There is only one time to live, right now. You can’t live in the past, although it seems as though many people think they do. You can’t live in the future either. Right now is all we have. This is the space in which we must live our lives, the here and now. Until we invent time travel that works, we are stuck here in the present.
Some people get so stuck in the past in their thinking, or in the future with their dreaming, that they aren’t much good in the present with their living. The mistakes and abuses of the past can overwhelm the present, even though they are past. The brain wants to protect the self from further harm. So when current things remind the brain of the pain of the past, signals are sent to the body almost immediately: fight, flight, or freeze. And the rest of the body happily follows the lead of the brain. That past moment is alive and active in our responses. Those responses have kept us alive through many an ordeal. It is the way God designed us to work.
Jesus is answering a question about the future, about heaven and life after this present time. His critics are trying to trip Him up, catch Him saying something that could be used as an excuse to kill Him. But Jesus isn’t so easily caught in a trap.
Jesus is now appealing to the Scriptures to prove the Sadducees wrong about their belief, or should I say, lack of belief in Heaven and the Resurrection. He quotes from the book of Exodus, a part of the Scriptures over which there was no disagreement about its authority in their lives. And He zeros in on the fact that when the LORD is talking to Moses He uses the present tense. God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, even though they were dead and buried.
God didn’t say “I was” the God of these three men. He says that He is, right now, in the present moment, the God of these three. He also doesn’t say that He “will be” at some future moment. This is the only way that the passage makes sense. These men must be living. And the LORD is still their God.
What a wonderful message. Even after death, we will live somewhere, and we will still be in relationship with God. Even death can’t stop that connection. Heaven is the home of those people who have the right relationship with the LORD in this life. Those who reject the LORD in this life have an alternative place, absence in this life means absence in the next.
We need to carefully read the Scriptures if we want to stay true to the text and really hear what the LORD wants from us. When we rush through the text we often miss some of the reality presented there. I am sure the Sadducees knew the quoted passage by heart. And yet, they missed this very important concept of the LORD’s power to bring to life those who physically die. He sustains a relationship with them because they aren’t dead. They are alive.
The Arnold Journey 