Daily Bible Verses for 3/14/2016

Easter: Our Lord is the God of the Living, Not the Dead – (Matthew 22:23-33) 

Bible Verse
The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, saying: “Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.” “Now there were with us seven brothers. The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother. Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh. Last of all the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had her.

Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.'” And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.

Reading Notes
In these verses we see the love of God and the depravity of man’s heart. The Sadducees were more or less political appointees. They only looked on the first five books of Moses as being authoritative. In addition, they did not believe in the resurrection, nor did they believe in angels and they were sympathetic to the Roman government. They were not asking Jesus a question because they respected Him as a teacher. The purpose of their question was not to actually learn anything from Jesus. Rather, they felt superior to the people and they thought this a clever question, which could confuse Jesus and make Him look bad in front of the people. This question had done the same thing to the Pharisees in the past, so they thought it would work with Jesus as well. The Sadducees only looked as far as the current ruling power, because they themselves wanted power. They did not understand the divinity of Christ, nor the reason for the incarnation. If we consider the Pharisees as the lawyers of the day, then the Sadducees would be the politicians of their day.

However, Jesus not only rebukes them publicly, He also corrects their wrong thinking. By asking Jesus this question they publicly embarrassed themselves because they did not clearly understand scripture. Jesus explains to them that angels are created beings. In other words, they are deathless creatures who do not propagate and therefore have no need of marriage. Jesus then goes on to explain that in our resurrected state the saints will have the same characteristics. In addition, God is showing us that when we die we do not cease to exist. Rather, we are transformed in an instant into our glorified bodies. Bodies made by God, which we will use to spend eternity with Jesus. Therefore God is not the God of the dead; but of the living! And those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ will live forever more in His presence. The Apostle Paul reminds us of this in his first letter to the Corinthian church, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”