The Words of Jesus: Logic on Fire

Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no
longer dared to ask him any question. (Luke 20:39-40)

Beloved Kinney,

In Luke 20, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day tried, on several occasions, to trap Jesus.
One of the occasions was about the topic of the resurrection. The Sadducees, who did
not believe there would be a future resurrection of anyone, brought up the Old Covenant
practice of Levirate marriage, where a woman, in the event her husband dies, is given in
marriage to her deceased husband’s brother. This way the family line could continue.

The Sadducees proposed a quite ridiculous scenario to Jesus in an attempt to prove the
ridiculousness of belief in a future resurrection, but they only revealed how ridiculous
their logic was! They said, “Now there were seven brothers. 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.”

Like I said…ridiculous. But Jesus, in deep winsomeness, exposes their faulty logic:
There is no marriage in heaven.

And then he offers a proof from Exodus 3, a Scripture passage the Sadducees
viewed as authoritative (because they only accepted the first five books of the Old
Testament), where God declares himself to Moses from the burning bush as “the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” And Jesus concludes, “He is not God of the dead, but of
the living.”

In other words, “If you don’t believe in life after death, then how can God speak of being
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’s God many years after they died?” Answer: Because
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive.

Jesus' words are logic…on fire. Our Lord used amazing biblical logic, again and again.
But it wasn’t mere logic. It was logic on fire. Jesus’ way with words was so powerful not
merely because was it logical (thought it was!), but because his use of words was
persuasive logic.

Every time the Lord Jesus Christ speaks in the New Testament, it is pure and powerful
logic. May we always receive his words as such!

Love,
Pastor Josh