Oct 20 2024 58 mins
In today's text, the Sadducees attempt to show that levirate marriage makes the idea of resurrection absurd. Christ's opposition to their argument is both abrupt and insightful. The very provision of levirate marriage points to the resurrection itself. If God gave a law which provided hope that life could indeed continue for a dying, childless man, hope that his name would live on, does that not itself demonstrate that God is a God of resurrection, a God of the living and not of the dead? When God binds Himself to Moses, He says that He remains bound to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob even centuries after their deaths. He is a God who is faithful unto death, and faithful yet again after death. Even this great obstacle to our eternal joy can never have the last word. The Sadducees do not understand the faithfulness nor the power of God. Christian, your charge is to remember that the gospel of grace does not destroy nature, but restores and perfects it. In this age we continue to taste death and to lay loved ones in the ground like a seed (1 Cor. 15:36, 37), but we do so in the great hope that they and we will come back out of the grave, just as Jesus did, having finally become fully glorified men and women. May we know both the Scriptures and the power of God.