The Resurrection of the Righteous Luke 20 Vs 27-40

Glad to have you all here today. Welcome to Faith Bible Church. Just going to go through some quick announcements. Finally, we have our summer church gathering today after service. So please join us if you're able.

The next Bible study will be this Wednesday at 5 .30 p .m. in the Fellowship Park in the back on this side here. We have our summer Greek study that continues. That will be Saturday, August 10th at 9 .30 a .m.

So please see Pastor Ilgen if you have any questions here. Our Missionary of the Month is Ellie Drizinga. She's serving with the Brazil Gospel Fellowship Mission in Saparinga, Brazil. She's involved with planting, leading youth groups, teaching English.

So please pray for her in the ministry that she is leading over there. And we'll just start service with some prayer. Dear Lord, we thank you for today. Thank you for getting us all here safely, Lord.

We just pray, Lord, that we can have an open heart to worship you today, Lord, through song and through your word. And, Lord, we just thank you for the opportunity that we have here to be able to worship you like this, Lord, so freely.

And we pray to you, Lord, and we pray for later that we can stay cool and have a good time fellowshipping together. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

As you see, we have communion set up, which we do the first of every month. And we like to think about our Savior, not just during communion, but even as we worship him and think about all that he has provided for us.

So if you would stand together with me, join me in song to our Lord and our Savior, Jesus Christ.

The Law of Levirate Marriage in Deuteronomy 25

Scripture reading is going to come out of the book of Deuteronomy. It's going to be chapter 25, verses 5 through 10. Yep, again, that's Deuteronomy, chapter 25, verses 5 through 10. Verse 5. But if the man does not want to take his brother's wife, then let his brother's wife go up to the gate to the elders and say, My husband's brother refuses to raise up a name to his brother in Israel.

He will not perform the duty of my husband's brother. Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him. But if he stands firm and says, I do not want to take her, then his brother's wife shall come to him in the presence of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, spit in his face and answer and say, So shall it be done to the man who will not build up his brother's house.

And his name shall be called in Israel the house of him who had his sandal removed. This is the word of the Lord.

We'll dismiss our youngsters to children's church at this time.

Jesus Answers the Sadducees on the Resurrection

Let us turn to Luke chapter 20. Luke chapter 20, verses 27 through 40. Luke chapter 20, verses 27 through 40. And some of the Sadducees who deny that there is a resurrection came to him and asked him, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife and he dies without children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.

Now there were seven brothers and the first took a wife and died without children. And the second took her took her as wife and he died childless. Then the third took her and in like manner the seven also.

And they left no children and died. Last of all, the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife does she become? For all seven had her as wife. Jesus answered and said to them, The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage.

But those who are counted worthy to attain that age and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage. Nor can they die anymore for they're equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

But even Moses showed in the burning bush passage that the dead are raised when he called the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. For he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.

Then some of the scribes answered and said, Teacher, you have spoken well. But after that, they dared not ask question. They dared not question him anymore. This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Father, we're grateful that the resurrection is real.

And we know that because Jesus rose from the dead after bearing our sin and suffering the punishment that we deserved. And Father, we pray that you would help us to understand your word. We pray that you would be present with us.

And we would delight in your presence. And we would experience your love this morning. In Jesus' name. Amen. So previously in chapter 20, the Pharisees and other religious leaders challenged Jesus' authority.

That was from verses 1 through 8. The question was, by whose authority are you doing these things? And last week, the religious leaders sent spies to test Jesus regarding politics. Is it right for us to pay tribute to Caesar or not?

And again, this was a trap to make Jesus say something that would get him in trouble with either the crowd, who are heavily anti-Roman, or Rome, who would want people to continue paying tribute. And this week, the Sadducees will challenge Jesus on the reality of the resurrection.

Briefly, we will go over who the Sadducees are. But we will go over in more detail. As we can see from this text, they are a religious group of people who do not believe in the resurrection. Which means the fact that they're asking Jesus the question, again, they want to trap Jesus.

They don't really care to know whether the resurrection is true or not. They've already made up their mind. And in fact, we know that Jesus believes in the resurrection. Because in Luke 14, 14, he spoke of the resurrection of the righteous, in which they will be repaid.

People who are faithful to Jesus will be raised from the dead to be repaid. And people who are not faithful to Jesus will be raised from the dead to be judged. Now, the resurrection was actually a debated issue in the first century.

And there were two main factions, the Pharisees and scribes and the Sadducees. The Pharisees and the scribes actually believed in the resurrection, while the Sadducees did not. And the challenge here is different because the Sadducees attempt to refute the resurrection of the righteous by misusing Scripture.

Right, before this, they weren't really using Scripture, but the Sadducees here want to use Scripture. In fact, the text that Dexter read to us this morning from Deuteronomy 25. Jesus, however, does not stand back.

He actually correctly uses Scripture to refute and silence his opponents. Deuteronomy 25, 5 through 10 is actually rather a curious text if you haven't read it until now. It's about this married couple and if the husband dies early, how his brother has to marry the now current widow.

We're going to go in detail what the purpose of that is. But think about, think about a widow state in ancient Israel. There's no government program. There's no social security. Who's going to take care of the widow, right?

There's that case in which the Leveret marriage, the text that Deuteronomy 25 is about, it takes care of the widow. But not only that, there's the context of the family and land. Remember, the Israelites inherited a specific land for their own family and for their tribe.

If there is no heir to that family, well, the land can get lost. After all, if the widow marries someone else from another family or another tribe, the land goes to them. And for the ancient Israelites, the physical phenomenon represented and taught them the spiritual truth.

The spiritual truth here is generational faithfulness. What God has given them as a blessing, which is the land, they must faithfully steward to the next generation. That's the point of Deuteronomy 25.

And what the Sadducees do is that they take that and then they use it as a trap to prove that resurrection isn't real. And Jesus takes that, corrects them, and then uses another passage correctly as the author intended to prove that the resurrection is real.

And this is important for us this morning because oftentimes scripture is used to further our agenda. And I would rather say it's misused, right? If it's to further our agenda, it's misused. Scripture must be used the way that Jesus uses it, which is how the author of that scripture intended.

How did God intend to use scripture, right? So the main point of today's text is although Jesus' opponents misuse scripture to trap him, Jesus properly uses scripture to defend the resurrection. Although Jesus' opponents misuse scripture to trap him, Jesus properly uses scripture to defend the resurrection.

First, the enemies of Christ misuse scripture against him. Now the Pharisees and other leaders challenged Jesus before and they were stumped. And right before this week, the last passage, the Nationalists tried to stump Jesus before and they were silenced.

Now verse 27 sets the background for this week's challenge against Jesus. Then some of the Sadducees who deny that there is a resurrection came to him and asked him. Luke tells us here their main distinction compared to who came before.

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. They denied being any afterlife, right? In which God would raise the righteous and the unrighteous back to life to reward and judge respectively. The Sadducees, we need to briefly cover what's the difference between the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

First, the Sadducees were actually the aristocratic elites who were heavily linked to the priesthood. So if you read the chief priests, they were Sadducees. And they desire to keep the status quo, right?

Oftentimes people in power, they want to keep the status quo, whether for good or bad. And the Sadducees were exactly that. They did not want to anger the Roman Empire. They also did not want to trigger King Herod, right?

The Sadducees just wanted to play safe. Second, they only regarded the first five books of the Old Testament as scripture. Anything that came after Deuteronomy was not from God according to them. This is why, in fact, Jesus does not use Daniel, which is an apocalyptic book that shares the resurrection, right?

Or any of the Psalms to show the reality of the resurrection. Or even Ezekiel, right? The reason is they would have rejected that. So Jesus goes back to the law, Exodus, in this passage. Third, the Sadducees did not believe in the supernatural aspects of scripture, which makes sense why they reject the resurrection.

Dead people do not come back from life in a natural way. It has to be a divine intervention. In fact, they also did not believe in the angels, which is a little jab that Jesus does when he says those who are resurrected are like angels.

This will be the point of contention this morning. Is the resurrection real? And again, the question asked is going to be focused and limited. Which of the husbands is the wife married to? However, Jesus answers this, it's a trap, right?

Whether you deny the resurrection or you believe the resurrection. But Jesus will not go either way. He's not going to name a specific husband. Now, the context. Now, despite these different views, the Pharisees and Sadducees, they're basically a different denomination.

The Pharisees hold to the whole scripture that we have of the Old Testament. The Sadducees only five. The Pharisees believe in the resurrection. They don't. The Sadducees don't. And then you wonder, how did they team up together against Jesus?

And it really shows how genuinely threatening Jesus must have been to their power structure. And now it is precisely regarding the third point, the resurrection, that they will challenge Jesus. Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man's brother dies having a wife and he dies without children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.

And just like the previous groups, they start with flattery. Teacher, and obviously they have zero intention of learning anything from Jesus. They also have picked their battleground, and it's the Mosaic Law.

That's where they study the most, right? After all, those are the only five books that they consider scripture. They probably had this memorized. And now the topic of discussion, the Leveret marriage, is bizarre to most of us.

And none of us probably have seen it in play. Why would a man marry his brother's widow to produce a child for his brother's name? Right? That's the question. And I want to deeply go into the context of the Mosaic Law regarding marriage that comes from Deuteronomy 25, 5 through 10.

This specific law is called the Leveret marriage, and we only see it in Genesis 38. And one could argue Ruth 4. There is no equivalent cultural or legal requirement in either the New Testament or America.

There's not a law or a custom in which a brother of a dead man marries the widow. So it is hard for us to understand this, but I do want to share the real purpose of the Leveret marriage, which is not to trap Jesus.

The Leveret marriage prevented the extinction of the title to the inherited land. Remember, the land was crucial for Israel in how they relate to God. The land was the blessing from God to the nation of Israel.

And when Israel arrived at the promised land, each family from each tribe received a plot of land directly from God, right? They casted lot. And hence, faithfulness to the land pointed to the faithfulness to God.

Ultimately, their faithfulness had to be generational because no one lives forever owning the same land. They needed to produce progeny to keep the land in the family. Yet, in a fallen world, that's not always the reality, right?

There's barrenness. There's no guarantee that the husband or wife, they're fertile enough to produce offspring. And then there's, of course, early death, right? There's war, there's famine, there's pestilence.

People die early without having children. And the question is, how do you make sure the land given by God is not lost to a stranger, right? That was a real concern. How does one's family faithfully continue with the Lord in the land that God has given them?

Right? And the answer was delivered marriage. Have your closest male relative who is unmarried marry the widow so that the land stays in the family. And that was the physical expression of faithfulness to the Lord.

Now, if a man married his wife and the man died without any offspring, his brother would marry the widow and produce the offspring on behalf of the dead brother so the name continues in order that the land continues with the name.

After all, the land could easily go to a stranger if the widow marries someone outside the family. In fact, it was common for the widow to marry because who's going to take care of her? Now, from verses 29 to 32, the Sadducees illustrate a scenario to trap Jesus.

They take a very important aspect of the law to maintain and preserve family faithfulness, and then they twist it to make an absurd scenario to trap Jesus in saying there's no resurrection. That's the misuse of scripture.

Using scripture as the author had not intended. That's false teaching. Verse 29, now there were seven brothers and the first took a wife and died without children. Similar to the last passage, today's scenario will be intentionally absurd.

There are seven brothers and one woman and the first man will die without children. And this continues from verses 30 to 31, right? From one through seven, they will all die chronologically childless.

And the childlessness in the story only exists to have the woman, the widow, marry all seven different men. Because all seven different men will die. Ultimately, in verse 32, the woman died. The fact that one woman married to seven different men, that drives the point home in verse 33.

Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife does she become? For all seven had her as wife. The absurdity of the story ultimately is to show, according to the Sadducees, how ridiculous the resurrection is.

Right? That's their use of the story. You see, how can a woman be married to seven different men and they're resurrected? How can this Mosaic Law even function with the resurrection in play? Think of it this way.

You can't possibly believe that this woman will be married to seven different men and no resurrection. Jesus, do you? See how ridiculous this doctrine is? If you apply the Mosaic Law, right? They're the experts of the law.

Do you see it? Can you see how ridiculous this is? In one sense, they want to reject God's doctrine of resurrection using God's very word, which makes it quite perverse. They want to disprove Jesus' promise of the resurrection using His very word in the Old Testament.

The misuse of Scripture to disprove God and His doctrine is quite common even today. And I think, I'd be willing to argue, really the origin is Satan himself. Take what God says, let's twist it and make it go against Him.

Right? That's Satan's modus operandi, right? That's what he does. And for Christians who follow Jesus, it is crucial that we read Scripture as the Scripture is intended to be read. We have to go along with what God wants to say rather than what we want it to say.

One of the most famous examples of the misuse of Scripture to disprove God's doctrine is How could God, how could the God of love judge the world? How could the loving God send anyone to hell? Right? And that's because biblically, you can see that God is not only loving, He is love.

Right? He is the source of love. He is the love personified. 1 John 4, 8, God is love. Everything He does and everything that He is, He is love. There's nothing in the world that He does without His pure and selfless love.

Right? And that's a classic mishandling of Scripture to deny Jesus His sovereign authority to judge. The question is, could we use Scripture passages that talk about how loving God is to deny His right to judge?

And the answer is, of course not. In fact, when someone makes up a point like that, how can the loving God judge? Or how can the loving God send anyone to hell? I would argue one of the best responses is to ask a question back.

Do you believe that there's no one who's going to hell? Right? Do you believe there's no one who's going to hell? Now the pressure's on them. The ball's on their court. But you believe, I mean, you can list a whole bunch of things that humans have done to one another.

That's so wicked that I would not be able to say it from the pulpit. And they have the burden of proof to show that those things were all acceptable to this God of love. And of course the answer is, of course not.

He has the right to judge. The fact of the matter is that God is loving when He judges. There's not like a good cop, bad cop for God. Right? It's not like the son comes in and says, no, I love you. You don't have to do this.

And then they reject Jesus and all of a sudden the father comes in and is like, welcome to hell. Right? That's not how it works. Right? There is no single moment in which His love is absent. Right? There is no divine activity in which God's love ceases.

Consider this. Can you imagine a world in which the wicked constantly get what they want and there's no consequence? There's no justice. Even afterlife, there's no justice. Can you imagine a world in which Nazi Germany continued to thrive because God did not judge?

Right? World War II just didn't happen. The Third Reich became the Third Empire to reach the millennium mark. Can you imagine that? To 2930. The fact that tyrants like Hitler, Stalin and Mao are dead and are waiting to burn for all eternity in hell for their crime against humanity and rebellion against God is because God is love.

God lovingly hears the outcries of the oppressed and He will act. God of love necessarily has to be the supreme judge or He's a cruel, apathetic divine figure who has every power to make things right yet does not.

We cannot misuse scripture to challenge God. We cannot twist God's word to challenge God. Now, how does Jesus respond to the question of resurrection? Jesus properly uses scripture to defend the resurrection.

Jesus responds to the Sadducees case study by contrasting the present world and the resurrection world. First, He describes the current world in verse 34. The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage.

The sons of this age, they are the normal living people. They are of this age. They're the ones who are constantly marrying. They're given in marriage, right? They're the very people who just live now even.

Now, what is the resurrection age like? First, there will not be marriage in the world to come, right? But those who are counted worthy to attain that age. So, it's not just everyone who's resurrected in the resurrection of the righteous.

Those who are found worthy. Those who are counted worthy. Those who are faithful in Christ. And the resurrection from the dead, neither married nor are given in marriage. His kingdom will look far different from the current kingdom.

That's what He's saying. And why is that? Why is His kingdom so different from the current kingdom? Verse 36 explains the second reality. Nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

When the righteous are raised from the dead, they are raised to live forever. They will not experience death again. Jesus actually compares them to angels, which actually snubs the Sadducees even more, who reject the existence of the angels.

Just as angels never die, the resurrected believers will not die. Their lives continue. And the title, sons of God, means that just as God lives eternally, the resurrected believers will live eternally as well.

Right? Remember, the sons do what the father does. If the father doesn't die, well, the sons don't either. Right? Now, what does Jesus base this upon? The Old Testament actually has several passages in which the resurrection of the dead is clearly spelled out.

In fact, one of the clearest places you can go to is Daniel 12 .2. If you read Daniel 12 .2, and if you read it out loud and you don't tell them it's from Daniel, some people will think it's from Revelation.

Some people will think it's from the New Testament. And I will read it to you. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

I don't know about you, but you can't not get resurrection out of that. You cannot dodge the resurrection when you read Daniel. The problem is, of course, the Sadducees do not hold the book of Daniel as Scripture.

Right? The book of Daniel is not part of the law. Right? Genesis through Deuteronomy. Thus, Jesus doesn't go back to Daniel. He goes back to Moses, just as the Sadducees had done. But even Moses showed in the burning bush passage that the dead are raised.

When he called the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. This verse is from Exodus 3 .6 and also 3 .15. God appears to Moses in the wilderness as the burning bush to tell Israel and to commission Moses that God will save them out of the enslavement in Egypt.

And how God identifies himself is that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs from Genesis, who died at least three centuries prior to Moses' encounter with the Lord in the wilderness.

Briefly, what we do need to consider here is that Jesus considered the book of Exodus written by Moses. He quotes from Exodus, and he says it's Moses. Mosaic authorship of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, is not an evangelically created doctrine.

It's what we get from Scripture. It's what Jesus considered mosaic. Second, if we stop here with, wait, how does that passage prove the resurrection? It gets confusing. Because all God said was he's the God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

How does this verse from Exodus talk about the resurrection? The only thing the Lord said was that he is Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob's God. How does that prove the resurrection at all? And Jesus explains this in verse 38.

For he is not the God of the dead, but of the living. For all live to him. The law of Moses consistently reveals to Israel that God is the God of life. We have to consider this. Even the Sadducees would have to agree with that because they believe in the law.

Think about it this way. Why were the Jews recommended to avoid shrimp? And oftentimes we scratch our head like, what's wrong with shrimp or pigs? It's not because God's against seafood or good food. But rather it's because God's people need to avoid anything that consumes blood.

And blood is the life force of the animal. What this shows is, if you consume animals that consume blood, you're too close to death and corruption. God's people, because they worship the God of life, need to reflect and represent the God of life by what they are eating and how they live.

That's why they're made unclean from touching a dead person. Not necessarily that sinful because you do have to bury your dead in order to honor your parents. But it made them unclean. Why? Because God is the God of life.

God's people need to avoid anything that reflects death when they're worshiping the God of life. And the Old Testament law clearly shows that God is the God of life. And now with that in mind, we go to how does God identify himself to Moses in the wilderness?

I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Jesus' explanation here is remarkable. The Lord is not the God of the dead, but of the living. God does not identify with the dead, but he identifies with the living.

What does that mean? The fact that God is keeping his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to deliver their descendants from Egypt, although they've been dead for centuries, is because one day these three men will be raised from the dead to experience the fullness and the fulfillment of God's promise.

The fact that God identifies with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he reminds Moses of his promise to these dead saints, is because in so delivering the Israelites from Egypt 400 years after their death, he is keeping the promise he made to these men, who are one day going to be physically alive to see the fulfillment of the promise.

That's how Exodus 3 proves the reality of the resurrection. The God of life will keep his promise to his people, who although dead now, will be risen later. If they're just dead and they just cease to exist, then there's really no point of keeping that promise.

Who cares? They're dead. The promise ends when they're dead. Promises end when people die. But not when it comes to God who's going to raise them from the dead. Now, what's the response to Jesus' answer?

First, we see how the scribes respond. Then some of the scribes answered and said, Teacher, you have spoken well, right? They said, Amen. The scribes actually belong to the same group as the Pharisees.

The scribes and Pharisees, they go hand in hand. Hence, they do agree with Jesus regarding the reality of the resurrection. Second, we see the result of all the opponents, but after they dared not ask questions, but after that, they dared not question him anymore.

The challenges stopped. They realized that Jesus' authority and wisdom far surpassed their own. They're going to have to find another way to deal with Jesus that is not intellectual, that is not based upon theology.

What they will do is they're going to put a false charge on him and deliver him to a Gentile governor. They're going to get the crowd riled up to ask for the crucifixion of an innocent man. What they wouldn't see is that through that crucifixion will come the resurrection.

What they meant for evil, God will bring up salvation of not just the Jews, but the Gentile world, which would have been unthinkable in the Old Testament, among the Old Testament people. Now, according to the Sadducees, the post-resurrection life will merely be a continuation of the current life.

That is the assumption that they're making when they make up that marriage story, right? Well, there are seven brothers and then one woman, and she at one point married to all seven of them, and they're all dead, but they're raised to life.

And their view is the resurrection will just be like the current status quo, right? The post-resurrection life will be the maintenance of the status quo. Hence, the scenario with the seven husbands and one woman will be bizarre in the resurrection.

Yet, Jesus tells us the resurrection will be completely different. It will be a different era. It will be a different world. The life as you know it will not even compare with the life that is to come.

That's what Jesus says. For those who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, oh, this is good news. Your resurrected life will be drastically different from the current life now. You won't be raised to live the same life that you've been living for however many decades.

Oftentimes, I think we're too easily satisfied with our current lives that we don't really think about the resurrection. In fact, we more so think about heaven, which is the intermediary state right before people are resurrected, where your soul goes if you're a believer and you're with Christ.

And it's a great place, but the end goal is really that your soul would reunite with the body, right? Because the body is good too. And this body will be sinless and unaffected by sin. And what would it be like to live in a body that is not falling apart?

In this life, there are limits to what money and medicine can fix, but there are no limits to God's resurrection. There are no expiration dates on your body parts. It doesn't go bad when God raises you from the dead, right?

And when God raises you from the dead, your chronic pain doesn't come back with you. Your short breath doesn't come back with you. Your chronic fatigue doesn't come back with you. That's the resurrection of the dead.

And whenever you grieve over what your body has become, you can actually long for what your resurrected body will be. After all, there is nothing that a good resurrection won't fix. Second, the resurrected body shows, and we must wonder, what would it be like to not be tempted by sin ever again?

The same old sin that you've been battling against for decades. The feeling of guilt and shame each time. This deep sense of regret. The overwhelming burden of filth. Sure, you have matured more, but there are still difficult days.

There are days in which you think you've backslid. Which you think, am I even saved? Days where you feel you went one step forward and three steps back. How could I do that to Jesus again? In such a moment, may it be a reminder what the resurrection will be like.

You will be given a body untainted by sin. There will no longer be any familiarity with sin. There will not be any delight in sin. There is no attraction to sin. Sin will be forever foreign to you. And it will be so long gone.

That's the resurrection. And how can you be sure of this resurrection reality? We go to scripture. The only way of learning of the reality of the resurrection is from the very person who has experienced it himself.

And that is Jesus Christ. God. The author of scripture. 1 Corinthians 15 tells us that the guarantee of our resurrection rests on the assurance of Christ's resurrection. How do we know this is all true?

How do we know that we all will be resurrected if you believe in Jesus Christ? Our faith in the afterlife is not a fantasy nor a folklore. The resurrection is not just a good idea, but a guaranteed end.

And that's because our hope of the resurrection is dependent on the historical reality of Jesus' resurrection from the dead. The fact that Jesus suffered for our sin on the cross and rose from the dead is the security of the resurrection to come.

His resurrection seals the deal for our resurrection. If you're ever in doubt that if there's afterlife, if the world will be made right again, if the pain you're going through, whether physical, emotional, spiritual, if that has an expiration date, don't look to yourself.

Look to Jesus. Is He risen or not? That's where we need to go. His resurrection is the reason why we don't fear death. God has shown through the resurrection of His son Jesus that death is not only defeated, but has an eternal expiration date.

Yes, there are people who have been raised from the dead in the Bible. But they all died. They were risen to die again. Not so Jesus. He was risen to live forever. He's been resurrected to reign forever.

And because Jesus is risen, there is a day in which death will not exist in God's creation. And because Jesus is risen, there is a day in which sin will be extinct in all of God's created realm. And we only know that when we approach God's word and read it in the utmost humility, asking God, what do you want me to know from this?

What did you mean by this? Let us pray. Father, we are grateful that the resurrection is true. And we can 100 be assured of the resurrection because of your son who rose from the dead. Help us to depend on Him.

Help us to submit to Him. Help us to rely on Him. And help us to look forward. May we not get stuck in the gloom of the degeneration of our bodies and the world, but rather look ahead to what your son will do and also look back to be assured of what your son will do.

Help us to have faith. In Jesus' name, amen.