Luke 20:27-40 - Jesus Deals with a Question of Life after Death - November 17, 2019

Hypothetical questions. They’re the kind students love and teachers…don’t. They don’t deal with reality but theory; with impossible or highly unlikely scenarios. Usually they’re not looking for the answer the Bible gives but rather an answer from reason or emotion. Often, they don’t spring from curiosity or a desire to learn, but from a desire to trap, discredit or humiliate the teacher. That’s the picture you should have in mind as you imagine the scene in our text: a group of Sadducees gathered around Jesus with what they think is the perfect hypothetical question; a question that will trap and humiliate and discredit him. And yet, as far as traps go, this one backfired, because Jesus deals perfectly with this question of life after death.

First things first, who were the Sadducees? The Sadducees were the elites, the 1%, the super-rich and super-powerful of Jesus’ day. They controlled the temple and ran the Sanhedrin, the governing body of Israel (Acts 23:6). They were also “fundamentalists” of a sort, meaning that while they may have paid lip-service to the entire Old Testament, they really only considered the books of Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy, to be authoritative. That’s why they didn’t believe in an afterlife or the resurrection or angels and demons (Acts 23:8). They didn’t think there was anything in those books which supported those doctrines. Thus, they set out to destroy Jesus’ teaching about the resurrection and confirm that this life is all there is.

Teacher, 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 have children for his brother. So far so good. They were merely paraphrasing what was known as the “levirate law” from Deuteronomy 25:5-6. This law obligated a man to marry his brother’s widow if he had died and left no heirs. Today, that practice might strike us as a bit strange: that if your brother dies childless you must marry your sister-in-law. But in the Old Testament, there were at least three good reasons for this law. First, it would preserve the deceased man’s name and genealogy (no small matter when everyone knew that Savior, the seed of Abraham, was going to come through one of Israel’s families (Genesis 12:3)). Second, it would keep that man’s land and property in the family. And third, it would also be a way of caring for the widow, who, with no children and no social safety net, would be left alone and vulnerable.

But the Sadducees didn’t ask this question to hear Jesus’ opinion regarding marriage or the levirate law. They have much more sinister motives, they want to trap Jesus into either looking foolish or denying the reality of the resurrection: “What do you think, Jesus? There were seven brothers, each of whom was married to this woman, doing their obligatory duty for their brother, until they all died. And then she died. In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?” The scenario is absurd on its face. There’s no remotely similar scenario recorded in Scripture. And in sheer practical terms, while the second and maybe even the third brother might follow through, the rest would probably run for the hills because apparently marrying this woman was akin to a death wish. In any case, the Sadducees figured they had Jesus caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, if Jesus said that in the resurrection she would be married to one of the brothers, that would be unfair to the other six. On the other hand, if Jesus admitted that the “levirate law” didn’t consider the possibility of an afterlife, he would be agreeing with their position, that not only does Moses not teach a resurrection, but that this law assumes that this life is all there is.

It seems like Jesus is caught, but of course, he cuts right through the ridiculous and far-fetched hypothesis and takes aim at the hardhearted unbelief behind the question: the people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die. The Sadducees had a wrong understanding of marriage. Regardless of what the Mormon cult teaches, marriage is for this life; not the next. Marriage is only necessary in this life because of death. God blessed us with marriage here and now so that human life could go on in spite of sin and death. In this life marriage is essential. It is the context in which children are conceived and raised; the foundation of the home; the basic building block of the church and state. But where there is no sin, no death, no need for the individual estates of home, church and state – there is no need for marriage. In the resurrection they will neither marry nor be given in marriage.

Instead, they are like the angels. I want to be sure you heard that right. Jesus doesn’t say that we will become angels. So you can shake the images of floating around in the clouds and halos and wings and harps out of your head. He says we will be like the angels. Meaning that 1) we will not die; and 2) we will no longer marry. “Well, what if I kind of like my spouse? What if I’ve gotten used to be married and like having children? Does God intend to tear marriages and families apart in the resurrection?” While those questions may seem innocent, they actually come from a heart of unbelief, a heart that doubts God’s goodness and love. God wouldn’t do away with marriage without a good reason and Jesus gives us the reason: They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. In heaven we won’t miss marriage because we will all be members of one family, God’s family. In heaven all things will be made right, everything that disrupts and destroys our relationships in this life will be gone (Isaiah 65:17). More than that, even if death made it necessary for a hypothetical woman to marry seven hypothetical brothers – it wouldn’t matter. Because through faith they would enjoy perfect unity in God’s family where the only marriage that matters is the marriage of Christ and his Church (Ephesians 5:25-33).

To review, Jesus has debunked the false premise of the Sadducees, exposed their unbelief, and he has described what eternal life will actually be like. And now he pulls out his trump card. Not from thin air but from one of the books the Sadducees held as authoritative: the book of Exodus. In the account of the 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.’ What does that prove? Well, when the LORD spoke to Moses from the burning bush (Exodus 3), Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been dead for around 400 years. In spite of that, he doesn’t say I was their God. He says I AM (Exodus 3:6) their God. They are just as alive to him now as they were when they walked this earth.

So you see the very practical lesson Jesus is teaching us here, right? Whenever we have questions about life after death, about heaven and hell, where must we go for answers – where did even the Son of God go? To the Word of God. We must not turn to books written by people who claim to have seen heaven in a near-death experience. We can’t and shouldn’t trust the logic or theories of mere men, no matter how well-intentioned and reasonable they sound. Nor can we trust science because science can only describe things that are observable and no one alive has observed life after death.

But neither should we dismiss these questions as dumb or foolish, either. These questions about life and death and resurrection – they are much more than issues of theoretical, hypothetical interest, more than fodder for discussion, more than theological musings. These questions deal directly with the most important thing in the world: what will happen to us and our loved ones when we die? Certainly there are a lot of questions that remain concerning the resurrection. What will we look like? How old will we be? What kind of bodies will we have? Will we recognize each other? What will the new heaven and new earth be like?

The answer to those questions is that we don’t know. We will know one day soon, but not one day sooner. As Paul said now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12). But for now, we don’t know – and we don’t need to know the answers to those questions. They would only be a distraction from the things we should be focused on here and now. For now, we have sins to repent of and a Savior to believe in. We have work to do, children to raise, marriages to maintain, vocations to carry out, neighbors to love and the Gospel to proclaim. All we really need to know now is that Christ has died and risen, and in his dying and rising has conquered sin, death and the grave once and for all.

We don’t have time to debate silly theoretical questions about life after death, and neither did Jesus. Remember why Jesus was here in Jerusalem on this Tuesday of Holy Week. He wasn’t there to debate death, he was there to go to war with death. He understood even better than we do how evil death is. He hated death with every ounce of his being. He not only saw how it destroyed marriages and ripped apart families and leaves empty places at dinner tables and gaping holes in people’s hearts. Jesus saw death as the wages of sin (Romans 6:23) which threatens to separate us from God now and forever. He saw death as the ultimate enemy of everything God had created, everything good. Which is why he didn’t come to earth merely to debate hypothetical questions about death, he came to destroy it; he came to put death to death by his life, death and resurrection.

If the Sadducees had believed the Scriptures, had believed Jesus, they wouldn’t have been looking for a way to trap him and discredit him with silly, hypothetical questions about some made-up woman married to seven brothers. Instead, they would have asked how they might be considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead. Because in the end, that’s the really important question, isn’t it? Heaven and the resurrection of the dead are real, Jesus proved it both from Scripture and by his own resurrection. But how can we be sure that we will be part of it? Thankfully God doesn’t leave us guessing about this answer. He tells us that Jesus is the resurrection and the life…whoever lives and believes in him will never die (John 11:25-26). He tells us that through the water of Baptism we are inseparably united to Jesus’ death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-4) and receive adoption into God’s eternal family (Galatians 3:26-27). He tells us that the Lord’s Supper is the medicine of immortality, the true fountain of life, because where there is no sin there can be no death (Matthew 26:26-28). He tells us that our loved ones who died in faith aren’t dead, but are feasting and rejoicing with their Lord in paradise (Revelation 7:14). Which all means that while we may not have every answer we would like, if we have Jesus we have the answer to death, for he has destroyed the one who holds the power of death, that is, the devil (Hebrews 2:14).

There are many questions in life that we don’t have answers to. But Jesus doesn’t want us to wonder about life after death. He has forgiven the sins that haunt us and defeated the death that waits for us. Through his Word he gives us faith to believe that this world is not like the next – there will be no more need for marriage because there will be one, glorious, harmonious family of God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God to [whom] all are alive. This answer that Jesus gives left the Sadducees speechless. But it can’t leave us speechless. No, it fills our hearts and our lips with that glorious refrain of faith: “Yes, it shall be so. Amen.”