29 But Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 31 But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God: 32 ‘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.” 33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.
A preacher spoke at a funeral about how the departed elderly woman was having a joyous reunion in heaven with her predeceased husband. Unknown to the minister, the woman had been married twice, the first husband having died after just a few years of marriage! So which husband was she enjoying the reunion with? This was the same basic scenario the Sadducees presented to Jesus, only concerning a woman who had been married seven times. The same faulty premise is assumed concerning the resurrected state.
The Lord made clear that marriage is a union for this life time only (see Romans 7:1-3 on this subject). While we popularly refer to marriages that are “made in heaven,” the resurrected state should be compared to that of angels, in that there is no marriage between humans in heaven. There will be a different kind of marriage, and only one, namely, that of Christ and His bride, the Church (see Eph 5:26-27, Rev 19:7-9). The completeness and intimacy that believers will experience in this union with Him will completely supersede and nullify any need for union with another human being. So, the Sadducees’ trick question was easily turned aside by the Lord, as a false premise to their argument!
Jesus goes on to directly challenge their denial of the resurrection by quoting Exodus 3:6, where the Lord speaks to Moses from the burning bush: “I am the God of Abraham ….” This conversation took place in the immediate context of God revealing His divine, name, Yahweh, doing so in a most poignant word-play in Exodus 3:14-16. Yahweh and “I am” come from the same root word. God is the eternal Present One, always acting on behalf of His people. In particular Jesus asserts that the Lord is still the God of the patriarchs—He speaks of being (present tense) their God even at the time God spoke to Moses and now as Jesus speaks to the Sadducees. This could not be the case if the patriarchs were gone and never to be raised from the dead. If they ceased to exist, God could only be thought of as having been their God, not as being their God. Therefore, resurrection logically follows, if God is still, in fact, God of the patriarchs!
Lord, You are the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and… of me, both now and for eternity. I look forward to being with You forever, fulfilled in every way.
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