SPEAKER_00: We do study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.
SPEAKER_00: As always, if you'd like a paper copy, uh, would you just lift up your hand?
SPEAKER_00: Someone will bring one along to you.
SPEAKER_00: If this is your first time here, or maybe you've been here a few times, but you don't have a Bible at home, this is our gift to you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh take it home.
SPEAKER_00: May it be a blessing to you.
SPEAKER_00: We also have a robust group of folks who worship with us regularly online.
SPEAKER_00: And last week we had folks from uh Quezon City, Philip uh Philippines, Sydney, Australia, Memphis, Tennessee, and Santa Rosa, California.
SPEAKER_00: Any California folks here in the room?
SPEAKER_00: Just one.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we got two.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's good.
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great place.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this year we've been immersing ourselves in the story of the remarkable growth of the early church in our study of the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: And to situate us back into the flow of the narrative, since we've been out of it for a couple of weeks, Jesus has risen from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: He's ascended to the Father, and his spirit has been poured out lavishly on his people.
SPEAKER_00: And the glory of God is unmistakably broken in to these followers of Jesus who are spiritually set ablaze with the love of Jesus and love for one another.
SPEAKER_00: And they are empowered, they are given the power of the Spirit to continue the mission of Jesus right there in the holy city of Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll continue to read more about that as we go through Acts.
SPEAKER_00: At first there were 120 believers, then 3,000 were added after Peter began his preaching ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And then in chapter 4, it tells us 5,000 men had come to faith through the preaching of the apostles, which likely meant 10 to 15, maybe even 20,000 believers in Jerusalem, when you include women and children.
SPEAKER_00: So there's the context for us.
SPEAKER_00: And Luke, the doctor and the historian, he carefully documents this explosive growth of the church, both numerically, but also transformational growth spiritually, as they boldly preached Jesus, and at the same time, sacrificially, costly, they gave themselves to one another to meet needs there in the city, both in word and in deed.
SPEAKER_00: Spiritual renewal, revival was taking place in Jerusalem in those weeks and months after the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: And Luke summarizes that blessing in that period of the life of the church, saying, Great grace fell upon them.
SPEAKER_00: What a summary.
SPEAKER_00: Great grace fell upon this church.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're familiar with the Bible, for a moment, think about what often happens after a great move of God among his people.
SPEAKER_00: Opposition.
SPEAKER_00: Resistance.
SPEAKER_00: Let's make it personal.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you've experienced in your life a reorientation towards God and His Word, and you've experienced that kind of opposition, that kind of resistance that so often comes after a great move of God, from the Word, from the world rather, from the flesh, from the devil.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever the darkness is pierced, whenever the darkness of our world is pierced, we should expect resistance and opposition.
SPEAKER_00: Turn with me, if you would, to Acts chapter 4, verse 32.
SPEAKER_00: Our focus today is going to be chapter five, but we're going to start at chapter four, verse 32, just to give us some context.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 4, verse 32.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember in our previous study before Palm Sunday, we saw Peter and John arrested, there's the opposition externally, for preaching the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that external opposition unified the church and their faith and their trust in Jesus as they fell on their knees and prayed for fresh boldness to keep on preaching Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't be stopped.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes resistance doesn't just come from without, it comes from within.
SPEAKER_00: Osgenis would say it's not the wolves at the door, but termites in the floor.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to see a little bit of that today before I dive in.
SPEAKER_00: Would you join me in prayer?
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come to you with our Bibles open, and we do say you are worthy to be praised in our every thought and deed.
SPEAKER_00: And with that disposition of heart, open your word to us and open us to your word.
SPEAKER_00: May your spirit convict and comfort and point us to our only hope in life and death.
SPEAKER_00: Your son Jesus Christ, in whose name we all said.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, chapter 4, verse 32, to give us a little context.
SPEAKER_00: Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul.
SPEAKER_00: And no one said that any of these things that belonged to him was his own.
SPEAKER_00: They had everything in common.
SPEAKER_00: Now let's just remember here, before Jesus, most of these folks didn't have anything in common, different trades, different social classes, different, different ethnic backgrounds, different languages.
SPEAKER_00: But here they are unified in their fear of the Lord, their love of the Lord, and unified in preaching the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: 33.
SPEAKER_00: And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And great grace was upon them all.
SPEAKER_00: 34.
SPEAKER_00: And it was distributed to each who any who had need, 36.
SPEAKER_00: Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field and a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostle's feet.
SPEAKER_00: And Luke, as he so often does, he zooms in on this particular kind of the paragon, this Barnabas character, the son of encouragement, which by the way is a nickname.
SPEAKER_00: What a great nickname.
SPEAKER_00: Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Encouragement.
SPEAKER_00: You know, so-and-so.
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember his name.
SPEAKER_00: Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Encouragement, that guy.
SPEAKER_00: And Luke zooms in on him.
SPEAKER_00: We're actually going to see Barnabas uh 20 more times, or more than 20 more times, uh, throughout the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: He zooms in on here to say this is the kind of character that we're seeing all throughout the church.
SPEAKER_00: And here was an exemplary example.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 5, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: There's a contrast.
SPEAKER_00: But, or however, a man named Ananias with his wife Sapphira sold a piece of property, and with his wife's knowledge, he kept back for himself some of the proceeds, and brought only a part of it, and laid it at the apostles' feet, just like Barnabas, except just a little bit different.
SPEAKER_00: You might highlight the word or the two words kept back.
SPEAKER_00: That could be translated misappropriated, embezzled.
SPEAKER_00: Verse three.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: Not just to the church, but to God the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And to keep back, to embezzle, to misappropriate for yourself part of the proceeds of the land.
SPEAKER_00: While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?
SPEAKER_00: It was you could do whatever you wanted with that land.
SPEAKER_00: And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?
SPEAKER_00: You could have kept a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't a big deal.
SPEAKER_00: Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart?
SPEAKER_00: You have not lied to man but to God.
SPEAKER_00: Look there at verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: What a stunning question.
SPEAKER_00: And remember the context here.
SPEAKER_00: Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart?
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the Holy Spirit had filled the heart of the church, all these believers at Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: And here in this kind of dark counterfeit, Satan had worked his way in because of the pride, the deceit of Ananias and Sapphira.
SPEAKER_00: And although Satan had influence, Ananias was still responsible, because there at the end of verse 4, Peter asked the question Why is it that you have contrived this deed?
SPEAKER_00: Cooperated with the evil one.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last.
SPEAKER_00: And great fear came upon all who heard of it.
SPEAKER_00: The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him.
SPEAKER_00: After an interval of about three hours, his wife came in, not knowing what had happened.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter said to her, Tell me whether you sold the land for so much, and she said, Yes, for so much.
SPEAKER_00: The first yada yada yada in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9, but Peter said to her, grieved, I assume, how is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.
SPEAKER_00: And immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last.
SPEAKER_00: When the young man came in, they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband.
SPEAKER_00: So there's some dignity there.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 11 And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I bet it did.
SPEAKER_00: The word whole church are the two words there, whole church, at the end of verse 11, is the first time the word ecclesia in Greek is used.
SPEAKER_00: The name for the church, and we're going to see that more than 20 times throughout the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting that the church is given that name, Ecclesia, the assembly, right there, when we see the holiness of God demonstrated in such a vivid and even a tragic way in this story.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd like to invite the ushers to come down as we take our offering here this morning.
SPEAKER_00: If this is your first time, that was a joke.
SPEAKER_00: That was a joke.
SPEAKER_00: Low-hanging fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Now let's begin by acknowledging that this text is perplexing, to say the least.
SPEAKER_00: Unsettling on the surface level reading.
SPEAKER_00: And I actually read this week that over 35 out of the over 3,500 published sermons of Charles Spurgeon, not one is about this text.
SPEAKER_00: How did he get out of that?
SPEAKER_00: We're going to explore some of the difficult realities of this account because there is something for us to learn here.
SPEAKER_00: But I do think it's worth occasionally resetting our expectations when we open up God's Word, when we read how God has revealed Himself to us in a text.
SPEAKER_00: The God who created the heavens and the earth out of nothing, who fashioned the cosmos out of nothing, some of which we saw such beautiful images from Artemis II this week.
SPEAKER_00: The God who so intricately created all of the infinite complexities of the human cell.
SPEAKER_00: The God who can silence a storm with a word.
SPEAKER_00: That kind of God should confound us at times, should unsettle us.
SPEAKER_00: The alternative is a God that I understand, a God that's limited to a set of boundaries that I'm comfortable with, and that God has no power to save.
SPEAKER_00: God has no comfort to give, no forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: There are some things about God we cannot fully understand this side of eternity and maybe even beyond that.
SPEAKER_00: However, that doesn't mean that we are left in the dark.
SPEAKER_00: When we see God as he reveals himself to us in the scriptures, we should pay attention.
SPEAKER_00: And one thing this text demonstrates to us is that we should take seriously the holiness of God, the purity of God.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the story when the disciples were out on the boat and the storm is raging and Jesus is sleeping, they go and in terror, they try to wake him up.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, get up, get up, because they were afraid of what the storm would do to them or to their boat.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus gets up and simply says, Hush.
SPEAKER_00: Peace be still, and the weather bends to his will.
SPEAKER_00: The response of the disciples wasn't, wow, did you see that?
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't high fives all around.
SPEAKER_00: No, the response was great fear fell on them.
SPEAKER_00: Who is this?
SPEAKER_00: That even the winds and the waves obey him.
SPEAKER_00: His otherness, they experienced it face to face, his holiness, his indescribable power, his inscrutable purity.
unknown: R.
SPEAKER_00: C.
SPEAKER_00: Spro would call the holiness of God transcendent separateness.
SPEAKER_00: Great grace and great fear.
SPEAKER_00: We read both of these things in the text, and they go hand in hand in the life of a believer, proper fear of God, and receiving the grace of a great God.
SPEAKER_00: We see it in our text, and we'll continue to witness this as we read throughout Acts.
SPEAKER_00: And it seems counterintuitive.
SPEAKER_00: Great grace, though, from the hand of a loving Father who will stop at nothing to bring his children back.
SPEAKER_00: Great fear, not in terror, that's not the kind of fear that I'm talking about here, but holy reverence for his power, his word, his authority, his ways that are for our good.
SPEAKER_00: It's the only kind of fear that actually brings peace.
SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of fear that drives all other fears away.
SPEAKER_00: So, what do we learn about God and even our need in a text like this?
SPEAKER_00: I think it's worth considering, at least for a moment, the depth of transformation.
SPEAKER_00: Let's get the context here: transformation of spiritual growth in the life of these believers.
SPEAKER_00: So, number one, I think we see here in our text the fruit of great grace.
SPEAKER_00: The fruit of great grace.
SPEAKER_00: Consider the apostles themselves, the leaders of this growing community.
SPEAKER_00: Just a few weeks or months earlier, we don't know the exact timeline, but they had scattered in fear as Jesus was in chains and being led to his crucifixion.
SPEAKER_00: Peter explicitly denies his Lord Jesus, but now restored and sent out by the risen Jesus, they are without reservation, preaching that there is salvation in no other name but the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And this made the religious establishment on two levels seeth in anger.
SPEAKER_00: Theologically, they thought this was just absolute blasphemy, especially the Sadducees.
SPEAKER_00: And then also jealousy threatened their power, and we're going to read more about that next week with Pastor Matt.
SPEAKER_00: If we were able to step into the first century at the time of this great move of God in the early church, we would notice just how costly following Jesus was there in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: We've already seen the opposition from the Jewish religious council.
SPEAKER_00: Later we'll see opposition from the Romans.
SPEAKER_00: Many believers would be ostracized from their families.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus told us that.
SPEAKER_00: Their work would be affected, their trade.
SPEAKER_00: There wasn't a welfare state.
SPEAKER_00: Their very lives were at stake.
SPEAKER_00: Many would lose their heads.
SPEAKER_00: Yet great grace had fallen on them.
SPEAKER_00: Changed everything.
SPEAKER_00: Their value systems changed.
SPEAKER_00: They found in Jesus a treasure that put all other treasures in their proper place.
SPEAKER_00: Look with me at uh 4, chapter 4, verse 34.
SPEAKER_00: If you would, there's there was no needy person among them.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Different ethnic backgrounds, different families.
SPEAKER_00: Because the ties of grace ran deeper than the ties of blood.
SPEAKER_00: The fruit of God's grace is actually freedom, freedom from love of money and possessions.
SPEAKER_00: Now, do we all need to go home and sell everything that we have?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: They were in survival mode.
SPEAKER_00: 120 to maybe 20,000.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot going on, a lot of needs that needed to be met.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't a precise template for us to follow in every place and time, but what it does demonstrate is that radical generosity is a fruit, an evidence of great grace.
SPEAKER_00: Unmerited favor.
SPEAKER_00: That's what grace is.
SPEAKER_00: Unmerited favor poured out on rebels who didn't deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: Brian Chapel would say, Grace overwhelms us with God's love.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, our heart resonates with the desires of God.
SPEAKER_00: His purposes become our own.
SPEAKER_00: Our soul delights in his service as love for him and thanksgiving for his mercy make us long to honor him.
SPEAKER_00: True grace produces joy and promotes godliness.
SPEAKER_00: And we can see that all over the pages of our text today.
SPEAKER_00: Freedom was abounding as great grace fell upon them from possessions, freedom from the fear of external opposition.
SPEAKER_00: After they were imprisoned, the people prayed that no, we would continue preaching the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Fear from external oppositions, and also freedom to freedom to serve one another with costly generosity.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the context of this great move of God.
SPEAKER_00: And right smack dab in the middle is this internal opposition that rears its ugly head.
SPEAKER_00: Threatening the unity, the vitality of this young Jerusalem church.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we see here, number two, the dangers of great deception.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look together again at chapter 5, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: But a man named Ananias with his wife Sapphira sold a piece of property, and with his wife's knowledge, so they conspired together, he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostle's feet.
SPEAKER_00: Luke is giving us a clear contrast between the heart disposition of Ananias and Sapphira and the many in the church who were giving so sacrificially, particularly Barnabas, son of encouragement.
SPEAKER_00: And the spiritual danger that Luke is shining a bright light on is not that Ananias didn't give all the proceeds, or that they could have even given more.
SPEAKER_00: The issue was never the money, the issue was the lie.
SPEAKER_00: It was the deception.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't fundamentally a matter of generosity, it was a matter of dishonesty.
SPEAKER_00: And that word, as I said before in verse 2 and 3, that we uh translate kept back, it's only used one other time in the New Testament in Titus, and it means to pilfer, to steal.
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, misappropriate, embezzle.
SPEAKER_00: And that word is actually used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember the story of Joshua, the people of God uh have this conquest, and Achan, there's a man named Achan who actually steals back some of the plunder for himself.
SPEAKER_00: The same word is used there.
SPEAKER_00: But what Ananias and Sapphira did was even a step further than Achan.
SPEAKER_00: They presented the money as if they had given everything.
SPEAKER_00: They had wanted to be seen as more generous than they actually were, play acting, pious pretending.
SPEAKER_00: Carson, it's not on the screen here.
SPEAKER_00: He would say, D.A.
SPEAKER_00: Carson would say the core offense was not the size of their contribution, but their conspiracy to mislead.
SPEAKER_00: And it crept into this church that was facing such spiritual growth.
SPEAKER_00: It may be that greed was a part of their motivations.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know all their motivations, but love of money.
SPEAKER_00: But the underlying motive seemed to be love for glory, love for acclaim.
SPEAKER_00: Pride was the taproot of the sin here.
SPEAKER_00: Elevating the appearance of godliness over actual godliness.
SPEAKER_00: And listen, the human heart is so uh vulnerable to this kind of temptation.
SPEAKER_00: I am.
SPEAKER_00: You are.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you some examples of pious pretending in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus talking about the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing wrong with that, but that they may be seen by others.
SPEAKER_00: Or the scribes in Luke 20 love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the Synagogues and the places of honor at feasts.
SPEAKER_00: Where in the Old Testament, the people of God, their hearts were far from him, but they brought him sacrifices, and God says, I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: Pious pretending is one of the core issues in the human heart.
SPEAKER_00: Tony Ranke would say, at root, sin is not wrongdoing, it's wrong adoring.
SPEAKER_00: They loved to be seen.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is riveting our hearts on any treasure or security that replaces the treasure and security we can only find in God.
SPEAKER_00: This kind of deception can weave its way into all of our lives in a million different expressions.
SPEAKER_00: And listen, if you're flirting with the very explicit sin here of lying or stealing, especially about money, I implore you to turn away from that darkness and walk in light.
SPEAKER_00: There is freedom and grace available even for that.
SPEAKER_00: But probably more often than not, our attempts at deception and self-glory show up as little drifts away from integrity, little drifts away from the fear of the Lord, living as if God doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: That's the opposite of the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Small decisions in our lives, living one way in the light and living a drastically different way in the dark.
SPEAKER_00: Or let's take it, get more personal, taking credit for work that isn't your own.
SPEAKER_00: Or letting people believe it was your own.
SPEAKER_00: Rounding up or down a little bit here and there on our taxes or other financial forms, telling your friends, family, spouse, home group, I'm fine when you're not.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not just talking about processing, there are healthy boundaries.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about when it could cost something.
SPEAKER_00: The church should be a place of unusual, refreshing honesty.
SPEAKER_00: And we're not gonna wallow in the mud, but we're not gonna be afraid of it either.
SPEAKER_00: This church, our church, Church of Jesus, should be a place of honesty.
SPEAKER_00: And that kind of deception, living with that kind of deception is exhausting.
SPEAKER_00: It damages relationships and families and churches and cities.
SPEAKER_00: It's a kind of slavery for which there is freedom.
SPEAKER_00: Freedom for those who want to lay down the heavy burden of dishonesty and take on the yoke of Jesus whose burden is light.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you hear that this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Eugene Peterson.
SPEAKER_00: He says, No is a freedom word.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to do what either my glands or my culture tell me to do.
SPEAKER_00: The judicious, well-placed no frees us from many a blind alley, many a rough detour, frees us from debilitating distractions and seductive sacrilege.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we have here in our text.
SPEAKER_00: The art of saying no sets us free to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Turning to Jesus is freedom.
SPEAKER_00: There is freedom in grace.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is like, it is like an antiseptic.
SPEAKER_00: It can sting at the first, but it leads to healing.
SPEAKER_00: I think of the prayer from David in Psalm 86, perhaps the king of cover-ups and deception.
SPEAKER_00: King David says, Teach me your way, O Lord, that I might walk in your truth.
SPEAKER_00: Unite my heart to fear your name.
SPEAKER_00: And there, that in that last line, unite my heart.
SPEAKER_00: That means at some times in his life, his heart is fractured.
SPEAKER_00: He's living one way over here and over here another way.
SPEAKER_00: And he's praying.
SPEAKER_00: This is such a beautiful prayer, unite my heart to fear your name.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that disposition?
SPEAKER_00: So we read an account like this, and even with an understanding of the motivations and some of the motivations, it's natural, I think, for us to wonder why is this judgment so swift and severe in this case?
SPEAKER_00: In this tragic case.
SPEAKER_00: And I might first suggest that we turn the question around and with humility and gratitude ask, not why was this judgment so severe, but why has the Lord been so patient and merciful to me?
SPEAKER_00: A rebel sinner who has many times turned away from the Lord and his ways.
SPEAKER_00: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: The wages of sin is death.
SPEAKER_00: Sin, when we talk about it, it's a turning away from God in its essence.
SPEAKER_00: And whenever we willfully turn away from Him, in all our mixed motivations, we are essentially saying, God, you do not matter.
SPEAKER_00: To understand the righteous judgment that we read about in our text, it's helpful to remember where we are in the story of this early church.
SPEAKER_00: These believers had unity and vitality, a growing spiritual maturity.
SPEAKER_00: Before the gospel is even taken outside the walls of Jerusalem, the evil one has worked his way in through the pride and deceit of Ananias and Sapphira.
SPEAKER_00: We see that again in verse 3 of chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: Satan was at work, but Ananias and Sapphira were also willing collaborators.
SPEAKER_00: And at this most vulnerable stage, this pivotal moment, the Lord was protecting this church from the poison of deception that can spread, from the poison of hypocrisy and pride.
SPEAKER_00: It could have dishonored this church, dishonored the name of Jesus at this most vulnerable time.
SPEAKER_00: And I know, and I imagine I know some of you who've experienced this kind of willful deception in the life of your family, or even from some churches, or within yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And the damage that unrepentant hypocrisy and duplicity brings is not the way it's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00: And it's worth grieving.
SPEAKER_00: This was a pivotal time in the history of God's redemptive work through his people.
SPEAKER_00: But we shouldn't see this act of swift judgment as a pattern.
SPEAKER_00: Let me be clear about that.
SPEAKER_00: We don't see this kind of swift judgment throughout the rest of the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: However, we also, I don't think, should soften the edge of what we're learning here in this text.
SPEAKER_00: We are called to take the holiness of God seriously, to take our own sin seriously, to live before his face, to live in the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The story this morning might be a wake-up call of grace.
SPEAKER_00: For those who have drifted from the God who loves you, who gave himself for you, who offers a way of living in the light of his forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to live in that kind of slavery, that kind of exhaustion anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Not perfection, but a trajectory of a faithful life, newness of life.
SPEAKER_00: We need not fear being struck down this morning, but we need to be watchful about the dangers of spiritual drift.
SPEAKER_00: And all the small ways that can tempt you to say, oh, I'll turn that part of my life around tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow is the evil one's favorite word.
SPEAKER_00: No, today.
SPEAKER_00: Today is the day for repentance, forgiveness, and freedom in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In the case of Ananias and Sapphira, like Adam and Eve, instead of listening to their heavenly father, they listened to the father of lies.
SPEAKER_00: And that lie threatened to fracture this young church.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what sin does, that's what hypocrisy does.
SPEAKER_00: It fractures us, it diminishes our humanity, it breaks relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Paul trips at it this way in a book I would commend, Lost in the Middle.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture never allows us to believe in a neutral, undirected, or unmotivated humanity.
SPEAKER_00: It requires us to admit that behind everything we do or say, we are pursuing something, some hope or dream or thing that we refuse to live without.
SPEAKER_00: There are things we value so much that we will willingly sacrifice other good things to get them.
SPEAKER_00: We will debase our humanity in order to deify the creation.
SPEAKER_00: The very things we seek to possess begin to possess us.
SPEAKER_00: We live for the shadow glories and forget the only glory that's worth living.
SPEAKER_00: The response of the people to this remarkable demonstration of God's holiness was great fear.
SPEAKER_00: We see that twice there in verse 5 and 11.
SPEAKER_00: An appropriate response, reverence and awe.
SPEAKER_00: Number three, I think we see the holiness of a great God in our text.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever we come across the judgment of God in the scriptures, we need to be careful not to gloss over it.
SPEAKER_00: If we flatten God's holiness, if we domesticate it, we cannot grasp the weight of what happened on the cross of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: To fear God appropriately is fundamental to understanding who He is, who we are, and what He has done for us through Christ on His cross, where His holiness, His justice, His love, and mercy meet.
SPEAKER_00: God's people throughout history have often strayed from a proper fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We're often a God forgetful people, aren't we?
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 6.24 from the Shema, which we read earlier as we were dedicating Violet.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes to fear the Lord our God for our good always, that he might preserve us alive as we are this day.
SPEAKER_00: Or Proverbs 19, 23, the fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: The fear of God is an orientation of humility.
SPEAKER_00: It's orbiting our life around him and his ways.
SPEAKER_00: Some of the great prophets of the Old Testament, like Isaiah and Ezekiel, when they came into the presence of the holiness of God, they couldn't help but be undone.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah would say, I'm unclean.
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel falls face down.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples in the New Testament in the boat, they see Jesus bend the weather to his will and they say, Who is this?
SPEAKER_00: They came face to face with the holiness of God in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And the kind of fear that we're talking about is not the kind of fear that leads us to constant terror and panic for those in Christ, but it's the kind of fear that should draw us to him.
SPEAKER_00: The kind of fear that knows the kind of power that he has, the only power to save, to set free, to forgive.
SPEAKER_00: And as we continue to study the early church, it grows and flourishes.
SPEAKER_00: More than ever believers were at it.
SPEAKER_00: Where the Spirit brings renewal, whenever the Spirit brings that kind of spiritual growth, it almost always exposes sin and unholy patterns, but it also brings hearts to repentance and faith, to freedom.
unknown: R.
SPEAKER_00: C.
SPEAKER_00: Sproull says, holiness is scary.
SPEAKER_00: The holiness of God is scary, but oh, that all of us would understand the grace, mercy, and compassion that is borne by that same man of holiness who says to people whom he makes uncomfortable sometimes, fear not.
SPEAKER_00: Peace be with you.
SPEAKER_00: God is transcendently separate.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what makes the gospel of Jesus Christ so remarkable, such an extraordinary truth claim.
SPEAKER_00: Our rebellion, God forgetfulness, does not make him recoil from us, but it makes him run towards us.
SPEAKER_00: That's the claim of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel tells us that there is a holy God.
SPEAKER_00: He will not tolerate sin.
SPEAKER_00: There's a settled opposition to it because of what it has done to his creation and to his people.
SPEAKER_00: But he has made a way.
SPEAKER_00: He has not left us in our rebellion, but has come after us to call us to life in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Do you believe that?
SPEAKER_00: Say amen, church.
SPEAKER_00: That's the gospel the early church preached.
SPEAKER_00: That's the gospel we preach here and will continue to preach until he comes home, brings us home.
SPEAKER_00: A holy God has made a way to bring sinners into fellowship, not just fellowship, but to become children of God.
SPEAKER_00: The writer of Hebrews tells us that we can come boldly to the throne of grace with confidence because of the cross of Christ, with reverence and awe, not cowering, not pretending, but with empty hands ready to receive his grace and his mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Tim Keller once said, The only person who dares wake up a king at 3 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: is a child.
SPEAKER_00: And you and I have that kind of access because of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the cross of Jesus has done for me and you.
SPEAKER_00: It's what the apostles preached.
SPEAKER_00: It's the message that united this young church.
SPEAKER_00: In just a moment, we're going to come to the table together.
SPEAKER_00: And we come to the table with holy reverence for what the bread and the cup represent for us.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy One, Jesus Christ, laid down his life to take upon himself the judgment for my sin and for yours, so that we might stand forgiven, so that we can come confidently into the throne room of a holy God.
SPEAKER_00: We come to the table with both things we've seen in our text this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Great fear and great grace.
SPEAKER_00: Wonder at His holiness and gratitude for His grace for us.
SPEAKER_00: They go together.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that?
SPEAKER_00: The grace of God is sweeter, I think, the more and more we understand just how holy our Lord is.
SPEAKER_00: D.A.
SPEAKER_00: Carson said, if you want to see what judgment looks like, go to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to see what love looks like, go to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know where you are in your walk with the Lord, but there's no reason for anyone to wonder whether this great grace is for you.
SPEAKER_00: It is.
SPEAKER_00: For all who would call upon the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you've drifted, you've been caught up in the lies of the evil one or grown cold to the holiness of our Creator God.
SPEAKER_00: This grace is for all who recognize their needs, their need and call on his name.
SPEAKER_00: And our Lord is eager, is eager to run after you and to welcome you into the fellowship of the forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: We confess our sins.
SPEAKER_00: He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Leave with that kind of joy, that kind of truth on your mind today as we prepare to come to the table.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to offer us just a few moments of quiet reflection.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to post the prayer of David we read earlier from Psalm 86 up on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps this prayer will give words to what might be resonating in your own heart and mind this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pause together.
SPEAKER_00: And your spirit that brings life.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, restore unto us the joy of our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, continue to move among us, reshape our hearts, rekindle our affections for you.
SPEAKER_00: Knit back together where our heart is fractured.
SPEAKER_00: Lead us to wonder and gratitude.
SPEAKER_00: Your holiness and your grace for us.
SPEAKER_00: In the precious name of Jesus, we all said Amen.