Lenten Reading # 9 -- 7 Marriages, 8 Funerals, and a Resurrection

If two trains are 1200 miles apart and one train is going west at 102 mph (but there won't be enough coal to keep the engine running at full tilt in two hours), while the other train is going east at 127 mph (but the engineer didn't have his coffee this morning and has fallen asleep with his elbow on the gearshift), plus the wind is blowing southeast, while the tracks are slightly rusty over a span of ten feet and a group of tourists are playing a game of Go Fish in the back car while eating a bag of Doritos...

...what color is sky over Korea? 


Yep. That's about how the question the Sadducees asked Jesus in Matthew 22 went.

23 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 24 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 27 Finally, the woman died. 28 Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”

It's easy to tell that they weren't interested in an answer. In fact, they were only interested in making Jesus and the idea of a resurrection look foolish.

But they weren't the ones being foolish.

29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am 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.”

33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.

Jesus' response is similar to the title of a new movie coming out: God's not dead! Their response indicated that God has no power over life. That death is the end. That God can't and won't stop it.

But he does have that power to give life.

It's why earth has life on it.
It's why babies are born everyday.
It's why we're alive right now.

AND EVEN DEATH DOESN'T STOP GOD!

Case in point: Jesus! At the end of this Lenten journey he will have suffered death. But that won't stop him. On Easter Sunday morning he returned from death. He had...a resurrection!

Are we saying that the God who has continually proven that he gives life will suddenly have lost his mojo and be unable to do so? Is he not as strong as he used to be? Has his power worn off?

Of course not! 

True, as human beings, we can't accomplish a resurrection on our own. In fact, when we're dead there's nothing we can do. That's the wretched effect of sin. (And apart from Jesus, it is a wretched effect we will suffer forever.)

But with the One who has that power, we will not die, but live! Jesus said, "whoever believes in me will live, even though he dies and whoever lives and believes in me will never die!"

Have confidence in this God. He is a living God. He is a God of the living. He is a God who gives eternal life to the living.

That's not foolish at all.

PRAYER: Dear Lord, thank you for being an awesome, living God. Help me never to forget that. Help me to turn to you for strength and confidence on a day to day basis. Your awesome living power will never fail me. Let me never forget it. Amen.