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Mark 12:18-27
Is there a resurrection? Demons, bran muffins, and sad religious leaders oh my.
I. Asmodeus the demon
I have two things to help introduce our text this morning. The first is a quick story that only a few of you have heard before. It’s kind of a tales from the crypt/ Twilight zone/Stephen King kind of story
The night is late. The wind is howling. A man tries to sleep. It has been a tiring day digging the grave. His trek back to his house was uneventful but he dare not enter the home. He is polluted from touching the body. His sleep does not come easy using the wall of his compound for protection from the night air and hoping no bandits see him. Just as his eyes are starting to close, there are birds all around him. Flying, pecking, he waves his hands frantically and they disappear. But it is too late, the damage has been done.
Here is where it gets a little corny. The text puts it better than I could “The birds “muted warm dung into mine eyes, and a whiteness came in mine eyes.”
From then on the man is blind.
Meanwhile on the other side of the world, well a long ways away anyway, a woman named Sarah has just been married. They entered the bedroom chamber and approached the bed cautiously. <trust me, this isn’t a love story> What would happen this time? Suddenly, it was there again. Something cold, that sent shivers down her spine. Something eerie. Her husband lifted off the ground and went flying against a wall. She screamed. It was happening again. She ran to her husband and saw an eerie shape take form with his hands around her husbands throat. She watches in horror as it all happens again. The demon Asmodeus strangles her seventh husband.
The story seems bad, but it isn’t over. I don’t want to give it all away, because its 14 chapters of fun found in the apocryphal book of Tobit.
The blinded man has a son who takes a trip with an undisclosed angel—he just thinks he is a good guide. It includes a fish jumping out of the sea and almost eating the man, another attack by Asmodeus and a good ending for both poor Sarah and poor blind Tobit.
I tell you that story for a few reasons:
1) its super cool
2) I love 2nd temple literature and I want you to as well.
2) This story about a woman losing 7 husbands is going to show up in our text today.
II. Confounded bran muffins
But let me tell you another equally true (or not true) story
An elderly couple passed away and found themselves at the pearly gates. Peter was there to welcome them. First he showed them their mansion. The man overwhelmed by the sheer luxury of it all asked, "How much does this place cost per night?" Peter replied, "Sir, this is Heaven, it doesn’t cost anything." Then Peter took them to the dining room where table upon table was piled high with the most delicious foods you could imagine. Again overwhelmed by the glory of it all the man asked, "How much for the meals?" Peter said, "You forget, this is Heaven, it’s free." Peter then took them out back where they saw a fantastically beautiful golf course. As the man stood there open-mouthed Peter said, "Now before you ask, there are no greens fees, this is Heaven, everything is free." The man looked at his wife and said, "You and your confounded bran muffins, I could have been here 10 years ago!"
I tell you that story so that I can ask you another question, more directly related to our text.
Do you ever wonder what will happen to you when you die? Perhaps you are here and this has bugged you for a long time. Will I become a ghost and haunt Demi Moore through Whoopi Goldberg. Will I get cool little wings and play harps on the clouds? Will our earthly life continue pretty much the same direction it was going? Or perhaps you heavily doubt whether there will be anything at all after death calls. Perhaps it will be nothingness. What does nothingness even mean?
Perhaps there is no resurrection from the dead. No afterlife.
III. The Sadducees question
This is what the Sadducees believed and we see this in Mark 12:18.
Then the Sadducees who say there is no resurrection came to him with a question.
This is the first time we see the Sadducees in Mark and compared to the Pharisees we almost never see them.
Josephus says
“The Sadducees . . . are, even among themselves, rather boorish in their behavior, and in their intercourse with their peers are as rude as aliens.”
They don’t seem overly rude here. They come to Jesus recognizing his status and asking a question. They saw Jesus as a teacher and respected his position.
I don’t much care about their attitude anyway. I care much more about their beliefs.
These people disagree with the Pharisees on numerous things. They rejected angels, demons, tradition, and held only to the five books of Moses as authoritative.
Most significantly of all, they denied the resurrection.
That’s why they were sad—u—see.
So the problem that the Sadducees bring to Jesus:
"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 have children 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?"
Perhaps the story from the book of Tobit was well known and certainly the Levirate law mentioned in Deut 25 and Gen 38 was known and practiced. Basically a man was obligated to marry a childless widow of his brother in order to preserve the name and memory of the brother—including his inheritance. Now, no one really sees this story as a real story. Seven deaths. On the other hand, there it was in Tobit. But its reality is irrelevant. It is a hypothetical story designed to win a debate. What can the Pharisees say to this? The Sadducees had probably used this conundrum successfully in past debates.
“Let’s be realistic Jesus. If there is an afterlife, then how do you account for this crazy idea? I mean, who gets the wife now? She belonged to all of them. The obvious answer, Jesus, is that there is no afterlife.”
IV. Ego shredding
Jesus rips apart their premises about the afterlife. But even before he does that, he rips apart their ego.
24 Jesus replied, "Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?
Problem is two fold—they don’t know the Word, and they don’t know God’s power.
Can you grasp the insult here? They don’t know the Word. They don’t know the Scriptures. This is exactly what they do know. They are specialists in the word. It would be like saying that Wall Street has no clue about finances.
They don’t know the power of God. He is setting them up for a beating. They come to Jesus expecting a slam dunk argument to topple the great rabbi, but he dunks them. They don’t have a clue about how powerful God is.
V. Assumption ridiculing
So they don’t know the power of God, they don’t know the word, they don’t comprehend that there are other understandings of afterlife. They probably think like the Pharisees that everyone has the same concept of afterlife—basically it will have large continuity with this current life. If there is marriage here, there is marriage there.
But Jesus says, Resurrection life is not an extension of earthly life.
25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.
Three things I want you to hear in this text
1) Know what you believe
What I mean is don’t let people assume things about your and set up straw man arguments. If you don’t know what you believe, then you will never put together a valid defense.
The Sadducees assumed what Jesus must believe and argued with that in mind. But he didn’t believe that at all. He said, “no, no we aren’t even on the same game board here. There is no marriage in heaven.
We have to know the truth too. Don’t let people present our argument. Be ready with the truth:
Don’t let people set up arguments that they can shoot down easily. People always say Christianity is dumb because of this or that. They quote statistics and you cant refute them. They speak of history and you get embarrassed. Know the truth.
Like the Trinity is logically inconsistent and therefore Christianity must be wrong. It goes completely against the law of non-contradiction, A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time. So God can’t be both the father and the son at the same time. But that isn’t what the law of non-contradiction says completely. And no one is arguing that they are all the same. They aren’t. Three persons, one essence.
Don’t let people make up straw men
When Jehovah’s witnesses come to your door and try to tell you that you will live forever here on earth, just agree with them. They will try to say that Christians believe we will live in heaven and they have verses to show this isn’t true. Just agree with them. They are right that we will live on earth forever. They are wrong that Christianity ever implied anything else. Christians always believed we would inherit the earth that the new heavens would come down to meet with the new earth.
Don’t let them start debates with wrong premises.
2) We will be like angels
Now lets not go too far. This doesn’t say we will be incorporeal, it doesn’t say we will have wings (angels aren’t even mentioned as having wings most of the time), it doesn’t say we will lack gender. All it says is that we will be like angels in that we won’t be married.
Don’t go further than is allowed by the text
Jesus doesn’t tell you what heaven will be like. He is simply proving the resurrection and discounting other views. Makes perfect sense really. I doubt the Sadducees could understand what resurrection life was really like.
It would be like trying to explain to one who is making mudpies in the slum what a holiday at sea would be like (C. S. Lewis).
Like explaining to one who lives on an icy tundra what a tropical bird, fish, shells, and beaches looked like. All you could do is say what isn’t there. There are no polar bears, and no freezing winds.
So if you are wondering about the wings, or the harps, or corporeality or floatability or any other post-resurrection attribute, he gives you nothing. I doubt you could fully grasp it anyway.
3) There is some marriage in heaven
He wants you to get the main point. There is no marriage.
Some people have said, well if there is no marriage in heaven, then I don’t want to go there.
I admire people whose marriages are that life-fulfilling, but that just shows you don’t have a clue about the scriptures or about the power of God. The greatest part of your marriage pales in comparison to the presence of God. In fact, your marriage is designed to be a taste of true intimacy. That’s the beauty of marriages here—they point to marriage there. So there is some marriage in heaven—don’t ever forget about the marriage supper of the lamb. Don’t ever forget or lose the excitement of that moment when we arrive home.
Home. Say that word in your mind. Home. Are you longing.
We will come back to that, but I need to take you through the last piece of the argument.
VI. Exciting hermeneutical implications
As exciting as the marriage prospect is, its really the next part just gets me all excited
26 Now about the dead rising-- have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the 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.
A. Yes, I am a nerd
Now my guess is that when you read this text you don’t get real excited. It’s not exactly a key text of the Bible and to be honest its not even an argument that makes a lot of sense to you.
But I see hugely significant hermeneutical questions. Deep expository dig kinds of questions. And this just gets my heart pounding:
I mean look at this text:
Syllogisms: premise, premise, conclusion
Incredibly relevant verb tenses
NT use of the OT that wouldn’t get a passing grade in any seminary in the world.
Exciting, right?
I have to be honest with you. I wrote this 3 weeks ago. I practice preached it Thursday. Even though it was an empty room, I could see people jerking their heads back up, some had drool running down their chin. It wasn’t pretty. I rewrote it Thursday afternoon.
What I planned has been cut in half.
Having said that, I don’t want you to think this isn’t important. It is just as important for me to show you how to use the Bible as it is to give you cool applications for living a Christian life.
So bear with me for a moment
I think there is an argument here that is worthy of seeing.
26 Now about the dead rising-- have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the 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.
Some would say this isn’t an argument at all.
Perhaps it is just an authoritative declaration of truth. He is saying, I am showing you the real meaning even though no one has seen this before. He is not like the Scribes and Pharisees. He speaks with power