Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Luke 20:27-38
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  November 6, 2022

A study was conducted in 2021 looking at American belief in life after death. [Pew Research] The most interesting part of the results was that while fewer Americans go to church regularly, belief in an afterlife is actually growing! It is higher than it was in the 1980s, at around 83% of the population. Isn’t that interesting? People believe in heaven even if they reject God or aren’t the least bit serious about their spiritual life. This incongruence may be behind what I find to be a terrible irony—that while a vast majority of our country believes in a life after death, most have such undefined beliefs that they live as if this world were all there is. That includes some Christians as well. While there may be more obvious dangers to faith, an incorrect view of heaven can threaten eternal hope in its own unique ways. Think about the 17% of Americans who don’t believe in an afterlife. Did they decide it wasn’t worth believing because of what they read in the Bible? Or, more likely, did they reject the wishy-washy, earthly versions of heaven which are so prevalent, hopping on the clouds with harps and halos? If you divorce heaven from a robust faith in God then it does become just some silly wish. Then it does become illogical and easy to reject or sneer at. That’s why having solid biblical foundations and expectations of heaven is vital! Vital for our Christian faith, our Christian living, and our Christian witness. Luke 20:27-38 helps us to do just that. Jesus fields a question from some, in his day, who didn’t believe in the resurrection and in doing so he grounds heaven in God’s nature and readjusts our heavenly expectations.

We’ll start with verse 27: Some of the Sadducees (who say there is no resurrection) came to him. The Sadducees were a sub-group within Judaism in the First Century. They were generally quite wealthy and were as much a political party as a religious sect. They oversaw the temple sacrifices and money exchange in Jerusalem and it was said that the high priest, Ananias, was held in high esteem because of his ability to supply them with money. As a result the Sadducees had become close-minded and materialistic, and enemies of the famous teacher from Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth. 

One of their key beliefs is mentioned here. They didn’t believe in the resurrection of the body or any life after death. They actually only accepted the first 5 books of the Bible and interpreted them very narrowly. So when a popular prophet comes speaking about death and resurrection and about the need to give away money to those in need, they find themselves in the crosshairs so-to-speak. Jesus made them uncomfortable. That helps us understand why they ask Jesus what they do. They start out by describing a ridiculous scenario where a woman is married to seven husbands, who each, in turn, die. And then they ask the question, “So in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as a wife.” Will they flip a coin or play rock, paper, scissors? We already know that they don’t believe in a resurrection, so this is not a genuine question. They are trying to ridicule the idea of an afterlife. They are trying to reduce it to the absurd—just some silly version of earth 2.0.

So Jesus begins answering the Sadducees’ absurd question by making it clear he did not have any earthly expectations of heaven. Verse 34-36: Jesus said to them, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy to experience that age and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. In fact, they cannot die anymore, for they are like the angels. They are sons of God, because they are sons of the resurrection. With these words, Jesus pops the balloon of the Sadducees’ joke. He tells them that they are operating on false assumptions. They think that heaven is a continuation of life on earth, or even comparable to life on earth. But Jesus knows that Heaven is far better and greater than any earthly comparison. His statement on marriage is really not the main point here, he’s making a clear distinction between the nature of this world and that of life after death. One reason is that in eternity, there is no death at all, in which sense Jesus says we will be “like the angels”. There is no need for the institution of marriage as we know it on earth, especially the need to form families and preserve the human race as was the case on earth. In heaven we will live forever as “sons of God,” equal in status and part of one big family.

Now, many of us who are married probably feel disappointed to think that marriage is not a part of heaven. We love our spouses and can hardly conceive of life without them. So this is only a natural and good tension. But we ourselves also need to beware of making false assumptions. We should remember that heaven will be more, not less. It will be better, not worse, in every sense. So I imagine that our close relationships now, in some way, enjoy an even deeper intimacy and a far higher joy in eternity. 

But this is all really preliminary because Jesus continues to address the real issue behind their smokescreen of a question. Jesus wants them to believe in the reality of heaven, the resurrection of the dead. He said this, “Even Moses showed in the account about the burning bush that the dead are raised, when he called the Lord: ‘The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’  He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him.” There would be a lot of easier places to go in the Old Testament to prove the resurrection of the dead, (eg. Job 19:25-27; Ps 16:9-11; Is 26:19, 53:10-11; Dan 12:2) but remember the Sadducees gave priority to the first five books of the Bible and so Jesus chooses to use a passage from Exodus 3:6. The Sadducees assumed that the relationship formed between God and people in this life is only temporary, but Jesus shows this to be foolish and really illogical. God is eternal and so the relationships he forms are eternal as well. Centuries after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived, God told Moses that he was still the God of Abrham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Eternal cannot be characterized by something that no longer exists. Resurrection then is not some fantasy dreamed up by the wishful thinking of less honest theologians. Resurrection is a logical and necessary outcome of the character and nature of God. To put it simply: If an eternal God calls you his child, then naturally that means you are part of an eternal family forever! Jesus is using an argument based on the character of God and he made it from the very books the Sadducees themselves studied!  So what did they have to say? Look at the response: Some of the experts in the law answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” Then they no longer dared to ask him anything. Embarrassing. They came to make fun of the resurrection and left considering it well spoken! 

I wonder if we are sometimes a little like the Sadducees. Not in that we try to mock the idea of heaven, but in that we are so concerned with our earthly experiences and relationships that we don’t see heaven as worth much anticipation. How often have you thought about heaven this past week? How many times have you considered that you will live forever? How many times have you considered what’s most important because this world is shorter than a blink of an eye compared with eternity? Isn’t it interesting that when the Apostle Paul wrote about the armor of faith, he chose salvation to be the helmet—the part which should be on our mind at all times? Too often, I’m afraid, we have such earthly hats on, so to speak. 

C.S. Lewis tells the story of an incarcerated woman who gives birth to a son in the cell of a dungeon. She raises him as best she can, but her son has never seen the outside world. Their cell only has one window but it’s too high for them to see anything except the light which shines through. So the mother draws pictures from her experience—in pencil lines on paper—of the real world outside to explain it to him. But, there comes a point where her explanation of the countryside—the sky, sun, the trees, the fields—fails because of the limits of her son’s experience and the concepts in his mind. “Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception. ‘But,’ she gasps. ‘you didn’t think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?” “What?” says the boy, “No pencil-marks there?” [Lewis, The Business of Heaven] The boy cannot imagine colored three-dimensional realities which don’t have rigid shape and are not enclosed in lines, something no drawing could ever achieve. The boy is convinced that the outside world is therefore less than the visible world of the prison in which they live. The small stone cell seems better because he cannot conceive of the world that waits outside. 

We all have that limitation when it comes to desiring heaven. We only have concepts and experiences, relationships, from this world and a tendency to prefer them. But faith is certain of what we cannot see. Faith looks up at the light coming through the window and longs to be set free into that beautiful eternity of color that will make our world right now seem like it’s just a bunch of gray lines on a piece of paper. It’s worth longing for! It’s worth dreaming about. It’s worth your faith and your focus everyday. You are created and redeemed for more than this temporary world.

Imagine there’s someone you love on death’s door. They are looking you in the eye and they ask you, “What is heaven like?” What would you say? Imagine speaking to your mother or father on their deathbed and they ask you, “What will heaven be like?” What would you say? There’s a bunch of pictures from Scripture you could draw on but they all center on one thing: we will be with the Lord who gave himself for us. We will see the face of God and live forever with him. We will be home in the purest and deepest sense. This is the logical outcome of your Savior’s everlasting love. Because He lives, you will live. Our eternal God makes us eternal children. Put on the Helmet of Salvation and raise your expectations. You will be with the LORD and all those who came before you in faith. And there will be no hardship, no pain, not even a trace of sin. What will heaven be like? I don’t know, but it’s better than you think. 

Amen.