Sadducees Challenge The Reality Of The Resurrection

Devotion Weekly Message

November 10, 2019

Luke 20:27-38

Sadducees Challenge Reality Resurrection

Sermon Prayer: “Heavenly Father, I stand before Your people, to deliver Your message. Though the words are mine and I prepared this message, I pray that this message is Your message in its entirety. I pray your blessing and anointing on its delivery, its reception and most of all its application in our lives.” Amen

The Reading

“ Then some of the Sadducees, who deny that there is a resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, saying: “Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife, and he dies without children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. And the first took a wife and died without children. And the second took her as wife, and he died childless. Then the third took her, and in like manner the seven also; and they left no children and died. Last of all the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife does she become. For all seven had her as wife.” Jesus answered and said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But even Moses showed in the burning bush passage that the dead are raised, when he called the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ For He is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him.”

From where I stand, we all have some questions regarding factual truth of some event or doctrine of the bible. Why is that? Why can’t we just accept on FAITH God’s Holy Word? I believe the reason is that the answers to what we might question defy earthly logic. As I so often say: when it comes to God’s Word there is an abundance of mystery but absolutely NO MAGIC. We simply must research and settle on the results. Bible scholars will never all agree on every aspect of biblical truth.

As an example, I like a point made by Bruce Larson in his commentary. Larson says: “are you a pietist or are you for social action?” “are you pre-mil or post-mil” “Do you speak in tongues?” Depending on how we answer those and like questions, we may be accepted or rejected. It is almost as if saying, “Believe as I/we do, or you are not acceptable.”

Getting back to the reading, we first must understand some background. If we read Deuteronomy 25:5-10, we learn that it was Jewish law for the brother of the deceased to take that brother’s widow as his wife. In our reading, the Sadducees are questioning Jesus, using a hypothetical question of seven consecutive brothers dying and each marrying the widow of the brother in succession. The challenge came, as they continued by asking IF they all are resurrected after death, when the widow dies, who will be her husband in heaven.

Let’s back up again. The Sadducees only believed in the first five books of the bible (The Books of Moses). They did not believe that Jesus was the Son of God, nor did they believe in resurrection.

When we are resurrected, we will be like “Him”. We will not be like angels, nor will we be like our earthly selves. We will have a new body and as it says in the following, we will be like HIM. We will not be deity in any sense of the word but we will be more as a spirit being. As Jesus says so plainly, in heaven we will not be married nor abide in the manner as we do on earth.

“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” 1 John 3:2

It is the body that dies, NOT the spirit. The spirit shall live on in eternity.

“For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” James 2:26

Remember the parable of “The Rich Man and Lazarus”? Though a parable, it was a parable to exemplify the truth: “And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.:” Luke 16:26