Let's pray together. Oh God, guide us by your word and spirit, so that in your light we may see light, in your truth find wisdom, and in your will discover peace. Add your blessing to the reading and the hearing and the preaching of your word, and grant us all the grace to trust and obey you. And all God's people said, amen. Now kids, most weeks I begin our time together by talking with you because I know it can be hard to sit still and listen for 30 whole minutes. My hope is that by talking to you first, even you little kids who can only pay attention for a couple of minutes will know that God loves you and he has things to say to you. And then as you grow up, as you mature, you'll be able to pay a little bit more attention each year, always hearing and knowing that you are just as much a part of the family of God as the really old people who also can only pay attention for a couple of minutes before falling asleep. So I know the question that I'm about to ask comes at a part of the sermon, where even though you've been trying your hardest, you might have gotten distracted, but let's see what you've got. Most Sundays, I finish my sermon and communion homily with one of two phrases. One is in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and everyone says amen. Now I say that one to remind us that the triune God who made and rules over the whole world and everything and everyone in it has just been gracious to speak to us through the preaching of his word, and that's good news. But there's another phrase I use a lot, mostly at communion, because That is where we get to eat with God and where he gives us the strength we need to do what he's told us to do in the sermon. So I'm gonna start the phrase and you see if you can finish it out loud. You ready? For the glory of God and The life of the world. Okay, that's right. Now I'm gonna say that one again at the end of our time together, so try hard to pay attention and we can all finish it together at the end. I say that phrase almost every week because it communicates something very important to us. that just as God's son lived his life for the glory of God and gave his life for the life of the world, so too God has saved us so that we, as God's children, might live our lives to the glory of God and for the life of the world. A very common question people ask when they come to understand the doctrine of election is why me? If you know that you're a sinner and you don't deserve mercy, and if you know that God chose to be gracious to you and save you, and if you know you don't deserve to be saved any more than the guy who isn't, that is a very natural question. Why me? Well, God chose to save you, as I've told you many times, simply because he loves you. but he also chose to save you for a reason, for a purpose, and Paul tells us what that is in Ephesians 2. God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us. even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them. Did you catch that? God being rich in mercy saved you so that he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace toward you and you are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God has prepared in advance so that you should walk in them. God saved you to lavish his grace upon you and so that you might be his means of lavishing his grace upon others. He saved you not so that you could have a nice, comfortable life, grow up and get married, have whatever you think the perfect amount of kids is, have a nice house, a couple of cars, a pet or a dozen, and make just enough money to retire and live a snowbird's life until you die. No. God saved you so that you might know his love and show his love to others, even when it's inconvenient to do so. even when it feels like, oh, I don't know, a cross. That fundamental truth that God saves his people so that he might bless others through them is in large part what the men in our gospel lesson had tragically forgotten. On the surface, and especially if you let the headings and chapter breaks in your Bible get in the way, it might sound like the stories we heard were about whether or not there would be marriage in heaven, how we should avoid outward expressions of piety, and how important it is to be a sacrificial giver. But that's not exactly what's going on here. Now sure, there are things we can learn from the resurrection in this passage. You shouldn't hide behind merely outward forms of piety to disguise a selfish heart, and you should give far more than most Christians do. But what's going on here isn't about those things as much as it is about Jesus yet again confronting people in positions of authority for their arrogant twisting of scripture and their refusal to obey God's law in the way they care for the people around them. for the entirety of Luke's gospel. Jesus has been claiming that he was the promised Messiah who had come to usher in the year of Jubilee, the anointed king, to come set God's people free from their oppressors. We've highlighted over and over again that most Jews thought that meant he had come to overthrow their Roman oppressors. But Jesus has made it clear from the get-go that while he has indeed come to set God's people free, the ones he had come to free them from were the Jewish leaders. And by this point in his ministry, in his final days, everyone knows this is his message. If you remember from last week, Jesus told the prophetic parable about how the wicked tenants were going to kill the son of the master, and as a result, the master was going to take away their oversight of the vineyard and give it to others. We saw yet again that this was another parable about how Jesus had come to judge the Jewish leaders, save even the Gentiles, and then entrust his rulership of the world to the church. After they heard that parable, Luke told us that the scribes and the chief priests knew that Jesus had told that parable about them. And so knowing that he claimed to be king, they sent spies to ask a political question about paying taxes to Caesar in such a way that they thought would trap Jesus and result in him either being rejected by the people or strung up by Herod for being yet another rebellious revolutionary. And yet in his wiser than Solomon way, Jesus didn't take the either or bait. Instead, in his both and response, he revealed not only their hypocrisy, but his authority as Lord and High Priest over everyone, even Caesar. Our story today is just an extension of that same scene. When Luke says, there came to Jesus some Sadducees, It's not as though this is a whole new group of people who are confronting Jesus in an entirely different setting. It's simply to point out that Jesus has finally gotten on the radar of the big dogs, and not in a good way. Up to this point in Luke's gospel, Jesus has really only been arguing with the Pharisees, the upper middle class businessmen who were like ruling elders over local synagogues. Now, they were still oppressing God's people, but they were the religious and political conservatives of their day. Their name, Pharisee, comes from the Hebrew, which means the separated ones. They believed in the doctrine of election, that they were God's chosen and special nation. They believed the whole Bible cover to cover, and they believed that the Messiah would come to restore the kingdom to God's people if they would just honor and obey his law. And so if you felt like some of the sermons have been stepping on religious conservatives toes and wondering why I keep warning you against people on our right who would claim the name of Christ all while living hypocritical godly lives, ungodly lives, well that was on purpose. Not that part, but the part about the warning. Jesus had made it clear that even religious and political conservatives can prove to be God's enemies, and the Pharisees had proven to be just that. But as well-off and as powerful as the Pharisees were relative to the poor among them, they couldn't hold a candle to the Sadducees. The Sadducees are the aristocrats. They were the rich and priestly class who, if we did a better job with our translations, we might actually call the Zedekites. According to God's law, while the Levites could serve as priests, only a descendant of Zedek, who was a descendant of Moses' brother Aaron, could be high priests. The problem was, even though the current high priests called themselves Sadducees or Zedekites, They were not descendants of Aaron and therefore were in direct violation of God's word and had no business holding office or making offerings on behalf of God's people. Their offerings were abominations that would lead to the desolation of the temple. When Luke situated the ministry of John the Baptist during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, he was communicating that these things were taking place during the corrupt reign of the unlawfully ordained impostors who had been put in their office ruling over God's house by pagan rulers. Annas was appointed by the governor of Syria in AD 6, and Caiaphas was appointed by a Roman prefect about a decade later. And so like Herod was a brutal, patsy king who oppressed God's people, so too are these guys brutal, patsy priests who were doing the same thing. They were not cover-to-cover Christians. They only believed in their interpretation of the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, They rejected the existence of angels and they didn't believe in an afterlife. And so as the saying goes, because they didn't believe in the resurrection, these guys were sad, you see. It might help you later. All that to say, while the Pharisees were the upper middle class conservative mafiosos, The Sadducees were the extremely wealthy, educated, liberal mafiosos. And so when for the first time in his gospel Luke says some Sadducees had come to see Jesus, well his hearers would have recognized that these religious liberals represented the false high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas who were famous for having their rivals die under not so mysterious circumstances. And I realize that is a lot of background information, but it is important information because just like last week, the question these guys ask is nothing more than a veiled attempt to see where Jesus stands in relation to them, not what they should do in response to him. They are not coming to Jesus with a posture of humility, actually seeking to understand what God's word says. These arrogant gangbangers are coming to see if Jesus is on their side or not. If he is, well, then everyone can go on their merry little way. If he isn't, well, then we might just have to do something about this Jesus character. And so, as is often the case when proud men ask questions, they create a hypothetical situation that they think their theological system already has an answer to, and therefore they can't possibly be wrong. They refer to a passage from Deuteronomy 25, and then they couch it in such extreme situations so that they can get a bead on Jesus. Here's the passage that they're referring to. If brothers dwell 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 his 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 so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. Now, sometimes when we read laws in the Bible, they might sound strange to our modern ears. But we must always remember that every single time God gives a law, he does so for the good of his people, particularly those who would otherwise be in a vulnerable position were he not to give that law. To a rigid reader of the law, this sounds like the only reason God gave this law was to ensure that the man's family line would be carried on. But to someone with eyes to see, this law should also be understood as a provision for widows, by assuring that if her husband died, well, then she would still be taken care of. Now, of course, the Sadducees don't care about that. They create a situation where not only does the woman's first husband die and leave her childless, his six brothers perform their duty and also die without giving this woman any children. So in that scenario, Jesus, whose wife will she be in the resurrection? You can almost feel their arrogance. Will she be married to the first or second or third or seventh? husband forever. Given that situation, how could anyone possibly believe in a resurrection? But do you remember what I told you about what the Sadducees don't believe in? A resurrection. They aren't asking this question because they're interested in the answer. They're asking the question to show how absurd it would be to believe in the resurrection of the dead, and they're using God's word to do it. I'm gonna go on a little bit of a rabbit trail here because I know Jesus' answer has been used by most people to teach that there will be no such thing as husbands and wives in the resurrection. But I'm not convinced that's necessarily true. I could be wrong. Okay? I'm fully aware that my own desires to be with Rachel forever are part of why I've thought about this topic and these verses so much, but I tend to think some people will be with their spouses in the resurrection. Now, I don't believe that everyone will be with their spouses or their children in the resurrection where there has been a great tragedy like apostasy or like the terrible situation that the Sadducees laid out. Being in the presence of Christ will be so far beyond glorious that we will not be dependent on those other relationships. And that's Jesus' whole point. But the resurrection does not wipe away who we are as people. and who we are as people is fundamentally tied to the other people with whom we have relationships with. Sure, some of our relationships to others aren't as fundamental to our identity as our relationship to God is, but I am my father's son. I am my children's father, and I am my wife's husband. And barring something catastrophic, I don't see enough biblical reason as to why those right and good and real identities would necessarily cease to exist in glory. After all, David expected to see his son when he died, assuming he would, you know, recognize him as such. Abraham and Lazarus retained their names in Jesus' story and even the risen Christ was and will always be the son of Mary and brother of James, Joseph, Jude, and Simon. Now sure, he's far more than that, but he's not less. Now again, maybe marriage is the one exception, and even people who were married to their best friend for 50 years will only be friends in the resurrection. But even in that case, will we somehow be ignorant that that person we're friends with was our spouse? I don't think so. I think in this particular passage, Jesus's response isn't fundamentally addressing the issue of whether anyone will be married in the resurrection. He's responding to an absurd hypothetical where a woman has been through tragedy after tragedy losing husband after husband, and the only thing that sustained her in this life was the fact that God made a law in Deuteronomy 25 to ensure that she wasn't left alone and destitute, gleaning in the fields and begging on the streets. And Jesus' response? to the question shows that these guys not only don't understand the resurrection, they don't understand the very purpose of the law they're using to frame their question. God's law was given to people in positions of authority to help them know how to care for those under their care. And if they understood that, they would know that even though that woman had been through more suffering than most could imagine, God had not abandoned her in life and he would not abandon her in the afterlife. In the resurrection, this woman wouldn't be dependent on Deuteronomy 25 to ensure that she was cared for anymore because God would wipe away every tear from her eye. She wouldn't need to be married or given in marriage to any of those husbands. She had proven herself worthy to attain the resurrection of the dead and therefore would not and could not suffer anymore. She wouldn't need a man to marry her and give her a child to care for her in her old age because she'd be like the angels. being in the presence of and under the eternal care of God, no longer dependent on others to care for her. And if these guys really understood God, they would understand that he is not just God of the living while they're alive on earth, only to abandon them in death. He was, is, and always would be the God of the living, as Moses, their own teacher, so clearly stated, according to Jesus, in the story of the bush. Now we're gonna look at this idea more when we see Jesus teach that the scriptures declared that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise again from the dead, but it's just as true here too that Jesus does not read his Bible like your average Christian. I can't tell you how many times someone has demanded that I give them a specific verse in the New Testament that says exactly word for word what I'm trying to say before they're willing to give it an ear. And I also can't tell you how many times I have given them a verse that does say what I'm saying and they still don't believe me. So I can't imagine most Christians being convinced by Jesus' method of Bible reading here. To show the Sadducees that even Moses believed in the resurrection, Jesus tells everyone to remember the story from Exodus 3 when an angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in the form of a burning bush. In the story, when Moses goes to look at the bush that's on fire but is not being burned, God calls out to Moses and identifies himself with the words Jesus quotes here. Interestingly, Jesus leaves out the part of the quote where Moses, where the Lord says he's the father of Moses and therefore Aaron. But nevertheless, Jesus teaching about the reality of the resurrection says that they should know the resurrection is true because Moses calls God the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Can you imagine someone coming in here and during question and answer asking about the reality of the resurrection and me saying, well, you see, in the story of the bush, God says he's the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. I can't even get people to believe that children of believers should be baptized and take communion by quoting explicit New Testament passages where children are baptized and receive communion and yet Jesus says these guys should believe in the resurrection because even Moses calls God by this name. Well apparently Jesus believes that you can and should reach some theological conclusions by good and necessary consequence. That is to say there are some things we can and even must believe, not just because we have a word for word verse for it, but because the implications of the verses necessarily require believing something. In this case, simply because God uses the present tense in calling himself the God of guys who have supposedly been dead between two and 400 years, these guys should have known that there was a resurrection from the dead. If God told Moses that he was presently at that time the God of Abraham, when talking to Moses, then Moses should have believed and therefore these guys should believe that Abraham had risen from the dead and was alive and being cared for by God in that very moment. What's more, the promise of God to Abraham was not just that he would be his God while Abraham was alive, And it wasn't even only that God would be Abraham's God. Going further back in the story, listen to God's actual promise from Genesis 17. I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your children after you. and I will give to you and your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God. God kept that promise. His promise to be Abraham's God and the God of his children, namely the same offspring he said he was still the God of when talking to Moses. the God of Abraham's son, Isaac, and the God of Abraham's grandson, Jacob. So you see, it's not just that these Sadducees mess up the theological category of the resurrection and need to bend to Jesus' intellectual argument from Exodus 3 and change their minds. They've completely whiffed on understanding the nature of the promise-making, promise-keeping character of God they profess to believe in, and their entire lives are proof of it. If they knew God, they would understand his character and therefore understand the purpose of his law and therefore would have been like Jesus, the King of Jubilee and defender of widows, caring for them rather than devouring their houses. If they would have believed that God had been gracious to save them and care for them in their time of need, well then they would have been eager to use the salvation that he had given them to care for others. They would have been living their lives for the glory of God and the life of the world and they would have rejoiced to see Jesus come to set free and provide for the people that are being oppressed. But alas, Even though outwardly they went through all the motions, their refusal to care for the widows among them was proof they did not love God. Beloved, let us not dare fall into the trap of the Sadducees. and be the kind of Christians who go through all the motions of worship and who love to wrangle over theological ideas that we should already know the answers to, all while neglecting the weightier matters, like caring for the flesh and blood people that God has put in our lives, even when it's inconvenient. Children, God gave you your parents to take care of you while you are young, and guess what? He gave them to you to take care of when they're old. I can't tell you how much it grieves me to see professing Christians whose parents loved them and cared for them and provided for them and who would still do anything for them, refuse to do something as simple as let them stay at their house when they come in town. What kind of child, let alone a child, who professes to love God is so ungrateful for the parents that God gave them that they can't even be inconvenienced in the slightest to reciprocate the love with which they've been loved? What kind of child grows up under constant loving Christian parents who after receiving decades of love and sacrifice only continue to burden their now elderly parents with their own responsibilities. And then as soon as those parents can't help them anymore, ship them off to a slumlord to care for. Maybe visiting them once or twice a month, you know, because they're good kids and they love their parents. What kind of Pharisaical and Sadduceical tradition can raise up a generation of kids who can claim to have a deep, loving, amazing, individual knowledge and love for God while simultaneously refusing to care for the very people God used to save them? Whatever flowery language they've learned at their megachurch to describe their relationship with God, I can't help but wonder if the flowers that smell so good to them aren't a stench to the God they claim to love. Beloved, let it never be so among us. God has been so good and kind and gracious to save us. And he saved us so that he can use us to display his goodness and kindness and graciousness to others, beginning with the others in your own household, and then extending to others in the church, and then others outside of that. Aren't those the concentric circles that Paul laid out for Timothy to lay out for his church? We often quote, and I think rightly, 1 Timothy, Five, to exhort men to do what it takes to provide for their families, even if it means working overtime or getting another job. If anyone does not provide for his relatives, especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. And again, I think we're right to use this verse to warn idle men who are failing to care for their wife and children. But this verse is in the context of caring, not just for one's immediate family and descendants, but in caring for widows. And I think, by extension, our elderly parents, when they can't care for themselves anymore. My grandmother taught me many wonderful lessons, but one of the ones I am most thankful for was not something she said with her mouth. When her mother, my great-grandmother, was suffering from dementia so badly that she had to receive around-the-clock care, my grandmother displayed the loving, multi-generational love of God by visiting my great-grandmother almost every single day for years until she died. Watching my grandmother to, again, use Paul's words, make some return to her parents by caring for the mother that had cared for her, even when it was inconvenient, was a glorious sight to behold. Many of you are right now living your life to the glory of God and for the life of the world as you care for your aging parents. And as your pastor, I am so encouraged to see the outworking of God in your life. Those of you who are younger, pay attention to these faithful saints. Learn from their example and dare not be caught misrepresenting Jesus by failing to care for the people who cared for you. Rather, having been loved by God and professing to love him, love the people he's placed in your life from womb to tomb for the glory of God and life of the world. Amen, let's pray. Our Father, we have heard wonderful things out of your word. We praise you for revealing Christ by promise and shadow in the Old Testament and for revealing him as the fulfillment of all these things in the new. Give us your spirit so that we might understand these words and the fullness of your truth as you have revealed it to us in the person and work of Jesus, who with you and the Holy Spirit be all honor and glory, both now and forever. Amen. Hear God's word. Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. So the 12 summoned the full number of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. We will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. What they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen. a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parnimos, and Nikolas, a proselyte of Antioch. These they sat before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them, and the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. This is the word of the Lord. We're getting it. Earlier, we discussed how Jesus used the story of Moses to prove the resurrection by referring to God's calling himself the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He calls himself thus because he was, is, and always would be the God of his people and their children and their children's children. And his promises did not stop being multi-generational with the coming of his son. The God who loved you and saved you and put his name on you at your baptism will never leave you or forsake you. He is not the God who is with you in your early years, but leaves you alone when you're old enough to fend for yourself. He's not the God who walks with you through the pains and trials and griefs in your adult years, only to hope that your kids will be faithful to care for you when you're old, but if not, that's sad. And he's not the God who will see you through your entire life only to leave you alone to face that which he alone can see you through, death itself. No, God keeps his promises from womb to tomb and beyond. He will never leave you or forsake you. And part of his means of proving that to you is by giving you people to love you through your hard times and for giving you them to love during their hard times. From cover to cover, we heard that from age to age, that includes not just the people beside us or under us, but the older saints who have gone before us. Like God's loving provision for children continued into the New Testament, so too did God's provision for the elderly. In Acts 6, one of the main reasons that the church needed more leaders was because there were so many widows who were needing care that the apostles didn't have time to get to them all. And so like the priests were to ensure that the widows were being cared for by the old covenant people of God, so too did God save and give his new covenant people, deacons and priests, to ensure their vulnerable were being cared for. This was something that was apparently so important for the church to remember that Paul included all those verses that we read in 1 Timothy. And beloved, I know that not all of you were raised in or have Christian families. And I know that some of you who do have family members that profess Christ are not caring for you how Christ would have them. That is a very sad and a very heavy burden that many of you are carrying, especially this time of year. But trust that while it feels lonely and it feels like no one sees you, Christ does. The same Christ who in the midst of all the chaos at the temple could see and hear that lonely widow drop two little coins into the offering box. That Christ sees you and hears your prayers. He hasn't left you alone. He has saved you and he has given you pastors and deacons and a church family true mothers and sisters and brothers to care for you in your time of need. And this table is the ultimate reminder of that. In your time of need, when you were still His enemy, God sent His Son to give His life for you. And as God's table servants bring you bread from heaven and the cup of blessing, be reminded of that love with which He loves you, and by faith receive the strength and encouragement you need from our ascended Christ. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.