If God is always the God of the living, there must be a resurrection.
So,
here we have Jesus in another dispute with religious leaders. It’s interesting
that more often than not, when Jesus gets into one of these debates it’s with
Pharisees. But this time is a little different. This is one of the few times
the dispute concerns the theology of the Sadducees. The Sadducees, were unique
among their fellow Judeans because they did not believe in the resurrection.
For all practical purposes, they believed this life was the only life. We’ll
say more about that in a moment.
I mentioned that more often than not these disputes were with Pharisees. Ironically, Jesus had much more in common with the Pharisees than he did with the Sadducees. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection, as did Jesus. They accepted the whole of the Old Testament as scripture, as did Jesus. And, they were generally from among the people and for the most part accepted by the people, as was Jesus.
The Sadducees, on the other hand, did not believe in the resurrection, they only accepted a small portion of the Old Testament as scripture, and they were the elite of 1st cent. Judean society. Sadducees were very often temple priests; they controlled the temple activities. They also managed domestic affairs, and negotiated between Judea and its overlords, whether it be the Greeks or the Romans. So, the Sadducees were very wealthy, very powerful, they were the upper most class of Judean society. For the Sadducees, if this life were the only life that wasn’t such a bad thing because, let’s face it, they were at the top of the food chain. At any rate, Jesus had much more in common with the Pharisees than the Sadducees.
And, even the way Jesus argues with the Sadducees is a little different. When Jesus argues with Pharisees, he often argues like a rabbi. They’ll ask him a question, and he’ll respond with a question. That’s how rabbis argued, it was a back and forth. But, not here. Jesus is very short, terse if you will, with the Sadducees in this passage.
They present him with this hypothetical scenario where a woman is married to seven brothers and never has any children. The whole point of this scenario is an attempt by the Sadducees to show that belief in the resurrection is absurd. If there were such a thing as the resurrection, this hypothetical woman would be married to seven men. But Jesus doesn’t even begin to engage with them in a back and forth, like he might with the Pharisees. Instead, he just deconstructs, tears apart, their whole theology in just a few short lines. And he does it with one thought: God is not the God of the dead. God is always the God of the living. And, if God is always the God of the living, then there must be life after death. That’s the argument in a nutshell.
But that statement: God is the God of the living, also says something about what was lacking in the Sadducees theology. Part of the reason the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection has to do with the scriptures. The Sadducees accepted only the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Well, in those books you do not find mention of the resurrection. The Pharisees and Jesus, on the other hand, accepted those books as well as the other writings: the psalms, the prophets, and so on. In those books, you do find mention of the resurrection.
So, the Sadducees only accepted the first five books of the Old Testament. The word used in those books for the afterlife is “Sheol.” The ancient Hebrews, the Hebrews of those first five books, had a primitive view of the afterlife. They believed when people died, their souls all went to the same place, Sheol. It was a primitive conception, very much like the Greek concept of Hades. Sheol was not a good place or a bad place. The souls in Sheol were neither happy nor sad, they were just there. That’s the afterlife in those first five books.
But once you get past those first five books, you begin to see a more robust conception of the afterlife. Consider Job 19:25-26, as an example of resurrection in the Old Testament. In that passage Job contemplates the possibility of resurrection:
"For
I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the
earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God."
In the prophets you also find images of the resurrection, such as with Ezekiel’s vision of a valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 27, where he sees this valley full of dry bones and God gives them flesh and brings them back to life. That is a very graphic image of resurrection. These would be passages the Pharisees might use to argue for the resurrection, but of course for the Sadducees those passages weren’t in the scriptures.
At any rate, the Sadducees offer Jesus this made up scenario to try and show that belief in the resurrection is absurd, and Jesus responds to this by essentially saying, You only read those five books, let me show you in those five books where you find the resurrection. And so, here’s his argument:
Throughout those five books, you will find the following phrase or one like it repeated over and over and over, “Your God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, did such and such…” Or, “Your God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob commands such and such…” Whenever God is referenced in those books, it is very often in terms of “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are dead; God is still referred to as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
And the question lurking behind all of this is: How can God be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, if the Sadducee are right? If those three people are no longer alive, if for all practical purpose they only exist as shadows in Sheol, how can God be their God? And yet, according to the scriptures that the Sadducees themselves accept as the scriptures; God is always their God. Therefore, they must still be alive. God is not the God of the dead Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but of the living Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So, that’s Jesus argument. And, notice how Jesus uses their own scriptures to make his point.
It really is a brilliant argument that comes out of nowhere, it’s totally unexpected. It would have never occurred to me to make that kind of argument, but then again I’m not Jesus, so no surprise there. But his argument does more than just show how to find the resurrection in the first five books of the Bible. Jesus also completely undermines the theology of the Sadducees. Jesus comes right out and says, “Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?” Isn’t the real reason they don’t believe in the resurrection because they don’t know their own scriptures and they don’t know God’s power. Jesus saws off the limb upon which they sit. How could they not know the power of God?
The Sadducees have the Book of Genesis, the first of their five books, where it states unequivocally that all that exists is a creation of God, and yet they stumble over the possibility that God could raise the dead. If God can create all of this, raising the dead should be no problem. In other words, they don’t know the power of God. And because of that, their theology was empty, with no hope, no promise, no life, no guarantee of a tomorrow. Whereas Jesus, and the Pharisees, and Christians for two thousand years since have had this promise, this hope that whether in this world or the next, there will always be a tomorrow. And, there will always be a tomorrow because God is the God of the living.
Let me wrap this up with a story. A dad and his young son were getting ready for a camping trip. Mom was gone for the weekend, so it was just the two of them. They had everything ready and packed in the car. And this little boy was so excited, he could hardly stand it. It came time for bed, and they laid down for sleep. At some point the little boy comes to his dad’s room and starts shaking him and whispering, “Hey, dad. Hey, dad.”
Dad’s zonked out, but he comes to, and says, “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you in bed?” And the little boy says, “I’m just so excited I can’t sleep!” Dad says, “I understand. Tomorrow is going to be a fun day. But if you don’t get your rest, you’ll be tired and you won’t have as much fun. So, listen to me and go back to bed.” So, he does.
A little while later, here he comes again. Dad is now somewhat awake, but really wishing he were sleeping. He looks up and there’s his little boy just looking at him. So, he says to him, “Son, what is it?” The little boy says, “Dad, I just wanted to come in here and thank you for tomorrow.”
I just want to thank you for tomorrow. I love that. That perfectly captures our blessed hope, “God, thank you for tomorrow.” Because God is the God of the living, because Jesus Christ is raised from the dead, we are promised tomorrow. Father God, thank you for tomorrow. Amen.
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