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April 21, 2019
Jason Meyer | Mark 12:18-27
And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died. In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”
Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”—Mark 12:18–27
Introduction
Easter is one of those high times in the church calendar. The result is that many more people attend church on Easter than at any other time of the year. If that is you, then let me say how happy we are that you are here. I will not talk down to you, but talk to you. I also want to welcome anyone who feels very out of place right now. Perhaps you are in need of a welcome because you are unsure about the Resurrection and therefore unsure of whether or not you are welcome here. You are. We welcome skeptics. Even if you do not believe in the Resurrection, it may be good for you to be around people who really do.
There was a skeptic named David Hume who used to listen to the great preacher, George Whitefield. Hume’s friends questioned him: “Why do you go listen to that preacher if you don’t believe what he says?” Hume’s answer: “Because he believes it and that moves me.”
We are a people who passionately, unapologetically believe in the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, we believe there is no hope without it. You also picked a great time to come to Bethlehem if you are questioning these things because we have been on a journey through the Gospel of Mark and it just seems like God gives us just the right passage every week. Last week, on tax weekend, the text had people asking Jesus if it was right to pay taxes. This week, on Easter weekend, the text has people who do not believe in the resurrection asking Jesus a question about the resurrection. So let’s hear the question (verses 18–23) and then hear Jesus’ response (verses 24–27).
And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question, saying …
The first thing to notice is that this is a cynical question, not a humble or curious question. They reject the resurrection. The Sadducees “say that there is no resurrection” (v. 18). The question is an attempt to stump Jesus and so they do not believe in the resurrection – rather they are using the resurrection to argue in essence against the resurrection. We should read verse 23 almost with a sneer: “In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be?” (v. 23). It is a question designed to show how ridiculous the resurrection is. They are trying to stump Jesus in order to debunk him.
“Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died.”
The whole question hinges on part of the Jewish Law written by Moses. It is called the levirate marriage commandment. If a husband dies without children, then the man’s brother has an obligation to marry his brother’s wife in order to provide children who will carry on the brother’s name and keep the inheritance in the family. You see the summary of this law in verse 19: “If a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.”
They ask about a hypothetical scenario that is almost incredulous: A family has seven sons. This is already an exceptional scenario. But it gets even more outlandish. All seven sons end up marrying this one woman. All of them die. No one produces a child. Now comes the question. She had seven husbands in this life, which one will be her actual husband in the next life?
“In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”
They think they have just dropped a ticking theological time bomb on Jesus’ lap. They regard this as the greatest theological thought-teaser. They have put themselves in the position of judging Jesus’ response. Jesus is called upon to perform for them with his intellect and they will be the judge if he is able to pull off this great intellectual feat.
They do not realize that they are really the ones standing before the judgment seat of Christ. He does not waste any time turning the tables of judgment upon them.
a. What is wrong with them (v. 24)
b.Why they are wrong about marriage (v. 25)
c. Why they are wrong about the resurrection (vv. 26–27)
Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?”
The structure of Jesus’ answer is exquisite. He frames the response by repeating the fact that they are wrong (same word at the beginning [v. 24] and the end [v. 27]). But it gets even better. The middle of his response says that the reason they are wrong is their ignorance of the Scriptures and the power of God. And then the next few verses offer proof of that claim in reverse order: They don’t understand marriage in the life to come because they don’t know the power of God (v. 25). Then they do not understand the resurrection because they fail to understand the Scriptures (vv. 26–27), and he quotes a Scripture for them.
A. You are wrong …
B. Because you don’t know Scriptures
C. or the power of God
C. the power of God (v. 25)
B. the Scriptures (vv. 26–27b)
A.You are very wrong (v. 27c)
For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
How does their view of marriage fail to reckon with the power of God? They think they have read the Scriptures rightly. They have read about the first marriage in Genesis and they have read about levirate marriage in Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 25:5–10). What are they missing? They deny the power of God because they assume that resurrection life is just the straight-line continuation of earthly life. They cannot understand resurrection life as a higher order—a great transformation of life as we know it now. I will come back to this in a moment.
“And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”
This is the second charge of Jesus: the Sadducees do not know the Scriptures. He says, “As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses” (v. 26). Pause for a moment here and consider how this rebuke cuts deep to the heart of who they think they are. Have you not read? They pride themselves in knowing the first five books of Moses front and back. They have read, studied, mediated, and memorized this five-part book. They have devoted their lives to it.
Now I want you to see the genius of what Jesus does next. Part of the text is that he is limited in where he can find proof for the resurrection in the Old Testament. The Sadducees only recognize the five-part book called the Law (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). There are certainly clearer and more explicit texts about the resurrection in the Old Testament. Job 19:25–27 comes to mind immediately.
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
Where will Jesus go? Jesus takes them to Exodus 3:6. Jesus’ case for the resurrection hinges on the tiniest, but greatest detail: the tense of the “to be” verb. Before we see the text, let us practice with this tiny verb of being. Someone could talk about their spouse in two different ways depending upon whether she is dead or alive. If the spouse has died, he could say “she was my spouse.” If she is still alive, he could say, “she is my spouse.” One could talk about marriage in two different ways depending on whether the spouse is still alive or not. I was married vs. I am married.
Now look at the text.
‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?
God does not say that say, “I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” He says, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Those who enjoy a relationship with God actually enjoy an everlasting, never-ending relationship with God. Not because they are great, but because he is great. What is the problem that must be overcome if someone is going to have a relationship that will never end? Human death! God will not die, but humanity will. And we do not have the power to defeat the grave. So God has to have an answer for death if this relationship is going to survive the grave. All our hope rests in the power of God when we are faced with the problem of death.
Main Point: If we fail to know the word of God and the power of God, we will get eternity wrong.
Transition: The Resurrection
I do not want you to reject the resurrection out of hand because you think the resurrection sounds strange. You will misread the word of God if you read God’s word according to your standards of plausibility. You can’t read the word of God rightly if you wrongly reject the power of God. If you replace the power of God with what is plausible to you instead of what is possible for God, then all your reading is a mis-reading. That might hit home for some of you. Do you read the Bible with pre-conceived notions of what it can and cannot say? Who gets to be the standard of what it can and cannot say? Do not reject the truth simply because it seems strange. “Could God do this?”
In order to get eternity right, we must reckon with two massive problems that stand between us and eternal life: guilt and the grave. First, we are all guilty before God. The Bible says we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). It says that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). We all are guilty and deserving of condemnation. We cannot be good enough to make up for all the times we have sinned and fallen short. The standard is not other people (I will go to heaven because I am better than that person and that person). The standard is not some abstract idea of moral balance (on the scales of good and evil, I am basically good because I do more good things than bad things). The standard is God. God does not and cannot wink at sin or minimize sin or excuse sin. God is just. Every sin must be punished justly.
There are only two options for our guilt. Either you pay for your sin personally in hell or Jesus pays for your sin in your place at the cross. That horrible, gruesome death that Jesus suffered was your death—it was in your place. He was crushed for our iniquities.
But how does God deal with the grave? Jesus took on flesh so he could become kill-able (he died for our sins) and so that he could defeat the grave from within the grave. What do I mean? Death could not hold him because it had no hold on him. Death is the wages of sin. The Bible says, “O death where is your sting? The sting of death is sin.” Jesus did not sin, so death could not win. Jesus took away the sting of death—it was defeated and stinger-less. I can just buzz like a bee, not sting like a bee. It is like being deathly allergic to a bee sting. That bee comes along and tries to sting you, but Jesus ripped the stinger right out of death. It has lost its power. It is a poisonous snake without fangs, a bee without a stinger.
There is a video of a cobra striking a baby. And the baby does not cry or die, but just stares at the snake like, “What are you doing?” That is what Jesus has done to death. It can hiss and it can buzz, but the sting and the poison is gone.
And this is so personal. Jesus does not do this work of mopping up death like a custodian, but like a husband. Did you ever wonder why Jesus said people are not married in heaven like they are here on earth? Answer: God did not create earthly marriage to exist eternally for its own sake. It is temporary and earthly because marriage is not the point, but a pointer. The temporary and earthly is a pointer to something eternal and heavenly. If earthly marriage is a symbol, then what does it symbolize? Answer: Temporary, earthly marriage between a man and his bride points to the eternal, heavenly marriage between Jesus and his bride (the church). Heaven is when people experience the eternal reality of heavenly marriage and so the earthly symbol comes to an end. The symbol can cease when the real thing has arrives. God sent his Son into the world to win his bride and defeat death for her so that the relationship would become unbreakable and unstoppable.
Personal Illustration
I recently had the privilege of going to a conference with our pastoral staff. I rode to Indianapolis with a group of pastors and they decided to play “name that tune.” We started out listening to 90’s pop. I was terrible. Seriously, I surprised myself with how bad I was. I started trying to recall where I was in the 90’s!
Then we listened to some 90’s contemporary Christian music. I immediately recognized some of the songs. Some of them you heard and just wanted to move on to the next song. Some of them we heard and found ourselves singing them at the top of our lungs. I was talking with one of the pastors later and we were reflecting on that experience. He said it reminded him of an essay from C.S. Lewis on bicycles. I had no idea what he was talking about so I asked him to explain.
C.S. Lewis wrote an essay on bicycles in which he spoke about four phases: (1) un-enchantment, (2) enchantment, (3) disenchantment, and (4) re-enchantment. He began by not being enchanted with a bicycle because he did not know what bicycles were. The second phase came when he discovered a bicycle for the first time. It was an enchanting time to experience freedom to go places he could not go before and have new sensations like the wind in his face. The third phase is disenchantment because things like cars came along that took the place of bicycles. The last phase was re-enchantment, when he rediscovered the joy of riding a bike as he got older, and he enjoyed getting outside and exploring again.
Then the pastor said, “I realized that I enjoyed those songs so much because that was a time period in my life when I was most enchanted with Jesus.” That resonated with me so deeply! I remembered what had happened in the 90’s. I had just been radically called to ministry and I was growing by leaps and bounds, and I was the most enchanted with Jesus.
Maybe you walked into this service as an unbeliever totally un-enchanted with Jesus. Or perhaps you came here this morning as a disciple of Jesus who has grown disenchanted with Jesus for various reasons (other things seem bigger and more pressing). What should you do on Easter Sunday if this describes you?
Conclusion: The Re-Enchantment of the Resurrection
Let’s get really tangible and practical here. How do you view death? It is an urgent question for some of you as you are staring into the face of death because of circumstances in your life. Others know they will have to face death someday, but it seems like something in the distant future.
The Bible allows us to look death in the face now! How? It says we can view death the way Jesus did. How does Jesus view death? One of the most exciting Easter stories for me is the story of Jesus and Lazarus, because we get a sneak peak of how Jesus looks at death. Lazarus was Jesus’ friend. Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha, were weeping and grieving because death had put a temporary end to their relationship with Lazarus. Jesus tells them that Lazarus will rise again. They think he means that Lazarus will rise at the end of time and that is when they will be reunited. God has the power of resurrection and he will use it then. Jesus tells her that he is the resurrection and the life. The death-conquering power resides in Jesus, and he is there now. So he calls for Lazarus to come forth out of the tomb, and he does.
All of that is awesome. But it is all made more glorious by a word found twice in this story (John 11:1–44) for how Jesus approaches death. Many translations say Jesus was “deeply moved” in the face of death. It occurs twice (vv. 33, 38). “Deeply moved” is a misleading translation. In the Greek outside of the New Testament, embrimaomai refers to the snorting of horses. Think of a horse ready to burst into battle—snorting and pawing at the ground. Whenever this word is applied to humans it means anger or outrage (see D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, Pillar New Testament Commentary [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991], p. 415).
When you think of death, do you ever look into the eyes of Jesus? They are a flame of fire, like a warhorse snorting and pawing at the ground ready to charge and crush death. But what about the outrage? He was moved to do something about death—and he reached into the jaws of death and pulled Lazarus out.
Death looked at Jesus like a wolf looks at a weak sacrificial lamb that would be an easy meal, but the sacrificial lamb became the roaring lion in the grave who tore death to shreds from inside. When the Lord of life rose, death died. Easter sings at the top of its lungs: Death is defeated! Jesus is victorious! Sin can’t win. Cancer can’t have the last word. Jesus does. He would not let death separate him from his bride! He never will ever have a moment where he has to talk about his bride in the past tense: She was my bride. No! I am her husband because I am the resurrection. I have dealt with her guilt and the grave. So she is my bride forever. We are persuaded that death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers—not height or depth or anything in all creation can separate us from his love (Romans 8:38–39). On Easter Sunday, do you hear Jesus singing, “I am the resurrection so I am sure that death cannot separate my bride from my death-defeating, grave-conquering love.”
If you are not a believer here this morning, it can happen right now. The Bible says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).
If you are a believer, I pray that the resurrection of Jesus will leave you re-enchanted with Jesus. You can look upon the price Jesus paid to remove your guilt, and the power Jesus used to conquer death. I pray you will say, “Does the Father truly love us, does the Spirit move among us, and does Jesus our Messiah hold forever those he loves?” He does. He holds them forever because death couldn’t hold him down so it can’t hold his bride down.
Outline
Main Point: If we fail to know the word of God and the power of God, we will get eternity wrong.
Discussion Questions
Application Questions
Prayer Focus
Pray for a grace to be re-enchanted with the resurrected Jesus.