Tuesday after the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on November 10, 2020 by under
Scripture: St. Matthew 22:23-33 (NKJV)
22:23 The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, 24 saying: “Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. 25 Now there were with us seven brothers. The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother. 26 Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh. 27 Last of all the woman died also. 28 Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had her.”
29 Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. 31 But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” 33 And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.
Devotion
The Sadducees, a religious faction within the Jews, did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. And the Sadducees came to Jesus to ask him a trick question about a woman who was widowed seven times by seven brothers. They asked, in the resurrection whose wife would she be? Jesus answered by saying that in the resurrection there will be no marriage, because we will be like angels in that regard. However, He also went on to state that “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
God did not create us in order to die. He created us to live forever with Him. Satan brought sin and death into the world with His lying and evil ways. “The wages of sin is death.” But, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, …and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” Our God is the God of the Living.
He has regenerated us to spiritual life (faith in Christ) in the waters of Holy Baptism. He will raise us to new physical life when His Holy Son comes again and resurrects our bodies to take us with Him in the life of the world to come.
Prayer: Almighty God, we beseech Thee, show Thy mercy unto Thy humble servants, that we who put no trust in our own merits may not be dealt with after the severity of Thy judgment, but according to Thy mercy, through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, who livest and reignest with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
