Matthew 22:23-33 - Feb. 9, 2010
Matthew 22:23-33 - Feb. 9, 2010
That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. "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. 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. The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?" Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, '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." When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.
Matthew 22:23-33
The Sadducees were prominent religious leaders of Jesus’ day who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. They did not come to learn from Jesus, but to question him so that they might find fault with his teaching and discredit him before the people. Their question of whose wife the seven-times-married woman would be in the resurrection stemmed from a law that God gave his Old Testament people through Moses (Deuteronomy 25:5-6). God set down that law to protect widows and to guarantee continuance of a deceased man's family line.
Jesus confronted their unbelief about the resurrection from the dead with the truth of the Scriptures. He took them back to the account of the burning bush, the scene at which God called Moses to be the leader of his people to lead them out of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. God revealed himself to Moses by saying: "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." At the time of Moses, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob has been dead already for hundreds of years. Yet when God spoke to Moses, he didn’t say that he was their God, but "I am" their God. Therefore Jesus declares that the Lord "is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive."
The God of the living declares that he will raise the dead to life. Jesus said, “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out” (John 5:28-29). God is all-powerful and faithful to his word. He can and will keep his promise of raising the dead to life. Not only does Jesus make that clear in his word, it is proved by his own resurrection from the dead. The Bible declares, “By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also” (1 Corinthians 6:14).
Trusting in Jesus as our Savior from sin and death, we can declare confidently: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27)
Jesus, fill my heart with the peace that my sins are forgiven through your death. Strengthen me in the confident hope that as you rose from the dead, you will also call me forth from the grave to live with you forever. Amen.
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