Well, I'll read for us our passage today. Matthew chapter 22, starting in verse 23. The same day Sadducees... Sorry, brother, I was not on. I should be on now. Matthew chapter 22, verse 23. The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question saying, Teacher, Moses said if a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now, there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. So too the second and third, down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her. But Jesus answered them, you are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, Have you not read what was said to you by God? I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching. I trust you're familiar with our context this morning. Jesus, of course, has come through the triumphal entry. He has interacted with the chief priests and leaders in three parables in which he unfolded the season of the times for them in revealing to them that Jesus has come looking for the fruit like a master has come to the vineyard of tenants and those tenants being wicked and not yielding that fruit, Jesus has come finding no fruit. And he revealed to them this parable of the wedding feast in which many were invited but they would not come, they had no interest in what Jesus had to offer. And on the heels of this, as opposed to coming to Jesus in repentance, the Pharisees first took their aim at confronting him again. It says they went out and they plotted how to ensnare him in his words. And they did this, not in a way that was upfront, but in a deceitful way, a conniving way, as they came as false disciples, appearing to be genuine, appearing to look for genuine answers to genuine questions, all along looking to ensnare Jesus, the Son of God, the Christ who had been promised to their father, Abraham. who was standing before them, Jesus. And so Jesus then is able not, sorry, Jesus is not at all weakened by their onslaught, but he is much more shown to be the Son of God. The wisdom with which he answers them is shown to be not only adequate, but far beyond their own learning in the law. And last week, we took a look at the first of three dilemmas. So if you remember, the Pharisees are gonna come with two, the Sadducees with one in the middle, but all three of them are cases of dilemmas. They're moral dilemmas put before Christ that if he missteps, his entire ministry is thwarted. First, we had, should we pay taxes to Caesar last week, or should we not? And we saw that the Pharisees went with some of the Herodians. These were people from either side of the issue. And if he answered one way, the Romans would come. And if he answered the other way, the people would reject him. For they held that the kingdom of Israel was to be honored and was not to be subject to any ruler, not a brother. but Jesus showing them that in essence, his kingdom is not of this world, and that they were to render to Caesar the things that were Caesar, but render to God the things that were God, disarms them. That is, he disarms their tactics. He is not pulled down into the politics of the current day, rather he says, look, the image of God is on you, and you will not go to him. Then we come to this section today. This is the second dilemma. This one brought by the Sadducees. Now you see the Sadducees, as we read in our passage, these were people who denied the resurrection from the dead. They were the opposite of the Pharisees. In fact, they were actually the enemies of the Pharisees within the Jewish context. The Sadducees and the Pharisees, though their names appear side by side often in the Gospels, that actually is a remarkable thing, not a normal thing. You shouldn't think, oh, Sadducees and Pharisees, there they are, buddies. No, it's Sadducees and Pharisees, two enemies brought together because they have a common enemy in Jesus Christ himself. And so on the heels of the Pharisees' defeat, the Sadducees say, well, we'll give it a shot. They couldn't do it, but we will. And so the Sadducees come with this question. And they put this to Jesus. Now, this question, as we will see, is contrived to put Jesus on the horns of a dilemma. Remember, Jesus himself, the one who has said that he is the resurrection and the life, if he cannot show how the resurrection is appropriately fitting to the law of Moses, and if the resurrection truly has no basis, then his ministry truly is shown to be a sham, and he is a fraud. So these Sadducees, in their clever thinking, they say, we will show that the law of Moses is not compatible with the resurrection. And so they pit Moses versus heaven, Moses versus the resurrection. Last week, it was two kingdoms, the kingdom of Israel versus the Romans. And God says, no, it's not like that. The kingdom of God comes and supersedes the kingdoms of this world. Now they'll say, well, what about the law of Moses? The law of Moses is not compatible with the resurrection. But we'll see that their presupposition is simply this. They think that marriage now is and means marriage and the resurrection. In other words, the resurrection is a return to the old rather than a fulfillment and completion of the old. Jesus goes to the root problem when he says that their fundamental difficulty, their fundamental flaw is that they are ignorant of both the scriptures and the power of God. And so Jesus addresses two issues. What is the resurrection? What is it and what is it not? As one. And then second, he addresses the very fact that the resurrection is and that it is because God himself is. My main argument today is this. God is the God of the living. The living belong to him. So specifically, God is a covenantal God, and your life is caught up, if you will, the words of Colossians, our life is hid with God on high. If this truth comes to you, if God is your God, your life is in him, and the resurrection is not in question. God is the God of the living and not of the dead. But let's work through this narrative together. So the narrative setting is this. As we already talked about, the very same day, the devil, not bringing only one temptation to Jesus, but many on this day, comes to test Jesus. And the Sadducees, having denied the resurrection, now confront him. Now this may seem like a peculiar question. Unless we are familiar with the Old Testament law, we may wonder what hat they pulled this rabbit out of before Jesus. But I would like to show you this thing in the law. So turn with me, if you will, to Deuteronomy 25, and we'll just see how this is working, Deuteronomy chapter 25. And as we're finding that place, I wanna remind you of this very thing. As the Sadducees come and confront him, and as we spoke about the Sadducees and Pharisees being contrary to one another, I found this comment very helpful this week when he says, this is from Matthew Henry, quote, the Pharisees and the Sadducees were contrary to each other, and yet confederates against Christ. Christ's gospel has always suffered between superstitious, ceremonious hypocrites and bigots on one hand, and profane deists and infidels on the other. This is the key part here. The former abusing, the latter despising, but both the form of godliness, they're both denying the power of it. That is, both sides are willing to quibble over the form of godliness. They're willing to say this and that, but when it comes to denying the power of God and the power of Jesus, they are twins. and this is often the case, nearly always the case when we're dealing with those who would confront Jesus. They may quibble with the form of godliness, what it looks like on the outside and what it should and should not be and all the hypocrisies of Christians and this and that, but truly they are denying the power of Jesus Christ himself, the power of his resurrection, the power of his word come to change souls and hearts and minds. So with that context, let's look now at this dilemma You're probably there and I'm not. One moment. Deuteronomy chapter 25 and verse 5. Let's just read this. It says, 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. And the first son, whom she bears, shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. And if the man does not wish to take his brother, His wife, then the brother's wife shall go up to the gate of the elders and say, my husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel. He will not perform the duty of a husband's brother to me. Then the elders of the city shall call him and speak to him, and if the priest's saying, I do not wish to take her, then the brother's wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face, and she shall answer and say, so shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother's house. and the name of his house shall be called in Israel, the house of him who had his sandal pulled off. Now, some of us may not want to be called the house of him who has his sandal pulled off, but I'm gonna guess we probably don't actually understand much of what this means, and I tried to do some research on what exactly this is getting to, and I think the best way to summarize it, it's just shame. Right? In this culture, this is a household of shame now. What was done was shameful to the man, and now the brother, whose brother died, because he will not perform this duty that God has commanded, his household is to be a household of shame. But the key thing here, though, is that Jesus, through Moses, did command that this particular ordinance be performed. But the question is why? Why would God command this sort of thing to be done? And it's important that we get this context, because as we're going through this, we'll see that the Pharisees, I'm sorry, the Sadducees, like the Pharisees, are making a similar mistake. They're going to the old law, and they're bringing out a conundrum that they think will put Jesus in this position where he cannot do right one way or another. But they're missing the whole purpose of the law. And this is what I want to draw our attention to as we begin to enter the subject. So think with me for a moment, if you will, about the context in which this law is given. It's commonly called the Law of Leverate Marriage, if you will, but this command that if a woman dies and she has no offspring, her brother should raise up an offspring in the name of the deceased husband for him is specifically tied to the land. We're in the section of Deuteronomy where God is giving the people of Israel the laws that they shall perform when they enter the land. That is, if you understand the law divided up into three parts, first God gives them the moral law and the 10 commandments, and then he follows that up with the ceremonial law, the ritual worship, and then we come to the section in Deuteronomy where he's giving them laws specific to the land that they're entering. When you go into the land, you shall do these, and those might be called civil laws, laws for justice and equity in the land. Now here's the situation that this widow would be in. the land in Israel was their peculiar inheritance given to them by God. It was very special and it was to be very special in the eyes of the Israelites that they had a piece of land granted to them by God. So if a widow dies and has no husband and the land was to be given up, they would lose the inheritance of God. So the faithfulness of God is in some way at stake here. And God is giving providentially a means that this inheritance will be perpetuated in the family. That though the man may die, yet he will have a son, an heir to that plot of land and may continue in the land. So I want to bring you to this. This is laid out in more detail in Leviticus. And we're going to look at something very interesting. as we see this text. So Leviticus 25, actually. I'm gonna read this short section, and we'll consider it together, and then we'll get back to Matthew 22, I promise. So this is Leviticus in the year of Jubilee, and it tells us something about property. He's telling us that in the land of Jubilee, the property, though it was sold perhaps to pay a debt, though the family fell into great trial, at the year of Jubilee, it was to return to the family. That is, the land could not in perpetuity, forever and ever, be sold or broken off away from the family. It was to remain in the family. So look at this in Leviticus chapter 25, and I'll read in verse 23. There's a bookend to this passage, and so I want you to listen particularly at the beginning and then the end and see the reason why God is doing this, okay? Verse 23, the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me, and all the country you possess, you shall allow a redemption of the land. If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. If a man has no one to redeem it, and himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it, Let him calculate the year since he sold it and pay back the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and then return his property. But if he does not have sufficient means to recover it, then what he sold shall remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of Jubilee. In the Jubilee, it shall be released and shall return to his property. If a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, he may redeem it with a year of its sale. For a full year, he shall have a right of redemption. If it is not redeemed within a full year, then the house in the walled city shall belong in perpetuity to the buyer throughout his generations. It shall not be released in the Jubilee. But the houses of the village that have no wall around them shall be classified with the field of the land. They may be redeemed, and they shall be released in the year of Jubilee. As for the cities of the Levites, the Levites may redeem it at the time of the house in the cities and possess it. And if one of the Levites exercises his right of redemption, then the house that was sold in the city they possess, a city they possess shall be released in the Jubilee. For the houses in the cities of the Levites are their possession among the people of Israel. But the fields of pasture lands belong to their cities and may not be sold, for that is their possession forever. And the end that I'm looking for here. I apologize, I'm skimming through. I want you to see this with your eyes, that's why I'm laboring over it. If it is not redeemed, I brought them out. I'm sorry, it seems like it slipped my place, and if I find it, I will let you know. But there's a bookend here, and I'm just missing it, so I'll repeat it, and if someone finds it, we can look at it afterwards. But after giving these laws of property, he tells them why he's doing it, and he says, because this land belongs to you forever. Oh, it was right there at the end, I just missed it. Okay, I'm sorry. Forgive me. And verse 34. But the field of the pasture lands belong to their cities. They may not be sold, for that is their possession forever. And that's all I wanted to key on. At the beginning, he says, you're sojourners in the land. But at the end, he says, this is your possession forever. And you have these two things going on. So if you'll stay with me, I'm going to try to summarize, because I know I might have lost some of you. Simply this. God gave them the land. He told them it was their inheritance forever. And yet, as they were to treat it as their inheritance forever, as it was not to be sold in perpetuity but always returned to the family, one of the reasons he said that also was, because you're strangers and sojourners in that land with me. It's my land. In other words, this is God's land. You're strangers, but it is your possession forever. See those two things? They seem different and at odds. And the whole point is that, In the Old Testament, as God gave them this land, it was an inheritance, and it was a shadow of an inheritance. It was not the eternal inheritance, but it was an inheritance for them. This is what the Sadducees are missing. So, if you'll forgive me, I'll try to bring us back on track here to Matthew 22, as we look at this context. So again, the Sadducees are confronting Jesus, and Jesus says, They say to him, whose husband shall she be in the end? And the purpose of this law was twofold. They were to see that though God had given them the land in perpetuity, the land was to be received as an inheritance from God, pointing them to the greater inheritance which was to come in the resurrection. But the Pharisees take that very law and are twisting it to say that there is no resurrection of the dead. So, as they do this, this is where we shall see the wisdom in Jesus' reply. It's this peculiar context of an inheritance and the shadow of an inheritance that this scenario unfolds. Their whole design was to discredit the resurrection, but Jesus comes to tell them the resurrection is a sure and steadfast reality. Do you see why this was a dilemma, though? If the seven brothers, if you cannot tell me which of the seven brothers was her husband, if you're not gonna say there was polygamy in heaven, then you must tell me which one of these brothers is going to be her wife. And if you can't tell me that, then the resurrection makes no sense, and Jesus, your ministry is a fraud. So this is what he says at first. He says this. You are wrong because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage. Jesus says the root cause why they're wrong is because they know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. Jesus was always inclined to point out to these men that they did not know the Scriptures. These were men who prided themselves in knowing the Scriptures, and yet Jesus is saying, you do not know them as you ought. And I take these two things, knowing the Scriptures and the power of God, not to be two separate things, but to be one thing, one indictment against them. That is, Jesus is not indicting them for not knowing the words of the text. The Pharisees could go back to this obscure law in Deuteronomy and pull this rabbit, as it were, out of a hat and present it as a dilemma to Jesus. But Jesus is saying, you have not encountered the God of the Scriptures with power. You don't know what the Scriptures are teaching you. taught in a way to take your eyes and your focus off of the inheritance that God gave you in Israel to the land that was to be given in perpetuity, that is, a city which has foundations. You see, the whole Old Testament was meant to coach the Israelites to see that this land was not their homeland. We know that from the book of Hebrews, right? When God gave a promise to Abraham, Abraham went and dwelt in that land as if he was a stranger and a sojourner, not inheriting even a piece of it because he knew that his homeland was with God. When Paul in Romans says that God came to Abraham and gave him a promise, Paul says when God promised Abraham that he would be heir of the world. Paul takes what God promised in the Old Testament, that Abraham would be an heir of Canaan, a very specific plot of land, and he brings it out and he says, look, God promised to give to Abraham the world. So these two things are always running side by side in the Old Testament. God had given them a land to show them that there was a greater land. God had given them a rest to show them that there was a greater rest. God had given them a particular, a particular inheritance through genealogy to show them that Christ was to come and to be their inheritance through Christ. And so now at the return of Christ, all of those things are coming to converge in Jesus. As Brother Tim says, all things come into Jesus, and all things leave through Jesus, and all things are to be interpreted through Jesus. And so, even now, as the Sadducees come and say, look, Jesus, this law doesn't make sense. Look, what if there was a situation where there were seven brothers and they all married consecutively? That makes no sense with the resurrection. And Jesus is saying, you don't know the scriptures or the power of God, because you don't understand why they're even put there in the first place, that this In other words, the question is wrong-headed. The question should not be, well, how does the law of leveret marriage work with the resurrection? How is that gonna fit into eternity? The question should have been, why did this inheritance, why did this land need a weird law like the law of leveret marriage? Because there was death. Because you couldn't inherit that land forever. Why did a widow need offspring? Because her husband died. Why did the land need an heir? Because, again, you could not inherit the land forever. You see how the Sadducees twisted this in their minds. And the reason for this is, not only did the Sadducees deny the resurrection, the Sadducees are actually a people that denied the eternal soul altogether. They were, if you will, the naturalists of their time. They believed that all there was was the material world. Yes, they believed there was a God, but apart from God, it was the material world. When we die, so our souls die, and all is at an end. And they thought they could prove that by this peculiar law. But Jesus goes on and he says, though they deliberately could not see beyond the temporal inheritance to the city which has foundations, now he shows them that they must look to the resurrection for the resurrection is real. You know, it's very common for us to muse and muddle over various scruples of doctrines, little things that would confound us and perplex us, when the greater thing is set before us, that God has secured for us an eternal inheritance in Jesus. And he is able to make these things clear in their time. So first, Jesus shows that there is a resurrection. He says this, for, You are wrong because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And so the first thing that Jesus says is, you're wrong because you misunderstand the resurrection. The resurrection is not just like this life. See, the Sadducees wanted to just project, well, if there is a resurrection, it must be the same as this. Marriage must be the same. And so, therefore, we can project what it's going to be like in the end. But the resurrection is a fulfillment of this life. The resurrection is taking what God has given now and making it to its full flower. Many false religions take what is of this life and treat it as if it's eternal. Maybe you've interacted with a Mormon missionary before. They have a doctrine of the eternal family. And many times, they'll try to bring you into their context by showing you, look, you can come and you can get your family baptized. And if your family is all baptized together, then you can come and have eternal family. You'll never be apart. And you will live the rest of your life with your spouse continually to make babies and have families. And this will be the wonder of heaven, will just be this life. but more and more and more and more in perpetuity. This is the way the Mormons would have you come into their ranks. But similarly, you can think of Islam also. Islam has the doctrine of the martyrs being presented with many virgins on the account of their good deeds. But all of this is missing the fact that when God gives us a world, a natural world, he gives it not so that we can hold on to it and think that that's all there is, but that there is something greater about it. Each thing that we have now, there is something greater to come. So first and foremost, our marriages are temporary marriages. And that's good news, because there's a greater marriage in heaven. The church, God's bride, is married to Christ, as we saw the wedding feast a few weeks ago. So our marriages and our lives are not meant to be the eternal thing. They're meant to be a picture, a shadow of the thing to come. They're good in their time. They're meant for a purpose, but they are not forever. Our brotherhood and sisterhood with one another is forever, but not the marriage. You know, this changes how we treat one another. Do I treat my wife first and foremost as a companion for my needs or as a sister in Christ? Do I treat my husband as the one who does the things that I need him to do or do I treat him as a brother in Christ, my family? What about other things, this church? You know, this church, If we are in Christ, this is an eternal, in some sense, brotherhood. And yet, this church, as we've come to know recently, is very temporary. It may depart soon or as long as God would tarry. And yet, it is merely a picture of what is to come. This is not all there is. There is a resurrection from the dead. Now, this ought to lift our hopes. We look around and we miss our brothers and sisters. We miss those who are here, but we will be with them in the resurrection. We will be with them for eternity. So we set our mind and our affections on these things because we know the power of God. We know his ability to do all that he has set his mind to do. We are not confined in our thinking to just this life. We are using this life as a window to see through the word that God has set our affections on eternity, and we will dwell with him forever. Our bodies, our bodies are withering away, yet this body is not what we will be one day. we will have a body like his body. We will be like him. And so the first thing that Jesus corrects as he comes to the Sadducees, he says, look, just like you looked at the Old Testament law and you failed to realize that the deficiency of that inheritance and the need for levitant marriage ought to have been pointing you to the kingdom of heaven, you're doing the same thing now also with marriage. You think marriage and Sorry, the perplexities and difficulties of this life are a hindrance to God's power in the resurrection. But quite the opposite, they ought to be the very thing that aids you to set your mind on the thing that God would have you to think about. the shortcomings of the marriage, the decay of the body, the falling apart of the church. All of these things are things in which God is saying, look, I've given you a picture, but it's just that. It's a picture that you might know there is an eternal heaven to look forward to. And so Jesus says, in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven. And then he goes on. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God? And he says, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Now, think about this for a moment. There are many more explicit texts that Jesus could have gone to in the Old Testament to show that there was a resurrection of the dead. He could have gone to Job 19. He could have gone to Ezekiel 37. He could have gone to Daniel. Explicit places that talk about the dead coming back to life. But Jesus would point the Sadducees and Pharisees to this specific text, back to when God appeared and spoke this word And he spoke it to Abraham, but in the context that Jesus is quoting here, he's talking about it when God spoke this to Moses. He's saying, look, when I came and revealed myself to your father Moses, God revealed himself as the God of Abraham, the God of Jacob, and the God of Isaac. Listen, or look rather, to the attention that Jesus pays to the text. He rests his argument, as it were, on one word. One particular word. It does not say, I was the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. It says, I am the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. And Jesus would look at that very thing and say, aha. Look, God is the God, not of the dead, but of the living. Now, this is perplexing at first, but it's marvelous if we take the time to think about it. What is Jesus pointing here at? What is he pointing at? Well, he's looking at this, and he's saying, look, when God came to Abraham, and he made a covenant with him, and he revealed himself to Abraham, and Abraham believed God, and it was counted to righteousness, and he did that again to Isaac, and he did that again to Jacob, and then God reveals himself to Moses, and he says, look, this is what God says to Moses, look, I am the God of Abraham, I am the God of Isaac, I am the God of Jacob, and if you caught this when we read it, it says, and that shall be my name forever. the eternal God took his name and bound it to sinners like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He said, you're not gonna remember me just as God or Elohim, or we can think of many names of God that we think of as peculiar names, but he says, I will be remembered as a God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, because he is a God in relationship to Abraham. A God in relationship to Isaac and to Jacob. God peculiarly set his affections on those people and says, I am their God. Now if God has set his affection on Abraham and Isaac on Jacob, and if he has said for all time, I am Abraham's God, then the logic here is that no more can God be Abraham's God than Abraham must be alive in that relationship. Do you see the connection there? He's saying, if your relationship is with the eternal God and God has set his affection on you, your relationship is eternal. God is not the God of the dead. He's the God of the living. Now that's profound exegesis. I would not have the confidence or boldness to make a sermon off of one word in the Old Testament. I would not stand here before you and say, oh, God said I am, not I was, therefore, doctrine of the resurrection, and lay it out. But Jesus, being the Son of God, he looks at that and says, Sadducees, you do not know the scriptures, nor do you know the power of God. Have you not read? He says, I am. the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. And of course, now this question comes to us. What does it mean for God to be the God of his creature? Not in a general way, but in a specific way. Think about this with me. I'm gonna take us to a few places and show us how this works. In the book of John, if you'll turn there with me, John chapter 20, we've been reading through it and we just concluded the book of John in our Wednesday gathering where we've been encouraging one another with these texts. But a couple weeks ago we read in the book of John. after he rose from the dead in John chapter 20. Jesus is in the garden and Mary Magdalene is there weeping for the body of Jesus. She wants the body to return. And it's interesting, again, this has language, this is resurrection motifs, right? Mary is there wanting to cling to the body. And Jesus comes as a gardener. And this is what it says in verse 11. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. And as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head, one at the feet. They said to her, woman, why are you weeping? She said, they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him. Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away. And Jesus said to her, Mary, And she turned and said to him, in Aramaic, Rabbani, which means teacher. And Jesus said to her, do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God. And Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord. and that he had said these things to her. When Jesus rose from the dead, he came and comforted Mary with these words, and he said, Mary, I go to my father, but not just to my father. I go to my father and to your father. I go to my God and to your God. That is, through Jesus, through Jesus, your relation to God is not merely creature and creator. It is also Father and Son. It is the God, in this sense, the God of you. Not that you own God, but that he owns you. Just like God said, I am the God of Abraham and I am the God of Jacob, And though that was a peculiar thing given to Abraham, not every person's name is recorded in the Bible as having God's name attached to it. And yet, as a paradigm, this is how God joins himself to his people. I am the God of sinners. That's what he is saying. And if I am the God of sinners, then most certainly sinners will rise again. If Jesus rose again, sinners will rise again. Think of how John takes this in his epistle. Someday, if the Lord tarries and if I'm given opportunity, I would love to preach through the book of 1 John. I think it's a very difficult book, though, and so I wouldn't rush to it. But in this section, in the first part of 1 John, John is doing something very peculiar, OK? He's saying, OK, we've seen Jesus. We've seen him with our eyes. Our hands have touched him. We've felt him. But he's trying to make you realize that the Jesus who you saw is the transcendent God, the one who has made fellowship between God and man possible and has, as it were, distributed God to you. And he's doing this in this way. So listen to what he says. That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard we proclaim to you so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship was with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ, and we are witnessing these things so that our joy may be complete. Do you see how he brought you into fellowship? He says, that which was, and he starts in this way which is somewhat obscure, and he brings it close, and he says, Jesus, whom our hands have touched and our eyes have seen, this Jesus, who is the word of life, What kind of life? That life which was with the Father, He's the one through whom we have fellowship with God. Now, this life that is with Jesus, this life is not the same, in one sense, as the life we know now. And this is the motif that Jesus, I think, is drawing on when he points the Sadducees to saying that, look, you don't understand the resurrection. In heaven, there's neither marriage nor giving of marriage because they missed the picture. There's a marriage of this life and there is a marriage of heaven. Just like there's a land of this life, but there's a land of heaven. So there is life, but there is life in abundance in Jesus. In other words, as we anticipate the resurrection, sometimes we have been, I'm speaking of my own heart here, sometimes I have been perplexed and hindered in my eagerness for the resurrection because I have taken all the baggage of this life and pushed it into heaven. That is, well, if there is no marriage in heaven, why would I want to go? Why would I want to be away from marriage with my spouse? Or if heaven is just forever, that sounds really boring. Like forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. But we forget that God is saying it's not just Life stacked on top of each other like again and again and again and again. It's not just more of the same. It is life in its fullness. That is, life as we know it now is always coming to an end. We don't know of life other than that joy has come to an end. We know that we have a relationship and it breaks. We have joy with one another and then we divide. We have fellowship with children and then providence takes over. We have brothers and sisters and friends and neighbors and events and happenings and all of them come to an end. But in heaven, Jesus himself is life. He is life. flowing out of him is abundant life. It's not just about quantity, if you will, it's about a quality, a sufficiency of life is with Jesus. And so as we think about the resurrection, I guess I would caution in these two ways. One, Do not hinder the power of God in your mind. Do not think that what God has called you to in the new heaven and the new earth is somehow less than what is needed for joy in Him. It is so much more. It is so much more, though the language sometimes baffles us because we could not understand it. Even the Apostle Paul couldn't understand it. And John even says here, we don't know what we'll be, but we know that when we see him, we shall be like him, right? We're grasping for what we do not know, but don't let your Imagination, if you will, be hindered by your lack of trust in the power of God. God is able to raise sinners to life, and if he's able to raise sinners to life, he is able to give you the kingdom of heaven. He's able to give you life because he has been given life of the Father. He's able to set your mind and heart and affections on those things which are better than this world. And if he can make a world with this kind of joy, he can certainly make a world with joy to the full. Joy to the full. And so, these Sadducees, I'm sorry, as they come to Jesus, you know, Jesus is almost more tender with them than he is with the Pharisees, oddly enough. The Pharisees, he called, what did he say last week? He says, you hypocrites. You hypocrites, why do you keep testing me? He's pretty brutal. And the Sadducees come to him, and yes, he corrects them. He says, you're wrong. But he shows them how they're wrong. In essence, they've denied all that there is to the real world. the eternal life that is with Jesus, the eternal soul that he has put within you. You're living as if this world is all it is, and it's a pitiful thing. You deny the power of God. So today, if you have not had an encounter with Jesus through his scriptures, through the power of God, then you have not come to know that God is your God. But if you have seen in his word the gospel of Jesus Christ, if you have seen that through Jesus, the God of heaven and earth may become your God, and that the father of Jesus may become your father, if you have not just seen it in scripture, but it has come to you in power, like it came to the Thessalonians in the first chapter of Thessalonians, you received the gospel with power. If it comes to you like that, then know that God is your God. And God is not your God if you are dead. You have been made alive in him. The Sadducees were dead men walking. We are alive men dying in Christ. This is what God has done for us. So when God says, I am the God of Abraham, I am the God of Isaac, I am the God of Jacob. and that he is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And he pays so much attention to the text, and he shows us the ability of God to raise sinners from the dead, and the affection and kindness of God to forever bind his name to sinners' names, like Abraham, like Isaac, and like Jacob, and that he is willing to take your name upon himself, and bear the penalty of your sins upon the cross, and say that I am your God and your Father, We ought to marvel at Jesus. And then the crowds heard it and they were astonished at his teaching. This is a sermon, no one will have any doubt about this, this is a sermon that Jesus, which Jesus delivers, is a sermon far beyond one that I can deliver. Far beyond what I can do here today, Jesus delivers to you in the text what is true about the world. He shows to you that God is your God, that He is your Father, that He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, and you have much reason for hope and trust in Him. Let's pray. Jesus, you have been faithful to us. Through many distractions and through the stammering and snuffled words of a weak vessel this morning, yet I trust your word has come and you have shown your people a little bit more of your truth that they might persevere in faith another week and that they might trust you. Lord, the resurrection is real. And the blessings of it are real, as we are redeemed and rescued from the pictures of this life to the perfections of the next. Help us to set our affections on the Jesus who delivers us to these things, on the power of God to affect these things. Lord, may we be a people who live in this world because we have been captured by the resurrection to the next. Help us, Lord, I pray. Help us now as we look to your table that you would set these affections before us. In your name, amen.