God of the living

Twenty-forth Sunday after Pentecost

November 11, 2007

Luke 20:27:40

[Jesus said,] "Now [God] is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him."

Last Monday, I got a phone call from a sweet lady, whom I don’t know, but who heard my sermon, last Sunday, and wanted some clarification. I gotta tell ya, I was very pleased about this. First of all, I don’t want anything that I preach to be misunderstood. Second, I’m delighted when folks aren’t afraid to phone me and ask me a question. Finally, I don’t want anyone going around saying, "Pastor Eilers said such-and-such and, well, that’s not right, is it?"

If you want to get something right, go to the source. Don’t rely on your memory, or what you think you heard, or your own opinion. That’s why I liked that phone call, so much. In only about two minutes, that nice lady and I got back on track so that we were both understanding God’s Word, correctly, and she was understanding was I said.

That’s where our Lord Jesus found Himself, in today’s Gospel, as He was confronted by the Sadducees. This religious group had some errant ideas about what God teaches about angels, and heaven, and the resurrection. So, they went to Jesus, where they might not have wanted to agree with what Jesus had to say, but they would get the correct answer.

The Sadducees tried to trip up the Lord with their question about a woman, whose husband had died. It reminds us of those story problems that we hated to encounter in math: A woman is married, but her husband dies and goes to heaven. Leaving the train station in Chicago is his brother, whom she marries. Now, all of his other brothers leave other Midwest train stations before they marry this same woman. So, Jesus, which of this woman’s husbands will arrive in heaven, first, so that he will be the one she’s married to, for eternity?

Were the Sadducees really wanting the answer to this particular question? No. They were trying to trip up the Lord in this manner, because they didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead. Thus, the Lord straightens them out.

Jesus teaches us that marriage is a gift, only for this earthly life. In this life, man and woman need companionship. God created marriage for companionship. I ask couples, when I have my first pre-wedding meeting with them, if they like each other. This might seem like an odd question but, look around at so many marriages where, several years down the road, one wonders if the man and woman like each other—or, if they ever liked each other.

The second reason God created marriage was for the procreation of children. The third, and final, reason God created marriage was to restrain sin—so that one man and one woman would keep the romantic act of sex between them—so that people wouldn’t be jumping in and out of bed, with multiple partners, doing great emotional harm to themselves, and so that people wouldn’t be sharing and contracting terrible diseases. As I teach the kids, when we are studying the Sixth Commandment, if you remain a virgin, and you marry a virgin, you never need to worry about giving or receiving a sexually transmitted disease. It’s not a bit funny how, if we follow God’s way, our lives run so much more smoothly.

Now, to the point to which our Lord has to get to answer the Sadducees, who rejected the notion that dead bodies will be raised to new life. Marriage is for this life, because we need the gift of companionship, and we need to keep the generations coming, and we need to behave ourselves.

But now, the Lord Jesus says that, in the age to come—in the resurrection—people will be like angels. Now, He doesn’t say that people become angels—let’s get that clear, right now, because I will not be around on Monday, to receive any phone calls, and if you get my cell phone number and call me at deer camp, then my vacation won’t be the heaven that I’m hoping it will be.

Rather, in the resurrection and eternal life, people will be like angels in that they will not marry. Why not? Because, after Jesus returns to this earth and resurrects all the dead, and separates them into the two groups—the believing sheep and the unbelieving goats—and sends the goats to eternal damnation, while the sheep are given the newly recreated earth on which to enjoy eternity—

In this new life to come, the three reasons for marriage will no longer exist. We will not need companionship of this sort, because all the believers—from Adam and Eve, to the apostles, to Martin Luther, to your believing parents, to grandchildren whom you have yet to meet—all of us will be brothers and sisters. Where we suspect that we will know that this person was our mom, and this one our son, and so on, they will not be mom and son in the new world. We will all be brothers and sisters, and Jesus will be our God.

The second reason won’t be needed, either. We will no longer procreate—we will not add to the numbers of people who will enjoy eternity. And, since there will no longer be any sin, or any temptation to sin, we don’t need the third reason for marriage. Thus, as with sin and sickness, as with divorce and disease and death, as with crying and mourning and pain, marriage will be a thing of the past, never to come around, again.

Now, we must get to the other problem, a problem which is gradually entering the Christian Church of today. Again, the Sadducees did not believe there would be a resurrection from the dead. They thought that death was death, and that is it. For this, we don’t entirely blame them, for we are all too familiar with the finality of death. But, since when do our personal opinions determine what is true? Since truth does not begin in us, we listen to God’s Word to learn the truth.

Ah, but, so often, we don’t. The voices of this world cry out with their own version of the truth—which is no truth, at all—and, we listen. This always reminds me of when I was in Bible class, back home, and we were having this very conversation. A man—a very bright man, actually—had read this book, and the book said that we will not be resurrected in real, physical, touchable bodies, but that the resurrection will only be a spiritual thing—you know, that we would be no more material than Casper, the friendly phantom.

Then came the Disney movie, The Lion King. We learned the sweet song, The Circle of Life. The world’s idea, that death is the natural conclusion to life, took a bit more of a hold through cutely drawn jungle animals singing a delightful ditty.

That song plays right into the theory of evolution, which the world is always cramming down our throats. Since evolution believes this world is all one big accident—that man is not made in God’s image, but only a higher progression of a lower life-form—then, when we die, we’re dead, and that’s the end of that.

Books, movies, modern science—you name it—we are always listening to the voices of this world—voices which do not agree with the Word of God—and, we become like the Sadducees, forming ideas that don’t line up with the Bible. We become like the devil, himself, who tempted Eve with the question, "Did God really say?"

If you like, go ahead and get your eternal truths from the world. But, if you do, don’t call yourself a Christian. The world is a seductive mistress, looking to infect you with the deadly disease which makes you deaf to the voice of the Lord.

Listen, instead, to Jesus: "But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him."

Since Jesus is God, listen to Jesus. Since Jesus is also your brother in the flesh, who took your sins to His cross, ponder Jesus.

Did Jesus remain dead? No, indeed, He was raised from the dead, and He was raised for a host of reasons.

Jesus was resurrected because He did not deserve to remain dead, but earned life by paying for all sins.

Jesus was resurrected to prove that he did, indeed, beat sin, death, and Satan. After all, how many people do you know, who have been resurrected, never to die, again? The answer is: One.

Jesus was resurrected as the firstfruits of those who believe in Him. His resurrection is a model for the resurrection of all who cling to His new life through God’s gift of faith.

For the rest of this life, Jesus’ resurrection comes to you in a threefold manner:

• In His living voice, He speaks through the Bible, and through sermons, and through hymns, and through Christians of every stripe, speaking of the love of Jesus.
• In His living water, He cleanses you of every sin and seals salvation in you, until you finish the race of faith.
• And, in His living body and blood, He keeps you fed on His eternal life. He promises, "Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood has eternal life and will be raised up on the last day."

See, Jesus is God of the living, not of the dead. Life—life which reverses the curse of death—is Jesus’ ultimate purpose . . . and, His ultimate gift to you. Amen.