“HEREAFTER”

                                                                  Luke 20:27-40

 

 

Introduction:

 

1.                  The fact that a current movie has this title suggests that all people, whatever their inward spiritual nature or outward way of life, have some level of interest in the hereafter.

 

2.                  One way in which we may address this human need is by reflecting on a circumstance in which our Lord responded to a question about comes after this.

 

Discussion:

 

1.                  There are correct and mistaken assumptions about the life beyond this, and the difference can be identified.

 

a.                   The Sadducees denied that there is a resurrection. Jesus spoke authoritatively about its reality. 

 

b.                  These are matters of how things are, not of personal imagination or preference.

 

c.                   The other writers include a significant detail: Mk. 12:24; Matt. 22:29

 

2.                  The questions we do not know the answers to (the “what-ifs” that we are in no position to grasp) should not allow us to excuse ourselves from the reality of what comes next.

 

a.                   This is a part of our existence with regard to which why we ask the questions makes quite a difference.

 

b.                  The plain fact is that God has not undertaken to answer every question anyone has ever had about life in the hereafter, but that exempts no one from the responsibility of contemplating its reality.

 

c.                   Campbell and Owen

 

3.                  Life in the resurrection should be expected to be different from the life we now have, and in ways we cannot yet explain.

 

a.                   The Sadducees thought the resurrection could not be because they had identified a circumstance now which could not be then.

 

b.                  The Lord, however, insisted that the life beyond this has to be because some things now do not make sense.

 

c.                   C. S. Lewis wrote, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

 

4.                  The resurrection life should be understood as a reality which has been implied in all God’s dealings with his people down through time.

 

a.                   This is another way in which both “the scriptures and the power of God” come into play.

 

b.                  There are not a great many places in the scriptures the people then had that specifically and clearly describe the hereafter life, but there are many expressions of hope which require it.

i.                    Ps. 17:15

ii.                  Isa. 26:19

iii.                Hos. 6:1-2; 13:14

 

c.                   The point is that both personal experiences and prophetic predictions foreshadow a resurrection beyond this life (cf. Job 19:25-27; Dan. 12:2-3).

 

5.                  The hereafter, and the resurrection which will be its central fact, is based on the nature and being of God himself, not on our experience or our understanding or our ability.

 

a.                   The crux of the argument Jesus made is who God is–this is the unanswerable claim for life.

 

b.                  The LORD made himself known as the eternal, living God, partly because all live to him.

 

c.                   Colossians 1:5

 

Conclusion:

 

1.                  The people who heard him that day just admitted he had spoken well and let it go at that.

 

2.                  This is too important a matter for that kind of conclusion to be an appropriate end for the discussion.