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The Sermon for Sunday, November 9th, 2025, the Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity
The Lessons: Psalm 17; Job 19:23-27a; Luke 20:27-38
The Text: Luke 20:27-38
INTRODUCTION
In 100 Meditations on Hope Wayne A. Lamb writes:
In the midst of a storm, a little bird was clinging to the limb of a tree, seemingly calm and unafraid. As the wind tore at the limbs of the tree, the bird continued to look the storm in the face, as if to say, “Shake me off; I still have wings.”
Because of Christ’s resurrection, each Christian can look the experience of death in the face and confidently say, “Shake me off; I still have wings. I’ll live anyway.”[1]
At the opening of our Gospel Lesson today, the Sadducees are introduced as denying that there is any resurrection from the dead. Now they were a very wealthy and influential party within Judaism in the first century A.D., and among them were the families from which the high priests were appointed. Denial of the resurrection was one of the traditional beliefs of Judaism that we encounter in some passages of the Old Testament. But accompanying this tradition was the tradition to which the Pharisees held, that there would in fact be a resurrection from the dead. In all our lessons for today, the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead is affirmed in some way. At the end of Psalm 17 we find this hope expressed:
As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.
(Psalm 17:15, KJV)
This testifies to the future beatific vision of the saints at the resurrection, when all God’s people will look upon God’s face and be filled with joy at the sight of his love and radiance.
In the Book of Job, we encounter Job’s own honest perception of the reality of death together with his hope of the resurrection:
For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.
(Job 19:25-27a, KJV)
It is remarkable that Job emphasizes that even after the decay of his own body, that in his flesh he shall see God. This means that Job believed in a bodily resurrection, in which his body would not be old and decaying, but renewed, and in this body he would see God. From this it is evident that Job held to the belief that not only would his spirit survive death, but that there would be a resurrection in which he would be raised to life in a new body and the eyes of this new body would see God.
Now the Sadducees in Jesus’ day denied all this, believing there is no such thing as the resurrection, or an angel, or a spirit (Acts 23:8). We read in Acts 4:2 that the Sadducees were grieved that the Apostles were preaching that there is a resurrection through Jesus Christ.
THE SADDUCEES TRY TO SHOW THAT THE CONCEPT OF RESURRECTION IS LUDICROUS
The Sadducees tell Jesus about the hypothetical situation of a woman whom six brothers had as a wife in an attempt to raise up descendants for the first brother, who died without an heir. This was an exaggeration of the concept of levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5), which was designed to ensure that every brother in a family should have an heir, so that his family name might continue. But here the Sadducees are using an exaggeration of levirate marriage to try to disprove or even mock belief in the resurrection. Of course, their assumption was that, if life after the resurrection is the same as this earthly life, that a marriage contracted in this life endures after the resurrection. By their scenario, they try to show the unfeasibility of a future resurrection on the basis of how many husbands a widow might have had.
THE LORD JESUS’ TEACHING ON THE RESURRECTION AND LIFE IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD
The Lord’s response to this attempt to discredit the doctrine of the resurrection begins with his emphasis on marriage as limited to this earthly life: “The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage” (Luke 20:34b, KJV). Marriage is for this life only. That is the Christian teaching.
What the Lord says next is very significant, since it excludes the idea that everyone will attain the resurrection of the righteous:
But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage.
(Luke 20:35, KJV)
This means that all people are not automatically going to partake of the first resurrection (Revelation 20:5-6) and of the new world of God’s creating (Revelation 21), but only those whom God counts worthy of it will inherit it. These are those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and have kept the faith, living in obedience to the will of God. In this new world, and in this age, the messianic age, there is no marriage among the faithful. Therefore the question of who is married to whom simply will not arise.
Procreation will not be necessary, since all who partake of the first resurrection, or resurrection to life (John 5:29), cannot die any more (Luke 20:36a), since they are equal to the angels, being children of God and of the resurrection (Luke 20:36).
The Lord concludes his argument for the truth of the resurrection of the dead by quoting the passage from Exodus 3, where God reveals to Moses who He is:
I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
(Exodus 3:6a, KJV)
The Lord Jesus shows here that in this statement God reveals himself as the One who raises the dead, since all live to him. He would not call himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob if these patriarchs could not be raised from the dead and were not living in His Presence.
CONCLUSION
The hope of the resurrection is a very real hope and one of our foundational Christian beliefs, occurring in both the Nicene and the Apostles’ Creeds. It is a wonderful hope for us, since the Lord Jesus Christ himself has given us this hope through his death on the cross to redeem mankind. We must not think that resurrection life is simply a continuation of earthly life. It is radically new, radically different. It is life liven in a spiritual body, which cannot ever die, a life in which the redeemed will be equal to angels, worshipping God and serving in his presence continually. We must not let others who do not believe discourage us from believing in the resurrection from the dead, but instead we must hold fast to this faith and hope in Christ and grow stronger in it!
[1] p. 457, Craig Brian Larson and Leadership Journal: 750 Engaging Illustrations for Preachers, Teachers and Writers. Grand Rapids, Michigan: BakerBooks, 2002, 2007, 2008.