Matthew 22:23-33 May 24,
1998
While the pale of death may unsettle us, in our culture, death haunts the modern consciousness even more because our age suppresses any discussion of death by the living. Our age sees such an absolute breaking of life in death that we say very little about it. All the unpleasantries and ultimacies of death are covered over and blocked out by a hundred euphemisms and walls. We can detect and monitor our decay so much so that as a person approaches death we can sequester him with professionals. We try to keep death out of sight, and, hopefully, out of mind. But the question cannot be suppressed: "What comes next?" The trouble is, we live in a death-defying, death-denying culture. We were raised in a society in which death was discussed in hushed, solemn tones, all the while more than 2 million of us die each year. But while we may spend our money on nutrients and creams to reverse the aging process, plastic surgeons and health clubs to tighten sagging bodies, we are forced to face the reality of the Grim Reaper. Boomers are now dealing with the dying parents and peers and so the race is on for a better understanding of the dying process, but also of what comes after death. In this process a transformation has taken place as death has taken off his shroud and, for some, has even become an honored guest. Dozens of new books on the subject are in the bookstores, with titles like The Dying Time, A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife and Transformed by the Light, covering subjects from treating the terminally ill to life after death. College catalogs now feature courses in thanatology, or the study of death. Death has quietly sidled into the marketplace. Hallmark is introducing cards for the terminally ill, their families and their caregivers. According to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll conducted last year, 28% of Americans believe it's possible to communicate with the dead, up from 18% in 1990. Many believe that this new openness about death is simply a reflection of a greater openness to the spiritual side of life. "People are starving for a spiritual context in their lives, and death can offer that," says Judith Orloff, an L.A.-based psychiatrist and psychic and author of Second Sight "In the medical profession, we're trained to look at death as a failure. But death can be about healing. People need to get totally re-educated about death." (Taken from USA Today, 8/11/97) We do need to be re-educated about death, and where is a better place to go than to God’s Word, to hear from the Author of life, a description of what we should expect after our death. Our passage this morning in Matthew 22:23-33 provides a glimpse into proper thinking about death in a way that provides us with comfort and hope without the sentimentality that too often pervades our thinking. In this passage Jesus is asked another question. Last week it was the Pharisees and Herodians who wanted to know about how to live in the real world of taxation and evil governments. Jesus’s response showed that God was God over all aspects of life, even over the wicked Caesar and that we must honor God in all aspects of life. Now it is the Sadducees turn. But their question is not so much about what to do in this life, but what the after-life will be like. 23. That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 24. "Teacher," they said, "Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and have children for him. 25. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. 26. The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 27. Finally, the woman died. 28. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?" 29. Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31. But about the resurrection of the dead--have you not read what God said to you, 32. `I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob' ? He is not the God of the dead but of the living." 33. When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching. The group who confronts Jesus were called the Sadducees. These were the sophisticates in Israel, in love with Greek culture, in collaboration with Roman power, thoroughly saturated with the world’s culture. They were wealthy, aristocratic, and with family connections to religious power; someone has called them the 1st century Episcopalians. The Sadducees were also theologically reductionistic; that is, they held to the bare minimal revealed truth. They believed that God spoke only to Moses and so held only the first five books of the Bible as valid. On top of that, the Sadducees believed that all there is to life is found in this life. There is no life after death, no resurrection, no heaven, no hope. (That is why they were sad you see!) They were the rationalists, the materialists of their day. So their question comes as not so much a valid concern for what to think about this ridiculous situation of seven brothers taking their turn trying to father a male heir to this black widow. Their question did, however, have a biblical basis. Levirate marriage is found in the Pentetauch first described in Genesis 38 where God strikes dead Onan for not taking his deceased brother’s wife and continuing his line. In Deuteronomy 25 we have the regulation of this custom explained. The Sadducees pick up on a theme in levirate marriage as they explain the reason. See verse 24: "the brother is to marry the widow and have children for him.” Literally this is to raise up children, or resurrect children. Since the Sadducees did not believe in the after-life, and that death brings an end to one’s existence, we would live on only in our children. Therefore, having kids was the means to one’s own eternal existence. What they were trying to do? The Sadducees point is that the seven brothers kept the law, so who gets her in heaven? This reduced the doctrine of resurrection to an absurdity. Their concern was not so much one of what happens when we die, rather they thought they could publicly humiliate Jesus with their question: if God commands or at least allows such a marriage take place, then God will not allow such people to live on in heaven. For them, resurrection meant resuscitation of former relationships, and if this was so, life after death would suggest promiscuity for the married more than once, a condition that on the face of it was preposterous. They thought they had the upper hand, but they were wrong. They had chosen the wrong opponent. They had about as much chance as Danny DeVito against Michael Jordan in a slam-dunk contest. FACING DEATH DEMANDS UNDERSTANDING. We must understand the Word of God. Jesus minces no words. He doesn’t compliment them on their effort in Bible study, but quickly puts them in their place: “You guys are way off base.” Literally, “You are being led astray.” There is something dragging them from a correct understanding and so they are unable to understand what is involved in death. The active power seducing them from truth is the soul-corroding denial of the supernatural. They do not believe that God is at present speaking to them in the Scriptures and for that reason they can not comprehend the present reality of God’s power in God’s world. These well-educated, culturally groomed intellects were biblical illiterates. For them “Scripture” was Greek literature and the Greco-Roman standards the truest ideals. Their problem is often our problem as well. To understand not only what God demands of us in this life, but what happens at death, we need not find the answer in spurious interviews of those who had near-death experiences, nor those who receive odd messages from the Great Beyond. We must face death with an understanding which God provides in His Word alone. But the fact of the matter is so few understand death because they don’t know the Scriptures. A Gallop poll revealed that 60% of Americans did not know what "the Holy Trinity" was. Sixty-six percent couldn't say who delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and 79% were unable to name a single Old Testament prophet. When people are questioned about the Bible, it is remarkable and disconcerting to see their complete lack of knowledge on the subject. Some are almost as confused as the little boy who wrote on his test paper that the epistles were the wives of the apostles, and that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife. We must understand the power of God. When we do not know the Word of God we will not know the power of God. To separate the two as though one is intellectual and the other experiential and we can pick one over the other is foolish at best. When we read and hear the Scriptures there is engendered in us a living experience of God and His power. Knowing the Scripture and knowing the power of God are cause and effect. The Sadducees thought that the only resurrection there could ever be was when people marry or are given in marriage (men marry, women are given in marriage is the way that culture referred to marriage). It is in that situation that children would be born and immortality would be discovered - one’s name would live on. But Jesus made it clear: while marriage and children are wonderful gifts of God, God’s power is not evidenced nearly as much as what God has promised to do with those who are His. OUR DEATH MEANS RESURRECTED LIFE DIFFERS FROM EARTHLY LIFE. Resurrected life is not this life stretched out over a really long period of time. Judging from their question, from their ridicule, the idea of resurrection means to them a return to such a state as this we are now in, and to the same circumstances. They confused resurrection with resuscitation. The person whose heart fails and through a defibrillator regains a heartbeat is not resurrected, but resuscitated. The Sadducees characterized those who believed in resurrection with a belief in a continuation with life as we know it today. Marriage remains intact, families are just the same, we eat, we sleep, we have kids, we go to work, all this just the same, only in another location. Part of the blame rests with the misguided notions of the after life of the Pharisees. The Sadducean ridicule developed in response to the fundamentalists of the day, the Pharisees. They had a very carnal, common notion of the resurrection. Heaven was a continuation of earthly pleasures and delights. Heaven was understood from a human perspective. A true doctrine wrongly held confirms the doctrine’s opponents. What kind of harm do we do when we allow portrayals of heaven in terms of clouds, white robes and harps? When our culture’s only understanding of eternity comes from Patrick Swayze in Ghost, John Travolta in Michael or Nicholas Cage in City of Angels we must not be surprised that there is a lot of confusion. We must know the Scriptures and the power of God if we want to think correctly. Resurrected life means a radical change in who we are. Unfortunately, Jesus does not delineate further what He means when He says that we will like the angels in heaven. He uses the angels as a foil against the idea of marriage even being a consideration at all. From what we know of angels in Scripture, they are not a race of related beings, but were created individually. Thus they don’t propagate and have no need for marriage. We may well recognize one another and have interaction. But we must not forget the main object in our resurrection is not getting the chance to see Uncle Joe and pick up in our relationship where we left off with a long lost loved one. Rather, our resurrected life is about worshipping Christ and serving Him. That may well include how we interact with each other, but that is not the focus. While Jesus cracks open the window here, Paul gives us a bit better view in 1 Corinthians 15:35-44. The question in verse 35 doesn’t seem so foolish, until one thinks through the issue. As Paul likens our bodies to seeds from which plants grow, we have a picture of what life and death is all about. After our death, in God’s appointed time, our bodies will be raised again to new life. We will not spend eternity as disembodied spirits, floating across the galaxy like ghosts. God cares for our bodies as well as for our souls. What that body will be like remains to be seen. Our death is not the end of our bodies. They are not destined to decay for all eternity. Rather, as frustrating, painful, overweight, uncoordinated our bodies may be, Scripture is clear that on the last day they will be raised and we will spend eternity in our bodies. OUR DEATH MUST BE DEFINED BY GOD. Death is defined by God’s presence. Jesus mocks the Sadducees even more; He rubs their noses in the Law they love to quote, but refuse to believe. In verse 24 they quote what Moses said, but Jesus ridicules them by asking, “Have you not read what God said to you?” Jesus uses the present participle here, stressing ongoing activity. What God said through Moses over a thousand years before, He is still saying during Jesus’ time and He is still speaking to us today. Jesus then quotes from Exodus 3. Remember the context here: forty years earlier Moses tried to rescue God’s people from the harsh treatment of the Egyptians but failed terribly, so he hid as a shepherd in the hills, a nothing, a failure, an old man. It was to Moses that the word of God came and spoke and called him to lead God’s people. When God spoke to Moses He identified Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is what Jesus quotes to the Sadducees. He points to the hero of the Sadducees, Moses, who was as good as dead out in the wilderness. Israel was as good as dead as slaves in Egypt. Yet God did something; His power was at work. Jesus’ reasoning quiets their questioning. At first, to us, His conclusion makes no sense. Abraham is dead, isn’t he? Not according to what God said to Moses. “I am the God of...” God’s presence with Moses is based on the continual presence with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. From that Jesus concludes that our God provides fatherly care for the living - like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. If the “God of Abraham” loses Abraham at death, what does this say about God? Which is stronger, death or God? Doesn’t God’s self-revelation as Abraham’s God lead to faith in the resurrection? Moses was not told that God would be good to Moses in this life just as He was with Abraham five hundred years before. Moses was not promised a similar help, but that just as God is still the God of Abraham He will be his God too. What this presence means for Moses is that there is no fear in life or in death. No matter what faces him God’s presence continues. Death is defined by God’s promise. The promise spoken to Moses of God’s presence is the same promise given to us. How then, in light of the truth, for those of us in Christ, should we view our death? "Dying well is one of the good works to which Christians are called," writes J.I. Packer. It is a work to which each of us is called. We commend how we are to live by faith, but we often forget that we are equally called to die by faith. Last February when our family was in Orlando for a conference I came across a reprinted classic I had wanted for years, A Token for Children. During the 17th century this book was recommended for children second only to the Bible. For over 200 years this was a best seller. But the book seems so out of place today, hardly something one would read for bedtime stories. A Token for Children is a collection of short stories of how Christian children die. What the Puritans understood and we have forgotten, what they faced often in their life and what we have tried vainly to suppress, is that death does come. Death is not the worst thing to happen, even to a child. Rather, dying without Christ is far worse. After I made my purchase I delighted my young ones to several selections, which they, of course, along with their mother, found rather morbid. Who wants to hear about so much death? That night as the children slept, I turned on the news before going down for the night. Each local channel flashed on the screen a severe storm alert which was soon upgraded to a tornado watch then a warning. By midnight the first touched down to the north of us, then more to the west. Finally, the SuperDoppler radar signaled our area as a prime target. As I crowded the kids and Janet at 1 AM into the oversized tub, they began to pray. And for good reason. Just five miles from where we were staying a tornado ripped through a development, killing thirty people. Those dead were not just the old and infirm, not those we expect to die, but people who, when they went to sleep that night, would never have thought of death. It is at times like that that we all need to know that the God of the living, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will be our God, too. But we must not wait for such a time as that, but even now come face to face with the great necessity of placing our faith in Christ’s death for our sins and His resurrection for our justification. As I labor over my flowers this summer, I realize that for all my groaning and aches, that most of those flowers will, with the first strong frost, all die. Next spring there will be nothing to show for them. The power of resurrection does not belong in my hands. But what I cannot do, God has promised He will do for us. We shall all be raised. But will you be raised to eternal life or eternal judgment? |