The God of the Living Text: Matthew 22:23-33
Introduction: Your God is Too Small
Every generation of Christians faces the temptation to domesticate the faith. We want a tame lion, a reasonable God, a religion that doesn't make our secular neighbors too uncomfortable. We want a faith that fits neatly within the existing intellectual categories of our age. The Sadducees were the masters of this kind of project in their day. They were the theological liberals, the wealthy establishment, the materialists who had made their peace with Rome and had no room in their tidy system for anything so disruptive as a resurrection.
Their worldview was flat. It was horizontal. It had no room for miracles, angels, or life after death. And so, when confronted with Jesus, who was the incarnation of the resurrection and the life, they did what all unbelief must do. They did not engage with the truth; they constructed a caricature, a silly little story, a "gotcha" question designed to make the very idea of resurrection look foolish and absurd. This is a standard tactic of the enemy. If you cannot defeat the truth with arguments, then try to defeat it with ridicule.
But in this confrontation, Jesus does more than just answer a question. He performs an autopsy on their entire worldview. He exposes the two foundational errors that give rise to every heresy, every theological deviation, and every form of proud unbelief that has ever existed. Their problem, He says, is that they do not know the Scriptures, and they do not know the power of God. They had a Bible they didn't understand and a God who was too small. This is a perennial temptation, and it is the central issue before us in this text.
The Text
On that day some Sadducees (who say there is no resurrection) came to Jesus and asked Him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘IF A MAN DIES HAVING NO CHILDREN, HIS BROTHER AS NEXT OF KIN SHALL MARRY HIS WIFE AND RAISE UP A SEED FOR HIS BROTHER.’ Now there were seven brothers with us; and the first married and died, and having no seed, he left his wife to his brother; so also the second, and the third, down to the seventh. And last of all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had married her.” But Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” And when the crowds heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.
(Matthew 22:23-33 LSB)
The Caricature of Unbelief (vv. 23-28)
The Sadducees come to Jesus with what they believe is an airtight logical trap.
"Teacher, Moses said, ‘IF A MAN DIES HAVING NO CHILDREN, HIS BROTHER AS NEXT OF KIN SHALL MARRY HIS WIFE AND RAISE UP A SEED FOR HIS BROTHER.’...In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had married her.” (Matthew 22:24, 28 LSB)
Notice their method. They begin with Scripture, quoting the law of Levirate marriage from Deuteronomy 25. This law was given to preserve a family's name and inheritance in Israel. It was a temporary, earthly provision for the covenant people under the Old Testament administration. But the Sadducees take this earthly provision and try to use it as a crowbar to pry open a heavenly reality they don't even believe in. Their fundamental mistake is assuming that the resurrection life is simply a continuation of this life, with all the same social structures and arrangements.
Their scenario is a ridiculous soap opera, designed for maximum absurdity. One woman, seven brothers. It is a question born not of sincere inquiry, but of cynical mockery. This is what unbelief does. It cannot imagine a reality grander than its own cramped experience, so it projects its own limitations onto God and eternity. They think they are being clever, but all they are doing is revealing the poverty of their imagination and the flatness of their theology.
They are, in short, materialists. They can only conceive of a world you can touch and measure. The idea of a transformed, glorified, resurrected existence is not just wrong to them; it is nonsensical. Their question is not really about marriage; it's a statement of their creed: "This life is all there is, and your talk of resurrection is silly."
The Twofold Diagnosis (v. 29)
Jesus cuts right to the heart of their error with a devastatingly precise diagnosis.
"But Jesus answered and said to them, 'You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures nor the power of God.'" (Matthew 22:29 LSB)
This is the foundation of all theological error, right here in one verse. Every heresy, every false teaching, every bit of spiritual confusion stems from one or both of these two failures. Either you don't know the map (the Scriptures), or you don't know the power of the one who made the territory (God). The Sadducees failed on both counts.
They thought they knew the Scriptures. After all, they quoted Moses. But they read the Bible with materialist goggles on. They read it flatly, without understanding its trajectory, its purpose, or the God who revealed it. They knew the words on the page, but they missed the entire symphony. You can have a Bible in your house and on your phone and still be profoundly ignorant of the Scriptures.
And they certainly did not know the power of God. Their God was a small, manageable deity who operated according to their tidy, predictable rules. He was a God who could create the world in the beginning, but who apparently couldn't do anything so radical as raise the dead into a new and different mode of existence. Their God was respectable, but He was not the Almighty. A God who cannot raise the dead is not the God of the Bible.
The Power of God and the Nature of the Resurrection (v. 30)
Jesus first addresses their ignorance of God's power by correcting their view of the resurrection.
"For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven." (Matthew 22:30 LSB)
The Sadducees' whole argument collapses on this one point. The resurrection is not a mere resuscitation. It is a transformation. Marriage, as we know it, is an institution for this age. It was established by God for companionship, for procreation, and most importantly, as a living, breathing picture of the ultimate reality: the union of Christ and His Church. Marriage is a glorious signpost, but in the resurrection, we will have arrived at the destination. You don't need the signpost when you are standing in the city.
To be "like angels" does not mean we become sexless, ethereal spirits. We will have glorified, physical bodies. It means that in the age to come, the central organizing principle of human society will not be the procreative family unit. The family is the quarry from which God hews the living stones for His eternal temple, but in eternity, the temple itself is the reality. The purpose of marriage will be fulfilled and gloriously consummated in the marriage supper of the Lamb. Our relationships will not be diminished; they will be perfected and upgraded in ways we cannot yet imagine. It will not be a downgrade. God's power is sufficient to create a new heavens and a new earth, and with it, a new social order that transcends the structures of this fallen world.
The Word of God and the Proof of the Resurrection (vv. 31-32)
Next, Jesus addresses their ignorance of the Scriptures, and He does so with breathtaking brilliance.
"But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living." (Matthew 22:31-32 LSB)
This is a masterstroke. The Sadducees only accepted the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, as authoritative. So Jesus doesn't quote Isaiah or the Psalms. He takes them right back to their own turf, to Exodus 3, to the story of the burning bush. He shows them that the resurrection was taught plainly by Moses, and they had missed it entirely.
The force of the argument rests on the tense of a single verb: "I AM." When God spoke to Moses, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been dead for centuries. But God does not say, "I was the God of Abraham." He says, "I AM the God of Abraham." This is a covenantal statement. God's covenant relationship with His people is an eternal one. He is the God of persons, not the God of dust. For God to be their God in the present tense means that they must be alive in the present tense. God does not enter into an everlasting covenant with corpses.
This reveals a profound truth about Scripture. Every word, every tense, every jot and tittle is inspired and packed with theological dynamite. Jesus is teaching us how to read our Bibles. We are to read it as a living word from the living God, who is not bound by death. The covenant promise of God is more powerful than the grave. If God is your God, then death is not the end of your story. It is merely a comma.
The Astonished Crowd (v. 33)
The effect of Jesus' teaching was electric.
"And when the crowds heard this, they were astonished at His teaching." (Matthew 22:33 LSB)
Why were they astonished? Because this was not the kind of answer they were used to hearing. The religious leaders of the day engaged in clever debates and hair-splitting arguments. Jesus did not just win a debate; He re-framed the entire reality. He spoke with an authority that came from His very nature as the Word made flesh. He showed them a God who was powerful enough to transform reality and a Bible that was deep enough to prove it from a single verb.
He silenced the Sadducees not with a clever trick, but with the massive weight of truth. He took their silly caricature and answered it with the glorious reality of the living God and His unbreakable covenant. This is the kind of teaching that changes everything. It doesn't just inform the mind; it awakens the soul to the grandeur of God.
Conclusion: Are We Modern Sadducees?
The Sadducees are not just a historical curiosity. Their spirit is alive and well. It is the spirit of materialism, of skepticism, of a faith that has been stripped of all its supernatural power. It is the spirit that wants a Christianity without the resurrection, a Savior who is merely a good teacher, and a God who fits into our scientific boxes.
We are tempted to be functional Sadducees whenever we live as though this life is all that matters. We are tempted to be Sadducees whenever we doubt God's power to intervene in our lives, to heal our marriages, to save our children, or to bring revival to our land. We are tempted to be Sadducees whenever we treat the Bible as a collection of quaint stories instead of the living and active Word of the God who IS.
The antidote to this is precisely what Jesus prescribes: we must know the Scriptures, and we must know the power of God. We must immerse ourselves in the Bible until we see the covenant-keeping God on every page. And we must pray for and trust in the limitless power of that same God, who not only raised Jesus from the dead, but who has promised to raise us also.
Our God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. He is the God of Abraham, who is alive to God right now. And if you are in Christ, He is your God, right now and forever. That is a truth powerful enough to silence every skeptic, to answer every ridiculous question, and to rob death of its sting. Let us, therefore, live as people of the resurrection, astonished not by the cleverness of men, but by the power and wisdom of the living God.