Living and Serving God with Resurrection Eyes
2nd Last Sun. in Church year - 11/18/01
Texts: Luke 20:27-40 and Exodus 3:1-15
vs. 38 Jesus said, "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to Him all are alive."
Introduction
What does the future hold for you? For any of us? That’s the million-dollar question that everyone is seeking the answer to, isn’t it? Can we really know anything at all about our future? Some would say absolutely not. No way! Others will tell you all kinds of things, probably more than you want to know about your supposed future if you pay them a few bucks. But what is the truth? What about my future life here on earth? There are certain things that we do know, because God has revealed them to us in His word. But before we can understand our earthly future, we first have to ask, "What will happen to me when I die?" Job asked, "If a man dies, will he live again?" (Job 14:14). You see our eternal future directly affects our earthly future. So we start with Job.
I. The God of the Living
A. The Sadducees were living for death.
The first part of his question asks, "If a man dies…" Doesn’t that sound kind of strange? Everyone dies don’t they? Of course they do. That’s the one thing that is certain - all people die. So why do we in America work so hard to deny its reality? We have people die in hospitals, we have funeral homes deal with bodies for us, we pay money to make our dead look like they are alive, many people shield their children from funerals and for some the subject of death is a forbidden conversation. Is it because we don’t want to face the reality of our own death? In the end that attitude will show itself to be silly won’t it? Because all people die.
In Jesus’ day, death and questions about it where right out in the open. And in particular within the Jewish faith there was a great debate over Job’s question. The Sadducees believed that there was no life after death. The entire Spiritual realm of angels and heaven, hell and Satan were non-existent to them and irrelevant because of they rejected the resurrection. They Pharisees however believed in all those spiritual things including a resurrection to eternal life. Yet both claimed to believe in Scripture as God’s word. You see, it’s not only today that people can read the very same words and come to all kinds of different conclusions about what is true.
The Sadducees heard Jesus teaching about the resurrection and they wanted to try and prove Him wrong. They even used Scripture, actually they misused it. They set up a ludicrous scenario about a women, her husband who dies and six brother-in-laws who die as well. Jesus begins with that subject of marriage but He quickly uses God’s Word correctly and shows them how far off base they really are. Because the Sadducees didn’t have "resurrection eyes" they couldn’t see the real meaning of life here on earth. They were all about death. But the true God is all about life.
Paul gets it in the proper perspective in Romans 6:23. He acknowledges that we all must die because we all are sinful to the core. But he looks at it through "resurrection eyes" when he says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
B. Jesus is the God of the Living.
Jesus proves this gift of God to the Sadducees before Him by taking them into Scripture - to Moses at the burning bush. He said, "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’" (v. 37). When Moses was speaking with God, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been "dead" for many, many years. And yet God uses the present tense for each one of them - "I am the God" of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Ex. 3:5).
God makes it even clearer by telling Moses that His name is "I AM" (Ex 3:14). From the perspective of Moses (and us) this name is recorded through out the Old Testament as "Yahweh" which means "He is". With God, every generation is present tense and once He is your God He is your God forever more. Yahweh told Moses, "This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation" (Ex. 3:15). Those words prove the resurrection because Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, though they no longer lived on earth, they still were very much alive with Yahweh as their God. He is their God forever, just as He is yours and mine.
Now when Jesus comes, He connects Himself to the great "I AM," proclaiming for all to hear, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies" (John 11:25). Yes, we will die. But for the Christian, death is not the end. It is merely the door through which we enter into the ultimate glory of our God. Verse 14 in our epistle lesson (2 Thessalonians 2) makes the connection between heaven and earth when it says that the Holy Spirit called you into salvation through the gospel, so "that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ."
How cool is that! You and I get to share in the glory of God Himself. Death is no longer an issue of concern or worry for "Death has been swallowed up in victory" says, 1 Corinthians 15:54. That’s why many of you have told me, and rightly so, that you want your funeral not to be a time of mourning but a time of great celebration.
II. Living and Serving with Resurrection Eyes.
Does that promised resurrection only affect our funeral? Is its application only for our life in heaven? Of course not. Paul speaks out against the Sadducee mentality. He emphasizes the importance of living today and every day with "resurrection eyes." In 1 Corinthians 15:(14, 16-17) he says, "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins."
If ours is the God of the living then He has called us to live. He created us for life, not death. That means that our faith is an active faith, a lively faith seeks to do His will. Yahweh made that abundantly clear when He talked with Moses through the burning bush. Let’s look at our Old Testament lesson for just a moment. To begin with, Yahweh hears and knows the needs of His people. He said, "I have indeed seen the misery of My people in Egypt, I have heard them … and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them" (Exodus 3:7-8a). I’m sure Moses was thinking that was great so far. But then Yahweh says those three little words that scare so many still today, "So now, go." "Go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people … out of Egypt" (3:10).
Now Moses panics. "This is too much for me, a measly little human," he must have thought. "I’ve got other things in mind. I’m not gifted to do this. I’ve never done it before." In verse 11 Moses said, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out?" What is God’s answer? Was it, "That’s ok Moses, I realize your schedule’s kind of busy right now, I don’t want to push you beyond your comfort level, or interfere with all your extra-curricular activities?" No. God simply said, "I will be with you." That’s the answer to every concern or worry or excuse ever expressed. If God is with us, than there is nothing we can’t do that is according to His will. In those words, it’s as if God were to say according to His name, "In all that you do, I AM-everything else is not."
God’s been giving that same promise of His presence throughout the ages. To Isaac he said, "I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you" (Genesis 26:24). To Jacob He said, "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go" (Genesis 28:15). To Joshua, who was facing a massive land acquisition and nation-building project God said, "Today I will begin to exalt you in the eyes of all Israel, so they may know that I am with you as I was with Moses" (Joshua 3:7). Through Isaiah we hear God’s comforting words, "Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand" (Isaiah 41:10). And when Jeremiah told Yahweh that he didn’t know how to speak to strangers about the truth, Yahweh responded, "Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you" (Jeremiah 1:8). Are you getting the point? The God of the living, is the living God who is always with you, His people.
You know there’s one more time in Scripture where God said, "Go" and "I am with you" in the same passage. In Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus says, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
That my friends, is the very same God, the great I AM speaking to you and to me as He did to Moses. How will we respond? As individuals? As a church? I am convinced that we will respond and we will serve our Lord through "resurrection eyes." For then we will not look at the task before us in light of the past events, past struggles or recent failures. That will only run us down. No, because we believe in the resurrection, we live for the future and we serve for life. Martin Luther King had a great, down to earth way of putting it. He said, "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree today."
There are people all around us today that need the Gospel fruit which Jesus has planted within us and called us to bear. The excuses, the other activities, and the reasons for us not to respond are more than I can list. But we each know them well. And Satan wants us to use them against Jesus. But if we do, it will mean that Satan will take more people with him into death. For without the Gospel truth of Jesus Christ and with out His love that Jesus wants us to share with others, thousands-even millions could die in unbelief and therefore experience eternal torment apart from God.
But we won’t do that, will we? We can’t, because we have been given "resurrection eyes" that make us sensitive to the real needs of people around us. By His grace we are, as Jesus told the Sadducees, "God’s children," "children of the resurrection" who "can no longer die." All of that is ours because our God is Yahweh, the one who is, who is always with us, who is giving us the gift of salvation by grace through faith alone, who is hearing the cries of those souls that do not yet know Him and who is therefore empowering us to share the wonders and the joys of being "resurrection children."
Conclusion
Starting this very moment may we live and serve our living God through resurrection eyes, eyes that see Him at our side in every challenge, struggle and pain, eyes that see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and all of our fellow believers alive and active before God’s throne, eyes that see them and hear them singing with us in just a few minutes when we sing "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord, - God of sabaoth adored," eyes that see Jesus in every challenge and opportunity to come, Jesus who "is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (v. 38), for in Him alone we have life and we live and we serve in His "resurrection eyes." Amen.
