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LIVING GOD, LIVELY SAINTS
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
Luke 20:27-40

Deuteronomy 25:5-10

 

“For he is not a God of the dead,

but of the living…”

 

LIVING GOD, LIVELY SAINTS
 
The Sadducees here questioned Jesus about the life hereafter which is something they themselves did not believe in. Obviously, they had asked the question with a sinister motive, and not because they honestly wanted to know what life after death entailed. Citing Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 25:5ff. concerning the custom of levirate marriage (“levir” is Latin for “brother-in-law”), they cooked up a story of a woman whose husband had died before they had a child. According to the Mosaic law, her brother-in-law is to take her to wife in order to preserve her husband’s line. But he also died without children, and so the second brother had to marry her. This continued until she married all seven brothers. Everyone who married her died without leaving a seed. Finally she died. Then came the fault-finding question: “Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them is she? for seven had her to wife.” Jesus rebuked them for their theological ignorance. The Sadducees erred in assuming that life in heaven was going to be like life on earth. Scripture nowhere affirms that earthly familial relationships will continue to exist in heaven. Moreover, their question denied God’s power to raise believers up to a level of existence that would be far more blessed than that of the earthly on the day of resurrection (1 Cor 15:40-50). Like the angels, resurrected saints neither marry, nor die. In the resurrected state, believers would still be human beings though living at the metaphysical level, and able to remember their past relationships and activities.
 
Jesus went on to refute the Sadducean denial of the resurrection. He argued that the God of Israel is not a God of the dead but of the living. If the God of Israel is the God of the living, and is also the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (citing Exod 3:6), then it must lead to the logical conclusion that the three patriarchs, though already departed, are still alive and awaiting the day of resurrection (1 Thess 4:14-16). All the people marvelled at the teaching of Jesus, and the scribes acknowledged the truth of His reasoning. The Sadducees dared not ask Him any more questions.
 
THOUGHT: Am I ready for the rapture?

PRAYER: Father, I long for the day when I would be raptured.

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