Don't Lie in Church | Episode 32

In this week’s Year Through the Bible podcast we talked about the question that no one asks.

Rather than being shocked at the rare times when God strikes someone dead, why aren’t we more shocked at all the times that doesn’t happen?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

To use a very, forgive me, a very sensitive, very um provocative example, why didn't he strike down more of these priests who are engaging in the sex abuse? Just knock them down in the church in the church in these bishops that covered it up. And so it is so funny. It's just such a modern world that we are we're we're all outraged when God enforces a boundary, but then we also get mad at him for not enforcing boundaries.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

My name is Rodney Adams. I'm the executive pastor at Asbury Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And you are? I'm Andrew Forrest, I'm the senior pastor, and we haven't done this for a while. On one hand, it feels like it's been a long summer, and on one hand, it feels like it's been a short summer, but it's been a summer. Um you've been off on vacation with your family, then we kind of overlapped. I was on vacation with my family. Um we both uh accumulated some nice tans, as did our children, which has been nice. Um, but now we're back. Um we're at this again, you and I together. So um I'm ready to get going. We've we're we're still on the Bible reading plan. We're still reading the one-year Bible. We're reading the entire thing in a year. I think we should go back to there's something weird that happened in our reading over the summer that um is seems like it's really far into the rearview mirror, but it came out of the book of Acts. Um, the Holy Spirit falls upon the church, signs and wonders are being done, um, believers are coming together. There's this picture of that would be familiar to Bible readers of all these people are sharing everything in common. Then some people just like drop dead. Yeah. And so I know we've talked about this in a few different forums or venues. You've preached on it a little bit. I've talked about it over the summer. I don't even remember if it was on the show, but regardless, it's weird. Um, I think it kind of offers a picture into some earlier parts of the scriptures. I don't know what you would think about that. So I would say let's get into it.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

I agree. I think it it's actually a good example of the threads between the different scripture stories, and you see it all fits together. So it starts with Acts 432. There's a couple of places in Acts where Luke gives these um beautiful pictures of like the church really at its best. I don't know, they're all sharing taking care of poor people. By the way, I mean, you just think about that. To use a modern term, I'm a very privileged person. I'm not a person who lives in poverty, uh, so I'm not acting like I get it or all those things. But modern American poverty is just not like it would have been in the ancient world, where there is no safety net at all. There is nothing. You starve. You don't have somebody to take care of you and you can't work, that's it, right? And particularly uh these older people, like these widows, you know, when they when James talks about widows and orphans, it's because widows have nobody to care for them. And so that's what you get the impression it acts like they are really caring for vulnerable people, people who would be beggars or worse.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

I don't want to get all superstitious and whatever, but we don't really we don't experience even like um natural phenomenon the way that the ancient world would have. Like a famine means something totally different in modern American sort of agricultural life than it would have even then. I mean anything can happen and we are not um we are not insulated from from the real world. From the real world, so to speak. But with modern technology, with the way agriculture works, with the way modern economics works, there's so many ways with the way modern just moving of like water and supplies. We are more insulated from things like famine and natural disaster than say the ancient world would have been. 100%. The famine meant certain death for large, large, large numbers of people and not just the poorest of the poor. We're talking like wiping out what we would call lower middle and lower class, even. Like so even if there wasn't, let's say, a famine or a current natural disaster or something like this, they they were intimately familiar with the need for caring for people and the need to be cared for. And a lot of that's was through like social structures and different things like that.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, and and the church, that's one of the calling cards of the early church, is how they cared for the vote of the vulnerable and the poor who had nothing else. So you have this here, uh, verse 32, chapter 4. Now the full number of those who believed 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. But again, it's worth pointing out I talked about this recently in a sermon, as we'll see a little bit later. There's no way you can get a theological justification for socialism here and the idea that private property is antithetical to the gospel. Because look at look what Luke says. Basically, what the guy says is even no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own. So it's not that the things weren't that person's stuff, it's that the person didn't claim they were his stuff. That's not the same thing as the socialist ethic that private property is wrong or something. The Bible supports private property and good stewardship. So they have all their stuff, they take care of it, they all do it together. Barnabas, he shows up here for the first time, chapter four, verse thirty-six. Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, the Levite and David of Cyprus, sold the field that belonged to him, brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet. By the way, Kevin and I talked about this last week on the podcast, but notice how they there's a disambiguation of Joseph here. There's a lot of Josephs, and so he's called Joseph Barnabas to distinguish him from the other Josephs. And Joseph is one of those incurring names that's very popular in Palestine in the first century, which is again another sign that this is real stuff. It's not made up. So Barnabas sells the thing. And then a man named Ananias with his wife Sephirah sold some property, and with his wife's knowledge, he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only part of it and laid it at the apostles' feet. So the the lie, the problem is not that they didn't give the whole field or the piece of property, the problem is they lied about what they were doing. That is the problem. It's the deceit is the problem. And then Peter, he's prompted by the Holy Spirit, says, Ananias, 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? So I find it interesting that Peter immediately he sees this not as a lack of generosity issue, but as an e evil, evil coming into the house of God. And that's it. And that brings back a lot of Old Testament stories about that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

You know what's interesting to me? This just kind of hit me. I didn't I didn't think of this when the when we read it the first time. It was Peter that told the Lord he was that he they were not gonna let him go to the cross, and the Lord said, Get behind me, Satan. It kind of makes me wonder if that was a learning moment for Peter. Because now it's Peter who's immediately identified. That Satan is the part of like blocking. I'm not I'm not saying that is a thing. I'm saying that's what makes me that's what this makes me think of. It's fun to connect little Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

In this scenario, Jesus rebukes Peter, get behind me, Satan. Matthew 16. Stuff happens, Jesus is crucified, he's raised again, Peter's reinstated, if 40 days with Jesus is part of Peter's discipleship course, thinking about why did I give why did Jesus call me Satan? How was I a mouthpiece for evil? What were my motivations that allowed Satan to get a foothold? That's interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

How does how does Satan how does Satan work through us who are also trying to do the work that how can Satan penetrate what what God is trying to do through those who are closest to God? Like these are like in that instance, Peter is like one of Jesus' guys. Right. It wasn't some weird dude that came out of nowhere that's trying to disrupt what they're doing, although that happens too. This is like this is like these are like the insiders.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

And the ultimate example would be Judas, because it says the devil entered him. So he's doing that. It's kind of weird. You know, I think um I think a sign of Christian maturity is plumbing the reason for one's sin in that, right? Like, so I got angry, but why what was it that made me angry there? What was it that made me do that? Why did I lose composure? What was that? I think a lot of people don't spend any time thinking about the motivations. I think that's a real work of the Holy Spirit. Yeah. When I realize this or that, you know, it's always in that scenario, and that's why I did that. And yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

So when I was in seminary in Dallas, um one of my professors was a clinical psychologist. He um was part of the Anglican church, he was an ordained priest, and also did like um psychological evals for ordinance in the Anglican church. His brother was a pastor, and his and his brother wrote a book called The Pastor as Minor Poet. It's kind of a weird title. But his his like working definition of a poet in that book is someone who sees the subtext like behind a thing. So he's less concerned about the engineering. He's less concerned about the engineering that put the bridge together, but why, why man longs to get to the other side of a river or something like that. Like there's always this like deeper soul subtext behind a thing. And he uses that as sort of his his underlying um sort of teaching to pastors that pastors are always poets in his definition, because you're always working with what's underneath something. Yeah. Like what's like if you're in a board meeting with a church council or you're in a staff meeting, or you're in a meeting with a family who is grieving, or a family that's mad at the church, or whatever, what's happening is not always what's happening. Yeah. There's always something behind what's happening. So here, with back to Ananias and Sophira, yeah, they were they lied about their real estate or whatever, but that's not actually what's happening. Right. That's not actually what's happening. That's the presenting issue. Right. But there's something deeper going on that Peter identifies.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah. And the deeper would be both why are they motivated to lie in that way? Number one. Number two, what is at stake according to their lie from Peter from the second side of it? Trevor Burrus, Jr. How high are the stakes here? Right. The first side of, I mean, I don't know their mentality, but I imagine it has to be they just wanted the credit that Barnabas received from being really generous. They just wanted people to think well of them. They wanted to appear better than they are. That's got to be the motivation. They don't have tax codes and write-offs and stuff for that.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Or they're faithful. They believe, maybe. They want to be a part of the church. Like they're they're maybe we would we would call them their good church people. Yeah. But they have a they do have a tight grip on their stuff. Like it's it is somehow difficult for them to let go of everything. Yeah. To give everything over. And w why that is, we don't know. But like, I mean, gosh, I'm that way when it comes to being generous. Or there are definitely times where I I know that like um I should give more than I'm giving. And I know that it's a heart reason why. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Yeah. But even here it's deeper than that, though, because it's not just they don't do it, but they lie about what they are doing. Yeah. And I love this verse again.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Well, maybe they're ashamed too, that they're they're just ashamed of it.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

They're ashamed of who they are. They're just ashamed that they're that they're that they withheld something or whatever. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Which could explain their imminent death, that the shame knocks them dead. Peter says, While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Again, making it very clear. They are free to do what they want with their property. Period.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

The theological justification for the abolishment of private property does not exist in the in the Bible. Just doesn't. It's their stuff. By the way, socialism is a complete disaster. It doesn't work. Private property rights are really important if the foundation of a prosperous society. But you know what the other problem is if you get rid of private property? Then I can act like I'm not a steward of anything. Actually, you know what it is? It's a way of me avoiding any type of responsibility. Because if God uh supports the idea of private property, then he supports me being held accountable for how I use it. Yeah. It's actually worse. Right? I mean, you're gonna be judged.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

If everything belonged to everyone, then even the people who wanted to take responsibility maybe couldn't because there wasn't ownership.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

And the people who want to take advantage absolutely can when nothing belongs to anyone, right? And so um it's kind of the same principle in economics where like there's sometimes there's these debates over like um endangered species or something, and what do we do with the black rhinos in in Africa or something like that? Well, on one side, it's you you protect them, you make hunting completely illegal, um, you leave them in the wild, nobody can touch them, and everything is illegal. Well, on one side that that could work. It mostly doesn't work. What does work is actually allowing hunting. The stewards then are the owners of these game ranches who are incentivized to allow um black rhinos to proliferate and to and to be fruitful and multiply. There's way more black rhinos now than there ever has been because the the way that you know big game owners and hunters and all that kind of stuff like steward it, right? So all of our hunting laws are actually stewarded by hunters themselves. Right. And and all of our conservation efforts with white-tailed deer in Oklahoma are stewarded by the hunters themselves, right? So, anyway, my whole point is it's actually the private property owners that provide the the best stewardship over large, large tracts of land than if everything just belonged to everybody. It'd be a mess.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Well, and they have an interest and they're close to it. And so and then when the Lord works in a person's heart, that person will use, give his private property into the hands of the Lord, so to speak. But it's a free gift. All that we have comes from you, O Lord, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Aaron Powell And are we saying that private property rights um ensures that no sin ever happens? Of course not. Obviously, that's so dumb. Um but working with the world the way it actually is and the way the Lord designed stewardship, it seems to be the best system.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

I think that's so clear. And here, again, their violation is that they lie about what they give. It's the deceit that's the problem. So, Peter, when Anani calls him out and Ananias drops dead, verse five. And everyone's afraid, and the young men rise and wrap him up. Imagine that act. Just the the shroud, the burial shroud, and they carry him out and bury him right away. That's it. Maybe they it's in Jerusalem, maybe they lay him in a tomb, like Jesus. They kind of shove him in there. Then his wife comes in, Peter gives her a chance to come clean. Did you tell it for this much money? She goes, Oh yeah, that's what we sold it for. And then Peter says, How have you agreed to test the spirit of the Lord? And then she drops dead, and the whole church hears about it. So it's a very strange story, kind of troubling in a way, but a lot of ant uh uh antecedents in the Old Testament. Remember the story of Achan in Joshua 7? He's the guy some of the treasure of the Canaanites was off limits to Israel, and Achan steals the treasure and hides it and lies about it, and ultimately he's struck dead. So there's that. And then there's the unauthorized fire from the sons of Aaron. As soon as the Levitical system is set up, they they're fooling around with the sacrifice and God strikes them dead.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Yeah. So I mean, this shouldn't shock us. That somehow connects all the all the way back to the Garden of Eden, where um the Lord says, Because you have done this, life is now going to be a certain way for you. He banishes them from the garden and then places cherubim at the edge of the garden. The focus is not on the banishment, but on the protection of Eden, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting how we sometimes um we immediately feel sorry for sinful people and we get mad at God for his judgment. Something happens with Aaron's sons where they were doing what they weren't supposed to do and they die immediately. Like they, their, their sin, their sinful rebellion is incompatible with the presence of God in the tabernacle. It's incompatible. They can't actually coexist in the same way that whatever was going on in Adam and Eve's heart and the reason for their banishment is actually incompatible with Eden. They they needed to be banished from the garden for the sanctity of Eden, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Yeah, and for their own safety in a way. Yeah, it's weird too how we You're right, we feel sorry for the sinner always. I mean, because we are sinners and mercy is not a terrible thing to feel, but shouldn't the question not be, God, why did you strike these sinners dead? Isn't the better question, God, why don't you do it more often? That to me seems way more of a relevant question. Like, like why didn't God strike young Hitler down or something, or some bad guy down, Pol Pot or Stalin or something? It seems like to me, the the charge I'd almost want to lay against the Lord is that he's almost too forbearing. To use a very forgive me, a very sensitive, very um provocative example. Why didn't he strike down more of these priests who are engaging in the sex abuse scandal? Just knock them dead. In the church. In the church. And these bishops that covered it up. And so it is so funny. It's just such a modern world that we are we're we're all outraged when God enforces a boundary, but then we also get mad at him for not enforcing boundaries. Yeah. You know?

SPEAKER_01 17:28

So here's what here's what we have. Peter has identified that that Satan has filled your heart, and there was an immediate death in it. Here's what I think is the most controversial part, or at least it should be. Peter is orchestrating this.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Like, um, there's a there's a part in the Gospels where where Jesus says that whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. And there's also in some ordination um vows, like in some for for modern ordination vows for elders, like it kind of says, like, whoever you forgive will be forgiven, and whoever you um don't forgive will not be forgiven, but there's consequences for for you doing that wrongly. Just think of the boldness of Peter to like basically be like orchestrating this death sentence for Ananias and Sephira. It's very, very that to me ought to trouble people as well. Well, why does Peter get to decide this stuff?

SPEAKER_00 18:25

You don't get the sense, oh Luke doesn't tell us everything, but you don't get the sense that Peter's like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry they died. I think Peter's kind of like just kind of sitting at his desk, like, hey, like you expect. Yeah. Don't fool around with the Holy Spirit. I think it's also fun, too, because um Luke is such a talented writer, he's just told us He's just told us. Look at look at this verse. Verse 32, chapter 4. The full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul. And no one said that any of the things that belonged to him were his own, but they had everything in common. Oh, great. And the very next story is is a contradictory story. So Luke is presenting kind of an idealized or he's using kind of theological hyperbole in a way. It was great. Everything was great, you know?

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

And then you had this other story of, well, there's a snake in the garden or snakes in the garden. And God in this place knocks them dead. I think the the reason has got to be that there was something, if this had been allowed to continue, it would have killed the church. That's it's just gotta be. It had it had to happen.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

What the scriptures are not saying to say what you said in a different way is that this is now normative, in that everything, everybody putting everything in a pile is and anything short of that is somehow wrong. I don't um maybe it is somehow wrong, but it's almost it would be impossible for us to get that right. What what this is is like a supernatural movement of the Spirit of God. Like that, like something is happening here at the early stages of the church that that God wanted to happen, and the Spirit of God is like orchestrating this picture of of Eden somehow where where no one had any lack. Deceit is incompatible with this with this Edenic picture, and it's like the cherubim at the edge of the garden just just swings the flaming sword and they're done. Like it can't, it's not about finger wagging you're a bad person. It's like literally incompatible. It cannot, they cannot be the same. And ultimately, if Satan had filled their hearts, then it was Satan that got struck down that day. Yeah. Um, and the church needed that to happen somehow.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

So here's the weird question, the real question, which we forgive me for bringing up a thing and we don't know the answer to. Does their death mean that they're not saved? I really don't know the answer. Because if it's more like they violated a sacred law, you stepped in front of the laser beam and it killed you or whatever, maybe they still have saving faith in the Lord, but their their sin, there's a consequence for their sin. The reason I'm saying that, because that could be it's actually worse for the judgment not to fall on you at this time. Because when you die and you stand before the Lord without ha, you know, because maybe they could have engaged in more sin. Maybe it could have gotten worse for them. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

It's a totally not helpful hypothetical, but we also don't know if they were part of all those who believed and they're of one heart and soul, or if they were these outsiders that were trying to get what the believers had, but hold you know, we don't know. We just don't we don't know anything really about them. I mean, Ananias is a that's a Jewish name, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Yeah, there's another Ananias later on in Acts who helps Paul.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Yeah. Yeah, we don't know anything else about him. Uh sh her name isn't related to a Greek word, uh which doesn't mean anything.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Maybe there would be a helpful nugget here for your for your you know Bible readers. Anytime you see something, anytime that you see what looks like extreme judgment, particularly when death is involved, you could probably ask yourself the question, is what's hap like like if if if Eden was your highest priority, is what's happening like compatible with Eden? I think you could maybe apply that to, you know, going back to the conquest of Canaan and all these things that we kind of talked about, these these quote unquote troubling passages that people seem to have problems with where people are dying, seemingly at the hands of God just for making a mistake. We don't we somehow like the justice of God until it happens until it actually happens to its full logical conclusion. That to me has just been helpful is to just package it like that, like is ultimately God's the judge, um he is establishing um his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, particularly through the work of the church now, is what's happening compatible with Eden or is it not?

SPEAKER_00 22:43

And a flip side of that is when there's a really severe thing that happens or language that's used, why? So when Paul says we'll get there in Galatians, I wish you would castrate yourselves. This is you're teaching a false gospel. Why is he so exercised? What's at stake? That's probably a really helpful uh question to ask, because we wouldn't think X, Y, or Z is that big of a deal. Why is that big deal to them? What what how are they thinking is kind of the point. Um So don't lie in church is the lesson. Ananias and Sephirah. It's a great great story. Really, just a lot, there's a lot more there we could do. So people got to keep reading the Bible. Uh we're about to move in the New Testament faster and faster. It's gonna speed up.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

There's not much left in the New Testament. Just you just feel the thinness of the pages. There's not there's not a whole lot left.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

We're gonna go in multiple books a week, sometimes even in the same day.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

We still have a couple of really long Old Testament books to work through that Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Job are all pretty long. And then after that, too. I mean, we're on the downhill. We're fast 60%, 50%. Which is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

This has been the Year Through the Bible podcast. Even though we are not in Acts, we touched on Acts today, but we'll be maybe in First Corinthians, maybe somewhere else on the show. But anyway, keep reading. Send in your questions, go to yearthroughtheBible.com. Uh the last question we got was over a week ago. So if you got questions, um the market is the market is wide open for you to get your questions answered. So send them in and we'll try to get to them. Great. Until then, I'm riding. I'm injured.