King of the Living - Gospel of Matthew - Part 64
King of the Living
Matthew 22:23-33
Immanuel – 3/2/25
It is still Tuesday – the final week before the cross – and the Pharisees and Herodians have failed to undermine Jesus. Rather, it was their position that had been undermined. They retreat from Jesus astonished, defeated, and in hard-hearted unbelief.
Now the Sadducees take their turn. We’ve encountered the Sadducees before; but by way of reminder, they were the religious upper class. To them belonged the lineage of the high priests. Though they were a smaller group than the Pharisees, they were wealthier and more powerful. Indeed, their power came through a careful political calculus of running the temple while also slipping into bed with Rome.
As I’ve said before in this sermon series, the Sadducees and Pharisees did not like each other. The Sadducees didn’t like all the traditions and teaching of the Pharisees. They believed only in Scripture, especially the Torah – the first five books of the Old Testament. And as verse 23 indicates, the Sadducees did not believe that the Scriptures taught a resurrection, while the Pharisees strongly believed in a resurrection.
So as the Pharisees retreated from Jesus, the Sadducees probably watched on with a smug sense of satisfaction. They are the superior class, and they were going to prove it.
Read vs 23-24
It’s a bit ironic that they politely call Jesus, “teacher,” since they were attempting to embarrass Jesus on the basis of His teachings.
The Sadducees reference levirate marriage, a lawful provision from the Torah. I’m not going to get into all the implications of levirate marriage, but I want you to see that it was a merciful provision from God – despite how distasteful it might be to our modern sensibilities.
Here are three things to know about levirate marriage.
1. Levirate marriage (as outlined in Deuteronomy 25) was designed to continue a man’s inheritance and lineage if he died without a son.
2. Levirate marriage was also a merciful provision for women. A sonless widow was one of the most economically vulnerable classes of people in the ancient world. By ensuring that she had a son, God is giving her not just family, but economic security.
3. In Jesus’ day, levirate marriage seems to have been a thing of the past, more honored in theory than in actual practice. And we don’t know if it was ever widely practiced.
Using levirate marriage, the Sadducees venture to take Jesus into the preposterous.
Read vs 25-27
This is called “reductio ad absurdum”: Latin for an argument to absurdity. The Sadducees are looking to make Jesus’ teaching about the resurrection look ridiculous: “A woman with seven husbands in heaven? It’s laughable.” Seems to me that this kind of argument is one that the Sadducees liked to bring up with one another, to mock all those who foolishly believed in the resurrection.
But absurdities aside, their question does touch on an issue that many people wrestle with. In fact, there was a time when I sincerely asked a very similar question. My mom died when I was three. A few years later my dad remarried. When we are all in heaven, who will be the wife of my father? Or will he have two wives?
The Sadducees were looking to disprove the resurrection, and with an absurd situation, make Jesus look absurd. My question was one of boyish curiosity and naivety, scratched from the scars of loss. You can imagine the temple crowd, a mixture of motivations and curiosities, listening intently for how Jesus would answer.
Read vs 29
Can’t you just hear the collective humph from the Sadducees after Jesus drops three truth bombs on them?
1. They are wrong – the assumption behind their question is entirely false.
2. The do not know the Scriptures – though they pride themselves in the knowledge of the unfiltered Scriptures, and not all the religious traditions and teachings of the elders.
3. The do not know the power of God – they are the chief priests, the high priest is one of them, they run the temple, if anyone knows the power of God, it is them!
Jesus’ indictment of the Sadducees is not just for them. Anyone can rip Bible verses out of context and use them to fit their preconceived positions.
· “Judge not, lest you be judged,” (Matthew 7:1) used to say that you cannot make judgments about any person for any reason.
· “I have plans to prosper you and not to harm you,” (Jeremaih 29:11-13) used to say that God is planning for you to have health, wealth, and happiness in this life.
· “Without vision the people perish,” (Proverbs 29:18 KJV) used to make vision statements and set goals.
These are all examples of misused and misapplied passages, which betray an ignorance of Scripture. Using the Bible out of context runs in contradiction to the knowledge and the power of God. Indeed, did not Satan quote Scripture – out of context – to tempt Jesus into sin?
Rather, the power of God is found through seeking the context of Scripture and understanding what it is teaching. The power of God is available to students of the Bible; students who don’t just want to know what the Bible says, but want to know the God of the Bible, the living Word. Indeed, these students – or disciples – find a union with Christ so powerful that even death cannot defeat it!
And it is on the basis of that union that Christ begins to undercut the Sadducees argument.
Read vs 30
The Sadducees propose an absurd situation, propagated by levirate marriage, where a woman in heaven must choose between seven husbands. But Jesus exposes an absurdity in their scenario: there will not be multiple husbands because there is no marriage in heaven.
This can be a difficult teaching for those who are happily married. The love that you have between you, the life you have built together, the family you have made, the struggles you have overcome; then, suddenly, in heaven that marriage is dissolved? That can be pretty hard to hear.
And instead of being given in marriage, we will be like the angels in heaven. What in the world does that mean? How will we be like the angels?
One of the things it means, which we can easily infer from this passage, is the fundamental basis of levirate marriage is no longer needed in heaven. Meaning, there will no longer be a need to produce children. God placed procreation within the confines of marriage. On earth, reproduction is out of place outside of marriage. In heaven, there will be no birth, no physical growth, and no death; because we shall be eternal – like angels. Thus, in heaven, with no need for procreation, it is marriage that will be out of place.
As R.T. France writes,
“Those who have found some of the deepest joys of earthly life in the special bond of a married relationship may be dismayed to hear that [marriage] must be left behind. But note that what Jesus declares to be inappropriate in heaven is marriage, not love. So perhaps heavenly relationships are not something less than marriage, but something more. He does not say that the love between those who have been married on earth will vanish, but rather implies that it will be broadened so that no one is excluded. Our problem is that we, like the Sadducees, have only this life’s experience by which to measure what is to come. We do not know what it is like to be like angels in heaven.”1
The Sadducees could only see earthly things, and believed only in what they experienced. And in so doing, they missed the power of God, which extends far beyond our experiences, reaching to the things that are not seen.
Only with the eyes of faith can we who are bound to earth reach into eternity.
We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
-2 Corinthians 4:18
And marriage is transient. The fundamental assumption of the Sadducees was wrong.
Read vs 31-32
Unshakable Life in Christ
There are mountains of glory and theology beneath Jesus’ words. We see only the tiniest pinnacle in this passage.
The Sadducees regarded themselves to be faithful children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These were their patriarchs, the progenitors of their religion, the ones with whom God established His covenant. Indeed, God did establish His covenant with Abraham, confirming it also with Isaac and Jacob.
It was a covenant of promise.
“I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” -Genesis 12:2-3
God promised to bless them. Even more, He promised to bless all the families of the earth through them. And if death were to terminate God’s promise, would that not mean that death overcame God’s promise – that death overcame God? And is God so weak that death would overcome Him?!
Never! God’s promise of blessing is so powerful, His covenant so fixed, that death cannot terminate it. And where morality takes our bodies, God gives life beyond death so that nothing will separate us from His love, that nothing would thwart the purposes of His promise. Even today lives Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the blessed presence of the Father; because God is the God of the living and not the dead!
And Jesus does not speak these words of promise about the patriarchs of Judaism alone. This is for all who put their faith in Jesus, trusting Him for eternal life. As Jesus said,
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
-John 11:25-26
Do you see how believing Jesus’ word or His promise is linked to living beyond death? Because when you believe in Jesus, enough to trust that He can defeat your death, it also means that you believe He has defeated His own death. It means you believe He is the Son of God who lived a perfect life then died in the place you deserved – yet He lives! To believe in Jesus is to turn away from your old ways of destructive living, and trust that following Him is a life far, far better!
To believe in Jesus is to believe that He loved you and gave Himself for you; and so it is a joy for you to love Him and give yourself to Him. That is language from Galatians 2:20. And I wonder if you hear how similar it sounds to the language of marriage; where we are His and He is ours. Indeed, are not we – the church – the Bride of Christ.
In Ephesians 5, Paul writes how the union between a husband and wife is a symbol for the union between Christ and the church. The most intimate union between two humans, on earth, is a marriage between husband and wife. And as intimate as that union is, it is a shadow of our union to Christ. Indeed, this miracle happens the moment we place our faith in Jesus: the Father places the Spirit of Jesus within our spirits, so that we are in Him and He is in us. It is what the Puritans called a mystical union.
And it is just as Jesus promised.
“Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” -John 14:19-20
There may be no marriage in heaven, but there is a union far greater: the union between Christ and His people – He in us and we in Him. If marriage is a symbol of Christ and the church, as Paul writes to the Ephesians, then when the consummation of all things comes upon us, what need will there be for the symbols? We will have the substance! Like the angels are now, we will be face-to-face with the Living God. We will see Jesus, and glorious joy will so flood our hearts that sin will be forever washed from it.
But I speak of the future consummation, when all things are completed in heaven. Know this today, believers in Jesus, the union between Christ and His Bride has already occurred. The moment He saved your soul was the moment you were united to Christ, now and forever.
This past week I was reading the Puritan, John Flavel. It was as if someone was directing me to read this particular book, knowing what I would preach on today. Listen to the words of Flavel, which I just so happened to stumble upon.
The mystical union is an unbreakable union. There is an everlasting bond between Christ and the believer. It is beyond all other unions in the world: death dissolves the dear union between husband and wife, friend and friend, and even between soul and body, but not between Christ and the soul. The bands of this union will never rot in the grave. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” asks the Apostle. He bids defiance to all His enemies, and triumphs in the firmness of His union over all hazards that seem to threaten it.2
There is no “til death do us part,” in our union with Jesus. There is no separation. The band of our union will never rot in the grave (as Flavel says)!
We’ve thought of the image of the church as the Bride of Christ. Let us think of another: the church as the Body of Christ.
For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of His body. -Ephesians 5:29-30
As members of the body of Christ, we are part of His fullness, His completeness. If a finger was severed from your hand, so long as you lacked that finger you would be less than whole, incomplete. Similarly, Christ is incomplete without all the members of His body. And can Jesus – the Son of God, the King of kings, the Alpha and Omega – can He be made to be incomplete?
Never! No one can snatch Jesus’ own from His hand (John 10:27)! Therefore, if by faith you have been united to Christ, you cannot be separated from Him – not by sword, not by Satan, not by death.
Jesus is not the God of the dead, He is the God of the living!
Listen to this final point on our unshakable lives in Christ.
God is life. It is impossible for Him to die. When Jesus rose from the grave, He killed our mortal death. Union to Him is to receive His death defeating, immortal life. Therefore, it is as impossible for you to die as it is for Christ to die.
Even if the sun were to flicker into darkness, even if the universe were to expand into heat death, God will remain. Time takes nothing from Him, nor will it take us. We are His and He is ours, from the moment of salvation to that glorious consummation, to a billion times ten billion years from now! There shall be no end in the presence of our God – life eternal!
For this promise making God is the God of the living and not the dead. He shall not lose His Bride! He shall not have members of His body severed from Him! He shall be whole, and we who have been unified to Him are a part of that mystical, everlasting wholeness!
Read vs 33
The crowds are not only astonished as Jesus’ teaching, but in the context of this passage, they are astonished at how Jesus decisively proved the Sadducees position to be a false one. It is clear, the Sadducees attempt to make Jesus look absurd has failed. At this moment the tide of opinion is in Jesus’ favor: The crowds are on His side.
For many in that crowd, it was a fickle allegiance to Jesus. I pray for you that there is nothing fickle about your understanding of Jesus. We are dealing with matters of eternity: eternal life and eternal death. The most important thing about you is whether or not you have been united to Jesus, whether or not you trust in His promises.
And if you have been united to Jesus, how should you live in light of eternity? You will not die, so what have you to fear? Tribulation? Distress? Persecution? Famine? Nakedness? Danger? Sword? Death? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors!
So proclaim the gospel and fear no man! Live courageously for Jesus without shame! Do not cower under the shadow of death, for the God is with you, so who can be against you!
Read Romans 8:31-39
God is the God of the living, and not the dead. Freely live today, fearlessly, in Him!
1France, R.T. (2007). The Gospel of Matthew. Pg 839. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
2Flavel, J. (Reprinted 2022). All Things Made New. Pg 103. East Peoria, IL: Versa Press, Inc.
