Daily Lesson for August 9, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Acts chapter 4 verses 1 through 4:

While Peter and John were speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came to them,2much annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead. 3So they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. 4But many of those who heard the word believed; and they numbered about five thousand.

Brian McLaren many who believe in the afterlife view resurrection as a kind of “spiritual evacuation plan” of escape from this world. What that kind of thinking ends us us with is an utter disregard for this world and a carelessness towards and perhaps even embrace of major threats to the wellbeing of this world, including nuclear holocaust and mass environmental destruction. Those who hold to that understanding of the resurrection think this world is not their home and so take no responsibility in its care. 

But that’s not Biblical resurrection. Biblical resurrection is, in the word’s of Job a belief, “that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth.” Biblical resurrection is not a rejection of earth, but rather a love for and value of it, and a hope in its ultimate redemption.

Spiritual evacuation plans do not get people arrested as the disciples were arrested in today’s Lesson. Promises of pie in the sky in the sweet by and by are not a threat to the powers of the earth today. Biblical belief in the resurrection loves and values the earth, its people, and believes in the power of God to restore and redeem them all — whether in this age or in the age to come. 

Believers in the Biblical view of resurrection are not careless about the things of this earth. They are not, as the saying goes, “so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good”.  No; they are present and they work for peace and for justice “on earth as it is it is in heaven”.  And, they do this boldly and without fear because of their believe in the power of God to raise them up again.

The Sadducees had the disciples arrested for proclaiming resurrection because the Sadducees thought a people who believed in resurrection could not be controlled. They were right about that.