Matt 22:23–33 — The God of Abraham, Isaac, And Jacob

Jesus and the Sadducees

This section of the Gospel of Matthew is set between the triumphal entry of Jesus and the passion of Jesus. Traditionally, this is called Passion Week, and the triumphal entry of Jesus is traditionally understood as being on Sunday before Christ goes to the cross on Friday.

It is called Palm Sunday for that reason. I am not exactly sure if it was a Sunday, but That is the traditional mapping out of this Passion Week, this Holy Week. On Sundays, Palm Sunday, he enters into Jerusalem. On Monday, he goes into the temple and cleanses the temple.

And then on Tuesday and Wednesday, we are not exactly sure where to divide up these days and what exactly happens on those days, but this is where we are at now, is in the Tuesday, Wednesday section of Holy Week, of Passion Week, where Jesus is teaching both publicly and privately with his disciples.

Right now we are in the public phase of his teaching. He has given these three parables in which he is talking about the transition from the old people of God to the new people of God, the church. Now he is engaging in some theological debates and discussions with each of the major theological sects or groups within Judaism, the Sadducees and the Pharisees and so on. And then, when we come to Matthew 24 and 25, we have the Olivet Discourse, in which Jesus, with his disciples, not publicly, is teaching them about their understanding of how things are going to play out, not only in the near future with the destruction of Jerusalem, but also looking to the coming church age, the preaching of the gospel, the final end of the age, and the second coming of Christ. That is an eschatological discourse in Matthew 24 and 25. All of this teaching of Jesus is happening in the middle of Passion Week, whether it is Tuesday or Wednesday, we are not exactly sure.

Thursday night is Maundy Thursday. That is when Jesus is with his disciples in the upper room and establishes and institutes the Lord’s Supper. Then he is arrested later that night. Friday morning is the trial, and on Friday he is crucified. So we are in the climax of the story. The whole gospel narrative is reaching its conclusion. We are almost there at the cross and the resurrection of Christ. It is only a few days away. But before we get there, there is this important section where Jesus is engaging in theological discussion with the major different groups of Judaism of the day. Notice that last week we looked at the debate over Jewish nationalism.

Some Pharisees came to Jesus plotting to entangle him in his words, and so they asked him this question about, is it right, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? And Jesus says, bring me a coin. And whose inscription and whose likeness is on this coin, this silver denarius? And of course, it was Caesar’s likeness and name written upon that coin. Tiberius Caesar was the Caesar at this time. And so Jesus said, therefore, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are gods.

And in this way, Jesus rejects Jewish nationalism, and he teaches that his kingdom is not of this world. And when the people heard it, they marveled. And the Pharisees, who had also taken along some Herodians with them, that is pro-Roman people, The Herodians were in favor of the Roman occupation and supported Herod, who was the puppet that the Roman Empire had placed to run Judea. He rejected their nationalistic aspirations. Of course, they would not listen, and eventually the zealots and the Jewish nationalists did rise up and rebel against Rome in the year AD 66, so that is only what, some 33 years or so from this time, and the rebellion was put down by the Romans, and the temple was destroyed, which Jesus himself predicts would happen. as we will see in Matthew 24 when we come to the Olivet Discourse about eschatology.

But now there is another debate with another theological sect. We talked about the Jewish Nationalists, but now there is another Jewish sect that Jesus is confronted by, and that is the Sadducees. It says there in verse 23 that this happened on the same day. So all of these debates that are happening here, first with the Pharisees and the Herodians, then with the Sadducees, then again the Pharisees are going to come up with another attempt in verse 34 and ask him about the Great Commandment.

All these debates that are happening with these different sectors within Judaism, the different theological positions within Judaism, are all happening on the same day, whether it is Tuesday or Wednesday of Holy Week, we do not know for sure, but it is right there in the middle of that week.

And Jesus is using these opportunities to spar with these theological groups within Judaism in order to show and to teach the nature of his kingdom and how he interprets the Old Testament. contrary to the interpretations of these major Jewish groups. The significance of these debates primarily has to do with scripture, primarily has to do with how to interpret what we would call the Old Testament. Now at this time, the New Testament had not yet been written, and so they would have just called it the scriptures, looking at the scriptures that God had revealed to his people, going back to the Pentateuch, the first five books of Moses, but also the rest of the scriptures, the historical books, the Psalms, and the prophets. In this section of Matthew 22, in the middle of Holy Week, these different Jewish groups are coming to debate with Jesus primarily over how to understand the Bible, how to understand the scriptures.

And we see Jesus as this masterful exegete, this masterful interpreter of the scriptures. And he shows how each of these different groups has completely missed the point of what the Bible is all about. To illustrate that, we are going to come to a few more debates, but just one key illustration that kind of helps you to see that this is the theme of this whole section is the last one, the last debate. So there are four different debates.

First, the question over taxes. That is the first one. The second one is today’s text over the debate with the Sadducees over the resurrection. The third one is about what is the greatest commandment. But the fourth one is crucial because that is the debate over who is the Messiah.

And Jesus here quotes from Psalm 110. and says, whose son is the Christ? And the Pharisees say, the son of David. That makes sense, the Messiah would be the son of David. Everyone knew that, all Jews knew that when the Messiah comes, he is going to be the son of David. But then Jesus says, if that is the case, if he is merely the son of David, if he is merely just a man, then why is it that in the Psalms, in Psalm 110, David, inspired by the Holy Spirit, refers to the Messiah as his Lord? The Lord said to my Lord, so Yahweh, God said to my Lord, David’s Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. If then David calls the Messiah Lord, how is he his son?

In other words, yes, he is David’s son according to the flesh, but he is also something much greater. He is the divine son of God. He is the Messiah. and no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

But you see here, this is an illustration of my point, that Jesus is saying, look at how the Old Testament itself, if we want to use their language, look at how the scriptures themselves point to me, and point to my office as the Messiah, not merely as a human Messiah, but as the divine Messiah. You have misread the scriptures. You have thought that the Messiah was going to be merely an earthly king, a mere human being, a mere son of David, who is going to come raise an army and throw off the Roman occupation and set up an earthly kingdom. But look at what your own scriptures tell you about the Messiah.

There is something more going on here. He is the divine son of God. and he is going to sit at God’s right hand. And the enemies that he is going to defeat are spiritual enemies, not just the Romans, but Satan and sin and all the hosts of God, the hosts that are arrayed against God are going to be defeated by this divine Messiah. And so Jesus here in this whole section is interacting with these different Jewish groups and their different theological perspectives and showing how they are completely wrong and how they have missed what the Bible itself is saying. about his person and work and about what he is about to do in a couple of days from now. He is going to go to the cross and he is going to be raised from the dead. He is going to bring in this eschatological kingdom of salvation and grace by his divine power.

The Two-Part Answer of Jesus

And the point is that these Jewish groups, they should have known that because the Bible itself tells them. Now, what is this debate here with the Sadducees, this particular debate in our text today? It has to do with how to interpret the scripture, for sure, but what is the specific issue at stake here? The Sadducees are a particular group within Judaism at this time.

They did not continue after the destruction of the temple in AD 70. The Pharisees were the ones that picked up the rubble, picked up the pieces of Judaism and continued it on and created what we now know as Rabbinic Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism is simply an extension of the Pharisees and their oral traditions. The party of the Sadducees died out. They no longer had any power in Judaism after A.D. 70. But during this time, leading up to the destruction of the temple, there was this group called the Sadducees who were the ruling elite within Judaism.

They were all the rich people. They were the aristocratic Jews who tended to be the ones in control of the temple. They were the priests. You know how it talks about the high priests in the plural? You would think that sounds kind of strange, because in the Old Testament, there is only one high priest. Well, actually, in the New Testament times, in the times of Jesus, there was a whole ruling clan, an aristocratic clan of men who claimed to be qualified to serve as a high priest.

And so there was this aristocracy of these elite Jews who held political and religious power centered upon their control over the temple. By the way, they would have been the ones who, back in the story about Jesus cleansing the temple, they would have been the ones who authorized those people to set up booths to sell doves, and pigeons, and lambs, and so on, and to engage in this commerce in the temple in order to empower the pilgrims who are coming to Jerusalem at Passover so that they could buy a lamb to worship God during Passover. But the aristocratic Jews, the Sadducees, the high priests, they were the ones in control of the temple, and would have authorized that action. So therefore they would have been particularly offended by Jesus’s action of cleansing the temple and challenging their authority and charging them with corruption, charging them with corrupting the worship of God. The Sadducees were an interesting group.

In our text here it tells us that one of their key theological principles is that they deny the resurrection. Verse 23, that same day Sadducees came to him who say that there is no resurrection. We know from some other information from Josephus, who describes the various different sects of Judaism, including the Sadducees, that it is not simply that they believed that, it is not simply the denial of the resurrection of the body, it is more than that.

They even denied that there is any life after death. They believe that when you die, your soul dies. And so there is no future life after death, and there is no future rewards, no future judgment of the righteous being given to heaven and the wicked being sent into hell. They denied any future eschatology. When you die, that is it. You just die and you are done.

They also only accepted the written Torah, the written Torah meaning the first five books of Moses, and they rejected the oral Torah, that is the oral traditions that the Pharisees talked about. The Pharisees were very big on saying we need to also keep these oral traditions that they claimed were handed down from Moses, but the Sadducees rejected those traditions.

You might think that the Sadducees, they almost sound a little bit like atheists. Like they just believe that there is no God, there is no souls, there is nothing eternal or spiritual. They almost sound like atheists, but they probably were not. They probably did believe in God. After all, they were Jewish and they believed in the scriptures, at least in the Torah. So they were believers in God, not rank atheists.

But their view of God was, much more distant, right? They did not really believe that God really had any desire to have a relationship with us. God was not intimately involved in the affairs of man and in our lives. Maybe they would be more like deists. kind of a distant God. Yes, there is a creator out there, but, you know, we just have to do what we need to do and just follow the laws and make sure that the temple worship is happening properly.

It is almost like kind of a version of, I do not know if you have ever noticed this in the current political realm, that there are people out there that call themselves political conservatives who are not Christians, who are not believers in God. They are secular conservatives. Have you heard about that? Secular conservatives. It is kind of an interesting thing that is happening out there philosophically and politically in the world around us. Secular conservatives. They believe in conservative morality.

They believe in wholesome traditions and conservative beliefs about practice, about politics, about life, but they are not They do not have this genuine piety of seeking to worship God, the true and living God, and to be in a covenant relationship with him. They see everything in terms of this world only. And so their conservative morality and their conservative politics is only about this life. It is only about making sure that things are done properly and in order here. There is no life after death. There is no eschatological hope. You are not living for anything beyond this life. This life is all there is, and so it is very important to make sure that everything is done correctly. Interestingly, we know from Josephus that These Sadducees, they differed from the Pharisees because the Pharisees did believe in the resurrection. They did believe in a future hope. but they differed from them in the interpretation of the law.

Both the Pharisees and the Sadducees were very strict about keeping the law. Of course, the Pharisees were, and we see in the Gospels, they almost come across as being the strictest ones, right? But interestingly, the Sadducees were even stricter. The Sadducees took everything written in the Torah Absolutely literally. So when it says an eye for an eye, they said we have to actually do that. Eye for an eye. Strictly. Very legalistic and very conservative. And almost to the point of being even more conservative and more legalistic than the Pharisees.

But at least the Pharisees believed in a future hope. They believed in the resurrection. They believed that there is life after death, that we have to have a relationship with God. But the Sadducees, they are secular conservatives. Might be the best way of putting it. They are secular conservatives.

Everything is about doing the law exactly as written, word for word, in black and white, and keeping the temple properly running, and that is all that matters. So these Sadducees who deny the future hope, they deny an afterlife, they come to Jesus and they think that they have the perfect gotcha argument against the belief in the resurrection. And they said, look, remember they keep the laws in the Torah to the letter, right? To the exact black and white letter. And they say, look what it says in the Torah.

This is actually in Deuteronomy chapter 25. If you want to check it later, you can. In Deuteronomy 25, they appeal to this text that they believe should be taken literally and applied literally, and they say this is the perfect gotcha that proves that there is no resurrection.

They say, Teacher, Moses said, if a man dies having no children, His brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. This is called Leveret marriage. Leveret because the word Leveret is a brother-in-law. So Leveret marriage is the brother-in-law raising up offspring for the widow so that his name would not die out and the inheritance would not be lost. Now they say, now, imagine this scenario.

The Covenant God of Abraham

There were seven brothers among us. So imagine, it is a pretty interesting idea to think about a family with seven brothers, but imagine seven brothers, and the first got married and died without leaving any offspring, and left his wife to his brother, to the second brother. So to the second and the third down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. So all seven brothers died and the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.

So in other words, they are saying, we do not believe in this resurrection that you, Jesus, and the Pharisees believe in. But, in this resurrection that you hypothesize, how would it work out? Based upon the fact that God made this law in Deuteronomy 25, called Leveret Marriage, it would seem that if there is a resurrection, that she would have to be married to seven men at once in heaven in the resurrection?

That does not seem right. That is a little bit scandalous to think about. Polyandry, you know, that is kind of a weird concept. Most Jews would frown upon that idea, right? So is that what you guys believe? If you believe in the resurrection, do you believe in some kind of strange, bizarre theory like that? They think this is a perfect proof that the resurrection is an absurd idea, because it would lead to all these absurd, strange ideas and odd behaviors that just do not make any sense. They are trying to argue, again, based upon their literal interpretation of the Torah, that this demands that there not be a future resurrection. The future resurrection must be a made-up, pharisaic notion, because God has revealed it very clearly in the Old Testament that this is what is to happen.

How does Jesus respond? I love how Jesus just flat out says to them, you are wrong. He does not like hold back. He does not qualify. He does not say, well, I have a different perspective. He just comes right out and says it. You guys are wrong. You are unorthodox. You do not understand God’s word.

Now he says two things, he gives a two-fold or two-part answer in response to their argument. He says you are wrong because you do not know the scriptures, that is the first thing. and you are wrong because you do not know the power of God. That is the second thing. And so he first states his twofold argument against them.

You do not know the scriptures and you do not know the power of God. And then in the next few verses, he is going to go back over those two things in reverse order and flesh out what he means. So in reverse order, he first begins with, what do I mean when I say you do not know the power of God? Well, verse 30, for in the resurrection, They neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. In other words, you do not know the power of God. You do not understand that this resurrection body that God is going to give his people is something completely different. It is something that is transformative.

Yes, there is continuity between the body that dies and the body that is raised, but there is also discontinuity because of the tremendous resurrection, glory, and power of God. Procreation and death go together. and they belong to this age, the age that we now live in, before the eschaton, before the end of time, before the new creation. Procreation and death go hand in hand. Having children is part and parcel of also the process of generations coming and going and death. In the eternal state, our bodies will be fitted to eternal life, and therefore they will be beyond the need for procreation, and also beyond this experience of generations coming and going, and of death.

You do not understand the power of God. You do not understand what the resurrection body is like. You are just thinking in very earthly terms. You are just thinking about, okay, the resurrection is just simply a recontinuation of this present life with all the same realities that we have of marriage and procreation and children and families and ordinary life. You are just thinking of it in very earthly, ordinary terms. Life in heaven is not just a continuation of life as we know it on earth. There is continuity, but there is also discontinuity.

And by the way, if you want to delve into this a little bit more, it is helpful to look at what Paul says about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Because in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul is addressing a very similar question. Now the people that he is dealing with in 1 Corinthians are not Sadducees, but they are Christians who are wondering about the nature of the resurrection body, and they are struggling to understand what that is. He says someone will ask, how are the dead raised? This is 1 Corinthians 15 verse 35. What kind of body do they have in the resurrection?

And Paul says, you have to think about it using this analogy. Use the analogy of a seed that is sown into the ground and then it sprouts into new life. The body that we live in now and that goes into the grave is like that seed. The resurrection body that we will receive at the end of the age, it is in continuity with that body that was put into the ground, but it is also raised in glory and power into a new kind of life that is different from this life. And so Paul says, so it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown, that is the seed that is sown, what is sown is perishable, but what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power.

And we could tie this back to Jesus’ teaching and say, the body that is sown is capable of marriage and procreation, but the body that is raised is something different. It is like Jesus says here, our bodies will be like the angels in heaven, and we will not be marrying and having children in heaven. In the eternal state, our bodies will be fitted to eternal life beyond the need for procreation. So that is Jesus’ first answer to the question.

You guys are wrong. You Sadducees who deny afterlife, who deny the resurrection. you are wrong because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. He begins with that second point first. You do not understand the power of God. You do not understand the power of God to raise our bodies and to transform our bodies into something new and glorious. But then he returns back to the first point. You do not know the scriptures, verses 31 to 32.

And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said by God, to 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. So here he gives his second argument for why they are wrong to deny the resurrection. And that is, he not only wants to say that just theologically, if we believe in the power of God, we should believe that it is possible for us to have resurrection bodies that are glorious and beyond procreation, but just apart from your doctrine of believing in God and God’s power, the scriptures themselves point to the reality of the future life and the resurrection of the dead. Do not you know? Have not you read what it says in the Bible itself? Your own Bible, your own scriptures that you claim to believe in so literally and that you hold to with such fervor? Do not you remember what it says?

And he quotes here from that wonderful passage in Exodus chapter 3 where God appears to Moses in the burning bush. And he appears to him and he says that he is the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now you might think, well how does this proof text from Exodus chapter 3, how does it prove the resurrection? it just seems to say that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Maybe you could say, well, maybe the argument is, it uses the present tense, I am the God of Abraham, and so therefore, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, even though they have long died, remember this is in Exodus 3, this is long after, you know, hundreds of years after Israel has already gone down to Egypt, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have already died, and so maybe the fact that it uses the present tense verb there, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is what Jesus is getting at to prove, therefore, that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, even though they are dead, they still exist.

They are still alive in a spiritual sense as departed souls with God. The problem, though, with that is that it seems to not quite get us to the Resurrection. It just gets us only to the idea of the intermediate state. That is, when people die, when Christians die, you go to Heaven, but you are waiting for the Resurrection in the future.

Is that what Jesus is doing here? Is he simply making the argument that there is an afterlife and that death is not the end? Is that simply all he is doing? Or is he also pointing to the resurrection in some way? But how does he get there? How does he get to the resurrection? The answer is this, and Gerhard is was in his biblical theology provided the clue, the answer to this.

Reading the Old Testament

The answer is that notice this language here, it is not just simply the verb and the fact that it is in the present tense, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is also the whole sentence, including this phrase, being the God of, right? I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. That is the language of the covenant formula. I will be their God and they will be my people.

To be the God of Abraham means to be in covenant with Abraham. To be the God of Isaac means that this same covenant promise that God made with Abraham is now being renewed and passed on to Isaac. And if you read the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the book of Genesis, you see that that is exactly what is being referred to whenever Isaac, or Jacob, refers to God being the God of Abraham, and therefore he is also their God. For example, you can just look it up, but in Genesis 28, 13, when God appeared to Jacob at Bethel, remember the angels of God were ascending and descending upon the ladder into heaven, that is when Jacob recognized that God was also his God. that the God of Abraham and the God of his father, Isaac, was also his God. The Lord appeared, the Lord stood above the ladder ascending to heaven, and he said, I am the God of Abraham, your father, and the God of Isaac. And so Jacob then, the third one in line, is saying, this same God who is the God of Abraham and who is the God of my father Isaac, he is also my God, and therefore the same covenant that God made with Abraham and with Isaac is also made with me.

This is the language of God’s covenant of grace with his people. I will be their God and they shall be my people. That is why I had us look at that verse in Revelation 21 verse 3 at the beginning for our silent meditation. Because there we see it, when we come to the final conclusion of this covenant that God initiated in the Old Testament with the patriarchs, and then as it continues on into the New Covenant and is finally consummated in the resurrection, in the age to come, we see that covenant formula once again. Behold, the dwelling of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

And so you see how now we are beginning to get to this idea of not only is it just the present tense that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still alive in some spiritual sense, we are getting to the eschatological fulfillment of the covenant relationship in the new creation when God is dwelling with his people who have been raised from the dead to live with him in the new creation.

In other words, what Jesus is saying here is that you Sadducees, not only are you denying the power of God, because you have this very distant view of God, that he is just a deistic God who simply created everything, but then he does not care about us. Not only do you not understand the power of God, you also do not understand your own scriptures that you claim to hold to, because the scriptures themselves are all about God’s covenant with his people. And this covenant relationship is not just a temporary thing. It was not just as if God was in covenant with Abraham while Abraham was alive. Nor is it simply a spiritual thing where he is in covenant with Abraham in heaven when Abraham is dead, but just as a soul in heaven. No, God is in covenant with his people with that eschatological conclusion in view. that he will dwell with his people forever in the new creation as God’s people are raised into resurrection bodies to live with him in heaven itself.

The Sadducees, by removing resurrection hope, by denying the afterlife, have reduced the Bible, have reduced the scriptures to a lifeless historical narrative and a legal code. Oh, they were conservatives all right, but they were secular conservatives. And they had reduced the Bible simply to a civil code that should be implemented in society, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, do the temple, worship God, follow all the rituals, but no life communion with God, no covenant communion with God. They believed in a distant God. They might as well be atheists if they have no genuine communion with God.

And so Jesus is proving something amazing here. He is giving us a broad perspective on the entirety of the Bible, on the entirety of Scripture, that it is ultimately about this covenant of grace. It was first revealed after the fall in Genesis 3.15, concerning the promise of the seed of the woman who would come and restore us to be able to eat again of the tree of life. But it was fleshed out further with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, specifically focusing upon the land, but the land not simply as just dirt and real estate, but the land as a type, the land as a picture pointing ahead to that ultimate fulfillment in the new creation.

And Jesus is saying, you have got to interpret all of the Bible in light of this covenant formula, that that is what God is all about in the Old Testament. That is what all the scriptures are about. Yes, those laws are there. Yes, God did want Israel to keep those laws in the land.

But the purpose of it was to communicate that God wants to have this covenant relation with his people, this union and communion. through the covenant bond where He is their God and we are His people, where we know Him and belong to Him and have a relationship with Him. Some scholars argue, and I do not think this is right, but they argue that the Jewish belief in the resurrection began much later in Jewish history, during the intertestamental time, you know, after the last book of the Old Testament was written. So we are talking, you know, in the time around 400, 300, 200, before Christ, that the belief in the afterlife and the resurrection is a much later thing. It does not really come up until much later. and it is not actually found in the Old Testament itself. But that is simply not true.

And Jesus proves it with this quotation from Exodus 3, verse 6, when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush. Remember also at that moment when God is appearing to Moses, what is he doing? He is saying, I have heard the groanings of the people and I have remembered my covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I am about to come down. as God himself comes in the form of that glory cloud to be with his people, which is, of course, a picture of the incarnation of Christ that is going to happen in the future. But he is coming down, he is heard the groanings of his people, and he is coming down to fulfill his covenant promises with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to make his people into that people that will worship him and have communion with him.

And it is not just in the books of Moses. It is throughout the Old Testament. Think about the Psalms, for example. Psalm 73, which we sang for our song of preparation. Psalm 73, you guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion. Only in this life?

No, my portion forever. See, there is that idea of this union and communion with God that we will have forever with him. And that death itself cannot prevent that. Death itself will not overcome that covenant bond. The covenant bond and this union and communion that we have with God through the covenant of grace will continue forever.

And that God himself is our portion. How different this is from the Sadducees who simply reduced Judaism to this external civil code. and thought nothing of their personal relationship with God, thought nothing of what the psalmist speaks of here in Psalm 73, my heart and my flesh may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Jesus then is using this opportunity as he is bouncing off the different sects of Judaism and their different theological views to give us a panoramic perspective of what the scripture is all about. The Bible is not a lifeless moral code governing life only in the here and now. It is the revelation of God’s gracious eternal covenant with his people.

And of course, remember, and as we are about to go to the Lord’s Supper in a moment, remember that in just a couple of days, from when Jesus made this teaching. In just a couple of days, he is going to be with his disciples in the upper room, and he is going to institute the Last Supper, the Lord’s Supper. And what is he going to say in that when he comes to the elements of the bread and the cup?

He says, this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. The covenant formula that goes all the way back to the Old Testament reaches its climax there at that moment as Jesus is about to go to the cross to lay down his life for his people so that our sins might be forgiven.

Not just so that we can avoid getting punished by the Jewish Sanhedrin, but so that our sins might be forgiven so that we might have communion with God, that we might know him and love him and have a relationship with him that not only begins in this life, but that continues after death and even beyond that. into the resurrection glory that is to come.