Ananias and Sapphira: Partners in Crime

Today is January 2 and it is the season of New Years’ Resolutions.

My wife helped me with this intro this week. She Googled “weirdest new years’ resolutions”. It is my pleasure to share these with you now. These are some of the top resolutions made on Twitter.

Get lost without any help from Siri

Check facts before sharing on social media

Stop kids from eating dirt

Stop kids from flossing in public

Watch every episode of Power Rangers

Rule the world

Stop procrastinating

Wash my underwear more often

Don’t make any New Years’ resolutions

How many of you have made a New Years’ resolution?

We know the typical resolutions we tend to make: I’m going to give up soda, I’m going to workout five days a week, I’m going to read the Bible all the way through.

What if we thought differently about making New Years resolutions? What if we went deeper than any of that to the root of things? What if, in other words, we made a commitment to live in light of three truths: the holiness of God, our sin, and God’s grace? I wonder how that would affect the other resolutions we make.

Notice with me three things from this passage today. This passage will introduce God’s holiness, our sin, and God’s grace in a very powerful and memorable way.

#1: The big-heartedness of the church in Jerusalem

Notice with the big-heartedness of the early church. Big-heartedness - why have I chosen that word? Look with me at verse 32: “Now the full number of those who believed” - and note that phrase, “the number of those who believed” - the book of Acts consistently refers to the church as the gathering of those who believed - not those who pursue good works, not those who pray, not those who give their money and possessions — no, while those things ought to be true of us, before we are any of those things we are a people of faith, a people who believe the gospel is true and we seek to bring our lives into conformity with the gospel.

“Now the full number of those who believed were” - now look at this next phrase, and underline it: “[they] were of one hearted and soul.” That’s the unity of the early church and it’s God’s intention for every church, including our church. God the Holy Spirit has united each of us with the risen Savior and because each of us are one with Him, we are one with each other. If you are a believe, you have more in common with your fellow believers, your fellow church members, than you have with your blood relatives who are not believers.

So that’s their unity, and it leads them to be generous, to be benevolent, to be, in other words, big hearted: “they were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common” (Acts 4:32 ESV). Makes sense, right? If you’re really and truly one with a person, as we are with each other as Christians, then the natural overflow of that is to share our lives, share our property, share our possessions with each other. Just like in a marriage: when my wife and I got married, everything she had become mine and everything I had became hers - including my french fries.

And by the way, this unity that we enjoy as believers is something the world around us seeks persistently and obsessively but has not found. And in fact, they never will find it, because true unity comes from being one with Jesus Christ in a personal relationship by faith. Make no mistake, church, Jesus is the only person who can take people who previously hated one another and bring them into loving fellowship with one another in the church. The gospel message is the only message that can take our hardened and hateful hearts and transform them into hearts of love and joy and peace. Just think of Jews and Gentiles.

But we started with the word bigheartedness. What does that word mean?

Bighearted:

Kind

Benevolent

Generous

Openhanded

Now, considering those descriptions, would you say the early church was big-hearted? Go back with me and read the second part of verse 32: “and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.” But wait, there’s more, verses 34-35: “There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.”

I really like that last word: openness. Let’s do a little exercise. Stretch out your hands, just like this. Now turn your hands so that your palms are facing upward, and open your palms like this. Now keep your hands stretched out, but make your hands into fists.

Which feels more natural? I think it feels more natural to be openhanded. And being openhanded is how the early church managed to be so bighearted. And their bigheartedness led them to radical generosity. They were determined, Luke says, that there would not be a poor person in their midst. Did the wealthier church members have to sell what they had and give the money? No. God respects property ownership. But here’s the thing: if God’s grace in Jesus Christ is changing you, then increasingly you’re going to want to be big-hearted, you’re going to want to practice radical generosity.

Three steps to generosity:

1. They gave themselves to Christ

2. They saw themselves as stewards, not owners

3. They gave themselves, and their possessions, to others

Because, you see, open palms show that we are opening ourselves to God to work in our lives, and open palms show others that we are open to them too: we will love and care for them, even to the point of giving our wealth to them if they have need. Here’s the progression: they gave themselves to Christ, they chose to see themselves as stewards of their possessions rather than owners, and they gave themselves, and their possessions, to one another.

2 Corinthians 8:5 ESV

and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.

And this is despite the persecution the church was facing right then! Peter and John have been threatened by the authorities. Stop preaching Jesus or else. They went back and gathered together as one to pray for boldness. God grants the boldness, and the early church presses on. I like what the Puritan pastor Stephen Charnock said about this verse:

Classical Study Bible Acts 4

“The church never was so like to heaven as when it was most persecuted by hell.”

There’s a little picture there for you, too. You didn’t know this until now, but in 2022 these man-wigs are going to come back in style again.

This is the bigheartedness of the early church.

#2: The big-heartedness of Barnabas

How many of you remember the TV series B. L. Stryker? It ran in the late 1980s into 1990. It was part of the ABC Mystery Movie umbrella group and it featured Rita Moreno and Burt Reynolds, directed by Tom Selleck.

One episode of this TV series featured a daring rescue. Burt Reynolds saves a woman from a burning house in Palm Beach, FL that was detonated by a bomb. The front yard of this was the epicenter of a really violent scene with cars crashing and blowing up. You know, your typical 1980s action movie.

Now the people who lived in the house were of course asked, “Can we use your hard to, you know, blow up a bunch of stuff in” And of course they said, “Sure”. Problem is, they didn’t own the house; they were renters. And the owner of the house ended up getting a tip from a neighbor that his house was literally burning. Those renters didn’t understand that as renters, they were stewarding the property for someone else. It belong to them. They were stewards, not owners.

Many of you know we just bought a house in Cherryville. That’s the first house we have ever owned. Prior to that, we rented. And prior to that, we lived in a parsonage. My first church had a parsonage, and I’ve often wondered if there’s still evidence of our time in that house. You see, our kids were much, much younger then; they were two and four when we started at Mt. Zion and they were almost five and seven when we moved out.

And the parsonage, how shall we put this: you could only conclude that small children had lived there. There were pencil drawings on the walls in the hallway; there were stains on the carpet (some of those stains might have been mine, by the way). There were chalk drawings all over the carport and driveway. There was a huge pile of sand in the backyard from when we had a sandbox. The church understood that and they didn’t ask us to make any repairs, and we were thankful for that, because it was not our house; we were stewards, not owners.

Of course, it’s much nicer to own your own property, but renting a house can actually teach you what the early church at Jerusalem, it seems, understood, and what Barnabas seemed to grasp, too. When you’re a steward, you’re accountable to manage the property or money or whatever it is according to the intentions of the owner who placed it in your care.

Well, you and I are stewards too. The deed to your home might have your name on it, and legally it’s yours; but if you’re a Christian, you have already renounced everything you own in principle even if not in practice. That is to say that you recognize that God doesn’t always bless us just for our sake alone; in fact, he rarely does that. God blesses us with property and possessions and money and those are good gifts and we are thankful to Him for those things. It’s right and good to spend it on yourself or for your family in a reasonable manner. But as stewards, we understand that in a sense, we are renting from God. It’s all his. We see this in Psalm 50:9-12

Psalm 50:9–12 ESV

I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.

In these verses, the Lord claims for himself unequivocally every square inch of this universe including the property our church sits on and our houses and the money in our bank account. We are stewards, and we are called to manage it according to his purposes. God wants to care for the poor, especially the poor in our church. Remember what Luke said about the early church in Jerusalem? “There was not a needy person among them” - why not? How did they ensure that the poor were provided for? “There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need” (Acts 4:34-35 ESV).

Now this is not Marxist communism; this is not wealth redistribution. Remember, Communism says the government owns everything that is yours, and it’s a forced redistribution of wealth (funny thing about communism, the money taken from the “haves” in society tends to redistributed to the government rather than the “have-nots”. No, this is voluntary generosity. God loves a cheerful giver, Paul said in 2Corinthians, not a begrudging or frustrated giver. If you can’t give with your whole heart, it’s better not to give at all.

Well, evidently Barnabas understand the idea of stewardship, because Barnabas is given by Luke as an example of one specific person who did what the Jerusalem church in general was said to do. Look with me at verses 36-37: “Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

Barnabas - who was he? Well, we know he was from a priestly family because he was part of that family, the tribe descended from Levi. But he was a native of Cyprus. Cyprus was the third largest island in the Mediterranean sea, about 70 kilometers south of what is now Turkey. From the tribe of Levi (priestly family)

Who was Barnabas?

From the tribe of Levi

A native of Cyprus

An apostle

Paul’s friend and ministry associate on missionary journeys

Barnabas was known as an encourager

There’s a picture for you there, it’s from the 16th century and it’s Barnabas healing the sick.

I love that Barnabas is renamed. Did you see that? His given name was Joseph, but the apostles’ called him ‘son of encouragement’. That’s basically a nickname. Anybody in here have a nickname? Anybody have an embarrassing nickname? Anyone want to share? It can’t be as bad as mine in college. My buddies apparently thought it would be funny to shorten “Dustin” to just “Duh”. There were variations on this too. Sometimes it was “Doober”, then “Doober-dang”. Those names don’t mean anything whatsoever. It’s just a play on my name Dustin.

By the way there’s a picture of Cypress for you.

Well, unlike me, Barnabas had a more meaningful nickname, one that described his personality, what he was known for: “son of encouragement”. Hebrew expression that basically means Barnabas was known as an encourager.

How many of you feel like you might have the spiritual gift of encouragement? I know some of you who do because you’ve encouraged me and I’ve seen you encourage others.

If you do, then you have one of the most important gifts in the church. Because, here’s what encouragement means: to instill courage and confidence in someone who is struggling, by speaking the right words, in the right way, and at the right time. What does it mean to encourage? My wife is an encourager - I mean, she is just unfailingly encouraging to me. There is rarely a time when I talk with her about something that’s bothering me that she doesn’t say just the right thing in just the right way to place courage back in me - that’s the meaning of encourage, by the way.

If you feel like you’re an encourager, friends, let me just encourage you to not hold back. Never, ever underestimate the effect that a timely, wise, gracious and kind encouragement can have on a person who is struggling.

Barnabas was not just an encourager; he was a giver. We’re not told how much he sold his land for; we’re only told that he gave all of the proceeds to the church to support the mission of the church. And I think there might be a link between being an encourager and being a giver. What do you think?

Why did Barnabas do this? Remember the open palms verses closed fists? Grace, received with open hands and gratitude

#3: The hard-heartedness of Ananias and Sapphira

A. The deception (verses 1-2)

There was a little boy who was asked by his mom, “Tell me, dear, what is a lie?” This was his answer: “Mother, a lie is an abomination to the Lord, but a very present help in time of need.” [Swindoll, p343] This little boy had discovered that lying can sometimes be convenient.

I’ve often felt like one of the hardest jobs in the world must be having to serve as White House Press Secretary. Not only do you have go up against dozens of reporters challenging your statements and pointing out contradictions. That’s nothing compared to the fact that whoever does that job is basically lying for pay on a daily basis.

I realize , you know, that there is alot that goes on in this country and in our government that, really, it would be best if the average citizen never knew about it. I realize, too, that there is such a thing as classified information. The White House Press Secretary simply can’t broadcast every detail to the press; there are some things that, if they were told, it would do more harm than good. I guess what i’m saying is that for people with great power and tremendous responsibility, telling the whole truth to all the world could be disastrous.

Still, though, it remains that that job is a job that requires you to deceive. And I’ve often wondered what that does to a person’s soul day after day, week after week, year after year. Because you see, no matter the reason, lying not only conceals the truth; it also changes us in negative ways. It hardens our heart, making it easier to lie the next time.

So look with me at verses 1-2: “But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property and with his wife’s knowledge he kept back some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” You’ll notice the contrast immediately between Barnabas who sold his property and gave all that he sold, and Ananias and Sapphira who sold their property and didn’t give all that they sold it for.

Well, what’s wrong with that, right:? I mean we already said this was voluntary, right? No one was being forced to sell their property and give the money to the church. So what did they do that was wrong? What they did that was wrong was not keeping some of the money for themselves; no, it was that they kept some of the money for themselves but tried to make it look like they gave the full amount. It was their motive, wasn’t it? They wanted to look good, they wanted the reputation of being a generous couple, and they also wanted a little bit of the money themselves. Rather than choosing one or the other, both good options, they instead tried to have both. It was the deception that was wrong.

That is the deception. Notice with me next the confrontation.

B. The confrontation (verses 3-4)

Peter is the one who does the confrontation. We aren’t told how Peter knew what had happened. Presumably it was a special revelation from the Spirit. Either way, Peter calls Ananias’ bluff. “Ananias,” Peter says, “why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land?” (Acts 4:3 ESV).

Now notice Peter’s reasoning here in the next verse, verse 4: “While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?” “Ananias, it was your property. You didn’t have to sell it if you didn’t want to. And after you sold it, the money was still yours for you to do whatever you want with it.”

What he’s saying, in other words, is that Ananias didn’t have to give any of the money to the church. It was at his disposal; it was his property,. God respects property ownership. This is a voluntary thing, Ananias. If you needed some money, you should have just kept the whole thing. Ananias, it would even have been okay for you give us some of the money and keep some for yourselves if you needed it. The problem, Ananias, is the deception - you wanted us to think you are more generous, more committed than you actually are, and in doing that, Ananias, you have lied to the Holy Spirit.

Here’s a really bad joke I found this past week. There was a man who went to see his doctor. Strangely, the doctor had a cat in his office and while the doctor was examining him, the cat got up on the table and walked around the patient and examined him and then got down. Later on the man got a bill for $200 and he called the doctor, furious, asking why it was so high. Now here’s the punchline, and it is so bad: The doctor said “Fifty dollars is for my checking you, and the other $150 is for the cat scan. [Evans p74]

So it was more than deception. It was spiritual deception. He was not only trying to deceive the apostles’ into thinking he had given the full amount when he in fact didn’t. No, Ananias wanted people to think he had a deeper commitment to Christ than He actually had.

Now listen, we’d like to think we’re different from Ananias and Sapphira. But we aren’t. Here’s how. I came across this quote last week:

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.” [Hughes p77]

He wanted praise for giving all and yet he took care of himself by keeping some”. [Rob WP]

…do you have the courage to face your own hypocrisy? Confess it to the Lord. Ask forgiveness. Seek his help to bring your life into alignment with the truth.

That is the confrontation. Notice with me, now, the retribution.

C. The retribution (vv. 5-11)

Why did they do this? Because they did not understand grace, so they clinched their fists, closing themselves off from God and others

Peter continues his rebuke of Ananias in verse 4b:: “Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God”.

Tony Evans had an illustration that I want to share with you. He told about a time when he was called by his credit card company with what they called good news: they had raised his credit limit to $25,000 because he was a special, VIP customer. Any of you ever had that happen to you?

He tells about how we often feel when we hear that: “Wow, a VIP customer! Really, little ‘ole me? Well, I guess I must be really wise with my money for them to raise my credit limit to $25,000 dollars.

But it’s deceptive, right? This is what Tony Evans says about this: “What they don’t tell you, he says, is that if you will simply use your limit, if you will simply spend twenty-five thousand dollars, if you will take advantage of everything they are offering, they will own you for the rest of your life.” [Evans, p74]

Ananias himself had been deceived, and so he deceived others. But the really sobering thing here, church, is that Peter indicates that to lie to others, especially others in our church, is to lie to God.

And Ananias’ discipline from the Lord is swift and sudden. Luke says in verse 5, “when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last.” …wow. This has happened before. Two guys in the OT, Nadab and Abihu, in the book of Leviticus, they try to offer a sacrifice in the tabernacle, but they ignore God’s prescribed rules for approaching God with a sacrifice. They were consumed instantly. Again, a man named Uzziah in the OT touched the ark of God to steady himself as they were pulling it along. Uzziah was instantly consumed.

“What right does God have to do something like this?”, we ask in anger. God strikes a man dead instantly, and later his wife in the4 same way, just because he told a lie? I don’t want to worship a God like that.

Here’s what we need to remember. First, we need to remember that God can do whatever He wants, whatever He deems best, with us. God does not owe us explanations. He is God; we are not. He alone gives life and takes it away.

The other thing to keep in mind is this: when we come across a text like this in the Bible that seems harsh and we don’t like it or we struggle to believe it, we need to ask ourselves, Is the problem really with the Bible itself, or is the problem with me?

Let me put this another way. Whenever we approach a text that shows us a harsh judgment of God upon a human being, and we read it and feel negative emotions, here’s what it’s always good to do. Consider prayerfully: “I’m having trouble with this passage. This seems wrong. Yet, it’s part of ther word of God and I cannot just dismiss it. So, is the problem really with the text, or am I part of the problem? Am I taking modern day ideas of goodwill and tolerance and importing them into the biblical text? Could it be that I don’t take sin seriously? Could it be that my view of God’s holiness and my sin has waned to the point that they no longer make an impact on me?”

Because it is those two things, the holiness of God and the sin of humanity, that alone explains why this happened to Ananias and Sapphira. God is a loving God, gracious and merciful and slow to become angry, and his first inclination is not to judge but to forgive. Yes and amen! But the loving God is also the holy God. The loving God is also our Creator. He has a claim on us. We have no claims on Him. This means that God had the right to take Ananias’ and Sapphira’s life with no explanation, and he has the right to do the same thing to us. The fact that we are all here this morning, living and breathing, is due to God’s mercy.

I really like what one pastor I read this week said about this passage. Rather than shake our firsts at God and say, How dare you do something like this?”, we do better to look inside our own hearts and repent.

“This story should make us repent and say, “God have mercy on us! Make us like Barnabas, not like Ananias.” And, “Thank you Lord for your amazing patience with us. Grant us grace to avoid hypocrisy and to pursue integrity.” [Merida p77]

Conclusion and call for response

We so easily lose sight of the holiness of God. We are so quick to minimize our own sin. But when we do that, what happens is that we forget about grace. After all, if you don’t if God isn’t holy, and we aren’t that bad after all, then what do we need grace for? And because it is God’s grace in action that compelled Christ to die for our sins, we’re also thumbing our nose at the cross. And that’s a big deal.

I guess what I’m saying is, Fear the Lord. I’m talking just as much to myself as I am to you. Why don’t you take time right now this morning to as we sing to get alone with God. Confess your sin to Him. Receive His forgiveness. Ask his help in the future. And then stand to your feet and worship.

If you don’t know Jesus as your Savior and Lord, get that settled today. Talk to me or to one of our deacons after the service, or come down front here and we will pray with you. Will you stand with me?