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What Jesus Believed About the Resurrection

The Lord’s Day Morning


July 3, 2011



“What Jesus Believed About the
Resurrection”


Luke 20:27-44


The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III

If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to Luke chapter 20.
We’ll be looking at verses 27 to 44 today as we continue our way through
the gospel of Luke. Let me remind you that the passage that we’re going to read
today is the third time in Luke 20 where Jesus’ authority and teaching is
challenged by the scribes and the Sadducees and the religious leaders in
Jerusalem. You remember the first
time happens in the early verses of Luke 20 when Jesus cleanses the temple and
He is challenged, “By what authority do You do this?”
And in the course of His response, He not only responds to the challenge
to His authority, but He teaches something very important.
Then, the last time we were together, we saw another challenge.
In this case, people came to Jesus pretending to be respectful towards
Him and asking Him a question that they thought would put Him on the horns of a
dilemma to answer. They asked Him
about rendering tribute to Caesar. Is it right to do that or not? And they
thought, “He’s in a catch-22 now. No
matter what He does, He’s going to get in trouble when He answers this
question.” And in that passage,
Jesus responds to the question in a faithful and Biblical way and also manages
to teach something of Bible importance to Christians that we still depend upon
to this very day as we sort through what it means to be in the world and not of
it.

Well now, in the passage that we’re going to read, for a third time and a final
time, the religious leaders in Jerusalem come again with a question to Jesus.
And the question is very frankly skeptical.
It’s a mocking, skeptical kind of question.
You’ve probably heard these kinds of questions before, asked to you by
hard-core agnostics or skeptics of religion.
And they’ll throw out some little question about the Bible that you know
they are clearly not interested in hearing your answer to.
They think simply in asking the question they have disproven God and
Christianity and basic Christian doctrine and they ask it in a sort of sneering,
condescending way. Well that’s the
kind of question that Jesus gets in this passage.
But once again, He not only answers the question in such a way that it
doesn’t leave Him stuck in the middle on the horns of a dilemma in a catch-22,
but He teaches things that are of deep importance and great value to us today.
So this passage isn’t about us just looking back at an event that
occurred two thousand years ago and sort of looking down our noses at the bad
scribes and Pharisees, and it has nothing to do with us today.
It has everything to do with how we live.

In fact, as we look at this passage today, Jesus teaches us important things
about the Bible and about doctrine, He teaches us a very important thing about
the resurrection, and especially how it relates to the Gospel, and He teaches us
about who He is. All of these things
are vital to Christianity and to the Christian life.
Now before we read God’s Word, let’s ask Him for His blessing in prayer.
Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we have just heard read to us Your Word from Hebrews 4 where we
learn that Your Word is powerful and effective and sharper than any two-edged
sword and that it pierces down to the point of being able to divide things that
can’t even be divided. The soul and
the spirit, joint and marrow, the intentions and the thoughts, the desires and
thinking of our hearts. Lord, You
search us out by Your Word, so we pray today, even as we read Your Word, that
You would search our hearts, that we would not stand over it in judgment, that
we would stand under its judgment and that as You search out our hearts that You
would also instruct us in the way of righteousness, that You would show us the
Savior, that You would set forth the Gospel, and that by Your Spirit we would
respond in faith. We ask these
things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Now again, Luke chapter 20 beginning in verse 27.
This is the Word of God:

“There came to Him
some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked Him
a question, saying, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies,
having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up
offspring for his brother. Now there
were seven brothers. The first took
a wife, and died without children.
And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children
and died. Afterward the woman also
died. In the resurrection,
therefore, whose wife will the woman be?
For the seven had her as wife.’

And Jesus said to
them, ‘The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are
considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection form the dead
neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because
they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.
But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the
bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the
God of Jacob. Now He is not God of
the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him.’
Then some of the scribes answered, ‘Teacher, You have spoken well.’
For they no longer dared to ask Him any question.

But He said to them,
‘How can they say that the Christ is David’s son?
For David himself says in the Book of Psalms,

‘The Lord said to my Lord,

Sit at my right hand,

until I make your enemies your

footstool.’

David thus calls him
Lord, so how is he his son?’”

Amen, and thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant Word.
May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.

There have always been critics of the resurrection.
When Paul was speaking to the Greek intellectuals at Mars Hill in Athens,
they listened to him until he started talking about the resurrection and then
they laughed at him. There’re no
shortage of skeptics of the resurrection who can be found in the annals of
history, but the interesting thing is, in the last two hundred years, you can
find skeptics of the resurrection who want to call themselves Christians, and
not only Christians, but Christian leaders, shepherds, pastors, and ministers.
When I was in Scotland studying at the University of Edinburgh, just down
the road from me in Durham there was a very liberal, skeptical bishop of the
Church of England named David Jenkins who denied and denigrated the resurrection
referring to it as “conjuring tricks with bones.”
While I was there as well, the moderator of the Church of Scotland, the
mother church of Presbyterianism in North America, denied the resurrection.
And the famous Barthian theologian, Thomas Forsyth Torrance, wrote a
column in The Scotsman, the national
newspaper, accusing the moderator of the Church of Scotland of being a hireling.
You don’t have to look far to find people who claim to be Christian
ministers denying the resurrection.

In fact, this week, in preparation for this message, I thought, “Let me just see
what’s out there,” and so I Googled, “pastors deny resurrection / church leaders
deny resurrection / theologians deny resurrection.”
I couldn’t read all of the responses that I got.
But one of them was very interesting.
It was a video of an emerging church pastor, don’t make me explain, in
which he was recounting a debate that he had participated in at Calvin College.
In the debate, it had become apparent to the other panelists that he did
not hold a traditional attitude towards Christian doctrines, even towards
Apostle’s Creed kind of doctrines, and one of them had queried him and asked him
point blank, “Do you deny the resurrection?”
And he was speaking to his congregation and he said, and he was clearly
very proud of himself in this response, he said, “And you know what I said to
him? I said, ‘I deny the
resurrection every time in don’t care for the poor, every time I don’t feed the
hungry, every time in don’t side with the oppressed, every time I don’t cry a
tear for those who have no more tears to cry, and I affirm the resurrection
every time I feed the poor, every time I side with the oppressed, every time in
take care of the hungry, every time in come alongside those who have no more
tears to cry and shed a tear for them.’”

Now the answer was some kind of contemporary post-modern moralism, you
understand. It was saying the
doctrine of the resurrection really doesn’t matter; it’s how we live.
I want you to understand that is not Jesus’ attitude either to the
doctrine of the resurrection or to doctrine in general and you see it very
clearly here. Let me look with you
at two or three things. This passage
is very rich. We could take a long
time legitimately unpacking this passage, but let me look with you at three
things this morning.


Jesus’
Attitude towards the Bible and Doctrine

The first thing I want you to see is what Jesus’ answer in this situation
reveals about His attitude towards the Bible and to doctrine because in this
passage we see Jesus triumphing over those who would mock Him with this
skeptical question. They set the
stage. There was a debate in
Israel’s religious leaders on the doctrine of the resurrection.
Pharisees, the conservative lay renewal party in Judaism, believed firmly
in resurrection. The Sadducees, who
we don’t know very much about, did not believe in the resurrection.
If you had asked a Sadducee, “Why do you not believe in the
resurrection?” I’m not sure of the answer that you would have gotten, partly
because we know less about the Sadducees than any other group of Jewish people
at the time that Jesus lived. Most
of what we know about the Sadducees, other than that which is told us in the New
Testament, most of what we know about the Sadducees we know through their
enemies. And it’s always a little shaky to depend upon your enemies describing
your view accurately. So I don’t
know whether they would have said, in answer to the question, “Why do you deny
the resurrection?” would they have said, “Well, we think it’s a newfangled
Persian idea that the exiles brought back from them when they came back to
Israel.” Or maybe they would have
said, “We think it’s based on a particular line of interpretation that comes
from the Pharisees party and we think they’re misunderstanding the Bible.”
I don’t know what they would have said.

Now Jesus tells us in the parallel passage, if you look in the gospel of
Matthew, there’s a parallel to this passage.
Jesus tells us why He thinks they deny the resurrection.
And you know what He says? He
says, “because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.”
Now I don’t need to know anything else about the Sadducees to know this.
I believe Jesus and I believe Jesus knew what He was talking about.
And He says the problem with the Sadducees was they didn’t know their
Bibles and they didn’t believe the power of God and that’s why they did not
embrace the resurrection. But it’s very interesting — Jesus does not respond to
this controversy. You can imagine
the Sadducees — they tell this story and they think this story is so cute.
They go back and they take the law of levirate marriage where if there’s
a man married to a woman and he dies and there are not children to carry on his
name, to pass the land onto to a next generation in his name, then his brother
takes him by law. And they go back
to that law of levirate marriage and they make fun of the doctrine of
resurrection with this question.
“It’s so cute. This woman’s been
married seven times. Who’s she going
to be married to in heaven? Ha, ha,
ha.”

Now Jesus’ response to that question is not to say, “I’m not going to get
involved in this petty theological dispute between the Pharisees’ party and the
Sadducees because after all, doctrine doesn’t matter.
It’s all about how you live.
That’s not what Jesus says. Jesus
says, “Your problem is, you don’t know your Bible!
If you understood the Bible, you wouldn’t be asking a stupid question
like that because your question is ignorant.
It shows Me that you can’t read your Bible.”
And He says, “Let me just give you an example,” and He takes you right to
the book of Exodus to where God announces His name to Moses, and He says,
“Moses, I am the Lord, just to be clear, I am the Lord the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob.” Now, guess who
had been dead a long time when God said that to Moses.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
And Jesus makes His point. God did
not say to Moses, “You know, a long time ago when Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were
alive, I was their God, even though they’re not around anymore.”
He announced Himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
“I am the Lord the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
And Jesus simply says, “Look, you can see from that that there is a life
that is after this life, that there is a resurrection, because God is not the
God of the dead, but the living. All
live to Him.” And so Jesus just
takes them to, He doesn’t even take them to an obvious passage like Daniel 12:2
or other prophetic passages that would have very clearly spoken of the
resurrection. He said, “Let me go
right to the Pentateuch, right to the Torah, right to the five books of the Law,
right to the books of Moses, right to the very beginning, and even there you can
see the doctrine of resurrection is true.”

By the way, when you come up upon people who want to say, “Oh I have a great
admiration for the Christian tradition, I’d like to consider myself a part of
the Christian tradition, but I’m just not sure whether the Bible teaches that
the resurrection is a necessary part of Christianity.
I want to embrace the moral teachings of Christianity, but not
necessarily the miraculous teachings like the resurrection,” understand that
Jesus says the Bible teaches the resurrection.
So who are you going to go with?
Jesus or the people who want to reinterpret the Bible to make some other
kind of religious belief. Jesus says
the Bible teaches resurrection.


Jesus affirms the importance of the doctrine of the
resurrection

But more than that, I want you to understand that Jesus is so emphatic about
this because Jesus believes doctrine matters.
It matters whether you believe the resurrection.
It matters eternally whether you believe the resurrection. And that’s
very clear in the second point that I want to make to you.
And it’s simply this — Jesus defends the resurrection from the
Scriptures. He teaches that the Old
Testament taught the resurrection and He makes it clear to us that the
resurrection matters for the way you live this life and what you believe about
the resurrection also makes clear something very important about the Gospel.
Now how does He do that? Look
with me at the passage again, if you would, picking up in verse 34.
As Jesus responds to them He says, “The sons of this age marry and are
given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and
to the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage for
they cannot die anymore because they are equal to the angels and are sons of God
being sons of the resurrection.”

Now there is a lot in Jesus’ answer that I’m not going to touch on today, but
one thing is crystal clear. He says
in response to the little skeptical, mocking question, “Who’s the woman going to
be married to when she’s in heaven if there’s a resurrection?” He says, “Don’t
you people understand that the age to come is going to be fundamentally
different from this age and that makes your question terribly unprofound because
your question assumes that the age to come is going to be just like this age,
just longer, and the age to come is going to be fundamentally different in ways
that you can’t even comprehend.” So
Jesus just wipes that objection away.
But in the course of it, did you catch what He said?
Did you catch how He described it?
He’s not even just talking about the general resurrection, He’s talking
about the resurrection of believers.
Look at what He says. “Those who are
considered or accounted worthy to attain that age.”
Let me ask you a question.
Who is worthy of heaven? There’s
only one human being, only one human being who was ever worthy of heaven — the
Lord Jesus Christ. But what does
this say? Those who participate in
the resurrection here are called “those who are considered or accounted or
counted worthy.”

How do you get considered worthy, accounted worthy, counted worthy to attain to
the age to come and to the resurrection of the righteous if you’re not
righteous? Only by grace.
Only by the Gospel. Only by
Christ. Only by faith alone in
Christ alone. That’s how you’re
accounted worthy to attain to the age to come and the resurrection of the
righteous because none of us are righteous, no not one!
So even in this answer, Jesus relates the resurrection to the Gospel.
And He says, “If you’re going to enjoy this resurrection you’ve got to be
counted righteous. Since you’re not
righteous yourself, you will need another righteousness in order to be counted
righteous.” And even in this passage
He’s pointing to that imputed righteousness which is ours only in Him.

But in saying this, Jesus is affirming the importance of the doctrine of the
resurrection for His disciples. He
does that repeatedly in the gospels.
And look, this is not lost on Paul.
There’s a reason why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that if there is no
resurrection we are, of all men, most miserable.
Paul’s attitude is not, “Christianity is a great thing.
Whether there’s an afterlife or not really doesn’t matter.
It’s just good to live for other people.”
That’s not Paul’s attitude.
You know there’s a very famous interview many years ago with a priest by a
skeptical religious reporter and that religious reporter said to the priest,
“Look, if you turn out to be wrong and there is no God and there is no
afterlife, won’t you be kind of disappointed that you lived the way that you
lived?” And the priest responded to
him, “No, no, no. Even if there were no God and there were no afterlife, this is
the most blessed way that a human being could live life.”
Understand that the Apostle Paul’s response to that would be to say,
“Rubbish! If there is no God, if
there is no resurrection, if there is no age to come and if there is no
resurrection for the righteous, then we are the most miserable human beings that
ever crawled on this planet!”

We’ve been watching publically, through the judicial system and now through the
legislative process, people continually redefining marriage and
institutionalizing and normalizing through our government and legal system, a
definition of marriage that has never existed in the history of the world.
It’s been fascinating to watch.
And I’ve been reading as much as I could, especially from the side of
those who are in favor of, it’s an oxymoron — I understand it’s contradictions —
same-sex marriage. One of the
arguments that was put forth by a defender went this way — “We live on a rock
that orbits a third-class star in a universe where there is no ultimate truth.
Morality is entirely socially contrived.
Why can’t you people just let us chose who we want to spend our lives
being a partner with?” Now
understand that if that person’s premise is true, that argument is irrefutable
unless you try and do it on the grounds of some sort of social greater good.
You know it’s important for us to do this for perpetuation of the race or
some sort of social greater good.
If his premises are right — there is no God, there is no judgment, there
is no afterlife — therefore, why can’t we just make this up as we go along, just
let people be happy by letting them do what they want to do?
The argument is irrefutable if you grant the premises.
Paul’s response would be, “The premises are wrong!”
See how much it matters that there is a resurrection, that there is a
judgment, that there is a life after this life?
It matters for how we live now.
What was it that Nietzsche said?
“If there is no God, everything is permitted.”

Jesus wants us to understand that doctrine is not just something for theologians
to sit around and smoke pipes and think about.
It impacts the way you live day to day and the doctrine of the
resurrection is absolutely vital for our encouragement because many, many
believers go through this life and face peril after peril, disappointment after
disappointment, and all will be repaid, Jesus says.


Jesus’
Question for the Sadducees

One last thing. After answering
their question, after completely closing their mouths, look at what’s said in
verse 40. “They no longer dared to
ask Him a question.” After they had
gotten to the point where they weren’t going to ask Him a question, He asked
them a question. “You may not dare
to ask Me a question,” Jesus says, “but I’ve got a question for you.
How is it possible that David’s son could also be David’s Lord?”
Now, Pharisees had a high regard for the Bible, and when they came to
passages that didn’t seem to fit or seemed to contradict one another, they knew
that somehow those passages fit together.
It was a matter of figuring out how they complimented one another because
they did not believe that the Bible contradicted itself.
So far, so good. But on this
one, they had no answer. Jewish
people in Jesus’ day thought of ancestors as greater than their descendants, so
how could David’s descendant, his son, the Messiah, be greater than David?
How could it be that David would call his descendant, who is lesser than
him in the scale of things because he’s the ancestor and the Messiah is his
descendant, how could it be that he, David, the greater, would call his son, who
is the lesser, Lord?

Now Jesus asks this question for a reason.
He’s going to raise it again in the gospel of Luke and Luke is going to
raise it again in Acts chapter 3.
Jesus quotes from the most quoted psalm in the Old Testament in the New
Testament. In other words, the New
Testament quotes this psalm, a psalm that we’re going to study soon on Sunday
night, more than any other passage.
And He points there because He wants them to understand something about His
Lordship. He is not simply coming as
a political liberator. He is Lord in
its most comprehensive and exhaustive sense.
He is not just Master, He is God in the flesh.
And you see how Jesus, in this interaction, is pressing them to ultimate
things. He’s pressing them to “Who
am I?” and “Who do you believe that I am?
What is the resurrection?
What is the Gospel?” because what you believe about those things matters
eternally, just as much to us as it did to them.

May God grant us faith. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, because Jesus lives, all who believe in Jesus as He is offered
in the Gospel will also live forever with You, for to live is to fellowship with
You, and it is eternal fellowship with You for which we long, to which we
aspire. This will only come by the
resurrection. Grant, O God, that no
one will go away uncertain about what Jesus has proclaimed in His Word, and
grant that by Your Spirit, all will believe Him and believe Your Word and be
able to sing with faith, “Jesus lives and so shall I.”
We ask this in Jesus’ name.
Amen.

Respond to God’s Word with number 706.

Only because the resurrection is true and only because Jesus has been raised
from the dead can you receive this — grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.