Father in heaven, we thank you for bringing us together one more time to rally around Christ, to sing his praises, to read his Word, to proclaim to each other, and to be reminded of just how excellent and gracious and loving he is. Father, we pray that we would see something of Christ this morning in your Word, We pray that we would see his wisdom. We pray that we would see his mercy. We pray that we would see the freeness with which he offers resurrection and life. Father, we pray that we would see him not only with the eyes of our head, but also with the eyes of our affections and our heart. Lord, we pray this in his name. Amen. There's no shortage about what people believe happens when a person dies. Of course there's some people who believe in what's called reincarnation or the idea that a person dies and their immaterial part of who they are is reunited with a different physical being and they become something entirely different maybe an animal, maybe a different person, maybe a different gender. In both Buddhism and as well as Hinduism, the physical form that you take after you die is almost entirely dependent on how you lived before you die. So if you live a really good life in Buddhism or Hinduism, you become something better. You get an upgrade. If you don't live such a good life, after you die, you get reincarnated as something worse. Something beneath the station that you used to have. A lot of other people believe that when you die, you simply cease to exist. There's nothing after this life. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, this is the end. In 2014, there was a man who was pronounced clinically dead on an operating table, but he miraculously came back to life. Someone asked him about his experience, and this is what he said it was like. Just black, emptiness. No thoughts, no consciousness, no nothing. My question is, if there was no consciousness or thoughts, how do you know it was black and empty? Some people believe a more sentimental idea, and they say that we all die and we all become like the angels. We become angels after we die. Some have adopted the idea that most people go to heaven and the really, really bad people go to hell. Of course, we're the ones that get to decide who's good and who's bad, and the bad people are always the people that are worse than us, and so most people in that mentality end up going to heaven. There's no shortage of views about what happens when a person dies, and most of them are based either on sentimentality or false religious notions. But this morning in Mark chapter 12 verses 18 through 27, Jesus is asked about the afterlife. The Sadducees come and they pose a question about what happens after this life. And Jesus doesn't give sentimental opinion. He doesn't give religious philosophies. He opens the Word of God, and he shows us that there is a resurrection from the dead, and for God's people, they will be with God for all eternity, and He will continue to be their covenant-keeping God. So if you have a Bible, follow along with me. I'm going to read Mark 12, verses 18 through 27. Mark 12, starting in verse 18. Then some Sadducees who say there is no resurrection came to him, and they asked him, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man's brother dies and leaves his wife behind and leaves no children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and dying, left no offspring. The second took her, and he died, nor did he leave any offspring, and the third likewise. So the seven had her and left no offspring. Last of all, the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as a wife. Jesus answered and said to them, are you not therefore mistaken because you do not know 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. But concerning the dead, that they rise, have not you read in the book of Moses in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him saying, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken. As we look at this passage, there's three things we're going to focus on. They're on the screen. They're on the back inside cover of your bulletin. First, we're going to see the questioners described in verse 18. Then we'll see the question that's asked in verses 19 through 23. Then we'll see the answer Jesus gives in verse 24 through 27. Let's begin by noticing the questioners described in verse 18. Verse 18 tells us, So we're talking about the Sadducees. The Sadducees were a very influential group of men in Jerusalem. They were both a political group as well as a religious authority. And in many ways, the Sadducees stood in direct opposition to the Pharisees. The Pharisees believed in the entire Hebrew Bible. The Sadducees only embraced the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, or the writings of Moses. The Sadducees believed in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They rejected the rest of the Old Testament. The other major difference between the Sadducees and the Pharisees is that the Pharisees believe that after death there is a resurrection and a judgment. The Sadducees don't believe that. They only believe there is a death. That's why verse 18 tells us that they say there is no resurrection. Much of what we know about the Sadducees we actually get from the book of Acts. Acts 23, verses six through 10. And notice as I read that how it describes the Sadducees. But when Paul perceived that one part were the Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. Concerning the hope of the resurrection from the dead, I am being judged. And when he said this, there was a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. Notice how it describes the Sadducees. But the Pharisees confessed both. Then there arose a loud outcry, and the scribes and the Pharisees' party arose and protested, saying, We find no evil in this man, but if a spirit or an angel is spoken to him, let us not fight against God. Now there arose a great dissension, and the commander, fearing lest Paul might be pulled to pieces by them, commanded that soldiers go down and take him by force from among them and bring him into the barracks. Notice how Acts 23 describes the Sadducees. They deny the existence of a resurrection. They deny the existence of spirits and the existence of angels. They only believe in what they can see, taste, touch, smell, and experience in the natural world. You could really say they were a type of naturalist. Anything supernatural, anything outside of the realm of the natural world, they struggled to believe. So on one hand, they believe the first five books of the Bible, but they simultaneously deny much of the things that are contained in the first five books of the Bible, anything supernatural. They picked and they chose what parts they wanted to believe, and they only believed the parts that were consistent with the naturalistic worldview. Let me just point out here that that's often one of the ways to spot a false teacher. More often than not, false teachers will use the Bible. They will use the Bible even as some kind of authority, but they pick and choose how they want to use the Bible. They'll pick and choose what parts of the Bible they want to use. They'll limit the scope of what they consider to be scripture to only certain parts that are consistent with their preconceptions. Of course, Mormonism is a classic example of that. I wish I had a dollar for every Mormon missionary who sat on my couch and said, we believe that the Book of Mormon is the Word of God and the Bible is also the Word of God, so far as it is accurately translated. What are they saying? They're saying we believe the Bible is true, but but only as much as it's consistent with my preconceptions, only as much as it's consistent with my experience, only as much as it's consistent with the Book of Mormon. And so we say we believe the Bible, but do we really believe the Bible? I was walking downtown Cody this week, and I noticed that the Christian Science group in Cody has a building with a storefront. They have two books in the window opened up. One of them was the Bible. They're putting the Bible out there, but do they believe it? Do they embrace it? Do they embrace all of it, or just the parts that talk about healing? We need to be committed to not only portions of Scripture, but the entirety of Scripture. And we need to reject any false teacher that comes to us with the Word of God and says, we believe these parts, but we pick and choose and we dissect and we only use certain parts. Christian science and Mormonism aren't the only ones that do that. Even fringes in Christianity will do that. There are many people who will base the entirety of their belief system on the words that are written and read in their Bibles. The words of Christ are what we should believe. And so they reject many of the clear didactic portions of Scripture, like the writings of the Apostle Paul. They'll reject those and they'll only go to the teachings of Jesus, and consequently they come up with all sorts of weird, unbiblical doctrines. And so we need to remember 2 Timothy 3.16 that says, all scripture is breathed out by God. All scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. Anytime you hear someone in any way question the inspiration or usefulness of any portion of scripture, you can be absolutely sure they are about to tell you something totally false. They're playing tricks with Scripture to support false doctrines. They're playing tricks with Scripture to support false practices. And so false teachers will always neglect the portions of Scripture that don't support their system of beliefs. But even though these men are naturalists who pick and choose what parts of the Bible they want to believe, don't think of them as ignorant or an insignificant group. These people are very highly educated and very influential. In fact, they're a group that contributes to the whole group called the Sanhedrin. And even though they were, the numbers they contributed to the Sanhedrin were very few, the influence they carried in the Sanhedrin was great and even disproportionate to their numbers. These men are not ignorant. They're not idiots. They're very intelligent, they're highly intellectual, and they're an elite group of well-educated, influential men in Judaism. There have always been people like that in history, haven't there? Maybe you know David Attenborough, the English broadcaster and natural historian, a major promoter of evolutionary theory. I'm certain we've probably all heard his voice on a nature channel. He has this really smooth British voice. He'll describe a cheetah tearing out the throat of an impala in a way that will lull you to sleep. Here's what he says. He says, it seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement, the greatest source of visual beauty, the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living. As an evolutionist who denies the existence of God, he says, But you don't have to be a British naturalist to be like the Sadducees. Thomas Jefferson was a deist. He took it upon himself, the great task of editing the Bible. into a book that he called The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. And in Jefferson's Bible, he took out the miracles of Christ, he took out the supernatural portions, and the last verse of the Jefferson Bible says this, describing the crucifixion and the last portion of Jesus' life. He says, it rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher and departed. Jefferson's Bible ends with Jesus going into the tomb, a stone coming in front of it, and a period. No resurrection. Jefferson leaves Jesus dead in the tomb. The same supposed intellectual denial of all things miraculous, the same denial of a resurrection that was present in the Sadducees continues today, and it's that mentality that brings these Sadducees to Jesus with a question. They want to trap him in his words with a question. Let's look at their question. We've seen the questioners. Now let's look at the question that they ask in verses 19 through 23. 19 through 23 tells us, Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man's brother dies and leaves his wife behind and leaves no children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. Now, there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and dying, he left no offspring. And the second took her, and he died. Nor did he leave any offspring. And the third likewise. So, all seven had her, and left no offspring. Last of all, the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as a wife." So the Sadducees come to Jesus and they pose this hypothetical scenario. It's a question about a fake scenario that they've created to try to trap Jesus. And as you read through it, it seems like their question is about marriage. It's not. They're disguising a question about the resurrection behind this question about marriage. To understand the scenario they're creating, we have to understand its Old Testament roots. In the Old Testament, God told the nation Israel that if a man and a woman got married and the man died without the woman having children, then the brother-in-law, the husband's brother, was supposed to marry the wife for the purpose of continuing the family name and keeping the inheritance and the family within the nation of Israel. Listen to Deuteronomy 25 verse 5. It says, if a brother dwells together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go into her and take her as a wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. So this is what's called a leveret marriage, a marriage of the brother-in-law. And under Old Covenant law, in order to keep the family name, in order to keep the inheritance in the family, in order to protect the purity of the nation Israel, anyone who dies and doesn't continue the family, the widow is supposed to marry within the family. That's the backdrop of this scenario. And the question these men bring to Jesus is that there's a woman who marries a man, and the man dies without having any children, but he's got six brothers that are ready to stand in line. The second brother comes and marries her. He dies. The third brother marries her. He dies. All seven of them marry her, and they die without producing a child. How would you like to marry this woman? She's like a black widow. the main point of the Sadducee's question is to try to trap Jesus in this discussion about resurrection. Their reasoning like this, okay, Jesus, you believe in a resurrection. You also believe in the first five books of the Bible. The first five books of the Bible tell us that this woman is supposed to marry all six of these men. And so let's create this hypothetical scenario. She marries all six of them. All seven of them die and are resurrected. Who is she married to in the resurrection? God's not a polygamist, is he? God wouldn't want this woman to be married to all seven. So clearly, if God is opposed to polygamy, then there can't be a resurrection if God is the one who told this woman to marry all seven of these men. The Sadducees are operating under a number of false assumptions. First, they're operating under the assumption that there's marriage after the resurrection. They're operating under the assumption that death does not nullify marriage. And the heart of their question comes from those false assumptions. If there's marriage in the afterlife and this woman has seven husbands, how in the world could there be a resurrection? Because she is like the most polygamous woman in the world. James Edwards helps us understand the Sadducee's conundrum when he says, the Sadducee's question is a brilliant edifice designed to explode what they considered to be the superstition of life after death. In the minds of the Sadducees, simple wit and common sense are sufficient to reduce the idea of a resurrection to an absurdity. The question is framed on the Pharisaic and Rabbinic assumption that the world to come is an extension of the earthly conditions here, including the marriage state, although under more glorious conditions. Of course, the poor logic and the fact that these men are asking something they don't believe in. They're asking about a resurrection. They don't believe in a resurrection. It's evidence to the fact that they're not asking a sincere question. They really don't care who this hypothetical woman is married to. They're trying to stump Jesus. That's their heart. And people do that today, too, don't they? Maybe you've heard someone ask, like, can God create a rock so big he can't move it? If you answer yes, it means God can create something. He's not powerful enough to move. If you answer no, it means there's something God can't create. Maybe you've heard someone say something like, okay, if God created everything, who created God? Other people have asked, where did Cain get his wife? I once heard a pastor answer that question, and he said, I'm a Christian. I don't care about other men's wives. People still try to play stump the chump with God, don't they? And just as with the Sadducees, the motive behind these kinds of question doesn't come from a genuine desire to know the truth. The motive behind these kinds of questions is to discredit the truth claims of Christ and to justify a person's unbelief. Maybe you're afraid of those kinds of questions. Maybe you're intimidated by your skeptic, unbelieving friends because maybe they'll ask me a stump-the-chump question. I don't know if God can make a rock so big he can't move it. Maybe those kinds of questions have shamed you into silence when it comes to sharing your faith. Jesus doesn't get intimidated by these questions. And the next thing we see in the passage is how Jesus responds to them, or the answer given. Notice again, verses 24 through 27. Jesus answered and said to them, are you not therefore mistaken because you don't know 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. But concerning the dead that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him saying, 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. You are therefore greatly mistaken. The first thing Jesus tells these guys is they're mistaken. He tells them twice. Is this not the reason you're mistaken? You don't know the scriptures and you don't know the power of God. And then he explains it and then he says, you are wrong. Jesus is a under-educated carpenter's son who comes to the most intellectual elite group of people in his day. He stares them unashamedly in the face and he says, you are wrong. Jesus is so committed to the truth that he's willing to correct even the most educated opponents of his day. He comes to them and he stares them in the face, and on the basis of the word of God, he says, you are wrong. There's application even in that for us. Like Christ, we should be willing to confront errors when they arise, even when they come from highly educated people. We shouldn't be the guy who's always looking for fights. We shouldn't be the guy who's always looking for every little error that we can stamp out and squish. We shouldn't be fighting fundamentalists. But when errors arise around us, when false doctrines are presented to us, when there's error that we have to confront, we should have the spiritual spine to stand up and look error in the face and say, you are wrong. Jesus isn't afraid to point out that these men are wrong, and they're wrong for two reasons. They're wrong because they don't know the Scriptures, and they are wrong because they don't know the power of God. The way this section works is that Jesus gives two reasons why these men are wrong. They're wrong because they're ignorant of Scripture. They're also wrong because they're ignorant of the power of God. And then what Jesus does in the rest of this section is he unpacks those two reasons, but he does so in reverse order. So in verses 26 and 27, he begins unpacking how these men are ignorant of the scriptures. He says, Jesus is quoting from Exodus chapter 3 verse 6, which is significant in and of itself because the Sadducees embraced Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And so they believe this part of the Bible. Jesus is finding common ground. He's not afraid to confront them and tell them they're wrong, but he's doing so in a very wise way. Jesus could have gone to any passage of, or any book of the Old Testament, and established the resurrection from the dead, but he goes to Exodus so that he's on common ground, and he says, even in what you do believe, you're not even consistent with the books that you embrace. What's interesting, though, about Jesus' proof text to support the fact that the dead are raised from the dead, they're raised to life, is that the passage Jesus refers to doesn't even initially seem to be talking about a resurrection. It seems to be merely a recounting of the covenant faithfulness of God to the Old Testament patriarchs. He was the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. But what's key in understanding Jesus's use of Exodus 3 is that by the time that God speaks the word of Exodus 3 to Moses, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are all dead. And so God comes to Moses at the burning bush and in knowing that these Old Testament patriarchs, these three men are dead, God comes to Moses and he says, I am. Not I was, not I used to be. He doesn't say, I used to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and now I can be your God. He says, I still am. Even though these three men are dead, even though they're long gone, some of them by hundreds of years, I am still their God. Jesus' argument goes something like this. If God told Moses that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he told them that after those three men have died, the only sense in which God's Word in the Old Testament can have any real meaning is if there is actually life after death, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob continue to be the people of God, and he continues to show covenant faithfulness to them after their death because they've been raised from the dead. Jesus is telling the Sadducees, look, God made promises to the old covenant saints. He made promises to Abraham. He made promises to Isaac. He made promises to Jacob. And the fact that those men are dead does not nullify the promises that God makes. He continues to be the covenant faithful, promise-keeping God of those men, even after they're dead, because he raises them from the dead. And so Jesus' argument for the resurrection is based on the fact that he believes God's covenant with his people establishes a relationship. A relationship so strong and so inviolable that even death itself cannot stop it. Romans 8, 37-39 makes the same point. Yet in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, or any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. What separates the people of God from the covenant promises of God? Death doesn't, life doesn't, nothing does. Even after death, we are raised from the dead and God continues to be the covenant keeping promise giving God to his people. But Jesus not only tells the Sadducees they're ignorant of scripture, they're also ignorant of the power of God. Remember, the Sadducees are naturalists. They only believe in the here and the now, what they can see, taste, touch, and smell. You're alive and then you're dead, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, there's no life afterwards. And Jesus, he's refuting the idea that there's no afterlife, and now he's showing them that that mentality is inconsistent with a understanding of Scripture that says God is powerful. Jesus is reducing their argument to say, if you don't believe in an afterlife, you are sucking the power of God right out of life. If you don't believe that God can come to a dead body and raise it back to life, you are clueless about how powerful God truly is. Jesus is saying if you believed in the power of God, you would recognize it's no hard thing for God to raise someone from the dead. This is the God that spoke the world into existence in six days. This is the God that brought all the plagues into Egypt to liberate his people from bondage. He did all the miracles. He is the one who has done everything in the Old Testament. You're gonna limit his power and say he can't raise people from the dead? Jesus is saying you grossly underestimate the power of God. And then to prove that they underestimate the power of God, he tells them in verse 25, So the first thing Jesus does in verse 25 is he corrects this false presupposition about marriage. So there's no marriage after heaven. There's no giving in marriage after heaven. There's nothing binding about marriage after death. Jesus has designed marriage to be a lifelong commitment between one man and one woman and it ends at death. That's why Paul told the Corinthian, a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to those she wishes only in the Lord. And so death is the dissolution of marriage. Their foundational presuppositions are wrong. They think there's marriage after life if there is life after death. And Jesus is saying that's flawed. There is no marriage after death. But then Jesus adds, in the resurrection, they are like the angels in heaven. Many people have used this passage to promote the idea that when you die, you become an angel. That's not what Jesus is saying. We know that's not what he's saying because angels don't have bodies, and scripture is abundantly clear that part of our resurrection will be the resurrection of our bodies. That's what 1 Corinthians 15, 42 is talking about when it says, So also in the resurrection of the dead, the body is sown in corruption and the body is raised in incorruption. So Jesus isn't teaching we become angels. He says we become like the angels. So, how do we become like the angels? We become like the angels in that there's no marriage, there's no procreation going on. But Jesus means more than that. Remember, this is Jesus' evidence that these people don't understand the power of God. So my question is, in what way do we become like the angels that demonstrates the power of God? The dead who rise in Christ will be like the angels in that they will share two things. Immortality and glory. We will be like the angels and that we will be immortal and we will have glory. First we'll be like the angels in immortality. Listen to First Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18. But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and who remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. and thus we shall always be with the Lord." What happens when a believer dies and is raised from the dead? They're not just raised from the dead to experience another life like a Buddhist or a Hindu would believe. They are raised to eternal life. They will be raised to a life where they will never die again. They're raised immortal. So when a believer dies, he does not go into soul sleep, he doesn't go into purgatory, he is instantly transported into the eternal presence of God where he awaits the resurrection of his body and for all eternity, he will be with the Lord, just like the angels. But we will not only be like the angels and that we will have immortality, we will also be like the angels and that we will be glorious. The resurrection is actually far better than the Sadducees could have even conceived. They believe that these bodies are all we have just like they are. We live, we use them, we burn them out, they're disposable, we die and that's the end. Contrary to that, the Bible teaches we will not only be raised in our physical bodies and they will be brought back to life, but they will also be transformed into glorious bodies fit for eternity. Listen to 1 Corinthians 15, 42 through 53. So also in the resurrection of the dead, the body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It's sown in weakness, it's raised in power. It's sown a natural body, it's raised a spiritual body. There's a natural body and there's a spiritual body and so it's written the first man Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural and afterwards the spiritual. The first man was on the earth, made of dust. The second man, the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also those who are made of dust. And as it is with the heavenly man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we also will bear the image of the heavenly man. Now this I say, therefore, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed. in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we will be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality. What happens with our bodies when they're raised from the dead? They're not just raised like they are right now. It's not like God goes, okay, you were 35, you were 78, you were 24, you were whatever, and I'm gonna just make you just what you were before. He makes us glorious. He makes us, 1 Corinthians 15 tells us, into the very image of the second Adam, which is Christ. We are raised in bodies that are just as glorious as the glory Christ has in His resurrected body. And so as those that share the likeness of Christ, we will be raised in such glory that we will be glorious like Christ. In fact, it's so glorious that scripture grasps at words. No eye has seen, no ear can hear. It is so glorious that the Bible grasps at words and says, you can't even understand it right now. As God's people, we have a glorious future. We will be raised from the dead. We will be given our own bodies, the same bodies we have now with upgrades that we can't even describe. I wanna close this morning by giving us one more way this passage is applicable to our lives. I'm gonna give one overarching way it's applicable and then I'll break it down into two subcategories. Jesus in this passage clearly establishes for the Sadducees that there is such a thing as a resurrection from the dead. He's clearly shown that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob does not cease to be the covenant-keeping, faithful God of his people even after they die. And even though Jesus' point in this passage is to defend the truth of the resurrection, this passage does more than just act as a polemic to teach us how to defend the doctrine of the resurrection. Whether you are a Christian or not, there is one reality that should shape everything about your worldview, and it's this. You will live forever. If there's one reality that should shape everything about our lives, it's this. Each and every one of us will live somewhere forever. Whether you're a Christian or not, that thought should dominate and define everything about your life. You will live somewhere forever. As Christians, we need to remember that. We need to remember it because it will give us joy and hope to persevere in this life. Let's face it, our bodies are falling apart. As we see the world around us, it's opposing to us, it's depressing to us. We see a spiritual downgrade and life is difficult as the world around us falls deeper and deeper and deeper into sin. Godliness is rampant. We wrestle like the psalmist did with the fact that the wicked are prospering and we seem to have a miserable life. We experience pain, we experience sorrow, we experience loss, and as we reckon with life in a fallen world, what will ground us? What will give us hope? What will give us joy? If this life is all there is, life stinks. We have every reason in the world to be overcome with sorrow and with hopeless despair if this is all there is, because it's not that great. We need to remind ourselves and to comfort one another, as 1 Thessalonians 4 tells us, with these truths. We will live forever. Our sorrow will one day be gone, our tears will be wiped away, our struggle against sin, our fears, our doubts, even our death, all of it will one day be done away with and we will be raised with Christ, like Christ, to newness of life where we will for all eternity share in his glory. Another reason it's important for us to be reminded that we will all live forever is because there are some of you that even though you may believe in a resurrection from the dead, you live your life practically denying it and trying to ignore it. You live your life, you fill your day with all sorts of things that in the scope of eternity are meaningless and irrelevant. The pursuit of your life is to maximize the amount of money you earn and the pleasure you can experience. You live your life filling your life with everything this world has to offer and you do everything you can to push out from your mind the reality that this isn't all there is. You will live forever. And the Bible is absolutely clear, we will live forever in one of two places. We will live together with the angels, with Christ, with God in heaven for all eternity, or we will live separated from him, experiencing his wrath for all eternity in hell. Those are the only two eternal options. God will justly condemn each and every person who remains in their sin, and he will consign them to an eternity away from him. And so the most important question for you is how can I, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have God as my God? How can I have this covenant-keeping, gift-giving, resurrecting God as my God so that I can share with him in glory and immortality for all eternity? Listen to the answer that comes from Ephesians 2, 4 through 9. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and sin, has made us alive together with Christ. For by grace you have been saved and raised us up together and made us to sit in heavenly places in Christ. so that in the age to come he might show us the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness towards us in Christ. For by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not of yourselves. It's a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." How do we experience this glorious resurrection? How do we experience the forgiveness of sins? How do we get raised together to be seated with Christ in heavenly places? It's by trusting in Christ. It's by the grace of God coming to people like us who deserve God's wrath, coming and making us alive with Christ and giving us eyes to see Christ as precious, eyes to see Christ as worthy of our confidence, eyes to see Christ as worthy of our worship and eyes to see everything that this world has to offer is passing and fleeting and futile. The Bible tells us that if we will trust in Christ and if we will turn away from our sins, we will be raised with Christ in glory forever. So don't continue to live as if this life is all there was. Let the reality that you will live forever You will die and the moment you die, your soul will instantly be in one of two places. And it will one day have your body reunited with it to either share in the glory of Christ or to experience his wrath for all eternity. Let that truth dominate your life. Let that truth drive you to Christ. Let that truth drive you to see you need your sins forgiven. You need Christ to have died on the cross for you. You need Christ to have been raised from the dead for you and come to him in humble faith and ask him to save you. And Father, we pray that we would let the reality that we will live forever dominate our lives. As Christians, let that truth give us hope. Let it give us joy. Let it cause us to persevere. Let it bring us comfort, as 1 Thessalonians 4 says. But Lord, if there's any here who are apart from you, who are living like Sadducees as if there is no resurrection, Lord, press the reality that they will live forever. Press it deep into their hearts and cause it to drive them to you. Lord, we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.