Take a few deep breaths to center your heart and your mind as you prepare to meet with God.

Meditation on God

What is the ultimate expression of sheer power? I have loved the direction movies and tv shows have taken in the past decade in large part because I love superhero stories. There’s just something awe-striking about their massive feats of strength, their mind-bending powers, and all the obstacles and villains they can tackle because of this. In almost every good superhero story, the momentum of a group of characters of all different levels and types of power comes to a screeching halt when they come in contact with someone who, compared to them, seems ultimately powerful. The Bible describes God as omnipotent, or all-powerful, shown in many different ways to many different groups of people, from creation to military strength. Take a moment and picture God flexing His power. What power do you see Him using, or what makes Him look the most powerful?

Teaching

Then Jesus was approached by some Sadducees—religious leaders who say there is no resurrection from the dead. They posed this question: “Teacher, Moses gave us a law that if a man dies, leaving a wife without children, his brother should marry the widow and have a child who will carry on the brother’s name. Well, suppose there were seven brothers. The oldest one married and then died without children. So the second brother married the widow, but he also died without children. Then the third brother married her. This continued with all seven of them, and still there were no children. Last of all, the woman also died. So tell us, whose wife will she be in the resurrection? For all seven were married to her.” Jesus replied, “Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God. For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. In this respect they will be like the angels in heaven. “But now, as to whether the dead will be raised—haven’t you ever read about this in the writings of Moses, in the story of the burning bush? Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, God said to Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ So he is the God of the living, not the dead. You have made a serious error.” (Mark 12:18-27)

As Jesus goes through His final week of human life, the attitude that people have toward Him goes from rampant praise on Palm Sunday to increasing personal attacks. In this situation, Jesus is intellectually jumped by a gang of religious elites hoping to show how wrong Jesus is about God, their faith, and the promise of the resurrection. For them, this is a game meant to shame Jesus, but for Jesus, this is a question of His Heavenly Father, the relationship between God and man that He is trying to mend, and the way He is trying to mend it. This conversation won’t prove anything away from Jesus, but the things these established religious people are attacking are near and dear to Jesus’ heart, which breaks for lost people.

The religious elites here try and make the resurrection look silly by citing a law from the Old Testament that we would think sounds silly today. Why would a man want, let alone need, to marry his deceased brother’s wife? Wouldn’t that be awkward? Wouldn’t that shame his brother’s name? For them, the short answer is exactly the opposite. For ancient families, there are no social systems set in place to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves like children and the elderly, and because of their view on women in the workplace and owning possessions, they would fit into that same group. After getting married, a woman would be taken from her family and grafted into the husband’s family, and if she found herself without children of her own or a husband to provide for her, women would become destitute, beggars, and people without a trace of hope for a better life. Because of this, God commanded that if a woman’s husband dies, one of her deceased husband’s brothers should marry her and provide her with children who can help take care of her. While we may see this today as a weird move for a brother to make, this was a move of extreme compassion and mercy toward someone in dire need.

Jesus’ words at the end of this don’t seem on the surface to decisively win the argument for Jesus, but when you look a little deeper, Jesus proves the resurrection in a really profound way. To do this, He quotes God, saying “I Am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” When Moses asks God what His name is in Exodus 3, God responds by saying, “‘I Am’ has sent me to you.” God declares that, along with the name Yahweh, His name is ‘I Am,’ so when Jesus repeats the common biblical refrain spoken by God–”I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”–He is both speaking God’s name and the fact that God is currently those 3 people’s God, not formerly. He doesn’t say “I was the God…”, He says “I Am the God…” The Great I Am, the Creator God of the cosmos and also His Father, has something to say about death and the life after, and He will prove it within a week with His own son.

Examination

Take a moment and ask yourself this question: how would your attitude and demeanor change if you thought that there was no afterlife?

Now, take a moment and be grateful to God for His promise of eternal life for those who love Him.

Memory Verse

As you go through your day today, show your thankfulness to God by repeating this verse from 1 Thessalonians 4,

“When Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died.” (1 Thessalonians 4:14b)