18 Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 19 “Teacher,” they said, “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 raise up offspring for his brother. 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. 21 The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. 22 In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. 23 At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
24 Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 26 Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”
-Mark 12:18-27
What a super weird question to ask Jesus? Why did the Sadducees pose this seemingly random scenario about people getting married and dying? Of all the things you an ask Jesus, why this?
It’s because the Sadducees was a group that didn’t believe in the resurrection and possibly didn’t even believe in an afterlife. They didn’t believe in the idea of resurrection and so created this playful scenario to mock and trap Jesus.
But look at the authority in which Jesus answers their mock riddle. First he declares that their’s no marriage in heaven since everyone will be relationally intimate with everyone else in heaven. How would Jesus know this unless he himself has been to heaven to begin with!
Second, he reaffirms that the famous Old Testament figures in the Bible are all still alive—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—but they are alive with God in heaven.
All of the hopes and foundations of Christianity rests upon the resurrection. The resurrection is a reversal of not just death, but a reversal of all the consequences of sin. To say like the Sadducees that resurrection is not possible nor the divine plan is to say that God either doesn’t have the power to restore the messed-up-ness of the world or He doesn’t care enough to do so. Both are blatantly false and would demote God from being God.
A loving and just God would yearn for a resurrected world much like a mother who yearns for the healing for her sick child. And our God’s love for us goes far deeper and far truer than even the abiding love of a mother. God loves you more than even your mom does, more than your significant other, more than anyone else in the world. In His way and in His time He will restore you. The resurrection is real.
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