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Feb 23, 2025

1 Bride for 7 Brothers

Passage: Mark 12:18-27

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Mark

Keywords: resurrection, marriage, death, singleness

Summary:

So much in this life points to the life to come. In this passage, Jesus uses a question from his antagonists, the Sadducees, to tell us why marriage won't be needed in heaven and why that is actually superior to what we experience on earth. In so doing he fixes our affections on where they should be regardless of whether you are married or single.

Detail:

1 Bride for 7 Brothers

Mark 12:18-27

February 23, 2025

 

Fellowship Question:  What would you say to someone who believes that this life is all there is?

INTRO:  There are lots of mysteries in life, aren’t there, even for Christ-followers?  We don’t have all the answers.  But I do think we have the most important answers.  And where we don’t have complete answers, God gives us enough information to sustain us, carry us through the questions, and give us hope and a vision for the future He has in store for us. 

ILL:  This week, I ran across an excerpt from a letter Pastor John Piper had received from a young widow in the Philippines.  It illustrates some of life’s hard questions.  And it touches directly on our passage today.  Here’s what she wrote:

“Dear Pastor John, I have been, up until recently, very happily married. I am now widowed. My husband died just a few weeks ago, and I am devastated. I believe there’s a reason for why I have been left behind. I trust God on that. I believe there’s a reason why he had to go. I can trust God on that. I believe that we can make it without him — myself, our young son, and the church my husband led. I find myself experiencing joy and longing, trust and nervousness, peace and homesickness for heaven.

“Aside from missing him and wanting the life we had back, what I can’t seem to wrap my head around are these questions. Why did God even allow me and my husband to share a love like ours on earth if this will mean nothing in heaven? Can’t I at least be guaranteed that my husband will still be my best friend in heaven? Will he even be excited to see me when I get there? In marriage, two become one. Am I just half a person left behind?

I know when I get to heaven and enter God’s presence, none of these questions will matter. But they matter now. And I struggle to find wisdom and comfort as to how I must approach my remaining years on earth. Thank you.”

            Life, and death, have a way of raising some of the deepest emotional questions imaginable.  Who of us doesn’t ache with this woman and her struggles even as she demonstrates great faith in God in the midst of great pain in life?

            Todays Scripture is from Mark 12:18-27. It is about life, death, marriage, singleness, the resurrection and heaven.  As such, it speaks to every single one of this woman’s questions and every single one of us. 

Biblical SETTING:   The context of this passage is another attempt by some of Jesus’ antagonists to undercut his credibility.  Whereas the Pharisees and Herodians in last week’s passage used money and taxes, the Sadducees in this week’s passage are trying to us marriage, death and the resurrection to discredit Jesus.  They are going to fail even more miserably than the Pharisees and Herodians did.  But I’m frankly very grateful that they at least tried to trip up Jesus because, in so doing, they provided Jesus with the opportunity to give us some much-needed information on this life and the life to come with Him in heaven. 

            So, let’s read about what happened in Mark 12.

18 Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 19 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. 21 The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. 22 In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. 23 At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”

24 Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 26 Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”

            So, who were these “Sadducees”?  Sadducees where another element of Jewish political and religious power in Jesus’ day.  They were generally wealthy aristocrats.  All of them were priests (though not all priests were Sadducees).  According to Acts 4, the chief priests of the day were Sadducees.  Doctrinally they only accepted the Torah, the 5 books of Moses.  They were conservative in that way.  But they were liberals in that they were rationalists and anti-supernaturalists who denied the sovereignty of God over all the affairs of people.  They denied the existence of angels and spirits.  They were lovers of Greek culture and collaborators with Rome who benefited financially and socially from their alliances with the Roman occupiers. 

            True to their anti-supernatural beliefs, they didn’t believe in a future bodily resurrection.  Unlike today’s agnostic or atheistic anti-supernaturalists who think that this life is all there is and once you die, you not only cease to exist but that there is no eternal supernatural realm that does exist forever, the Sadducees very much believed in God and heaven.  They just weren’t so sure about who was there besides God. 

            So, they come to Jesus with what they think is a pretty good argument from the Scriptures for why there can’t be a resurrection of the dead.  The passage they used as Deuteronomy 25, a passage that specified what we call “levirate marriage.”  Under this provision in the law, if a woman who had not birthed any heirs lost her husband in death, she could demand that, in order to keep her husbands name and property intact, if her dead husband had any brothers, the next brother in line had to take her as a wife and father a child for her that would take her husbands name.  If he refused, he was to be publicly disgraced, shamed and cursed. 

            So, the Sadducees looked at this passage as one that had to support their theology of “no resurrection”.  They concluded that, unless God was somehow going to sanction polygamy in eternity, there could not possibly be a bodily resurrection of the dead.  Seems like reasonable logic.  But, as we’ll see, it was flawed on several accounts. 

            They come to Jesus with this “1 Bride & 7 Brothers” hypothetical situation that we’ve already read about.  They think that Jesus is either going to discredit himself by having to take a position that supports eternal polygamy OR he’s going to have to back off of his multiple references to a bodily resurrection.  Either way, they win and Jesus loses, which is all they really cared about. 

            Jesus responds head-on.  To the top religious minds and social 1% of the day, Jesus says, “24 Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?”  Their question had failed on two fronts:

  • While they prided themselves on knowing the Scriptures, Jesus charged them with biblical ignorance.
  • While they considered themselves intellectually superior to everyone else and God-fearing men, Jesus accuses them of being unacquainted with the true power of God.

They didn’t know about God or even know God as He was.  I’m sure those two criticism did little to diffuse their hatred of Jesus. 

            So, where was their biblical knowledge missing and where was their understanding/experience of God’s power deficient?

Ignorance of Scripture:  Interestingly enough, Jesus doesn’t go to passages in the O.T. that show God has a plan for people post-death, places like…

  • 1 Kings 17—Elijah raises the widow’s son from the dead.
  • Job 19:25-27—Job declares “after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another.”
  • Isaiah 26--Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead. and the earth will give birth to the dead. 
  • Ezekiel 27—Valley of dry bones.
  • Daniel 12--And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. 

Instead, Jesus appeals to one of the most basic identifiers for God in the O.T.—“The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”  That triple acclimation of God occurs 3 times in Exodus 3 alone.  So, Jesus is refers to one of the passages they viewed as authoritative to show them they are missing the Scriptural teaching.  He argues that God is not declaring that he is God of dead, non-existent people.  Rather, in speaking to living people God declares that he is the God of the living.  To be a God of the dead does nothing to encourage or convince living people to trust in you. 

Deficient understanding of God:  Jesus also faults their disconnected view of God as one who is not all-powerful and sovereign.  If they believed in the power of God to appear to Moses in a burning bush that was not consumed by the fire, why did they not believe in a God who had the power to overcome consuming death with a resurrection experience?  Hadn’t he already…

  • Created life out of the dust of the ground?
  • Spared Enoch and Elijah from death?
  • In their very own day given a foretaste of that by raising Lazarus from the dead nearby in Bethany and the synagogue leader Jairus’s daughter from the dead?

Jesus simply closes the discussion with, “You are badly mistaken.”  Ouch!

            The central teaching of this text is that, contrary to popular belief both then and now, there will be a resurrection.  People will live forever.  Their bodies will be miraculously reconstituted and transformed at the last day.  And that reality should somehow significantly and deeply shape all of us who are still living. 

            You see, so much in this life hinges on the truth that there is life after this life ends.  If there is not, then there is no such thing as divine justice for any human actions.  IF there is no resurrection, there are no rewards for righteousness or punishments for evil.  There is no hope of anything better or fear of anything worse after this life.  There is no forgiveness of sins now or in the future.  Our sins still own us and death is the end.  As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, if there is no resurrection of the dead, our entire faith is empty, it is vain and it is a charade.  We’re the most deceived and deluded people on earth, living a lie and perpetrating that lie.

            So, the alternative to the biblical resurrection is nothing but an eternal black hole.  To which God says, “NOT TRUE!  You are badly mistaken!” 

            Worse yet, to make that mistake is to rob every pain and every pleasure in this life of the eternal impact it can have.  Failure to have a knowledge of the coming resurrection inform every area of our lives today will not only negatively and disastrous impact aspects of our eternal experience; it will diminish and destroy the blessings God wants the reality of the resurrection to bring to us in this life. 

            To explain a bit of that, Jesus was glad to use marriage as an example of just how the resurrection changes everything.  Let’s explore for a moment HOW.  To do that, let’s return to that dear young widow’s questions about the loss of her husband.  She obviously knew this passage in Mark 12…and it bothered her.  How could heaven be heaven when it would be void of the one relationship in this life that had brought her closest to heaven? 

            Allow me to borrow from what Pastor John Piper gives as an answer. 

  1. The reality of the resurrection gives eternal significance and weight to every relationship of love, faithfulness, loyalty, sacrifice and care… because God will reward them all in heaven.

To this widow’s question of, “Why did God even allow me and my husband to share a love like ours on earth if this will mean nothing in heaven?” [the truth of the resurrection answers]…in this present life, every relationship of love, and faithfulness, and loyalty, and sacrifice, and care will be celebrated for all eternity in tribute to the grace of God and the faithfulness of his obedient child. The “well done, good and faithful servant” that Jesus speaks to his faithful followers at the resurrection is a well done in every fruitful relationship (Matthew 25:23). Well done for that beautiful love. Well done.

God’s gracious approval of our imperfect works of faith is not a celebrative bubble that pops at the second coming and is forgotten for eternity. There are eternal good effects to all good done on the earth. 

Ephesians 6:8 says, “Whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord.” Good parenting that lasts five years before a child is snatched away in a car accident; good chastity during engagement before a fiancé dies of a heart attack before the wedding; good faithfulness and intense, mutually self-giving romance in marriage that she describes — these will not be meaningless in heaven. They won’t.

“Every good and beautiful fruit of God’s Spirit in your life will reverberate forever.” [Drawn from an article by John Piper found at https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/will-my-spouse-be-my-best-friend-in-heaven on 2.17.25.]

The sweetness and intensity of the love in Christ between a husband and wife will have its echo in the music of heaven. It wasn’t in vain.  Neither will be any love or friendship or kindness or compassion or goodness in Christ shown in this life.  It will resound with the approval and applause of God in all eternity. 

  1. The reality of the resurrection means that life’s sweetest experiences are meant to be appetizers that point us to the banquet to come.

This world, in its most exquisite pleasures, is designed by God to show us something of himself, not everything. The heavens and all creation are declaring the glory of God, the Psalm 19 says.  And all these glorious pleasures are meant to awaken thankfulness now and strong anticipation of the age to come when the pleasures of this age will seem like foretastes of something vastly greater. Because they are. The pleasures of this present age, even the most godly of them, are not the point of the universe; they are pointers to the point.

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul compares the best of spiritual gifts with what is to come at the resurrection. 

“We know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:9–12)

Paul says that comparing human life in this age with human life in the age to come (when the perfect comes) is like comparing human life as a child with human life as an adult. Let’s apply this to the pleasures of marriage.

The deepest pleasures of marriage, be they companionship or procreation or continual kindnesses are like a child’s enjoyment of ice cream. There is as much distance between marriage joy in this world and the ecstasies of the spiritual body in the age to come as there is between a child’s enjoyment of ice cream and the pleasures of marriage twenty years later.

Piper—“The best human pleasures we know in this world — relational, emotional, psychological, and physical — are wonderfully suited for [as Solomon called it] “life under the sun.” But in the age to come, “The city has no need of sun to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light” (Revelation 21:23). Should we, then, not say that the pleasures known by the natural body in this age are as inferior to the pleasures of the spiritual body as the sunlight of this age is inferior to the brightness of the glory of God?

Therefore, marriage ends for the same reason the sun ends. And childhood ends. And the natural body ends. All of them were foretastes, prelude, pointers. When the perfect comes, the pointers pass away.   [Found on 2.17.25 at https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/matrimony-no-more] 

  1. The reality of the resurrection means that even good things taken from us in the life have the potential to enrich now and for eternity.

This truth is illustrated in this young widow’s question, “Since in marriage the two become one, am I just half a person left behind?”

The answer is no, you are not only half a person left behind. Yes, part of you is gone. Death of a loved one does take what their ongoing life would have continued to give us. Grieving owns that and embraces that hard reality. Part of you is gone.

In a marriage, only a spouse could draw out of us certain desires, certain kinds of laughter, anger, peace, and countless other inner responses that we can’t even put into words. Spouses are meant to become so embedded in our life that for them to be absent is, yes, for part of us to be absent. Things will never be just the same again. And it would dishonor our departed loved one to think that they could be.

But consider this: not all that we became by union with another is lost. We know it’s not. We became a wiser, deeper, better person because of life with others. They do not take all of that with them when they leave us in death. Anyone who has lost a loved one knows that how they impacted us really changed us…forever. And what we became through them is not less, but more than we were before they entered our life. It may feel for some time that we have lost a huge part of ourselves.  But God has not made us less, but more, through those we love, whether they are with us now or whether we are looking forward to being with them again in heaven.     

Life will never be the same after the death of a beloved one, particularly a spouse. But God’s call on our lives in the life that remains for us to live in Christ is to be even more of the person we became through the love we shared with them, for the glory of God.

  1. The reality of the resurrection means that heaven is not only an improvement over the worst of this world, but over the best.

The Bible pictures the age to come as better than this life, not just because bad things will be taken away (like sin, suffering, tears and death), but because today’s good things will be seen to have been only foretastes of better eternal things — a better feast of pleasure.

Jesus showed this when he said that marriage gets replaced by something better than marriage (Mark 12:25). Paul showed it when he described the resurrection as replacing this world and our frail bodies with something gloriously better. Listen to these words from 1 Corinthians 15:42—[The Message:  The corpse that’s planted is no beauty, but when it’s raised, it’s glorious. Put in the ground weak, it comes up powerful. The seed sown is natural; the seed grown is supernatural—same seed, same body, but what a difference from when it goes down in physical mortality to when it is raised up in spiritual immortality!

Now, we can’t conceive fully what a spiritual body is. But in Paul’s mind, it exceeded this present body, with all its pleasures, like the brightness of the glory of the sun exceeds a decaying, rotting seed in the ground.

“The happiest marriage in the world is but a pleasurable head start on the joys of heaven.”  It is the appetizer before the feast. It is the warm-up band who’s good before the really great lead band performs. God saves the best wine, just like Jesus at Cana did, till the last (John 2:10).

So, is it any wonder that God tells us that our relationship with Jesus is like that between a husband and wife?  Any wonder Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 that he is speaking of Christ and the church?  Any wonder John records that all of us in the church have a future wedding and feast in heaven where God himself will be joined to us as an eternal Bridegroom with experiences that will make the best marriage and the best of marriage in this life look rather faded and pale? 

  1. The reality of the resurrection means that we will no longer need the procreative power and function intended for marriage.

Jesus mentions deathless resurrection bodies as one of the reasons why marriage ends after this life. “Those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore” (Luke 20:35–36).

Since there is no death in the age to come, and since the number of the elect humans that will inhabit heaven will be complete at the resurrection (Romans 11:25), then the need and experience of procreating or producing new human beings will ended. Not only will sex between a husband and wife be ended; so will the co-creation of new human beings come to an end. 

Evidently, the Sadducees agreed that, if procreation is not needed, marriage is not needed. So, Jesus simply chose to answer them in the most straightforward way they would understand.

APP:  Which has something to say to us in our culture which devalues both marriage and children.  Truly, one of the fundamental reasons God established marriage was for the raising up of successive generations of godly offspring.  Marriage was not just about “being fruitful and multiplying.”  It was designed by God to be the means of creating, raising, and making godly every necessary generation of God-fearing humans on earth.  Both marriage and parenting are how God designed humanity to survive the curse of death and not only populate this earth for thousands of years but populate heaven for eternity. 

            Despite the negativity enveloping our world about marriage and children, we as God’s children should hold both in highest esteem.  Don’t believe the world when it says marriage doesn’t work.  That is a lie.  Don’t believe them when they say children are a burden…or will ruin your dreams…or are unwanted unless they come at your convenience…or any number of lies about them.  They are an answer to the curse of death and they are an answer to the longing for meaning in life!

But what about single people?  Or childless couples?  Part of the answer to why God does not make marriage an eternal ordinance without procreation is that its disappearance clarifies what has always been true — that non-married people and childless married people are still the full beneficiaries of the greatest eternal joys. God had said in Isaiah 56 to those who did not marry, but kept his covenant,

“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” (Isaiah 56:4–5)

It becomes clear that this “monument” and this “everlasting name” is a position with no disadvantage to the not-married in the resurrection, since all are not married.

And just 2 chapters earlier in Isaiah 54, when speaking of the glory to come to God’s chosen people, Isaiah wrote,

“Sing, barren woman,
    you who never bore a child;
burst into song, shout for joy,
    you who were never in labor;
because more are the children of the desolate woman
    than of her who has a husband,”
says the Lord.

To summarize,

  • marriage ends because its procreating purpose is not needed in the resurrection (Luke 20:35–36).
  • Marriage ends because all its pleasures are preludes and pointers to something so much better that the human heart cannot imagine (1 Corinthians 2:9). When the perfect comes, the partial passes away.
  • And marriage ends in order to put the married and the non-married on the same footing for enjoying the fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

“Feel the astonishing force of the promise that marriage will be no more because it was too weak to carry God’s best eternal pleasures.”  Since the age to come is not only an improvement over the worst of this world, but over the best, then the end of marriage is spectacularly good news. Marriage in this age, at its best, offers some of life’s most intense pleasures, and sweetest intimacies. If you have ever tasted these, or have ever dreamed of tasting them, then you can feel the astonishing force of the promise that marriage will be no more because it was too weak to carry God’s best eternal pleasures.

Benediction:  1 Corinthians 2:9-10 says, quoting Isaiah 64:4,

“What no eye has seen,
    what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
    the things God has prepared for those who love him—

10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.

 


 Additional Passages--Communion

Luke 12

35 “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, 36 like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. 37 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. 38 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. 39 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

 

Matthew 26:29

I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

 

Revelation 19

6 Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting:

“Hallelujah!
    For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
7 Let us rejoice and be glad
    and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
    and his bride has made herself ready.
8 Fine linen, bright and clean,
    was given her to wear.”

(Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of God’s holy people.)