🌿 The God of the Living
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By Pastor Gary Boyd
📖 Text: Mark 12:18–27
💭 When Death Feels Like the End
Picture this: you’re standing at a funeral.
The music is soft 🎶, the flowers are starting to wilt 🌸, and the family sits quietly as the casket is lowered. In that moment, even the strongest hearts whisper the same question:
“Is this really the end?”
Our world doesn’t like to talk about death. Some avoid it. Others joke about it. Plenty shrug it off with, “When you’re gone, you’re gone,” or “Nobody really knows what’s on the other side.”
That kind of thinking isn’t new. Long ago, a group called the Sadducees thought the same way. They were smart, powerful, and proud. 💼 They didn’t believe in angels, spirits, or resurrection. To them, death was the final curtain call.
When they approached Jesus in the temple, they weren’t looking for truth. They were trying to mock Him. 😏 They made up a wild story about seven brothers who all married the same woman, hoping to make the idea of resurrection sound ridiculous.
But Jesus wasn’t shaken. He used their question to teach one of the most hope-filled truths in all of Scripture. It is a truth that gives peace at the graveside, courage in suffering, and confidence in a world afraid of death. 💪
✨ “He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.” (Mark 12:27)
Here’s the heart of Jesus’ message and the heart of our hope:
💡 Because the living God is faithful to His Word, we can be certain that death is not the end.
🧩 1. When We Can’t Imagine God’s Power, We Mock His Promises
(Mark 12:18–23)
The Sadducees prided themselves on logic and learning. They accepted only the first five books of Moses and denied anything supernatural, including resurrection.
Their question to Jesus went something like this:
“If a woman’s husband dies, and all six of his brothers marry her too, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?”
They thought they had exposed resurrection as nonsense. But their question revealed a bigger problem.
They couldn’t imagine a God greater than their understanding.
💬 Their reasoning stopped where their imagination ended.
And isn’t that often true today? People say things like:
“You really believe in heaven?”
“Bodies rising from graves? That’s impossible!”
“Faith is just wishful thinking.”
Unbelief often dresses itself up as intelligence.
It’s like a blind man mocking color because he’s never seen it. 🎨 The problem isn’t with the truth. It’s with perception.
📜 2. Doubt Grows Where Scripture and God’s Power Are Ignored
(Mark 12:24)
Jesus looked right at them and said,
“Are you not mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God?”
He put His finger on the real issue, the same two roots behind most unbelief today:
- 📖 Ignoring Scripture.
- The Sadducees had the Bible in their hands but not in their hearts. They read selectively, believing what fit their system and ignoring what didn’t.
- ⚡ Underestimating God’s Power.
- They believed God could create life, but not re-create it. They trusted Him to make the world, but not to remake it.
It’s like saying, “The sun must not exist because it’s cloudy today.” ☁️
You can’t see it, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone.
When we limit God to what we can understand, we stop worshiping Him and start worshiping a smaller version of ourselves.
🌅 3. The Living God Promises a Transformed, Eternal Life
(Mark 12:25–27a)
Jesus didn’t debate philosophy. He opened Scripture. 📖
“When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”
In other words, resurrection life isn’t just an improved version of this one. It’s completely new. Resurrection isn’t reanimation. It’s transformation. 🌱
Then Jesus quoted the only part of the Bible the Sadducees claimed to believe:
“Have you not read in the book of Moses how God said, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’”
Did you catch that?
“I am,” not “I was.”
Even though those men had been dead for centuries, God still called Himself their God. That means His relationship with them never ended. 💖
💬 God’s promises outlive the grave.
Think of a parent whose child lives far away. The distance doesn’t end the relationship; it just changes where it happens. If human love can endure separation, how much more can divine love bridge the gap between life and death?
🕊️ 4. The Faithfulness of the Living God Secures Our Hope Beyond Death
(Mark 12:27b)
Jesus ended the discussion by saying,
“You are greatly mistaken.”
The Sadducees’ error wasn’t small. It was eternal. To deny resurrection is to deny the faithfulness of the God who made promises that reach beyond death.
For believers, though, that statement is reassuring. 🙌
If God is the God of the living, then His people can never truly die.
Missionary Adoniram Judson, after decades of hardship, said near death:
“I go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from school. I feel so strong in Christ.” 💪
That’s the peace of someone who knows death cannot end what God has begun.
So when life feels fragile, trust His Word.
When death feels final, remember His power.
When hope feels distant, rest in His faithfulness. 💗
If God is the God of the living, then life with Him never ends.
🌻 The God Who Won’t Let Go
When Jesus finished speaking, the Sadducees were silent. The debate was over, but the truth still echoes:
God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
He’s the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God who raised Jesus from the dead. ✝️ And the God who promises eternal life to everyone who trusts Him.
So the question isn’t just “What happens when we die?”
It’s “Whose God is yours?”
If you belong to the God of the living, then death is not your master. It’s just the doorway to His presence. 🚪
And when fear whispers, “This is the end,” remember:
✨ The living God is faithful to His Word, and death will never have the last word.
💬 A Personal Invitation
The same Jesus who silenced the skeptics is alive today.
He didn’t just teach about resurrection. He proved it when He rose from the dead. 🌅
He offers that same eternal life to you. Jesus said,
“I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
If you’ll turn from your sin and trust Him today, you can know the God of the living. He is the One who forgives sin, defeats death, and keeps every promise He has made.
🙏 Will you trust the risen Christ today?
