A Valpraiso University philosopher by the name of Gilbert Meilaender put the events of September 11th and their aftermath into context as he recounts a time in the not so distant past when the famous Christian preacher and writer C.S. Lewis addressed a gathering of college students in England, a nation that was being dragged into World War II because Hitler had invaded their ally, Poland. Meilaender writes, “On October 22, 1939, at the church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford, C.S. Lewis preached at evensong. To anxious undergraduates, many of whom would soon face death, and all of whom must have wondered what they were doing studying mathematics and metaphysics when their nation was in mortal peril, Lewis said: ‘If we had foolish unchristian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon’” (Christian Century, 9/26-10/31).
All of us were quickly reminded of that reality as we watched the horror of September 11th unfold with our own eyes. That is why against the backdrop of this present reality our celebration of Saints Triumphant, which in years gone by may have passed without much notice, is today filled with eternal significance, and everlasting comfort. This morning we celebrate the reality that for God’s saints the hope for a great life isn’t built on the evolutionary promise of the gradual betterment of humanity, nor will is it found in our own ability to somehow create a heaven upon this earth. As God’s saints we give thanks that our lives here on earth are but a brief pilgrimage that leads to the greatest life there is - found in our true home in heaven. This morning we celebrate the goodness of our God who has already brought many of our brothers and sisters in the Christian faith to their eternal resting place. As we give thanks for their deliverance we are moved to press in our fight contending to keep hold of the Christian faith that God has so graciously planted in our hearts as we eagerly look forward to the resurrection when all of God’s saints will be united to spend forever in his gracious presence.
As we wait eagerly for our final redemption we gather at our Savior’s feet to hear his words of comfort as he confidently assures us in the words of the text for this morning: You are counted worthy of the resurrection. How do we know for certain? Jesus tells us that we can be sure because I) our hope is not based on the power of our minds. Jesus reminds us that we can be sure because II) our hope is based on the Word of God.
Jesus understood the world around him very well. He understood that people’s hearts and minds from conception are completely tainted by sin. They are steeped in spiritual blindness and are hamstrung by sinful presuppositions. The Sadducees in the text are a prime example of this. The Gospel writer, Luke, points out their fatal flaw when he writes, “Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection” (Luke 20:27). Even though God’s Word clearly states that the life of the soul continues on after the death of the body, since such a thought didn’t make sense to their rational minds these Sadducees refused to believe it was true. But it wasn’t enough just for them to reject the ongoing life of the soul and the future resurrection of the body. They wanted everyone to reject that notion - so they approach Jesus, who is the chief proponent of the resurrection, with a question. Of course, their desire was not to learn from Jesus. Rather their desire was to grandstand their marvelous new teaching and their supposed achievement as great thinkers. In their arrogance they expected to make the Son of God look foolish.
While the mind is certainly a tremendous gift that God has given to men, the mind was never meant to replace God. It was meant to serve him. That’s why when it comes to spiritual things a heart that is cloaked in unbelief and a mind that is blind to spiritual truth cannot reason correctly. Unfortunately the Sadducees weren’t spiritually smart enough to understand this. As a result we hear their spiritually ignorant approach to Scripture that attempts to find flaws in God’s Word and make it sound contradictory. They proudly bring Jesus a “what-if” kind of question that they figure will make them look quite smart and at the same time stump the Great Teacher – Jesus. They cite a law given by Moses to the people of Israel called the law of the levirate marriage. That law said (Deuteronomy 25:5,6) that if a woman should become a widow, her brother-in-law was required to take her in marriage and seek to father children with her who were to bear the dead man’s name. The law was instituted both to keep the family name alive because it could have been the human line of the Savior as well as provide an heir for the family property. With this law in mind the Sadducees construct this almost absurd scenario concluding it with a real zinger of a question, “Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?” (Luke 20:33).
The Sadducees wanted to trap Jesus in trying to explain what was according to their thinking a contradictory scenario. They figured either Jesus would have to admit that this woman would be the wife to seven men at one time in the resurrection, or he would have to deny that there is a resurrection because having multiple husbands at the same time was unscriptural. But here is where their false, sinful presuppositions have tripped them up and led them to false conclusions. Their first false conclusion is that life on the other side of the grave will mirror life on this side. Their second false conclusion that really underlies this entire discussion is that the Word of God is at least unreliable because of its gaping inconsistencies and ultimately should be declared false because of its apparent contradictions.
It’s doesn’t take too long to see that this same kind of spiritual, Scriptural misunderstanding or manipulation is prevalent in our world still today. There are some people who reject all of Scripture outright as nothing more than another piece of literature. But perhaps what’s even more disturbing is when Christians are content to sacrifice the pure words of Scripture to harmonize God’s Word with the popular mindset of the day. At times this compromising has even been promoted as a wise way of making Scripture more “palatable” to modern people and supposedly it is therefore easier to believe. There are a number of different areas that are commonly compromised in Christendom today – whether that’s watering down God’s clear, scriptural declaration that all people from the point of conception are completely evil in his sight, or sidestepping the Biblical truth that we have no power to come to faith in Jesus on our own, or a willingness to adjust the time frame of the Scriptural account of the creation of this world out of nothing in six-24 hour days, or to ridicule the veracity of Scripture when it claims that by applying water in the name of the Triune God people are actually brought to faith, or a willingness to make logical leaps and grammatical summersaults so as to evade the Biblical mandate to lovingly ask people to refrain from receiving the Lord’s Supper until they have been properly instructed about the significance of this supper because of the special, physical presence of the Lord’s body and blood together with the bread and wine as well as the need to be able to examine oneself in order to partake of it in a worthy way, or an unwillingness to acknowledge in practice that while Scripture clearly states that men and women enjoy equal status before God as his redeemed children in Christ it also clearly points out that God has assigned males and females differing yet complementary roles when it comes to the way they are to live and interact with one another on this earth. Such a compromising approach to Scripture, even with the best of intentions, does not flow from a heart of faith. It flows from a heart of unbelief that doesn’t believe that God really can and really does change hearts, minds, and lives. Such an approach is actually a slap in God’s face as though he weren’t smart enough to get it right the first time, but thankfully our human minds have now advanced to the point where we’re able to make up for his literary and intellectual shortcomings.
While we may be tempted to give into the spirit of Scriptural compromise for the sake of convenience or out of our own, selfish pride, make no mistake, to do so would be to violate the truth of Scripture. Violating the truth of Scripture is not the heart of Christian faith. Rather Scriptural truth is what molds the heart, mind, and life of the Christian. As the Apostle Paul remarked in his second letter to the Corinthians, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Why? Because as Jesus himself has said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31,32). As his saints he has set us free – from our guilt for the times that we have violated Scriptural truth, free from the punishment that we justly deserve for it, and as a result he has set us free from the chains of our natural spiritual blindness. He has freed us from the hope that is built on the power of positive thinking or the ingenuity of human mind or the promise of the human spirit. He has freed us to see life as it truly is in his Word. In that Word we find our hope because in his Word we are assured that we are counted worthy of the resurrection.
Through his powerful Word our Savior allows us to know things about human relationships that we otherwise could not. As he quickly points out to that group of Sadducees that had gathered – human relationships as we know them in this life will be much different in the life to come. In this life human beings marry and are given in marriage. One of the purposes that God outlined for marriage in this life is to “be fruitful and increase in number” (Genesis 1:28). God purposed to populate this world through childbirth in this age by means of the blessing of marriage.
But in the age to come there will no longer be birth or death because the saints will be like the angels. We won’t be angels – we will be like them in two ways. First of all we will never face death because we will never again be able to sin – just as the angels in heaven are no longer able to sin. That means the joy of heaven will never end! We will be like the angels in another way as well. Just as angels do not join in marriage to bring forth new creations so also Jesus tells us that the necessity of the marriage relationship will no longer exist in the age to come. All the saints will simply be known as God’s children, enjoying perfect unity and happiness both with God and with one another. There is no way that our frail human minds could possibly know such things had Jesus not revealed them to us and brought us to believe them through his powerful Word.
What’s more Jesus reveals amazing things about the true God in his Word that give us hope. As Jesus speaks to the Sadducees he demonstrates that all of Holy Scripture is inspired by God, not only the exact words – but even details like the exact tense of the verbs. Jesus points out that even from early on in the history of this world God revealed himself as the God of the resurrection using the present tense of a verb to do so. Jesus recalls when God spoke to Moses at the burning bush he said about himself, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). Even though the bodies of these three men had long been dead God made it clear to Moses that his relationship with these three men continued to exist even in the present. So while human relationships in this age end in death; the relationship that a person has with God continues forever. This is the wonderful truth that has given strength to God’s saints throughout this age. It is this truth that will continue to strengthen God’s saints until this age comes to an end. That is why God’s saints find their hope in God’s Word because that is where these incredible truths are revealed.
Just as all the saints who have gone before us we are confident that we will participate in the resurrection because our hope is built on the one who calls himself the living Word of God. That’s why our real hope for future life isn’t focused to the cross as much as it is focused to the empty tomb. That is our hope because we have been united with the one who gives us hope. Just listen to the Apostle Paul as he wrote to the Romans, “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection” (Romans 6:3,5). The resurrection to life everlasting is our destiny – for both our bodies and our souls – because our living Savior has blazed that trail before us!
That is why we hold our heads high even in this present age and confess with confident conviction: Therefore I murmur not, heav’n is my home. Whate’er my earthly lot, heav’n is my home. And I shall surely stand, there at my Lord’s right hand. Heav’n is my fatherland. Heav’n is my home. Amen.
