Word Live: Now And For Ever
Pray for those close to you who are wrestling with sickness. Ask Jesus to touch them and give them hope.
Bible passage
Mark 12:18–27
Marriage at the resurrection
18 Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 19 ‘Teacher,’ they said, ‘Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. 21 The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. 22 In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. 23 At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?’
24 Jesus replied, ‘Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 26 Now about the dead rising – have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!’
Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Explore
Again, the Sadducees try to catch Jesus out with a divisive question. If, as the Sadducees believed, there is no resurrection from the dead, then Jesus could not have risen. And if Jesus did not rise from the dead then death, sickness and sin still have power over us. As Paul says so clearly in 1 Corinthians 15:12–19, our faith is futile if the dead are not raised.
In the hustle and bustle of our twenty-first-century lives, it is easy to forget that this life is not the main deal: it is only a preparation. Our bodies may be decaying, we may be fighting sickness, but we are made to live for ever! Let’s lift our eyes off our present struggles and remind ourselves that one day we will be with Christ in glory!
From the hints Jesus gives in this passage, we can only guess at the details of what our eternal existence will be like. As far as marrying is concerned, we will be ‘like the angels’ (v 25), but the Bible doesn’t give us a very clear idea of what this means! What we do know for certain is that both they and we will spend eternity worshipping the Lamb who was slain and who was raised to life (Revelation 5:11–13).
Author
Alison Allen
Respond
‘Lord, thank you that you were with me in the past, you are with me in the here and now, and one day I will be with you for ever.’
Deeper Bible study
‘Praise be to … God … In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’.1
The resurrection is central to the Christian faith: it is our ‘living hope’. Yet there are many today who dismiss it as preposterous. This opposition is not new. The Sadducees were a conservative set of Jews who held only to the first five books of the Old Testament – the Law.2 They did not believe in the resurrection of the dead (v 18) and sought to discredit Jesus and his teachings by showing the doctrine of resurrection to be incompatible with the Law. By using an exaggerated example of levirate marriage, they tried to make belief in the resurrection seem absurd (vs 19–23):3 which of the seven husbands would remain the woman’s true husband at the resurrection?
Jesus makes it clear that the Sadducees’ doctrine is in error, not his (vs 24–27). First, they ‘do not know the Scriptures’ (v 24). The idea of the resurrection was present in the wider Old Testament.4 Jesus used even a portion of the Law5 to refer to the resurrection (v 26): years after the deaths of the patriarchs, God said to Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’. He remains their God; and ‘He is not the God of the dead, but of the living’ (v 27).
Second, the Sadducees are in error because they do not have faith to believe that God has the power to raise the dead. For those of us already convinced that God can raise the dead, perhaps we have the opposite problem: perhaps we are so used to the doctrine of the resurrection that we have overlooked how mighty was the power that God needed to exert in order to overcome sin and death in raising Christ – and one day us – from the dead.
Meditate on Ephesians 1:18–20. Praise God for his resurrection power and the living hope it brings. Where else do you need that power at work today?
11 Pet 1:3 2 Cole, 1995, p264 3Deut 25:5–10; Hendriksen, 1975, p486 4 Eg Dan 12:2; Job 19:25,26 5Exod 3:6
Author
Fiona Silley
