Introduction

[If you’re a new or returning visitor, again I’d like to welcome you. I’m glad you could be with us this morning.] Today we’re continuing our sermon series through the life of Jesus, as it’s laid out for us in the book of Mark. And recently, we’ve been walking through events in the last week of Jesus’s earthly ministry. It’s such an important week, that Mark isn’t just giving us the highlights of the football game anymore. But he’s been going into much more detail, giving us a play-by-play of what happened.

And we’ve seen, even though many of the Jews knew and respected Jesus, most of the Jewish leaders felt threatened by him. And so these Jewish leaders have been trying to trick Jesus into saying something scandalous or foolish. Though they haven’t succeeded so far, in our text, the Jewish leaders try again. But it just gives us another opportunity to see how incredible Jesus is in his wisdom and glory.

So if you haven’t already, please pull out a Bible if you have one nearby. And turn with me to Mark, Chapter 12. If you’re using one of our church Bibles, you can find our text on page _____. I’ll be reading from Mark, Chapter 12, starting at verse 18. Before I read our text, though, one of the things we do each week is we pray before the preaching of God’s Word. Because we recognize – our hearts and minds need a work of the Holy Spirit in order to understand and to receive what God has said. John 6:63 says that depending on our flesh and our own human resources is actually no help at all when it comes to receiving the Word of life. And so we need the Spirit to shine into us – to chase away our ignorance and to illuminate our thinking. That’s why we humble ourselves and pray, here. So let’s do that now. Please pray with me:

[Pray and Read Text]

Foundational to the Faith

Resurrection from the dead is a foundational pillar of the Christian faith. And it’s so foundational, if you don’t believe in a literal resurrection from the dead – you’re not a Christian. That’s how essential this is. If you don’t believe in the realness of God’s supernatural, miraculous intervention to raise the dead – then you’re rejecting Christianity, you’re rejecting Christ, and ultimately you’re endangering your soul. Resurrection from the dead is that important.

And it’s essential like this, because if you deny resurrection, then you’re denying that you have a resurrected King, King Jesus, who’s seated in heaven. And if you deny resurrection, you’re denying Jesus’s saving work – that he’s overcome the curse of death for you. If you deny resurrection, then you’re denying God, and the almighty power he has over his creatures. And if you deny resurrection, then you’re ultimately denying the promise God has made – that a day is coming (the day of the resurrection!) when every human being will be raised from death for judgment. In the resurrection, God has said that the righteous who are raised will enter everlasting life with God, and that the wicked who have spurned God will be cast into eternal torments. Believing that this resurrection from the dead is truly, physically legitimate – it’s foundational to Christianity. And the appointed day – the resurrection – the day which is certainly coming – it mustn’t be denied.

And yet, of course, many people do deny it. Now, we might assume that skepticism about resurrection is just a modern-world problem, for people living in a scientific age. I think it’s easy to imagine that long ago, people were more superstitious and more naïve. Surely those ignorant people long ago had an easy time believing in resurrection from the dead. But that’s really not true. It was just as big of a pill to swallow then as it is now. And in fact, we have evidence of this in our text. Because there’s a group of people in our text, the Sadducees. Verse 18 tells us that they denied the final resurrection day, and – really – resurrection in general. And so they approach Jesus on this issue – the issue of resurrection.

Now, some background is probably important here: the Sadducees were a faction of Jews that primarily included the priests who serviced the temple. And one of the things that was unique about the Sadducees – was they really only believed that the first five books of the Old Testament were binding – the ones written by the prophet Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – that’s all. They had some limited respect for the other Old Testament writings. But they ultimately ignored the other Old Testament writings because they viewed them as secondary and non-essential. They believed that it was only the law written by Moses that had legal, authoritative weight.

Now, that’s much different from the Pharisees. The Pharisees – they were mentioned in our text last week – the Pharisees were another faction of the Jews. They were primarily the scribes and scholars. And they accepted the whole Old Testament Scripture that we have. They believed it carried authority from God. And this is largely why they believed that there would be an ultimate resurrection day. They believed in the resurrection.

Because when you’re using the whole Old Testament, it turns out this teaching about the resurrection is quite obvious. For example, the prophet Daniel, in Chapter 12 of his writing, he says: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” (This is a clear statement of the resurrection, already in the OT!) And then there’s also Isaiah 26:19. The prophet predicts: “Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.” The Pharisees read these verses – and bingo! – of course, we should believe that the resurrection is coming, and the dead will be raised.

But the Sadducees denied those Scriptures. So they thought it was right to deny the resurrection. That’s why, among the Jews, there was an ongoing debate about the resurrection from the dead. Should people expect the resurrection and an afterlife, or shouldn’t they?

And the Sadducees decide to trip up Jesus in this debate. Because they have a question for Jesus they think he can’t answer. They figure this will be a good opportunity to humiliate him.

But we’ll see in our text, Jesus has a good answer to their question. And here’s ultimately what Jesus shows us: Resurrection from the dead is a Scriptural, rational, and essential teaching that enlarges the hope of God’s people. And to appreciate Jesus’s point, here, first we’ll explore why resurrection from death is denied by many. That’ll be my first main point. But then we’ll turn our attention to what Jesus says, here, and why resurrection from death is definitely true. So if you’re taking notes – those will be my main two points: Why resurrection is denied by many, and why resurrection is definitely true.

Why the Resurrection Is Denied by Many

So let’s start with that first point – why resurrection is denied by many. Because a lot of people today have the same issues and hang-ups that the Sadducees had. So what does God show us, here, about why these people are denying the resurrection? Well, there are at least three reasons why.

Reason number 1, many people deny the resurrection because they have wrong arguments, that are built on wrong assumptions. Notice the Sadducees, here. As they come to Jesus, they challenge him in verse 19: “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.” (So the Sadducees, here, are mentioning a specific law that Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 25, about how men should marry their brother’s widow if their brother dies childless. It may seem like a strange command. But it honored the brother’s legacy by providing offspring who could inherit his place in the Promised Land, and it cared for the widow long-term by giving her children who could care for her in old age). Anyway, the Sadducees refer to this law – and then they challenge Jesus with a question: if there were seven brothers, and the first married but died without offspring, and then the second brother married the widow, and then died without offspring, and the same thing happened to the third brother, and fourth, on down to the seventh brother – then of these seven men, which man will be the husband of the wife when the resurrection happens? That’s the question.

But, of course, it’s not a genuine question. The Sadducees are just using this question to argue against the resurrection. Now, if you’re familiar with debate and logic somewhat – you’ll know there are good structured arguments, and there are also bad arguments. And it’s worth pointing out – because it might be surprising – the Sadducees are actually using a very legitimate technique to make their argument here. If you want to impress your friends, this type of argument is often called by a Latin name – it’s called a reductio ad absurdum argument. And essentially here’s what the Sadducees are doing: They assume, for the sake of argument, that the position of their opponent is true – that a future day of bodily resurrection is real. But then, they propose a situation (dealing with these seven brothers) where resurrection would lead to an outcome that’s absurd or impossible to make sense of. And then they conclude their argument, based on the absurdity of that outcome, that the starting position of their opponent must also be absurd. The resurrection must not be true. That’s essentially the argument they’re trying to make here.

But even though there’s a good overall structure to this argument, it’s ultimately a wrong argument. And that’s because it’s based on wrong assumptions. Specifically, the Sadducees were wrongly assuming that marriage is permanent, lasting after death. And that’s actually the reason why the situation with these seven brothers and the widow seems so absurd. It’s not because resurrection is wrong. But it’s because that assumption about marriage lasting after death – that’s the thing that’s wrong.

And I’ll briefly explain one reason why that assumption is wrong. It’s because when God institutes marriage in Genesis 2, and the husband and wife are joined together – they don’t become one spirit, or one soul. But in the marriage covenant, the two become one flesh. The marriage covenant lasts for as long as both partners live. But then at death, when the old body passes away, that’s the end of the marriage covenant, just as we read in Romans 7:2. And so earthly marriages don’t last forever. The idea of soulmates for eternity is actually more of a Mormon false teaching. It’s not Biblical. So in any case, the argument of the Sadducees ends up falling on its face. Because their argument is built on a bad assumption.

Now, I’m aware, though – many of us may not get all that excited about logic or debate or rational arguments. It might be hard to appreciate what Jesus says here. But let me explain why this matters – for all of us. Because at some point, if you haven’t already, you’re going to hear someone make an argument against Jesus, or against the Bible, or against some aspect of Christianity. It’s gonna happen. And in fact, one of the most common ways people will do this is by trying to make Christianity seem absurd or irrational – just like the Sadducees were trying to do. But you don’t have to get nervous or flustered by those arguments. Because there will never be a truly good argument against Christianity. Never. Instead, you’ll find that every argument against Christianity, when you look really hard at it, will have wrong assumptions that are baked into it. And at the end of the day – it isn’t Christianity that’ll be false or unbelievable – but it’ll be the wrong assumptions that are false and absurd, just like it is, here, in our text. So having wrong arguments built on wrong assumptions – that’s reason #1 why people – even smart, logical people – end up denying the resurrection, and other aspects of the Christian faith.

But now let me give you reason #2. People deny resurrection because they have a wrong understanding of Scripture. We see this in verse 24. As Jesus responds to the Jewish priests, the Sadducees, here – he says, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?” You see, Jesus is identifying more reasons why the Sadducees have gotten the wrong answer. And reason #2 is because they don’t know the Scriptures.

It seems like a simple statement at first. But Jesus is likely pointing out three related issues. For one thing, he’s pointing out that the Sadducees don’t know the canon of Scripture – the canon (c-a-n-o-n), meaning the collection of writings that rightly belong in Holy Scripture. As I mentioned before – the Sadducees were only working with the first five books of the Bible, and they were ignoring the others. And Jesus’s point is that if they knew the right canon or collection of Holy Scripture – they’d be closer to having right beliefs.

And this issue of the canon of Scripture is still significant today. Roman Catholics added some books to the Old Testament, called the Apocrypha, in response to the Protestant Reformation. And having a distorted canon of Scripture has contributed to some of their wrong teachings. And another issue is that some Christian groups today functionally discard the Old Testament. And as you’d expect, that leads to its own variety of errors. So when people, like the Sadducees, fail to know the canon of Scripture, it often leads to error.

But the Sadducees were also misunderstanding two more things. They failed to know the content of Scripture, and also the correct application of Scripture. And certainly, these problems haven’t gone away in our day, either. People still come to wrong conclusions like the Sadducees did, because they don’t know the content of their Bibles, and because they lack discernment when it comes to applying what it says. In order for us to get the right answer when it comes to the question of resurrection, and other foundational teachings about God, salvation, and right living – we need to know the Scriptures.

Now, I realize, for some of us, that can sound really challenging. Especially if you don’t feel like you’re a strong reader, or you feel like you struggle to remember names and places and ideas from the Bible. But if knowing Scripture sounds a bit intimidating, here are some suggestions that might help. First, if you don’t have a study Bible, a Bible that has explanatory notes down at the bottom of the page – those notes can often help explain ideas that are confusing. Second, if reading is a challenge – consider listening to an audio Bible. You can do this while you’re driving, or jogging, or working around the kitchen. You might even want to listen to the same chapter two or three times in a row, to make sure you really grasp it. That can be helpful, too. Third, I’d encourage you, don’t just read the Bible alone, but read it and discuss it with other people. Spend time doing this with your family or roommates. Not only will you often learn things from other people, but the process of discussing it, and thinking about it out loud will usually help you to remember what you’ve learned. As a fourth encouragement, pray that the Holy Spirit would help you understand. Come to the Bible hungry and humble. Ask for God’s help. And then as a fifth and final encouragement, don’t give up, even when learning the Bible comes slowly. You might like instant gratification. But learning God’s Word often isn’t like that. It’s more like laying bricks. It takes effort, and also endurance. And it often just takes time. The mortar needs to solidify around the bottom bricks before you can add more bricks on top. Learning is a process. But if you stick it out, and keep building, you’ll end up with something really wonderful. All this to say, knowing Scripture is important. And if we don’t know the Scriptures, we can end up in a really wrong place, like the Sadducees.

But now, remember, there’s a third reason Jesus gives for why the Sadducees have gotten a wrong view of the resurrection. Here’s reason #3: it’s because they also have a wrong understanding of God’s power. Again, look at verse 24. Jesus says the reason they’re wrong is because they don’t know the Scriptures, and also because they don’t know the power of God.

And this point in particular really struck me while I was preparing the sermon. Because Jesus affirms, knowing the Bible is really important. And yet at the same time Jesus insists – that knowledge isn’t enough. You could know Biblical people and places and events. You could know the right principles of interpretation. You could know the Scriptures forward and backward, inside out and outside in. And yet, you could still be in a very wrong place.

And so Jesus points out the second issue of the Sadducees is that they don’t know the power of God. Now, what does Jesus mean by that? Well, again, I think there are a couple different dimensions of this statement Jesus makes.

For one thing, the Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection because they haven’t known God’s resurrection power experientially. They have no confidence that God will raise the dead, because they haven’t experienced God’s saving work, to raise them from their deadness in sin. They haven’t known the power of God’s Spirit, working in their soul, to bring regeneration and new birth. If they personally knew the saving power of God in their own life, it would just make sense – how could you not believe in the resurrection?

But here’s the other important dimension of Jesus’s statement. The Sadducees also don’t known God’s power accurately. And ultimately the problem boils down to this – their view of human power is too big. And their view of God’s power is too small. Because, see, the Sadducees are overly confident in their own abilities. And they imagine that if they can’t understand something, or if they haven’t observed something – it must not be possible. On the flipside, they have a very limited view of God. He’s a pony who only knows the same five tricks. And they refuse to believe that God is capable of doing anything more than that.

And isn’t this such a temptation for us? We often place limits on what God can do, too. We don’t bring up Christ in conversations with people, because we don’t believe God has the ability to use that conversation to flip a switch in that person, to change the direction of their lives! Or other times, we don’t take steps of obedience, because we don’t believe God has the ability to make that obedience profitable or pleasurable. We don’t pray expectantly, or we don’t pray big prayers for the advance of Christ’s honor in the world, because we underestimate what God can and will do when everyday Christians pray. It’s foolish and tragic that we would have such a stunted view of God’s power.

But of course, God isn’t limited like this. He isn’t limited by us, or even by forces of nature and natural laws. In fact, the reason such laws or limits exist in our world isn’t because they limit God, but because God has limited them. And God his power, is free to do incredible, supernatural things – even things that have never been observed or imagined before. If we know the power of God, we’ll know that raising the dead isn’t something too difficult or too wonderful for God to do. And in fact, Jesus insists that it’s something that God absolutely will do.

Why the Resurrection Is Definitely True

And this brings us to my second main point: Why resurrection from death is definitely true. That’s where Jesus takes us. He tells us why resurrection from death is definitely true. And essentially, Jesus does this by explaining the three things that the Sadducees have gotten wrong.

Of course, we’ve already seen how Jesus points out the wrong assumptions of the Sadducees, and how they wrongly thought marriage lasts after death. But Jesus also explains the other two issues. He explains the power of God in resurrection. And he explains Scripture’s teaching on resurrection.

So let’s look at each of those two remaining things. First, Jesus explains God’s power in resurrection in verse 25. He says, “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” And in this statement, Jesus isn’t just clarifying wrong assumptions about marriage. But he’s saying something important about God’s power. Because Jesus explains, that when the resurrection comes, it won’t just be a renovation project. But it’ll be a work of new creation. In the resurrection, God will be bringing something into being that’s different from how we’ve known it before.

I think sometimes we imagine that when the resurrection happens, we’ll be raised from death into essentially the same life we had before. We might expect that God’s plan is to simply bring us back into a sinless version of the world we presently know. But that’s not the picture Jesus gives us. Because he explains that the resurrection will usher in something new for humanity, where even the good institution of marriage won’t be in view anymore. It suggests that after the resurrection, the natural order for immortal human beings – it’ll be different somehow. That’s what Jesus reveals when he says that those who rise from the dead “neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven.”

Now, let’s be clear, Jesus is not saying that resurrected people are angels, or that they become angels. We shouldn’t imagine that our loved ones turn into guardian angels when they die. And we shouldn’t seek out the spiritual presence of ancestors or saintly people from the past. If you feel alone and want to be comforted by the spiritual presence of someone, then the Bible urges us to turn to the Spirit of God, and seek his presence. But the point is that people don’t become angels in the resurrection. Jesus simply says that we’re made like angels. We’ll be similar to them, because by God’s power, in the resurrection, we’ll be made immortal and glorious. And though in this life marriage is truly good and morally important, Jesus indicates that as new creations we’ll operate under a new creation order. It’ll be different from what we’ve known and seen before.

And so Jesus is helping us remember that God’s power in resurrection – it’s not limited by what we’re familiar with, or what our expectations are. But God is capable to do incredible things, new things. And in the resurrection, we should anticipate that his power is going to usher in a great deal of wonderful newness.

But after Jesus explains God’s power in resurrection, he also takes time to explain Scripture’s teaching on resurrection. And Jesus does this by making a case for resurrection from the Law of Moses – from within those first five books that the Sadducees accepted. And Jesus ultimately argues that God must be a God of resurrection, because in the days of Moses, God reaffirmed his relational loyalty to godly men of old who had died. Notice how Jesus argues for this in verse 27. He says, “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 God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”

And so Jesus is pointing at those three men – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the forefathers of the Jewish people. And as he’s acknowledging, in Moses’s day, they had been dead for hundreds of years already. And if they were dead, and gone, and if God were done with them, he would maybe tell Moses, “I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” But that’s not what God says. He says, “I am” – I am still the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob.” I am still committed to being their God, and having them as my people.” And how will this happen? Of course, it’ll be by the resurrection! And so it’s fascinating, a glorious resurrection into life with God – it isn’t just something unexpected that shows up with Jesus, at the empty tomb. But it’s been anticipated. It’s been an expected blessing from God, implied in his gracious covenant commitment to his people, back from the beginning.

And if resurrection from the dead was a certainty held out to God’s people hundreds and hundreds of years before the appearing of Jesus, how much more confident should we be, that God truly intends to overcome death, and bring his people into new life, that’s free, and fresh, and forever.

And God has opened the way into this resurrection life by sending His Son – by sending Jesus. And if you trust in him, his work is credited over to you. Through the death of Jesus on the cross, your old corrupt self is put to death. And in the resurrection of Jesus, you’re given a future of new life. God offers it freely. He simply says believe, receive the free gift. Admit you can’t do any of it alone, and turn in faith to Jesus.

Because if you do, then all this discussion about resurrection – it won’t just be a fancy topic for discussion. But it’ll be your future. You’ll be able to live it, and enjoy it, and enjoy the glory and goodness of God forever. Friends, the resurrection is a foundational pillar to our faith as Christians. So as a church in Mt Pleasant, let’s make it our aim to declare the resurrection, and to delight in the resurrection – and to decisively believe God’s power for resurrection, as we live each day as his people. Please pray with me: