Tricky Question
Scripture: Luke 20:27-38

The questions of life after death, questions of who is going to enjoy it and who is going to regret their life on earth, is there a heaven, what is it like, how do we get there and what will we be doing are all questions that have been speculated upon and debated for most of the history of the human race.

Why doesn't the Bible give a definitive answer so we could settle all the debate? Whole religions have sprung up from trying to piece together the gaps in Biblical descriptions.

The Mormons for example, believe that God once was what we are now. He died on another planet and was sent to this planet to create it and populate it.
They believe that when Mormon man dies he gets a planet for him to create and populate and be God of that planet. Women remain in the grave until their husband dies and decides to lift their vale and take them to his planet. She better be a good wife while she is here.

They believe, Jesus is not God's only begotten son, but one of two, the other being Satan. God has a good son and a bad son.

Of course we read a lot these days and hear about what Islam thinks of life after death and how some extremists wire their bodies with explosives so they can die for Allah, and thus be guaranteed heaven.

Today's scripture says that life after death was a question among the religious in Jesus' day as we have read in this teaching from Luke today. Remember that this is during the last week of Jesus' life. He has just ridden in on a donkey and been hailed as the "Son of David" which was code for "The Next King of The Jews."

The religious Jews and all their various factions agreed that they had to do something about Jesus. In this scripture it is the Sadducees who are having their turn as trying to trick Jesus with some tricky questions about life after death.
Jesus is busy teaching and preaching and various religious figures are coming to ask Jesus questions. Jesus uses it to instruct us as well.

The Sadducees, a religious faction of Judaism, come up with an interesting question. First of all we need to remember that about 200 years before Jesus Jews began believing that when a good law practicing Jew died or a wicked sinner died, they both went to a place of waiting, called Sheol. There was a wide gulf between the godly, who waited with Father Abraham and their ancestors, and the wicked who waited in torment.

We see this view clearly in Luke's record of Jesus' teaching in Luke 16 in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Although the point of the parable was our actions in this life have eternal consequences, it did point out the teaching about Sheol or the "place of the dead". There the dead would wait until the Day of Judgment and then the wicked would be condemned to hell and the righteous would be resurrected.

Sadducees did not believe in any kind of resurrection and held that the only scriptures were the first five books. Everything else was an add-on and not considered scripture from God.

Jesus was not a Pharisee, those who practiced the letter of the law. Would he agree with the Sadducee teachings? His answer to this question would settle it. The Sadducees were political and social conservatives and Biblical literalists, and they said there is no resurrection because what they considered the "Books of Moses" did not explicitly teach it.

There was this rule in Israel, recorded in Deuteronomy 25:5-10. Everyone knew it. If being part of the blood line of Abraham is necessary to inherit God's favor, what happens when there are brothers and one marries and dies before children are born?
The law was the dead man's brother is supposed to marry the widow and the first born son is to be considered the dead brother's child and would claim the dead man as his father in the family tree.

This is so that the dead man will not have his name blotted out of Israel's history.

If the brother refuses to marry her, she can go and tell the elders and they will talk to him.
If he still refuses she could go in the presence of the elders and pull off his sandal and spit in his face and say, "This is what is done to the one will not build up his brother's house. And throughout Israel his family shall be known as "the house of him whose sandal was pulled off."

That was pretty serious stuff!

Jesus was asked what happens if the brother married the widow and he died, and the next brother married her and he died, and the next brother married her and he died, until all seven brothers had married her and they all died. None of them wanted to have their sandal pulled off! Now they were all dead and gone. In the so called "resurrection" whose wife is she?

Jesus said, "You use that to prove there is no resurrection of the dead? There is a reason to marry in this life, so that the human race can continue as God intended. But in the life to come people don't worry about getting married. No one will die. There is no need to keep the blood lines going.
Everyone is like angels. They are the children of God."

Now I want to say that because of this teaching of Jesus that says there won't be any boy-girl kind of relationships some say heaven looks pretty boring and not fun.

However we should remember that this life with its best is only a small taste of what is to come. I Corinthians 13 in which the Apostle Paul describes human love at its best says, "For now we see now in a mirror, dimly. Then we will see face to face. Now I now only in part, then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known." Heaven will be lots better in every joy we have experienced here and even beyond.

Jesus went on in this teaching recorded for us by Luke to say, "To say there is no resurrection, no life after death is to deny what Moses wrote when he told about the burning bush. When Moses asked God's identity God said, 'I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob'. God is not the God of the dead, but the living; for to God all of them are alive."

It was a tricky question, and Jesus answered it well.

We have questions today about the existence of heaven or life after death. We don't hear much about heaven these days unless we go to a funeral. Then we hear a lot about hope and we translate that into "wishful thinking"

We all, nevertheless have questions about what happens when we die?

One thing for sure; we are created by God with all we need to trust God. There are some things bigger than our imagination. We can trust God's presence to be with us in this life and also in the life to come.

We read this in Ecclesiastes 3:10&11 "I have seen the business that God has given to the sons of men to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man's mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to the end."

God has not revealed exactly what or how we will continue past the grave. God has revealed himself to us in this life through the person and ministry of Jesus the Christ. From what we know about Christ, we are to gain a further trust that God will work out the details.

This Christ came to open up a relationship between each of us and God by being the payment for the sins you and I have committed against one another and against God.

We read in the 14h Chapter of the Gospel of John that Jesus was trying to prepare the disciples for his impending death. He could see the sad looks on their faces. He said, "In my Father's house there is room for everyone. If it weren't so would I have promised I go now to prepare a place for you? I will come again to take you to myself; so that where I am there you may be also."

Jesus said he was going to leave them and they could not follow. They thought he was going off to another part of the country-side and compelling them to remain there.

Philip said, "Lord we don't know where you are going, or the way to get there." Jesus replied, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me."

The Apostle Paul taught that there is more to life than what we know here. He wrote to the struggling church in Philippi: "For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you." (Philippians 1:21-24)

We must never focus on heaven and what God has waiting for us while we sit idle in this life. We are here by God's design and we have a calling that is important to God's Kingdom. We do not wait to escape from our troubles, but with God's help we face them and try our best to live answering God's call to love.

Because there is so much more to God than we can possibly become acquainted with in a life time, we know we have to have more time than just this life to discover all the God is so we may faithfully praise and worship God.

God is not satisfied that we be looking at him through a "dim mirror", but wants us to be able to see him "face to face".

We find God in this life, and in finding God we have that "eternity" stamped in our hearts that tells us we can trust God for more than we know now.

We read in the third chapter of John's Gospel the story of a Pharisee who had kept all of the Jewish laws all his life coming to Jesus knowing he needed something more.

Nicodemus came to Jesus and Jesus tried to explain to him; just as natural birth is an awakening to the physical world and all its wonders and relationships, knowing God is like a spiritual birth, awakening to the wonders of a spiritual world living in a relationship with God.

Jesus told Nicodemus there is a definite separation between earthly things and heavenly things. We can only understand the heavenly based on our limited experience of the earthly.

Jesus told Nicodemus, this is how it is, "God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever would believe in him would not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16)

We know that our life on this earth comes to an end. We have a beginning and an end. Jesus taught about "everlasting life". A life beyond what we know in the physical world.

Dr Lewis R Donelson, a professor of New Testament at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary says, "If there is a Presbyterian narrative about life after death, this is it: When you die, your soul goes to be with God, where it enjoys God's glory and waits for the final judgment. At the final Judgment bodies are reunited with souls, and eternal rewards and punishments are handed out."

What about that final Judgment Day? Friends those who have placed their faith in Christ as the payment for their sins cannot go from being in God's glorious presence to being condemned to hell for their bad deeds on earth.

For those who have trusted in Christ as their Savior have their sins forgiven and those sins have been wiped from the memory of God. Those in heaven need not fear the final Judgment.

The fact is the Bible spends more time taking about this life and our relationship to God and to one another. We can trust God to give us the means in Christ to connect to God in this life, and we can trust God to give us the means in Christ to connect to God in the life to come.

What do we do with the tricky questions about heaven? We have a call from God that is focused on that which is within our reach; our relationships to God and to one another.

We must either make grand speculations and unneeded leaps of faith to answer all our questions about heaven and the life to come, or we have to trust God and leave heaven to those who are there in God's presence.

Will we know one another? Will we know our loved ones? Will earthly relationships there matter? What will we be doing there? Do we get to do our favorite things there? Will I finally be rich and get to live in a big house?
Here is the bottom line on the subject. Knowing that God provides us everything we need to know God in this life, we can trust God to provide for our needs in heaven as well.

We don't know about bodies, and faces, and likes and dislikes in the life to come, but we can trust God to continue to be our God and provide for our needs.

Is there a heaven and a hell? We have accounts of Jesus speaking about it. If we take the teachings of Jesus as the "truth" he claimed to be, and the "eternal life" he promised to believers, we have to say "yes". But we should be careful that we do not put such an emphasis on what life will be beyond the grave that we forget God has put us here at this moment to live for God's glory.

We read this wisdom in Proverbs chapter 3 page 585 of your pew Bibles.

Friends the final word on life after death has to be, trust God.

Luke 20:27-38
Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. "Teacher," they said, "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. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?"
Jesus replied, "The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God's children, since they are children of the resurrection. But in the account of the bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord 'the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive."
(From the New International Version of the Bible.)

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