Untitled Sermon

Acts

This message should probably come with a viewer/listener warning something like what we get in the media: “The following contains material that may prove offensive or upsetting.”

And, to be honest, I was initially tempted to avoid the account of Ananias and Saphira altogether (Acts 5:1-11).

One of the things we really dislike talking about in Christian communities is that of God’s judgement.

However, if we believe that we are all sinners in desperate need of God’s grace and that the wages/resul;ts of sin is death, then we must also have a healthy understanding of what God’s judgement looks like and why it is important.

Over the last few weeks we have been considering what a healthy community of God’s people looks like and how these communities should function.

A significant part of this is the work of the Holy Spirit as we are not only equipped for our call to “go into all the world”...

The early followers of Jesus would have understood this powerful reality as they were products of Judaism where the sense of the holiness of the Temple as the place where Yahweh dwelt was a major part of their religious and cultural experience.

Tom Wright says of this:

Acts for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1–12 Disaster (Acts 5:1–11)

Part of what he is trying to tell us, whether we like it or not (and many of course don’t), is that the early Christian community, without even trying, was functioning somewhat like the Temple itself. It was a place of holiness, a holiness so dramatic and acute that every blemish was magnified.

The people of God understood that there were rules and requirements around the Temple and the sacred things of YAHWEH:

there were restrictions on who could enter the Temple

Gentiles = no

women = only to a ceratin point

Jewish men = yes, but with limits

Priests = permitted into the inner courts

High Priest = could enter the Holy of Holies in the Temple and only once a year and after specific and intricate preparation and precautions

All of this was to remind the people of God that entering His presence was to be taken seriously and with a significant degree of both awe and holy fear.

For this very new and fragile community of “new covenant” believers holiness and a recognition of the impact of unholiness (sin) on individuals and, especially, on communities was critical for both their survival and the impact of the “good news” message they were called to proclaim.

Tom Wright again:

Acts for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1–12 Disaster (Acts 5:1–11)

We don’t like those stories, of course, any more than we like Acts 5, but we can’t have it both ways. If we watch with excited fascination as the early church does wonderful healings, stands up to the bullying authorities, makes converts to right and left, and lives a life of astonishing property-sharing, we may have to face the fact that if you want to be a community which seems to be taking the place of the Temple of the living God you mustn’t be surprised if the living God takes you seriously, seriously enough to make it clear that there is no such thing as cheap grace.

Aananias and Saphira were not punished because they didn’t give everything they had to God.

There was no requirement for anyone to do that - Acts 2 tells us that the people chose to sell what they had to give to those in need, but there is never any Apostiolic command to do so. And Peter makes it clear in Acts 5:4 that the decision of what to do with the land and any proceeds was completely that of Ananias.

The sin that had such devastating consequence for Ananias and Saphira was that they made promises to God (note that the promise was to the Holy Spirit) and then chose to not only renege on the promise, but to then seek to lie to God about their decision.

It appears that this was a one-off event in the New Testament but the message for the early church and for every follower of Jesus Christ was, and is, abundantly clear:

Holiness matters. Holiness is not an optional extra.

And, equally, unholiness matters and can have no place in a healthy community of followers of Jesus. And there will be consequences...

The Temple was clearly a place where no unholiness would be tolerated but now, under the New Covenant, the Temple had been “enlarged” to such an extent that every Spirit-filled, Spirit-led disciple of Jesus Christ was to recognise that they/we are the temple of the Holy Spirit - 1 Corinthians 6:18-19:

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

So, what is really at play in this account, why is it included in the evry early accounts of a movement that is intended to be about God’s race and love to a lost and broken humanity, and why does it matter?

At the very heart of the sin of Ananias and Saphira was not simply a lack of honesty - although that does matter - but a lack of integrity.

Tom Wright says:

The Message of Acts 2. Ananias and Sapphira Are Punished for Their Hypocrisy (5:1–11)

They wanted the credit and the prestige for sacrificial generosity, without the inconvenience of it. So, in order to gain a reputation to which they had no right, they told a brazen lie. Their motive in giving was not to relieve the poor, but to fatten their own ego.

Ananias and Saphira allowed their pride and desire to be seen as holy rather than to genuinely be holy to lead them to perhaps the most subtle, but most destructive behaviour for any follower of Jesus and, as a result, any community of Jesus followers - hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy simply means “wearing a mask, or acting a role”.

It is important to understand that failing to live up to all that we know God would want for and from us is not hypcrisy - that’s humanity and dealing with that is part of the life-long process of being made holy that every one of us experiences as we allow Jesus to renew and transform us.

Hypocrisy is the wilful intent to live deceptively in order to convince others and, of far more significance, God that we are more spiritual and holy than we really are. In other words, it is living behind a mask and believing that we can fool others and God!

In an age when what is seen seems to matter more than what is unseen, when what we are matters more than who we are, communities of Jesus-followers have a powerful and profoundly counter-cultural message to share.

Ananias and Sapphira’s sin was not robbing God of money but of robbing God of the glory and honour that is His alone.

Warren Wiersbe writes:

The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Five: Beware of the Serpent! (Acts 4:32–5:16)

It is easy for us to condemn Ananias and Sapphira for their dishonesty, but we need to examine our own lives to see if our profession is backed up by our practice. Do we really mean everything we pray about in public? Do we sing the hymns and Gospel songs sincerely or routinely? “These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me” (Matt. 15:8, NIV). If God killed “religious deceivers” today, how many church members would be left?

“The Lord will judge his people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Hebrews 10:30–31 (NIV)

Acts for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1–12 Disaster (Acts 5:1–11)

The real, deep-level problem about lying is that it misuses, or abuses, the highest faculty we possess: the gift of expressing in clear speech the reality of who we are, what we think, and how we feel. It is, as it were, the opposite of the gift of tongues. Instead of allowing God’s spirit to have free rein through our faculties, so that we praise God in words or sounds which enable us to stand (however briefly) at the intersection of heaven and earth, when we tell lies we not only hold heaven and earth apart; we twist earth itself, so that it serves our own interests. Lying is, ultimately, a way of declaring that we don’t like the world the way it is and we will pretend that it is somehow more the way we want it to be. At that level, it is a way of saying that we don’t trust God the creator to look after his world and sort it out in his own time and way. And it is precisely the claim of the early church that God the creator has acted in Jesus Christ to sort the world out and set it right. Those who make that claim, and live by that claim, must expect to be judged by that claim. This is a terrifying prospect. But if we took the underlying message of Acts 5 more seriously, we might perhaps expect to see more of the other bits of Acts, the bits we all prefer, coming true in our communities as well.