A Chilling Day of Giving
Please stand as we read our newest memory Scripture together …
John 14:23-24
“Jesus said, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will obey My teaching. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home with him.
“He who does not love Me will not obey My teaching. These words you hear are not My own; they belong to the Father who sent Me.”
And our memory refresher verse(s) for today is(are) …
Romans 12:4-5
“Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
Please open your Bibles to Acts 4:32 - 5:11
Over the past few weeks we have talked about:
- There is a coming day of Judgment (Matthew 25)
- Jesus is seeking the lost (Luke 15) so that when the time of judgment does come many will be saved
- The Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost in order to lead us to salvation and then to enable us to live a holy life of faithfulness once we are saved
- I emphasize that the Holy Spirit ENABLES us to live a holy life. We can still sin but His presence is a spiritually empowering dynamo if we allow Him to be!
- Today we’ll be reading about a couple who lied to God Himself and the immediate punishment they received.
Read: Acts 4:32 - 5:11
(Prayer for help …)
You will notice that I have never used this Scripture to introduce the time when we worship the Lord by the giving of our tithes and offerings.
We often think of the Holy Spirit as a formless entity; kind of like a cloud that floats around and affects people if they let Him do so.
God the Father, as we see Him in the Old Testament, can be pleased with us as we see in Psalm 104:33-34
“I will sing to the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. May my meditation be pleasing to Him, as I rejoice in the LORD.”
And the LORD can also be angry as we see in 2 Samuel 6:7
“The LORD’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down, and he died there beside the ark of God.”
What about Jesus, the Son of God, the second Person of the Holy Trinity?
Did Jesus exhibit emotions?
In John 11:15a speaking of the death of Lazarus, Jesus says …
“For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.”
And then it says in John 11:35 (everyone’s favorite memory verse …)
“Jesus wept.”
We also see Jesus angry in Matthew 21:12
“Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.”
Now, if the God the Father has varying emotions and Jesus the Son has varying emotions, isn’t it likely that the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity also has varying emotions?
Isaiah 63:8-10 says,
“[The LORD] said, ‘Surely they are My people, children who will be true to Me’; and so He became their Savior.
“In all their distress He too was distressed, and the angel of His presence saved them. In His love and mercy He redeemed them; He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
“Yet they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit. So He turned and became their enemy and He Himself fought against them.”
Ephesians 4:30
“Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with Whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
OK. So, based on the Holy Bible, from which we gain all spiritual truth, we have determined that the Lord God of Heaven and earth not only has emotions but exhibits them and acts on them as well.
Here in this passage we just read we can see that the honest offerings which Barnabas and other believers brought were simply accepted and used for the good of the body of believers.
They were sacrifices on their part but they did not expect any great “thanks” for it. The offerings were given to the Lord for use by the Lord’s people. The apostles did not remark about the offerings, they were just accepted and used for the good of the church.
Then we have Ananias (the LORD is gracious) and Sapphira (beautiful).
Ananias and Sapphira are part of the church in Jerusalem.
They are so well known to the church that Peter knows Ananias by sight and calls him by name. Peter also recognizes Sapphira as being the wife of Ananias.
Ananias and Sapphira have seen and heard of various people selling houses or property and bring the money from the sale to be used for the welfare of the community.
So, Ananias and Sapphira hatch a plan of deception. They are going to sell a piece of property, keep some of the money and bringing the rest to the church pretending that it is the total price they had received.
How do we know this?
Acts 5:1-2 says,
“Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.”
There was absolutely nothing wrong with this … unless … Ananias and Sapphira were going to pretend that they were giving the entire price of the land to the church. And, apparently that is what they did.
How do we know this?
Acts 5:3-4 says,
“Then Peter said, ‘Ananias, how is it that satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to men but to God.”
“Ananias, how is it that satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?”
I wonder if Ananias fully realized that satan had filled his heart?
I wonder if Ananias fully realized that he had actually lied to the Holy Spirit?
Anyway, as we look at this whole scenario you have to wonder what is really going on here? We know for certain that the Lord was not going to slay everyone on the spot who lied about their giving, right?
I mean, really. There are actually people who put empty offering envelops into the plate in some churches on Sundays so that it looks like they are giving when they are not. (Don’t get any ideas here …)
Others commit to tithing and then don’t and THEY do not drop dead.
So, why Ananias and Sapphira?
If we have read from Acts 1 to this point we know that the Holy Spirit has come in power with the salvation of many souls. A lame beggar has been healed and many of the eye witnesses have turned to Jesus for salvation. Peter and John have been hauled before the Sanhedrin and threatened and released.
And now we see in Acts 4:32-34a
“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them.”
This must have REALLY irked the old evil one, right?
I mean, if you are miserable and you see a group of people who are filled with joy and peace you might just want to cause some problem so that they can be as miserable as you are, right?
So, just like the old serpent in the Garden of Eden he finds a husband and wife duo that he can dupe into sinning. Satan tells them, it’s gonna be a “win-win” situation. You’ll get to eat some of that beautiful fruit and you’re gonna be like God “knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:4b
But now, instead of Adam and Eve the devil approaches Ananias and Sapphira with another false “win-win” situation. This is the lie, “You’ll get the respect of the other believers because they will think that you have brought the entire proceeds from the sale to the church AND you’ll get some pocket money as well. All you need to do is to tell a little lie. What can it hurt?”
Let me give you a little example of how this deception works.
Let’s say that you are living a life pleasing to the Lord and are at peace with everyone. The Lord is providing for you through a good job; you are able to give the Lord’s tithes and offerings and to meet all of your needs.
Now, the devil knows your past and in this case Google knows your history as well and Google knows that in the past you lost everything to a gambling addiction.
Because Google knows this Google will put up little ads about casinos and internet gambling and lotteries. Google does NOT care about you. Google will present it as a harmless game in a little thing called click bait where you can often play for “fun” with no money involved. Soon you are back online losing money and ordering more credit cards so you can gamble some more and hiding your addition from your spouse and family members.
You were free but you took the bait.
Ananias and Sapphira were free but they took the bait.
The church in Acts 4 was in the center of God’s will and the Lord was working powerfully through them. The devil, he don’t like that!
So, Ananias and Sapphira were tempted by their ego and their lust for money to lie to the Lord and they paid for it with their lives on the spot.
What was the result of the Lord slaying Ananias and Sapphira for lying to the Holy Spirit?
Acts 5:11-14
“Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.
“The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon’s Colonnade. No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.
“Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.”
Let’s put up these verses back to back with what MIGHT HAVE happened if the Lord had NOT slain Ananias and Sapphira.
Acts 5:11
“Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.”
If the LORD had not disciplined Ananias and Sapphira Acts 5:11 might have said:
(Everyone wondered why nothing was done about the sin of Ananias and Sapphira.)
Acts 5:12
“The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people.”
(The apostles were powerless because they had allowed sin to go unchallenged and undisciplined in the church.)
Acts 5:14
“No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.”
(No one wanted to join them because the spiritual integrity they once had was now gone. People said, “They are no different from people outside the church.”)
Acts 5:15
“Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.”
(Consequently, less and less people believed in the Lord and the church eventually died after sin became rampant among the members.)
What would a company do if they knew that one of their engineers was producing patented ideas but was only giving half of them to the company he worked for. The rest of the patents he was selling to a competitor company. Would they say that was OK? No, they would fire him on the spot.
What would the wife of an over-the-road salesman do if she found out that her husband had another wife and family in a distant city where he conducted “business” on the nights he was away from home?
Should the Lord have a lower standard of loyalty than a company or a wife?
How many churches have been destroyed by allowing unrepentant sin in their congregations?
How many churches have become objects of ridicule and scorn over scandals which would have caused humiliation out in the world?
How many of us would scold the Lord for slaying an Ananias and Sapphira in one of our services?
And that always brings about the question of personal responsibility …
Do we ever act more righteous than we actually are?
Do we ever say that our life is dedicated to serving Jesus when in reality we are living for ourselves?
Do we ever raise our hands in worship because we see others raising their hands and think it will make us look holy?
Do we ever come to church or to a small group or Sunday School gathering because that is what we are supposed to do and not because we love Jesus and His people who meet to worship Him?
Do we ever contrive a plot to make us look spiritually better than we are?
Are we lying to the Holy Spirit?
The Lord may not kill us on the spot but it is still true that …
Romans 6:23a
“The wages of sin is death.”
When we are tempted to sin it is so important that we not only think of the personal consequences but also that we think of the consequences to the body of Christ, the church and the consequences to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ in the eyes of the world.
God help us to be holy that the world may know there is a Savior and His name is Jesus! PTL!!
(Final thoughts and prayer)
