ONE BRIDE FOR SEVEN BROTHERS
Luke 20:27-40
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR: THE GARLIC REMEDY
1. Soon after Bernard reached his 110th birthday, a Houston Chronicle reporter visited him looking for a story. "So, Bernard," asked the reporter, "to what do you think you owe your longevity?"
2. "That’s easy," replied Bernard. "It’s garlic.” "Garlic?" said the reporter. "Can you explain further?"
"Well," replied Bernard, "I eat a clove of garlic every morning after breakfast. Then, after lunch, I eat another garlic clove. And finally, just before I go to bed, I eat my third clove of garlic."
3. "Good grief!" said the reporter. "And why do you think that works?" "Well," said Bernard, "whenever the Angel of Death comes to me and calls out, ‘Bernard, Bernard,’ I turn and face him, take a deep breath, and loudly say, “Whooooooooooo?"
B. TEXT
27 Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. 28 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. 30 The second 31 and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?” 34 Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come [that age] and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, 36 and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. 37 But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’[Ex. 3:6] 38 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” 39 Some of the teachers of the law responded, “Well said, teacher!” 40 And no one dared to ask him any more questions. Luke 20:27-40.
C. THESIS
1. When I was growing up I watched a humorous movie called “7 Brides for 7 Brothers.” It portrays the 1850s, where a woman marries a backwoodsman in the Oregon Territory, only afterward to find out his six hillbilly brothers were all going to be living with them. Luckily, she's very stubborn, and begins the process of ‘housebreaking’ them all. The 6 brothers kidnap wives who eventually fall in love with them and have a collective shotgun wedding!
2. Tonight’s story is almost as dramatic as that, for it is, as its title says, about “One Bride for Seven Husbands.”
I. THE SADDUCEE’S QUESTION
A. HIDDEN MOTIVES
1. In today’s scripture, the Sadducees came up with a story they thought would confound Jesus’ wisdom. The gist of it is that seven brothers, in obeying God’s commands, all married the same woman, one at a time, and all of them died (her too).
2. So the Sadducee’s question was, “In heaven, who’s wife will she be?”
B. RIDICULOUS EXAMPLE
1. Now the first laughable thing is that the Sadducees didn’t believe in a resurrection, so they really weren’t interested in knowing this – it was all subterfuge intended to baffle Jesus.
2. Secondly, their story was so unlikely to happen that it would be a one in a trillion chance of occurring. Why worry about something we’d never see?
3. Like many people today, they were so bent on stopping Jesus that their obsession drove them into areas of wild speculation.
C. IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE, WHY THE FIXATION?
1. Evangelist E.L. Hyde was confronted with an atheist during revival meetings in New Jersey. The atheist said, "Didn't you say last night that you could prove to the satisfaction of anyone within 10 minutes that all atheists are fools?" "Yes I did. Are you an atheist? And you say there is no reality in Christianity?"
2. "Yes, I do say that! I have studied all phases of the subject and have traveled and given lectures against Christianity for more than 12 years and I am prepared to say there's nothing in it." "You are certain there is nothing in it?" "Yes, sir; there is nothing in it!"
3. "Would you please tell me," said Mr. Hyde, "if a man who will lecture 12 years against nothing is not a fool, what in your judgment would constitute a fool?"
4. The atheist turned away in a rage. Mr. Hyde, taking out his watch, insisted he still had 6 minutes to go, but the atheist wouldn't hear him! [Knight’s 3000, p. 28.]
II. JESUS’ ANSWER TO THE QUESTION
A. YOUR QUESTION IS UNSCRIPTURAL
1. Jesus said, “You ask such a question because you don’t know the Word of God nor the power of God!”
2. It wasn’t at all material whose wife she would be in heaven, for death puts an end to that relation. Paul said in Romans 7:2 that “a woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.”
3. So what DID Jesus say the Word said about these issues? There is NO MARRIAGE or giving of marriage IN HEAVEN. Instead, WE WILL BE LIKE THE ANGELS.
B. REPRODUCTION ONLY OCCURS IN THIS LIFE
1. Because of sin and its result – sickness & death – the only way for life to continue in this present world is through reproduction/ begetting children. The old die & new are born.
2. In heaven, there won’t be any death. 100% of those who get into heaven will still be there a trillion years later. So we don’t need to reproduce. So there won’t be any marrying or a state of matrimony in heaven.
C. WE WILL BE “LIKE THE ANGELS”
1. Angels are very different from us. They have no permanent form or material body. They are compared to “winds” or “spirits” (Heb. 1:7,14; Ps. 104:4). They easily change form; see Judges 13:20.
2. They are sexless though they are always described as looking like men. They undoubtedly don’t have male or female body parts. They don’t need to eat or excrete. They don’t need to breathe.
3. One angel was standing “in” the Sun (27 million degrees F). Angels are spoken of as being “stars in heaven” (Rev. 12:4) and pictured as if in the vacuum of space.
4. Jesus said we will be like them after our resurrection because our bodies will be transformed to be resurrection bodies like Christ’s (Phip. 3:21). Jesus’s resurrection body could pass through walls (John 20:19,26) and ascend and go through the universe without a space suit (Acts 1:9-10; Heb. 4:14 NASB).
D. WRONG CONCEPTIONS
1. The Mormons, Muslims, and many Christians are under the wrong assumption that earthly marriage continues in Heaven. This is a great error. Heavenly life will be completely different.
2. The proponents/supporters of the Gen. 6 idea that angels had sexual relations with humans would also be rebuked by Christ for not realizing that angels CAN’T have sex. Nor are there heavenly pediatricians, maternity wards, heavenly day cares, angel baby formula, pacifiers, or heavenly diapers.
3. There are the same number of angels NOW as there were when they were first created. Angels are a “company,” not a “race” (Heb. 12:22, KJV). They live forever and there will never be a need for more of them.
III. JESUS ATTACKS THEIR ANTI-SUPERNATURALISM
A. EASY PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION
1. In vss. 37-38 Jesus turned His attention from their question to the false doctrine of the Sadducees who denied the resurrection.
2. Jesus asked how Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – who were dead to our world and their bodies were dust in the cave of Machpelah – how could God say of them, “I AM the God of Abraham, etc.? Obviously, the patriarchs were still alive to God Himself, therefore God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
B. EFFECT OF JESUS’ ANSWER
1. Verse 39-40 says, “Some of the teachers of the law responded, “Well said, teacher!” And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
2. Not only did Jesus silence the Sadducees’ attack, this final turning the tables on His opponents discouraged all the others from giving it a shot. At last they left Him alone. Praise God!
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION: Finding More Than You Thought
1. Howard Carter was squinting into the darkness through a hole. His aid asked, “Do you see anything?” That question ended up in history books. Dr. Howard Carter, a well-known British archeologist had been digging for six years in an out-of-the-way valley.
2. All the other archeologists were digging in the Royal Valley, where the Pharaohs were all buried. All the tombs there had also been robbed earlier. Carter found an old tomb in adjacent valley. After digging all around it and finding nothing, he finally began digging under it. It was a long shot.
3. He knocked a hole through a wall and peered in to see if anything was there. He saw animals, statues, chests, gilded chariots, carved cobras, boxes, daggers, jewels, a throne, a figure of the goddess Sekhmet, and a hand-carved coffin of a teenaged King – and everywhere was the gleam of gold! More than 3,000 objects were there.
4. What a shocker it must have been; not expecting to see much, but to see so much that it took 10 years just to catalog its contents. Imagine when we get our first glimpse of Heaven. We won’t be expecting to see much, but our shock will be greater than Carter’s when he peered through that hole in the wall!
B. THE CALL
1. If you are here tonight and you are discouraged, I want you to know that there’s a real Heaven we’re headed for. It will be more wonderful than anything we could imagine. Who’s going through a tough time and needs some prayer?
2. How many of you know someone who needs to be saved? Let’s pray for that person right now to be saved.
3. PRAYER
