God Often Has a Different Premise to Hard Questions - Luke 19-20

Luke 20:34-40 (ESV)

And 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 and to 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. 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.” Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no longer dared to ask him any question.

The above words of Jesus are spoken to some Sadducees.   Unlike the Pharisees, their religious counterparts, they did not believe in either the resurrection or of angels.   The Pharisees believed in both.   The Sadducees have  just presented to Jesus a riddle that, no doubt, they often asked to torment their Pharisaical friends.  They asked Jesus if a woman had married a man with seven brothers and he died and she subsequently married one of his brothers and this was repeated for all seven brothers, when she died, who’s wife would she be in this so called resurrection?   This was probably asked with a sincere face toward Jesus but a smirk cast toward the Pharisees standing near by.   In His response, Jesus tells them the premise of their question is wrong (this must have, for the moment, brought to Pharisees to Jesus’ defense).  Their premise was that life after death is just a continuation of life before death.  It is not according to Jesus’ above teaching.  Jesus answers their question by telling them that the afterlife is like the angels (who they denied) and that marriage is not viewed as it is on earth.   But the point of Jesus’ teaching is that there is life after death and God is the God of the living and not the dead.   They refused to even believe in a resurrection so Jesus tells them God does.   Again, this must have been a delight to the Pharisees.   A key takeaway to this teaching is that when we come to Jesus to ask questions we often start with the wrong or mis-placed premise.  We attempt to prove our point as we come to ask God for wisdom.  We often want to put Him into our box of thinking rather than ask Him to change the way we are thinking.   If we are coming to God to learn we should start with His premise and not our own.