Turn if you would in your scriptures to Matthew 22 verse 23. 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.

And 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 God of Isaac 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 but when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees they gathered together. Let's pray for them. Preaching this morning. Our glorious father we praise you this morning for the bread of life that you give to us through your word. The Lord as we gather together to hear from it, I pray that your words be preached today.

O Lord that you would give anointing upon the teacher. Lord that your word would Go forth and do mighty works to give glory to your Son. Amen. Our text this morning, I want to arrange it as we go through the teaching under seven headings as you've got them there in your outlines. First of all, the adversaries are identified in verse 23.

Secondly, the attack question is presented by the Sadducees. Thirdly, the flaw in their thinking is exposed. Fourthly, the design of heaven is explained by the Lord Jesus. And then fifthly, the resurrection is proved from the Pentateuch. And then number six, the multitudes are astonished.

And then lastly, the back story is revealed in verse 34. So our text here this morning is of enormous importance because it's the first place in the Synoptic Gospels where the most pivotal word in the entire Bible is mentioned. And It's a word that explains the center of all of history. It explains what all of history was leading up to. And that word is resurrection.

In verse 23, the first time that the word resurrection is used in the synoptic gospels, it uses. Of course, Lord Jesus has already said the word resurrection when he raised Lazarus from the dead. In John chapter 11 he said, I am the resurrection and the life he who believes in me will have everlasting life. And so here we encounter this word resurrection, which we find the Lord Jesus Christ in the last week of his life. It's Tuesday, in three days he'll be dead, and then he'll rise from the dead.

And so in this last very pivotal moment seen in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, this idea of resurrection is brought to us. And it's so important for us to understand the resurrection and the freedom of it, the power of it, the blessing of it. What lies under this word is so important to us. This is why the apostle Paul said in Philippians chapter 3 that it was for him to know the power of the resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead, not that I have already attained or am already perfected, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. And what we have been laid hold of for is for a demonstration of the power of the resurrection.

And this is why The Lord Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. And so here on the power of the resurrection, Satan's chains were broken, the power of death was destroyed, and his empire crumbled here at his resurrection. So when this word is brought up, we have to understand its significance in all of Scripture. All of Scripture is driving toward this moment of the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And while in just a few days the Lord Jesus will hang on a cross at Calvary, he demonstrates his love, but at his resurrection he demonstrates his power and the help that he has for his people. And so here in the last days of his earthly ministry, he is still in the temple. It's Tuesday on Holy Week, And he's going to spend from this, actually from chapter 19, all the way to 24 verse 1 in the temple instructing. And he's dealing with various questions. And it's a fascinating scene because the Lord Jesus has just cleared the temple.

He made it look like a hurricane had just gone through it. This gigantic piece of real estate that was the temple court that the Lord Jesus had just devastated, turning over the tables, you know, stopping the traffic and not allowing any movement in the temple. After that, you would think that he would be incarcerated. They would take his body and throw him in the slammer, but they don't dare do it. Luke 20 tells us, they feared the multitudes, for they took him to be a prophet.

And so they are. Instead of taking him to prison, The leaders, they continue to converse with him as if nothing had happened. It's an astonishing moment, really, when you think about it. These murderous and perverse hearts are raging, they're plotting to put him into death, and yet they're having these genteel, ironic conversations with him. It's absolute abject hypocrisy, fear of man, and rage all in one.

But, you know, it is all about the fear of man. And the issues that are being brought to the Lord Jesus during this time in the temple are mostly issues of authority. In the previous section, the authority of Caesar was surfaced. Whose authority will man live by? And of course the answer is obvious.

Given to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God. It's really quite simple. And now there is another question of authority. This is the authority of the rationalists, the authority of the rationalistic mind, the Sadducees, those who don't believe in heaven, they don't believe in angels, they don't believe in the supernatural, they accept the Pentateuch and that's it. And so It's a question of authority as well that's being brought up here.

Whose authority will determine what will be believed about the resurrection? And so all of the questions are really about authority. And then in the next section, It's the same issue in the disclosure of the greatest commandment. And of course what the Lord Jesus says is there is a resurrection, there are angels, and this is exactly what it looks like. And What's fascinating about this passage is that the Lord Jesus Christ takes the Sadducees back to a passage of Scripture in the Pentateuch, which they accepted.

And he proves his point by using a verb tense in that text to disprove their argument. And so this passage should just help us to ponder just how sufficient is Scripture? Which parts are sufficient? How carefully should I understand Scripture? How much can you trust it?

How often should you consult it? Do the verb tenses matter in Scripture? How reliable is it really? How deep should you understand this book? How much should you rely upon it?

How much of your weight should you rest? Your whole life even on a jot or a tittle of Scripture for which Jesus said They will not pass away until heaven and earth pass away. So it's a passage of Scripture that brings together so many themes, the resurrection, marriage, the sufficiency and the perfect authority of Scripture. And then also it's such an exposure of hypocrisy. And it's so helpful again to see the Lord Jesus do what He always does, is He, when asked a question, He does what we ought to learn how to do so much better, And that is to go back to Scripture.

When a question is on the table, that this book is opened and it's consulted. It's so easy just to go from our memory and our feelings, our thoughts. Well, I think this. The Lord Jesus says, I say nothing unless I hear my Father saying it. And so he goes back to his Father and he quotes what was written.

And so here in this attempt to entangle Jesus with a dishonest question, the perfect, sufficient scripture is used when dealing with these skeptics and a glimpse of eternal life and our great hope that is set before us in the resurrection. So let's now just sort of engage in the text here. First of all, the adversaries are identified in verse 23, on the same day the Sadducees, who say there's no resurrection, came to him and asked him. So who were the Sadducees? Well, first of all, they were the opponents of the Pharisees.

But on this occasion, they were united. They were united in their hatred of Jesus Christ. It's always fascinating to see what hatred does. It will unite you with the most interesting people, and that's what was happening here. But the key difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees is that the Sadducees rejected the supernatural.

They did not believe that there was any resurrection. And they did not believe in a final resurrection or a reward. They were the aristocrats, they were the elite, They were at the top of the social pyramid. They were the richest of the high priestly families. They had mixed religion and finance together.

They were the ones that were in charge of the whole money changing operation and the cash flow that was going on in the temple that the Lord Jesus Christ had just dismantled with his own bare hands and a whip. And they were the liberals, they were the anti-supernaturalists. And strangely enough, they only embraced the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And so that was their whole focus. They rejected the prophets.

They rejected the poetry and the history. They were a little bit like Thomas Jefferson. You're familiar with the Jefferson Bible. He took out his scissors, and he took the Gospels, and he cut out the parts that were supernaturalistic, and the parts that he didn't like. He took out particular commands that he didn't appreciate that would rend crosswise against his precious life.

And they were like that. They were sort of the pickers and the choosers. They were like the modern day religious people who believe the red letters are authoritative. And Somehow the red letters are somehow the most special parts of the Bible, when in fact all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. They were the people that rejected that whole idea.

Every word of scripture is a word of Christ. Every word of scripture from Genesis to Revelation is a red letter of Jesus Christ. He wrote it. He is the Word. He breathed the Word.

And so it is a word of Christ. They're like those people who say in modern times, the Old Testament is irrelevant today. That's exactly what the Sadducees had done. They'd said, well, the prophets don't have anything to do with me. It's a very common principle among the apostate to reject a part of Scripture and say that it doesn't apply to them.

So the Pharisees were the big, tine pickers and choosers of Scripture and they isolated what was authoritative in their life to one single section of Scripture. And in that section of Scripture, there isn't quite as much about the resurrection as there is in other places in Scripture, although there are many types of the resurrection in the Pentateuch, at the same time, the Lord Jesus Christ is going to take them to a place that will strike a deathblow to their proposition. And so then the attack question is presented. I mean, this was an attack question. This was not an honest question at all in verses 24 to 28.

And I want to just give five observations about this question. And the first is, this was a question that was born out of hypocrisy. It was sanctimoniously presented. They called him teacher. I mean, this was nothing but a lie.

They did not regard him as their teacher. They wanted to kill him, and yet they called him teacher. And in Luke 20 verse 20, we read that they actually sent spies who pretended to be righteous to ask him these questions. And so here are these spies. Now, so it was a, it was born out of hypocrisy.

It was not, it was not a genuine question. It was a question that was meant to trap, to belittle. And then secondly, it was a ridiculously extreme example that they, that they gave. It was, it was, it was, It was really an outrageously hypothetical, completely fabricated, summarily impossible situation. Has it ever happened in history like this?

And this is what the wicked try to do. They want to bring an edge case. They want to bring something that's really outside of the range of normal life and present that as sort of the core argument against the position. And this is what the wicked are always doing. They don't deal with reality.

They deal with something over here that's sort of on the edge of reality. That may happen at some time, but it doesn't deal with normal, it doesn't deal with your life. It doesn't deal with your heart and things like that. And as the wicked desire to distract all judgment from them, They pick a point out in the outer reaches of rationality. So they're bringing kind of an edge case because their hearts are hard.

And, You know, their example is seven men marry a woman and not a single one of them bears children with that woman. You know, I mean, it would have made a great modern movie, One Bride for Seven Brothers. That's what it was. And it was a ridiculously extreme example. Thirdly, it was meant to refute the doctrine of the resurrection and heaven.

And they want to make the point that if a woman married seven brothers, then she would be a polygamist and therefore the idea of heaven is ridiculous and contradictory to the Pentateuch. They want to make the case that this scenario of getting to heaven and having all these spouses, totally contradict, it makes the resurrection ridiculous. They want to make the resurrection look ridiculous. That's what they're doing. They want to refute the whole idea of the resurrection.

And you can see how pivotal this is, because the resurrection is absolutely the center of history. It's the point to which everything is being driven. And so they're choosing, actually, a very, very good target. They're choosing the very best target. And with the situation that they've cooked up, you picture yourself getting into heaven and there are your spouses.

Which one do you hug? That's really their proposition. But in reality, they hate the Word of God. They hate the idea that there will be a resurrection and a judgment. That's what they hate.

And so they take this ridiculous story which is really diversionary in order to refute the fact that they will be held accountable on a day of resurrection. And there will be either a resurrection to life or a resurrection to eternal damnation and the Pharisees understand this or the Sadducees understand this and you know there was an even more ridiculous story that was in the culture in the in the apocryphal writing Tobit in Tobit 3.3.8 there's a story of during the intertestinal period of a woman who marries seven men, and each one of them is strangled by a demon on their wedding night. So it's just as ridiculous as that. And then fourthly, it was an example from leverant marriage. It was an example from leverant marriage.

Now, leverant marriage, the term leverant comes from levir, meaning a husband's brother. And leverant marriage is assumed in Genesis chapter 38 in this whole scene with Onan where he spilled his seed. The sin of Onan was that he refused to perpetuate his brother's name, and his punishment was extremely harsh. God actually killed him for destroying the inheritance of his brother out of his own selfishness. And a lever of marriage is pictured in the Book of Ruth, where Ruth marries Boaz in a lever of marriage.

And, you know, God looks with disfavor of the destroying of inheritance. Because inheritance is a picture of heaven. That's why. And so lever of marriage was meant to protect the name of a brother who died without children and to guarantee that he would have heirs, to keep the property in the family, to give the widow resources. And so, if a man died childless, his wife would marry a brother and have children in his name.

Now the whole principle of lever at marriage is really important here because it is a principle of resurrection. But it's many other things. It's a law that protects women and provides a home for a widow, you know, in a family. It's a law of kindness for a dead husband without a son. It's a law that exalts marriage and childbearing and the importance of having godly seed.

It's a very pro-family, pro-child kind of a law. It's a principle of family names and how bad it is when people don't care about their names. It's a principle of inheritance that keeps the inheritance in the family. It also exposes sin in a brother who pursues his own desire above his generational responsibilities. And it's a principle of love, because you are your brother's keeper, and brothers should look out for one another.

So it's a principle that speaks of the love of God to preserve inheritance. The gospel is in the whole lever it marriage proposition, because it's about preservation of inheritance. And it's a it's a type of inheritance that God is reserving in heaven for you. It is that the Lord Jesus said, behold, I go and prepare a place for you. And there in heaven is inheritance.

So, lever of marriage is an important principle. And it is a principle of resurrection. And in fact, the Sadducees are quoting that passage of Scripture in Deuteronomy 25 verse 5 and 6. They actually quote Deuteronomy which is the primary text that explains this whole matter of lever of marriage. In Deuteronomy chapter 25 verse 6, we read, And it shall be that the firstborn son, which she bears, will succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out in Israel two words to understand blotted out this is about being blotted out or not being blotted out secondly he says it that the son which she bears will succeed, that's a really important word, will succeed to the name of his brother.

Now the word succeed actually means to raise up. It's the same word, aniste mi, which is a cognate verb for anastasis, which means resurrection. So even embedded in the whole principle of lever marriage is the whole idea of resurrection, that there will be someone who will succeed, who will be raised up. It's a principle of resurrection. And so that's why the that's why the Sadducees use this strange situation about lever at marriage.

And how why they quoted Deuteronomy chapter 25 because they hate resurrection, they hate inheritance, but truly they hate the judgment of God. And they cannot conceive of a God who would both damn and then also bring sons and daughters and give them an inheritance. So it was a trap as well, number five. It was not only an example of leverant marriage, number five, it was a trap. And in this trap, the Lord Jesus has to choose sides.

And he is either going to validate polygamy, or He's going to deny the afterlife. He's either going to have a Muslim vision of heaven where men have multiple wives and they can do whatever they want. That's the Muslim vision of heaven. Or deny that there is an afterlife, and the Lord Jesus cannot do either. And so these are what make up this whole attack question.

It was born out of hypocrisy, it was a ridiculously extreme example, It was meant to refute the doctrine of resurrection in heaven. It was an example of lever of marriage and it was a trap. And it was a very significant trap for very significant issues. Because if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen, as 1 Corinthians 15.13 says. So they chose their subject matter well.

They were going after a very significant issue. They weren't just talking about, you know, seven, you know, seven brothers and one wife in heaven. Then the flaw in their thinking is exposed in verse 29. Jesus answered and said to them, You are mistaken, not knowing the scriptures or the power of God. So the Lord Jesus here is identifying the root cause of their wrong thinking.

They were mistaken and Jesus of course gives two reasons they were mistaken and which is the root of all mistakes. There are two flaws that they had. One was not knowing the Scriptures and not knowing the power of God. But in their being mistaken, the Lord uses a word which has to do with being led astray, being duped, being lost. They were in sort of a lost state in their whole thinking.

But it was related to these two flaws, not knowing the scriptures or the power of God. Now, let me just pause for a minute and just rest on this thought. This is really the heart of every error. It can be traced to one of these two problems, not knowing the Scriptures or not knowing the power of God. And this really is the great error of rationalism, is that it rejects the Scriptures and it rejects the power of God.

And what's so tragic about this condition is that the Lord has given his word as bread and that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Our family was reading in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 5 where Paul was talking to the Corinthian church and he talks about how they were enriched by the Word of God. They were being saturated by an enriching, life-giving, joy-producing, you know, help from the Word of God. And so here, this rationalism, it's such a deprivation. It deprives you from the enrichment, from the food.

It deprives you from what your soul needs. And so it's a very tragic situation. And this kind of rationalism that does not know the Scriptures and does not know the power of God is such a tragic thing. And you can sympathize with the condition that these men would have been in. You know, maybe they're a little bit like John Lennon, imagine there's no heaven.

Well, you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. That was the essence of their whole inner life. So, they were mistaken, and they did not know the Scriptures. Now, they had heard the Scriptures, but they didn't understand the Scriptures. And, You know, to not know and understand, it means that you are adrift in this life, and that you don't know where you're going, and you're groping, and you're leaning on an unworkable system of your own invention, or of the invention of someone else who is in this surrounding culture who is trying to beam into your soul all kinds of unworkable propositions.

But God gives his Word so that we would not be adrift. We would know how to think about everything. And this really is the love of God. To have a people who are not do's. Without the Word of God, you cannot be saved.

Without the Word of God, you can't live right. You can't even feel right unless you have the Word of God in your soul, feeding you, teaching you the way in which you should go, keeping you from being conformed to this world, but your mind being transformed. And this is the issue on the table. You cannot know who you are. You cannot untangle your thoughts.

You can't understand your feelings unless you understand the Scriptures. And so this was the problem that they had. Now of course they had rejected all the Scriptures that spoke of the resurrection, like in Job chapter 19 where Job says, After my skin is destroyed, this I know that in my flesh I shall see God. They had rejected the idea of resurrection in Isaiah chapter 26 verse 19 which says, Your dead shall live, Together with My dead body they shall rise, awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust. For your dew is like the dew of herbs, and the earth shall be cast, and the earth shall cast out the dead." They rejected Ezekiel 37 and the whole picture of the Valley of the Dry Bones.

They had rejected Daniel 12, too, which speaks of the resurrection of those who love God from their heart. And they had set aside, they had set all these things aside and accepted only the Pentateuch. And so the Lord is saying that the flaw in their thinking is that they do not know the scriptures. That's their flaw. Now, you know, you might think also that there's a lesson in apologetics here.

If you want to see how the Lord Jesus Christ deals with his opponents and proves his doctrines, in this case the doctrine of the resurrection. See how Jesus does it. And he doesn't answer them according to their ridiculous folly. He answers them with the Scriptures. He answers them with the Scriptures.

And it's not always pleasing when you do that. I was on an airplane this last week from Johannesburg to Dakar, Senegal, and I was sitting next to a woman. She was a vegan, a radical worshiper of the earth. It was very disturbing to her when I had beef. It was just one of the hardest.

She was so upset, you know, that something so horrible, something so murderous would be happening in her very presence. But we talked about all kinds of issues of the Bible. And I'll never forget, She said, she brought up several issues and I said, well, could we talk about this one? And she said, well, the all you'll, you're just going to go back to that book you keep pointing to. You're just going to keep going back to that book and she's pointing to that book.

Well that's what Christians do. They go back to the book. They bring the Word of God. That is, I think, one of the most important principles of apologetics. If you want to seek and save the lost, give them the bread of life.

Read the scriptures to them. Forget all your arguments forget all your humanistic gymnastics the Word of God is powerful it's more powerful than a two-edged sword and so we ought we ought to trust it and that's what the Lord Jesus Christ does he goes back and he he quotes the scriptures that he has written himself. And in doing so, he's defending something so great. He's defending the resurrection. And It's so important that he does defend it, because if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen.

That is the issue on the table. And then they also do not know the power of God. That's the second problem. And specifically, they do not know the power of God to raise the dead. They don't believe that God is that powerful.

And the truth is that unless you know the power of God, you can never be happy. Unless your vision of God is the vision from the Bible, then how can you know that He will never leave you or forsake you? How can you know that nothing can stay his hand? How can you know that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose? How can you know that he is sovereign over all the weather?

How can you know that even the inanimate objects he controls by his hand, how can you know that he even has the King's heart like a water course in his hand, That he is in control of every leaf that falls, of every synapse of every brain on the planet. How can you know it unless you believe in the power of God? Well, the Sadducees did not believe in the power of God. They did not see Him working in the world. They were on their own, in their own self-made, prayerless world where all they needed was themselves.

They were the power of the universe. And there's nothing more tragic than to be in that place, to be all alone in the universe, you yourself as the prime determining factor of everything. Oh yes, it's all about your skills. Oh yes, it's all about your personality. Yes, it's all about your knowledge.

Yes, it's all about that you had a father. Yes, it's all about who your friends are. Yes, it's all about all these external things. If only I had this. If only I had that.

If only I could get better than that, better at that, then everything would be well. No, not at all. It is well because God is almighty, because God is sovereign. And this is why the Apostles said with such boldness, it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. This is the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.

The Lord Jesus Christ is attacking them with his own might and his power. And he's saying, No, no, you do not know the power of God. And of course, they could not accept the power of God regarding resurrection. And they had rejected this idea because they did not believe that God was almighty. This really is the source of so many of our sorrows and our insecurities that we think that we are the measure of all things.

And we don't trust that God is in control. We don't trust that God is the one who has brought everything to us for His own glory. God is in control. You know it's interesting, I was reflecting on this yesterday, that we have so many people sick. I think probably that there must be 50 or 75 people home today because they're sick.

And there's a, you know, one of the illnesses that is around is whooping cough. Well, the thing about whooping cough is that you can have it for two or three weeks and not know it and give it to everybody. Now, there are lots of diseases like that, That you don't know you have it, and so you are spreading it even though you have no symptoms. And of course this is from the fall, but this is also the providence of God. That you wouldn't know who you are infecting, You just don't know.

God is wise. God is sovereign. He is absolutely in control of the spread of every disease and every plague that there is. God is in control of that. That's not to say that we don't take measures and we don't consider the way that God has wired the world and take note of that and act accordingly.

But the truth is God has made a world in which you do not know where you're going or what you're doing. You don't know how you're affecting people, but God knows and He is sovereign. And I pray that you do know the power of God. When young people come to me and they say, what should I do to prepare myself to be married? Absolutely, the first thing that comes to my mind is you must know God.

You must know that God is sovereign. How can you have happy single years unless you know that God is sovereign? How can once you're married have happy years Unless you know that God is sovereign, that nothing is hidden from His sight, that He was the one that brought you together in marriage. He did it by His sovereign will. How can you be happy when you have a family and things are going awry, and you say, where did I get this family?

Well, I got it because God gave it to me. God gave me that son. God gave me that daughter. God gave me that father. He did it for a purpose.

He did it because He's glorifying Himself. He did it because He's almighty. He did it because Nothing can stay his hand. He did it because he will sum up all things in Christ, including the difficulty that you're in now. This is the sovereignty of God.

And it's so important that we understand it. I pray as a church, especially, so especially, that our young people understand how sovereign God is, how sufficient His Word is, and how good He is. So here we have the design of heaven is now explained. He has explained the flaw in their thinking. They are misled, they are adrift because they do not know the scriptures and they do not know the power of God.

And then the Lord in his kindness, he explains the whole design of it in verse 30. He says to them, for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of God in heaven. I'm astonished at this response. These men want to kill him. These men are trying to destroy What is the most important moment in history?

The resurrection. And in their duplicity, He answers them with mercy, it seems to me. Psalm 111 verse 4 says, the Lord is gracious and full of compassion. He even seems to speak with mercy and compassion to these men. And he tells them about what it's like in the resurrection.

In verse 30 he says, For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given a marriage. So there's no marriage in the resurrection. And this is just a disclosure of what we already know from Ephesians chapter 5, 22 to 33, that marriage was intended by God to be a picture of Christ's love for the Church. That's the purpose of marriage. That's the earthly purpose of marriage.

When a husband loves his wife, well, it speaks of Christ's love for the Church. When he's patient with her and he has the mercy of Christ and he has the head as Christ is, he declares Christ's love for the church. And a wife, she declares the obedience of the church by playing the role of the church. She submits to her husband and she respects her husband, as every child of God ought to do. So earthly marriage is first of all it's a picture but second of all it's temporary.

It's designed to provide a number of things on the earth. One the most important thing that marriage is designed to do is to present a picture of love to the world, to keep love alive in the world, to keep sacrifice and nourishment and cherishing and self-sacrifice, And even death for a spouse alive in the world, that it's right for men to be like that toward their wives. They're not domineering, they're not hateful, but they are like Christ. If you want to define Patriarchy, Christ defines it perfectly. His love for the church shows you what it looks like.

But marriage is also temporary because it is meant to give God what he desires, godly offspring. So you have children, marriage is designed for children, it's designed for companionship, it's designed for intimacy and an act of intimacy that speaks of the oneness of Christ with his people, amazingly. It's made so that a husband and wife would take dominion, that they would collect up their energies and their desires and passions together, and they would take dominion. So it's designed for all these things on the earth. Marriage is designed for the earth.

It's not designed for heaven. Marriage is a picture of heavenly love. It's a type. So when the antitype comes, the type is no longer necessary. And so marriage is not necessary in heaven.

And there's no death in heaven either. And there are no children being born in heaven either. There's no need for procreation in heaven, in the same way that there's no death in heaven. There's obviously no jealousy in heaven. And so here earthly marriage has a particular design.

Now, Why is it? Why is it the Lord would take what is the most desired and? Is the most pleasurable relationship in the world? Known to man, Why would he take that and make it a picture of heaven? And here's why.

You can drive a stake deep in the ground on this. He has given marriage and all that it means, and even its pleasures, Its pleasures are foretastes of greater pleasures. And that's true of so many things in the world. So God gives us so many foretastes of heaven. All of the pleasures of this world are merely foretastes of a greater pleasure.

They're designed by God. This is why the heavens declare the glory of God. There isn't anywhere you can look and not see something pleasurable, some expression of His goodness and His glory. The human eye cannot look without seeing it. Now, the human eye can look but not perceive it.

But God has scattered throughout the whole world so many pleasures. Pleasures in tastes. Pleasures in colors. Pleasures in textures. Pleasures in relationships.

Pleasures in movement. Pleasures in emotions, pleasures of the mind, pleasures of the body. He set all those things in the world to show you that there is more to come. And isn't it true that he's organized life that way in the earth? That life the way God has it, there's just these increasing pleasures.

You know, when you're, when there's a particular pleasure, you know, that babies have, I can't remember what it's like, But I do remember what it was like to be five. And I remember the pleasures of being five and all the things that five-year-olds get to experience. And then when you're 11 or 12, there are all these new Amazing pleasures out there. You know, I think about this every time we have our Father-Son retreat you know because I used to have a 12 year old boy and 11 year old boy who went to a father-son retreat and You know the you know the boy can't sleep the night before because he's so excited and God God does this and He takes you through these various stages, increasing responsibilities that are pleasurable and joyful. I'll never forget when I was finally able to drive my car.

This was a gift from heaven, Absolutely it was. And then I married the girl of my dreams. And then I began to have children and there was more. And then now I'm having grandchildren. God has organized life like this.

He's such a good God and He scatters these pleasures before us not so that we would be stuck on them and idolize them, but that we would realize that in His presence are pleasures forevermore. That's why they're here. Why does that food taste so good? Why does that sunset look so astonishing? Why is that thing so beautiful?

Why do I feel this way? Because you've been made in the image of God. You've been made to experience pleasures on this earth that are just mere shadows. Yes, they are destroyed by the works of the devil and various other things, but they are given from heaven. And everyone in the world has them.

He causes His reign to fall on the evil and on the good. And His Son shines on the just and on the unjust. This is how good God is. And He gives these pleasures. He's given marriage as a pleasure, as a foretaste for the greater pleasure in heaven.

And so there is this new, enhanced relationship in heaven. It's more joyful, it's more wonderful than you can imagine. You thought that marriage was so wonderfully satisfying. You can hardly think of not being married to your wife. I cannot conceive of it.

My mind is not capable of understanding how it could be that I would not desire to be with my wife, that I would not love her. Well, the truth is, I will love her more than I ever dreamed. It's not a downgrade. Our love will not be diminished at all. It will be fulfilled and satisfied.

But it is a pointer. This marriage, what John Piper called this momentary message, marriage, it points to ultimate satisfaction in him. And he is the author of marriage, designing it to point to the pleasures and the joys, the closeness, the bonds that are in the resurrection. So in one way, marriage is not about marriage. Marriage is about an ultimate satisfaction that comes as a pointer to a greater joy.

I think it's reasonable for people to be sad about thinking that they might not be married, that they won't be married. It's reasonable to think that. But again, the Lord says, My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. And all of his ways are better ways. All of his paths are peace.

He is a tree of light to those who embrace him. So this whole idea here that the design of marriage is explained and that there is no marriage. The second part of that design is that we are like angels in heaven, verse 30, but are like angels of God in heaven. So we learn something about heaven here and that is that we will be like angels. Luke chapter 20 verse 36, the parallel passage, says that we will be equal to angels.

In Mark chapter 12 25, the Lord Jesus says, are like angels. So that's the whole idea. So our bodies will be transformed. And I'd like to just speak about a number of these things that happen to us in heaven. The Lord has said that we are like angels of God in heaven.

So what does that mean? Well, it means many things. First of all, it means that you'll be transformed. In Philippians 3, verse 20 through 21, Paul describes those who are citizens of heaven. He says, for our citizenship is in heaven from which also we eagerly await 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." So Not only are we equal to the angels, we will have a body like His.

Our lowly body will be like His. I don't know what that means. And it says that we will be like Him. In 1 John 3, we read, Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God. And then He says, And it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, But we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." So there's a certain...

We were made in the image of God, and now we will even seemingly be more like him, more than ever before, such that there are no tears, no crying, no sin, no anger, no wrath, no slander. None of that exists. We will be like Him. What you've longed for will come to pass. And then we will have new bodies.

Romans 8-11 says this. Romans... In verse 10, Paul says, And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. So you'll have a new body transformed by the energizing power and might of the Spirit of God.

A force will act upon your body, yes your body, and you'll have a new body. In 1st Corinthians 15, the apostle speaks of how it is changed. He says, we shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed in the moment, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." This incorruptible must put on incorruption. This mortal must put on immortality.

And death is swallowed up in victory. And we will also worship. Revelation 19 speaks of what life will be like there in the resurrection. Our hearts will be so moved. They will be so full of joy.

The happiness will completely fill our souls. You've never been in a happier place ever than heaven. And you will say, hallelujah, salvation and glory and honor and power belong to the Lord our God. For true and righteous are His judgments because He has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with a fornication. It is praise for God's justice and salvation, His judgment of the wicked, and His salvation of the repentant.

And we'll worship for that. And then we will rest. Hebrews chapter 4 speaks of that. And then we will work. We will be at work judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

And you know, we were put in the earth to work. We know that God was put in the garden to work. Work is not a curse, it's a blessing. And that's why, that's why when we enter glory, it won't be a time of leisure, it will be a time of work. Remember the parable of talents were coming up to it here in Matthew.

When all is said and done, and the man was faithful with what he had been given, He'd worked what God had given him. He was given something and he multiplied it. He made it greater, which is what Christians should always do with what they have. He says, well done, good and faithful servant. And how are they rewarded?

How are they rewarded? They're rewarded with a job. Okay? They are... They will be given cities to govern.

And we're being tested now to be faithful with the goods of this world. And our reward in heaven is not a vacation, but it's a job. We are restored to be workers in heaven in all eternity to serve our Master. And then we will be like the angels and all those who are registered in heaven. Hebrews 12, 22.

We will be in proximity to the Lord. 1 Thessalonians 4, 17, where we read, And there we will also be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words. So we will be with Christ. So you can see why this attack against the resurrection is so important.

They were attacking the whole nature of heaven and the way that sinners are resurrected and taken to heaven. And it was so important because if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. So when these Sadducees were coming to him and talking to him about the resurrection, they were attacking his very purpose. They were attacking the center of history. And then in the next scene here, the resurrection is proved from the Pentateuch, verses 31 through 32, but concerning the resurrection of the dead.

Had 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 of the dead, but of the living. Here, our Lord Jesus Christ. He quotes Genesis, or Exodus chapter 3, and he says, I am the God of Abraham. And he makes his entire argument on a verb tense.

The Lord Jesus Christ does believe that every jot and every tittle is authoritative, That Scripture is sufficient, even a verb tense. You can rest your whole life on the meaning of a verb tense in Scripture. You can rest your whole life on a single word, a single phrase in its context, a single book, a single section, the entire Word of God. This is why Moses said, do not add and do not take away. This is why the Bible begins in Deuteronomy in Moses' testimony in the law with this principle of not adding or taking away.

And the Bible ends in Revelation with a curse upon those who would add or take away. So the patriarchs knew that life was beyond the grave And there really is a rich testimony of resurrection in the Pentateuch. Genesis 5, 24, Enoch walked with God and was no more. The Sadducees ignored that. Genesis 22, 5 says, Abraham believed God could raise his son from the dead.

Yes, there was resurrection in the Pentateuch. But these evil men passed over what they did not like. They do what we do today. We don't like this statement, we don't like that command, and so we pass it over. But what is so critical here is that our Lord Jesus Christ is defending His resurrection.

And then the multitudes are astonished in verse 33. The multitudes heard this and they were astonished. Now they were completely overwhelmed. That's the word that is used here. They were greatly astounded at his teaching.

That's what it was. And then finally the back story is revealed in verse 34. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees. They gathered together. Now, the word that is used here, silenced, is the word that implies a muzzle.

He had closed their mouths. He had closed their mouths. He had closed their mouths. He accomplished what no one else had been able to accomplish, not even the Pharisees themselves. He proved the resurrection from one single verb tense in the Pentateuch.

And he destroyed their argument. And he shut their mouths. And they walked away. OK. Let's talk about some applications of this.

Number one, I'm very taken by the fact that he was asked a question in hatred, and he answered it with love. And he talked about a world of wonder and beauty that was so far beyond their thinking. And He showed them the world of the resurrection and the like. And He went to their own text to prove the point. He was a merciful high priest who was seeking and saving the lost.

These would be lost. There's no record of a Sadducee turning to the Lord Jesus. That doesn't mean that none did, but there just is no record. There are many Pharisees who turned according to Scripture. But I think it should help us understand how we should deal with educated fools, people who naturally think they know more than they do.

They're arrogant, they're independent, they're self-satisfied, but their answers are in Scripture. We should turn to the Word of God and give them the Word of Life. Number two, these Sadducees lived like there was no tomorrow And they tried to find every proof for it, and they rejected anything against it. How easy it is to do that, to not live for eternity. Maybe we say we accept more than we penitent, but really don't.

And we really are living for this world and not for eternity. And we don't have our minds fixed there. We're not living for eternity. We're not laying out treasures in heaven. We're neither moth nor rust destroyed.

Nor are thieves breaking in steel. It's so easy in this world to live like there is no tomorrow. And then I think that we should use this opportunity to just marvel. Take a moment and marvel at the resurrection of Christ. To believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to repent and be saved, and to recognize that Christ came, that you might have life and you might have it more abundantly, that He desires to take sinners to heaven, that there's no sin too great, that he would not pour out the blood of his son to wash white as snow, to give new life and resurrect you unto life." This is the beauty of this passage.

This was the Apostles vocation, they said in Acts 4, 33, and with great power the Apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them all. We need to marvel at the power of the resurrection, how important it is for us to speak of the resurrection, even to people who hate the resurrection, and to open up the Scriptures and show them a resurrection, regardless of all their fancy intellectual arguments. Preach the resurrection like the apostles did. This was Paul's evangelistic theme when he was in Greece. In Acts chapter 17, the Epicurean Stoic philosophers were encountering him, and they were calling him a babbler and a proclaimer of foreign gods, because he preached Jesus and the resurrection to them.

When we're speaking with our unsaved friends, you know, so many people, they just want to talk about, you know, you have a hole in your heart, Jesus wants to fill it. You know, if you just pray this prayer, this is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Jesus Christ is that Christ died and rose again for repentant sinners. And so we preach Jesus and the resurrection. We have this idea that somehow people are going to come to Christ if they somehow think that they're going to feel good someday.

But they won't unless they feel bad and repent of their sins first. It was a controversy that Paul was always engaging in Acts chapter 23. Paul had the Pharisees and the Sadducees together, and he caused a great tumult over the resurrection, saved his life one day. It was the validation of Jesus' ministry in Romans chapter 1 verse 4, that he was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead." The resurrection is the heart of the matter, and it ought to be on our lips first and foremost in all of our evangelizing. It's pictured in baptism.

Baptism is a picture of the resurrection. You died and you're raised up to new life after having been cleansed. Without the resurrection we have no hope, says Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, 19. He says, If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable. But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

For since man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive." Without the resurrection we have no hope. Paul's prayer for the Ephesian church was that they would be filled up with knowledge, even of the resurrection of Christ. And then Finally, I just want to close with just a recognition of the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven. He brings out the best wine last.

You thought love was so good on the earth. You thought food and colors and tastes and travel and movement were so good. They are nothing compared. They are only first fruits of a greater harvest that you will reap in heaven." And he's provided so many blessings in this world. And there's more to come.

And it will be better because God is there. That's why He says, great is your reward in heaven. And so on that day, that day that the Sadducees so despised, He will take you home, He will give you rest, He will make you alive, He will make you what you could be, and He'll put you by His side, and He will prove what He's been saying to you your whole Christian life. I will never leave you or forsake you. That is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, that you would help us to so Worship you for the power of the resurrection, for if Christ was not raised, we will die in our sins. Amen.