Some Sadducees came up. This is the Jewish party that denies any possibility of resurrection. They asked, “Teacher, Moses wrote us that if a man dies and leaves a wife but no child, his brother is obligated to take the widow to wife and get her with child. Well, there once were seven brothers. The first took a wife. He died childless. The second married her and died, then the third, and eventually all seven had their turn, but no child. After all that, the wife died. That wife, now–in the resurrection whose wife is she? All seven married her.” Jesus said, “Marriage is a major preoccupation here, but not there. Those who are included in the resurrection of the dead will no longer be concerned with marriage nor, of course, with death. They will have better things to think about, if you can believe it. All ecstasies and intimacies then will be with God. Even Moses exclaimed about resurrection at the burning bush, saying, ‘God: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob!’ God isn’t the God of dead men, but of the living. To him all are alive.” Some of the religion scholars said, “Teacher, that’s a great answer!”
Luke 20:27-39
Remember, I told you a few gems ago that it was like the factions were lining up. After the cleansing of the Temple, then the Triumphal Entry, followed by the discussion related to His authority to cleanse the Temple, they begin to organize the opposition. First, the Pharisees and the Experts in the Law get together with the Herodians to sort out how they are going to deal with this Jesus. When that ploy doesn’t work, the next strategy is put into action. Now the Sadducees move in and seek to deal with Him their way.
Do you know what you have to do now? I hope so. If you have been following Gems long enough, you know what to do. Start connecting the dots. Look for the details that will help you to solve the problem before you. I have told you before, your ability to solve the problem to understand this segment, lies in your ability to ask the right questions. We have to focus on the things we don’t understand and ask the questions which will help us to achieve understanding. We need to be able to work out what the thinking is behind the scenes with this sense unit.
- Why is it here in this sequence?
- Has it been moved from a different position from the other gospels, to this place in Luke’s Gospel?
- Does it connect with the background material surrounding it?
Are there places, terms, cultural understandings, historical background, we need to know more detail about before we can understand what is being meant in this passage? We need to pay careful attention between the question and the answer given, to work out the connection or the point of comparison, before we can fully understand Jesus’ point or Luke’s purpose in including the story at this point.
Don’t forget also, to stand back and take in the wider perspective of the order in which things are placed and the connections with what has gone before it and what follows it. The more we do this, the more we learn to understand the Bible as a whole. Like the segment before this, we need to understand what Jesus is alluding to when He talks about the image on the coin. Sure, the image on the coin was important, but maybe more important is the connection between the image on the coin and the image on our lives. The image of Caesar compared with the image of God. We need to consider all the angles in order to pick up on the inferences Jesus is making.
You know what I am going to say now, don’t you? Of course you do. Now is the time for you to look at this segment which has been given a number of different titles :
- The Sadducees’ Question
- The Question about the Resurrection
- What Happens at the Resurrection?
- The Problem of the Resurrection
- The Resurrection and Marriage
- The Controversy with the Sadducees about the Resurrection
- The God of the Living
- The Seven Brothers
Have fun sorting out the meaning of this sense unit. We will look at it in detail in the next Gem.
Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.
Tony Robbins
If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.
Regina Brett
If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.
Anon
Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.
Douglas MacArthur
Though we are incomplete, God loves us completely. Though we are imperfect, He loves us perfectly.
Anon