The God of the Living
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God gives a great understanding of spiritual things to those who know His power.
Focus on these points in Mark 12:18—27:
People are wrong about the afterlife, especially for not believing in the next life, because they know neither the Bible nor God’s power.
Jesus taught that the dead will rise and their nature will be like the angels who do not marry. [The angels are immortal.]
God is not the God of the dead but of the living because He remains the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Jesus emphasized that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to demonstrate that He will resurrect the dead.
People are “very wrong” about the afterlife and the resurrection to come because they know neither the Scriptures nor God’s power.
“How can you believe in an afterlife when there is no evidence?”
Have you ever wondered how we can follow Jesus’s example and know how to respond to those who dismiss the hope of eternal life?
Jesus would respond, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?”
The Sadducees were naturalists like many today who did not believe in angels, spirits, or resurrection (Acts 23:8).
The Sadducees confronted Jesus in the temple because he had cleansed the temple the day before harming their profits (Mark 11:15—18).
Now, Jesus stood in the temple as the Son of God and the King of the Jews in contrast to the high priest for which the Sadducees detested.
The Sadducees thought that they could make light of the belief in the resurrection by a story of a widow with 7 husbands (Deuteronomy 25:5—6).
The Sadducees should have been familiar with God speaking to Moses from the burning bush (Exodus 3:1—4; cf. Acts 7:32).
Jesus cited Scripture and expected religious leaders to know the Bible (Matthew 21:16; cf. Luke 3:4; 20:42).
The Creator created life and natural laws and He has the power to give life for life was good from the beginning.
“And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by His power” (1 Corinthians 6:14).
“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Philippians 3:20—21).
Why do the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob keep living to live an afterlife without bodies?
What do you believe about the afterlife affects how you live?
“What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’ Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’ Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame” (1 Corinthians 15:32—34).
Today, many believers in an afterlife assert that there will be no resurrection of our bodies (1 Corinthians 15:12).
“For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:16—19).
In our fallen sinful state, many doubt and think that this life is not good, life will all come to an end, and so they should live it up now.
Jesus’s response to deniers affirms that God is the God of the living. People are wrong for denying an afterlife because they know neither the Bible nor God’s power.
Christ Offers Eternal Life
“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24).
“For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:40).
“And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
Christ resurrected confirming the truth that God is not the God of the dead but the living.