Sons of the Resurrection, Part 1 | The Unassailable Authority of Christ

Luke 20:34-40

Well, we are in Luke 20 and in our study as we come to the text, we find Jesus fending off yet another attack, and this time from the Sadducees. As I looked at my notes, I realized I could have cut this into another half. So that’s three halves. Three sermons could have done that, but I didn’t do that. So get comfortable.

Sadducees, as we saw last time, have come to challenge the doctrine of resurrection, which seems strangely coincidental, doesn’t it, since this is Jesus’ last week of earthly life before he goes to the cross, before he goes into the tomb, before he is raised from the dead. Jesus will die, be buried, and only to rise from the dead, all within a week of this interchange with the Sadducees.

Let’s start reading the section we covered and, and then I’ll do a brief review. But let’s start reading in verse 27 of Luke 20. “There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers, and the first took a wife and died without children, and the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward, the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.’”

This is meant to be a gotcha moment for Jesus and a, a bit of a chance to scoff at not only Jesus, but also the Sadducees and the Pharisees were rivals and opponents, theologically and in many other ways as well. But this is meant to be a, a scoffing. It’s meant to be a gotcha moment for Jesus, to embarrass him publicly, to knock him down a few notches in the eyes of the people because the Sadducees saw him gaining power, gaining influence, gaining authority and they didn’t like that threat and that rival to their own power.

So that’s the section, set up, here, and the challenge that they want to bring is the challenge of the absurdity of the concept of bodily resurrection. We’ll get into why that is in a moment, but I mentioned during our Scripture reading time in 1 Corinthians 15, I know that none of us as professing Christians would deny the resurrection as some were doing in the Corinthian church. No one in your, in our evangelical churches today would dare to take the side of the Sadducees, scoffing at the doctrine of resurrection. We are evangelicals, after all. Euangelion, evangelical means we are people of the Gospel, and the Gospel is the good news, the good news that we can be saved from our sins and rise from the dead. So we wouldn’t in, in any of our profession, we would not side with the Sadducees. We wouldn’t side with the deniers of resurrection in the Corinthian church.

But as I mentioned in our time of Scripture reading, I do wonder, and I actually wonder this often, I wonder this sometimes as I examine my own heart, and maybe you have examined your heart in this way as well. But I wonder how many professing Christians live as if the doctrine of resurrection were not true, living as if the doctrine of resurrection doesn’t really make a practical difference in our day-to-day lives, doesn’t really set the priorities for us, it isn’t the hope that we’re fixed upon, rising from the dead. We live instead as if this world is all that matters, trying to live as Joel Osteen commends us to do, to live our best life now, try to grab up everything we can, see as many things, travel as many places, get as many toys, do as much stuff as we can do.

I wonder if this world has, this modern world with all of its, honestly, I, I like the conveniences of the modern world. I like running water. I like flushing toilets. I like electricity. I like warmth. I like comfort. I, I like all those things. I don’t wish we could go back to the Stone Age. But in times of great prosperity, it’s a different kind of a test of the heart, isn’t it? Will we become fat and lazy in our prosperity and giving our attention instead to maintaining our prosperity and our comfort and our ease?

Or will we see all the gifts that God gives in the world as signs pointing our eyes toward heaven to see the giver of all good things, and to not worship the gift, but worship the giver. Not to seek, to strive, to hold on to what we like, and what is comfortable, and what’s fun, and what’s enjoyable, but instead to hold those things loosely in, in fact, in many times, to reject them all together, that we can instead have our arms open wide and our hands open wide to embrace what is truly great, what is truly wonderful, what is truly majestic, what is our true destiny as humanity, to give glory and honor to our God in the name of Jesus Christ.

And so my hope for you and my prayer for you as I’ve been thinking about this passage of Scripture is that our Lord’s teaching will instruct and correct, maybe rebuke in some cases, but in every case it will encourage your heart, that it would put your hope never in this life, but always and ever in the life to come. And I hope that you will evaluate your life and that you’ll think about the way you’ve been living, think about the way you’ve been conducting yourself in your days and your weeks and your months and your calendar, think about your, your bank account or your checkbook, or however you keep track of the flow of money, it’s a good way to evaluate where your priorities are and that you’ll think about that in light of this text and think about how you live. Is it distinctly Christian or is it more worldly than Christian with some Christianese over the top?

Well, we started into our three-point outline. Remember those three words I gave you: the condescension, the correction, and the confirmation. We only got to the first point last time, the condescension, and that first point, expanded, was number one, the condescension of the scoffers, the condescension of the scoffers. The Sadducees are the scoffers, and they condescend to talk to Jesus, to stoop down and speak to him, a peasant, a Galilean, no less.

He, they came from an aristocratic class of wealthy elites, and they held positions of power in the temple. Their subordinates are the ones who ran temple operations, operations that kept them rich. They oversaw and controlled everything in the temple. Remember the procession of Jesus as King? He came into the city, caused quite a stir. Nothing, though, was so disruptive to them as his clearing of the temple, as his entering into the temple and basically taking over, driving out all the buyers, and the sellers, and the money-changers, and all the animals, and all the cacophony, and all the stuff that was going on there, driving them out so that he can restore the temple to its purpose. “My house shall be a house of prayer for all the nations,” not a, “you’ve made it a den of robbers.” Let’s drive out the robbers and go back to prayer and instruction and teaching. So he came to clear the temple, and that frankly threatened all their business agreements, their business arrangements, all their enterprise. They needed to do something.

So the Sadducees, they had a lot to lose. They, they had influence. They had authority. They had money. But of greatest concern to them was this threat that Jesus and, and his teaching and his, his way of living, who he is, the threat that he posed to their entire way of life, the philosophy of life that was justifying their lifestyle. He was, he was cramping their style, and about this they agreed with their Pharisee rivals, this Jesus has to be stopped.

So they come to Jesus. They issue the same kind of attack that embarrassed the, their Pharisee rivals in the past. They weaponized scorn, and they used scorn to try to make Jesus look foolish, showing the absurdity, they thought, the absurdity of the doctrine of bodily resurrection, and they wanted to, to cast it in contrast, in contradiction to the sacred writings of Moses. On that, every Jew agreed. We talked a lot about the Sadducees. I’m not going to repeat or rehash all that. If you missed it, I will refer you to that sermon. It’s posted online. I think you may find some helpful things about the Sadducees if you’re not exposed to them, if you haven’t been exposed to them before.

But suffice it to say, just as Luke tells us here, the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection. But Luke also reveals in Acts 23, verse 8, that Sadducees don’t, not only do they not believe in resurrection, they don’t believe in angels or spirits. So basically, you might call them materialists. They say that there’s no continuation of the soul after death, and so they’re very much like your best life now. That’s very much their philosophy. This life is all there is, and that is exactly how they lived.

For the Sadducees, the only way to achieve any kind of “immortality,” and I do put that in quotes, they would put it in quotes, is to perpetuate one’s name. They don’t believe in the immortality of the soul. They believe men, bodies, souls are mortal, and the only way to perpetuate one’s imor, one’s immortality is to perpetuate one’s name. So attain power, get position, get authority for yourself, get influence during your life on earth, buy up land, amass as much wealth as possible, build businesses, get strong and wealthy, and then hand off whatever you didn’t spend, whatever you attained, whatever you gained and gathered, hand that all off to family members. In that way, you live on through your offspring, through your family.

You may have heard of the term nepotism. Nepotism is where you give preferential treatment to family members. You disregard principles of right and wrong, principles of merit, disregard merit, disregard just reward, and you show favoritism based on partiality. Nepotism, sometimes we call it cronyism, almost universally condemned as corrupt except when it’s a petty dictatorship like North Korea or Russia or the Mafia. That’s how they live is that cronyism and then nepotism and apparently the Sadducees as well that’s how they live. For them, nepotism was a way of life. It was a means of attaining a, a form of immortality for themselves and that’s why the high-priestly family kept it all in the family. They were Sadducees, they handed off their position, their priesthood, to their next of kin.

That’s what made the Sadducees such strong proponents of free will, human free will. They were totally antagonistic to God’s sovereignty. They wanted to believe that rewards and punishments were wholly determined in this lifetime only, and not meted out in some, some kind of afterlife. No judgment seat for them. So just work hard, get money, position, power, that’s your reward here and now, and then fail in some way as many people do, and say, that’s on you, you should have done better, should have worked harder.

So this is what made the Sadducees such hard men, cold, callous to people, indifferent to suffering. They were uncaring toward lower-class people, those they, they considered below them, those from the common classes, the peasant classes. This is the, he-who-dies-with-the-most-toys-wins philosophy, that’s how they lived. And they handed that wealth down to posterity that’s how they achieved a form of earthly immortality, as their name is remembered and carried on, honored by their achievements in and through their family.

So these are the Sadducees. They are the agents of the challenge, the authority for the challenge, it comes in Moses. The Sadducees, sensing the need, as all men do, to justify their philosophy of life by appealing to an external authority, something beyond themselves, they, too, did that. They thought they could find justification for their, their cold form of materialism and their unabashed nepotism by appealing to the Law of Moses.

They were strict rationalists in their interpretation of Moses, and as Jesus shows, they violently twisted Moses and his words into their own image. They distorted Moses, what he actually wrote, so it conformed to their own presuppositions. And that’s what we see in verse 28 as they cite the law of levirate marriage from Deuteronomy 25:5-10. The Sadducees liked this passage for several reasons. First, these are the words of Moses. Can’t get better than that. This is the gold standard, unquestioned source of canonical authority. Second, they like this text because they saw it’s established on, and therefore justifies, they believe, their own philosophy of life: Achieve immortality through posterity. So if your, your brother, your older brother marries a woman, dies, dies childless, it’s your responsibility, step in there, raise up offspring for your brother.

Third thing they liked about this text is it provides them with the argument that they used before with great effect against their adversaries, the Pharisees, this argument that they hoped they could use to embarrass and silence Jesus as well. It’s the absurdity, the third point: the absurdity in the challenge against Jesus. And we’re referring to the form of argumentation used by the Sadducees against Jesus, absurdity, it’s a reductio ad absurdum, a form of logical argument that attempts to reduce the opponent’s position into absolute absurdity. That’s what, that’s what he’s, that’s what they’re doing with Jesus, right here.

It goes like this. So, Jesus, you believe in bodily resurrection, do you? Well, if the dead are raised, wouldn’t it lead to some embarrassing levels of, of immorality contrary to Moses? In cases of levirate marriage, a woman goes through seven brothers in her lifetime and legitimately, legally married to each one, so whose wife is she going to be then, in your perfect world? They think they’ve got him. They’re laughing, snickering. They think they’ve caught Jesus once again between two opposite views, two opposite impulses. Will he hold fast to resurrection and oppose Moses, or is he going to cave to the superior authority, turn tail, walk away in defeat?

Brings us to a second point and here’s where we continue on in the text. Number two, the correction, the correction of the teacher. The correction of the teacher. We’ll read Jesus’ response in its entirety starting in verse 34, and then we’re going to come back and take a, a closer look at the text. Jesus said to them Luke 20:34, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore because they’re equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised even Moses showed in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’ Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.”

One of the unique features we see in Luke’s account, which we see this in contrast to the accounts of Matthew and Mark, but a unique feature we see here is a distinction that Luke makes between, this age, as you see in verse 34, and, that age, in verse 35. And that distinction between, this age, and, that age, is loaded with eschatological significance. It’s a eschatological significance that I would love to unpack for you right now, but I will not do that. I’m going to resist that impulse. It is a, another sermon for another time or another series of sermons for another time. But I, I just want to acknowledge that’s there. And it is a very important distinction: This age and the age to come; this age and that age.

But we want to be careful as we look at that distinction and realize the implications for eschatology, we want to be careful not to make the same mistake that the Sadducees did, that is by trying to be too restrictive with this text and make it say things it doesn’t say, make it so restrictive that it excludes some considerations. Because Jesus is answering a particular challenge from the Sadducees. He’s going to talk eschatology, but only in reference to their question, only in reference to them. He’s not going to go into a long explanation of eschatological significance. He’s not saying all there is to say with regard to last things. His teaching here is limited in scope and limited in design.

So by distinguishing, this age from that age, Jesus has identified two broad ages: The one we’re living in now, and then the eternal state. But the emphasis in this context, what Jesus is talking about, he’s talking about the sons of this age. That’s where the emphasis is in contrast to those who are of that age. So it’s not the ages that he’s, he’s concerned with distinguishing between right now, even though he does. It’s the people. It’s what characterizes the people of the one age and the other. You get what I’m saying?

Even so, there’s a lot that the New Testament does unpack about this age, about the transition from this age to the next age. We, you know, we didn’t read the section in 1 Corinthians 15, but you could have, if we would have read the whole thing, we would have seen Paul describes the order of the resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15. We would see also in the rest of the New Testament the, the resurrection of the unrighteous. Matthew 25:46 refers to that, the, John 5:29. Both of those texts pointing back to Daniel chapter 12, verse 2. There’s a resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous.

He’s not talking about all that, here. Doctrines of the rapture, the great tribulation, the second coming, followed by a, an intermediate and millennial kingdom that Revelation 19 and 20 talks about, prophesied first back in Ezekiel 38 to 48, Jesus leaves all those details off the table in this discussion. He leaves those details to later revelation because he’s going to get, they wouldn’t make sense now to this context in this conversation. They do make sense after his resurrection when he gives the Holy Spirit to his Apostles and the prophets in the New Testament, and they pen the words of the New Testament. There’s more to come.

But in all three synoptic accounts, Jesus’ corrective begins as it does here, with eschatology, and he shows that there is a change to be expected in our anthropology, in our doctrine of man, our understanding of mankind, and it occurs due to the resurrection. Only Luke includes the distinction Jesus makes between, the sons of this age and those of that age, “those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection of the dead.” He’s the only one that makes this distinction between Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Now, having said that, it’s gonna help to know what the Sadducees, before we get into what Jesus says here, get into it in some detail, it’s going to help to know what the Sadducees did believe about God, about man, about future things. So let me just give you a very short, very brief summary. Regarding God, the Sadducees believed in what we might refer to today as a form of deism. Really amounts to a practical atheism, but basically, they taught that God, after he created the world, he left the world to operate by the laws of nature, physics that he set up and established. He kind of spun it up, set it going like a top, and then he left it also to the governance of mankind and mankind’s free will, left them to do their thing.

God doesn’t govern the world by providence, executing his divine will. They viewed that as fatalism. Instead, as one writes, explaining this about the Sadducees, “They believe that God neither intervenes in history at large nor cares for the individual in particular. Thus good and evil, prosperity and adversity have their origin solely in the free will of man.” End quote.

So regarding man, what do the Sadducees believe? They denied the immortality of the soul. It’s a little misleading to say they’re complete materialists. They don’t deny spiritual reality; they just deny the continuation of the soul or of the spirit. They say that the soul can only exist and remain alive in conjunction with the body. In that sense, they do understand, rightly, that to be human is to be composed of two parts, an immaterial and a material part, that is correct.

And even when we die and our spirits go to be with God, there is something that’s not quite right with that situation even though we do go into life with God. In Jewish terms, it’d be the bosom of Abraham. But in Christian terms, we go to be with Christ in paradise. As Jesus said to the thief on the cross, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” But that thief’s body still stayed in the ground. There’s something that’s not right about that, and that’s why Romans 8 talks about the, the longing of the sons of the resurrection, the sons of redemption, to be united with a resurrection body. That’s what it is to be human, is to be embodied, a spirit that’s embodied.

So the Sadducees, they so emphasize that, that they denied that the two could be separate, that the spirit could live on. The soul exists only in this life. It’s only a part of this world as long as it remains of the body. Once the body dies, so does the soul. No soul survives after death, so no soul faces any judgment, just snuffed out, annihilated, that’s it.

And so when it comes to their eschatology, the Sadducees denied the resurrection of the dead because they denied that the soul continued beyond death. Mortality of the soul was the most basic presupposition and shaped all of their theology. Again, they’re man-centered, they’re man-centered, and that error in their man-centeredness then distorts everything else in their world view. You see how that works?

You can say that the Sadducees were like today’s uniformitarians. Have you heard of uniformitarianism? It’s arguing that the, for this evolutionary view of the world, with the mantra, that the present is the key to the past. The present, whatever, whatever conditions we see now, whatever geological conditions, whatever physical conditions on this earth, what we see now, we just kind of extend that back through time, and that’s how everything got here.

Well, the Sadducees just flipped that around and said the present is the key to the future, too. The present is the key to the future. Whatever processes we see now, that continues on. Problem was, what they thought they knew about the future was based on what they thought they knew about the present, which is based on what they thought they knew about God, what they thought they knew about man.

And they were wrong on every point. Their starting point was wrong, and so if you start here on your compass, and you want to go there, but you start here, you’re going to get wider and wider divergence from where you want to be. All of it was wrong. Turns out everything you believe in life, everything you believe in life, it stands or falls on your view about God. If you’ve got a wrong errant view about God, about who he is, about what he is like, you’re going to have a wrong view about everything else.

So with some of that in mind about the Sadducees and their theology, let’s get into some of the details, and hopefully some of that will come to your mind and help shape the way you hear what Jesus is addressing. We have two sub-points, here, following Jesus’ answer, A and B. Letter A, the teacher starts by correcting their eschatology. He corrects their eschatology in verses 34-35. In correcting their eschatology, by the way, he also corrects their anthropology, and he starts actually with a declaration of soteriology. You’re like, there’s a lot of “ology” in this. Yes. Eschatology, doctrine of last things. Anthropology, doctrine of man, Anthropos, in study of. And then soteriology, soteros is savior, salvation, so doctrine of salvation.

Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age into the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.” In verse 34, Jesus identifies this group that he calls “the sons of this age,” and we will come back to clarify them once we see them in contrast to another group, identified there in verses 35 and 36.

The second group is identified in two ways, parallel expressions. First, they are “those who are considered worthy to attain to that age.” That’s one way of identifying them. And secondly, carry that verb forward, they are “those who are considered worthy to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” So there are those who are considered worthy to that age and to the resurrection from the dead, parallel expressions, same group.

That verb, considered worthy, interesting, kataxioo is, it’s used twice in, in Luke’s readings, here and in Acts 5:41. In Acts 5:41, the Apostles left the presence of the Sanhedrin that was presided over, by the way, a Sadducee high priest along with his Sadducee colleagues. Acts 5:17 says, “They were filled with jealousy over the popular appeal of the Apostles’ preaching and teaching about Jesus and the resurrection.” It says in verse 41, “After being flogged, they were ordered not to speak in the name of Jesus any longer.” And both, by the way, Don’t mention that embarrassing doctrine of resurrection either. “They went out, left the presence of the Sanhedrin council, and they were rejoicing,” and here’s the verb, that they were counted worthy, kataxioo, to suffer dishonor for the name.

The suffering for the sake of Jesus Christ was a gift of grace, just as Paul said in Philippians 1:29, “It’s been granted to you,” that is to say, as a gift of divine grace, “it’s been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake.” Belief, faith, and suffering as a Christian, both are granted as a gift of grace. Faith that brings salvation, suffering as Christians, both gifts of divine grace. I hope you see it that way.

We find the same connection and the only other use of this verb in the New Testament, kataxioo, in 2 Thessalonians 1:5. When we back up one verse, read the verse 4, just get the context. Paul says, “Therefore, we ourselves boast about you among God’s churches,” you Thessalonians, “about your endurance and faith and all the persecutions and inflictions that you endure. This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy” kataxioo, there’s the verb, of the kingdom, “worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you also are suffering.”

It’s impossible to miss the New Testament connection between salvation, entering into the kingdom of God, and the suffering that’s endured by those who are in the kingdom of God. The suffering endured by those who receive salvation, those who are true citizens of the kingdom, because being citizens of his kingdom here, among the kingdoms of this world isn’t popular. We are a threat.

But to be considered worthy, to be counted worthy, it’s a nod here to justification by faith. Justification, God declaring the guilty sinner righteous solely because of his grace, because of the objective reality of the atoning work of Christ on the cross. God does not declare guilty sinners righteous based on their own merit because they have none. We can all attest to that. The only merit that they have is the due penalty for their sins, which is a sentence of an eternal death in hell, but based on the merit of Christ Jesus, solely because of God’s grace, the benefits and the rewards that are due to Christ, righteously due to him as a reward, God grants those to his people, to his elect, all those who repent and believe because they and they alone are united to Christ by faith and by the power of the Spirit.

So those who are counted or considered worthy that Jesus is talking about, worthy to attain to that age, worthy to attain to the resurrection from the dead, it’s an expanded way of referring to God’s elect, to God’s people, to those who are counted righteous in Christ.

Believe me, the way that Jesus has described, these participants in resurrection life, this immediately rubbed the Sadducees the wrong way. Remember, they’re not about God declaring anybody anything. That’s fatalism to them. They don’t see it as grace. They see it as an offense against human free will, human power, human might, human earning. They’re all about personal merit, the exercise of human free will, choice to do hard work and earn the good rewards. Talk of God’s grace offended them, deeply irritated them, confronted their pride and believe me, Jesus using this language is intentional. The offense is meant to cause them to stop and reflect and think about their soteriology, about their theology.

Now from that statement on the prerogative of divine grace, this statement about soteriology, counting some as worthy to attain to that age, some as worthy to attain to the resurrection from the dead, by that statement Jesus identifies one group, and he does so in contrast to another group, the previous group, the first group he identified, the sons of this age. Not only that, but all that follows after identifying this group of blessed people, those in verse 35 “counted worthy to take part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead,” they are those in verse 36 who are equal to angels; also in verse 36, those who are sons of God, who are sons of the resurrection; those in verse 37, they’re the dead who are raised; those in verse 38, they are the living, those who live to God. They all of those belong to the same group of blessed people. And that second group stands in contrast to the first group in verse 34, “the sons of this age.”

Okay, so who are “the sons of this age”? Notice, Jesus is not using, sons as opposed to daughters. He’s not using sons to emphasize maleness, here, male offspring in contrast to female offspring. Male, “sons of this age” marry, but it’s the female “sons of this age” who are given in marriage. So “sons of this age,” it’s a group of male and female. It’s those people who belong to this age.

We go back to Luke 16:8, Jesus uses a similar contrast. It reads this way in the Christian Standard Bible, “the sons of this age are more astute than the sons of light in dealing with their own people.” So you’ve got “sons of this age” in contrast to “the sons of light.” The ESV translates that same verse “the sons of this age,” they translate that as “the sons of this world.” That’s accurate. Those who are bound to this world, those who are bound to, tied to, caught up in this world. We just use the, the shorthand expression, worldly people. That’s what the sons of age, this age, refers to.

In Luke 17, we saw this when we studied this section, Luke 17 verse 26 and following. We realize Luke is using the, “marrying and,” giving marriage, “given in marriage” expression based on, already set up by, what he has taught us in Jesus’ teaching in Luke 17:26 and following. Marrying and giving in marriage is that which characterizes those who are caught up in the routines of life, mindlessly living as if this world is all that matters.

There’s nothing wrong with marriage at all, with getting married. But when that’s all that matters, when romance is all that matters, when family is all that matters, no concern for the life to come, you’ve got to take a couple warnings from history, and that’s what Jesus unpacks in Luke 17. That’s what characterized the days of Noah, when Noah was building an ark, and people were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day 120 years later when Noah entered into the ark that he had built, and the flood came and destroyed them all.

If you are just caught up in this life and doing the things of this life and enjoying the romance and enjoying the family and family celebrations and work, work, work, and all the things you’re doing in keeping busy, take note. This world is not all that there is. Judgment’s coming, and you may be caught. You shouldn’t be caught unaware because the Bible tells you. So it characterized the days of Lot as well, when people were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting, building. But on the day that Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulphur, rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. Very rude awakening for the people in Sodom and Gomorrah. Same thing when the Son of Man comes, it’s going to be a rude awakening.

So all that to say, going back to Luke 20, the sons of this age, the sons of this world, those who live for this world, who haven’t transcended the, the rhythms of the temporal world and the distractions of the world and the priorities of the world. It’s a world that’s defined, by the way, as, by the reality of death, because living for marriage is living for procreation, living for business and production, culture, politics. These are the people who are “the sons of this age.” They are the offspring of a fallen, cursed world that’s governed by death.

So this expression, “the sons of this age,” is, you could say, it’s synonymous as Jesus uses this other term in this concept of this generation. Same kind of an idea. This generation, in Jesus’ language and his, his expression, refers to an evil, wicked, unbelieving generation, a group of people that is worldly and unregenerate, caught up in this life alone.

So in the context of Luke 20, and in the context of all of Luke, when Jesus identifies “the sons of this age,” it’s the Sadducees who are firmly included in that group of people in that expression. They are decidedly caught up in matters of this life. They are, by philosophy and by practice, dedicated to this world alone and not to the next because they deny it. They are dedicated to the idea of marrying and giving in marriage because that sums up everything that matters most to them.

I want to say this clearly, it’s not that marriage is unimportant, it’s that, as we’ve said, the Sadducees as the aristocratic class, they had made marriage all-important. And why is that? Because they sought immortality through posterity, through proper marriages among the children of aristocratic families. That’s how they perpetuated their own name. That’s how they gained immortality.