In this video, Clint Loveall and Michael Gewecke discuss Luke Chapter 20 in the context of Holy Week. They explore the encounter between Jesus and the Sadducees, who try to trap Him with a question about resurrection. Clint and Michael delve into the deeper meaning of Jesus’ response and the significance of God’s promise of resurrection. Join them as they analyze this passage and uncover its teachings about the hope and new life found in Jesus Christ.
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Transcript
00:00:00:12 – 00:00:33:38
Clint Loveall
So we are in the Gospel of Luke. We are in Luke Chapter 20. Remember that we’re in what we call Holy Week or the last week of Jesus’s earthly life. Jesus is being tested here. He is passed with flying colors. A trap that was set for him about taxes. And now some Sadducees come to him and just. Just kind of a very quick landscape note here.
00:00:33:43 – 00:00:56:53
Clint Loveall
Among the religious leaders of Jesus Day, there are scribes that kind of work with the Pharisees. There are religious leaders. Pharisees is a growing group, not yet dominant, probably the dominant group, though they’re on their decline. And in way out are the Sadducees. The Pharisees will end up being the group that kind of continues Judaism from Jesus Day.
00:00:56:58 – 00:01:18:01
Clint Loveall
But at the time, there is another group called the Sadducees, and they argue over a few fundamental differences, one of them being that the Sajak’s didn’t believe in resurrection. And so they are up to this task of questioning Jesus and whether that’s on purpose or whether it’s just natural that they would be the ones asking. We don’t know.
00:01:18:01 – 00:01:36:34
Clint Loveall
But let me read you the conversation, then we’ll come back and talk about it. Some Sadducees, those who say there’s no resurrection came to Jesus and they asked him a question. Teacher Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, a man should marry the widow and raise children up for his brother.
00:01:36:39 – 00:02:02:16
Clint Loveall
Now, there were seven brothers, the first married and died childless. Then the second and the third married her and so on. The same way all seven died childless. Finally, the woman also died in the resurrection. Therefore, whose wife will the woman be for? The seven had married her. Well, we stop there for a minute, Michael. So this is again, one of those traps.
00:02:02:16 – 00:02:26:34
Clint Loveall
And we see here these people putting this question to Jesus that really gets just pushed to absurdity. Imagine there are seven brothers that each one of them dies in succession. So the next one in line marries the wife trying to provide for her. There were laws. There were Jewish laws about these things. It sounds very strange to us.
00:02:26:34 – 00:02:56:01
Clint Loveall
But remember that in Jesus day, a widow is extremely vulnerable. And so the the commitment and the responsibility for caring for that widow could be passed along family bonds to a brother or to extended family. How much that was practiced in Jesus day is debated somewhat, but those laws are on the books. They they all know what they’re referring to.
00:02:56:06 – 00:03:13:51
Clint Loveall
And then we get this ridiculous scenario spun out where this happens six times. And finally, then the question about both resurrect action and the question to to sort of overthrow Jesus is whose wife is it?
00:03:13:55 – 00:03:42:32
Michael Gewecke
Yes. So we know that once you get down the line as far as this, you’re sort of living in that beautiful historical kind of precedent in that it’s popped up time over time. Christians have historically had times where we debated how many angels could fit on the pin of a needle. That’s a real thing. You know, there’s there’s moments where you get so far into the weeds that you’re no longer interested in things of substance.
00:03:42:34 – 00:04:06:42
Michael Gewecke
Now, they would say that this the conversation about resurrection matters and that they’re trying to get to the center of that. But Clint, I mean, at at the point of which you’re saying, you know, that we have all of these brothers and then each one dies child childless. You’re essentially looking for the the most fine tooth, the really exposition of the law.
00:04:06:42 – 00:04:27:07
Michael Gewecke
And, you know, the the the devil’s in the details here. And and the point that they’re going to try to make to Jesus is going to be trying to catch him in the weeds of the details. I mean, it’s just that the question is in some ways fitting their emphasis. I mean, we know the Sadducees were very interested in the law and the application of the law.
00:04:27:07 – 00:04:34:35
Michael Gewecke
But in another way, I think this is this is kind of ad nauseum them taking an argument as far as it can possibly go in breaking it.
00:04:34:48 – 00:05:00:27
Clint Loveall
Yeah, it’s a it’s a shallow question. It’s not a real question. It’s just some people who think that they have sprung another trap on Jesus. And so let’s hear the response here, verse 34. Jesus said to them, Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but to those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead, they neither marry or are given.
00:05:00:32 – 00:05:26:13
Clint Loveall
Indeed, they cannot die anymore because they’re like angels and are children of God being children of the resurrection and the fact that the dead are raised. Moses himself showed in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.
00:05:26:18 – 00:05:59:53
Clint Loveall
Then some of the scribes answered. Teacher, You’ve spoken well, for they no longer dared ask him another question. So Jesus, essentially in in Bible language here says you don’t you don’t understand what you’re saying. Having the kingdom, the resurrected life is not like this. Life. There isn’t giving and taking because those people now live a new life. They are like angels, they are holy, are heavenly, their children of God, children of the resurrection.
00:05:59:58 – 00:06:40:42
Clint Loveall
And. And then He gives this idea that Moses could address God as the God of his forefathers because they still lived, or because the idea that they now lived with God. And and then he says, ultimately, God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, which is a wonderful phrase, not only answering their question to some extent, but also kind of teaching the idea that you should probably spend less time worrying about how things are in heaven and more so worrying about the kind of life that will allow you to be alive after your death.
00:06:40:42 – 00:07:14:30
Clint Loveall
You have plenty to do in the here and now without coming up with these ridiculous questions. And then an interesting note at the end here, Michael. Some scribes and probably scribes are on Team Pharisee arguing for resurrection and not on the Sadducees group. They say you have answered well, Jesus. In other words, you put them in their place, but they’re afraid to ask Him any more questions as well, because he has this sort of habit of springing traps on the people who meant for them to work on him.
00:07:14:34 – 00:07:36:39
Michael Gewecke
So one thing we might miss if we rush through the end of this text is the irony of this, that they’re coming to Jesus in the middle of what we would call Holy Week, this last week between his coming into Jerusalem and his death and the debate about what happens to people after they die is should not be lost on us.
00:07:36:39 – 00:08:02:03
Michael Gewecke
That Luke is doing some really interesting kind of narrative teaching multiple layers deep. On one hand, he is telling us about this encounter that Jesus had with some very influential, very thoughtful religious leaders who are trying to teach him in, you know, the very tiniest details of the application of Old Testament law and its impact upon and understanding of resurrection.
00:08:02:07 – 00:08:24:55
Michael Gewecke
But here Jesus is teaching about what happens to those who are on the other side of life itself. And it shouldn’t be lost on us that this is in many ways Jesus also teaching what is going to happen to Him, what He will be the first fruits of for everyone that will come after him. Because the earliest Christians who read this, this text would serve multiple purposes.
00:08:25:05 – 00:08:49:19
Michael Gewecke
On the first, it would just simply serve as a teaching text. It would teach a story of Jesus in a way that he taught revelation, this revelation of resurrection. And He did so even in the face of some people who are trying to trick him. But on a deeper level here, Jesus is now describing for the earliest Christians, this is what our resurrected hope is in.
00:08:49:24 – 00:09:14:43
Michael Gewecke
This is just a small glimpse and what Jesus Christ has done for us and the new life, the new kingdom that He’s ushering in, the one that extends beyond our understanding of life itself. So I simply point this out, Clint, to say that Luke is a masterful writer and teacher. He is giving us a thoughtful, carefully written, carefully resourced expositions of Jesus’s life.
00:09:14:58 – 00:09:39:42
Michael Gewecke
And the way that this is told, I think is not accidental that we see Jesus fighting back, this false faith, this this not good faith argument, but simultaneously teaching something true about himself, about what he’s going to do in just a few days, and then also the hope of resurrection for for all of the days after him and and all of that is happening simultaneously in the text like this.
00:09:39:46 – 00:10:24:18
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And I again, I think an important takeaway here is found near the end. This idea of God is not the God of the dead. You know, we we think about the past, but the idea of God being timeless, the idea of life being eternal or extended, the idea that God is the God of life. This has been an important promise to Christians that there is more to the message of the gospel, there is more to the teaching and the presence of Christ than what happens in the moments that we are walking around here on Earth or that we’re drawing breath here on Earth, that there’s something more to the story.
00:10:24:18 – 00:10:48:24
Clint Loveall
And early Christians, as did some, some Jews of Jesus de leaned into that hope drastically. What I think is intriguing about this, Michael, is the idea that in our day and age, it’s normally a nonbeliever or an atheist may be someone from another religion that tries to kind of back you into the corner and spring a trap about the Bible or about faith and some God.
00:10:48:28 – 00:11:05:33
Clint Loveall
It’s fascinating as we read this, to see that it was people of the same faith doing it to one another. You know, that they had differences on ideas. But these are religious people trying to trap Jesus. And I think that makes that unusual in our experience.
00:11:05:38 – 00:11:33:01
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, I think your point is really well made. I think that we can take it even further and we should name there is a devotional reading of that here. Jesus is doing a really interesting and generative interpretive thing when he starts talking about God’s revelation to Moses at the burning bush that texts was and remains one of the most well-known Old Testament passages.
00:11:33:01 – 00:12:05:51
Michael Gewecke
Because God is named in it, it becomes this place where God commits to carry the people out of Egypt and in the commitment to Moses in the encounter of that place, God reveals something new about God’s self. And what I think is unbelievable about the reference here is when Jesus reads that and Jesus speaks about the way that God claims, you know that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
00:12:06:01 – 00:12:29:06
Michael Gewecke
This living relationship that God has. And then Jesus, you know, He puts aside for a moment the the amazing fact, the amazing reality that it was at the bush, that God names himself and establishes a relationship with Moses and the Israelites to follow. But Jesus looks at that moment and says, no. God also claims all of those who came before.
00:12:29:11 – 00:13:02:51
Michael Gewecke
And so then the promise that Jesus offers in this interpretation is to say that God has already been for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob the hope and promise of their future, which is held in the hope and promise of their resurrection. So Jesus’s reading of the Old Testament here, I think is really, really interesting. It has something to your point, Clint, to say to us, people who now live thousands of years later, we especially if you’ve been Christian for some time, you’ve lived with this word resurrection in there at some point.
00:13:02:56 – 00:13:29:15
Michael Gewecke
This is an idea that we’re comfortable with. But it was number one debated in Jesus’s day. There was real disagreement about that. And as we see Jesus reading his Bible, the Old Testament exodus, we see him doing some incredible things to remind us today that the God who we think of as being the God of old remains the God of today and promises to be the God of the future.
00:13:29:27 – 00:13:51:07
Michael Gewecke
And that’s good news for everyone of all time. And if you think that that’s an interesting point today, it is. I would say let’s wait and hold that in view. We’re going to get to the Lord’s Supper. We’re going to get to the upper room. That text is going to just bring that in in different shades. How God continues by the work of Jesus to be faithful and present.
00:13:51:07 – 00:14:11:30
Michael Gewecke
So it’s a big text in many different ways. In one way you could read past this and say, look, another debate, Jesus and some people trying to trick him in another way where this story has been placed. It has a kind of, I think, prominence over some of these other conflict stories that we’ve had. And I think it’s really has a lot to teach us, actually.
00:14:11:34 – 00:14:33:39
Clint Loveall
Yeah, it is a big text, but I think ultimately a helpful one as it reminds us, you know, you have some people that want to create a framework in which God is about rules and what are the exemptions, what are the loopholes, what are the standards? And Jesus won’t have it. Jesus says that that’s not what God’s about, God’s not about death.
00:14:33:39 – 00:15:10:13
Clint Loveall
God’s about life isn’t about the past. God isn’t about the ins and outs of legal rules. God is about life. God is about the future. God is about creating and extending and remaking and, you know, I appreciate that at the end, at least some of the teachers recognize some of the scribes, at least recognized, in Jesus words, of wisdom that briefly sung in the last Long, but briefly transcended the tension between them.
00:15:10:13 – 00:15:16:14
Clint Loveall
So a rare compliment in this section of the Scripture.
00:15:16:19 – 00:15:39:00
Michael Gewecke
Though they they’re silenced again, right? I mean, we have that verse for thee. They don’t have another question. Go back verse 26. They’re amazed by his answer and they become silent. We have this repeated scene where they come to Jesus with these traps. Jesus responds, They’re silence, they’re quiet. And again, I would only point out their words may be silenced.
00:15:39:05 – 00:16:00:07
Michael Gewecke
Luke goes out of his way to make sure that we’re clear the the vitriol and the rising anger in their hearts. I mean, this isn’t in today’s text, but the conflict with Jesus is only raising. We’ve already had reference to that. They would have liked to have grabbed him, except they were afraid of the crowds, the the tension as Jesus silences them.
00:16:00:07 – 00:16:12:00
Michael Gewecke
He’s only they’re only quiet in heart or in their in their speech, not in the things that they’re devising. And Luke’s ratcheting up the the causation for why they’re so angry at Jesus.
00:16:12:01 – 00:16:16:30
Clint Loveall
The next time Jesus mentioned scribes, they will not be happy about it.
00:16:16:30 – 00:16:27:42
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a good segue way. We hope you’ll join us for that. I’m certainly glad to have you with us today. We look forward to continuing this study with you. I hope you’re well and we’ll see you next time.
00:16:27:46 – 00:16:28:25
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody.