Available so we're I'm going to be reading from Acts chapter 4
verse 32 through to chapter 5 verse 16.
So in the church Bibles, the green Bibles that starts on page
1096, all the believers were one heart, one in heart and mind.
No one claims 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 was no needy person among them.
For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them,
brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet,
and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called
Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, sold a field he
owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles feet.
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 bought the rest
and put it at the apostles feet. Then Peter said, Amnias, how is
it that Satan has so filled your hearts that you have lied to the
Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you
receive for the lands? 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 human
beings, but to God. When Ananias heard this, he fell
down and died, and great fear seized all who heard what
happened. Then some young men came
forward, wrapped up his body and carried him out and buried him.
About 3 hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had
happened. Peter asked her, Tell me, is
this the price you and Ananias got for the land?
Yes, she said. That is the price, Peter said to
her, How could you conspire to test the spirit of the Lord?
Listen, the feet of the men who buried your husband are at the
door, and they will carry you out also.
At that moment she fell down at his feet and died.
Then the young men came in and finding her dead, carried her
out and buried her behind her husband.
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 who
used to meet together in Solomon's columnade.
No one else dare 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.
As a result, people brought those who were I'll into the
streets and laid them on beds and mats, so that at least
Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by.
Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing
those who were ill and those tormented by impure spirits, and
all of them were healed. So as Kate has said, we are
actually in quite a challenging and almost disturbing bits in
the book of Acts. And it's a passage the kind of
challenges our our natural way of thinking.
As I've talked to people over the years about the God
Christians believe in the God of the gospel.
There's a common assumption people make both inside the
church and outside the church. And it's this that the God of
the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are actually
very different in the way they relate to people.
So the God of the Old Testament, people think, well, he's the
angry God who judges sins, and the God of the New Testament,
he's the loving God who forgives sins.
And that's how a lot of people think to the point it's almost
like 2 separate gods sometimes. And in church history, some of
these people have had to fight heresies that have said, yes,
almost like 2 gods in the Bible. But this bit of acts challenges
that way of thinking. Here at the very heart of the
New Testament, after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus,
the coming of the Holy Spirit into the world, we come across
this account of God judging a married couple, Ananias and
Sapphira, 2 members of the early church in Jerusalem, who sell
some property. They claim to give the full
amount to the church, but they keep some of the money back for
themselves. And how does God respond?
God judges them for their hypocrisy and lies by striking
them dead immediately on the spot, one after the other.
And that doesn't sound like the God of the New Testament, we
think. But I see this pastor reminds us
the God of the Old Testament, God of the New Testament.
It's the same God. He is the same godfather, Son
and Holy Spirit. And he's a God we need to take
seriously as individuals and as a church family.
So who is the God that we meet in this next bit of acts?
I want to say he's the God who gives generously to us and
causing his people to be generous with each other.
He's the God who judges sin and causing his people to take sin
seriously within the church. He's the God who transforms
lives and calls on his people to be his witnesses to change the
people around them. We see in this passage the
awesome presence and power of the living God at work.
It's a power to judge and to heal.
It's a power that that punishes sin and forgives sin.
The God we meet in the book of Acts, He's not a tame God, a
safe God, a God we could ignore or control.
He's the God who is holy. He's different to us.
He sees what is in our hearts. He hates hypocrisy among his
people. He's a God he hates and we
pretend to be more spiritual than we actually are.
And he's a God. He loves his people enough to
expose hypocrisy and to judge our sin so that we can live as
witnesses for Jesus in this world with honesty and
integrity. That is what God is doing in
judging Ananias and Sapphira. He's loving the church enough to
expose their sin and hypocrisy. And on either side of this
disturbing account, we have the God who heals, the God who gives
generously, the God who transforms his people.
Also, the other people around them can hear and respond to the
good news of Jesus through the life and witness of the early
church. So the central bit of our
reading is, is a passage we can struggle with.
So you want to explore together what does this passage show us
about the presence and power of Godfather, Son and Holy Spirit?
And how should knowing this God change us as individuals and as
a church? So basically there are three
sections we're going to look through.
We're going to major on the middle one.
But the first section, the last bit of chapter 4, God's grace
towards his people makes them generous.
The keywords there are grace and generosity.
God hates hypocrisy in his church.
The keywords there are fear and judgement.
And God transforms lives through the witness of his people.
That's the healings, the signs and wonders we read at the end
of our passage. So first of all, God's grace
towards his people makes them generous.
Again, it's always helpful to remember where we've come from
in this series. Look back at verse 31 for a
moment. The early believers have been
praying together. We looked at that last week in
response to the opposition they were facing from the religious
leaders, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit,
verse 31, and spoke the word of God boldly.
And so in this next section, verses 32 to 37, Luke is wanting
to give us another snapshot of what a spirit filled church
looks like. What does it look like for a
church to be filled with the Holy Spirit?
And according to Luke here, a spirit filled church is a church
marked by love, unity and generosity towards each other.
A spirit filled church is a church marked by love, unity and
generosity. Let me read from verse 32 again.
Luke writes, 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 a work in them
all that there was no needy person among them.
For from time to time, those who owned land or houses sold them,
brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet,
and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
It's an astonishing picture of generosity here.
And actually look at deliberately referencing an Old
Testament passage here when he has this phrase in verse 34.
And there was no needy person among them.
Well, that's a deliberate echo of a bit of the Old Testament,
Deuteronomy 15, verse 4, because in that passage God is calling
on his people, ancient Israel, to commit themselves to
cancelling debts and giving to the poor among them.
And he says, there need be no poor people among you, for in
the land the Lord your God is giving you, he will richly bless
you. So why is Luke referencing the
Old Testament in this bit of the New Testament?
Again, we might think, well sure, it's a different sort of
God, but no, it's the same God. And what Luke wants us to see
here is the early church in Jerusalem is like the new
Israel. It's the restored Israel.
It's Israel as Israel should have been.
It's an Israel transformed by the generosity and grace of God.
So they in turn are generous and gracious to each other.
The gospel message of Jesus, Jesus giving himself for us,
transforms his people into those who give of themselves to each
other. And you look down at verse 33.
The apostles message is about the resurrection of the Lord
Jesus. Jesus is alive, He is lured, but
he's resurrected because first he died first.
He gave himself for us. He gave everything he could to
us to save us. And in return he calls on us to
be generous and give of ourselves to each other.
There's another bit of the New Testament we looked at last term
or a couple of maybe last year at some point in two Corinthians
8. First, name the Apostle Paul
writing, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that
though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor so that you
through his poverty might become rich because of God's generosity
towards the early church. The early church is generous
towards each other. And in case that all sounds very
idealistic or theoretical, then Luke gives us a solid living
example of a church member living that way, a man called
Barnabas. That's verses 36 to 37.
Just read that for us. So Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus,
whom the apostles called Barnabas, which means son of
encouragement, sold a field he owned and brought the money and
put it at the apostles feet. This man, Barnabas, he's a
Jewish believer from the island of Cyprus.
He's going to play a big role in the second-half of Acts.
But here we are introduced to him.
He has sold a field he owns and instead of keeping the money for
himself, which he's fully entitled to do, he gave the
money to the apostles for them and to give to believers who
were in need. So in Barnabas looks shows us a
life transformed by the grace of God.
Barnabas knows God has given him everything in Christ.
And Barnabas then says, well, what I have I want to use to
bless other people in Christ. What does that have to teach us
today? In a sense, the Ananias and
Sapphira bit makes it even more clear.
But here with Barnabas, we learn that what we do with our money
and our possessions as followers of Jesus, it's a spiritual
issue. It's not like, well, that's the
practical stuff. I don't need to think about
Jesus with I'll I'll think about Jesus when I'm singing, when I'm
praying, when I'm doing church things.
But the money that's that's mine.
That's mine. I've worked for that.
I get that. OK, Jesus, you died to to pay
for my sins but but I worked to pay for my house and my car and
this holiday, but actually know what Barnabas demonstrates for
us If someone for him. Jesus was lured over his money
over his possessions over his bank account.
If they had such a thing. This is talking about the
lordship of Jesus. It's calling on God's people if
we've received lavishly from the grace of God in Christ, and
everything we have is a gift from him.
Everything we have is to be used to worship Jesus and bear
witness to Jesus. Barnabas shows us that.
And again, this passage doesn't command or mandate that all
Christians everywhere must sell everything they own and put it
into a common fund. We see that in the case of
Ananias Zephyr. Peter's really clear.
With him, you were free to do what you wanted with your
property. You didn't have to bring the
money to us, but Barnabas shows us someone who willingly wants
to use whatever opportunity he has to bless others who are in
need in God's people. One possible expression of that
we'll look at verse 34 to 35. This kind of struck me this week
that the early church seemed to have a common fund that people
could give towards for the benefit of the needy.
I think we discussed as a family meeting a few months ago.
In the past Ave. Summers has had a hardship fund
where to a separate pot of money that people can give towards,
held separately from our general giving.
And then we then have that money available to help anyone in our
church family who is struggling or in need.
And quite a few years ago we were facing financial challenges
as a church, so we chose to to to finish that fund for that
season. But again, this past makes you
think, is that something we need to explore?
Again, having some sort of a hardship fund, a common fund
that we can give towards and go, God has been good to us.
We want to help other people, even if we don't know who those
people are. We want to support and love each
other. That's just a thought, a
possible application of this. But Barnabas, he's a life
transformed by the grace of God. And we learn in chapter 5,
there's another couple in the church who like the look of the
praise that Barnabas has received.
And Barnabas, his name is Joseph.
He gets a whole new nickname by the apostles, Barnabas, son of
encouragement. And there's a couple in the
church going, I'd quite like that sort of nickname.
I'd quite like people to think that of me.
And that couple are Ananias and Sapphira.
This is the middle section of this passage, the most
challenging and disturbing one, where God judges Ananias and
Sapphira for their sin and hypocrisy.
And the opening verse is a sobering reminder to us.
Acts chapter 5. God hates hypocrisy in his
church. He hates hypocrisy.
Now this is a really challenging passage.
I think just a few things to comment about them.
The first thing is this actually Luke is writing a reliable
history of the early church here.
It would have been easier for Luke just to focus on the
positive stories of the early church in Jerusalem.
The last bit of our reading even has amazing signs and wonders.
Lives being transformed by the power of the apostles in the in
the power of the spirit that look at you said, well, let's
skip over analysts of fire because that's a bit depressing.
But no, he really wants to to write an honest and accurate
history of the church. He's not writing Christian
propaganda. This isn't an airbrushed story.
This is the church, warts and all, it's great strengths and
it's alarming weaknesses, it's triumphs and it's failures, It's
heroes like Barnabas and it's cautionary tales like Ananias
and Sapphira. I think the second thing we need
to see here is this is Satan attacking the early church.
Peter unmasks Satan in verse 3, but this is Satan working very
subtly to destroy the church. In Luke's gospel, we saw Jesus
and Satan clash on multiple times.
People who are demon possessed when when the devil tempts Jesus
in the wilderness, there are these moments where Jesus and
Satan clash and Jesus triumphs. And we might even think, well,
maybe is is Satan is sitting done for him, maybe actually
not. He's not active anymore.
But no, we get this reminder here.
Satan wants to stop what Jesus is doing in his church.
He wants to corrupt the church and destroy its witness, and he
will do that in any way he can. Now, sometimes Satan attacks the
church through persecution and violence, and we saw that in
chapter 4. We're going to see that again in
chapter 5 when the apostles are arrested for preaching about
Jesus. But here with Ananias and
Sapphira, it is a much more subtle strategy.
Satan tries to bring down the church through the hypocrisy of
its members. That's what he's doing with this
couple. Verse 3 Peter says, how is it
that Satan has so filled your heart?
There are spiritual dimensions. This is a spiritual war going on
in this moment. Finally, I think this is meant
to be a picture of the coming judgement of God.
I see throughout the book of Acts the future keeps breaking
into the present. Every time someone is healed,
every time there is a miracle, that is the future new creation
breaking into the here and now through the church.
And that can still happen today around the world and among us.
By nice as if I was like the flip side of that coin.
This is the future judgement of God on hypocrisy and sin,
breaking into the present through this couple.
This is a trailer of the judgement to come, given in
advance to warn us to be ready and to run to Jesus for him to
take the judgement we deserve. So what do we learn about this
couple, Ananias and Sapphira? A few very obvious things.
They're members of the early church in Jerusalem, where we're
told that we need to pause for a minute there because they looked
like everyone else. They look like genuine
believers. They would have been baptized
like the other believers. They would have come to faith.
They're living among the early church members and to see what
struck me as well is their marriage is a strong and united
1. Yet how often do we sort of
aspire that as Christian. If you want a strong united
marriage and we learn in verses one and two that that Hannah
survived. They're A-Team.
They're in this together. Verse 2, with his wife's full
knowledge, Ananias kept back part of the money for himself.
This is a strong marriage. Tragically, from Luke's
perspective, it's one united in hypocrisy, lies and greed.
We learned that they're looking for the same praise Barnabas
received. Again, their actions look really
similar to Barnabas actions on the outside.
Barnabas had some property, so did Anas and Sapphira.
They sold the property. They brought the money to the
apostles feet. They they say this is for the
needs of people in need in the church.
It looked exactly the same, looked identical on the outside.
And yet Peter recognizes their deceit as an attack of Satan on
the church. Verses 3 to 4.
Then Peter said, Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your
heart that you've lied to the Holy Spirit, and I've kept for
yourself some of the money you received from the land?
If Peter makes it clear, no one forced Ananias into this deceit.
He and Sapphira had been free to do whatever they wanted with
their property. Verse 4 Didn't it belong to you
before it was sold, says Peter, And after it was sold, wasn't
the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing
such a thing? You're saying, what have you
done, Ananias? He's done such a foolish and
terrible thing. You have not lied just to human
beings, Peter says, but to God. And as a result God judges
Ananias for his sin. Verse 5.
When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died, and great fear
seized all who heard what had happened.
Then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body and
carried him out and buried him. Great fear seized the church.
We often think the early church would have been such a time of
joy and wonder, seeing God healing, transforming, growing.
This church 3005 thousand more here they suddenly have this
encounter with a God who judges hypocrisy and sin, because that
was at the heart of what Ananias and fire were doing.
It was hypocrisy. There was greed involved, but
the sin behind the sin was hypocrisy.
And that's a that's a big word, plenty of syllables, but a
definition I read the last few weeks has really hit me.
One way of defining hypocrisy, but tell you in this passage is
it's just pretending to be more spiritual than we really are.
That's what Ananias survivor are doing here.
They're pretending to be more spiritual than they really are.
The same root for that word, hypocrisy is, is the word for
play, acting, acting out a part to convince other people, even
God, that you're better than you are.
And that's what Ananias inspire we're doing.
And they believe they could get away with it.
Peter points out the madness of what they're doing, verse 3.
They're lying to the Holy Spirit.
They're lying to God himself. It's a personal rejection of the
God who always speaks the truth and always seeks honesty from
his people. Hypocrisy is a big deal for God.
And I want to say actually, just as we pause for a second, that
is really good news about the character of our God.
We have a God who hates hypocrisy even more than we do.
You look throughout the Bible, you see in the Old Testament,
but tell you the prophets, they are always challenging ancient
Israel. You claim to follow God, but
look at what you're doing. You're exploiting the poor.
You're you're, you're working on the Sabbath.
You're not trusting God. You claim one thing, but you
live a very different way. Jesus in his ministry is so
gentle and compassionate to those caught in sin, to those
who confess their sin, but to those who say, no, we are fine
without you. Jesus, the religious leaders, he
denounces their hypocrisy again and again.
It is self righteousness that the Son of God is angry about
and it's self righteousness that is the heart of what Ananias and
Sapphira are doing here. I want to say this is good news
about God because most of us hate hypocrisy when we see it,
whether that's in the world of politics or celebrity or our
friends and family members see people claiming one thing, but
then we see, hang on, that's not what they say.
Well, why did you do that? They always said they do this,
but they're doing this instead. Of course, hypocrisy is one of
the most damaging accusations people outside the church level
at Christians. That's why the stakes are so
high here. Why does God hate hypocrisy?
Because of who he is, because he's the God who is light and in
him is no darkness at all. He's the God who tells the
truth. He's the God who wants honesty
from his people. And God hates hypocrisy because
of the damage hypocrisy does to the life and witness of his
church. I can think of the number of
times it is so often when I've spoken to people about
Christianity, they say, oh, but Christians, they're all
hypocrites. They, they say one thing, but
they do another. They, they claim to, to, to love
people, but actually they're just as as as greedy and selfish
as the rest of us. Why would I want to be a
Christian? Why would I need to go near a
church? It's just full of hypocrites.
If you've ever felt like that and if you've friends, family
members who feel like that, I want to see the God of Acts 5 is
good news for them because the God of Acts 5 hates hypocrisy
even more more than we do. This is a loving God stepping in
to protect his church from the danger of hypocrisy.
For the good of his church and the sake of our witness, God
steps in and judges this couple as a warning for the rest of the
early church. Instead of hypocrisy, God wants
his people shaped by honesty and humility.
Instead of being hypocritical, claiming to be more spiritually
are he wants to be honest. Actually, I am struggling to
pray right now. I actually I don't love God as
much as I should. Actually I am.
I am putting my trust in my job or my family or my wealth.
I am not always trusting in God. Actually, God wants that level
of honesty. Blessed are the poor in spirit,
says Jesus, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven, not the
people who claim they've arrived.
They're sorted. God wants honesty from his
church and he wants humility, self righteousness says I don't
need God's grace. That person over there might.
I don't. God wants humility, the humility
that says actually I need Jesus, I need forgiveness.
God invites us to be honest to him.
I seem interesting. In the middle of this passage,
this dark passage, Peter the apostle invites Sapphira to be
honest with him. Look at verse 7, we're told
after the death of Ananias, his wife Sapphira comes looking for
him. She doesn't know what has
happened yet and Peter asked her a question.
Verse 8 tell me Sapphira, is this the price you and an
Ananias got for the land I want to see this is the grace of God
being offered to Sapphira. Just tell the truth Sapphira.
You don't have to face the same fate as your husband.
Yeah, I've been in that together.
But I if I was given an opportunity here to repent, to
acknowledge what they've done. But she chooses the path of lies
and hypocrisy. And she too is struck down by
God and buried alongside her husband.
And verse 11 comes the summary. Great fear sees the whole church
and all who heard about these events.
This is like a moment in the life of the church that no one
would forget. And how do we respond to this
astonishing story? A few things stand out for us.
We've already said it, but we need to be honest with the
living God. We need to be careful not to
pretend to be more spiritual than we are.
I see for any of us who in any teaching capacity, that is a
huge challenge for us. And I include that we'll say
parents hunger leaders. The danger is we will present as
more spiritual than we are, but we cannot lie to the Holy
Spirit. It is foolish to even try, and
we should not lie to God's people for their precious to
Him. The great tragedy of Ananias as
fire is they refuse to confess their sin, their needs of God's
grace. We need to be honest with the
living God and we need to come to Jesus in repentance and
faith. There's a big danger actually
with any passage like this may be a challenging 1.
The the the message of it could be well, make sure you're not
like Ananias and Sapphira sort it out.
You know, be better than that. Make sure you don't struggle
with hypocrisy. Otherwise God's going to strike
you dead. I don't believe that's why Luke
records this for us. He records this for us to say,
Christian, don't think you can save yourself.
I don't think you can play act your way into God's family.
You need the grace of God. You need the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus in your place so you can be welcomed by
a holy God. Our only hope, Ananias and
Sapphira's only hope was Jesus life, death and resurrection.
So come to Jesus, Luke says, for the forgiveness and new life.
He alone can give us this fear, the impact he's having us to go.
I'm not going to mess around with the living God.
I want to be honest with him and honest with his people, honest
about my need, honest about my dependence on Him.
I don't want to pretend to be someone I'm not.
I want to be honest and come to Jesus because Jesus welcomes me,
warts and all. It was a children's song we used
to sing a few years ago an Ave. Jesus died so I don't have to
hide anymore. I love that line.
Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.
He's not ashamed by anything you've done.
What he wants is honesty, confession.
Come to him, humble yourself and say, Lord, here I am.
You know the mess I am in, Lord, would you forgive me because of
your life, death and resurrection?
That's if you like the individual application.
I think corporately we just need to take sin seriously in the
church. And I said fire.
There are members of the early church.
They looked the part, claimed to trust in Jesus, but they had let
hypocrisy and greed sneak in. And God steps in to stop that
because the holiness, the the Christlikeness of the church
matters to God and it should matter to us.
God steps in here through the leadership of Peter and the
other apostles to expose hypocrisy, confront sin, and
protect the church. And it's for those reasons that
Christians throughout history, including Ave. today practice
what is called church discipline participant is is that is that
thing we do for one another. And it happens most of the time
informally in a very natural way, where we speak the truth in
love to each other. Where we seek to .1 another to
Jesus and away from the world. Where, where we seek to listen
to and live out the word of God together on Sunday mornings in
our home groups. In other times when we see a
friend, a brother or sister in Christ making wrong decisions
and we love them enough to say something about it, we say it
humbly. We don't say it arrogantly, but
we say something about it because we know God takes in
seriously and so do we. I want to say that that
category, church discipline, it happens all the time, week on
week at Ave. informally and formally.
We have had to practice church discipline on a number of
occasions over the years where where a church member has just
been unrepentantly defying what God says in his Word.
The elders have met with them. We've tried to plead with them
overtime. Eventually we'll bring it to the
whole church. We pray for them.
And then sometimes tragically, we have had to remove people
from membership. Why?
Because sin matters. Because hypocrisy tarnishes the
witness of God's church. Because actually to love one
another, we need to challenge when we are getting it wrong.
I have had people challenge me over the years and I have needed
it. I have wanted to be more like
what the world wants. And I can think of actually a
teenage friend of mine who just said, Richard, you watch TV and
just go with what it says. I was like 1516.
I remember those words. I'm so grateful my friend had
the courage, and I love to say that to me.
We need to do that week on week. This is why we need each other.
Church discipline should be happening all the time in our
church. Informally, it happens sometimes
formally when the informal hasn't worked.
I think that is a principle we get from passages like Acts 5.
It's about taking sin seriously. It's about the glory of God,
about loving one another as God's people, and about
protecting the witness of the church.
This is the presence and power of God at work in the early
church to judge sin. The final little section of our
reading, very briefly is, if you like, the flip side.
We see the power and presence of God to heal and transform lives.
Great fear seizes the church, but actually we learn verse 12,
they are out serving as witnesses to Jesus in Jerusalem.
God is answering the prayer they pray back in verse 30 of chapter
4 when they pray Father, stretch out your hand to heal and
perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy
servant Jesus. That is precisely what God does
in verses 12 to 17, verse 12, the apostles before many signs
and wonders among the people and all the believers used to meet
together in Solomon's colonnade. This place in the temple, a
large gathering place where Peter had preached when he'd
healed the lame man in chapter 3.
And now they're proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom through
word and through deed. This early church is not being
known for its hypocrisy. It is being known for the power
of God at work through them. And there are unique moments in
this passage. In the original Greek and verse
12, we learn it's through the hands of the apostles.
Many signs and wonders are taking place, it seems, at least
at this point. In the early church, the signs
and wonders are restricted to the apostles.
Not every believer is performing these signs and wonders.
They're a continuation of the healing ministry of Jesus
because actually it's Jesus himself healing through the
apostles. And we get these astonishing
moments. Verse 15.
Even Peter's shadow had the power to heal the sick.
That is astonishing, and I don't actually know many churches
today, whatever they think about signs and wonders, who claim
that shadows are healing the sick.
This seems to be a moment of astonishing power of God in
response to him working through his church.
We get a bit later in Acts where a handkerchief used by Paul
heals people. These these astonishing moments,
but this is the transforming power of God at work through his
people and the early church is growing.
It's growing beyond the binds of Jerusalem.
Verse 16, crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem.
Actually, this is Jesus command to be witnesses outside of
Jerusalem. It is happening through the
power and presence of the living God at work in his church.
And we'll pick up the next bits of this account in Acts 5 next
week. But our God transforms lives.
He exposes sin, and He brings healing.
Ananias and Sapphira missed out on the healing, the forgiveness
that would be theirs by hiding their sin and pretending they
were more spiritual than they are.
The living Godfather, Son and Spirit would not accept that He
wants honesty and humility from his people.
So as we leave this bit of Acts this week, what do we learn
about the God who is present and powerful among his people?
But we've seen He's the God who gives generously so that we
learn generosity. He's the God who judges sin so
we take sin seriously. He's the God who transforms,
lives as we live for him in this world.
He's a God who is holy. He is different to us.
He sees what's in our hearts. He hates hypocrisy even more
than we do. But if we are honest with him,
he's a God who heals, who transforms His people into those
who bear witness for him in this world.
This is not a tame or safe God we encounter in the book of
Acts, and it's not a tame or safe God we worship and trust in
as a church family here at Ave. But whenever I come across
passages like this, we're reminded of the awesomeness that
even the frightening power of the Lord.
I often go back to the Narnia stories that I used to read as a
kid, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
In that story you may know it for human children are
transported to the magical land of Narnia.
In that land, animals can talk. A cruel witch rules over the
land. And Narnia's only hope is the
return of the great lion Aslan to save them all.
Billy's not here right now, but she just loved these Narnia
stories. There are maps in her hand drawn
of Narnia around our house. She's to try and dig through
snow to get into Narnia. When it snowed as a girl, I can
say, oh, like, she's not here. But it's an astonishing story.
And the four children, Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy, are told
about this Aslan by Mr. and Mrs. Beaver.
Let me pick up the story at this point.
Mr. Beaver, says Aslan, he's the king.
He's the Lord of the whole wood, the son of the great emperor.
Beyond the sea he'll settle the White Queen.
All right. Aslan is a lion.
The lion, the great lion. When the children hear it's a
lion, well, they're frightened. They're scared.
One of them says, well, well, he's a lion.
Is he quite safe? I should feel rather nervous
about meeting a lion. It's great 1940s English.
And the Beavers reply, safe. Of course he isn't safe, but
he's good. He's the king, I tell you.
The God we worship, the God of Acts 5, is not safe, but he is
good. He alone is strong enough to set
us free from sin and death and the devil.
He alone is strong enough to transform our hearts, to show us
what it means to live genuinely before him, not hypocritically.
He alone is our only hope because He's good and He is our
King. The early church saw that and
worshipped Him. We see that through His Word, by
His Spirit, and we worship Him. Today.
His presence and power is at work among us.
Let's ask Him to keep us trusting in Him and worshipping
Him for His goodness and His good purposes for us as a
church. Let me pray for us.
Let's, let's pray. Father God, this is a sobering
and challenging passage. Father, you know each one of us
how often we have, maybe even in the recent days, pretended to be
more spiritual than we are. We've been frightened of being
honest with you and with other people about our real fears or
struggles or doubts. Lord, we ask that through this
true story of what you did in Ananias and Sapphira's case,
would you bring us to our senses?
Would you keep us from trying to lie to the Holy Spirit about who
we really are, and instead remind us that we can be
completely honest with You? Not because we're good, but
because you're good? Not because we deserve
forgiveness, because you offer forgiveness.
Because Jesus lived the life and died the death and rose again to
reconcile us to you? Would we rest in His saving
grace? Would we be honest in the light
of his saving grace? And Father, would we love each
other enough to keep pointing one another to you day in, day
out? Until that time we see you, the
glorious King, face to face, and we ask that in Jesus name and
for his glory among us, Amen.