Yesterday, I focused on the inevitability of our death. Today, Jesus explains the inevitability of the resurrection from the dead. The Sadducees did not believe in the supernatural at all and always argued that there was no such thing as a resurrection of the dead. (That’s why they were sad, you see!) In chapter 22, they challenged Jesus on the subject and presented him with the dilemma of a woman who had outlived seven husbands. They thought they would trick him with the question, “whose wife is she going to be in the resurrection?”
Jesus knew that their question wasn’t a legitimate question, but rather a question designed to discredit the doctrine of life after death. I love the way Jesus answered them. He first pointed out that their illustration was faulty because in the resurrection there will not be marriage as it is in this life. But their major problem was that they did not know their bible. Thousands of years after their deaths, God said, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Jesus pointed to the present tense verb, “I am,” as evidence of life after death. It doesn’t say “God was.” He concluded by saying you see, “He is not God of the dead, but of the living.”
When the Garden Tomb was discovered in 1885, General Gordon was convinced that this was the place where the body of Jesus had lain. There is a traditional tomb inside the wall of modern Jerusalem, but no certainty attaches to the site. The Garden Tomb, hidden for centuries, was covered with rubbish twenty feet high. When they first cleared the spot, with great caution they gathered all the dust and debris within the tomb and carefully shipped it to the Scientific Association of Great Britain. Every part of it was analyzed, but there was no trace of human remains. If this is the real tomb of Christ, then Jesus was the first to be laid there and he was also the last. We’ll visit this tomb when we visit Israel in June!
Chuck
“He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” Matthew 22:32