A Holy Church | Sunday Sermon

A Holy Church | Sunday Sermon

Series: Acts: The Story Continues...

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The thing about preaching through a book of the Bible is that um you don't get to avoid passages. You don't get to avoid things. If you were just if I was just picking a passage to teach every week, I probably would never willingly choose to preach this passage. You know? And there's a lot of misunderstanding around it. And so I want to walk you through that today. But first, what I want to do is I want to back up and I want to just remind you of what we're doing in the book of Acts and what where we are in the story of the book of Acts. We're in this series called Acts, as the story continues. And the premise of the series is that the work and the ministry of Jesus didn't end at the cross. It didn't end in the tomb. It didn't end even after his resurrection, and it didn't even end when he ascended to God the Father, because Jesus then poured his spirit out upon the church, and Jesus' ministry through his church has continued on the earth from Pentecost until today. So where we are in the story is last week, last couple of weeks, we were talking about the lame man who sat outside the beautiful gate asking for alms. And Peter and John were going up to the temple, and they saw him sitting there, and he asked them for some money, and he laid hands on them, and um they they actually didn't lay hands on him. He Peter commanded him in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth to rise up and walk, and he was healed. And he went into the temple with him, and Peter and John had preached the gospel to the people who saw the man that was healed and came running to see what had happened. And Peter had just preached the gospel to them. It says that the number of just the men, didn't count the women for some reason, but for the number of just the men was 5,000. And so if you count the women, I'm sure the number was much higher than that. And then Peter and John were arrested. They were taken to jail. They sat in jail, and the next day they came back out and they were questioned by the council. The council threatened them, but they had to let them go, and they went away praising God. And they went back to the church, to the family of God, to the brothers and sisters in the Lord, and they prayed together with them. They praised God, they lifted up their hearts to him, like we did this morning. They reminded their own souls of who he is, of his being, of his power. They consigned the threats to his sovereign control. And then they prayed, not for protection, they prayed for boldness, to continue to preach the word with boldness. And it says, as they finished their prayer, the room was shaken, and the believers continued to speak the word with boldness, as the Lord answered their prayer. And we come out of that passage into verse 32, where it says, 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. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold, and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Now, if you haven't done it so already, you can grab a Bible if you don't didn't bring one. There's one in the seat back in front of you, if you've got one on your phone. You want to be in Acts chapter 5 today. So out of this prayer that the believers prayed, they received the answer to their prayer: boldness to continue to proclaim the word of God, even in the face of threats and persecution. They also received unity. They have power to be obedient. They begin to experience even more deeply this koinonia. Do you remember that word from a couple of weeks ago? This was oneness. It was common life, having all things in common. It was unity, it was generosity that was just coming up with the fruit of the Spirit from within them as the Holy Spirit began to transform them inside from the inside to the outside into the image of Jesus. They began to become like him. They began to become filled with love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. They also received power. The apostles' testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus was powerful. They were there. They saw him. You know, 2,000 years later, it's easy for people to just kind of try to just throw a curveball past you. Oh, you know, Jesus never actually even existed. Well, he absolutely did. He absolutely did. You know that from the word, but you also know that from also secular history. Okay, and so people can say what they want today, but you have to think these people were actually alive at the time, living, saw him and stood before you and said, Yeah, just like a month and a half ago, he was right there with us. We ate some fish with him on the Sea of Galilee. We went up to the mountain at Bethany and he ascended to the Father after giving us commands. We watched him go. Okay, you keep you how are you gonna argue with that? We saw it, and there was 500 of them that he appeared to before that. How are you gonna argue with that? So their testimony is powerful, but then along with their testimony, along with their witness, God's also also confirming their word with signs and with wonders. And people are being healed of diseases and saved from oppression from the enemy. They're receiving eternal life and salvation. And what's interesting to me is just the radical nature of the generosity that they were experiencing there. You know, this wasn't ordinary generosity. People can be, you know, generous in the world today, and you know, even people that are not Christians, people from other faiths, people that don't have faith, people can just be generous and have moments of generosity. They can even live lives that are pretty generous, right? But the kind that we see in this passage in general, you just don't see that. It doesn't come naturally to human beings. Because human beings, we we're pretty much wired to look out for ourselves. We look out for number one, and we also look out for number two and three, which is like our wives and our children or our husbands and our children, right? We we look out for our, you know, ourselves and our own interests. And and and like I said, it's not that people aren't generous, it's that they're not this kind of generous. Imagine, put, let's take it out of the first century and just put it in today's context. Imagine if a couple of us got together and we're like, you know, what do we need stuff for? You know, like, man, this world's not our home. Like, we're citizens of heaven, and from there we await a savior, even the Lord Jesus Christ. He's gonna transform our lowly bodies to be like his heavenly body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself. Like, what do we need stuff for, guys? Like, let's just live this fully. Let's live the gospel, let's just be believers, let's just follow him, let's do what he says, let's just see what God will do if we give him everything. And we just started selling our houses, and we're like, let's just pool our money together, right? And if somebody has a need, we'll just give it to them. Like, we'll just provide for them. Imagine that. Oh, I got some property in, you know, in Barstow, I got some in Arizona, I got some in Montana, let's just sell that. Well, we'll bring that in and we'll just distribute it to any as any has need. Can you imagine that? That's the level of generosity they're seeing. The people are just filled with awe at what God is doing among them. And I want to be really clear about what this was not. Okay, this was not government endorsed. In other words, this is not like socialism or something. This is not enforced by the government saying you have to give us your money and we'll redistribute it back to you. Okay, this is not the leadership of the church saying if you don't tithe a certain amount, then you can't be a part of our church and you're gonna have to leave. Okay, it's not imposed by anybody. This is something God's doing organically from the inside out. And the other thing that this wasn't, I want to be clear about this, this was not just a universal charity. This wasn't just to everyone, this was to the needs of the church. Says there was not a needy person among them. So this was the needs of the saints. You know, and you have to think about this. When someone sold their most valuable possession and just laid the money at the apostles' feet, what are they doing? They're taking away their own financial security, they're taking away their own ability to sustain themselves and provide for themselves, and so they become those who are receiving from the daily distribution. Another thing that this wasn't is this wasn't the apostles' personal piggy bank. Okay, they weren't enriching themselves and driving around on chariots with spinner wheels, you know. They weren't asking for another jet plane or anything like that. This was being distributed to all, including the apostles. They need something to eat, they'd get some food. Okay, and so radical, radical generosity. In verse 36, it says, Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a piece of land that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet. So Luke shares a specific instance, okay, of a specific man. His name is Joseph. He's also called by the apostles Barnabas. Okay, Barnabas is a man who later on we'll read about in the book of Acts as we continue in the series, was a companion of Paul on Paul's first missionary journey. We sat in the Philippian prison with him as God caused an earthquake and opened the prison doors. And so this was a man that we're gonna read more about. He decides to sell a piece of property, he does the same thing, he lays the money at the apostles' feet, and then right in the midst of this beautiful picture of unity, of koinonia, of generosity, comes Satan's first attack on the church. And it doesn't come from outside, it comes from inside. In chapter 5, verse 1, but 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 apostle's feet. And so as this beautiful unity is happening, as people are giving all of their things, in come Ananias and Sapphira. And so they do something, they're looking around, they're seeing other people sell things, and they're like, ooh, you know, and everybody's kind of looking at those who give, like, wow, they're very, you know, committed. They're they're these are real believers, you know, and they they're they probably are being respected and esteemed by the brothers and the sisters in the church, right? And so they're seeing what's going on, and so they do the same. Outwardly the same. They sell a piece of property, they bring it, and they lay part of the money at the apostles' feet, and they keep back part of it for themselves. In verse 3, but Peter said, 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? And because of the confusion that's surrounding this verse, and in some of your minds right this second, I want to clarify some things. I want to ask a question: what is the actual sin in this verse? Anybody. Yeah, in this particular verse, he said, how is Satan filled your heart with a lie to the Holy Spirit? Okay, so what's not the sin in this verse? Anybody keeping some of the money, right? So a lot of people think, see this, and they go, Oh, man, God just killed them because they just kept some of it? Well, well, Peter goes on and he says, While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You've not lied to man, but to God. So Peter's making clear right here that his sin was not that he didn't give all the money. He was never required to give all the money. They weren't required to give any of the money. It was their money. Okay, there was their land before it was sold, after it was sold, the money's at his disposal. They could do whatever they want to do. But but what they did is not that they kept some of it, it's that they brought a part of it and then they lied about it, and they tried to pretend that we're like everyone else, we're bringing all of the proceeds and laying it before the apostles' feet. And they're pretending. Their sin was hypocrisy and deception. They wanted to project to the image that they were spiritual and that they were Christ-like, without the inward reality. And in verse 5, it says, When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and he breathed his last, and great fear came upon all who heard of it. The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him. After an interval of about three hours, his wife came in, not knowing what had happened, and Peter said to her, Tell me whether you sold the land for so much. And she said, Yes, for so much. But Peter said to her, How is it that you have agreed together to test the spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they're going to carry you out. Immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. And when the young men came in and found her dead, they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And so Peter, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he calls out the hypocrisy to her, but he also gives her a chance to just come clean, to come in repentance, to not have the same fate as her husband, and instead she chooses to double down on the deception, and she dies just like her husband. And verse 11 says, And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard these things. Now, by show of hands, who feels like right now? This feels really, really harsh. Go ahead and just raise your hand if you feel that way. It feels very harsh, yes. The question is, why would God judge them so severely? Why would God strike them dead for the same fake spirituality and hypocrisy that probably happens in churches, everywhere, all over the place, all over the world, every day, right now. In order to understand what happened here, I think it's important for us to think about what was going on in this moment of history. Okay, the Messiah had just come. He had completed the work that the Father gave him to do. He had gone to the cross, he had paid the debt of human sin with his own blood upon the cross. He had purchased, he had redeemed a people to the Father by his own sacrifice on the tree. Now the Holy Spirit's been poured out upon the church. The apostles have begun laying the very foundation of the New Testament spirit-filled church. The gospel's being spread, and human beings are beginning to be delivered from the dominion of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of Jesus Christ. And what's about to happen through this apostolic generation is churches are going to be planted, the gospel's going to go out to the whole world, the New Testament scriptures are about to be written, and future generations, including our own, are going to hear the gospel and be saved and redeemed from their sin. Those are some big things, right? And right at this moment, right at the genesis of Christ's New Testament spirit-filled church, Satan immediately tries to corrupt the church from within. Or were they just plants, you know? Planted there. It doesn't actually tell us, but it does give us a clue. And Peter asked Ananias, how has Satan filled your heart? What happened on the day of Pentecost to the believers there? Anyone? What about the Holy Spirit? What did the Holy Spirit do? He filled them. He filled the people who were there. And they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And the apostles began to preach the gospel. He filled them. And to Ananias, what did Peter say? How has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? You know, are they Christians? I'll leave that up to you to decide, okay? But at this moment, at the beginning, Satan immediately tries to corrupt the church from within. And what he's trying to do is he's trying to corrupt it with the very same spirit that Jesus ran into in his own earthly ministry. And it's the spirit of hypocrisy. There's a passage in Luke chapter 11 and 12 where Jesus gets invited to the house of a Pharisee to eat. And it says he goes into the Pharisee's house and he reclines at table, because I think they ate, you know, kind of on an elbow like this, lying on a cushion or something around the table back in the day. That'd be a cool way to eat. We should try that sometime. Anyway, so he he reclines at the table, and then the religious leaders start saying, Well, we can't believe you didn't do the ceremonial washing, you know. And back then it wasn't about germs, it wasn't like bacteria, it wasn't like hand sanitizer or something. This was pre-COVID, right? So they weren't, they didn't understand about germs in the way that we do. Microscopes didn't exist at the time. Okay, and so this wasn't about like, ooh, your hands are dirty. It was about, we can't believe you didn't do the ceremonial, you know, cleanse thing before you sat down. And Jesus starts to call them out and confront them on their own hypocrisy. He says, You clean the outside of the cup, but inside the cup is full of greed and wickedness. He said, You're like unmarked graves. People walk over you without even knowing it. Now, a grave back then, they would mark them, they would whitewash them for a reason because in the in the Jewish faith practice, if you were to step over a grave and not know it, you would become ceremonially unclean. You couldn't go to the temple, you couldn't go to worship, you had to go through a cleansing process after that, basically to become clean again. And he says, You're like an unmarked grave. They would whitewash them so no one accidentally walked on one. He says, You're like an unmarked grave. People brush up against you, they come into your life and through your life, and they don't even know they've been defiled by you. And Jesus comes out of that meeting with those people, that that dinner with the people, he comes and he gathers his disciples, and know what he tells them? He says, Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. You know what leaven is? What's leaven? It's yeast, yeah. What's yeast do? Yeah, so if you take a little tiny bit of yeast and you put it in a big batch of dough, and you just let it sit, what happens? It expands. The yeast works its way through the whole batch, it permeates the whole thing. And what Jesus is saying is hypocrisy is just like that. It's like a disease. If you allow just a little bit of hypocrisy into your life, into your church, into your business, into your ministry before long, it corrupts the whole thing. And so he cuts it off. He just removes the corruption. See Jesus the parable of in um John 15? He says, I'm the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And then he says, Every branch in me that does bear fruit, he prunes that it might bear more fruit. So it's like those of us who are in the church, and we are, we do believe, and we're following him, there's gonna be things in our life. There's gonna be parts of hypocrisies, there's gonna be things that he wants to fix and correct. It's like we're not, we're not just instantly perfect. You realize we're not perfect, right? Like we're not done cooking yet. Okay, we're saved, we're his, we're always his, and we're secure in that, but he's not done with us yet. He's working on us, and there's things that he's pruning and cutting off in our life, things that sap the spiritual strength in us and our ability to be witnesses to him. So Jesus loves his church too much to allow it to remain infected by the disease of hypocrisy. You're talking about his bride, his people, his image bearers, his temple, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit of God, those he died to save and redeem after sacrificing the Son of God to redeem us. Do you think God the Father is just gonna allow Satan to come in and plant some hypocrisy in the middle of it and allow it to corrupt the New Testament church before it even had a chance to write the scriptures and have a foundation and spread the gospel to the whole world? The gospel was just about to leave Jerusalem and go to Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth, and Satan's trying to corrupt it right now at the beginning, so that what spreads is defiled and corrupted. And so, like a vine dresser, God removed the sickness from his body, and in doing so, he protected his church, and he protected her witness and he protected her mission, he protected the scriptures, he protected the spread of the gospel into the world. And though it might not look exactly like this in our day, he does the same thing now. He does the same thing. When we talk about things like this, there's usually two different reactions. And one of them is defensiveness, and one of them is suspicion. Because we start thinking, who's the hippoc? Who is the hypocrite in this room? I wonder who around me is the Ananias and Sapphira. It's funny, Jesus said that one thing. Remember, he said, Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye and you do nothing about the plank that's in your own eye? You look around, who's the hypocrite in here, and you got this big two by four sticking out of your eyeball. See, it's not up to us to look around at the people around us and try to figure out where's the hypocrisy in them. It's up to us to actually look in the mirror and look at me, look at me, and you look at you, and allow the Holy Spirit to show where the hypocrisy is in us. There's this scene at the Last Supper where they're all sitting with Jesus around the table, and Jesus says, I tell you the truth, one of you is gonna betray me. And you know what you don't hear? I bet it's Matthew. That guy was a tax collector. I never trusted him anyway. It's probably, I don't know, Thomas. That guy's such a doubter, you know? It's Simon the zealot, because he's really zealous. You know what they did? It says that they went around the table one by one and said, Is it me, Lord? Is it me? Am I the one that's gonna betray you? And you have to think about from their perspective, they knew who he was. They knew who was sitting before them. This was the one who had walked on the water. This is the one who had commanded the wind and the waves, and they stilled. He he called out the inner thoughts of Pharisees when they were thinking things about him. He's like, Why do you think in your heart this? And he would call out what they're thinking. They knew that they couldn't hide from him. He could see right through them, he could read their mail. And so instead of trying to hide from him, they just looked inside themselves and they saw weakness. They saw potential to let him down, potential to betray him, and instead of trying to hide it and run away, they just brought it to him. Lord, is it me? And that's exactly what he's calling each of us to do today as well. Is to look at ourselves in the mirror and allow him to reveal the things that are dead in us, to reveal the things that are unhealthy, that are sapping our ability to be spiritually strong, sapping our ability to be witnesses to him, to reflect him to the world around us. And the Father wants to cut those things away to make us more fruitful. And before we close, I want to show you what the result of this was in the New Testament church. In verse 12, it says, Now many signs and wonders were being regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles, and they were all together in Solomon's portico, and none of the rest dared join them. But the people held them in high esteem, and more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women, so that he they even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, that as Peter came by, at least his shadow might fall on some of them. The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed. So what happens after God prunes the church? The church begins to shine. The presence of Christ becomes more clearly manifested. Says none of the rest dared join them, but they held them in high esteem. In other words, there was this kind of holy caution about the people of God. They saw them meeting in Solomon's portico, the same place that Peter and John had healed the layman, the same place Jesus used to preach. They saw them there and they were like, whoa, God's doing something there. They could sense the presence of God there. And you know that because when you read the scriptures where people were kind of caught up in the presence of God, Isaiah, you know, he's in the presence of God and he's like, whoa, you know, you don't just come casually into God's presence. And this is sort of the sense that even begins to permeate from the church as he purifies them and Christ begins to be seen in them. But it says also that more than ever, believers are added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women. And so despite that fear and that awe, people are still being drawn to the Lord in repentance. They want what the Lord can do for them. They see the authenticity of the people, they see the realness and the difference between the religious system they grew up in and this real, actual living relationship with God. What happens is the visible ministry of Jesus on the earth becomes clear and manifested and powerful. Acts is the story of Jesus' ministry continued on the earth. It's not just an what I what I like about the fact that even though I wasn't looking forward to maybe this passage in this series, that as I got to it, I realized, you know, Acts is not, Acts chapter 5 is not the story about how God's so mean that he struck down Ananias and Sapphira and all they did was didn't give them enough. They just didn't tithe enough. No, that's not what the story is about. The story is about how much God loves his church. The story is about the lengths that he will go to to protect her and to prune her and to purify her and to make her fruitful and to make her beautiful and worthy of his name. It's a reminder that God is holy. What he wants to is to make us holy. He wants us to be like those disciples in the upper room, willing to lay down our masks and just be real. To look inside of ourselves and say, Is it I, Lord? And he wants us to trust him enough. To submit to his pruning. He's not trying to hurt us as a church. He's trying to make us holy. He wants to make us fruitful. He wants to make us look more like him. So that when the world sees us, looks at us, they see him. Father, we thank you that you care this much for us. We thank you that you love us enough to prune us. Your word says that those that the Lord loves, he disciplines. The fact that we sometimes feel that in our lives is proof that you love us, that you care for us, Lord. I pray in the name of Jesus, Lord, that your word would sink deeply into each of our hearts today. That you would help us, Lord, to walk out of here more willing to be authentic and real. More willing to be surrendered to your hand and to the work that you want to do in our lives and through our lives in the world around us. May we look more like you in Jesus' name. Amen.