November 6, 2016

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You’ve heard people say “Get Real”, “Is this for real” or a cola ad “saying the real thing’. People hate to be duped. Everybody searches for something real, or genuine or authentic. Unfortunately when it comes to God and immortality people want to believe anybody who claims knowledge of the divine and immortality. The Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas is one example. The saying “it takes one to know one” is usually seen as a trite reply to an insult. However, in the Gospel reading it means everything. Let’s look at the claims: Real God, Real resurrection

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Real God: Sadducees come to Jesus with a hidden agenda. They doubt that there is a resurrection. They may also be questioning who is God? Just yesterday I watched a program titled “Who is God?” hosted by Morgan Freeman. In the program there is an attempt to find the God part of the brain. God is literally in this show seen as a product of the brain. Electrical firings of neurons determine if God is real to any person. The real God is not a figment of imagination. God exists outside the firing of neurons of our brain. It is we who have been created from the mind of God. The real God gave real life to us. 
 

Jesus in his response to the Sadducees uses Scripture to give clarity on the real God. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a declaration the three patriarchs were governed by the same God. The real God Yaweh. Yaweh governs all that is real including Angels and humans. 

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Real Resurrection: The Sadducees could not believe that resurrection is real. Their thinking was that if Jesus claimed resurrection of the dead then Jesus could not be Messiah. It is a truly sad reflection on the spiritual leaders of Jesus day. They knew that death came to all things but they forgot that God is able to give new life to that which is dead.  Jesus uses the claim the “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as a proof that these three are alive and goes on by saying that Yaweh is the God of the living and not the dead. Jesus later overwhelmingly proves it by restoring Lazarus to life and by his own resurrection. 
                                      

This leaves us with two questions:

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• Do you believe that the God described in the Bible is real?

• Do you believe that the resurrection of the dead is real?

 

Let us pray