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So what were they? What would you bring back?

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Elf.

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Elf?

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Alf.

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Alf.

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Alf.

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Who remembers what, who remembers what Alf cherished? What he...

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Remember?

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No, he wanted to eat cats.

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But their currency was...

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Wasn't it lint?

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Yeah, like lint from, from the dryer trap.

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What else, what else would you bring back?

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Longmire.

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Longmire. Longmire is one of those shows that was on AMC for those of you that don't care.

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Longmire was on AMC for three years. It was actually their most viewed show and they canceled it for some reason.

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And so Netflix picked it up and they kind of did what a lot of shows do. They kind of make their changes.

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And from seasons four, five and six are fine, but they're not as good as seasons one, two and three.

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Anyone else, what would you bring back?

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Little Fire.

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What?

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Little Fire.

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Little Fire, what is this?

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Little Fire, is it a song? Should I make one up right now?

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Oh, alright.

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Alright, well I was thinking about, anyone familiar with the soda blue knee high?

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So when I was a kid we would go to the bowling alley and I'm old enough that when you went to the bowling alley,

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the soda machine was actually like glass bottles.

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And knee high, N-E-H-I was the name of a soda company. It's been bought two or three times since then.

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But it had like a blue raspberry, it was like a blue cream soda, is basically what it was.

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But it was the one thing I really loved about going to the bowling alley.

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And then the bowling alley got a new soda machine that was actually like plastic bottles.

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So they didn't have knee high anymore and the knee high stopped making knee high.

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And I need to talk to my therapist about it I think.

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Another one I was thinking about is a show called My Name is Earl.

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Anybody watch that? It's not that it's my favorite, but it sticks out for a very specific reason because of the way that it ended.

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My Name is Earl ran from 2005 to 2009, it had four seasons.

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And this is true. Even though they had been told that there would be a fifth season,

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the executives canceled it right after the final episode of the fourth season.

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And what really makes that sting is that the director, the writer actually said,

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hey, we're planning on ending season four on a cliffhanger to be continued. Is that okay?

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And they said, yeah, that's just fine. And then they canceled it.

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And so no one ever got to find out what happened after that last episode.

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It literally ends to be continued. It's not like some cliffhanger just like, oh, it's a cliffhanger.

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It said to be continued. It hurts when our favorite things get discontinued.

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And so for some of us, it's going to be difficult to hear that Jesus' plan is that there's an end to marriage.

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Say what? Dun dun dun. I still remember the first time this came up in my marriage.

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Newlywed Greg wasn't quite wise enough when newlywed Cynthia asked him if he thought that we'd be together forever.

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I wasn't wise enough to just say, of course, baby, we'll be together forever.

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I had to bring up Matthew 22. Well, yes, in this life, yes, I do think so.

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But it's only one of a million things I'd go back and not say.

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And now I'm going to preach an entire sermon on it. So let's go ahead and jump in.

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We're going to be in Matthew chapter 22.

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And I'm going to give you a parental warning that I'm going to be using some words about things that happen inside of a marriage.

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Wink, wink, wink, wink, things that happen between people.

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And if you don't want your kids that are still in the room to hear those words,

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then you are welcome to send them either to Treehouse or have them have a coffee out in the lobby.

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And then we can I don't know that I don't think this is on out there.

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But just so you know, there's going to be some words said that you may have to explain on the way home in the car.

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That's not what you want. You've been warned.

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All right. Matthew 22, it goes Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, very beginning of what's called the New Testament.

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I like to call it the Second Testament.

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And we have a tradition of giving the scriptures our full attention when we read them.

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One of the ways we do that is by standing together. You're welcome to sit as well.

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Let's give the scriptures our full attention as we read this.

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Matthew 22, starting in verse 23.

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That same day, the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question.

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Teacher, they said, Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offering for him.

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Now, there were seven brothers among us.

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The first one married and died. And since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother.

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The same thing happened to the second and third brother right on down to the seventh.

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Finally, the woman died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven since all of them were married to her?

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Jesus replied, You are in error because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God.

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At the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage.

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They will be like the angels in heaven. Let us pray.

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God of every tribe, every tongue, every color, every nation, we thank you for the scriptures.

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I pray that whatever you have for us to learn today, that it would stick, that it would become a part of the framework of our faith, that we would be more like your son, Jesus.

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Amen. Amen. You can all have a seat.

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I think the first thing that we got to cover just real quick is who are the Sadducees?

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When I was a little kid in Sunday school, they helped us remember who they were because it'd be like, see, the Pharisees, they weren't fair, you see.

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And then the Sadducees, because they don't believe in the resurrection, they'd say, they don't believe in the resurrection, and so they're sad, you see.

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You know, these little mnemonics. Of course, this reduces them down to like one thing.

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But the Sadducees were a religious sect within Judaism that had only been around for about 200 years at the time that Jesus was doing his ministry.

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But they had become extremely influential because their sect, their section of Judaism included most of the leading priestly families.

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And so for all intents and purposes, they controlled the temple.

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And if you controlled the temple in Judaism, you controlled quite a bit.

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Theologically speaking, the Sadducees were the conservatives.

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They were the fundamentals of their day.

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They didn't care for the miraculous. They didn't believe in the afterlife, the resurrection.

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They didn't believe in angels.

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Primarily because they only followed the first five books of scripture, which was called the Torah or the Pentateuch.

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It's Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

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The Pharisees, right, they get a bad rap.

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It's the kind of thing that we do.

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But they were actually much more open theologically speaking than the Sadducees were.

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See, the Pharisees accepted the prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, the wisdom literature like the Proverbs, the poetry of the Psalms.

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For the Sadducees, there was nothing new under the sun.

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But not because Ecclesiastes 1.9 said it, because Ecclesiastes was far too new for them.

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It says pause for extreme laughter.

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That's a little Bible joke.

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Did you get it?

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Because it came after the first five books.

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It comes down to this.

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If Moses didn't say it, then the Sadducees probably didn't believe it.

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If it wasn't in those first five books, and because the Torah didn't have anything that it said about resurrection or eternity,

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or at least they didn't think that it did, they didn't believe it.

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So the Sadducees, what they do is they think that they can trick Jesus into agreeing that there's no resurrection by using a ridiculous argument.

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In Latin, this kind of argument is called reductio ad absurdum, which means reduction to absurdity.

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It's the kind of argument that is supposed to be so absurd and contradictory that it's impossible to ignore how wrong the conclusion is.

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A woman married to seven brothers?

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What?

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Is she going to be in a polygamist relationship with seven husbands for all eternity?

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Well, of course not.

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That's absurd.

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Therefore, there's obviously no resurrection.

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What they didn't count on was that instead of their story proving the absurdity of resurrection and eternity,

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their story proved the absurdity that marriage is eternal.

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Before we get more into that, I want to...

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I also want to think...

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I also think that their story proves the absurdity of how we treat women.

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This story makes it clear that to them, women had one primary purpose.

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Childbirth.

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We don't always think of it like this, but culturally speaking, marriage was for men.

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Because marriage was for making babies so that men could continue their line, their name, their lineage, their influence.

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If a man's wife didn't bear him a child, he could leave his wife in his will to his brother-like property.

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Why?

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So that she could get pregnant and carry on his name.

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Marriage, situationally speaking, was for men.

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Today, the battle over marriage isn't that different.

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It's just that our modern arguments have shifted from who has a baby to who's having sex.

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And so, marriage can be used to control who gets to have it, when they get to have it, or what kinds of sex they can have.

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And the side effect, or even the direct intent of these views of marriage, is that it reduces women down to baby makers and sex machines for men.

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But I do not think that Jesus thinks of marriage and women this way.

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If you look back, if you actually go back two chapters in the book of Matthew, you'll find that this time it's the Pharisees that are challenging Jesus.

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And they're asking Jesus about marriage and divorce.

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And if you read it, it's clear that Jesus cares deeply about marriage, but you might be surprised how he cares.

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Because if you're paying attention, you'll see that his confrontation about divorce is directed squarely at men.

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And how frivolously they would discard women for their next partner.

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Jesus speaks up for women.

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He doesn't reduce them by confining and defining them with one role of wife or mother.

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That brings us to what he has to say to the Sadducees.

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When he confronts the Sadducees, this is probably one of the most direct and no-holds-barred responses to an argument that Jesus gives in all of the Gospels.

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Not only does he say, you're wrong, then he says, you don't know the Scriptures.

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And then he says, nor do you know the power of God.

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There's no other way to describe this but harsh.

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Remember, their name, the word Sadducee, actually comes from the root for the word to be right.

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And he tells them directly, you are wrong.

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And then they had all memorized every word of the Torah.

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And then he says, but you clearly don't know the Scriptures.

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And they didn't believe in the miraculous or the resurrection, so he says it plainly, you are limiting what God can do.

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And as if he hadn't already dropped bombs, he completely flips the absurdity of their argument by saying,

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not only are you wrong about eternity and resurrection, but marriage is what will change at the end.

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Okay, but why?

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There's a few layers to this answer, okay?

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So hang on.

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One is that presumably we will live forever.

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So we have to ask some questions about what's the nature of living forever.

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And if we live forever, we have to ask what role does sex and marriage and childbearing have anymore?

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Because first, right now, we have to have children.

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We have to have children or humanity would not exist.

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Societies would crumble.

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China used to have a one-child law.

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Did you guys know about this?

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They had a one-child law.

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Oh, sorry.

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Law, law, law, law, law.

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But then China found out that their workforce was getting older.

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And they didn't have enough young people to continue to expand their society,

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to continue to prop up the financial obligations that they had.

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And so six years ago, six years ago, they made it okay to have two.

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And it's not that you couldn't have more than one kid.

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It's just that if you did, it probably meant that you were wealthy

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because you had to pay extra money if you had extra kids.

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And then last year, they actually said that you can have three kids without any penalty.

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Because our societies right now on this earth are contingent on having children that will carry our societies on.

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One question about eternity is will we need new children?

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I don't know.

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I tend to think that Jesus really loves kids.

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If you read the Gospels and see the way that he talks about them,

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you would go, well, I can't imagine an eternity that didn't have any of those

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when he seemed to be so enamored by them.

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But Jesus also doesn't think that we should reduce women down to being our baby makers.

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So by taking marriage off that eternal table,

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he's directly confronting their assumption that that is what women are for.

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And again, the woman in their story is just there to be a wife,

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handed down from one brother to the next.

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But for Jesus, she's her own person.

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She doesn't need to wonder who she'll be married to in eternity.

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Jesus isn't interested in reducing her or any other women down to one single role.

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In his version, she gets to experience the resurrection and eternity like everyone else

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as her own person perfected in God's presence.

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So Jesus takes marriage off the eternal table

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because in the kingdom, at the resurrection, men will have no position of cultural authority

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or relational superiority over women.

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So the last question might be then, what happens to sex in eternity?

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I'll tell you two basic schools of thought.

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Really pay attention, okay?

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Either there could be no sex or there could be free sex.

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Let me explain both of those a bit.

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Those on the theological side of free sex in eternity might say something like this,

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because we will finally love each other perfectly.

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Because having sex with someone you're not married to would no longer damage a marriage.

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And because the colloquial protection of family lines will be gone.

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And because presumably we'll still have our body parts.

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Why wouldn't we use them?

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Now, on the other hand, while some may want that to be the reality,

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the no sex in eternity side might say that believing we will have the freedom to have sex

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with anyone we want in eternity isn't based on perfect love.

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It's based on our actual earthly desires.

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And that's that far too often we make sex the point.

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We make sex the goal.

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We make sex the reward.

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I did good. We had a good date. Why didn't you reward me?

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And if some of us are truly honest, some of us hope that we will have free sex in heaven

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because that's what we want now.

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We see our marriage as just keeping us from doing whatever we want with whoever we want.

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Or we see our marriage as keeping our spouse from doing whatever they want with whoever they want.

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When here on earth, sex is actually only one tiny percentage point of the totality of the kind of relationship

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God hopes we will experience together here on earth.

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We distort it.

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So those are the two views. Do you want to know what I think?

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I like asking that question because you're a captive audience.

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I'm going to tell you.

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Here's the truth about sex in eternity.

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The Bible doesn't say.

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As far as I can tell, the Bible has absolutely nothing to say about whether we will have sex in eternity

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or whether we can have children in God's new creation.

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Nothing.

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We just know that marriage, as we currently know it, will not be.

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And that somehow, that will be good.

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So I hope that if we walk away with anything today, I hope that it's one of the things I think Jesus is trying to say to the Sadducees.

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And it's that reducing women down to baby machines, making sex the point, misses the point.

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So as I close, let me say this.

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When it comes to marriage, this is my legitimate view.

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When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray,

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He taught them to pray by saying, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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Jesus has given us a little peek into what eternity looks like.

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So I think that our view of marriage here on earth is meant to be informed by God's will for relationships in heaven.

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Mainly, that sex won't be the point.

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And I think that should inform how we think about marriage now.

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In particular, how we pressure people to get married, often because of sex.

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You want to have sex? You better get married quick.

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How can we treat people...

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What are your phrases?

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I think it should inform how we treat people that aren't married.

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How sometimes they're treated like they're incomplete because they don't have...

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Because they don't have a partner.

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And I think that it should inform how we gatekeep who can marry and who can have sex like same-sex couples.

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Because so much of the conservative modern Christian perspective on marriage is wrapped up in who can sleep with who.

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But...and stay with me.

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If it isn't an issue in eternity, why is it the main reason so many people get excluded from church here on earth?

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I left this out earlier, but the theological concept of resurrection in Judaism,

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by the time Jesus was doing his ministry in the first century,

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the theological concept of resurrection had only been around for less than 200 years.

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The Sadducees didn't like it because they didn't see it in the part of the Bible they believed in.

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The Sadducees didn't like it because it was a newfangled theology.

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And yet here was Jesus saying that new idea, you know what?

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Give it a shot.

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And that thing that you're obsessed about, it's not the thing you should be obsessed about.

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Just because a theological idea is relatively new does not mean that it's wrong.

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And I think that we should have a sense of kindness and gentleness

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as we discuss things like this with people that don't see it the same way that we do.

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There's no need for absurd illustrations.

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There's only a need for love.

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Let us pray.

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God, I pray that your spirit of understanding would be all about us today.

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You would help us to be kind and gentle, that we would be quick to listen and slow to speak, slow to anger.

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That the things that we get caught up on, that you would teach us how to no longer trip on them,

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because they are not the stumbling blocks on the way to eternity.

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Fill our hearts with joy that there is a resurrection coming.

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Fill our hearts with peace as we seek humility in how we understand each other.

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Amen.