[Note: This sermon expounds Matthew 22:23–33. Delivered 19 April 1981, Montreal. This passage was skipped in the sequential exposition and is being returned to here, as it concerns the resurrection.]
Today we continue our exposition and we turn to Matthew chapter 22, verses 23 to 33, which I skipped earlier because we were intending to return to it — it has to do with the message of the resurrection. Here we have the Sadducees asking the Lord Jesus a question about the resurrection. The Sadducees were a Jewish party that became a significant political power in Israel; unlike the Pharisees, who believed in the resurrection, the Sadducees were mostly the aristocrats and government officials of Jewish society. They based their faith essentially on the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, as the supreme authority in matters of faith. Because they could find no explicit teaching on the resurrection in those first five books, they did not believe in it.
Here they put their question in a trick manner, hoping to get the Lord Jesus into an impossible position. "Teacher, Moses said, if a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married and died, and having no children, left his wife to his brother. So too the second and the third, down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. Now in the resurrection, therefore, to which of the seven will she be wife? For they all had her as wife." They thought this a knockdown question. Then in verse 29: "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 God of the dead, but of the living.'"
The Lord's answer is twofold. First, he addresses whose wife this woman would be in heaven: simply, nobody's, because death terminates marriage. In heaven you are not anyone's wife in any legal sense, and therefore this question does not arise. The law of Moses required the brother to marry the widow of his deceased brother so as to raise up an heir for that brother and preserve the line of descent — but that arrangement has no continuation beyond death. Second, and more profoundly, he addresses the question of resurrection itself by appealing to the very Pentateuch the Sadducees regard as their supreme authority.
Now, the Lord says to these Sadducees: "You are wrong because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God." This is a startling statement, because the Sadducees certainly considered themselves to know the scriptures very well. When the scripture speaks of knowing the scriptures, it does not mean how many years you spent in Bible school. You can spend a very long time in Bible school and not know the scriptures. When I was in the Bible Institute, we had a graduate from Oxford who was studying there, and we all asked him why he had come. He said: "When I was at Oxford, I studied theology. I didn't know the Bible. Now I want to know the Bible." Knowing the scriptures means understanding the spirit of what is written — knowing the mind of God — not merely knowing the external contents, the history, the archaeology, or the linguistics.
The second thing that is immediately related is the power of God. You do not know the scriptures, and you do not know the power of God. To know God's power has to do with experiencing his power — with a living relationship to him. A professor of theology may not really know the scriptures at all if he does not know the power of God. His knowledge of scripture then is only knowledge of it as literature, as history, as a philosophy of religion. You can study the Greek grammar, you can study the archaeology, you can study the philology — and all of these things are valuable in their own way — but none of them lead you into the full depth of the word of life until you walk with God.
Consider what it means to understand a passage from Acts where God says to Philip: "Go to such and such a place." Unless God has spoken to you, unless you have experienced the Holy Spirit addressing you directly, that passage remains purely linguistic. You know what the words mean, but you don't understand what it is. You can study what eunuchs are like, what happened with the church in Samaria — but you still don't understand what it means when God said to Philip, "Go and meet this eunuch," because you haven't experienced it. What does it mean that the Spirit of God came down at Pentecost? You cannot understand the spirit of this by studying the history or linguistics. You cannot understand what it means that God's Spirit came into somebody's life unless you have experienced it. But when God's power comes into your life and raises you up, then you know what resurrection is — because now you have experienced it yourself.
The Lord's profound insight into the text of Exodus 3 presents the exposition of this passage with considerable difficulty. He says to the Sadducees: "Have you not read what was said to you by God?" — note those words: said to you by God. At the burning bush, God said to Moses: "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." The Lord simply says to the Sadducees: there is the resurrection in those very words. You read it again and again and you don't see any resurrection. You scratch your head and think: resurrection? Where? It is one of the more challenging passages of the Lord's teaching to understand and expound, and our spiritual blindness makes it difficult to see.
An early church explanation focused on the present tense "I am" rather than "I was," arguing that since God says "I am" their God, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must still be alive. The Septuagint does translate a present tense verb, since Greek requires one, but the Hebrew original has no verb. And more importantly, the reasoning itself is faulty: to say "I am the God of Abraham" would prove that God is alive, but it does not necessarily prove that Abraham is alive. I can say "I am the father of X, Y, and Z" even if X, Y, and Z are dead. I have not ceased to be their father by their death. So that argument does not work, and too many exegetes have satisfied themselves with faulty reasoning that only appears to prove the point.
Where, then, is the resurrection in these words? The approach must be different. Suppose we read it like this: "I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — the God that they once knew when they were alive." What would that statement leave us with? It would mean: I am the God of dead Abraham, I am the God of dead Isaac, I am the God of dead Jacob. And that brings a stinging question: if that is the case, what good did it do Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to have known God? What is the essential difference between believing in God and not believing in God, if the godly perish exactly as the ungodly do?
[Continues in Part B]
# He Is Not God of the Dead but of the Living — Matthew 22:23–33 (Part B) — God of the Dead or the Living; Abraham's Hope; Death Cannot Separate
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 22:23–33, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 19 April 1981, Montreal.]
What advantage is there in believing in God? If believing in him ends up in death anyway, just as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob died, then tell me — what is the essential difference between knowing God and not knowing God? Being a Christian is not an easier life than being a non-Christian; you need only read the Psalms to see that the godly are constantly persecuted by the ungodly, that the righteous are constantly under affliction. Too often the ungodly seem to have a better existence — they seem to get away with everything while the godly are made to suffer. And what is more, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not even inherit the promises that God gave to them while they lived. This is exactly what the book of Hebrews says in chapter 11, verse 13: "These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on earth." They looked forward, as verse 10 says, "to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God." They desired, as verse 16 says, "a better country, that is, a heavenly one." On this earth they owned nothing: Abraham bought one small plot of ground to bury Sarah, and that is all.
If God is the God of Abraham and Abraham is not going to receive his promises — if Abraham has no inheritance, having left his home country and sojourned as a stranger all his days — what is the advantage that Abraham had of being in covenant with God? What did he get out of it? You could say all he got was death, like everybody else. And then for God, some considerable time later, to appear to Moses and say "I am the God of Abraham" — according to the Sadducees — is a statement that has no meaning whatsoever. It is a pointless, disappointing statement. Can you see any point in it?
Now you can see where the whole understanding of the Lord's words turns. The reasoning is very easy to see once you see it. Either Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive, or they are dead — there are only two possibilities. You take your choice. According to the Sadducees, they are dead. If they are dead, then what God proclaimed to Moses is this: "I am the God of dead Abraham, I am the God of dead Isaac, I am the God of dead Jacob." God has proclaimed himself to be the God of the dead. Is that the God you believe in? Now you begin to see the depth of the Lord's insight.
We can take it still further. If the Sadducees believe in the God of the dead, seeing that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are dead, then either God is unwilling to raise them up or he is unable to raise them up. There is no third alternative. If he is unwilling, then he is not a God of compassion, and neither is he a God of justice — for it is simply unjust that the godly and the ungodly receive exactly the same end. That, of course, is precisely where the ungodly hope to triumph: "You believe in God, but your end will be the same as mine — six feet under." If God is unable to raise the dead, then death is more powerful than God. God is not the Almighty after all. Death is the almighty because God cannot overcome it. Now we can see why the resurrection of Christ is so important: it demonstrates that God is both compassionate and just, and also that he is powerful — willing and able to raise the dead.
The Lord's conclusion is simple and comprehensive: either he is the God of the dead or he is the God of the living — and if God is God of the living, then he is both willing and able to raise those who trust in him, such as Abraham. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: if there is no resurrection, if death is final, then we who serve God are of all people most miserable. Why did we turn our backs on the world? Why did we endure all that suffering? For nothing, since it all ends in death. So let us, Paul says, quoting the Old Testament, go out and eat and drink and be merry. Let us enjoy ourselves with maximum capacity. But by implication, of course, the Sadducees, who believe in the God of the dead, are the real fools. What are you going to believe in him for, and build a great temple for a God who is the God of the dead? Useless. You have to make that choice today. Is your God the God of the Sadducees, or is your God the God of the Lord Jesus? Is your God the God of the dead, or the God of the living?
The parallel passage in Luke chapter 20 and verse 38 gives us the concluding statement: "For all live to him." This dative phrase means that everyone lives by his power and lives answerable to him. All the issues of life are in God's hands. Life is not in the hands of death — it is in the hands of God. He is the one who determines who lives and who dies. That is what the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 10: "Do not fear those who kill the body but can do no more; fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell." And therefore even the wicked will be raised up to answer for their actions, as Revelation 20 describes in the second resurrection. God will raise up all who once were alive — great and small — to answer before him, because we all live accountable to him.
Two final principles follow from this passage. The first is that to know God is eternal life. To stand in covenant relationship to God, as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did — to know him as Abraham knew him — is already to have eternal life. As the apostle John says in 1 John 5:20, to know Jesus Christ is eternal life. As the Lord himself says in John 17:3, "This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Those who live by God's grace and enabling power, who live according to his word as Deuteronomy 8:3 describes — "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" — will live. That is the path to life.
The second principle is that death cannot separate between God and man. It will separate us from our loved ones for a time, but death cannot separate between God and the person who stands in covenant with him. At the very moment of death, the Christian enters into the presence of Christ. Death has not been able to separate him from God for one split second. That is the beauty of it. And this is what the apostle Paul says in Romans 8:38–39: "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Death cannot separate between God and the man who loves him — nothing can come between them against their choice and wish. There is no way to tear that relationship apart. Blessed are you, if like Paul you can say: "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he will keep safe that which I have entrusted to him on that day." I have entrusted myself to him, and I know that he will raise me up at the last day. Not only that, but at the very moment of death I will enter into his presence immediately, because he is the living God.
Let us be quiet before God in prayer.