This morning, we are back in the Gospel of Mark, nearing the end of Jesus’s ministry, and as we do, we are also nearing the end of the age. Jesus began his last week by clearing the temple of money changers and merchants, which set off a firestorm that reached all the way to the Sanhedrin, the high court of the Jews. They sent a delegation to confront Jesus about his authority, and he completely embarrassed them. So, they decided to set some traps. Last week we saw the first trap – an attempt to get him to commit treason in front of Rome’s puppets, the Herodians. Instead, he left them amazed at the depth of his teaching. Now, we come to the second trap that they set for Jesus, in Mark 12:18-27. From this text, I want you to see two points: The Ridiculous Scenario and the Reality of the Resurrection.
First, from verses 18-23, see the Ridiculous Scenario. We are told that another group comes from the Sanhedrin. This time, it’s the Sadducees. The Sadducees were a religious/political group made up primarily of the priests. They were socially and religiously liberal – the opposite of the Pharisees. They only accepted the Torah (the first five books of the OT), and rejected teachings on the resurrection, spirits, and angels. Knowing that, we see the question they ask is cynical and hypocritical. They present Jesus with a scenario about a resurrection they don’t even believe in. This is supposed to be a complicated, unanswerable riddle because it appeals to several OT laws. One is the law of the kinsman redeemer. Deut. 25 required that, should a man die and leave a widow, his kinsmen should redeem her by marrying and having children by her in the name of the dead brother. This law was intended to maintain the lineage of the brother, but also to redeem the wife and provide her with a future (as seen in the story of Ruth). The Sadducees use this law to create a conundrum: what happens if multiple men marry the same woman and die without children? When the resurrection comes, who will she be married to?
To this ridiculous scenario, Jesus once again gives a marvelous answer. This leads me to my second point: The Reality of the Resurrection. Jesus begins his answer with a rebuke of the Sadducees: “Is this not the reason you are wrong?” He is not saying that they are wrong on this one question, but their entire belief system is wrong. And, he gives two reasons for why they are wrong. They don’t know the scriptures or the power of God. Then, Jesus proceeds to show how wrong they are.
First, when it comes to the power of God, they are wrong about the very nature of the resurrection. He says, “when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven.” The Sadducees took a very materialistic view of the world. They believed that only the physical world was real – only what you could feel or taste or touch. Because of this, they thought that God was limited to this reality. They thought that he was too weak to change reality itself. They were like the little girl who asked her daddy what a honeymoon is. The dad replied, “Well, honey, when you grow up, you will fall in love with a young man, and he will marry you. You’ll go off on a trip with your new husband and spend some time together, which is the honeymoon.” To this, the little girl asked, “Can Mama come, too?” The daddy patiently answered, “Well, no, when that day comes, you won’t want your mother to be there.” The girl thought for a minute, and then asked, “Can I take my teddy bear?” The father chuckled and said, “Honey, you won’t want to take your teddy bear either.” The girl grimaced and said, “Well, if I can’t take Mama, and I can’t take my teddy bear, I don’t want to go.”
To be honest, this is often the way Christians view the resurrection, as well. It’s sad to say that the resurrection is often downplayed in modern Christianity. As you know, if you’ve been to one of my funerals, I make a big deal of it. In fact, my whole sermon is centered around it because it is the central claim of the Gospel. As Charles Spurgeon said, “The resurrection of Jesus is the keystone of the arch of our holy faith. If that were taken away, the whole system of the gospel would fall to the ground.” After one funeral, I had a man come up to me and ask, “Are you a Baptist preacher?” I answered, “Yes.” He looked shocked, and said, “Huh, I’ve just never heard a Baptist pastor focus so much on the resurrection. They often talk about heaven and eternal life, but never the resurrection.” Well, as sad as that is, understand that the resurrection is the whole of the gospel. Go read the sermons of the book of Acts, and you will find that every last one ends with a call to believe in the resurrection of Christ. Paul, in that famous verse from Romans 10:9-10, says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” The resurrection of Jesus is a promise of our own resurrection. But, like the little girl and her teddy bear, we get hung up on what that will look like. It weirds us out, thinking that we will just be raised in this old body to live as a decaying corpse for the rest of eternity. We wonder, how can God do anything with this old, sinful, decrepit flesh? But, this is the hope of our salvation. 1 John 3:2 says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”
This is what Jesus means when he answers the Sadducees. In the resurrection, we will not be as we are now. There will be no need for marriage, because we will inherit the new earth. The world and our bodies will be different, renewed, made imperishable. Now, certainly, God will use the stuff of this body, but Paul describes it, in 1 Cor. 15, as a kernel going into the ground. What comes out of the ground is not the same as that which went into it. He also says that the perishable will put on the imperishable, like a person puts on a cloak. And, God has the power to do all of this. He made the world in six days. He judged the earth in a flood. He parted the Red Sea. He rained fire from heaven. And, in his greatest act, he caused Jesus to rise again from the dead. So, yes, he can take your mortal body and make it immortal. Even if it is consumed in fire, he will still do it. Even if it has been food for fish at the bottom of the sea for ages upon ages, he can still do it.
Jesus’s second reason is that the Sadducees do not understand Scripture. Again, his answer is brilliant, because he refers them back to Exodus 3. Remember, the Sadducees only accept the first five books of the OT, and Exodus is the second of those books. So, he asks, in verse 26, “Have you not read… ‘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.” Here, Jesus points out an important verb tense that God uses when referring to the patriarchs. He does not say, “I was the God of Abraham”, he says, “I am the God of Abraham.” It is as if God believes that Abraham is still alive, because he is. Remember, the Sadducees do not believe that man has a spirit, they don’t believe in life after death, and yet, here is God, in one of their favorite passages, referring to Abraham as a living spirit.
With this answer, Jesus proves the priests of Israel to be hypocrites. They asked a question about a doctrine they don’t even believe. And, when Jesus answers, he shows that the God they worship is an impotent being who cannot change things, and that they don’t even know the Scriptures they claim to cherish.
Friend, the resurrection is your only hope for eternal life. Jesus rose again to show that God’s intent is to make all things new. One day, Christ will return in judgment, and on that day, he will bring forth a new heavens and a new earth. Those who believe in him will be part of that new creation, our bodies made new by the power of the God of creation. Won’t you believe on Christ today and inherit the promise of that resurrection?
Brothers and sisters, as John Calvin has said, “The resurrection is not an appendage of the Gospel, but the most important article of it, and that on which the faith of the Gospel rests.” We have this promise from Scripture, that though our bodies may age and decay and die, it will not end in dust. By the power of God, we will be raised in the glory of our brother, Jesus Christ, to live in the newness of everlasting life. It will be a beautiful, renewed, perfect world, where no sin can molest and no pain will haunt us. Like Jesus in his resurrection, it will be familiar, but different, too. This is the great hope we have in Jesus Christ, and may we wait on it with patience.
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