guess which group of people were most offended and felt the strongest rebuke by Jesus’ actions that day: that’s right, the Sadducees!
The Sadducees did not like Jesus upsetting their status quo. That’s what Jesus does, by the way. He disturbs us and upends the things inside of us that hurt us, damage others, and get in the way of our relationship with God. All of this is done in love, sometimes painful, uncomfortable love like that day in the temple. But Jesus came to set things right between us and God. He does this still to this day.
The Sadducees decided to lay a trap for Jesus that, if answered incorrectly, could cause the crowds to begin to doubt Jesus, and might cause them to begin to turn away from him. If that happened the Sadducees could get back to business as usual.
Marriage in Heaven
Their question is about marriage in the afterlife. “Whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
How does Jesus answer? He simply rejects the premise of their question ... View this full sermon with PRO Premium
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