Every Last Word

Guest (Male): Is there really a resurrection? How can we be certain? If there is a heaven, how do we get there? Turn to the Gospel of Luke and listen in as we discuss how Jesus answered these tough questions just before he was about to face his own death.

Mark: Welcome to Every Last Word, a radio and internet program with Dr. Philip Ryken, teaching the whole Bible to change your whole life. Today we’re continuing our studies in the Gospel of Luke, learning how Christ explained the resurrection from the dead even as he got closer to his own death.

Phil, it’s finally spring, and that means it’ll soon be Easter. We’ve all been taught that Jesus was raised from the dead, but how can we know this for sure? And how do we know that each one of us will be raised from the dead?

Dr. Philip Ryken: Mark, I think the clearest proof of that is in the resurrection itself. It won't be too much longer until we get to the end of the Gospel of Luke and we'll be looking at the very resurrection of Jesus Christ. Already here in Luke chapter 20, there’s a little detail from the Bible that Jesus points to as a proof of the resurrection.

It’s simply this fact: that God calls himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When he says this, he uses the present tense, not the past tense. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not was. That clearly indicates, as Jesus explains it to us, that there is still a living relationship between the living God and these men who still live.

Mark: I think we’ve all wondered if, when we get to heaven, we’ll still remember our spouse or our best friend. What does the Bible say about this? Will we still have relationships when we’re in heaven?

Dr. Philip Ryken: We will, although they'll be transformed. This is the clear teaching of Jesus. You’ll remember—and we’ll have this in today’s passage—the Sadducees came to Jesus with this story about this woman that had been married to seven successive husbands, all brothers. They were making this question sound absurd: whose husband will she be in the resurrection? They didn’t believe in the resurrection at all.

Jesus said, "No, you have to understand. We will be like the angels in glory." Those earthly relationships do not continue. There is no marriage in heaven. But we will still have loving relationships with all the people we know and love. In fact, we will be able to love them much better than we have ever loved them in this life. That’s one of the great things we’re looking forward to when we go to heaven to be with Jesus and with all his people.

Mark: Thank you, Phil. Let’s turn in our Bible to Luke chapter 20 verses 27 through 38 and listen to Dr. Ryken.

Dr. Philip Ryken: Is there life after death? The woman asked me in the flower shop not long ago as I was buying some flowers for my wife on Easter Sunday. The context of our conversation was that we had been talking just a little bit about church and about ministry. She knew a little bit of something about Tenth Church and about Dr. Boice. She knew that our former minister had died very suddenly of cancer, and she shared with me that her own husband had died just a few months ago of the very same disease.

As we spoke, she grabbed my arm and she wanted to ask me, "Will I see him again? Do you think that I will see him again? Is there life after death?" Most people would like to hope that there is, but so many people in our own culture doubt it. The only thing we know for sure, they say, is the life that we are now living. According to the worldview of secular humanism or Darwinian evolutionism, our biology is also our destiny.

When our hearts stop beating, when our minds cease to exist, that is the end of us. There is nothing left. Human destiny, wrote the philosopher Ernest Nagel, is only an episode between two oblivions. The same way of thinking has been enshrined in a document called the Humanist Manifesto, which says, "As far as we know, the total personality is a function of the biological organism. There is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body." So says the Humanist Manifesto.

There were some people who said basically the same thing in the time of Christ. They didn't talk about biological organisms, at least not in so many words, but they did say that there was no life after death. Some of them even tried to prove it to Jesus. You see them here in Luke chapter 20 at verse 27: "There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection."

The Sadducees were the party of privilege. They were the ruling elite. One of their defining doctrines was this denial of eternal life, this rejection of the resurrection. Incidentally, the fact that this is mentioned or made note of here in the scriptures is a sign that most Jews in those days did believe in life after death. Although it is sometimes claimed that there is no such doctrine in the Old Testament, it’s clear that most people in the time of Christ did believe in the resurrection, except for these men, these Sadducees.

According to Josephus, the historian, they wanted to get rid of the persistence of the soul or penalties in the hereafter or rewards. In other words, they wanted to get rid of the doctrines of heaven and hell and immortality. The soul, they said, perishes along with the body. I doubt it’s very surprising that these men denied the resurrection because they were wealthy men. Most of them, like most of us, had all of the material comforts that this life has to offer.

Like most people who have a lot of money, like most people in our own culture, and maybe like many of us, they were mainly living for today. They gave little thought to eternity. This is one of the problems with rampant materialism. Who needs eternal life if you can get everything that you really want right now? The Sadducees came to Jesus with an elaborate seven-part question designed to show the absurdity, indeed the impossibility, of the very idea of eternal life.

They told this story about these seven brothers, each one taking this wife in turn, each of them dying without children. Then they posed the question in verse 33, "Whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife." This question was based on something from the Bible. It came out of Deuteronomy chapter 25. It was part of the law of Moses. If a man died childless, if there was a brother on hand, he was to marry the wife, be a husband to her, and raise up children for his brother. It all had to do with maintaining the family line.

This reminds us of one of the main purposes of our existence, one of the main purposes of marriage, one of the main purposes of our sexuality, and that is to procreate. Within the providence of God, who alone is sovereign over life in the womb, we are called to produce children for the glory of God. That was the purpose of this ancient law. In raising their hypothetical question, the Sadducees took that good biblical law to an absurd extreme: one bride for seven brothers.

The very absurdity of the situation was actually an attempt to prove a point. This is what a logician would call a reductio ad absurdum, an argument designed to show how nonsensical something is by taking it to its logical conclusion. In this case, they were trying to show how ridiculous the resurrection was. I can imagine the Sadducees somewhat smugly waiting for Jesus to answer, nodding at one another approvingly. They really had him this time. What a convincing argument for rejecting the resurrection.

How little they realized how flawed their reasoning was. This was a bad question to begin with. It was bad because it wasn't even really a question. The Sadducees were mainly trying to score a theological point. It was also a bad question because it was so speculative. Who would ever marry seven brothers like this? It's a bizarre speculation. It's really the kind of hypothetical situation a student asks about in graduate school or some other academic setting but never comes up in real life. That’s the kind of question it was.

It was also a bad question because it used a biblical premise in order to advance an unbiblical position. Just because somebody starts with a Bible verse doesn't mean they really understand what the Bible says. In this particular case, they were quoting from the Bible, and yet their argument itself was still unbiblical. We don't get this in the Gospel of Luke, but Matthew tells us that Jesus rebuked them by saying, "You are wrong because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God."

As bad as the question was, really it still needed to be answered because the question itself was driving at something that strikes at the heart of the gospel. The gospel is the good news, the good news about what Jesus has done to rescue us from our sins. To be more specific, the gospel is about the cross and the empty tomb. It’s about the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When people talk about the gospel, that’s what they’re talking about.

They’re talking about the Son of God dying on the cross to pay the penalty that we deserve for our sins. They’re talking about God raising him from the dead with the power of eternal life. That’s the gospel; it’s the cross and the empty tomb. But you see here the Sadducees were denying even the possibility of resurrection. They were taking away half of the gospel. If you have no resurrection, you really have no good news for sinners. Here was a question that really had to be answered. The resurrection had to be defended.

Jesus began his answer in verse 34: "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." Jesus is making a distinction here between the present age and the age to come. He talks about the sons of this age. That means people alive today during this whole period of time up until the day of judgment.

It is characteristic of this time that people do marry and are given in marriage. It's not to say that some people aren't single, of course, but it is an age when brides and grooms do get married. It will be different in the coming age when no one will be married at all. This question from the Sadducees rested on an entirely false assumption. They were assuming things would just continue to go on as they have, but they're asking about something that won't even come up in the resurrection.

What Jesus said here about marriage is often a mystery and sometimes something of a disappointment, particularly for Christians who are happily married. Many husbands and wives find it hard to imagine that their marriage will not last forever. How are we to understand this? How can we accept it? I remember one man consoling himself with the thought that even if he couldn't be married to his wife in the age to come, maybe God would at least let them room together.

I find it more helpful to remember that as Christians, we are engaged to Jesus Christ. This is the fundamental biblical teaching about marriage. We only find our full satisfaction in our relationship with him, which the Bible describes as a kind of marriage relationship. That truly is a match made in heaven. I also find it helpful to remember how little I love my wife now, how much more I will truly love her in the coming age. Far better for her, I think, not to be married to me at all and yet perfectly loved.

This truth ought to be then not a disappointment but actually, in a way, even an encouragement for Christians who are married. It ought to be especially precious to Christian singles and to anyone who has suffered or is suffering a broken marriage. Christians tend to put a great deal of emphasis on marriage, maybe too much emphasis. Marriage is a basic relationship of human life. It's the building block of human society. It's also under attack in our culture and therefore in need of special support and even, in some circumstances, defense.

In the scope of eternity, marriage is not the be-all and end-all of human existence. Even under the best of circumstances, it is only a temporary institution. Its very transience points us towards an eternal relationship with Jesus Christ. This is one of the main purposes of matrimony. It's the mystery that Paul writes about in Ephesians 5. He says, "I'm talking about marriage, but you know, it's not really about marriage on earth. It's about Jesus Christ and his relationship to the church."

Among other things, this means that when it comes to the blessings that God has for us in Christ, single people are not at any kind of disadvantage. Even if this isn't always fully understood now, it will become perfectly clear to us in the coming age. In exposing this false premise of the Sadducees, Jesus had some important things to teach about life after the resurrection. In his infinite wisdom, there are many things that God has left undisclosed about that resurrection life.

There are many things God has decided not to tell us, although many things that we wish he would tell us sometimes. But don't you at least want to know the things that God has revealed? There are a number of important things here in this passage, the teaching of Jesus Christ. I want to mention four truths in all very briefly and then tell you why you can know for sure that these truths are really true. The first truth is the one we've already seen, a truth about matrimony: there is no marriage in heaven.

The second truth is that not everyone will go to heaven, but only those—notice verse 35—who are considered worthy. This is a truth about merit. The only people who reach the blessings of the resurrection are the people that God considers worthy. That raises an important and obvious question: If I want to go to heaven when I die, and if heaven is only for people who are worthy to be there, then what do I have to do for God to consider me worthy?

Jesus doesn't answer that question here, not in so many words. But I think this Greek verb that he uses does seem to give us at least a clue. He speaks here of being "considered worthy," or you might say "counted worthy," or even "made worthy." The worthiness is not something that comes from inside of us. It's not something that we do, but it is something done to us. That’s the kind of verb that it is here. It’s something that God declares about us.

Ultimately, if you see what the scriptures say about salvation, it is something God gives to us by grace. We are not worthy in ourselves because of our sin. Nevertheless, God considers or reckons or counts us as worthy if we have a faith relationship to Jesus Christ. That’s the basis for any true worthiness. It’s the perfect righteousness of Jesus himself. We’re not worthy, but Jesus is. When we put our faith in him, we’re joined to him. Now God considers us to be worthy in his sight, as worthy as Jesus is himself.

This is what the Apostle Paul was writing about when he said that he wanted to be found in Christ, not having a righteousness or you might even say a worthiness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ—the righteousness or worthiness from God that depends on faith. You can see from the way he describes it, it’s not something that you offer to God. It’s something that God gives to you in Jesus Christ. This is what makes anyone worthy to enter the glories of the coming age.

Then there is a third great truth that Jesus teaches here, and that is that when God raises us from the dead, we will never die again. This is a truth about immortality. You see in verse 36, Jesus says that these worthy ones cannot die anymore. Their existence is everlasting. I think this is the main point of the comparison Jesus makes here to the angels. Surely you noticed this in the reading earlier: that when we’re raised from the dead, we will become equal to angels.

It doesn't mean that we will actually become angels. Sometimes people have the wrong idea about that. They know angels are in heaven. They know that when believers in Christ die, they also go to heaven. Some people have this idea that we actually become angels, but that’s not what Jesus is saying here. Neither is he saying we’ll become equal to angels in a kind of hierarchical sense, the way that we might use the word equality in our own culture.

Really what he’s saying is that in certain respects, we will be similar to angels. We will be like the angels. This is one place I think the New International Version may give us a better translation. It says they are "like the angels." So in what way will we be like the angels? There are many comparisons we could make. One of them is that the angels are not married, and that may be part of the total context here because Jesus has been speaking about marriage.

But I think the main thing here is that the angels are immortal. They will not and they cannot die. When God raises us from the dead, we will be like the angels in that respect. We too will be immortal. Of course, that is essential to the joy of resurrection life. The joy of our present existence is so often muted by the painful reality of death. Even if we try not to think about it, we know that unless Jesus comes first—which he may, but which he might not—we too someday will die.

Maybe much sooner than we even hope. We also know that the people we love will die if they have not died already. Our mortality inevitably makes this life something of a tragedy. But there is no such sorrow or sadness in heaven. It is because there is no death there. You might even say there are no funeral directors there, no hearses, no coffins, no tombs in glory. Because after the resurrection, no one will ever die again.

How different that is than the present age when even the best things must come to an end. In the coming age, our happiness in God will be endless. By the power of his resurrection, the glories of the coming age will go on and on and on forever. Then there is this fourth truth about resurrection life, and that is that God will raise us up to be his children—a truth about paternity. Jesus said that those who reach this resurrection from the dead in verse 36 are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

Here is a deep truth about our salvation: that we are the sons and the daughters of God. Thus this resurrection life is something that we share together as the family of God. Here Jesus calls us the resurrection sons of God. Truly this is the highest status that any human being can be given. Let me just emphasize: it applies both to men and to women. According to ancient property law, it was only the sons who could inherit the father’s estate.

By calling his daughters "sons" in this sense of the word, Jesus is assuring the women in his family that as joint heirs of salvation, they will have all the blessings of their Father's house. What a blessing it is to have this relationship with God as your Father. The Bible talks about it often. It identifies God as our Father and it says in various ways that we are his sons and daughters. It says we’re his sons and daughters by regeneration, by new birth.

This is the work of the Holy Spirit making us the children of God. It says that we’re God’s sons and daughters by our adoption in Christ. There’s a kind of legal act that has been proclaimed about us, declaring that once and for all, we are the sons and the daughters of God. Here Jesus says we are also his children by resurrection. God will not leave his children in the grave, but he will raise them up and he will bring them home to be with him forever.

How do we know that this is really true? How can we be certain about these things? How can we know that without any merit of our own, but only because God has counted us worthy in Christ, that we will be raised up to live forever with our Father in heaven? That’s the question the Sadducees had: how can you know something like that? It's the question the woman had for me in the flower shop: how can I really know this burden that is on my heart? How can I be sure of the life of the resurrection?

Up to this point, Jesus has simply assumed that’s true. It's the whole assumption of his entire argument. But right at the end of this discussion, he gives a biblical proof. It’s very significant here that we see Jesus believing in the resurrection even before he rose from the grave on the first Easter Sunday. He knew it from the word of God. Notice the proof that he gives in verses 37 and 38: "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."

This was a very pointed argument, a very persuasive way of making his case because the Sadducees prided themselves on following the five books of Moses. They mainly emphasized the Torah, the Pentateuch, and they were convinced that those books of the Bible had nothing to say about the resurrection. But here Jesus is proving it by quoting the words of Moses himself, which shows how well he knew his Bible and also how much confidence he had in the truth of what the Bible said.

Nevertheless, it has to be admitted that there are some people who doubt whether his argument is a very good argument. Some evangelical scholars even claim that there’s no very persuasive connection between what Moses said and the way that Jesus used what Moses said here in the Gospels. I think that forces us to go back to this important passage and see what Jesus was really saying. Let me invite you, please, to turn back in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 3.

I think you can see what this passage proves about the resurrection. Exodus chapter 3 is the story of the burning bush. It was the time of Israel's slavery in Egypt. The people of God had been crying out for their deliverance. After forty long years in his personal wilderness, Moses met the living God on a lonely mountainside. God spoke to him out of this fiery bush that kept burning and burning but was not consumed. He told Moses to take off his sandals; it was holy ground.

He called Moses in these verses to be his prophet. He said that he was going to lead his people out of Egypt and take them back to the promised land. He disclosed to Moses his special divine name. What a significant passage this is for the teaching of the whole Old Testament. Near the beginning of that conversation, God clearly identifies himself to Moses as the God of the covenant, the God who had made everlasting promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—those famous patriarchs we read about in the book of Genesis.

Notice the way that God says this in verse 6: "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." He is speaking to Moses in the present tense. He’s not saying, "I was the God of these men," but "I am the God of these men." He’s telling Moses that he is a living God, and therefore that he is able to save his people. It's essential to all of the promises of God that the God who makes promises in the Bible actually is a living God and therefore can follow through on those promises.

Here Jesus rests his proof for the resurrection on the tense of that same verse. You see again how completely he accepted the inspiration and authority of the Bible. He’s reasoning from the scriptures. He’s doing it by good and necessary consequence. He’s making a logical argument from it. The argument is that when God said, "I am the God of Abraham" and these other fellows, he’s not just saying something about himself but also saying something, in effect, about Abraham and about the rest of them.

God’s statement is only true in its fullest and most complete sense if these men are still alive—alive when God is speaking to Moses and alive at this very moment. Here it is, centuries after these men died, and God is still styling himself as their God. Which I think means that there had to be an Abraham and an Isaac and a Jacob for him to be the God of. This is only true, said Leon Morris, if they are alive beyond the grave.

The alternative is to think of God as the God of non-existent beings, which is absurd. That’s the real absurdity, not the kind of absurdity the Sadducees were trying to make the resurrection out of. No, it would be absurd if God were not the God of resurrection and still claimed to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Yet even that is not all, for how could God even call himself the God of these men unless he kept his promises to them?

When he called himself the God of Abraham, he was using the language of the covenant. Just look back at the end of chapter 2. God is hearing the prayers of his people, and he remembers his covenant with Abraham and with Isaac and with Jacob. That’s what God is talking about. He’s not just talking about these men, but also about the promises he made to them. Yet even though he kept many of his promises to them during their own lifetimes, there were also promises that remained unfulfilled when they died.

They didn't fully possess the promised land. None of them saw those offspring that God had promised—like the stars in the sky or like the sand in the desert, the children that God had promised. None of them saw the savior for the nations, which God had promised would come through the line of Abraham. Yet God still says that he is their God. He says it without embarrassment, without apology, because he knows that every last one of those promises will come true, and they will come true for these men in the resurrection of the coming age.

Do not worry that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob will not receive the promise. No, they will receive the promise. They will reach the promised land of the glory of God. They will worship with all their children in the eternal city. They will know the crucified and risen Christ. It is all because their God is the covenant God of the resurrection. If God couldn't even raise the dead, well, he wouldn't be much of a God for them at all. He wouldn't be able to keep his covenant.

But Jesus said he is the God of the living. He’s the God who raises the dead. Therefore Abraham and Isaac and Jacob are living for him right now, and they will keep on living for him forever. This is the promise that God offers in Christ to everyone who will come to him in faith. You can have that resurrection life right now. You can have this kind of relationship with God that will go on forever. You can be raised from the dead by the power of the living God.

It all depends on the resurrection, the realities of Easter Sunday. He is not our God unless he is able to raise us from the dead to be with him for all eternity. If you want the proof for that kind of resurrection power, you could go back to Exodus. You could prove it right out of Exodus 3 if you needed to, right from the words of Moses. Or you could go back to the empty tomb. You could prove it there for sure, because that’s where God raised Jesus from the dead and declared once and for all that he is the God of the living. He’s the God of Abraham, he’s the God of Isaac, he’s the God of Jacob, he’s the God of Moses. He is the God of Jesus Christ, having raised him from the dead on the third day.

This is the reality that will save us, body and soul, and make us to be with God forever. Sometimes I am a little bit careless and don't finish a story that I tell at the beginning of a sermon, and people always come up at the end and they ask me for the rest of the story. Do you want to know the rest of the conversation in the flower shop? Do you want to know what I said to that woman?

I told her I couldn't answer her question directly. You’d have to be God to know whether she will be with her husband again in heaven. I don't know him; I don't know his relationship to God. But I said, "I have an important question for you, and that is: do you know Jesus Christ? Are you trusting in Christ for your own resurrection from the dead? That’s the way to know this kind of reality of the life to come."

Praise God, she was able to tell me that she did know that reality. She was a believer in Jesus Christ and also her husband was a trusting believer in Jesus Christ. Yet like so many of us, she needed a little bit of reassurance. She knew that it was true, and yet she needed to be reminded from the scriptures that it was true. That in part is what Easter Sunday is for. May the words of the Lord Jesus himself confirm the realities of the resurrection to our minds and to our hearts.

Father, we give you praise for the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. We give you praise for the proof of scripture about these realities. Father, give us faith to believe that you are the God of the living. Father, we would pray particularly for those whom we know who are still spiritually dead, maybe some here Lord in need of this resurrection life. Will you reach out in your grace and save them by the resurrection power of the Spirit? In Jesus' name, amen.

Mark: You’re listening to Every Last Word with Bible teacher Dr. Philip Ryken, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance exists to promote a biblical understanding and worldview. Drawing upon the insight and wisdom of Reformed theologians from decades and even centuries gone by, we seek to provide Christian teaching that will equip believers to understand and meet the challenges and opportunities of our time and place.

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