November 10, 2019- “The Real Question”

November 12, 2019 Pastor Christy Hallenbeck Ask No comments

The Lesson: Job 19:23-27a

Job suffers the loss of children, wealth, and health. Accused by his companions of wrongdoing, he knows himself to be innocent. Here, in the midst of his suffering, Job clings to the radical hope that his vindicator, his redeemer, lives; and that one day he himself will see God.²³“O that my words were written down!
  O that they were inscribed in a book!
²⁴O that with an iron pen and with lead
  they were engraved on a rock forever!
²⁵For I know that my Redeemer lives,
  and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
²⁶and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
  then in my flesh I shall see God,
^27awhom I shall see on my side,
  and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”

Gospel: Luke 20:27-38

The Sadducees, who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead, try to trap Jesus. They formulate the convoluted case of a serial widow who marries a succession of seven brothers. Jesus responds by teaching about God, to whom all are alive and in whom all relationships are fulfilled.²⁷Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to [Jesus] ²⁸and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. ²⁹Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; ³⁰then the second ³¹and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. ³²Finally the woman also died. ³³In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”
³⁴Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; ³⁵but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. ³⁶Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. ³⁷And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. ³⁸Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”