But concerning the dead that they rise, have ye not read in the book of Moses, in [the section of] the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, *I* [am] the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?
The Sadducees denied the resurrection, and they argued from the books of Moses. Jesus answers them from Moses too, and the whole case turns on the tense of one verb.
The Lord could have quoted a plainer resurrection passage. He chose this one because of who was asking, and because of a promise never kept while Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived.
He takes this passage, not because it is the clearest Scripture in the Old Testament, but because it is in the books of Moses. These Sadducees valued those books most. God never gave Abraham, Isaac or Jacob the land of Israel to own while they were alive in their natural bodies. Yet He did promise them the land — not just to their children, but to themselves. So they must rise to have that land as promised to them.
By calling His source "the book of Moses," Jesus also says who wrote Exodus.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, the infallible Son of God, perfect in knowledge, said these words to the Sadducees. In this way He gives positive evidence that Exodus is the book of Moses. Christ and His apostles quote Exodus twenty-five times. To reject the inspiration of Exodus is to reject the inspiration of the entire New Testament. Worse than that, it is to reject the testimony of the Son of God.
God spoke at the bush long after those three men had died. What He called Himself then settles the question.
When the incident at the bush happened, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been long dead, yet God still speaks of Himself as their God. He is not, however, the God of the dead, but the God of the living. Though dead to this scene, they still live. They will rise again to enjoy the promises of God. Since sin has come in, those promises can only be fulfilled on resurrection ground.
The setting matters here as much as the wording.
God sent Moses out from the bush to be their deliverer. He sent him under that title, "the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob" — as that "I am" who had looked on His people and cared for them. The Sadducees' creed could never have been the good news of that deliverance, nor its inspiration. A living God in covenant with men meant life, not death; and if death was there, then a life supreme above it. So resurrection was the necessary filling out of such a declaration. The hand God held out to man was not to clasp the listless fingers of a corpse.
Surviving death and rising from death are not the same claim. This verse reaches the second, not just the first.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died long before God spoke to Moses this way; yet He was still their God. So they did exist, for He is not a God of that which has no existence. Further, though they were dead, their body was an essential part of their person. Resurrection of the body must therefore take place. Abraham could not be complete without his body. So Exodus 3:6 taught by implication the truth the Sadducees denied. From the Lord's use of it we learn this: where a truth has no direct statement, Scripture may still teach it by implication.
The Lord traced their mistake to two things. The second shapes how we read the first.
They "knew not the Scriptures, nor the power of God." These are the two things needed. If we do not recognise and own the power of God, we limit the working and reach of the Scriptures to our own. Then we go astray even in interpreting them. That is a great evil, and perhaps not a rare one. The testimony comes from God. He views things in His own light, and He accomplishes His own thoughts by His own power. Leave this out, and we are shut up to the small conclusions, results and measures of our own minds and strength.
- Living. God said "I am," not "I was," of three men long buried. He is the God of the living, and that one word carries the argument.
- Promised. God promised the land to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob themselves. They never owned it, so they must rise to receive it.
- Complete. A man is not himself without his body. So life with God after death still needs resurrection — a truth this verse teaches by implication.
- Covenanted. At the bush God sent out a deliverer. A living God in covenant with men means life — not a hand reaching out to clasp a corpse.
- Grounded. Their error had two roots: not knowing the Scriptures, and not knowing the power of God. Christ answered from "the book of Moses" and staked His own authority on it.
He is not the God of [the] dead, but of [the] living. *Ye* therefore greatly err.
The Sadducees came to Jesus with a marriage puzzle meant to make resurrection look absurd. He answered them from the books of Moses, which they valued most. His closing words settle far more than their puzzle. They touch what death is, and whether God keeps His word to people who have already died.
Before untangling their story, Jesus named what lay underneath it.
Next came the Sadducees, asking Him to unravel the marriage tangle they put forward. He did this and convicted them of their folly; but before doing so He revealed its underlying causes. They did not know the Scriptures — that was ignorance. They did not know the power of God — that was unbelief. These twin pillars held up their unbelieving error. Modern unbelief of the Sadducee type rests on exactly the same two pillars. They constantly misquote, misinterpret, or otherwise mangle Scripture. They think of God as anything but Almighty — as just a man, though with larger powers than ours.
The force of the sentence depends on what the Sadducees meant by death. In their view, the dead had stopped existing altogether.
"I am the God of Abraham" meant that Abraham existed when He spoke. He could not be the God of one who had no existence. He could not be in relationship with a person who did not exist. He could not be — in the Sadducees' idea of what the dead were — "the God of the dead."
Jesus chose His text with these men in mind. From it He drew an argument about a promise never yet kept.
He takes this passage, not because it is the clearest Scripture in the Old Testament. He takes it because it is in the books of Moses, which these Sadducees valued most. God never gave the land of Israel to Abraham, Isaac or Jacob to own while they were alive in their natural bodies. Yet He did promise them the land — not merely to their children, but to themselves. So they must rise to have that land as promised to them... God declared Himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, and that proves the resurrection. God cannot fail to keep the promise He made them.
Denying resurrection was no small mistake about the afterlife.
It was in this view a fatal error, for it struck at the root of God's faithfulness to His promises. Indeed we now know that it is the very centre of all our hopes.
A present-tense relationship carries a future with it.
When the incident at the bush happened, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been dead a long time. Yet God still speaks of Himself as their God. He is not, however, the God of the dead, but the God of the living. Though dead to this scene, they still live. They will rise again to enjoy the promises of God. Since sin has come in, God can only fulfil those promises on resurrection ground.
A living spirit is not yet the finished picture.
The bodies of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have died, but their spirits live. So they must be raised in the end, because man is not complete without his spirit and soul and body (1 Thess. 5:23). The Lord therefore emphasised a second time how great the error of the Sadducees was.
His answer appeals to something a person can recognise without being taught.
Our Lord is now attacked by another form of unbelief — the Sadducee kind. Now see the beautiful simplicity of the wisdom of the mind of Christ. He brings them back to the burning bush and the voice of God that spoke from it. His point to them is that "He is not God of the dead, but of the living." Our natural conscience tells us that He is the God of the living.
- Error — Their trouble had two sources: not knowing the Scriptures, and not knowing the power of God. Modern unbelief stands on the same two pillars.
- Name — At the bush God still called Himself their God, in the present tense. He cannot be the God of someone who does not exist, so Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were not gone.
- Promise — God promised the land to those three men themselves, and they never owned it. To deny resurrection strikes at the root of God's faithfulness.
- Body — Their spirits live now. But man is not complete without spirit, soul and body, so the living must be raised.
- Verdict — Jesus did not soften it. He told them a second time that their error was great.