Matthew 22:25 (LSB) Now there were seven brothers with us; and the first married and died, and having no seed, he left his wife to his brother;26 so also the second, and the third, down to the seventh.27 And last of all, the woman died.28 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had married her.”

Now that the Pharisees, chief priests, and Herodians have all made their attempts at questioning Jesus; the Sadducees take their turn. So far, each group has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt to be wrong in their interpretation of Scripture. The Pharisees had questioned Jesus' authority, and Jesus demonstrated--once again--that He had the authority to do all the things He was doing. They sought to trap Jesus into saying something that would make Him unpopular with two groups of men. Jesus argued from the relationship between the Creator and the created to demonstrate that taxes belong to Caesar and that everything belongs to God. As each group walks away with their purposes unfulfilled, the Sadducees come and give it their go.

The Sadducees were a group of teachers in ancient Israel whose own writings we have very little left, for their writings were destroyed in AD 70 with the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by Rome. What we do know about them comes from the writings of others, and we are told by Scripture that the Sadducees denied the existence of angels as well as the hope of the resurrection. 

These Sadducees had come up with a hypothetical conundrum which they thought disproved the resurrection. They used what is known as the levirate marriage as a proof against the resurrection. The levirate marriage was a part of the Mosaic law that made provision for the preserving of the physical line such that if the oldest brother died without children, the younger brother was to marry his older brother's widow and raise up offspring for him. The Sadducees took that to an extreme and said, "What if that happens for one bride and seven brothers? Whose wife will she be in the resurrection, for they all had her as wife?" 

You can hear them saying, "You see, Jesus? God cannot violate His own law in eternity, now can He?" 

Jesus' answer is clear: the Sadducees are assuming incorrectly both about marriage and about the resurrection. Marriage is an arrangement for this world only. In the new heavens and new earth, in the New Jerusalem, marriage will no longer exist as an institution. Marriage was designed to be a temporal arrangement. 

As for the question of the resurrection, the Sadducees are also sadly mistaken. Jesus could have used any number of passages from Scripture to prove them wrong, but He also knew that the Sadducees accepted as authoritative only the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). So, Jesus quotes Exodus 3:6 where God reveals Himself to Moses in the burning bush as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the interesting thing is that God uses the present tense. Not, "I was," nor, "I will be," but, "I AM!" Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been in their graves for at least 400 years at the time. God IS the God of all His people. His people live with Him the moment they leave this world. They are with Him and are made like Him, for nothing unholy can dwell in His presence. 

Is there a resurrection? Most emphatically: yes, and amen. Without the resurrection of the dead, you do not have Christianity. Paul tells us such in one of the longest chapters he ever composed: 1 Corinthians 15. 

What was the response of the people at the time? Astonishment! In our day, people are hardly moved by anything. Movies and news and images flashed at us across our screens have anesthetized us against feeling awe and astonishment. At least the crowds of Jesus' day recognized His greatness. Sadly, by the end of the week, they were calling for His death. It is possible to be astonished and amazed at God without knowing and depending and relying upon Him alone for your salvation. Jesus--as fully God and fully man--has kept God's perfect standard of righteousness for all who believe. He was raised from the dead to demonstrate that His death was substitutionary and undeserved. He sits at the right hand of the Father, making constant intercession for His saints. He and the Father have sent the Holy Spirit to call sinners to sainthood by grace alone through faith alone in Him alone! O sinner, repent and believe! O saint, cast aside your false beliefs and run with eagerness toward the prize of the high calling of Christ: God Himself! 

#comeandseeJesus

#comeandlivebyfaith

#comeandworshipHim

#SoliDeoGloria