Luke 20:27-40

Butler's Comments

SECTION 4

Resurrection and the Grave (Luke 20:27-40)

27 There came to him some Sadducees, those who say that there is no resurrection, 28and they asked him a question, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. 29Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and died without children; 30and the second 31and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32Afterward the woman also died. 33In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.

34 And Jesus said to them, The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; 35but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him. 39And some of the scribes answered, Teacher, you have spoken well. 40For they no longer dared to ask him any question.

Luke 20:27-33 Rationalizations of Humanism: The next group coming to try to destroy Jesus-' image with the people were the Sadducees. They also had a catch question which they believed would be unanswerable. They fully expected to destroy Jesus-' reputation as a teacher in the eyes of the people. Their question dealt with the most crucial issue of human life: Is there life after death?

The sect of the Sadducees were the humanists of the Jewish religious hierarchy. Most Sadducees were priests and their sect likely originated with Zadok, the famous priest of David's day (cf. 2 Samuel 15:24; 1 Kings 1:32; Ezekiel 40:46; Ezekiel 43:19; Ezekiel 44:15; Ezekiel 48:11). Their name probably comes from the Hebrew word tzaddikim which means literally, righteous ones. It may have been a sarcastic nickname given to them by others or a boastful one given by themselves. They believed in preserving the nation by intelligence, diplomacy and prudence. They asserted Jews need keep only the essential parts of the Mosaic Law (the so-called 613 great principles) and in everything where Moses did not speak they might act according to the requirements of the time. They were pragmatic toward the attempts of the Seleucid (Syrian) conquerors to Hellenize the Jewish culture during the Maccabean era (300-100 B.C.). Sadducees were wealthy, controlled the Temple and its services, but were in direct opposition in almost every issue with the Pharisees. In Jesus-' day, though they secretly hated the Romans, for the good of their nation they believed it was better to make the best of their situation and go along with most anything the Romans demanded. They were the aristocratic party; they did not believe in Divine providence, miracles or angels. They did not believe in a resurrection from the dead (cf. Acts 23:7-8). They were suspicious of one another and had no group loyalty like the Pharisees had. They renounced all the traditional interpretations and practices of the Pharisees; accepted only the Pentateuch; they insisted on a rigidly literal application of Mosaic Law which led to judicial severity without mercy and made themselves unpopular with the common people.

The Sadducees came to Jesus with a hypothetical question which was probably one of the stock arguments they used against the Pharisees who undoubtedly had a great deal of difficulty providing an answer to it. They proposed the riddle of a woman married to seven husbands who all preceded her in death without ever giving the woman a child. The woman eventually died also, of course. The poser no one was able to answer was, Whose wife will she be in the resurrection, since she had seven husbands. The Sadducees started, of course, with the a priori that the doctrine of immortality was an absurdity and then made up an absurd illustration to prove it. The careful student will note the Sadducees arranged their story so all the woman's husbands were brothers making it conform to the Levirate law (Deuteronomy 25:5-6). They probably thought this would give the added impact of inferring the Law of Moses denied immortality because the Law made life after death an impossibility, If a child had been born in the illustration to one of the husbands, it might have solved the question as to whose wife she would be in heavencraftily they omit children.

Luke 20:34-40 Revelations from Heaven: Both Matthew and Mark record Jesus-' first words in answer to this challenge as: You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God (Matthew 22:29; Mark 12:24). All humanists make the unforgiveable mistake of a priori rejection of the scriptural record as unworthy of consideration in the subject of life after death. The Bible claims to be an accurate documentation of historical events. It demands to be tested. If its historicity can be established by all the accepted canons of historical verification, it deserves to be studied and believed. The Sadducees were either innocently ignorant or deliberately ignorant of what the Old Testament said about life after death. They were probably like those people described by Peter who deliberately ignored the facts concerning the flood (2 Peter 3:5). The Old Testament says this about life after death:

a.

There are actual, documented cases of resurrection from death in the Old Testament (cf. 1 Kings 17:22; 2 Kings 4:35; 2 Kings 13:21).

b.

There are documented cases of translation from this life to the next life without the experience called death (one in the Pentateuch) (cf. Genesis 5:22-24; 2 Kings 2:11).

c.

There is one case, well documented by eyewitnesses, of the reappearance of a man (Samuel) after he had died (1 Samuel 28:12-19).

d.

There are many declarations in the Old Testament of immortality and eternity: (cf. 2 Samuel 12:15-23; Psalms 16:8; Psalms 23:4-6; Isaiah 53:10-12; Ecclesiastes 3:11; Ecclesiastes 12:5-14; Job 19:25-26; Exodus 3:6).

e.

The statements in Genesis concerning the patriarchs who died and were buried, and were gathered to their people (cf. Genesis 25:8; Genesis 35:29) infer immortality. This term is constantly distinguished from death and burial and denotes the reunion in Sheol (place of departed spirits) with family and friends who have gone there before.

Jesus also told the Sadducees they were ignorant of the power of God. This becomes a problem at times even for those who have accepted the historicity and integrity of the Biblical record. The Christians in Corinth to whom Paul wrote two letters had this problem. They said, Since we have no earthly experience by which to determine what kind of body we will have in the resurrection we have doubts that there will be a resurrection. Paul told them, essentially, just what Jesus said here; God has the power to do in the next life what He has never done in the earthly life. The fundamental ignorance of man is his presumption that the life after death, if there is one, would have to be like this life. That is because man wants to reject anything outside his own experience lest he find out he is not his own sovereign. Man does not want to admit there is another Sovereign beyond himself able to do things he himself is not able to do. An all-powerful, all-wise, supernatural God has power to transcend and overcome all the inadequacies and incongruities of this existence by creating another existence, different and everlasting, yet incorporating the best of this one. This was what Jesus tried to convey in His answer to the Sadducees.

Jesus said there would be no marriage or sexual intercourse in heaven. Procreation will not be necessary to the survival of the human race there because those worthy to attain to the resurrection from the dead will be immortal, never dying, like the angels. If we may trust what God has revealed (however little and dim it may be) concerning the next life, we know life and personal intercourse in heaven will be much more thrilling and sensational than any fleshly sexual intercourse could ever be in this life. The apostle Paul was convinced that the next life would be very far better than any experience in this life (cf. Philippians 1:21-23). C. S. Lewis wrote some of his opinions about life after death. Here are some excerpts from The Joyful Christian, by C. S. Lewiswe think they are appropriate to this text:

Resurrection of the body: What the soul cries out for is the resurrection of the senses. Even in this life matter would be nothing to us if it were not the source of sensations.. Memory as we know it is a dim foretaste. of a power which the soul. will exercise hereafter. At the present we tend to think of the soul as somehow inside the body. But the glorified body of the resurrection as I conceive itthe sensuous life raised from its deathwill be inside the soul. As God is not in space but space is in God..

Intercourse in the Afterlife: Our present outlook of the absence of physical, sexual intercourse in heaven is like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure, should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer, No, he might regard the absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their sexual raptures do not bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate. He does not know the better thing that excludes it.

We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the better thing, which in heaven, leaves no room for the lesser sensation.
In denying that sexual life, as we now understand it, it is not necessary to suppose that the distinction of sexes or personalities will disappear.. What is no longer needed (sexual distinction) for biological purposes may be expected to survive for splendor.

Heaven: Dance and game are frivolous, unimportant down here; for down here is not their natural place. Here, they are a moment's rest from the life we are placed here to live. But in this world everything is upside down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of Ends. Joy is the serious business of Heaven.. At the resurrection of the body. once again the birds will sing and the waters flow, and lights and shadows move across the hills, and the faces of our friends laugh upon us with amazed recognition.

For these reasons, and many more sublime than even C. S. Lewis might imagine, Jesus rebuked the Sadducees for not believing in the power of God to make the next life far beyond the limitations of this one. It is significant that in answering the Sadducees Jesus did not refer to Pharisaic traditions, Greek philosophy, nor even to His own authority (as He did in the Sermon on the Mount), but to the Scriptures! He, of course, was God in the flesh and author of the Scriptures. His deity was, at that point, an excusable stumbling to the Jews. He had every right to insist they believe in life after death merely on His say-so, but giving them the benefit of the doubt about His identity, He appealed to the divine record. They could have no excuse for rejecting the Old Testamentits divine origin was the accepted basis for their existence as a nation and all their hopes for a future messianic relationship to God. Its historicity and integrity had been established by thousands of years of supernatural demonstration to their ancestors. So Jesus cited the Pentateuch itself as the authority for believing in life after death. At the burning bush Moses quoted God as saying that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exodus 3:6). All of these patriarchs had been dead for centuries before Moses, yet God said they were living presently with Him. God is not the God of the annihilated or deadbut of the living.

There are still humanists today denying life after death. The Humanist Manifesto of 1933, updated 1973 and called Humanist Manifesto II, says, We find insufficient evidence for belief in the existence of a supernatural.. Humans are responsible for what we are or will become. No deity will save us; we must save ourselves. Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful.. The universe is self-existing and not created. The mind or soul does not exist apart from the body.. Avowed humanist, Corliss Lamont, wrote in the magazine, The Humanist, March-April 1980, Humanists live for actions, ideals on this Earth in our one and only life. Heaven must be built in this world or not at all.. While we-'re here, let's live in clover, for when we-'re dead, we-'re dead all over.

This is still the most crucial issue in the life of finite manlife after death. Upon the answer to this issue depends true love, morality, meaning, purpose and every human relationship. The only viable answer continues to rest upon the historical integrity and credibility of the Bible for it claims to be the only and final revelation of God concerning this life and the next!One need only compare the after-life concepts of the religions of human origin with that of Christ to appreciate the Biblical revelation. The Buddhist nirvana is an alleged state of non-existence; the Hindu after-life involves an endless cycle of re-incarnations into this world of imperfection and tribulation; the Islamic paradise is a place of sexual promiscuity and fleshly indulgence. Even orthodox Jews today believe that some day a Jew will appear who will announce the end of the world as we know it and the establishment of the kingdom of God, in which finally the lion will lay down with the lamb. This Jew, and he will be a person, not an incarnation of God, as if such a thing were possible, is called Mashiach, or Messiah. When he arrives there will be a resurrection of the dead, called in Hebrew, T-'chiat Ha-metim, and all the resurrected of the Jews will gather in Israel, there to live forever. Mashiach will be a descendant of the house of David and will be announced by Elijah the Prophet.. Nevertheless, if one were to say, -While not denying what the sages have said, I have no belief concerning any aspect of the life after death or the world to come; all I believe is that my soul is in the hands of God and my faith is in Him-' such a Jew would not be considered a heretic, even by the most pious. Much more important than speculation about the afterlife is the acceptance of the revelation of the Torah, which is entirely concerned with life and the living. Living Jewish, by Michael Asheri, pub. Everest House, pg. 196. The gospel of Christ is as relevant for the Jews today as it was when Jesus pointed out to the Sadducees that the Torah teaches life after death as a fact and a fundamental tenet of true faith in God. For more information on Old Testament teaching on life after death see special study, The Future Life, Isaiah, Vol. II, by Paul T. Butler, College Press, pgs. 287-299.

The Lord's reply to the Sadducees destroyed the last stronghold of His enemies. And even the scribes, personally taking pleasure in His humiliation of the Sadducees, dared not ask Him any more questions. They were at least wise enough to see that from then on every trap laid for him would only give Him another opportunity to manifest His divine wisdom and destroy their pretensions. They give up this method of attack.