Christ the King – 20 November 2016 – Year C

Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen

The text for our meditation is written in the 23^rd Chapter of the Gospel according to St Luke: Verses 27 – 43:

A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. ²⁸ Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. ²⁹ For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ ³⁰ Then

“‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’

³¹ For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

³² Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. ³³ When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. ³⁴ Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. ”And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

³⁵ The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”

³⁶ The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar ³⁷ and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”

³⁸ There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the Jews.

³⁹ One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

⁴⁰ But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? ⁴¹ We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

⁴² Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

⁴³ Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Pain tends to bring incredible attention to things we often ignore.  I don’t often give a lot of thought to my toes, but that changes when I stub one of them.  Suddenly, every effort of my entire body is bent toward relieving the pain in that toe.  I take a sharp breath.  I grit my teeth.  Tears start to well up in my eyes.  A little bit of pain can get a whole lot of attention.

That tendency to focus on pain is one of the many things that causes me to marvel at our Saviour as He endured the cross for my sake.  In spite of the unimaginable pain, Jesus focused on the people around Him.  The crowds who followed Jesus were weeping over Him and He thought of them as He warned them of tragedy in their future.  The soldiers pierced His body with nails and He prayed for their forgiveness.  One of the criminals confessed his sin and Jesus absolved him of his sins.  Jesus was thinking about the people around Him while He Himself was suffering the pain of flogging and crucifixion.

How different Jesus is from our culture today.  We live in a culture of narcissism.  We are in love with ourselves.  If it makes me feel good, then it is right.  If it makes me feel bad, then it is wrong.  Instead of searching for truth, we search for pleasure.  We don’t care if something is right or wrong.  We just care if it is fun or boring.

Ask someone why they are opposed to something.  The reply is often, “I don’t like it,” or “It bothers me,” or “I disagree with it.”  We have become so self-centred that we don’t even realise that such statements are not reasons.  They don’t answer the question, “Why!”  All these statements do is restate the opposition.  They do nothing to make a case.

Sadly, each of us is guilty of relying on our own opinions, feelings, and desires instead of looking to the Word of God.  When we go with our own thoughts and desires instead of studying the word of God, we are saying, “I am the ultimate authority in this universe.  Therefore, if I disagree with it, it is wrong just because I say so.”  If we insist something is wrong for the simple reason that “I don’t like it,” or “It bothers me,” or “I disagree with it,” then we are bullies and we are making ourselves into God.

Jesus said, ^{[Matthew 15:19]} “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.”  Never the less we trust the thoughts and feelings that come out of that evil heart more than we trust the Word of God.  If it makes me sad or angry, it is wrong.  If it makes me happy … If it gives me pleasure, then it is right.  This is nothing other than worshipping our wants, our desires, our thoughts, our opinions.  This is nothing other than the “Playboy philosophy” of Hugh Heffner saying, “If it feels good, do it.”

What kind of arrogance does it take to place our feelings over the Word of God?  What kind of arrogance does it take to complain that we don’t feel heard, when we ourselves refuse to listen to God’s Word?  It is the arrogance that the serpent suggested to Eve in the garden. ^{[Genesis 3:4–5]} But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. ⁵ For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  You will be like God.  That is the temptation.  That is the sin when we place our wants, our desires, our opinions, our feelings above the needs of others … especially when we place them above God’s will for us.  We want to be God.

^{[Matthew 20:25–28]} Jesus … said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. ²⁶ It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, ²⁷ and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, ²⁸ even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  How sad it is that we decide to follow the example of the Gentiles and lord it over the people who disagree with our feelings, our wants, and our desires.  How often do we even disagree with God and try to boss Him around.  That is not just sad, it is destructive.

Jesus Himself gives us a different example as the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to write, ^{[Philippians 2:5–8]} “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  Jesus actually is God and yet He did not grasp for the equality with God that was rightly His.  Instead, He emptied Himself and humbled Himself in order to die for you on a cross.

This is what we see in today’s Gospel.  Here is Jesus, flogged to the point of death, staggering toward the place that is called the Skull in order to be crucified for the sins of the entire world.  Is He thinking about Himself?  No!  He noticed the mourners following Him and He cared enough for them to warn them of their future troubles.  In His extremity of pain and sorrow, He continued to serve others.  He continued to place others above Himself.  He offered Himself up for them.

The same is true of the soldiers.  No doubt the two criminals cursed these soldiers for inflicting such pain on them.  Jesus, on the other hand, prayed for the soldiers.  When the soldiers pierced Jesus, He asked the Father to forgive them.  Here they were crucifying the very Son of God and Son of God served them with prayer.  He offered Himself up for them.

Then there was the criminal.  This criminal had no reason to expect anything from the Son of God.  He knew that he had earned the death sentence with his crimes.  He knew that he deserved eternal punishment for the life that he had led.  His only prayer was that the innocent Son of God would remember him.  Jesus served him with absolution.  Jesus assured him that they would meet again … in paradise.

Jesus served you as well on that day as the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to write, ^{[Romans 5:8]} “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  While we were still curved in ourselves … while we were still trying to satisfy our feelings … while we were still busy trying to impose our will on others … while we were even trying to impose our will on God, Christ died for us.  Christ, the true God, died for us while we were busy trying to become god in His place.

When Jesus died on the cross, He was thinking of us … not us-all as a group, but us, each and every one of us … personally … as an individual.  He was thinking of each and every way that we personally sinned and earned eternity in hell and He paid for each and every sin.  In a way that we cannot understand, He took on the eternity of hell that we deserved and suffered it for us.  He served us in a way that we can never repay.

Because Jesus’ service was perfect in every way, it was impossible for death to hold Him.  It is as the Apostle Peter said in his Pentecost sermon, ^{[Acts 2:24]} “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”  After His resurrection, He ascended and poured the Holy Spirit out on us that the Holy Spirit might work faith in us so that we receive the forgiveness He earned for us on the cross.

The Son of God died to serve us, and He lives again to serve us forever.  He serves us through the proclaimed and written Word of the Holy Scriptures divinely provided for us in the Holy Bible; and through the sacred Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion.  Jesus invites us to join the criminal on the cross and confess our sin so that we too may be served with the promise of paradise as we receive His holy absolution in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

On this day we, as Christians, celebrate ‘Christ the King’. In a time when sovereign titles can have political, ceremonial and / or dictatorial connotations, this can detract from the real purpose of our Lord. In the Old Testament there were more than one hundred prophesies of a coming Messiah; a man anointed by God for the specific purpose of restoring the birth right of God’s chosen people. Today Jesus has come to be known by Christians as that Messiah of the Hebrew prophecies and the Saviour of humankind; but the Jesus we know is not just and man, but is in fact God Incarnate – that is both God and Man. God taking on the form of mankind that he may experience all that we experience and suffer as we suffer.

Today we celebrate our Saviour, our Messiah, because in His love for us He took upon the suffering that we could not bear as punishment for our sins. Jesus died that we may live, and because of His Godly nature he defeated Satan and overcame death that we also may have eternal life. By the grace of God, we are forgiven! We can go forward with optimism and joy, regardless of the circumstances, knowing that we have our eternal home in paradise. Amen

The love and peace of our Great Triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen

Pentecost 26 - 13 November 2016 - Year C

Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen

The text for our meditation is written in the 21st chapter of the Gospel according to St Luke: Verse 6:

“  for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of will be thrown down.”

In ancient days, the Lord asked Abraham to go to a very specific mountain and sacrifice his son Isaac.  Abraham demonstrated his faith by preparing Isaac for the sacrifice, but at the last moment, God intervened and spared Isaac.  About 2,000 years after Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, another son climbed the same mountain carrying a cross.  This time there was no reprieve, for unlike Isaac, Jesus, the Son of God, offered Himself up to death in order to take away the sins of the world.

Both of those events happened in the same area and that area has a lot of history in between those two events.  A group of people built a city on that site.  The city’s name was Jebus and the people were known as the Jebusites.   King David conquered Jebus and changed its name to Jerusalem.  David’s son, Solomon, would build the temple in that area and Solomon’s temple would stand until the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC.  That area lay in ruins for seventy years until Cyrus of Persia allowed the people to return and rebuild.  The second temple remained on that site until about 20 BC.  At that time, Herod the Great began an eighty year building campaign that greatly increased the size and the beauty of the temple and the surrounding areas.  Herod hoped that this building campaign would improve his image in the eyes of the people, but it didn’t work.  No one mourned for Herod the Great when he died a few years after Jesus was born.  Never the less, his improvements to the temple grounds were pretty spectacular in size and scope and they continued on after Herod’s death.

The disciples were, quite naturally, impressed by the new buildings as well as the stacks of stones and other materials that would soon be part of other buildings on the temple grounds.  It was all pretty impressive.  That is, it was impressive until Jesus said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”

Of course today, we know that that is exactly what happened.  Rome attacked Jerusalem in 70 A D and destroyed it so that not one stone was left on another.  On the other hand, the disciples didn’t know that.  The temple buildings were huge.  They were impressive.  They were made from native rock.  The history of the temple site was already ancient.  As I said before, the history went clear back to Abraham and Isaac.  What Jesus said would be very shocking.

Jesus was about to fulfil the purpose of the temple.  In a couple days, Jesus would be hanging on a cross outside of Jerusalem.  His sacrifice for our sins would fulfil the role of the temple, the altar, the sacrifices, the festivals, and everything else about the temple.  All these things were there to point forward to the one time for all sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  Once Jesus died on the cross, the entire purpose of the temple would be fulfilled.  This became clear when Jesus died and the temple curtain tore in two.  At that point in time, the temple became obsolete.to

In its day, the temple was not just a building, but it was a message.  The message was the same two part message that we find in the rest of the Bible: Law and Gospel.  Every sacrifice proclaimed, “This is how bad your sin is.  What you see in this sacrifice is what you deserve for your sin.  At the same time the death of this animal and its blood point forward to the innocent suffering and death that will one day pay for your sin.”  As the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to write, ^{[Colossians 2:17]} “These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.”  These words teach us that Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of all the sacrifices offered on the altar of the temple in Jerusalem.  Our sin demands blood and Jesus Christ is the source of that holy blood.

Now that Jesus Christ has made the sacrifice for sin and offered up His own body and blood for us, we no longer need something to remind us of His future sacrifice.  Now we have reminders that look back to the sacrifice that He already made and bring the benefits of that sacrifice forward in time to us.

Our ^{[1 Corinthians 11:23–26]} Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁵ In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.  In this sacrament, Jesus gives us His own body and blood for the forgiveness of sins and by this sacrament we proclaim His death … the sacrifice that He paid for the sins of the world.

Then there are the words that the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to write to the church in Rome and to a young pastor named Titus: ^{[Romans 6:3–4]} Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? ⁴ We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. ^{[Titus 3:5–7]} He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, ⁶ whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, ⁷ so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.  In Holy Baptism, Jesus washes us with water and word and so pours the forgiveness of sins out on us even as He joins us to Himself.  He joins us to Himself in His death so that we may also rise from the dead just as He also rose from the dead.

Finally, there are the words of authority that Jesus gave to the Apostles: ^{[John 20:21–23]} Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” ²² And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”  With these words, Jesus gives the authority to administer the very forgiveness that He earned on the cross.  He makes His forgiveness available through the mouth of the pastor so that all who hear the words of forgiveness receive the gifts of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

The proclamation of repentance and the forgiveness of sins are the true building blocks of the church.  In the Old Testament, the proclamation pointed forward to the future Messiah in the many sacrifices offered up on the altar.  In the New Testament, Holy Absolution, Holy Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper point back to the Messiah as we eat His body and drink His blood; as we receive the washing of Holy Baptism; and as we hear the words of forgiveness from the pastor as from Jesus Christ Himself.  These are the true building blocks of the church.

The disciples in today’s Gospel were distracted by the beauty of the stones and other decorations of the buildings on the temple grounds.  The most amazing thing that was happening in that place was the spilling of blood that pointed forward to the blood the Jesus would spill in a few days … the blood that washed away the sins of the world.

There are times when we are also distracted by our buildings.  We get so preoccupied by cleaning and repairing that we forget that the most amazing thing that happens in this place is the forgiveness that comes as we hear the promises of God in the spoken word of the absolution, the wet word of Baptism, and the word that enters our mouths in the Lord’s Supper.  The important thing is the presence of Jesus Christ to give us His gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation.

The Roman army destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, but the Holy Spirit preserved the Holy Christian Church.  Jesus still comes to the church with His gifts.  Someday, the building in which we worship will fall into ruins, but the Holy Christian Church will continue.  Jesus will still bring His gifts to His people.  The day is coming when the very power of the heavens will be shaken and the world as we know it will disappear.  Never the less, the Holy Christian Church will carry on for the gifts of Jesus Christ are eternal.

Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”  Let us not put our faith in the buildings and other things of this world that will all come to an end, but let us dwell in the eternal word of God that promises life everlasting … the life everlasting that Jesus earned with His perfect life and His innocent suffering and death.  It is the gifts that Jesus earned for us on the cross that are the noble adornments of His Bride, the Holy Christian Church.  Amen

The love and peace of our Great Triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen

Pentecost 25 – 6 November 2016 – Year C

Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen

The text for our meditation is written in the 20^th Chapter of the Gospel according to St Luke: Verses 27 – 40:

²⁷ There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, ²⁸ and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. ²⁹ Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. ³⁰ And the second ³¹ and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. ³² Afterward the woman also died. ³³ In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”

³⁴ And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, ³⁵ 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, ³⁶ for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. ³⁷ 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. ³⁸ Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” ³⁹ Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” ⁴⁰ For they no longer dared to ask him any question.

One of the gifts that the Holy Spirit gives to Christians is the ability to understand the Scriptures.  Unbelievers do not have this gift … as the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to write: ^{[2 Corinthians 3:13–16]} “We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. ¹⁴ But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. ¹⁵ Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. ¹⁶ But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.”  The Holy Spirit also inspired Luke the Evangelist to describe the teaching of Jesus with these words: ^{[Luke 24:45]} “Then [Jesus] opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”  

So we see that believers have minds that are open to understanding the Scriptures and unbelievers have veiled minds toward the Scriptures.  Today’s Gospel demonstrates the lies that the veiled mind can believe when it rejects the teachings of the Bible.

In past readings the Gospel according to Luke has introduced us to the veiled mind of the Pharisee.  The Pharisees had developed a group of laws called the Tradition of the Elders.  The Tradition of the Elders had over six hundred laws based on the Laws of Moses found in Holy Scripture.  At first, it might seem that the Pharisees were making things harder than they needed to be.  In fact, a careful examination of these traditions exposes them as loop-holes.  These loop-holes gave the Pharisees the impression that they could earn their own way into heaven.

Today’s Gospel records an encounter between Jesus and a different group … the Sadducees.  The Sadducees were very different from the Pharisees.  Instead of trying to work their way into heaven, the Sadducees simply denied the existence of life after death.  The Sadducees denied the existence of heaven, hell, angels, and most of the other things that belong in the spiritual realm.  They pretty much believed that this life is all that there is.

Under ordinary circumstances, the Pharisees and the Sadducees did not get along.  The Pharisees were busy earning their way into heaven and the Sadducees were always trying to show that there is no heaven.  Both of these groups were wrong and both of them show the veiled thinking of those who reject the teachings of Holy Scripture.

The encounter in today’s Gospel is part of the account of Jesus in the temple just a few days before He died on the cross.  The temple authorities had already decided that Jesus must die.  They just didn’t quite know how to arrest Jesus without causing a riot among the Passover Pilgrims.  For the time being they were sending various delegations to Jesus to see if they could get Him to make some sort of mistake that would lower His standing among the people.  If they could embarrass Him in front of the people, then perhaps, they could arrest Him without incident.  As Jesus taught in the temple, many tried to embarrass Him in debate, but they the only thing they managed to do was embarrass themselves.  So far, no one had been able to trip Jesus up.  Today’s Gospel tells of the last group who came to the debate with Jesus … the Sadducees.

The Sadducees tried to show that eternity does not make sense based on the teaching of traditional levirate marriage.  Levirate marriage has nothing to do with the tribe of Levi.  Instead, it is part of the social and economic safety net in that culture.  It was also a statute that Moses had established for the Nation of Israel.  If a husband died without an heir, the nearest male relative was to take the widow as his wife.  The first heir born to this union would become the legal heir of the dead husband.  Ordinarily, the nearest male relative was a brother to the dead husband.  In this way, the name and property of the dead husband would be preserved into the next generation.

The Sadducees come up with a rather wild hypothetical circumstance about seven brothers who are in turn married to the same woman by virtue of the statute of levirate marriage.  Then they ask Jesus to determine which brother will be the woman’s husband in eternity.

Their question demonstrated the veil that covered their mind.  They simply assumed that life in eternity would be the same as life is here in time.  They were unable to grasp the idea that eternity might be totally different than their experience here on this earth.

Many people still have this problem today.  They may not even know what levirate marriage is, but they still tend to make up their own truth based on their own ideas and feelings.  We hear people say something like, “A loving god wouldn’t really let people suffer in hell forever.”  Then they try to come up with alternative ideas.  “Maybe there isn’t a hell.”  “Maybe we only suffer in hell for a short time and then all people go to heaven.”  Some people promise their followers that they will become gods in their own right and rule over their own planet.  All of this is just the imagination of those who reject Scripture.  Their problem is that they are trying to learn about eternity based on their experience in this world of time.  They are stuck because their minds are covered by a veil just as much as the Sadducees who challenged Jesus.  This is nothing other than the blind leading the blind.

The worst thing about our veiled minds is that they do not just affect us here in time, but they also affect us for eternity.  The Word of God teaches that our veiled minds place us under the power of the devil.  It teaches that our veiled minds deliver us up to sin, death, and everlasting condemnation.  It teaches that those who live with veiled minds in time will suffer forever in eternity.

We all begin our life in time with a veil over our minds.  This is the sad reality of our inheritance of sin from Adam and Eve.  When they sinned in Eden, they corrupted the human race. We enter this world with minds that are already veiled.  We are stuck with veiled minds until someone or something comes to remove the veil … to open our minds to understand the Scriptures.

The only one who can open our minds is the one who comes from eternity into our time; God the Holy Spirit. It is only through Holy Baptism does the Holy Spirit open our minds to the truth that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God who entered our time by taking on our human flesh.  He is the one who gives us true understanding of the message of the Holy Scriptures.

Jesus replied to the Sadducees by reminding them of the instructions that God gave, not only to Adam and Eve, but also to Noah and his family: ^{[Genesis 1:28; Genesis 9:1]} “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”  The primary objective of marriage is to propagate the human race.  The husband and wife are not only to produce children, but the husband is to sacrifice himself for the well-being of his wife and children so that his children will grow up in a God-pleasing, loving, nurturing, and safe environment. (Ephesians 5:25) The wife in turn is to receive her husband’s service with thanksgiving and respect (Ephesians 5:22) so that parents may work together to bring their children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)

Since the human race multiplies here in time, the role of marriage is fulfilled here in time.  There is no need for marriage in eternity.  The Sadducees elaborate scenario is irrelevant.  It is a groundless hypothetical case.  It simply shows how their minds are veiled.

Jesus then went on to answer their theory with Scriptural truth.  He demonstrated the reasonable nature of the resurrection from the dead.  He recalled the words that He spoke to Moses from the burning bush.  The pre-incarnate Son of God spoke to Moses and said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  Then Jesus proclaimed that the true God is God of the living, not the God of the dead.  With these words, He not only refuted the Sadducees question, but He also showed that their rejection of the resurrection did not make sense given how God identified Himself to Moses.

Just a few days after this debate with the Sadducees, Jesus would demonstrate the reality of the resurrection by rising from the dead Himself.  Jesus is the only figure in all of history to predict not only His death, but also His resurrection from the dead.  Jesus regularly and clearly taught that evil men would arrest Him and kill Him.  It is not all that unusual for a martyr to predict his own death.  But the promise that Jesus then gave was unusual.  He promised that He would rise from the dead and He kept His promise.

The temple authorities were never able to embarrass Jesus in debate, but they did get their wish.  One of Jesus’ own disciples, Judas, offered to betray Jesus to them.  Finally, they had a way to arrest Jesus without causing a riot.  Judas betrayed Jesus into their hands.  They quickly convicted Jesus in a “kangaroo court,” and backed the Roman governor into a political corner so that on the Friday after Jesus encountered the Sadducees, He was hanging on a cross.  As He hung on that cross, He paid for the sins that veil our minds.  He redeemed us from the power of the devil and claimed us as His own.  He surrendered His life to save us from eternal death.

Then, on the first day of the week, He demonstrated the truth of the resurrection.  He rose from the dead and showed Himself to His disciples.  With His resurrection, He demonstrated that He is indeed the God of the living.  He gave us the eternal promise that those who die in Him will rise again and live with Him forever.  We who trust in Jesus have already joined Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Though we die, we shall live again with Jesus in eternity.  Amen

The love and peace of our Great Triune God that is beyond all human understanding. Keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen