God Of The Living - Not The Dead

On this first day of a new month, is there not resurrection for us? Has our Lord not lifted us up out of the grave of sleep to welcomed new life in a new day? Our Creator God gives life.

Here is our today’s Scripture passage.

I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead but of the living. Matthew 22: 32.

This statement may seem very simplistic to some, however, it certainly carries sound teaching about resurrection that we all must learn.

May the Holy Ghost make it marvellous and wonderful in our eyes. Amen!

Jesus is speaking to a religious sect, who really do not believe in the resurrection of the dead. They have come to Jesus, with one single mission and it is to trap Jesus on a technicality of law, which deals specifically with the resurrection of married people. They are looking at married men who have had more than one wife in their lifetime. Jesus used the opportunity to explain a misunderstood fact about resurrection.

The first fact is that there is no resurrection, if there is no death. You only resurrect that which is dead, that which has been buried and forgotten. You resurrect an old garment, one that has been hidden or lost for quite some time. Is resurrection part of your daily experience? Think deeply about it, you may be surprised.

Resurrection is also about that which has become ‘dead’ to you. Jesus is quoting Scripture. Do you believe that Scripture is God’s unchangeable, unarguable, indisputable and unflawed Word? God has said to all the people that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Now all these three men have been dead for some time now, yet the truth is that God is their God. Just what then is God saying? True, these men are dead because they have died, but God is the Creator God who raises the dead. He is the God who gives resurrection to the dead, so that His Word remains forever true.

Let’s listen to what is told to us in Luke’s account of this conversation with Sadducees, unbelievers, when it comes to resurrection of human beings from the dead. This is what Jesus tells them. The people of the age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. Luke 20: 34 – 36.

Mark is even more forceful and forthright in presenting to us, what Jesus has said to those facetiously deceiving religious sect. Jesus addresses their question and premise on which it is based. Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. Now about the dead rising – have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, 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. You are badly mistaken! Mark 12: 24 – 27

It is God who raises the dead, so that He will never be the God of any dead. These men are all examples of faith, whose lives have been kept and directed by God. Have we not been schooled on this matter? When they died, as the human body does not remain forever, that was not the end of God being their God. But God never leaves His own dead, for He has to make them in the form which gives credibility and testimony to His spoken Word. He gives resurrection.