Romaine Park Church Burnie Service – 13/03/2022, Nick Booth :- Resurrection to Eternal Life – Luke 20: 27-40.
Let’s read today’s text from Luke 20: 27 – 40
27 Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. 28 “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. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. 30 The second 31 and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
34 Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, 36 and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. 37 But in the account of the burning 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.’ 38 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
39 Some of the teachers of the law responded, “Well said, teacher!” 40 And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Well in today’s passage, we are back in Luke as we move towards the end of preaching through Luke’s Gospel. This passage is one that many women and men will find challenging to our romantic side that wants to spend, not just all our lives with our spouse but also be together for all eternity.
For other people, this passage can bring to mind many of their hurts and failed expectations, and while that might not be the main point of the text, well we might well read it through that lens. So, I want to address them first and then move to the point of the text which is about the Resurrection unto eternal life.
So before I start, can I speak to the issue of childlessness. This woman, in that culture had the incredible pain of remaining childless. This was something that left people feeling shame and disappointment in that culture.
It wasn’t unusual, it happened then just like it does today but it was attributed to sin and God’s judgement. That might have been true in some cases but just like we know – so many times it is often about the male’s failure to fertilise the egg and not about the woman at all. Yet in that culture, the blame was attributed to the women and they carried great shame because of it. While that shouldn’t be the way it is in our day and age, sometimes people still carry around great levels of shame for something that there should be no shame in.
Friend, God doesn’t want us carrying shame. Guilt is feeling bad about what we’ve done but shame goes so much deeper. Shame is feeling bad about who we are! We are created By God, For God, in the Image of God. We are Loved by God! Christ came to save us from Guilt and Shame! Thank you Jesus!
I also want to speak about the special relationship that marriage is!
Marriage reflects the relationship of God to His church, but I do not want to ignore the fact that no relationship here on earth is perfect. Many people here today and online have lived with the pain of broken relationships. Some marriages continue on and are actually full of pain, some have ended because of betrayal, some for substance abuse, others for emotional or physical abuse. Not every relationship here on Earth has lasted the lifetime that almost all of us plan for. While some bare the pain of loss because of their spouse passing away, so many more today bare the pain of LOSS AND REJECTION because of divorce. Truthfully, the Bible says “God hates divorce” because he hates the destruction that it brings in people’s lives but. AND THIS IS A VERY BIG BUT. I really want you to hear me on this. God loves divorcees! Please, please, please hear me on this. He Loves You! There are actually some very real reasons why it can be more harmful to be in a relationship and it can requires people to get out!
But! As A VERY BIG COUNTERPOINT TO OUR CULTURE’S readiness to leave marriages at the Drop of a hat. It is God’s desire for 2 people in a relationship to be following Christ, becoming more like Christ, mutually loving and caring for the needs of the other before their own. Laying down their lives for their spouse and family. When this is happening, Marriage, will be at its best and ought to reflect our relationship with God to others.
- There is no such thing as a perfect marriage because the people in a marriage are not perfect, but I would encourage you to let Christ into the centre of your marriage because Life, Marriage, All relationships actually, they go better when we are following Jesus together.
Well, let’s get to the main point of today’s passage – not so much about marriage as it is about eternal life and what that might be like.
Just over a week ago, I had the joy and sadness of doing the funeral for our beloved brother Leon Smith. Leon is survived by Jean, and we send our love and greetings to you Jean as you join us online.
In the case of Leon’s funeral, it is easy to wish our brother farewell until we are all reunited at our death or at Christ’s return. When I do a funeral, there is a line in the benediction and committal that I always include.
That line states this. It says “In the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection of the Dead.
So much of our understanding of life after death has been informed, not by scripture but by Hollywood, by books that we read, and in reality by Greek philosophy!
- The Problem of Plato and Augustine!
We have been so influenced by A wrong concept of eternity. And it stems from the Platonistic worldview that the physical world is evil and that the spiritual is pure and perfect. Gnosticism (also known as mystery religions that were rife at the time of the early church held strongly to these beliefs) – Such views were counteracted by the early church in the 2nd century and even the proto-gnostics (who held a belief that it was their special knowledge that could save them rather than knowing Jesus.) were addressed in parts of the New Testament.
John’s Gospel and his letters particularly dealt with this wrong belief/ thought of the evil nature of matter and the physical world.
The trouble is, in the 21st century, many of us still read the statements of Paul in Galatians 5 “Works of the Flesh” as though everything in this world is evil and bad. Because of this view, we seek an escape. But this world, although it is in a fallen state, is loved by God. It is God’s creation, and Humans are the pinnacle of it. God saw what he made and said it was good until he made male and female and he said it was very good!
So Jesus did not only come to save our souls but our whole being and indeed to restore all of creation that was affected by the fall. That is the point of a renewed Heaven and Earth at the end of time! God and Humans living together, forever. No more sin, no more sickness, no more pain, no more death. This is the picture that scripture paints for us again and again throughout the Old and New Testament alike.
- The Modern and Postmodern Worldviews
Naturalism – what you see and experience in this world is all there is. Atheism lives with this worldview and although, not strictly a product of our modern age, it grew in strength because of the belief that Science would discover everything that there was to be known and the world would reach a humanistic perfection. No wars, no hunger, no sickness. Science would fix it all. The Problem was that 2 world wars, many famines and diseases have proved that Science and modern technology didn’t fix everything but actually created many more problems.
Even in today’s world, there are people still fighting for the belief that science will prevail and humans will reach this state of enlightenment without any supernatural help. How many times have we heard in recent years and decades, the line “Believe the Science”.
Today, we find now that we live in a post-modern world. In fact – we might even be moving beyond that philosophical worldview without realising that it is happening.
Post moderns have rejected the notion that science will fix everything – they have noticed that science and technology has created more, bigger problems than we might have experienced without it. A global pandemic that spreads as quickly as it has is perhaps due to scientific manipulation, and its spread was made possible by modern ease of travel.
All these views influence how we read the Bible and how we understand eternal life. God is real and Eternity is real, the end of time will happen when Christ returns to put our world right again and undo the impact, the affects, the destruction of the Fall.
In Bible times and culture, there was an extreme view that was held by ne group who were called the Sadducees. They held that there was nothing beyond this life. No Heaven, No Hell, No Judgment. This is a view that is known as Anihilsm and many still hold that view today. People believe that only this life is all that there is and so they better make the most of it and who cares about others because there is no consequence. It is at the root of Atheism. Not every atheist is a bad or evil person but when such a view is taken to the extreme, it produces the destruction that is communism.
The Sadducees were a sect of Judaism and they did not believe in the Resurrection. Every other class and group of the Israelites believed in it. The problem was that the Sadducees were the Ruling Class. The priests came from the Sadducees. Many of them manipulated their way and bribed their way to their positions of power. The Sadducees only accepted the first 5 books of the Bible (the Torah/ or Pentateuch). The Pharisees and indeed pretty much everyone else in Israel held that the rest of the Old Testament called the writings (historical books and poetry books) along with the prophets. The Law and the prophets gave more references to Judgement, to resurrection, to vindication for Israel.
But because the Sadducees only believed the first 5 books, Jesus used the Torah to demonstrate that their belief was invalid and that the expectation of the resurrection was the reality of the coming age.
Jesus quoted Moses encounter with God at the burning bush, God is ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 38 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
- Doctrine of Hope –
We have the need for eternity and eternal values to outweigh everything. Eternity must be the determining factor and not the things of this world. Good belief in the truth of the Resurrection provides great hope in this life and ought to reprioritise how we live. We need to live with Eternity in view!
God of the Living – not the Dead
Illustration: Story of my Dad’s passing. If it is good enough for Jesus then I will put my trust in his words
- Your mistake is this!
Matt 22: 29
29 Jesus replied, “Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God.
The saying goes “Only Scripture then you will dry up, Solely Spirit and you’ll blow up, Holy Spirit and the Word and you will Grow Up.”
We can’t only know God with our head and we can’t only know God with our heart/ or experience because that makes everything about knowing God subjective. God is not the Subject – He is very real and can really be known! He reveals Himself to people and has done so in the person of Christ as the living Word!
Many Bible scholars of the 18th, 19th and 20th century decided to discount many parts of the Bible that they couldn’t see happening in their world. (That was the Modern worldview that produced naturalism). They decided that if they couldn’t see the miracles happening now, then they might have happened then but God must have stopped doing them. Some call this cessationism – but generally speaking people were trying to defend God and people from being deceived by false miracles – Cessationism is a reaction against false miracles and unfortunately some people have thrown the baby out with the bath water. Just because there are false miracles or spurious miracles does not mean that there are nor the genuine article.
Paul writes that this is a sign of what many people will be like in the end-times. He writes in 2 Tim 3:5 that they will have “a form of godliness but denyi its power.” And He tells us to “Have nothing to do with such people.”
But our biggest problem when it comes to unbelief is the liberal theologians during the late 19th and early 20th Century who tried to discredit large parts of scripture and pretended that it was just a fairy tale. They actually did a very similar things to the Sadducees who also did not believe large parts of the Bible. But their worldview of unbelief has been smashed to smithereens. Today, 85% of Biblical scholarship is done by genuine, Bible believing people who have encountered the God of the Scriptures through the scriptures and by His Holy Spirit.
Now, if you watch “Our ABC” at Easter, they will always find the minority opinion and try and say that the Bible has been discredited. I want to tell you, the Bible has not been discredited. It has been proven over and over again to be true, both by historical discoveries through Archology, by the changed lives of believers, by the demonstration of the Spirit and Power through conviction of sin and through miraculous interventions and healings. God is still a miracle working God! He never changed, He does not change and He will never change. He is the same Yesterday, Today and Forever!
Let’s not make the mistake of the Saducees – We need to know the word of God and the Power of God. Religion without the reality of God leaves us empty of heart, even if our heads are full of knowledge.
All Word – we dry up, All Spirit – we blow up. Holy Spirit and the Word – we Grow Up! Paul wrote that “the letter kills but the Spirit gives life!”
May we be people who do not make the mistake. My prayer is that we know the Word of God and the Power of God in our lives.
Why don’t we pray now?
Lord, thank you for your word and thank you Holy Spirit that you speak to us through your word. Lord, please give us ears to hear what you say and a heart that is willing to obey. Lord increase our faith to believe you and trust you always.
In Jesus name
Amen
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