📨 THEKNGDOM | August 23rd, 2025

Passage 📖: Matthew 22:23–33

📺 Want to watch the full teaching? Click here to view the August 23rd, 2025 Lesson.

📢 KNGDOM Announcements:

• 📺 NOW ON YOUTUBE

  All of our Saturday teachings are now available on YouTube! This is a powerful way to revisit the lesson — or share it with someone who needs hope.

  Please support the mission by subscribing to our channel and passing the message along to your community. Every share helps the message of the Kingdom reach further.

  👉 Subscribe & Watch on YouTube

• 🙏 PRAYER
  We believe prayer changes everything. If you’re carrying something heavy, facing a challenge, or simply want to invite God into your week, we’d be honored to pray for you. Share your prayer request with us here:

  Submit a Prayer Request

• ☕️ THE KNGDOM STORE
  Start your mornings with more than just coffee — start them with a reminder of what matters most. The Seek First Coffee Mug is designed to keep your focus where it belongs: on God and His Kingdom.
  👉 Shop the store here (link not working? copy and paste this in your browser the-kngdom.printify.me )

👋 Introduction to Today’s Lesson

Hey Friends,

What if I told you that everything good and beautiful in this life — the joy of celebrations with loved ones, the tenderness of love stories, the wonder of music and art — are not the full reality, but only shadows of something greater?

Centuries before Jesus, the philosopher Plato gave us the Allegory of the Cave — the idea that human beings only see faint shadows of truth, mistaking them for reality. The true world, he argued, lies beyond what the eye can perceive.

It’s a striking image. And it’s not far from what Jesus reveals in today’s passage. When the Sadducees — some of the most educated and influential thinkers of His day — tried to trap Him with their questions, Jesus tells them plainly: despite all their brilliance, their understanding of God, of His power, and of the life to come was limited, even distorted.

Today, Jesus pulls back the curtain. He shows us that resurrection life isn’t just an extension of this world, but something far greater — a reality beyond the shadows.

Let’s dive in.

⏪ Recap of Last Week’s Lesson (Matthew 22:15–22)

Last week, the Pharisees and Herodians joined forces to trap Jesus with a loaded question about paying taxes to Caesar.

It looked like a lose-lose scenario: endorse the tax and alienate the Jewish people or reject it and risk arrest by Rome.

But Jesus cut through their false choice with divine wisdom:

“Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

We were reminded that:

• The world loves to force us into narrow categories and false choices.
  

• Our civic duties have their place, but our ultimate allegiance belongs to God.
  

• And because we bear His image, our whole lives are owed to Him.

Missed it? Click here to read or watch last week’s lesson.

📖 Matthew 22:23–33 

That same day, some Sadducees — a group who deny the resurrection — came to Jesus with a question.

“Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, leaving his wife with no children. The second did the same, as did the third — right down to the seventh. At last, the woman died.

So then, in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? Since all seven were married to her.”

Jesus replied:

“You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.

At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.

But as for the resurrection of the dead — have you not read what God said to you: ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?

He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.

🧭 Context & Background

This conversation happens in the Temple courts during Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem. After the Pharisees fail to trap Him, another group steps forward: the Sadducees — wealthy, politically aligned with Rome, and theologically skeptical. They accepted only the Torah and denied the existence of angels, spirits, or resurrection (Acts 23:8). To them, this life was all there was.

Their question isn’t sincere — it’s a mockery. They present a far-fetched scenario about seven brothers marrying the same woman, based on the levirate law from Deuteronomy 25:5–6, which called for preserving a family line if a man died without children.

The Sadducees use this law to make resurrection look ridiculous, assuming eternal life is just an extension of this one — with all its same rules and systems.

But Jesus exposes the flaw in their logic on two fronts:

First, He clarifies the nature of resurrection life: it’s not just more of the same — it’s a complete transformation. Earthly institutions like marriage serve a temporary purpose here (for companionship, procreation, protection, and pointing to Christ). But in the resurrection, those purposes are fulfilled. Like the angels, we will live eternally in God’s presence — complete, whole, and lacking nothing.

Second, He confronts their misunderstanding of Scripture itself. Citing the Torah they claim to uphold, Jesus reminds them of God’s words in Exodus: “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Not was — am. These patriarchs are not gone. They are alive to God. And God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

In just a few sentences, Jesus pulls back the veil — revealing a Kingdom that transcends human categories and a resurrection that is more real than anything we’ve known.

✨ Key Takeaways

1️⃣ God of the Living — Resurrection Hope Changes Everything

When Jesus says, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” He isn’t just quoting Scripture. He is anchoring resurrection hope in God’s very identity. To belong to Him is to belong to life itself. Death does not have the last word. The God we serve is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

The Sadducees rejected this because their worldview was too small — bound to this life, obsessed with what could be controlled, measured, and leveraged for power. But Jesus reveals a reality so much larger: the Living God is not bound by death, and His people are not either.

And this isn’t just abstract theology. It touches our lives in the most personal ways.

How many of us have sat in a doctor’s office, hearing a diagnosis that felt like a sentence — cancer, heart disease, something that rattled us to the core? In these moments our small world view may cause fear to grip us, and cause us to begin to lose hope. 

In those moments, we need to allow Jesus’ words to enter us: “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

Like Plato’s allegory of the cave, our sight is limited. We only see shadows and fragments of reality. Death might look final from our perspective, but it is not the true reality. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. 

If our hope is only in this world, we will cling desperately to control, possessions, and our reputation. But if resurrection is real, we are freed. Freed to live with courage, because death cannot defeat us. Freed to live and love with generosity, because we don’t have to hoard what we cannot keep. Freed to live with faithfulness, because we know the story doesn’t end at the grave.

The God of the living has the last word — and that word is life.

2️⃣ Don’t Limit God to Human Categories

The Sadducees mocked the resurrection because they imagined it would simply mirror life as they knew it — marriage contracts, family obligations, earthly systems continuing on forever. They tried to box eternity into categories they could manage. But Jesus tears down their small framework. The power of God creates a reality beyond our imagination — one where death is gone, every longing is fulfilled, and communion with Him transcends every earthly institution.

And we do the same thing, don’t we? We shrink God to fit our categories. We pray as if He’s bound by our timelines. We expect as if He’s restricted by our logic. We assume that what’s broken now will always be broken, that what’s lost can never be restored, that what looks impossible must always remain that way.

But God is not limited by our categories. His Kingdom is bigger. His ways are higher.

Think of the places where you’ve quietly given up — a child who’s wandered far from faith, a marriage that feels beyond repair, a diagnosis that seems immovable, a part of your own heart you think will never heal. Into those very places Jesus speaks: “You do not know the power of God.”

So don’t shrink Him down to fit your categories. Let your prayers stretch beyond logic. Let your hope rise higher than what you can explain. Because with God, the categories are different. And the impossible is where He does his best work.

3️⃣ Resurrection Life Redefines Relationships

When Jesus says that in the resurrection people will “neither marry nor be given in marriage,” He isn’t minimizing the beauty of marriage — He’s lifting our eyes to a love even deeper, a communion even more complete.

In this life, marriage is sacred. It binds hearts together. It reflects covenant love. It offers glimpses of God’s faithfulness through intimacy, companionship, and sacrifice. But even the best marriage is still only a beacon — it is not the destination.

Resurrection life is the final destination.

A life where every longing for connection is fulfilled in the unbroken presence of God.

A life where we will not lack affection, intimacy, or belonging — but will experience them in ways no earthly bond could ever provide.

This truth brings freedom.

If you’re married, let your relationship point to something higher. Let your love be a living testimony — not just of affection for one another, but of a deeper devotion to Christ.

If you’re single, widowed, separated, or navigating relationships that feel fractured — know this: your love story is not on hold, and it is not waiting in some far-off future. It’s already unfolding. You are already being courted and pursued by the greatest love of all. What the resurrection promises is a union that no earthly relationship could ever compare to.

So wherever you find yourself — single or married — let your hope rest not in the relationship role you hold, but in the relationship that holds you.

Let your deepest sense of belonging come from your union with Christ, and Him alone.

Because that union is eternal — and it’s already begun.

Final Word

The Sadducees came to Jesus with a riddle meant to make resurrection hope look foolish. But their mockery only revealed their blindness. They assumed that eternity must look like this life — same relationships, same limits, same fears.

Jesus shatters that assumption.

He reminds us that resurrection life is not just a continuation of this age — it’s something altogether new. A life beyond death. A life where marriage, lineage, and survival give way to perfect communion with God. A life where every longing for intimacy, security, and belonging is fulfilled in Him.

And then He anchors it in the very nature of God:

“I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

Not was. I am.

To belong to Him is to belong to life.

This changes everything.

Because if death is not the end, then no earthly system can hold ultimate power over us. No regret has the last word. No fear of loss can dictate our choices. And no missed opportunity in this life can rob us of the fullness to come.

So the question for us is simple:

Are we living as if this life is all there is?

Or are we living with the boldness, the peace, and the freedom of people who already share in resurrection life?

May we rest in the truth that we belong to the God of the living — and let that hope shape every choice, every step, every breath.