One of the great things about the early community of believers is the open practice of love and unity. ALL the believers were united in heart and mind. What that means is that they all had the same agenda. They weren’t clones, but they all wanted the same things and thought the same way about the important spiritual and practical matters of the church. There were no separate personal agendas.
Now this was not communism for a couple reasons. First it was voluntary. As we will see you didn’t have to give and you could give what you chose to give depending on your situation. Secondly, it didn’t involve everything you owned, but only as much as was needed. And thirdly, it was not a membership requirement in order to be part of the church.
Now this giving isn’t a command, but it’s sure a good principle to follow that seems to be attractive to the outside world. The point I take from it is that no one in the Kingdom of God should be without. We serve a God who has all the resources in the universe and the idea of a Christian or any human being for that matter, going without basic necessities should be unfathomable to us as the body of Christ.
That’s why it says that nobody felt that what they owned was there own, it was God’s. Is that true of us? You know the theme of the entire Bible is to trust Him. Do you believe that he owns all things, and that if you give some of yours away to someone else, he will still provide for you? Again this is the one area that God says we can test Him.
There were no needy people amoung them and this freed the apostles to focus on testifying powerfully about the resurrection of the dead. And it says God’s blessing or favour was on them all.
Now in verse 36 we hear about Joseph who was nicknamed Barnabas (son of encouragement). He gets a little fame here by coming from Cyprus with the proceeds from one of his fields. But the way he brought his offering was to lay it at the apostle’s feet. This indicates that he gave this in private. He humbly placed it at the apostle’s feet and even received a new name from them. And as a prominent Jew from the family of Levi he is also showing his support for the Gentile mission that was about to begin.
Now it sounds like this church was perfect. Perfectly unified, perfectly Holy, hadn’t been a lie yet apparently. But we see that whenever you get a bunch of people together, soon both internal and external problems start to develop. Now if we think carefully about this, we see that the people were filled with the Spirit and were walking in the Spirit. I think that is probably where the term spirit of unity comes from. But it’s also true that no mere mortal is always walking in the Spirit. The flesh takes over sometimes and this is what we see in the story now of Ananias and Sapphira at the beginning of chapter 5.
There was external pressure on the church in the form of persecution, but there was already some internal pressure it seems, to look good. I think this is something we can all relate to in church, and it is one of the reasons people outside see us as hypocrites and judgmental sometimes. When appearances become more important than love, humility, truth, and generosity, we can run into problems. We see in this story of the first 11 verses that dishonesty stemming from pride and greed was already surfacing.
This husband and wife Ananias and Sapphira had intentionally conspired to be dishonest and misrepresent what they were giving. Now we can only imagine they lied about this in order to make themselves look good, more spiritual than they were. Now there was no command that people had to bring all the money from anything they sold, there was not even any command to sell anything, this was all optional. But Ananias says this is the full proceeds from the sale of the property they sold.
Now right away Peter knows he’s lying. How did he know? Maybe when he saw the amount he realized that it didn’t represent what Ananias said he sold. But more likely Peter wouldn’t have known how much land was sold. The better explanation is that Peter was given the gift of spiritual discernment in this situation.
This spiritual gift is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:10 and in my personal opinion is one of the most important and least commonly used gifts in the church. Much of what the Bible calls wisdom is the ability to discern, truth from error, right from wrong, demonic spirit from Godly Spirit, and so on. This is not a fun gift to have because no one wants to tell another person they are lying or they’re wrong. It is a gift that a good counsellor should have and can be developed a bit with practice.
1 Tim. 4:1 says that in latter days, deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons will come, so one of the important roles of the gift of discernment is to identify those spirits and doctrines. I don’t think anyone would argue that many of those have already crept in to the church, and more are trying all the time.
A discerning spirit tests the spirits with this rule of scripture from 1 John 4:
"By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God."
Leslie B. Flynn writes in his book 19 Gifts of the Spirit, "Any relegating of Jesus Christ to an inferior spot less than the incarnate Son of God, the crucified and resurrected Savior, means that spirit is not of God."
So in this instance Peter goes on to say that you are not just lying to us, but to God. And this just blows me away because it speaks of the expectation of holiness in the church of Christ. Notice Peter’s first reaction, “Why have you let Satan fill your heart?” Peter sees right away that this is a demonic spirit.
The point is that anything we say or do that tarnishes the reputation of our perfect Lord (Father, Son, or Holy Spirit) is essentially relegating Jesus to an inferior spot less than what he is. Satan’s ploy right from the Garden of Eden has been to tarnish God’s reputation, and one of the primary ways he does this is to get people to doubt God’s trustworthiness.
All through the NT Satan uses the religious experts to try to ruin the reputation of Jesus. Jesus always sees right through them and he continues to see right through us. And if we allow unholy behaviour to run unchecked in the church, Satan wins by ruining the reputation of the church, and of Christians who are now his body on the earth. This is why God gives the incredibly important gift of discernment, but again, I think this gift is under used for fear of offending or upsetting people.
How do you know if you have this gift? You will get a feeling that something the person is saying is not truthful, or goes against the Word of God. It will be a nagging sense. Most of us who may have this gift, feel it, but choose not to say anything. If you truly have this gift, it will be confirmed and you will likely be reluctant to take action on it. This is not about those people who think they’re always right and aren’t afraid to let people know about it. This is a spiritual matter
Let me give you an example. Someone from church comes up to you and says, “I think the story of Jesus’ resurrection is just symbolic to teach us the power of God.” What would you say to them? Would you say anything? In that kind of example we would all be exercising this gift if we corrected the person.
Why am harping on this point? Because of what we see next, and the seriousness with which God wants us to deal with false teaching and lies. As soon as Peter says this to Ananias, he falls down and dies. Now to prove that this wasn’t just coincidence and a very coincidental heart attack, his wife comes in a few hours later not knowing what happened.
Peter asks here about the whole transaction, Peter calls her on it and she dies on the spot. Just a few verses ago we were hearing about God’s great grace and blessings, now we hear that terror and great fear gripped the entire church. Then right after this we hear about a bunch of healings that the apostles do.
So what’s up here? I mean we would kind of expect something like this in the Old Testament, remember Uzzah touches the falling Ark of the Covenant and immediately is killed by God. But why is that story here in New Testament age of grace. It doesn’t even appear they were given a chance to repent.
Here’s what I think, and then I can give you some expert commentary on it. I think the church was growing really fast, was becoming the in thing. It was cool to be in the church and even to be persecuted for it. I think like in all the OT stories they started to take their eyes off God and put it on themselves. And before it got too out of hand God reminds them who is in charge of this whole thing, with an OT type of reminder.
Does this happen today? You bet it does. And it is why mega churches are becoming so popular. Clearly if it’ big, and has quality programs, preaching, and music, it becomes the hip church, the church to a part of. I am not saying these are bad churches either, but human pride will inevitably, if not kept in check, cause us to start taking ownership of something that belongs to God. The goal is not to glorify Christians or churches, but Christ.
This was a blatant premeditated sin against God, to make themselves look better than they are, and God knows that kind of attitude will ruin the real church and turn it into a country club where anything goes as long as it popular. Don’t rock the boat, we got a good thing going here.
Listen to what John in 1 Jn chapter 1. “We are lying if we say we have fellowship with God, but go on living in spiritual darkness (in the Bible that means essentially the opposite of the truth, the light); we are not practicing the truth. But if we are living in the light, and God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.” … “If we claim that we have no sin, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.”
This was the first excommunication, and it was done by God himself. John also says there is a sin that leads to death, and I wonder if this isn’t it. Calling God a liar with our behaviour, and therefore not really believing in and trusting Him. Please don’t tell us you’re tithing if you aren’t. But you should want to at least do that if the Spirit of God is in you.
Let’s also look at Proverbs 6:12-17. A worthless person, a wicked man, goes about with crooked speech, winks with his eyes, signals with his feet, points with his finger, with perverted heart devises evil, continually sowing discord; therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly; in a moment he will be broken beyond healing”.
What about Hebrews 10:26-31? For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment (don’t know how it gets worse), do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine; I will repay,” and again “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Hello, I am not going to stand up here and tell you not to fear sinning against God, that would make me a false teacher. Maybe the reason we don’t drop dead in church when we lie is because there wouldn’t be anybody left. We’ve gotten so far from holiness and obedience.
But I think we need to understand that it’s not God we should be afraid of. He laid out the rules, warned us time and again that the penalty of sin is death, and if we choose to sin, we clearly are saying that God is a liar or at least demeaning his power, aren’t we. We should be afraid of ourselves and sin, not God.
Do you understand, God loves us, that’s why he warns us, that’s why he wants us to keep his church pure as a refuge for sinners who want to change and be changed by Him. It drives me crazy how the church and Christians want to blend in with the world, to cater to the world. Do you not know that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? James says.
In the world we maybe don’t confront liars and false teachers, but in the church we sure should. We don’t need to judge those sinners outside the church Paul says, but we should judge those inside the church who are sinning. Do we have that backwards? We think we get behind these walls we are covered and so we don’t have to worry about our sin, we don’t have to confess to each other, we don’t have to get our acts together, just accept Jesus and you’re OK, but those outside, better watch it, but they don’t know any better.
If the church isn’t obedient to Jesus, then what makes it any different form any other organization or country club. Is this a fire and brimstone sermon? I guess it has kind of evolved into that, because I’m using the Bible. These aren’t my words, my opinions, I wish they weren’t true as much as you. Hebrews flat out says, when you know better how much worse the punishment. And that passage is clearly written to Christians who have been sanctified.
Were Ananias and Sapphira believers? I would think so if they are bringing money to the apostles, unless they’re just going through he motions to be part of this in thing. That’s possible I suppose.
Whatever the case, we can certainly say that God hates lying, he hates all sin, not just the biggies like murder, and he loves his church and wants us with his power through the Spirit to present it without blemish before his Father. Do we hate what God hates, do we love what God loves, do we want what God wants? That’s the question today, please take time to consider it in your own heart.
