Eckart Frahm is a professor of Assyriology at Yale. In his book, Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire, Frahm includes a chapter entitled “A Ghost Story.” He summarizes the stunning military exploits of Sargon II, who expanded Assyrian’s territory and wealth in the late eighth century B.C., but suddenly disappeared.
In the summer of 705, Sargon II led a military campaign in the region that is now the country of Turkey. But he did not return, and the royal inscriptions go silent.
Later writings reveal that the king was killed in battle, but his soldiers were not able to recover his body. From an Assyrian perspective, that is a royal scandal. Frahm explains,
“If they were not properly buried, Assyrians believed, the dead—especially if they had been abandoned on the battlefield after being killed there—would…find their way back to those they had known in life and punish them with sickness, misery, or death.”
This belief caused the Assyrian nobles to be gripped with fear. Sargon’s son (who you might be familiar with, Sennacherib), began to take evasive maneuvers. Things like…
But Frahm explains that Sennacherib’s maneuvers were not successful. He writes,
“Based on the available evidence, it appears that Sennacherib felt unable to openly acknowledge and process what had happened to Sargon. The anxieties produced by the traumatic experience of the events of 705 B.C.E seemed to have stayed with the king and over time triggered certain psychotic syndromes. A letter from the reign of his son and successor Esarhaddon mentions that Sennacherib was frequently so enraged that none of his diviners dared tell him of any untoward sign they had observed, and adds that the king struggled with the ‘alu demon,’ often mentioned in cuneiform texts alongside spirits of the dead.”
It doesn’t appear that Sennacherib was ever able to face or deal with his father’s death, and in 681, he himself came to a violent end.
The prophet Isaiah may be referring to these events when he laments (with a bit of sarcasm) the king of Assyria. Isaiah 14:
“All the kings of the nations lie in glory, each in his own tomb; but you are cast out, away from your grave, like a loathed branch, clothed with the slain, those pierced by the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit, like a dead body trampled underfoot. You will not be joined with them in burial, because you have destroyed your land, you have slain your people” (Isaiah 14:18-20a).
In other words, you have made a lot of people homeless, so you will be homeless forever.
Now, it’s easy for us to look at these ghost stories with disdain. We are modern people. We send astronauts to space. We have iPhones. We don’t worry about death. We actually don’t think about it.
But maybe we’re more like Sennacherib than we realize. We work really hard to try to erase it from our minds. We have a lot of evasive maneuvers that may not be the same as Sennacherib’s.
In his excellent book (this is a big recommendation) called Remember Death (Karen and I have been reading that together), Matthew McCullough asks,
“Why are we avoiding the truth about death?”
Then he suggests a couple of reasons. There are a lot. Here are two:
1. Our duty to happiness.
We have a right, even a “social obligation,” to be happy. McCullough writes,
“We seem to believe that we have a right to the experience of happiness. This entitlement drives our surging consumer economy: if I’m not happy, I should buy something to make me happy. It drives our obsession with psychotherapy: if I’m not happy, I need a professional to figure out why and help me get there. But there is no consumeristic or therapeutic solution for the problem of death. There is no product you can buy that will bring back someone you love or add an extra year to your life. There’s no therapeutic insight that could turn death into a good thing. The more you get to know yourself, even love yourself, the more deeply you grieve the end of yourself. We suppress death because it’s an unanswerable challenge to our happiness.”
2. The horrible implications
The second reason we might avoid talking about death, facing death are the horrible implications of death. McCullough goes on,
“Death cuts us off from everyone we love. It means the end of everything we enjoy about life. And it is a head-on assault against our dignity and significance as human individuals. Who can fully stand up under the weight of this knowledge? The irony is that in order to survive, we must deny that we can’t survive.”
He then goes on to confront Christians, as we often face death with the same evasive maneuvers as the world. We refuse to talk about it. We invent prosperity Gospels that promise us that “if you have enough faith, you will always have enough health and wealth.” McCullough summarizes the problem:
“Death is not okay. By avoiding the subject of death, we act like that’s not true. And we shrink down the scale of Jesus’s victory to fit the world we live in now…If death is not a problem, Jesus won’t be much of a solution.”
If death is not a problem, Jesus won’t be much of a solution. I wonder if that’s where some of us are. If death is not a big deal… Maybe Jesus isn’t a big Let’s pray.
Father, I need your help this morning. I can’t do this without you. This message, under your providence, is a little too close to home. So we continue to pray as we prayed earlier: speak to us, catch us, track us down in our evasion, or fear, or distraction, or wherever we are, and pull us close. We pray in Jesus’s name, amen.
Matthew 22:23 starts “the same day,” the same day. Probably Tuesday, maybe Wednesday of Jesus’s final week, the Passion Week. The religious leaders are testing Jesus.
Last week, we focused on his first test, and we talked about politics. This week, we focus on his second test, and we talk about death. Can you imagine two things you’re not supposed to talk about in polite society? Politics and death.
Today we’re focusing in on verses 23 to 33, and it breaks into two parts.
1. The Sadducees test Jesus.
Who are these guys? The Sadducees? Think about some of the groups we’ve met in our journey through Matthew:
The Zealots were essentially the Jewish terrorists. They fought with every means possible against Roman occupation. The Pharisees might be Jewish purists. They were extremely popular among the people.
The Herodians (we talked about them last week as well), the Jewish aristocrats— they figured, if Rome’s going to be over us, let’s get in on the action. They were really tight with the Herodian family, the royal family over this region.
The Sadducees, you could think of them as the Jewish religious elite. They had authority over the temple, so they were extremely wealthy because they controlled the money changers, the sale of temple sacrifices… So it’s not surprising that they’re ticked at Jesus. Why? Yeah, he’s cutting into their profits, flipping tables, driving out merchants. So they want to get him.
The Sadducees could also be, if you think of the Pharisees more like conservatives of the day, the Sadducees might be more like progressives or rationalists. They viewed anything they couldn’t see as non-existent. Not anything, but most things.
They didn’t believe in angels. They didn’t believe in the Spirit. They were just material, so they didn’t believe in a resurrection, as you see there in verse 23. You live, you die, you cease to exist, you’re extinguished.
Because the resurrection and eternal life are mentioned so many times throughout the Old Testament, they had to get rid of a lot of the Old Testament. So they decided that their scriptures are essentially the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). That’s it.
Maybe this is a stretch, but they remind me of groups today like the “Red Letter Christians:” We’re going to focus in on this part of scripture because these parts don’t fit what our agenda is as much. We’re going to claim Jesus is all about this part.
Well, Jesus isn’t—as we’re going to see today—just a part, all about one part of Scripture. He’s all about all of Scripture! But the Sadducees in his day did the same thing.
In order to test Jesus, the Sadducees post a ridiculous case study to trap him. They start with Moses because Moses is their man. Verse 24:
“…saying, ‘Teacher, Moses said, “If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother”‘” (Matthew 22:24).
They’re referring to Deuteronomy 25, where Moses did not initiate, but he did regulate what is known as the “levirate marriage.”
Levirate marriage is, if a man dies without children, his brother can marry his widow in order to carry on his name. The first child would be, legally, the dead brother’s, to carry on his name. Few practice this, but you get glimpses of it in certain places (like the book of Ruth, chapter four, with Boaz and Ruth).
The Sadducees’ hypothetical story is intended to make anyone who believes in the resurrection feel stupid. That’s the purpose. You’ll see it in verse 25:
“Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. So too the second and third, down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died” (Matthew 22:25-27).
The first man marries a woman, no kids. He dies, she marries his brother. He dies, all the way down to the seventh. Now, if your brother numbers six or seven, you’re going to be sleeping with one eye open. “How about we order Grubhub today?”
This woman in this creepy case study reminds me of Betty Neumar. Betty—real story—all five of her husbands died mysteriously. When Betty comes along, keep moving. Or Mary Elizabeth Wilson of the UK. She was married four times and was charged with the poisoning deaths of several of her husbands.
The Sadducees really aren’t interested in a murder mystery. They’re trying to trap Jesus. So here’s the trap, you’ll see it in verse 28:
“In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her” (Matthew 22:28).
Gotcha. Don’t you feel stupid for believing in a resurrection? This is so often the case: take a belief, drive it to the point of making those who hold it feel dumb.
2. Jesus responds to the Sadducees.
In his response, he does three things.
“But Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong’” (Matthew 22:29a).
Just take that in for a moment: “You are wrong.” Does your vision of Jesus permit him to say those words? Or is your vision of Jesus, “He’s just a nice guy. As long as you’re sincere, he’s good with anything.” No. It’s not okay to simply be sincere. You can be sincerely wrong.
That word “wrong” means to wander or to be deceived. The Greek word “planao” is where we get our word “planet.” The idea of a wandering body. So Jesus is saying to them, your brain (or heart) is straying from truth, wandering from reality.
I want us to sit on this for a moment because in our day, Jesus is often portrayed as someone who “only cares about love. He doesn’t care about theology.” Now, of course, Jesus does not want us wrangling and dividing over secondary issues. That’s not what we’re talking about. But when it comes to primary theological truth, Jesus cares what you believe. Big time. He is committed to the truth of scripture, as we’re about to see. What you believe matters. Look at verse 30:
“For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30).
Jesus is describing a plane of existence that the Sadducees, due to their rationalism, can’t even imagine. They’re blinded. What if, in eternity, love will be so pure, so universally experienced, that the Sadducees’ question will be irrelevant?
Notice he is not saying we will be angels. We will be “like angels.” Ultimately, in the new heaven and the new earth, we will not be disembodied or sexless.
We will be male and female with resurrection bodies. We will enjoy good music, great meals, meaningful work… No curse. Procreation will no longer be necessary.
Now, this is where it gets a little bit weird for many of us, right? Because the idea of a marriage-less existence is met with a variety of responses:
People who are in difficult marriages are thinking, “Yes! Finally.” Or People who have had deep disappointment about marriage or in marriage, this might come as good news. But for people who are really happily married, this feels really weird. Like, I can’t imagine being really happy and not being in marital union with my spouse.
Here’s one thing we know for sure (and this little exercise might help, maybe not), but try to imagine one of your greatest memories. May have been your honeymoon. It may have been a very special birthday party or the ultimate family vacation. A time, a moment, when you didn’t want it to end. It may have been an evening meal with laughter and good food, and you wish it would just go on and on. If you can capture that memory, bottle that, and then multiply it by eternity, you’re getting a slight test of what we’re in for in the future.
All these little tastes of joy and peace, the kind of experience where you’re just like, “I don’t want this to end.” But in this life, it always does. God has put within us that longing for when it doesn’t. That’s what Jesus is talking about.
The Sadducees, in their rationalism, can’t imagine, so they just deny it. Some of us are tempted to do the same thing. “Can’t relate to that. So, chuck it.” But Jesus is leading us toward an experience of reality that is unimaginably and unendingly delightful, in the presence of God, through Jesus. 1 Corinthians 2:9,
“But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
Just that language, “God has prepared.” He’s preparing a place for you. So Jesus corrects their theology.
Jesus connects word and power, Verse 29,
“You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Matthew 22:29b).
We’ve talked about this before, how in the evangelical world, there is a constant debate between Word (Scriptures) and power (works of the Spirit or supernatural enablement). Often, these two are described as competing forces, depending on the tradition you’ve grown up in or experienced.
What’s beautiful here is Jesus brings these two together as inseparably linked. If you try to experience power without the scripture (without the Word), then you will seek experiences that reinforce your own assumptions, not God’s. But if we try to experience Word (teaching, biblical truth) without power, we will shrivel up, our heads will expand, and our lives will be dry and dead. The two have to go together.
He connects these in verse 31, notice, “Have you not read what was said to you by God?” Jesus is saying, when you read the Bible, you are hearing God speak to you. Why do you minimize that? Why do you say, “Well, no. I want to see a form in the clouds. I want God to speak to me like he used to in the ancient world through the intestines of a sacrificed animal.” Creepy. No.
Have you not read what was said to you by God? God’s power is experienced through the truth of scripture, manifested in the kind of power that can raise the dead. That’s in this context, which leads to the third thing Jesus does:
He clarifies resurrection hope, verse 31.
“And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:31-32).
This is stunning for several reasons. First of all, he’s quoting Exodus 3:6. It’s so personal: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. But when he says, “I am,” it’s in the present tense. Not the past. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have been dead for about 400 years, and God is talking about them as if they’re still alive. “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
The two key elements here: one is the present tense, “I am,” but the other part (that’s very evident in the context of Exodus) is the covenant-keeping faithfulness of God. When God enters into covenant with you, he does not forsake you. Forever.
We think life is unto the grave. God is saying, “I am the God of Peter.” 400 years from now, when Peter and everyone in this room (if Jesus doesn’t come back first) is long gone, God is still calling you, present tense, “I am your God,” because when I make a covenant with you, I never break it. Death can’t break it, the grave can’t end it. He is not, verse 32 again, the God of the dead, but of the living.
“And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching” (Matthew 22:33).
That’s a word for “blew their minds.”
What does this mean?
Two things:
We can’t do this on our own. There is eternal death (like a forever), but there’s not eternal life.
One question we have to answer, each of us: Does God speak your name? I am the God of Steve, or Spice. I am the God of Steve. I am the God of Bob. The God of Nick. The God of Gary. The God of Donna. I am your God.
When you’re in a relationship with him through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, his death, his burial, and his resurrection become ours.
My burden is some of you—if you have information in your head about Christianity, but you’re not in a relationship with him, the God of the living—then yes, you’re going to want to avoid any thought of death, because it’s terrible.
If you don’t know Jesus, today is the day. What do I do? Romans 10:9,
“…because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Romans 10:9).
God is calling you today so that your name can be spoken by the God of the living. “I am your God.”
The second thing this passage confronts us with is
We can face death with hope. We don’t have to be like Sennacherib, or most people today, where we can’t think about it. It’s tragic. I’ve been with people who know they’re dying and won’t talk about it. The fact is, I’m not trying to be morbid, but I think all of us are going to die. If Jesus doesn’t return, it’s not up for grabs. And yes, death is terrible. We can’t sugarcoat it. But death is a defeated foe, Hebrews 2:14,
“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews 2:14-15).
“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live’” (John 11:25).
As many of you know, this reality has taken on an immediacy for our family this week. It was a very difficult week. For the sake of the visitors, quick background:
Five years ago, my wife, Karen (we just celebrated our 38th wedding anniversary), was diagnosed with a rare terminal cancer and was not expected to live long. That was five years ago. She has done miraculously well through treatments, surgeries— Not just survived, thrived.
But Tuesday evening, this past Tuesday, she prepared a big meal, was doing well, but the pain was increasing. Throughout the night, it got unbearable, as well as other symptoms. The doctor told us to call an ambulance. She was excited about her first ambulance ride. We spent that day in an emergency room pod, and then from Wednesday to Friday in a hospital room.
We learned gradually throughout those days that the cancer had essentially overtaken her abdomen. The doctor said he expects her to live two to four weeks. She’s now home, got to have a second ambulance ride (lucky week), and is under hospice care. Cami, our daughter, has moved back home to help care for her. Karen’s sister, Kim, and many others… We are so blessed.
Let me tell you, it is so hard to watch someone you love suffer. But we have been doing a lot of singing, and crying, and laughing because we are definitely grieving, but so much hope.
I wish I had several hours to tell you stories of things she has said. Even right before we got out of the hospital, she wanted to write down all the names of the nurses because she will— she would want to (she’s done this many times) go back to the hospital with gifts.
But she would just let out these pearls of wisdom, and about halfway through the hospital stay, I’m thinking, “Why am I not writing some of these things down? Because I’m not going to remember, my brain is so fried.” Let me just share two:
She said in the hospital, “I wouldn’t change anything. We get to know God by going through hard things.” I wouldn’t change anything. One time, she looked at me, and she had this twinkle in her eye. She says, “There is a good end to this.”
She had so much peace that when the doctor shared the hard news (two to four weeks to live), you could tell—and it was a different doctor than we normally have—you could tell he was like, “You’re taking this awfully good.”
They’re wondering, are you in denial? Delusional? No, she has so much peace. Where does this come from? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. God is the God of the living. And when he starts a work, he doesn’t end it.
We have prayed for the last five years, every day, with you. We’ve had amazing prayer times. So many times I thought, “He’s going to heal her.” But just so you know, the Lord has made it very clear to us (and Karen’s known it for a little while), God is saying, “I’m calling you home.”
That is a massive loss for me, our kids and grandkids, our church, but it’s a big-time gain for her. Better than an ambulance ride. Why?
“‘Cause death is just the doorway into resurrection life
And if I join you in your suffering,
then I’ll join you when you rise” – Cody Carnes, “Christ Be Magnified”
Do you see that connection? It’s a doorway. It doesn’t minimize the horrors of death. The dying part is not easy. But when we were talking about this passage in the hospital—
All the songs today were planned. This text obviously was planned long ago. We didn’t know this was going to happen, and so I asked her, “Do you think I should preach this Sunday?” I’d rather be home caring for her right now. But she said, “You need to preach this,” and she wants me to communicate: You’ve been our church family for 34 and a half years. You’ve loved us through the greatest joys and the hardest things. We’re going to go through this together. She wanted me to communicate her love for you in the midst of this trial. Thank you all for loving us so well.
I would like to first pray for you, because we’re deeply burdened for your hearts through this, that you would know the kind of grace and peace that we are experiencing as a family as we, again, pull out the hymnals and we sing (with tears).
I want to pray for you, and then some of the elders are going to come up, and then Tim Keesee is also going to join us. They wanted to pray for our family. So let me start.
Lord, first of all, thank you for my wife, Karen, and the miraculous work of grace you have done in her life. She exudes your kindness and the strength of your promise. Oh Lord, thank you.
Thank you that you’re with us, in the really happy things and the really hard things. You don’t leave us, you don’t forsake us.
I pray for my brothers and sisters (whether they’re here or they’re watching on livestream), that, Lord, they would know the same grace that you are pouring out on us, that we grieve with hope. We ache, and we cry, and yes, it hurts, but with joy and peace.
Father, if someone in this room doesn’t know you, we pray that today would be the day they confess with their mouth and believe in their heart, Lord Jesus, you’re risen from the grave. We don’t have to run in fear from reality. We can face it squarely.
You are with us, so draw us to yourself and pour out your sustaining grace, we pray, in Jesus’s name, amen.
