After Death, What?

I have your Bibles with you today.

Turn with me if you would to Mark chapter 12. We're looking at verses 18 through 27. First took a wife, and when he died, left no offspring. The second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. The third likewise, and the seven left no offspring. Last of all, the woman also died. In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be?

For the seven had her as wife. Jesus said to them, Is this not the reason you are wrong? Because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. Or when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. It is not God of the dead, but of the living.

You are quite wrong. Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, you have taught us that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. It is profitable for doctrine, for proof, for correction, instruction, and righteousness.

We believe that, and that truth fills our hearts with confidence. But you do not say that all Scripture will affect us in the same way. When I read the long list of genealogies in the book of Numbers, I don't doubt the truth and validity of each name and each word, but those passages don't affect my heart quite the same as does the passage that we're looking at today. This passage grips my heart and challenges my will and thrills my soul. This passage deals with eternity. It teaches us about what happens after death.

It gives us assurance that this life is not all there is to it. Lord, I pray that you use Jesus' words about the reality of the resurrection to convict unbelievers and to embolden your children. Help me, Lord, to preach without error, to exalt Christ for it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. Today we are dealing with a passage of Scripture that rings in the heart of every person. It asks a question.

It rings in the heart of every person in every age. What happens when you die? What went on in the minds of Adam and Eve after the fall when God took two animals, probably lambs, and killed them, took their skins and made for Adam and Eve coats of skins in order to cover over their nakedness? What do you think Adam and Eve did?

I think they looked at those two animals lying there lifeless and motionless in a pool of blood. That was the first death on this earth. And they saw that, and I'm sure they probably said to themselves, soon that will take place in our lives. Soon we will experience that same thing. Soon we will die. And after death, what? Four thousand years ago, the old patriarch Job was going through a time of horrible pain and intense suffering.

And he cried out to his friends, and he said this, If a man dies, will he live again? Today's message deals with that very issue. It is not a peripheral issue.

It is not a side issue. It is one of the most important questions that you will ever have to deal with in your life. And that is this, after death, what? We're living in a culture that is desperately trying to convince everyone that this life is all there is to it. Secular humanism and Darwinian evolution are trying hard to convince us that all we have to look forward to is non-existence. That when the heart stops and when the brain quits functioning, then there's really nothing left. The Humanist Manifesto states it this way.

It says, As far as we know, the total personality is a function of the biological organism transacting in a social and cultural context. There is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body. The Atheists, the Agnostics, the Humanists are determined to try to force this kind of thinking down our throat. And if they are right, and this life is it, then sin is trivial, justice is meaningless, and how you live doesn't really matter. And most of all, what Jesus Christ did on the cross is absolutely meaningless if this life is all there is to it. Because if there's nothing after death, then there's no heaven to gain, there is no hell to avoid, there's no God to account to. Folks, the Humanists are betting their souls that they are right, and I want you to know that is extremely dangerous. I have been with many who were Atheists, and they went to the hospital, and I was with several of them. And they said, the doctors said to them, you don't have long to live.

You're going to die within weeks or maybe days. And all of a sudden, that bravado, false bravado, that cockiness, that macho attitude just kind of faded down into absolutely nothing. And they started looking for somebody that could tell them the truth. All right, I got five points I want to share with you today as we take a look at this passage dealing with the resurrection.

And the first is the questioners. Look at verse 18a. And Sadducees came to him who say, there is no resurrection. Now who were the Sadducees? They were the party of privilege, the religious elite we might call them. The Sadducees held the majority in the Sanhedrin, which was the Jewish high court. And because of that, they were able to elect or appoint a high priest each year that usually, almost always, was a Sadducee.

Some scholars call them the priestly aristocracy. It was Kent Hughes who called them another name. He said they're a bunch of heartless philosophical materialists.

He was right. The Sadducees were always at odds with the Pharisees. They were always fighting. The Pharisees believed that the best thing that they could do was try to destroy the Roman Empire and conquer them and not be ruled by them. The Sadducees said the best thing we can do is to cooperate with them. The Pharisees believed in strict adherence to the traditions of the fathers. And the Sadducees said, no, we don't see any need to be connected with that whatsoever. But the thing I think that the Pharisees were best known for was their rejection of the resurrection. They did not believe in heaven, did not believe in hell, did not believe in the immortality of the soul. They said when the body perishes, the soul perishes right along with it, and they were willing to fight over that issue. Acts 23, you might remember the apostle Paul had been taken into custody and given over to the Jewish council in Jerusalem. And Paul was a Christian, and both the Pharisees and the Sadducees hated him, but Paul was wise. He knew what would get them off his back, and so he said this is what we'll do.

I'll share something. I'll throw them a theological hand grenade into the courtroom, and that'll explode. And boy, then they'll be at odds with each other instead of at odds with me. This is what happened in Acts chapter 23 verses 6 through 8. Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of a Pharisee.

It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial. And when he had said that, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided, for the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection. That was pretty quick thinking on Paul's part, but the questioners here are the Sadducees. And they think that they can outfox Jesus with a question about the resurrection. All right, point two.

Is the resurrection ridiculed? Look at verse 18b through verse 23. And they ask a question saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. There were seven brothers. The first took a wife and when he died, left no offspring. The second took her and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. And the seven left no offspring. Last of all, the woman also died. In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be?

For the seven had her as wife. Now picture what's going on here. These haughty, arrogant Sadducees come walking over to Jesus like a bunch of puffed up peacocks. They come walking over to Jesus. Jesus says to them, just an old country boy, he's from Galilee, he's not been well educated like them, so they think that they can mess with his mind. They're going to lay before him a hypothetical question that will first confuse him and then leave him absolutely speechless. So what do they say?

They say, okay Jesus, here's the deal. There was a man who's married to this lady and this man's got six brothers, all younger than him. And so the man dies and so she marries the second oldest brother and then he dies and she marries the third older brother and then he dies and it goes all the way down till she has married all seven brothers.

They all die and then the woman dies. Where did they get that from? They got that from Deuteronomy chapter 25 and verses 5 through 6. It's called the Levirite marriage law. It says this, 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, take her as his own 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, and his name shall not be blotted out of Israel.

It's a good law. The Sadducees are making an absolute farce of it. My question would have been, when it got down to brothers 6 and 7, I think if I had been brothers 6 and 7, I'd be thinking to myself, I think I see a pattern here and maybe I ought to run out of here as quick as I can before I'm 6 feet under.

Of course, it wasn't a real story. So the Sadducees were taking the Old Testament law, the law of Levirite marriage, and they were building a hypothetical situation around it. And after laying out this silly hypothetical situation, they smugly asked this question. They say, okay, Jesus, in the resurrection, in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? You can almost see them holding back a snicker. They're kind of looking at each other, kind of approvingly nodding to each other, and they're just extremely proud of themselves.

They say, we got him. What a great question we asked Jesus, one that he'd never be able to answer for us. Now, what were they expecting from Jesus? I think they expected Jesus to be real impressed with them. They expected that Jesus would kind of stroke his beard a little bit and say, wow, guys, that's really good. I never thought about that.

So what a great question you've given to me, and I'm just confused and I don't know how to answer that. That's not what happened. Instead, Jesus says to the Pharisees, you are dead wrong. And let me tell you why you're dead wrong. You're dead wrong because you don't know the scripture and you don't know the power of God. Jesus has just rained on their parade. He has just let the air out of their balloon.

He has taken them to school. His Sadducees believe themselves to be the greatest theologians on the face of this earth, and Jesus has just put them in their place. He's simply saying, your question shows your ignorance. You don't know the scripture, the word of God, and you don't know the power of God.

I love what Philip Ryken said here. He said this, but as bad as the question was, still needed to be answered because the Sadducees were asking about something that strikes at the heart of the gospel. The word gospel simply means good news, and the gospel is the good news about what Jesus has done to rescue us from our sins. To be specific, the gospel is the cross plus the empty tomb, the crucifixion, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

By dying in our place on the cross, Jesus suffered the punishment that we deserve for our sins. By rising from the dead, Jesus broke the power of death so that we can live forever with God. The Sadducees deemed that there even is a resurrection, thereby eliminating half the gospel. If there is no resurrection, then there's no good news for sinners. Furthermore, if there is no resurrection, then there's no final judgment, and therefore no need for atonement, which eliminates the need for a gospel at all. This attack on the good news of salvation is such a matter of life and death that Jesus had to respond. It takes us to point three, that is the resurrection defended, verse 24 through 25.

Jesus said to them, Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. Jesus answered their question by drawing a comparison of the people in this life, and then the people in the life to come. Jesus said people in this life get married.

They fall in love with each other, they live with each other, they have children together, they share things together, they grow old together, they are married in this life. But then he compares them to people who are resurrected from the dead. And he says that they, the resurrected ones, neither are married nor are given in marriage.

The Sadducees' question was based on a false premise. They said, well if people are married in this life, and then if there is a resurrection, they'll still be married in the next life, except it'll be just for a whole lot longer time. Jesus says, wrong assumption, in heaven there will be no marriage. Now for Christians who are happily married, what Jesus said about marriage here comes as kind of a disappointment, doesn't it? Many husbands and wives find it hard to imagine being in heaven for all of eternity and not being together as husband and wife. I heard about one man who said, if we can't be married in heaven, will God let us be roommates? No, he will not.

Why is that? This is what we need to remember. We need to remember that as Christians we are engaged to Christ. And we will find our full satisfaction in Him.

Will we know our spouses? Absolutely we will. Will we fellowship with them?

Absolutely we will. We will talk with them, we will worship with them. But we will be fully matured and our satisfaction will primarily come from our relationship and our fellowship with Jesus.

This is really insightful. Philippa Reichen said this, this truth ought to be especially precious to Christian singles and to anyone who has suffered a broken marriage. Christians tend to put a great deal of emphasis on marriage, maybe too much emphasis. Certainly marriage is a basic relationship of human love, the building block of human society.

It is also under attack in our culture and for that reason in need of special support. But in the scope of eternity, marriage is not the be all and end all of human existence. Even under the best of circumstances, marriage is only a temporary institution and this very transience points us towards an eternal relationship with Jesus Christ. This is one of the main purposes of matrimony. As Paul said, the profound mystery of marriage is not an end in itself but refers to Christ and the church.

Among other things, this means that when it comes to the blessings that God has for us in Christ, single people are not at any kind of disadvantage. Even if we do not always understand this now, it will become perfectly clear to us in the coming age. Let me point out a few things that Jesus is teaching here concerning the resurrection. There are many things that God has not said about what we're going to experience after death. There are many things we don't know.

But in this passage here, there are several things that he teaches us that we can know. We've already shared one and that is that there will be no marriage in heaven. But the second truth is not everyone will go to heaven. Not everyone will go to heaven.

In the parallel passage that we have of this passage in Luke chapter 20 and verse 34, he says this, But those who are considered worthy to attain to that age. Now, all people are going to experience the resurrection. But some people will experience a resurrection that's an eternal resurrection with Christ. And some will experience a resurrection of damnation.

So this raises an important question. If I want to go to heaven when I die and if heaven is only for the people who have been counted worthy by God to go to heaven, then what do I need to do in order that I might be counted worthy? The Greek word for considered means counted worthy or made worthy.

So worthiness is not something that we do, but it's something that's done to us. It is not something that comes from inside of us, but it is something that God declares about us and that God creates in us by his grace. When we put our faith in Christ, then Christ imputes his perfect righteousness to us.

And what does that mean? That means that he takes my sin, my sinful heart and my sinful record and he washes that away and he replaces it with a perfect righteousness of Christ. So that when God looks at me, he doesn't see my sinful record, he doesn't see my sinful heart, he sees the perfect sinless perfection of his son Jesus Christ. That's why we call it amazing grace.

It is the unmerited, undeserved favor of God. So who can be saved? Well, I would have you to think for just a minute about the thief on the cross. Thief on the cross was a robber. He'd go into people's houses, steal stuff. He would lie. He was an insurrectionist.

There's no telling what else he was guilty of. He's a very wicked, wicked man. He's hanging on the cross and things haven't changed. And he's mocking Jesus and he's cursing. All of a sudden, something begins to change in his heart.

And what does he do? He confesses his sin to Jesus. And with a broken heart, he says, Lord, remember me in your kingdom. Remember what Jesus said to him? Jesus said this, truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. He was counted worthy through the grace of God.

Author of the great hymn, Amazing Grace, is John Newton. John Newton, before he was converted to Christ, was a very wicked man. He was a godless slave trader. He was immoral. He was a liar.

He was a blasphemer. God did a work in his heart. God brought him under deep conviction. He confessed his sin. He repented of his sins.

He trusted Christ as his Lord and Savior. God opened his eyes. God opened his heart. God changed him. And he was saved for all of eternity.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. It saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found.

Was blind, but now I see. Right before John Newton died, his great friend, William Wilberforce, came and stood with him at his deathbed. And he looked up at William Wilberforce and said, two things I know. One, I am a great sinner. And two, Jesus is a great Savior. Here was a man who understood the gospel. He wasn't saved because of what he did for Jesus. He was saved because of what Jesus did for him.

He was counted worthy by the grace of God. Maybe you're here today and you think there's no hope for you. Maybe there's been horrible immorality, illicit sex.

Maybe there has been stealing, cheating. Maybe you've gotten caught up in drugs and alcohol. And you look at your life and you think, well, there's no hope for me. I don't deserve the grace of God. None of us deserve the grace of God. But listen to what the apostle John said in 1 John chapter 1 and verse 7. He said, the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin.

How much? All sin. The blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If the thief on the cross can be saved, so can you. If John Newton and the apostle Paul and Chuck Colson and Doug Agnew can be saved, then there's hope for every sinner.

When Jesus said to the Sadducees, there will be a resurrection, what he was saying to them was this. If you keep going in the direction you're going, you're going to spend forever in an eternal hell. But if you come to me and you allow me to wash away your sins in my precious blood, then you will be saved forever. You will be counted worthy by God. You will be counted worthy through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

The third thing that we learned is the truth of immortality. We will be like angels, Jesus said. Now, have you ever heard people that want to tell you that we're going to be angels when we die? I hear that all the time. No people, we're not going to be angels when we die. I can promise you that. But the scripture says that there are some things about angels that we'll be like.

And what is that? Angels are made for God's glory, so are we. Angels worship God, so do we. Unfallen angels never sin. In heaven, neither will we. Angels don't marry. In heaven, neither will we. Angels never die.

Neither will we. The fourth truth about resurrection is the truth about paternity. And you see this once again in the parallel passage in Luke's gospel, in Luke chapter 20. Jesus calls us sons of God. Two things happen when a person is saved that deals with paternity. They are born again, birthed into the kingdom of God, and then they are adopted into the family of God. So you as a Christian are not just a legal citizen of heaven.

You're much more than that. You're family, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. All right, point four is the resurrection proved. Look at verse 26 through 27. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses in the passage about the bush how God spoke to him saying, 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.

You are quite wrong. The Sadducees prided themselves in the fact that they were great students of the Torah. The Torah is the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, written by Moses. And so I think it was a very wise thing that Jesus did here. He uses a passage from the Torah, which they knew inside and out. He uses that passage to prove to them that there is a resurrection. And he points them right back to Moses when Moses came before the burning bush.

And Moses came before the burning bush, and the Lord spoke to him and told him to take off his shoes for he was on holy ground. Moses said, who are you? And God said, I am that I am.

I am the great I am. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That means he's not the God of the dead, but he's the God of the living. So Jesus says Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were alive at that point in time when Moses spoke to the Lord in the burning bush.

That's a theophany. He spoke to the Lord, and some good things and glorious things happened there. Moses understood something there. Jesus is sharing with us what Moses came to really grasp and understand. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had physically died, but spiritually they were more alive than they ever had been before. And their spiritual life was proof that God would one day keep his promise to them that history would come to an end and that Christ is going to return and there's going to be a resurrection of the dead. And Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are going to receive new glorified bodies, bodies that can never get hurt, that can never get sick, that can never go old, that can never sin, and that can never die. And folks, if that's true for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it is also true for us. For 2 Corinthians 5, 8 says, For the Christian to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Argument over.

The Word of God was proof. The Sadducees believe that when you die, you just cease to exist. Your heart quits pumping, your brain waves just kind of flatten out, and that's it. You're not around anymore.

You cease to exist. Jesus said, That's a lie that militates against the Word of God. Jesus said, You are absolutely wrong. After Abraham and Isaac and Jacob had died and they were buried, God himself announced that they were, in fact, living.

And their living status was proof that God would keep his other promise, and that is the promise of a new glorified resurrected body. It takes us to point 5, the questioner silenced. And I'm going to go back to Luke's gospel here. Luke 20 and verse 39 through 40. Some of the scribes answered, Teacher, you have spoken well, but they no longer dared to ask him any question. Isn't it amazing how truth shuts the mouth of the wicked?

That just happens. Here were these hotshot theologians who claimed that they knew all there was to know about the scripture. And here's this carpenter from Galilee who is really who. He's the creator of the universe. He is the son of the living God. And he takes the Word of God that they thought they knew, injects it with life, and drives it into their heart.

And what do they do? Well, they quit arguing. They quit mocking. And they lower their heads and say, Teacher, you have spoken well.

And they shut their mouth, and they quit asking questions. All right, in closing, I've got a question for you. Not is there a resurrection. Jesus has already dealt with that issue.

Yes, there is a resurrection. That's not the question that I have for you. My question for you is this. Are you counted worthy? Are you counted worthy? Is Jesus your Lord? Is Jesus your Savior? Is Jesus your treasure?

Let me tell you something. The humanists are wrong. Humanist manifesto is wrong. The secularists are dead wrong.

The Darwinian evolutionists are wrong as they can be. But Jesus is right. And Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.

What can I do at this point in time? I can give you this invitation. Come to Jesus. Come to Jesus. He is your hope. He is the only one who can make you worthy. It took his shed blood on the cross of Calvary and his resurrection to break the power of death to save us, God's people, from our sins. Are you a Christian? Is Jesus your Savior? Is Jesus your Lord? Is Jesus your treasure?

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, this life is not the end. It matters not how Satan deceives and atheists lie.

It matters not what theories the pseudo-scientists hold on to. What matters is this. The Son of God, the Creator of the universe, the King of kings and Lord of lords has assured us that there will be a resurrection of the dead, of the just and the unjust. Father, help us to grasp a hold of this truth and to live like we believe what Jesus so powerfully taught. For it's in Jesus' precious and holy name that we pray. Amen.