In 1993, professional golfer Paul Azinger was diagnosed with cancer. He was 33. He had just won a PGA championship and had ten tournament victories to his credit.
After receiving the diagnosis, he wrote, “A genuine feeling of fear came over me. I could die from cancer. Then, another reality hit me even harder. I’m going to die eventually, whether from cancer or something else. It’s just a question of when. Everything I had accomplished in golf became meaningless to me. All I wanted to do was live.”
Then he remembered what Larry Moody, who taught a Bible study on the tour, had told him. “Zinger, we’re not in the land of the living going to the land of the dying. We’re in the land of the dying, trying to get to the land of the living.” This is the enduring hope of the Christian faith, the assurance of life after death.
Paul Azinger recovered from his cancer and chemotherapy treatments and returned to the PGA tour. He’s done well and served as a Fox Sports and NBC golf analyst.
But that bout with cancer deepened his perspective. He wrote, “I’ve made a lot of money since I’ve been on the tour and won many tournaments, but that happiness is always temporary. The only way you will ever have true contentment is in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I’m not saying that nothing ever bothers me, and I don’t have problems, but I feel like I’ve found the answer to the six-foot hole.”[1]
I was struck by the simplicity of Larry Moody’s words. As followers of Jesus, “…we’re not in the land of the living going to the land of the dying. We’re in the land of the dying, trying to get to the land of the living.” It’s easy to forget that simple truth in daily hustle and bustle.
Many people today deny the reality of the resurrection. Their idea is that “when you die, you die like a dog. They put you in the ground, and that’s the end of it.” But the resurrection is not just a belief but a truth of immense significance. If this is all there is, what’s the point? The resurrection gives life meaning and purpose.
There were people with this worldview who lived during the time of Jesus, too. Does that surprise you? Did you think a materialist worldview was something new? Hardly! The significant questions of life have intrigued people ever since time began. “Why am I here? Where did I come from; where am I going; what happens after I die?” These questions and others are asked by people worldwide in every generation.
We’ve come to chapter 12 and verses 18-27 in our study of Mark’s Gospel. Jesus had just silenced the Pharisees on the question of authority. When the Sadducees saw what happened, they were gleeful. They considered themselves intellectually superior to the Pharisees, and they decided to try to trap Jesus with their question about the resurrection.
So, let’s see what happened. I’ve titled our study “The God of the Living,” and I’m reading Mark 12:18 to 27. Here are God’s words to us.
This text records the TESTIMONY of two witnesses who verify the reality of the resurrection.
The First TESTIMONY is,
The Testimony of Jesus
As I said just before reading our text, the Sadducees wanted to trap Jesus with their question about the resurrection. Who were the Sadducees, and what motivated them?
The majority of the Sadducees were wealthy, aristocratic, and elitist. They denied the supernatural, including the resurrection; they were the rationalists/materialists of their day. Since they didn’t believe in life after death, they pursued wealth and status here and now! This put them in direct opposition to the Pharisees. They also rejected the Pharisee’s oral interpretations of the Law and didn’t accept them as binding.
You may recall that Paul used the division between these two groups to preserve his life in Acts 8. Setting the two groups against each other led to a riot, which the Roman government squelched by force.
The Sadducees held to Scripture as the sole authority, especially the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Law. However, they weren’t literalists; they believed the Scripture should be modified by human logic. In other words, they wanted the freedom to interpret Scripture as they wanted. Does that sound familiar?
Many of the Sadducees served as priests in the Temple. The Jewish-Roman historian Josephus mentions one high priest, Ananus, who had five sons. Each of the five eventually served in that office. Nepotism and collaboration with the Roman government allowed them to secure their positions. The Sadducees primarily focused on Israel’s position in the physical world and not on its future position in the spiritual world.
These men came to Jesus with a hypothetical question based on Deuteronomy 25:5 to 10. Our text gives us the basic idea of this law of levirate marriage. So, they devised this impossible situation of one woman sequentially being the wife of seven brothers and having no children. I think if I’d have been about the third or fourth brother, I’d have said, “Count me out; I’m not ready to die yet.”
One doesn’t need to look too closely at this encounter to see the Sadducees’ attitude. Their object was not serious dialogue and engagement with the truth. Instead, they were wielding the potent weapon of ridicule—the same weapon often used by those who reject the truth today. When you can’t refute the message, you attempt to destroy the messenger.
So, picture them sneeringly asking Jesus, “Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” Jesus immediately responds, “Are you not mistaken because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God? Wow, that was a zinger! Not knowing the Scriptures experientially prevents one from understanding the power of God. Remember, they denied the supernatural.
By the way, translators’ use of the word mistaken may be better rendered as deceived or having wandered astray from the truth like those mentioned in Jude 13. These men were wrong in their understanding. This criticism must’ve stung sharply since the Sadducees posed as intellectually superior in knowledge to the Pharisees.
Here was Jesus, who, according to John 7:15, was a man whom the religious leaders knew had never studied under the famous rabbis, and he was telling them they didn’t know the Scriptures or the power of God. What gall! These were educated men well-versed in the Scripture, but they didn’t believe it. The Hebrew Scriptures repeatedly taught a future, bodily resurrection, but the Sadducees rejected the supernatural. Unfortunately, there are many like them today in the pulpits of our churches and the chairs of our seminaries.
Incidentally, while the Pharisees did believe in the resurrection, they erred in thinking (as Islam does) that marital relations would exist in the afterlife.
Now, Jesus begins to explain their error in lofty, spiritual terms, but ones they could easily understand. If they had received them, it would have led them onward, far beyond their understanding and the viewpoints of the Pharisees. However, we have no evidence they did.
Marriage is for this life. Marriage and procreation will not be needed in heaven because death will be DEFEATED! Jesus said those who are accounted worthy to reach heavenly existence cannot die anymore. Their equality with angels consists in their deliverance from mortality and its consequences. This is a message of hope and reassurance, a promise of eternal life for those counted worthy.
They are now entirely the sons of God because they are the sons of the resurrection. Notice that Jesus didn’t say if they are resurrected; He said when they are resurrected. That was His first strike against the Sadducees. However, this resurrection is not simply a reawakening but a transformation. The world to come is not merely a reproduction of what has passed away. Why reproduce what was corrupted by sin?
Listen to Paul’s words in Romans 8:21 to 23. “…because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.”
In First Corinthians 15:42, Paul compares our human bodies with other types of bodies. “So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption.It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.It is sown a natural body and raised a spiritual body.”
Furthermore, in Philippians 3:20 and 21, Paul wrote, “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.”
There’s another reason why marriage isn’t needed in heaven. Marriage was created as a type of Christ’s relationship with the church. When we get to heaven, the marriage between Christ and His bride, the church, will be consummated, so marriage as we know it will no longer be necessary to propagate the human race.
My wife and I have a wonderful marriage. But the quality and purity of relationships in eternity will go far beyond what we experience now. With sin banished, no longer to cloud our relationships, they will be directed by the fullness of the presence of God. I can’t imagine what that will be like, can you?
When we’re in heaven, there will be no sin. There will be no exploitation of women. There will be no insults between husbands and their wives. Sin will be banished from all human relationships. Our relationships with people we hardly know in this world will be more profound, blessed, intimate, and fulfilling than anything we can experience in marriage. Think of it. We will enjoy far richer human fellowship and communion than the best communion we can ever experience in this life.
The authoritative testimony of Jesus provides clear proof that He is the God of the living.
The Second TESTIMONY is,
The Testimony of Moses
Jesus was the master Teacher. Did you notice that the Sadducees appealed to Moses’ law? They saw the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, as carrying supreme authority. They took the command God gave through Moses, the command of levirate marriage, and extrapolated it to an absurd, hypothetical situation. They knew Moses’ law; they’d studied it forward and backward. They were sure they had Jesus caught in their trap.
But to their surprise, Jesus appeals to the same prophet, Moses. He points them back to Moses’ experience at the burning bush. The proof that God raises the dead is evident in Moses’ record of God’s words in Exodus 3:6. There, Moses records God speaking these words of identification: “I am [ present tense] the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob…” Physically, all of these were dead, but they were not nonexistent.
Look at what Jesus says in verse 27 of our text. “[God] is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.” So, if God is the God of the living, the patriarchs must exist somehow in the presence of God.
In their commentary, Jamieson, Fausett, and Brown state the following: To God, no human being is dead, or ever will be, but all sustain an abiding conscious relation to Him. These [faithful ones] maintain a gracious covenant relation to God, which cannot be dissolved. In this sense, our Lord affirms that for Moses to call the Lord the “God” of His patriarchal servants, they would be unworthy of Him if they had no existence at that moment. He “would be ashamed to be called their God, if He had not prepared for them a city” (Heb 11:16). How precious are these glimpses of the resurrection state![2]
In Luke 16’s account of the rich man and Lazarus, verse 22 shows Lazarus being carried to Abraham’s side in Hades, the place of departed spirits. What value would this picture have if Abraham did not exist? But Abraham comforts Lazarus and also communicates with the rich man. Using God’s words through Moses, Jesus communicates Himself as the God of the living.
Do you realize what that means to us today? Abraham is still alive. Isaac still lives. Jacob is alive and well. Their lives are in the hands of the God of the living, who will not let death end our existence. We find in this text not only a magnificent philosophical refutation of the views of those who tried to entrap Jesus, but we see from our Master’s lips His bold and strong affirmation to the oldest question that man has, which is, “If a man dies, shall he live again?”
Our Lord, without hesitation, without ambiguity, answers that question in the affirmative. We have life, and we have it forever. Jesus ends His monologue with a similar, yet strengthened, rebuke with which He began. You are greatly deceived!
I pray that this mistake will never be found among us! Our God is the God of the Living.
[1] [The Answer to Death, Citation: Robert Russell, “Resurrection Promises,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 151.]
[2] Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., & Brown, D. (1997). Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (Vol. 2, p. 121). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
