Sermon Tone Analysis

Mission “You will be my martyrs”

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed.

(μάρτυς)

μάρτυς, μάρτυρος, ὁ

① one who testifies in legal matters, witness

② one who affirms or attests, testifier, witness transf.

sense of mng. 1, of anyone who can or should testify to anything.

③ one who witnesses at cost of life, martyr, in the usage of the persecuted church

A martyr is primarily a witness.

They are a faithful witness who testifies to the truth, no matter the cost.

For some, that has been at the cost of their lives, meaning they have died physically because of their message.

But we all need to die daily.

We all need to deny ourselves - restrain ourselves from what we desire to pursue what God wants.

We need to take up our cross - put to death the passions and desires of our flesh, and sacrificially love and forgive others.

We do need to die to ourselves and “our lives” so we can wholeheartedly pursue fulfilling the mission given to us to witness to Christ, no matter the cost to our own desires, reputations, or lives.

Methods

Prayer

Proclamation

Means: Power through Holy Spirit

Prayer: In light of circumstances, giving concerns to God, and asking for what we need for our responsibilities.

Some Tools:

Prayer Guides

Pocket New Testaments

Today we are going to be looking at a passage that many people tend to skip over.

It is regarded as difficult because it is seemingly harsh.

However, I believe it is important for us to look at, and God included it in His record of the early church for us to learn from it.

There was a specific reaction within the church and without, that we need to have today.

Today we are going to look at Acts 4:32-5:14.

Please open your Bibles and let’s study this together.

Prayer

In your Bibles, you probably see the headings so you know what we are looking at today.

“The Believers Share Their Possessions” and “Ananias and Sapphira.”

The first part is the background to help us understand the second.

Let’s begin the study.

Background

The Believers were United

The Believers were Sharing

Notice the next two descriptions of the church:

With Great Power the Apostles Testified (martyrion)

God’s Grace was so powerfully at work

Example of Joseph / Barnabas

Now, the difficulty.

Why?

Why would Ananias and Sapphira do this?

The World and the Flesh

In the context, it appears that they wanted to seem more spiritual than they were.

They wanted to appear to be spiritual so that they would receive recognition like Barnabas.

The world tells us that if we do things a certain way, we will get recognition.

Our Flesh, that is, our selfish nature, tells us that is what we want!

Their enemies were at work, and they didn’t recognize it.

Maybe they wanted a position in the leadership of the church?

Maybe they just wanted people to look up to them?

The problem is, they wanted to appear to be what they were not.

It was deliberate deception.

Satan

He has already attacked the church from without, through the persecution of the Jewish religious leaders.

And, that failed to stop the church.

Now, he attacks from within.

The way to do that is to attack a member, and to use them.

Trojans attacking Troy

Instead of being filled with the Spirit - yielding to and being led by the Spirit - Ananias was filled - led by - Satan.

Why would God respond so seemingly harshly?

Nadab and Abihu

Achan

When starting out, you need to have a good start, or everything goes wrong from there.

Keep the corruption at bay for a time

Tares Matthew 13:24-30

Warnings - 1 Corinthians 10:11-12

We have enemies!

We need to be on guard against them!

The Outcome - Great Fear

This is the point.

This is what God wanted.

He is Holy, and we need to remember who He is.

We love the good and gracious God...

But we need to remember where God first revealed this about Himself:

The church saw what happened to Ananias and Sapphira and had the proper response...

We need to remember as Peter well learned,

What is more, the word got out, and

No one else dared to join them… People didn’t just go to the church because it was a good group of people.

They didn’t feign to be Christians.

They didn’t claim the name of Christ lightly.

God kept the tares away for a time.

What about you and me?

Are we remembering that the Lord is Holy?

We must be absolutely clear as to what Ananias’ sin was.

It was not casual deception.

Rather, he feigned a deeper spiritual commitment than he had.

We share Ananias’ sin not when others think we are more spiritual than we are, but when we try to make others think we are more spiritual than we are.

Examples of Ananias’ sin today include: creating the impression we are people of prayer when we are not; making it look like we have it all together when we do not; promoting the idea that we are generous when we are so tight we squeak when we smile; misrepresenting our spiritual effectiveness (for example, saying, “When I was at the crusade in New York, I ran the whole follow-up program,” when the truth is, you were a substitute counselor).

When a preacher urges his people toward deeper devotion to God, implying that his life is an example when in actuality he knows it is not, he is repeating Ananias’ sin!

When an evangelist calls people to holy living but is secretly having an affair with his secretary, he is an Ananias!

This gives us all a lot to think about, if we dare.

Are we aware of our enemies?

Are we prepared?