Sermons 2025

Text: Luke 20:27-40 

Theme: Relationship to Resurrection

 Outline 

1. Sadducees, no resurrection, then what is there to live for? 

2. Relationship with Jesus-Worthy to obtain resurrection of the dead/everlasting life 

3. Live not for mere moments but focused on eternity 

Sermon 

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 

My dear beloved flock, the text for our mediation today is the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke the twenith chapter verses twenty-seven through forty. 

Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. Do you know how long eternity is? Eternity is a really long time. For example, this tape measure. This little bit (5 inches) is your life here upon earth. It is not very long. It is a small time, maybe 70-80 years. All this…tape measure to the limit, is the rest of your life in eternity with God. Do we live for this life or do we live for life in eternity with God? How does Jesus help us to life for life in eternity? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you. 

1. Sadducees, no resurrection, then what is there to live for? 

Our text is set the Wednesday of Holy Week. In just a few short days our Lord is going to be betrayed into he hands of sinful men, crucified, and raise again from the dead. A few hours before Jesus had overturned the tables in the Temple courts, whipped the money changers, freed the beasts and birds of sacrifices. The Sadducees ruled over the Temple. They were in charge of everything that went on theologically in Jerusalem because of their control of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of 70 Jewish elders. They applied the Law harshly to the people and were very hated by the people because of it. 

Angered at what our Lord has done by disrupting the economic business of the Temple, and their livelihood, they come to Jesus. They pose this gotcha question. According to what Moses said, as found in Deuteronomy 25, it was lawful for a woman whose husband died to marry the closest male relation, usually a brother, have a child, named after the late husband. 

This was done so that when the Promised Land was settled, every tribe and family would have a blood descendant in the Land and the promises of God would not fade from the Land or people. Therefor they posit this illustration. A woman has 7 husbands under the Law. If we are known and have marital relationships at the resurrection, whose wife will she be? 

Luke records that they do not believe in a resurrection of the body. They made a mockery of the resurrection by this line of questioning because it was absurd in their minds. In the mind of the Sadducees, all that mattered was life here and now, after we died, that was it, you simply ceased to be. 

How many people in the world today hold this viewpoint? How many times do we fall into this same line of thinking? We are bombarded constantly with the idea that we just need to live for the moment. We just need to live life here and now. We just need to live for this moment. The past is the past; we cannot change it so do not worry about it. Thinking about the future will only fill you with anxiety and terror over the unknown and what-ifs, why bring that kind of worry and fear into your life on a daily basis? You’d become a nervous wreck if all you did was worry about the future or past, just live for the moment. Celebrate and rejoice in what you can change and try to be the best person here and now that you can be. 

This is what the world says to us constantly. They strive to erase this text. There’s no past. There’s no future. There is only the here and now. Live your best life now. Be the best you can be with the short time that you have so you can be remembered for something before you fade away into dust.

 2. Relationship with Jesus-Worthy to obtain resurrection of the dead/everlasting life 

Yet our Lord’s response shows us that this viewpoint is completely wrong. He says that we cannot compare what happens in this world with the world to come at the resurrection. The new heavens and the new earth, along with our perfected bodies, will be something so glorious that anything we could compare it to upon this present world fails to compare. The resurrection to come is ours because the resurrection shows clearly the eternal nature of God. To misunderstand the resurrection is to misunderstand the eternal nature of God.

 To prove this point, Jesus quotes Himself speaking to Moses at the Burning Bush in Exodus chapter three, our Old Testament Lesson for today. There, when asked who He is, the Lord replies, “I am who I am, or I will be who I will be.” That He is, the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. These blessed Patriarchs had been dead for hundreds of years before Moses, but notice the tense. The Lord does not say, I was…He says I am. Present tense here and now. Our Lord does not expound upon what the resurrection body and what that will look like. 

Rather instead He points to the covenant and the relationship between God and His people. “Our Lord here testifies of the conscious intent of God in speaking the words. God uttered them, He tells us, to Moses, in the consciousness of the still enduring existence of His peculiar relation to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Meyer). “The groundwork of His argument seems to me,” says Alford, “to be this: the words ‘I am thy God’ imply a covenant. There is another side to them: “Thou art mine” follows upon “I am thine.” When God, therefore, declares that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He declares their continuance, as the other parties in this covenant. It is an assertion which could not be made of an annihilated being of the past.” 

There is a resurrection from the dead because of the eternal nature of God and His relationship with His people. He is not a dead God, but a living God for all live for Him. God is eternal, without beginning or end. That is a characteristic of His nature. Because of that, every person who has ever lived, are alive in His perspective in eternity, no matter how long they may have been dead upon this earth. Some are alive and rejoicing in His presence, those who do not believe are also alive, but in eternal suffering. 

3. Live not for mere moments but focused on eternity 

So, what does all of this mean for us today? It means that we are not living merely for the passing moments of this life. It means that because of our relationship with God, which has been restored in and through Jesus Christ, His perfect life, suffering, death, and resurrection from the dead. You and I will live eternally. We live not only for this life but especially in, and for, the life to come, whatever that may look like. 

We do not disregard the past. While yes, we cannot change it, we can learn from it. Our past influences our present. We may look upon our past actions with sadness, regret, or joy. We learn from them. God uses them to build us up, lead us to mourn them in repentance, and strengthen our relationship with Him as we turn towards Him, seeking forgiveness and mercy. Our present is not merely seeking our wants and needs in this moment. Known that God alone has all wealth, power, and authority. We do not seek after anything in this world for our own gain, but rather that we may use what we have been given to seek what is best for our neighbor. The eternal relationship that we have with our Heavenly Father means that even the future is not a worry for us. 

While we may not know what the future holds for us, God knows. We live continually before Him and He is indeed our Good Shepherd. He leads us to springs of living water and green pasture, working out everything for our good, even if we cannot see how in the midst of the chaos and fallness of the present world. Dear beloved flock, rejoice that our God is indeed a not a God of the dead but of the living for all live to Him. Live not merely for the moment. Live not for this world, it’s wealth, power and possessions. Rather, live for eternity with God in the life of the world to come, seeking here and now serving the needs of your neighbor as we show the love of God to the world.

 The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep, your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. 

Amen.