following, as we heard that reading earlier. Here's where we're spending the next few moments, in Luke chapter 20 verse 27 following. And here we see, at verse 27, that Jesus is given one of those Dorothy Dixit questions, one of those, perhaps it's a question that he could be easily answered, but they're not intending that. They're not asking Jesus because it's kind of a Bible study and they're interested, no. They came to him, the Sadducees particularly, coming to Jesus, and they have a question that relates to the resurrection. Now, it relates to the resurrection because it really is about whether Jesus is going to teach them the resurrection or not. But for them, they bring it a bit closer to home and they bring an emotional weight to it because they start to talk about marriage and relationships and confusion in heaven. If there's a resurrection, Jesus, won't there be confusion when it comes to whose wife will she be? As we start this sermon, this message, we want to acknowledge that sometimes we come to Jesus with questions like that. Perhaps we want to know really what's going on in the Bible, but at other times it could just be that we come to Jesus just wanting to see, you know, does Christianity really have all the answers? What about that Jesus? What about that Christianity? What about that Bible? And you see here that Jesus finishes with His answer where no one dares ask Him any more questions. It's good to ask questions. We're going to be asking questions now. But for us, we need to see that when we come to Jesus, the reason no one dared to ask him any questions is because he has the authority to answer. Jesus knows what he's talking about. Now these Sadducees, of course, if you don't know who they are, we've been in loose gospel for some time, we've been engaging or seen Jesus engaging with the Pharisees quite a lot. Who are the Sadducees? When I was growing up and I grew up in a Christian home with a great loving dad who had great loving dad jokes, one of my dad's dad jokes was, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the difference between them is the Pharisees are religious rulers and the Sadducees tend to be kind of like political rulers. At least, they might have a religious influence, but they tend more to be kind of politically leaning in their influence. And so, when it comes to the difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, my dad's dad joke was this, the Sadducees don't believe in the resurrection. The Pharisees do, but the Sadducees don't believe in the resurrection. Why? Well, that's why they're sad, you see. cue the laughter from the kids. If it was my son, Knox, he'd be going, ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, in his little way that he puts the fake laugh on. You might be fake laughing at home, or you might be just sitting there watching this on your dinner table going. Mm-hmm, fair enough. But you see, the Sadducees are that group of people who, unlike the Pharisees, who may be religious rulers and quite against Jesus, the Sadducees are these influencers in society. They didn't have Insta, but they're influencers. And their influence is, we don't even believe in a resurrection. In other words, all we care about is this life now, and that's all that matters. So they come to Jesus. They haven't really been on the scene until now. They come in this part of Luke, and they come to Jesus. And they come to Jesus with a question. It's a very pointy question. It's one of those questions, it could seem like a Dorothy Dixer, just, we know the answer, Jesus. But it's not that, is it? They think they know the answer. They want to see, does Jesus have the right answer? Or at least, can we trip him up in his answer? And so they ask, teacher, Moses wrote for us. You know Moses, like he is the writer of the Old Testament, Torah, the instruction, the law. So if you're going to pick someone of all the prophets and the writings and the law, well pick Moses because he's like the big writer, okay? You know Moses, he writes God's Word, right? And their point is, we've got someone with authority who's written that if a man's brother dies having a wife and no children, the man must take the widow and raise her up for offspring. That's in the law, that's fine. But this is where their question goes into, wow, extremes. What about if there were like seven Jesus? What if there were seven brothers Jesus? What are you going to say to that Jesus? You can kind of see the tone, can't you? They're not interested in pastoral questions. They're not interested in actually caring for people and shepherding people. They're interested in coming with that worry, the smile that says, I got you now, Jesus. I got you now, Bible teacher. I'm going to trip you up on the spot. It's not a question of care. Notice even the way they ask it. You know, died without children a second, third, and took all likewise, left no children and died, and then In the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be? And notice they're treating this wife, this woman, like she's some sort of property. And Jesus says to them, you are just talking about this age. You are just talking about this age and marriage and this age. But the resurrection life is a different kind of life. It's a better life. Now, we understand marriage as we know it, the way God made it. We know this from the Old Testament and into the New Testament. We understand it is a good gift of God. We understand marriage is given to us, in fact, ultimately, to illustrate the relationship that Christ has with the Church. That is ultimately the illustration of marriage. As a married person myself, I can tell you that singleness is a gift, and so is marriage. They're different gifts, but they're both given by God. And we'll see in this message today, in this sermon, where we're going with this is, as we talk to people who are in different stages of life, or different places of life, and we all have different gifts of life, including marriage and singleness. Some of us see marriage or singleness as not a gift. Some of us see it as perhaps even a curse. We feel differently about that and we understand that. sometimes the way religious leaders or political leaders or influencers talk about marriage or singleness or remarriage or widows and widowers or death and divorce and any framework like this, sometimes it comes across as not being pastoral. It comes across as not really caring for your situation. But notice Jesus' response in verse 34. He cares. This comes from God Himself, in the flesh, incarnate, embodied as a human person, as a human single person. But Jesus is not just a human single person, of course, because He is God in flesh, He knows how the whole universe operates because He made it. He made the gift of marriage. He made the gift of singleness. He made all these gifts. He made us. And so when Jesus speaks, He's got authority. And this is what Jesus says, verse 34, the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. That is how God made it. It is of this age. But those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead, neither will they marry nor are given in marriage. Now, you see this Jesus saying there is this age where marriage exists as a gift to us, where singleness can exist as a gift, but that is of this age. That is, even singles of this age won't exist in this age like that as a single person forever in that state, whatever that means for the next. Married people won't exist forever in that state of marriage, whatever it looks like in the next. At least if we just pause at verse 35, it's different. It's different. Now you have to see the connecting word verse 36, why? For they cannot die anymore. That's the distinction between this age and the next. This age is different than the next because this age there is this thing called death because of sin. But in the next age, in the resurrection life, in the new creation to come, that exists forever because death does not bring it to a terminus. And so we see verse 36, for they cannot die anymore because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of thee, or sons and daughters, your Bible might have a footnote there, of the resurrection. but that the dead are raised. Even Moses showed in the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And verse 38 is where Jesus concludes his answer. Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him. This is really important to see. We live in a time that is brief. It is finite, our life, in an earthly sense. Marriage is finite as we know it in an earthly sense. That is even singleness is finite as we know it in an earthly sense. Now we could go to many other places in the Bible to do a sermon particularly on marriage, a sermon particularly on singleness. We've done it before, we can do it again. I gave it at one of the theological colleges I studied at, I gave an issues paper, a whole issues paper to faculty and to students on singleness. We could do that, but for now, why are we in this passage? With four passages to go of Luke's gospel before we get up to Easter and the end and our next series and the next term, why this passage? I want to put a pause, just a moment, at looking at this before we move to meaning further application, just to say the reason is this. We want to be, I want to be pastoral with you. I want to look you in the eye and a camera lens, yes, but over the phone talk to you this week or send an email or a message or see you in our Zoom groups. You and I are now what's called social isolation. It's kind of like social media without the, yeah, I wish there was a socialization for that sometimes, but we're kind of in this space where we're supposed to be not hanging out face-to-face together. John writes in his epistle, you know, I'd much to write, but I'd much rather see you face-to-face. That's kind of how I feel now as your pastor, as one of your elders. But for us, as I was going through Luke's gospel thinking about where do we go next? What are we going to be encouraging one another with these words? For us, I think to start with, here is a place in Luke's gospel as Jesus is walking on the way to Jerusalem since chapter 9 verse 51, where he is met by people who want to have a go, have a crack, have a question. him at the resurrection and he's been speaking about his own death and resurrection, he's going to his death on the cross to then one day fulfill all things in his resurrection and here for us we can see this has meaning for us today in our isolation, in our loneliness, in For some of us in our church, we are experiencing isolation even more, because some of us are not married. When we started seeing government regulations coming in, and every week there's been new and more, and they've been more, how can we put this gently, more restricting, in a good way, we understand why they exist, we understand why that must happen. My first thought was not for me and my family, although I do think of them often and I love them dearly. My first thought was actually for those among our church family who are single. It was for those among our church family who will not get to just go home to someone else. And for us, we need to abide by the government regulations. We need to do what's been called the right thing, so that we can see lives in this earthly life saved. And I would put it this way, so we can see not just earthly lives saved, but we can see people have more time in this life to hear the gospel in God's patience and repent and believe. But for you, for you who are single people, You who are single, of course, is not your primary identity. Just like me being married is not my primary identity. For you being single, as we know in the scriptures, the Apostle Paul calls it a gift. It's a gift for you for now that God gives you in this time by his grace. You live and breathe still. You have your being in this time and this place in Australia. And for you, there's this gift given to you. You are given singleness in this season. just like for others they're given marriage. Now for you who are single and particularly isolated, I think this passage is helpful for us today to spend some time just sitting in and dwelling in for a moment. For we see where people would bring a question to Jesus and they would use marriage to trip Jesus up, Jesus takes their question and their rope that put across his pathway that he walks to trip him up and he takes it and he bundles it up and says, I want to talk about what really matters. What really matters is this, knowing there is this life, there is the next life, And that's what really matters and that's what shapes marriage and singleness and everything else. And what really matters is the resurrection. What really matters is the resurrected life. For you who are single, I think it's incredibly helpful. So when it comes to replication at this point, for you who are single among us, among our church family, you can see this, you can see what Jesus is saying. He is saying marriage is just for this life, singleness as we know it is just for this life. But the resurrection that is to come for us, the resurrection that Jesus will go to, we'll see in our fourth and last sermon of this online series. The resurrection of Jesus now means nothing is the same. Nothing will stay the same. Everything is new, wonderful, and different. For the Sadducees, notice what they do. They quote from the Old Testament. Jesus, well of course he's the author of the Old Testament, if they only knew who they were speaking really to, but Jesus of course is not just the author of the Old Testament, which is a wonderful thing that he is, he is God, but he's the God who made all things and he's the God who is preparing for the general resurrection to come. He knows Abraham, he knows Isaac, he knows Jacob, And Jesus, verse 38, doesn't just know them because he wrote about them, he's the author, as Moses penned his pen. No, verse 38, look at verse 38. Jesus knows them because Jesus is God of the dead and of the living. Jesus is the one who will raise the dead. He's not just the God of the dead, of the past. He is of the living, now, of the future. Jesus is God, and all live to Him. Jesus knows Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as He knows them as they are now, also awaiting their resurrected bodies like we will. And for Jesus, as He answers the Sadducees, He shows us what really matters. And that's a great encouragement for single people, even if it's hard and it gets harder. It will get harder for isolated people who are single. It's harder. This isolation, which may last a couple of weeks, a month, a few months, maybe more, no matter how long it lasts, it's still not forever. What is coming in the resurrection lasts forever. And Jesus, therefore, gives us great hope. He gives everyone great hope. in the Old Testament that the Sadducees quote from, the Old Testament, marriage was important. In fact, marriage was so important that you'll notice it's rare in the Old Testament to meet a single person in the Scriptures. It's just rare. They are there, of course, but usually in the Old Testament, the Old Testament is about progenation. So that's why whenever you see in the scriptures someone's identified a couple or a woman is identified as being barren or unable to have children, that's seen as, wow, that's hugely significant. Perhaps even shameful in that culture, but hugely significant. And of course, the scriptures, whenever they point someone out like that, it gets even more significant because it tells you, it's a signal, God is about to do something big. God is about to do something special. The Old Testament was about progenation. We live in the days now after Jesus' resurrection in this New Testament time. And Jesus is saying, whilst the Old Testament was about progenation, the New Testament is not about progenation anymore. It's not about getting married and having kids necessarily, although that's still a good gift of God. No, now, in these New Testament times, we're not looking forward to necessarily having lots of great grandchildren by birth. We are looking forward to having lots of great-grandchildren by new birth. Whereas the Old Testament was about progeny, the New Testament is about regeneration. It's about people being born again. It's about single people being included in the family of God. It's about single people, married people, not just being included and looking after their own kids, their own kids, and that matters, but looking after a whole family of children, a whole family of little disciples who are being born into this family of God. And this is where we find application and local expression in the local church. So that when Jesus answers the Sadducees on their trip-you-up question, He actually does much more than answer their question. If we were to look at that, the simple answer is, Jesus was basically saying, no, you have no idea what you're talking about. I do, I'm God and I made it all. It's not going to matter. In other words, you see in other Gospels, Jesus basically says this, in the resurrection life and the new life to come, there's not marriage as we know it. gathered issues paper at college years ago now to faculty and students there was a faculty member disagreed arguing there is marriage in heaven but by and large we see and I want to say you know and who am I to speak in a different opinion to a theological college lecturer but I think he's actually wrong and what I think that because the trajectory of the scriptures not just a passage that Jesus has in the Gospels which carries all the weight and authority of God himself, but all the trajectory of what Jesus, what God is saying in the Scriptures is, marriage is for this life, singleness as we know it is for this life, but what the resurrection life to come promises is this, it's all glimmering new and better. How does it help us today? Knowing that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, that Jesus is, verse 38, that God. He's not the God of the dead, but of the living. How does it help us today? It's a great comfort. When my first thought in this whole regulations about social isolation, and if we're on this pathway, and I'm speaking now on Monday, March 23rd, for this recording to happen on the coming Sunday, we could be, in the space of a week, by the time this is being heard by you and you're singing the songs and participating in this reforming online community, we could well be with new regulations that could say we're not even allowed out of the house. At the moment, some of us can go to work. At the moment, if you're a single person, you're a married person, some of us can go and do things. But what if that changes? Now, people might say, well, it's only for two weeks for us, or it's only social isolation for a little while. That's true. And I want to say again and again at every point, no matter how long it takes, we actually need to all do our part. We need to not fear, not fear, not have anxiety and trust ourselves to God. Instead of being anxious about everything, we can be prayerful about everything. It's Philippians 4 verse 6, whenever in a fix, Philippians 4 verse 6. We can now, Romans 12 verse 12, which you heard yesterday on Sunday, March 22nd, we can as we had that last time of outdoor gathered worship. We can now rejoice with hope, be patient in tribulation and be constant in prayer. We can do that because Jesus is the one who rejoices in hope. Who is patient in tribulation? Yes, Jesus is. Who is constant in prayer? We can be because Jesus is for us even when we fail. So we need not fear. But on the other end of that, we also need to also listen to what the governing authorities are saying. If the governing authorities are saying we need to not meet in groups, even in our homes, we need to listen to that. We need to do what's right for a short period. But here's how our church family can help those who are isolated, and I'm particularly thinking of single people. We can encourage them and remind them that this is brief. You see, if marriage briefly illustrates, which is Ephesians 5 of course, if marriage is this mysterious thing that Paul says illustrates the relationship of Christ and the Church in this life, well this brief time that we have in social isolation illustrates the brevity, the brief nature of this life, doesn't it? It illustrates how short this life is, because we might be socially isolated for two weeks, but that's brief. Two months, that's a longer kind of brief, but it's still brief compared to a lifetime, more so compared to eternity. And so, the first thing we can do is be encouraged by Jesus, that the first answer to socialization, isolation, the first answer to being socially isolated is remember the resurrection, remember the gospel, remember Jesus' words, and be comforted. The second thing we can do is, as a church community, as a family, a church family, is care for those who are isolated, And that can be as simple as, it doesn't even have to be complicated like getting on a Zoom group, which is a good thing to do. Can I encourage you, it can be as simple as this old fashioned thing, we used to call it phoning people. Just call them up, call them up. Yes, you could send a text message. Yes, you could send an email. Yes, you can get on a Zoom group, good thing to do once a week, but you could even just call someone. We're going to be calling people as best we can. Our elders are going to be calling our whole church list every week as best we can. It can be as simple as calling people. How are you going? And part of the conversation can be, yeah, it's hard, isn't it? Let's acknowledge that. The gift of marriage has hard things about it. The gift of singleness has hard things about it. Everyone was single once. Some of us, that singleness was very brief. Some of us, that singleness was long or continues to be long. Some of us, that singleness existed, then we were married, and then sadly that marriage is not there anymore. Some of us go through different painful experiences in singleness and marriage, but here's where we can encourage each other on that phone call. Remember the resurrection. That this light and momentary affliction, 2 Corinthians 4, this light and momentary affliction, it is hard, but in comparison to the eternal weight of glory to come, the thing that Jesus is speaking of, that existence, that life that we will experience, it is promised to us, means that this is hard, but brief. Encourage them in that phone call. Pray through these words together. You'll see at the bottom of this particular page, this service, this online service for you, you'll see there'll be some questions, some ways in which you can, in your home, discuss. So obviously, if you're a family, discuss the kids' questions with your kids. We've got some kids packs coming, family packs coming. Perhaps if you've got housemates, you can discuss with your housemates. If your housemates are not believers, and you're watching this with earphones on somewhere else, perhaps you could think about how you might talk about these things and what gives you hope in a brief period of isolation. Perhaps you're a single person living by yourself. What we might do is actually, on our phone call, talk with you about these things. You see, what Jesus gives us here is a promise that we can hold on to. It's the promise of the resurrection to the come. And that verse 38, Luke 20 verse 38, Jesus is God, not of the dead, but the living, for all live to him. earlier in that passage, verse 35, we see Jesus use these words, "...but those were considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection of the dead, neither the married are given a marriage." Things are different. There's no marriage in heaven as we know it, not as we know it now, because there's a new marriage. And that new marriage is like when the sun comes out when the moon's been up all night. You know, the moon's up and you see the light of the moon is that kind of black and white or grey kind of light. Well, that moonlight is like marriage in this life. It's like singleness in this life. It's what we understand it as. It's an illustration of Christ in the church. It's how it exists now as a gift of God. But soon, with the resurrection and the Son coming up, with Jesus, the Son, returning, that will eclipse this life, and there's a new marriage to come. So that the earthly marriages that we have today, whilst they're good and a blessing and yet hard, while singleness is a gift and yet hard, all of that is eclipsed and there is something new coming. And that newness coming is that we're married to the Lamb, to Jesus. We're actually married to the one, the husband, who's laid his life down for us. And I know sometimes if you're a man, you're a bloke, you're like, that's a bit weird, but it's actually not as a marriage as we know it. It's joined to him in a new and better marriage. And that one is the one that we look forward to. So I know I've spoken a lot to singles and how we can encourage you, but can I encourage you, if you're a married person, to see this passage and the trajectory of the Scriptures, the way God speaks about marriage and the resurrection to come, to see this. To look forward to being with Jesus. To look forward to being married to Him. The church is the bride of Christ. Men, women, boys and girls, we're the bride of Christ and we look forward to being with Jesus. Which means for us, in our brief isolation, This is a reminder, it points to the brevity of this life. A brevity of isolation from being fully and finally with God. What we look forward to in the resurrection life is not just having all our tricky questions answered in the great hall of theology. It's not just seeing each other or perhaps catching up even with our spouse. I heard a theological college lecturer say around the time that I gave that more than 10 years ago in that paper, He said, yeah Russ, I don't believe in us being married in heaven either, as we know it. I think Jesus is right, it's not exactly what he said, but Jesus is on point all throughout the scriptures and that's exactly right, he says. But he says this, although there's no marriage in heaven, my wife and I have agreed we might sit next to each other. Now he's joking of course. What he's saying is, we won't be married in the same sense, but there will be a sense where we'll know each other. Well, I'll know Amy and she'll know me and I'll know you and you'll know me and we'll know reforming church family. We actually look forward to seeing each other. We look forward to seeing perhaps those others, friends and family who we saw come to Christ, even at this time, in the time of the virus, the great virus crisis of 2020. There is a sense where we look forward to in the scriptures, we see this again and again, we look forward to being together again, reunited. Yes. But that's even not the big thing. The most wonderful aspect of the resurrection is we get to be with the God who is not God of the dead, but of the living. We get to be with Jesus. That's we long for. That's we look forward to. So in this time of social isolation, in this time of being briefly apart, yes, we do look forward to getting back together to do church again, to be the church. That's what the word church means, to gather. But we look forward to being the church fully and finally by being gathered to Jesus. That's the encouragement we have. because Jesus, the one who came to die for our sins, rise for our hope and our future resurrection to bring us to God and to one day gather us to bring us to be God's church fully, finally, forever in the resurrection age, the age that is to come. That's so encouraging. Can I encourage you to be speaking with one another about these things? When it gets hard in our isolation, when it's hard for others, speak these words of the good news of Jesus, of the gospel to one another. For even in days of isolation, the gospel changes everything. Let's pray. Our Lord and God, we thank you for Jesus. We thank you that this question, although asked out of perhaps a bit of rebellion in their hearts, the Sadducees asked it. You allowed it to be asked of Jesus so that Jesus could point to us to bigger things, not just to answer their superficial question, but to show us a hope of the resurrection. Thank you for the hope that's been given to us. Thank you for Jesus. And we pray that now we would apply this by encouraging one another in His words, that we would see one another encouraged and looking to Jesus, the God of the living, our God, our Savior. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.