After Death – Mark 12:18-27

Text: Mark 12:18-27

What happens after death?

We’ve pondered the question for ages: What happens after death? Will there be anything at all?

What you believe about that, really believe, pretty much determines how you really live.

If you believe you’re finished when they pull the sheet over your face, you’re probably trying to squeeze as much fun out of life as you can.  Eat, drink, and be merry, as the saying goes. This is all you’ve got.

You won’t care what some clergyman speaks over your grave.

You won’t care because you won’t know, and you won’t know because you won’t exist anymore.

Many people believe that, and that’s how they live.

We live, we die, that’s it.  Game over.  It’s what the Sadducees believed.

They were so sure about it that they had created what they thought was an insurmountable argument.

They’d used it before, and now they plan to try it on this up-and-coming Rabbi who had proved to be a difficult sparring partner.  As it turns out, he poked a few crater-sized holes in their argument.  Here’s the confrontation:

Then some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him; and they asked Him, saying: “Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man’s brother dies, and leaves his wife behind, and leaves no children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife; and dying, he left no offspring. And the second took her, and he died; nor did he leave any offspring. And the third likewise. So the seven had her and left no offspring. Last of all the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as wife.”

Jesus answered and said to them, “Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB’ ? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken.” (Mark 12:18-27).

They’d probably stumped quite a few teachers in their day, and they were eager to see Jesus wilt under their inescapable logic.  But Jesus was no ordinary Rabbi.  By quoting one Scripture he exposed their biblical ignorance and theological bias.

They denied the afterlife not because there was no evidence, but because they didn’t want to believe in life after death.

• You are quite wrong, Jesus says.
• I’d say that’s a pretty huge thing to be wrong about.

Imagine living your life as if this is it, only to die and find out there’s more.  Much more.  An eternity more.  Imagine:

• Accumulating the toys and chasing the dreams and squeezing every ounce of fun out of life . . . only to realize that you missed the whole point.
• Realizing that God wanted you to live a selfless life to prepare you for something infinitely better than the passing fancies of a self-centered life here.
• God as the God of the living, not the dead.
• Eternity with him.

Believing there is life after death completely changes the way we live.