To have descended from David's family tree means that the Messiah, well, he's got to be a human being. But to be invited to sit with shared divine authority, that means he must be divine. So here's the answer to the riddle. The Messiah is both man and God.
He is both the son of David and the son of God. That would make Jesus, then, the Messiah. With that, the Sadducees are looking for the back door. They're looking for the fire escape.
How do we get out of here? The Sadducees, along with the Pharisees, have completely failed trying to stump Jesus yet again. They thought they could tangle him in a political web, but Jesus outsmarted them. And now, the Sadducees take one more attempt at trapping Jesus by asking him an absurd hypothetical about the afterlife. Jesus' response to them reminds us that it's past time to make sure we're confident in our eternal future. Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart, featuring the Bible teaching of Stephen Davey.
Stephen continues through the series Here Comes the King with this message called One Final Riddle. I couldn't help but think after several years now of the preaching ministry of the Lord, the Master Teacher, the divinely insightful preacher, the Redeemer, that by now, he should be knee deep in thank you notes. But instead, his followers are going to thin out.
In the next day or so, he's going to be left alone, fully God, yet fully human. He felt that. He knew that. We watched him together riding into Jerusalem on that unbroken colt, and he broke out into literal sobbing. It wasn't because he wasn't thanked. It was deeper than that. He was weeping because of, among other things, the rejection of the nation and all that that would mean.
I want to be clear. Jesus didn't do anything to be thanked. He didn't need to be. He was eternal and sufficiently self-satisfied.
We call that the doctrine of the deity. But don't overlook the fact that he was fully human. He knew that he would not be thanked. Instead, rejected. And he felt that. In the days leading up to it, we've been watching him handle one question after another. In fact, Luke chapter 20, which is where I want you to turn again, he's engaged in what scholars call the day of questions – a dozen or so. The Pharisees have come to him. They've come after him.
The Supreme Court justices have attempted to trap him in our last study. The political leaders, the Herodians, they were going to trip him up on that trick question of do you pay taxes to Caesar or not. And now, today, we pick up our study as another group, really the final group, the final party, arrives to try their hand at giving Jesus a riddle that Jesus cannot solve and thus discredit him. Now before we get to their question, Luke's gospel account briefly introduces this party.
If you look at verse 27, there came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection. Again, this is the last group within Judaism to try and trick him. They are the priestly party in Israel. They dominated the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council. They were heavily involved in politics. They were really all about power. And since the Roman government assigned the high priest, the Sadducees had worked it out to where he would choose one of them and the current high priest is a Sadducee. They managed the temple. They owned the money-changing business, the cattle and livestock which were sold at exorbitant prices to those who came to worship.
Because of this, they had become enormously wealthy and powerful. Their families were composed of what Berkeley referred to as aristocrats. The first century Jewish historian Josephus wrote that the Sadducees were, and I quote, boorish in their behavior and rude among their peers.
We would call them in today's vernacular, religious snobs, looking down their noses on the masses, viewing themselves as superior. Now, as far as the scriptures go, the Sadducees didn't believe anything outside the Torah, the first five books, the books of Moses. Anything outside of that, they didn't believe, the prophets, the poets. We know from history that Sadducees thought the resurrection was a myth.
It was a fantasy. It was created by those poor peasants out there that hoped for a better day. We also know that the Sadducees did not believe in heaven or hell, angels or demons.
Once you died, that was it, so get everything you can out of life. As a backdrop, before we get to their question, keep their denials in mind. They denied all of scripture outside of the Pentateuch. They denied the existence of angels. They denied a resurrection from the dead. Now, the Sadducees, they had this little riddle. It silenced the Pharisees who believed in the resurrection.
It kept all those other religious leaders just sort of bumbling along. They couldn't answer it. They'd pull out this favorite question, and then they'd just sort of smirk. They'd laugh over the fact they'd just stumped some other religious nut who thought the resurrection was real. Now, here they come. They're going to try to stump this poor peasant teacher from the back country of Galilee.
They can't wait. So here's their riddle, verse 28. They asked them a question saying, teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.
Now, stop for a moment. They're pulling this out of the fifth book of Moses, chapter 25, Deuteronomy 25, verses 5 through 10, the law of Moses concerning the virut, marriage. This was a unique custom for the nation Israel. The nearest of kin would marry the widow whose husband had died without having an heir born to them for a couple of reasons. One, to keep the family name alive, the clan, and secondly, to keep property and inheritance laws intact within that family. You might remember the true romance novel in the Old Testament of a man who did this after he fell in love with a widow.
His name was Boaz, and her name was Ruth. But by the time of Jesus, they weren't practicing this anymore. In fact, they'd come up with a custom to get out of it. But to the Sadducees, this is in the law of Moses, and this is their favorite argument against the idea of a resurrection to an eternal life in heaven. So here they go. Here's their riddle. They said to Jesus, now, there were seven brothers. The first took a wife and died without children, and the second and the third took her. And likewise, all seven left no children and died. Afterward, the woman died.
Now here's the tricky part. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven brothers had her as a wife.
And you can kind of see these Sadducees, you know, holding back their laughter. Seven husbands in a row. Seven husbands in a row all died. Now who will be her husband in heaven?
I think somebody should have been asking, what was she putting in their soup? Number one dies. Number two dies. Number three dies. Number four dies. Number five dies. Number six dies.
Would you be number seven? I doubt it. Now obviously, the Sadducees had constructed this crazy hypothetical situation to prove a point. There can't be a resurrection because if there were, something like this would create chaos in heaven. So Jesus tell us whose wife will she be? And Jesus effectively says, nobody's.
Well, they weren't expecting that. Verse 34, Jesus said to them, the sons of this age, this lifetime, marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage. For they cannot die anymore. In other words, you don't need to propagate the race.
Nobody's dying. Now they are equal to angels and our sons of God being sons of the resurrection. He's saying in a number of different ways that we are raised to life immortal from the family of God, but he's also correcting the Sadducees here by effectively saying you have made a huge assumption that relationships in this age are going to mirror relationships in the age to come, and your assumption is wrong.
Relationships are going to be different. For one thing, Jesus says the institution of marriage will not carry over into eternity. That doesn't mean, by the way, that we won't know who our believing spouses or children are in heaven or other family members who are believers or friends. Our memories are not swiped clean.
The bema where we're rewarded for that which we did which was profitable would be meaningless if we had no memory. Our memories are perfected, though, with godly perspective. You might remember that Moses and Elijah met with the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration.
They were still Moses and Elijah, only glorified, and so will you be perfected and glorified in shining brilliance one day. Our joy is going to be especially great for our loved ones that we see in heaven. While our relationships with our believing spouses will no longer be matrimonial, they will be special. I like the way Davis put it, though.
He said it this way. Your marriage was made in heaven, but it was not made for heaven. Now Jesus says here in verse 36, we're going to be like the angels. We're not going to become angels. We will be like them. Now the apostle Paul would say that we will become like Christ.
Jesus was single, unmarried. But since Jesus is the one speaking here, he refers to us as becoming like angels, which is true as well. And with this, he's kind of pulling back the curtain between earth and heaven. And I have to tell you, it's really tempting to stop here and just preach about angels, which we cannot afford to do. But let me point out some attributes we will share with the angels. Angels are perfected in holiness, and so shall we be in heaven. Our sinful natures are gone in our glorified state and status, First Corinthians chapter 15. Another shared likeness is that angels obey God without any hesitation.
They never ask why. They trust perfectly. Kent Hughes writes on this text and says this, the Lord taught us to pray to obey like the angels. He taught us to pray, thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.
And how is God's commands accomplished in heaven? Immediately, without hesitation, without resistance, joyful, loyal, complete. That's just the beginning. Beloved, as I thought through this, like the angels, our glorified bodies will be healed, perfected, immortal, glorious, shining, noble, regal, beautiful, fearless. We'll be like the angels in that we will be tireless.
I'll never pass another second grader who thinks pastors tired today. We'll be ageless, delighting forever in the worship and service of our great God. It's beyond our imagination, really. In fact, the apostle Paul put it this way. He said, no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him.
We can't even begin to imagine it. Jesus gives us a little glimpse by saying this because we've been able to catch a glimpse every so often of angels in the Bible, haven't we? These glorious creatures. Jesus says we're going to be like them in some way.
Now, back to the text. Here's the stunning thing that rocks the Sadducees back on their heels. How would Jesus know what the angels are like in heaven? How would He know about marriage and relationships in heaven? Well, one thing's for sure, the Sadducees are not going to ask Him. They'd already heard Him say that He'd come from the Father. They knew He could have responded by simply saying, well, it's because I used to live there. I've seen it.
I created it. They didn't want to go there, so they just zipped it up. Remember, the Sadducees didn't believe in angels. What does Jesus do here? He validates the reality of angels, and He speaks with authority.
He's lived in both worlds. Now, again, remember the Sadducees don't believe anything outside the Torah, the books of Moses. Since there's no illustration of the Pentateuch of a resurrection, then they didn't believe it. So what does Jesus do? He starts quoting from the book of Exodus.
I love this. Verse 37, but that the dead are raised, Jesus says, even Moses showed in the passage about the bush, that burning bush episode in Exodus chapter 3, where He calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now, He is not the God of the dead, let me apply it for you, Jesus goes on, but of the living, for all live to Him. Then some of the scribes answered, teacher, you've spoken well, probably Pharisees who believe in the resurrection, and we like that answer, Jesus, you know, keep going.
But they all no longer dared to ask Him any question. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died long before God showed up and spoke these words to Moses, and He uses the present tense verb, I am. Jesus says to them, didn't you read what Moses said? God did not say to him, I used to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but they're dead, so that's over. Or I wish I were still the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but, you know, that day's long gone.
No, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Why? Because they've been resurrected, they're alive.
That's why. The Sadducees are stunned. How'd we miss that verse? Jesus has trapped them with the words of Moses and they're quiet now.
No more questions. Oh, but Jesus, He now goes on the offensive. He's got one for them. Verse 40, but He said to them, how can they say that the Christ that is the Messiah is David's son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms, Psalm 110, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. David thus calls him Lord, so how is he his son? And Jesus is quoting here a Psalm, everyone in Israel recognizes Messianic, in fact, it's the most often repeated Psalm in the New Testament. The Messiah will one day be invited to sit at the right hand, that is the hand of authority, divine authority, shared deity. So here's the riddle that Jesus is giving back to them. If the Messiah is David's divine Lord, how can the Lord be David's physical son? To have descended from David's family tree means that the Messiah, well, he's got to be a human being, but to be invited to sit with shared divine authority, that means he must be divine. So here's the answer to the riddle. The Messiah is both man and God.
He is both the son of David and the son of God. And with that, the Sadducees are looking for the back door. They're looking for the fire escape.
How do we get out of here? Jesus knew that they had to admit, with the riddle they understood, that that light bulb effectively turned on. They knew Jesus was a descendant of David.
They had already checked out his genealogy. They knew that he claimed to have come from the Father in heaven. They knew he knew how the angels now were living and serving in heaven. They knew that he was applying Psalm 110 to himself and declared the Messiah descended from David, and yet he was Lord God. That would make Jesus then the Messiah, both man and God. And they knew it. But instead of breaking into praise and worship, they remained silent. They had not shown up here to thank him, but to trap him, and Jesus turned the tables on them, and with divine truth, he literally chased them down.
What will they do with Jesus now? I shared with our student body at Convocation for Shepherds Seminary a couple of years ago with the conversion account of Adoniram Judson, the great missionary to Burma, now known as Myanmar, bordered by India and China. Adoniram was from a believing home. When he went to college though, he came under the influence of a very popular student, a brilliant student by the name of Jacob Eames.
Jacob became Adoniram's closest friend, and he introduced Adoniram to what was then called free thinking. It was just really another word for atheism that appeared as skepticism. It denied the resurrection. It denied the deity of Christ. By the time Adoniram graduated from university, he had abandoned the Bible.
His parents had taught him how to read by the age of three. After informing his parents of his unbelief, trying his hand at tutoring for a little while, he decided to set out and tour New England on horseback, just sort of say goodbye to the world. He eventually met up with a group of actors in New York City and joined them in a rather reckless lifestyle, sinful lifestyle.
Among other things, they would find lodging in an inn, run up the bill, then slip out in the middle of the night without paying. Adoniram eventually grew tired of this wandering lifestyle and struck out on his own again, roaming without purpose or meaning. One night he stopped to spend the night in an inn.
He'd never stayed at it before. The innkeeper warned him that his sleep probably would be interrupted by a young man next door to Judson's room who was dying. Sure enough, during the night the moaning, the crying, the weeping of this young man, the fear it could all be felt through the walls, kept Adoniram Judson awake. He was crying out in hopelessness and Adoniram said, I lay awake through the night. And as I lay there I wondered about this young man's soul. Where would he spend eternity? What was his hope after death?
And I began thinking the same thoughts about my own soul. Eventually the moaning stopped and Adoniram drifted off to sleep. Early the next morning Adoniram came down and asked the innkeeper and the innkeeper confirmed that the young man had died that night. Adoniram asked him, do you know who he was? And the innkeeper said, oh yes, his name was Jacob Eames. Adoniram stayed at that inn for several hours pondering death, the gospel. He would recount later to a friend that I quote, that hell should open up in this country inn and snatch my dearest friend from the next room. This could not be coincidence. He said it was clear that God was on his trail chasing him down.
He returned home and to the joy of his parents he trusted Christ as his savior and devoted his life to the Lord. I thought about that as I thought about these skeptics. The Sadducees were first century skeptics who did not believe in life after death until it was too late. By the way their followers today number in the millions.
The bigger question is this, are you one of them? Do you have your favorite philosophical question down pat to kind of ward off those Christians if they get too close? Do you have your favorite riddle that no one can solve behind which you hide? Here's what you can know. Listen to the words of Jesus, there is life after death. There are angels. There's a future heaven for the redeemed. There's an afterlife in eternal glory for those who claim him as savior.
Claim him today. That was Stephen Davey and this is Wisdom for the Heart. As we bring today's message to a close remember that Jesus faced relentless questioning yet always revealed deeper truths.
The Sadducees attempt to trap him only highlighted the reality of the resurrection and eternal life. Let's take comfort in knowing that our faith rests in these eternal promises. If you'd like to dive deeper into the truths of God's word explore the resources we have for you at wisdomonline.org. If we can assist you personally our number is 866-48-bible or 866-482-4253. I'm Scott Wiley and for Stephen and the Wisdom team thanks for listening. Join us next time on Wisdom for the Heart. I'm Stephen Davey and I'll see you next time.
