Luke chapter 20, verse 27. This morning we encounter the aristocratic priestly group known as the Sadducees. Luke 20, 27. Now there came to him some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection. And they questioned him, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife, and he is childless, his brother should marry the wife and raise up children to his brother. Now there were seven brothers, and the first took a wife and died childless. And the second and the third married her. And in the same way, all seven died, leaving no children. And finally the woman died also. In the resurrection therefore, which one's wife will she be? For all seven had married her. Jesus said to them, The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage. For they cannot even die anymore, because they are like angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed in the passage about the burning bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him. Some of the scribes answered and said, Teacher, you have spoken well. For they did not have courage to question Him any longer about anything. Thank You, Lord, for giving us Your Word. Thank You for opening our eyes to know that what we read here is divine truth. That we can rest all things in You. That we can trust You in all things. And that we can know that all that You have promised, Again, Lord, we ask that You would deliver this Word to us in power. And that You would, by this Word, equip us to be effective witnesses of Your grace and Your glory. In Christ's name, amen. Well, we continue this week again in the gospel according to Luke. Jesus is still in Jerusalem. Passover is still just days away. And Jesus, as we know, knew that by the end of the week, He would go to the cross to die, to atone for the sins of His people. And at the same time, the Jewish religious leaders, Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees, were plotting to kill Him. Jewish religious leaders were angered over the large crowds that were following Jesus. Over the acclaim which greeted Him when He entered Jerusalem two or three days earlier. Their hostility to Jesus grew when He came into the temple and exercised authority there, driving out sellers of livestock and money changers. And that same week, Jesus was teaching in the temple. Though none of the Jewish religious leaders had authorized Him to do so. So they came to Him and said, Where do you get this authority? Where's your authority to do the things you're doing? And when He was confronted by these officials, Jesus responded with a question. We recall, was John's baptism from heaven or from men? And stuck on the horns of a dilemma, they refused to answer. And Jesus told them, neither then would He answer their demand that He tell them the source of His authority. And He then issued a warning against those men by means of a parable. Parable of the vineyard. By this parable, Jesus showed them that He knew of their murderous intentions toward Him. And by the parable he declared that their wicked failure as rulers of Israel to watch over God's vineyard, His people, would bring judgment on them and on the whole nation of Israel. And that their privileged position as the people of God would soon be taken away and given to the church universal, all who would believe in the Son of God, both Jew and Gentile. We saw last Lord's Day that Jesus' enemies turned to a different manner of attack. One that was somewhat less confrontational, but that was more deceptive perhaps. A group from the Pharisees, and Mark adds also some Herodians, came to Jesus pretending to be righteous, seeking to catch Him in some statement by which they could accuse Him of sedition to the governor, Pontius Pilate. And we recall Jesus had prophesied that all these things would happen. And that group of Pharisees and Herodians, in place of accusation and confrontation, attempted to flatter Jesus. Verse 22, Teacher, we know You speak and teach correctly, that You are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar or not? And it appears these spies, as Luke called them, came to Jesus pretending to have a conscientious objection to paying tribute to Caesar. Or at least genuinely seeking his opinion on the matter. Of course, Jesus was not fooled by these imposters. Luke tells us he detected their trickery. And he knew that if he said they ought not to pay the tribute, they'd accuse him to the governor of sedition. But if he acknowledged it to be justly due, he would be seen as siding with Rome. He would be seen perhaps as an enemy of Israel and the liberty from Rome that Israel was seeking. And if that were the case, he would be viewed as not the kind of Messiah they were looking for. They were looking for a Messiah who would free them from Roman rule. And we recall he called for a coin, a denarius, a Roman silver coin, which had the image of the emperor on it. Sitting on a throne with his crown on his head. Jesus said to them, Whose likeness and inscription does it have? They said, Caesar's. And then Jesus answered, Which has rung down through the centuries. Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. Well, the opposition was again silenced. Amazed at his reply, and again they were unable to trap him. Jesus had left no room for an accusation of sedition against Caesar. And at the same time, He affirmed the absolute necessity of faithfulness to God in all things. Well now, some of the Sadducees would try their hand at tripping up the Lord of glory. There came to him some of the Sadducees who say there is no resurrection. And Matthew tells us it was still the same day. Now the Sadducees were a priestly sect. High priests came from these Sadducees. They denied not only the resurrection of the body, but the immortality of the soul. In their minds, there was nothing beyond the grave. All rewards for the godly, all punishment for the wicked, were limited to this present life. Sadducees accepted only the written Word of God. They rejected all of those 613 oral traditions handed down that the Pharisees relied upon so heavily. They are said to have emphasized the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, books of Moses. over all of the rest of the Old Testament. It's interesting that as familiar as this word is, and these people are to us in a sense, the Sadducees are mentioned only here in Luke's Gospel. They're more frequently mentioned in Acts, usually in regard to their persecution of the early church. And Matthew, while repeating this story, also mentions them as coming to John for baptism. The brood of vipers, John called them. And in chapter 16, as coming to Jesus, demanding a sign from heaven. It's also interesting, there are no authenticated surviving Sadducee writings. We can't go and read the writings of the Sadducees. We can read just about anything these days. So our information, though, is pretty limited. We've got the fairly brief mention in the Gospels. And we've got what we have in Acts, usually in their persecution of Paul and the church. And we have the writings of Josephus, the Jewish secular historian. We read of no men of great accomplishment among the Sadducees. If you try to think who was the greatest Sadducee, nobody comes to mind. So where does party come from? Well, we don't know. We don't know that either. They claimed to have derived their name and their origin from Zadok, who was the high priest along with Abiathar during the reign of David, and who became sole high priest under Solomon. And whether this is valid, we don't know. But these were aristocratic types, high priestly. They exercised authority in the temple. They were always ready to cooperate with the Romans, which enabled them to maintain their position and their influence among the Jews. And they were disliked on many different sides. Sadducees and the Pharisees both served on the Sanhedrin. But they were opponents. They had different beliefs, different doctrines, just as communists and conservatives do. We see an example of this after Paul was arrested in Jerusalem, which we read earlier. When he was standing before the Sanhedrin and he hits on this strategy of inciting division between his accusers. the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Acts 23, 6, perceiving that one group were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, Paul began crying out in the council, Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am on trial for the hope of the resurrection of the dead. So he's trying to win favor with the Pharisees. As he said this, there occurred a dissension between the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. Verse 8, For the Sadducees say, There is no resurrection, nor an angel, nor a spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. And so what happened was, there was a great uproar. Some of the scribes of the Pharisees stood up and began to argue heatedly. Paul's tactic was successful. We find nothing wrong with this man, they said. Maybe an angel or a spirit has spoken to him. And so there was a great dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, recorded in Acts 23, verse 6 and following. As we see throughout the Gospels, all of the ungodly, who may differ widely in many respects, who may even be enemies of one another, as the Pharisees and the Herodians, as the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They're brought together by Satan as to one thing. And that one thing is their opposition to Jesus Christ and to divine truth during the time of the Reformation. So fierce was the hatred of Rome against the true gospel of justification by grace through faith, that the Pope supported Epicureans, Libertines, and men of other pagan philosophies in order to secure their aid in his attempt to destroy the spread of the gospel. Reformation was a frightening time in a material sense for the Reformers. Calvin wrote, Thus in the present day, writing 500 years ago, we see all the forces of Satan, though in other respects they are opposed to each other, rising on every hand against Christ. Do you suppose that this opposition to Christ ended in the 1500s? Of course not. Still today, what do we see in the streets? Atheists, socialists, anarchists, and the sexually immoral joined together against their common enemy, the Lord Jesus Christ. Still today, the streets of Washington, New York, Seattle, Paris, London, the enemies of Christ. All forces of Satan gather together against the Lord Jesus Christ, His Word, His will, and His ways. I saw an item yesterday morning that sickened me. It was a video, short, a few seconds, maybe a minute. U.S. and NATO socialists, atheistic socialists, were playing soccer. And do you know what they were using for a ball? a Bible. They were kicking the Bible back and forth. Their opposition to Christ is becoming more apparent. They're not trying to hide it anymore. It was that way with the Sadducees. So we see then and now, they come out of all different various groups and camps to attack Christ. Why? Because they hate Him and they hate divine truth. Now, as for the bodily resurrection of man, this wasn't a brand new doctrine in the time of Jesus, as the Sadducees might have argued. Hebrews 11, 19, we read that Abraham believed that God could raise his son Isaac back from the dead. He saw death as no impediment at all to Isaac being the seed of the promise. Elijah, remember, and Elisha had both raised dead back to life. It was the Sadducees who were contrary both to Scripture and to history. And though they didn't know it, why had Christ come but to overcome death? To die, then to rise bodily back to life. That's why He came. To atone for our sins and overcome the wages of sin. He had said He would be killed, then rise on the third day. Had the Sadducees heard of this? We don't know. But we do know that they did not believe in the resurrection of man back to life. And so after those Pharisees had failed in their attempt to soften Jesus by flattery and then trap Him in this question about Caesar, some Sadducees now brought a riddle to Jesus. by which they sought not only to expose Him, but to ridicule Him. And to ridicule the whole idea of a resurrection. When they approached Jesus, they were hoping to win a victory not only over Jesus, but over the Pharisees as well. If they could expose Jesus' belief in the bodily resurrection to ridicule, they'd also show the Pharisees, who also believed in the resurrection, to be in error. So the inquiry here is in the nature of a riddle. Verse 28, They questioned him, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife, and he is childless, his brother should marry the wife and raise up children to his brother. The firstborn would be of the line of the brother. So the context of This riddle is the teaching of Moses in Deuteronomy 25, where the law is. We're told, remember, that the Sadducees regarded the writings of Moses, those first five books, as being of higher import. than the rest of the Old Testament. So here's the passage, Deuteronomy 25, 5. When brothers live together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man. Her husband's brother shall go into her and take her to himself as wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. It shall be that the firstborn, whom she bears, shall assume the name of his dead brother, so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel. That's the law. The law of the Leveret marriage, it was called. Now it's not clear that this was still being obeyed, practiced in Israel during Jesus' time on earth. But in the Sadducee's riddle, there are not two but seven brothers. First brother married the woman, then he died. And his brother married her, and he died, and a third, and a fourth, until each of the seven married her and then died. And then the woman died. And the question posed to Jesus was this. In the resurrection, which one's wife will she be? For all seven had married her. This was their clever attempt to disprove the idea of the resurrection. It was made with the hope of exposing Jesus and his teaching as false. He who believes in me, he had said, has eternal life. Well, we saw men dying. We saw Abraham had died. In their minds, this law of leveret marriage showed that the very idea of a resurrection is foolishness, that it's incompatible with the law of God. wouldn't make any sense. They thought that the impossibility of an answer to this question showed the impossibility of a resurrection. One writer suggests they may have tried this tactic against the Pharisees in their arguments over whether there's a resurrection. And it's likely the Pharisees had no good answer. Which one's wife would she be? So like the group of Pharisees who tried to trick Jesus with the question about whether it was lawful to give tribute to Caesar, the Sadducees thought they had a two-edged sword going here. They thought that any answer would prove fatal to Jesus. His answer was one even believers at that time might not have anticipated. And it's one that may surprise many professing believers today. Matthew 22 prefaces Jesus' words here by saying that Jesus said to them, you are mistaken. You do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God. And Jesus then said to them, the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. but those who are considered worthy... Not those who are worthy. ...those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage. No marriage in the age to come. Now Jesus spoke of two ages. Not three as some do. Two ages. This present age, which He sometimes called this present evil age, and the eternal age to come. And Jesus said, in this life, yes, in this life, in this present age, men and women marry. God instituted marriage. Why? Well, two reasons are stated in Genesis chapter 1. For the procreation of humanity in this age. And to provide a suitable helper for the man he had created. Genesis 127, God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created him. Male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. So that was the purpose. One purpose. Genesis 2.18, there's another purpose. Then the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone. I'll make a helper suitable for him. And the Lord God then fashioned into a woman the rib He'd taken from the man, and He brought her to the man. So those are the reasons that we're given in Scripture for marriage. Jesus' answer here must have caught them off guard. No one's married in the resurrection. The pattern of life, brethren, in the next world, in the age to come, is not like that of this present age. Life and glory will be far different from life in this age. In the age to come, there will be no marriage. We talked about this last night. God has something better for us. Purposes for which God instituted marriage in this age, procreation, and a suitable helper for the man, won't be present. They won't exist in the next age. God Himself will dwell in our midst, remember. And the marriage in heaven is between Christ and His bride. There's going to be no procreation of humanity in the age to come. In the age to come, there'll be no death. Revelation 21, 4. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will no longer be any death. Where there's no death, there's no need for procreation of humans to replenish the population. Sixteen hundred years ago, Augustine wrote, where there's no dying, there's also no succession of children. In case you think John got it wrong in Revelation 21, Jesus' words here, they cannot die. In heaven they cannot die. Verse 36, they cannot die anymore because they're like angels. They're sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. They cannot die anymore in the age to come because they're like angels. Now what did Jesus mean by these words? Well, angels do not marry. They do not die. They do not procreate. The number of angels created by God when He created them is fixed for all eternity. Good angels stand in the presence of God, in the worship of Him, in the service of Him. And so will all those who have been redeemed by Him, those who by His grace have been deemed worthy, considered worthy, through no merit of our own, to come into His presence and dwell with Him forever. going to be doing what angels do, largely. And as the number of angels was fixed from the time of their creation, so will that of the number of the saints be fixed in the resurrection. And it'll be fixed for all eternity. There's no salvation after death. That is a wicked deceit. But the point that Jesus is making is here, there will be no purpose for marriage in the age to come. You know, we were not born again because of marriage. Well, some of us might say we were, I guess, but that's not why we were born again. That's not how we were born again. We weren't born, well, John 1, 13. Our spiritual rebirth was not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. It wasn't of human procreation. Those in heaven were born again of God. Now there will be this difference between angels and the sons of God. Because angels are spirits. But men will be raised bodily and come into God's presence in glorified, imperishable bodies. I think it's worth stopping to read from 1st Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 51. 1 Corinthians 15, 51. 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 imperishable. we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, And this mortal will have put on immortality. Then will come about the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? These bodies, glorified and imperishable, will be free of all the infirmities and limitations of these bodies. They will no longer be subject to the wants and needs and desires of this life. The risen saints are sons of God, he says. We spent our whole time Wednesday night in that glorious passage. I almost still can't get it out of my head. It's such a beautiful, beautiful passage. Paul's song of praise of the glory of God's grace. That all those chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world have been predestined and decreed by God to adoption as His own children. If there's a more glorious and more blessed passage in Scripture than Ephesians 1, 3 through 6, I'd sure like to see it. Ephesians 1.3. I'll wait if you want to turn there. Blessed be, praised be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm in Christ. just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love. And here's our verse. He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, according to His own good pleasure, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. God's people become sons of God by His adoption of them. As we are joined by the Holy Spirit into union with the risen Christ and are given the gift of faith by which we believe in Him, we are adopted by God as His own children. It's not biblical to say we're all God's children. We're all God's creatures. But only those who have received the Spirit of adoption and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are adopted as His children. Romans 8, 15. And this is part of why Jesus came. You wonder, why did Jesus come? Well, yes, to die for us, to atone for our sins so that we might be justified before God, declared not guilty. But that isn't all there is to it. Look to Galatians chapter 4, verse 4. Galatians 4, 4. But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that He might redeem those who were under the law. Why? That we might receive the adoption as sons. as His children. He doesn't just pronounce us not guilty and tell us to leave the courtroom and go in peace. He invites us into His house forever. Galatians 4, 6, Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. 1 John 3, 2, Beloved, we are now children of God. And it's not appeared as yet what we will be, but we know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him just as He is. Why? Because Romans 829, the sons of God are predestined by God to be conformed to the image of His Son. Those Sadducees understood none of these things. None of them. And remember, Jesus knew what they were thinking. Here they are. Well, nothing you've said proves there will be a resurrection. Give us some real proof. How do we know all men will be raised? So Jesus takes the Sadducees back to what they held up as the authority. Moses. He takes them back to a book they knew and revered all too well. Written by the same author they had cited in this little riddle they had presented to Jesus in the law of the lever of marriage. Here's what Moses said Jesus said to them. The one you cite to try to make your foolish case. Exodus 3 and verse 6. God's call of Moses to lead the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob out of bondage in Egypt. He calls Moses. Moses sees a bush that's burning. And at the time that Moses saw that burning bush, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all dead and had been dead for several hundred years. And now Jesus explicitly, in using this passage, explicitly declared, the dead are raised. the dead do rise. Verse 37, But that the dead are raised... And here's his source. Even Moses showed in the passage about the burning bush. Notice he calls it the passage about the burning bush because they didn't have chapter and verse numbers at that time. But even Moses showed that the dead rise in that passage where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He's not the God of the dead. He's the God of the living. All live to Him. A man might have read Exodus 3.6 and said, Well, wait a minute. When they were on the earth, God was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Maybe they made that argument. But look at the words of the passage. He said also, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. God didn't say He had been the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He said long after they had all died, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He remained their God long after their death because they were living. He's not the God of the dead. He's the God of those who live. So the Sadducees had rested on Moses. And Jesus pointed to that same Moses. Matthew tells us, unsurprisingly, that when the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching once again. Some of the scribes answered and said... We're not told whether these were Pharisaic scribes or scribes of the Sadducees. ...But some of them answered and said, Teacher, you have spoken well. For they did not have the courage to question him any longer about anything. So attempts to turn the people against Jesus, attempts to trick him into saying something that might be construed by the governor as sedition, all of it has failed. They had tried confrontation, flattery, deception, riddles, and every form of trickery. If these, by the way, were scribes of the Pharisees, they may have taken some small delight in Jesus defending their position against the Sadducees regarding the resurrection. But in the end, they realized there was no hope of exposing Jesus as a false teacher. Everything he said had the ring of truth because it was the Word of God. Luke tells us they lacked the courage to question him any longer about anything. What's interesting and what's really amazing, neither the Pharisees nor the Sadducees realized who they were dealing with. Here was the Son of God incarnate, the Lord of glory who had humbled himself and taken on human flesh to be the mediator between the divine and the human, between God and man. And they're standing there talking to him and trying to give him riddles. It's astonishing. He had come to defeat death by his own resurrection. But the Pharisees, there was at least a glimmer of light in them. They believed there's life after death. But they didn't realize. Just think about it. Here's the Son of God in their midst. That Jesus had come. That Jesus was in Jerusalem that week to accomplish what? The resurrection of the body. to overcome death for all humanity. And for those who believe in Him, life after death will be one of eternal glory in the presence of God. Sadducees were even more pitiable than the Pharisees. They didn't even entertain the hope of a resurrection. You die and you go in the ground. Whatever blessings we get, they're in this life. Like far too many today, they gave no thought to the resurrection. None. Or to judgment. Like far too many today, they gambled their eternity on a belief, a false hope that the Son of God was not telling the truth. Son of God, you're not telling the truth. You don't know what you're talking about. But hear the words of our Lord. Turn to John 5.24. John 5, 24. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and does not come into judgment but is passed out of death into life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live." Now in verse 25, Jesus was speaking of the new birth. An hour that now is, He said. when those spiritually dead who hear His voice in the gospel and believe are born again. Then in verses 28 and 29, Jesus spoke directly about the bodily resurrection of all men and the eternal destinies of those who believed and those who did not. And we know he's talking about bodily resurrection here because he refers to all who are in the tombs. "...Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice." Good and bad. "...And will come forth those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment." Have no doubt, Jesus Himself explicitly confirmed the bodily resurrection of all men, and the glorious, joyful, eternal destiny of all who believe in Him. I pray no one who hears this will ever allow the error of the Sadducees to become your error. May the words of our Lord Jesus Christ speak to our hearts today and always. He is not the God of the dead. He is the God of the living. Let's take a moment and meditate on these glorious and joyful things our Lord has taught us this morning, and then we will gather at his table.