Sean C. Capparuccia

26 April 2026 – Trinity Global Methodist Church, Magnolia, NC

4th Sunday after Easter

Gen 38:1-30; Ps 119; II Cor 7:2-16; Mt 22:23-33

In this Gospel text, we hear from a group that we don’t often hear from in the Scriptures: the Sadducees. The Sadducees are mentioned 6 different times in the Gospels and the book of Acts while the Pharisees are mentioned about 35 times, not counting parallel passages throughout the Gospels.

So, to begin with, who were the Sadducees? They were a Jewish group that were most prominent in Palestine from the late 2^nd century B.C. until the late first century A.D.   While the Sadducees were not as numerous as the Pharisees, they seemed to have had a greater power, especially in the early to mid 1^st century, the years that Jesus lived and of the early Church. They had power because, from their beginning, they were made up of the upper class; they were the aristocracy. They were also more centered on the Temple rather than on the Law being followed by individuals. In other words, they were more concerned with form of worship, than with the activity of God in the believer or in the process of holiness.  They rejected the supernatural and anything miraculous, basically anything spiritual. They were pragmatic and materialistic, meaning that the only things that mattered were… matter; flesh and bone, what could be seen and touched. They were rationalists and so anything irrational, like resurrection from the dead, was rejected.

             They accepted only the Pentateuch (the first five books of Moses) as authoritative and so only those feasts that are mentioned in these books were celebrated. (Purim was out). Their interpretation of the Law was strict and narrow. Josephus said that they even rejected the immortality of the soul. God did not concern Himself with human affairs but stayed far off in the distance. Humans were thus autonomous and free to do whatever they wished with no interference from God, or angels or any other supernatural being.

            In other words, this group of people were elitists who denied anything more powerful than themselves and rejected anything that disagreed with their positions. Today we would call them liberals.  They cherry-picked the things in the Bible that they liked and disregarded the rest. And while the Pharisees were at least sometimes regarded as tolerable in the New Testament, the Sadducees were always seen in a bad light.[1]

            You can imagine, then, that the Sadducees did not care much for Jesus or His followers. The idea of repentance and sin was repugnant to them and the very thought of resurrection was intolerable. And so that is who the Sadducees were.

            They came at Jesus with this hypothetical question. Now, have you ever experienced this? When someone who is maybe a bit hostile to your belief in Christ, they often come up with the most outlandish and impossible scenarios to try to prove that God doesn’t exist. 

I recall getting into a conversation several years ago with a young man who was an agnostic – he didn’t reject God completely, but he needed a god that he could understand; a god he could wrap his mind around.  He was, at the time, interested in one of our daughters, so after putting up with him for a while, I thought I would just hit him with the Gospel and tell him he was going to hell unless he repented. My thought was that either a) he would repent and become a Christian or b) he would say Adios to our daughter.  Anyway, when I gave him the Gospel, his immediate response was something about how God ordered the destruction of all those Old Testament peoples by the Israelites. “What kind of God would do that? Have His people kill everyone who didn’t believe what they believed? And if God never changes then Christians should kill other people who don’t believe in Jesus.” I told him that God required holiness. And that since Jesus came, we do still ‘kill’ people who don’t believe, but we kill them by giving them the Gospel; their sinful self dies, not their actual selves. Well, he didn’t buy it, and he eventually lost interest in our daughter. We lost contact with him until, sadly, not too long ago, we found out that he had died. One can only hope that he found Christ before then.  

Sola Scriptura        

But the point is these outlandish questions and statements. If a woman marries seven brothers and then she finally dies, whose wife will she be in heaven?  This was a common philosophical question at the time and one which no doubt had been kicked around among the Sadducees for a while in order to renounce the idea of resurrection.[2] It was “in their playbook,” so to speak. The resurrection of the dead is clearly taught in the book of Daniel[3], but it is not mentioned in the Torah, or the Pentateuch.  This is why we need to read the whole of Scripture, not just parts of it.  How many people have made the rather ignorant remark that Jesus never once mentions homosexuality so it must be okay with Jesus.  Beloved, we must read and know the whole counsel of God. 

The background for the Sadducees’ question is the Old Testament concept of Levirate marriage. In Deuteronomy 25:5-6 we hear this from the Law: “If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.” I would assume, then, that subsequent sons would be his, but his brother’s name would live on because of the gracious duty of the second brother. Maybe that’s why little brother seemed to have a very keen interest in who big brother married.

The Old Testament passage from Genesis is an example of this. And I know it seems to be a rather sordid story to read in church but let me remind you that we cannot shy away from any part of Scripture; we must engage the whole of it. This passage is not one that is read in church very often but since I am using this “Year D” lectionary, there it is. All the pericopes that we don’t normally hear.  And let us not neglect to mention that Tamar is in the lineage of Jesus – for this very reason. He was not born into a world of perfection with a perfect lineage – all have sinned, from Adam all the way down to Mary.

So that is Levirate marriage, a legitimate thing to do so that a man’s good name doesn’t die out. In fact, forms of it are still practiced all over the world although modern times have made it more voluntary than a result of coercion[4] But just like any law, it can be misconstrued and turned into something totally unintended which is what the Sadducees were trying to do with Jesus.

“After seven brothers, whose wife will she be in the ‘supposed’ resurrection that you believe in?” Now this could also apply to someone if they’ve been married only twice. And, if you want to get really technical, Paul tells us in I Corinthians 6:16, “Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.”  In other words, anyone with whom you sleep you have become one flesh and in a sense, “married to,” in God’s eyes. Now there’s a thought! So which one are you going to have in heaven?

Now while it’s easy to get lost in the question here, pondering the implications of marrying down a line of seven brothers, the real question is is there a resurrection? Because if there’s a resurrection, then this woman is going to have to be in heaven with somebody. Well Jesus answers the question quite to the dissatisfaction of the Sadducees and tells them, “You guys are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures, or the power of God. She won’t be married to any of them because in heaven there will be no marrying or giving in marriage, but everyone will be like the angels” (Mt. 22:29-30).

Marriage

Let’s parse this out just a little first. This isn’t saying that marriage is ultimately a waste of time since we aren’t married in heaven. Let’s look at the purpose of marriage here below. First of all, we are commanded by God to marry so that the husband and the wife – this otherwise lonely boy and lonely girl – will complete each other. Now an egalitarian will tell you that they don’t either one need each other, but are completely equal in all they are and can do.  This is the drum beat of modern feminism. “Anything you can do I can do better.” “No, you can’t.” “Yes, I can.” “No, you can’t.” “Yes, I can.”

The complementarian view is that there are some things men can do, some things women can do, and together, they can accomplish a lot more. A man and a woman are complete with each other, they don’t compete with each other. Complete, don’t compete.  So marriage is designed to make the combined force of a man and a woman stronger than if they remain single. 

The next function of marriage is to reproduce. Well, you don’t have to be married to reproduce, pastor. Fair enough, but I submit that in order to bring that child up in a stable and secure environment, you absolutely do.  And here is where the concept of covenant comes in. Even in a marriage where the couple argues, there is a covenant that keeps them together and gives security to the child. As we’ve talked about before, marriage is supposed to be a picture of Christ – as the bridegroom – and the Church – as His bride.  He is faithful, He is true, loving, He is everything a husband ought to be; the Church is obedient, is a helpmeet, meaning it helps Christ in His work on earth; and is also faithful, meaning it doesn’t keep running after other gods and ideologies that are contrary to Christ’s word; in a word, the Church is everything a wife ought to be. And the legal covenant between a man and a woman, along with the faith covenant before God and His holy Church, makes that couple the smallest unit of government on earth. From this relationship then flows the family, a people, society, nation, civilization.  “Let man not put asunder,” God says. In other words, when these two become one flesh, it is not within man’s power to tear them apart. Oh, legal documents can be shredded and new writs of divorce drawn up, but once one flesh, always one flesh. This is how God views marriage and we are treading on dangerous ground when we try to usurp the role of God in these matters. 

 So, Church, on earth, marriage is essential to civilization. In heaven, we will be like angels. Not that we will be angels but like the angels in this regard: we will not need physical sustenance like we do here. We will have our physical bodies but they will be glorified and fit for eternity and won’t have some of the physical needs that we have now. We won’t need sex because we don’t need to procreate since all the elect will be there; there will be no need for new people. There will be no need for society as we know it, or laws, because everyone will live obediently and sinlessly before the throne. All relationships in heaven “will be as loving and rewarding as the best of human marriages in this life.”[5]  (Now at some point we will do a study in Revelation and talk about these things more in depth so put that on your radar.)

But here is where the Sadducees fell into error in rejecting the resurrection: they denied the power of God. I love Jesus’ response to these guys, “You are mistaken. You have erred.” Some translations say, “You are deceived.”  And so knowing that they at least say they believe the Pentateuch, Jesus answers them from the Pentateuch. But first He gives them a sucker punch when He says “they will be like angels in heaven.” Sadducees don’t believe in angels.[6] So this first statement was kind of a shot across the bow. But then Jesus takes them straight into the Pentateuch. “Haven’t you read,” Jesus asks, “that which God has said, saying,” and then He quotes directly from Exodus 3:6, “’I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ He is not the God of the dead but of the living.’”

Think about what He did just there. He deconstructed an entire theology, a whole doctrine, or anti-doctrine, based on the tense of a verb in the Old Testament. I mean, does it really matter if it said “ I am the God of Abraham” or “I was the God of Abraham?” Apparently it does.  This is why translating the Scriptures is so important and why studying God’s Word is essential.  In The New World Translation, the special translation of the bible used by Jehovah’s Witnesses, John 1:1 reads like this: “In the beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.” Did you catch that? One little letter. “The Word was a god.” One added letter and the whole meaning of who Christ is is changed. 

Paul says to Timothy in II Timothy 3:15-17, “…you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”  God’s word is infallible: it does not err. And every letter is important. Every “jot and tittle,”[7] Jesus says, or every dotted ‘i’ and every crossed ‘t’.

This is where we get the doctrine of sola scriptura, Scripture alone. Not that Scripture is the only thing that exists or is the only thing useful, but it is the only thing essential. And the scriptures contain everything that is necessary to bring an individual to faith in Christ.  Nature can bring someone to God, but faith in Christ comes by hearing His word. That’s it.

There are some people who say that doctrines just divide people. The truth is, true doctrines unite people. They unite Christ’s body together in right belief.  Now most of us aren’t Bible scholars and able to answer every question that some agnostic, or atheist, or other person asks us. But you know what? You don’t have to answer their question, you can just pull out whatever verse you want and let them hear God’s word. And there’s nothing wrong with saying, “That’s a good question, I don’t know; I’ll get back to you on that.”  Not knowing the answer to something is not ignorance; knowing the wrong answer to something is ignorance. This was the problem with the Sadducees, they were convicted of something that was wrong. Ignorance is pretty sad, you see. As the late great Ronal Reagan put it, “They know so much that isn’t so.” But if you don’t know, you simply don’t know. Maybe you were never taught; maybe you were taught it but you forgot it (which is my problem; terrible memory.) 

I think a lot of us fear being asked something about our faith. But His Word tells us not to fear. Just answer with what you know and continue studying the Scriptures.

Just know this, Church, if you are standing on God’s word in truth, it doesn’t matter who comes up against you. If it is just you and God, you are still a majority. Be confident in standing on His Word because it does not err, it does not fail, and it does not pass away.

God is the God of the living, Beloved. All who have fallen asleep in Christ are even now living with Him. And even more than that, our God is bringing the sinful dead back to life every day. He is that powerful. We serve a living and powerful God of a living Church. May we at Trinity, continue to strive to be an active part of that living Body and see what our living God will do with us.  To God be all glory.  Amen

---

[1] Walter Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of the NT. “Sadducees.”

[2] Cf., Tobit 3:8ff.

[3] Daniel 12:2, “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.”

[4] Examples include: Sub-Saharan African countries, Central Asia, Fundamentalist Mormon groups,

[5] G.K Beale and D. A. Carson, eds. Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: BakerAcadmeic, 2007), 75.

[6] Act 23:8  “For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all.” 

[7] Matthew 5:18.