God's Unfolding Plan

--- We're going to study Acts chapter 5 this morning, and God has a plan for our world, God has a plan for our church today, God had a plan for the early church, and his plan was that they would continue to do and to teach the things that Jesus began to do and to teach. And that plan required them to have power from the Holy Spirit, and in order to have power from the Holy Spirit, that required them to walk in a sense of purity. So I really appreciate Amy's pick on that last song this morning, because power and purity are what we are going to be looking at in this chapter. In chapter 5, we come to this portion of the narrative that tells us that purity of heart wasn't always found among the early church. And we mentioned in the study guide that when you come to this chapter as a modern reader, it can be very troubling, very difficult to process. And so what we want to do this morning is continue to ask our three questions, what does the text say, what does the text mean, and what does it mean to me? And so what we're going to do is start back on chapter 4, verse 32, with a reminder of what the work of the Spirit was in the lives of the whole group of believers as a community. And this is what it looked like in verse 32 of chapter 4, as they were filled with the Spirit. It said, now the full number of those who believed, they were of one heart and soul. And nobody said that any of their things belonged to him, was his own, but they had everything in common. 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 they laid it at the apostles' feet. And it was distributed to each as any had need. So that's a synopsis of what the collective group looked like, and now we move in the next verse into one specific individual. In verse 36, Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas, sold a field that belonged to him, and he brought the money, and he laid it at the apostles' feet. So now we're going to go into chapter 5, and I'll read verses 1 through 11 all together. We're looking at the purity of the early church.

Let's pray together. So Father, we bow our hearts before you because we really need your wisdom and your insight to process this passage, to understand why you inspired Luke to include it in the narrative of the early church, and Lord, most of all, to see what you want to teach us, to see how you want to change us through spending time in this chapter today. So we invite your work among us, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so let's ask, what does it say? What actually happened in this passage? Well, what actually happened, we see some similarities between Barnabas, who was detailed for us at the end of chapter four, and Ananias and Sapphira at the beginning of chapter five. Both of them were among the group of believers. Both of them owned some property, which they sold. Both of them brought money, and it says the same phrase, laid it at the apostles' feet. Both of them did that. The difference was that Ananias and Sapphira brought only a portion of the money, and we learned that they had conspired together to conceal the fact that they had brought only a portion of the money. We also realized that Peter's knowledge of the deception wasn't just natural information that he could see from the outside. It wasn't naturally obtained, but it was a supernatural revelation. It was supernatural insight given to him by the Holy Spirit. Peter said these things, why has Satan filled your heart? You are lying to the Holy Spirit. Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? And then he said, you've not lied to men, but to God. These are supernatural things that Peter knew by the power of the Holy Spirit. And then, of course, we read the fact that Ananias fell dead. Young men came in, and they took him out and buried him. And when his wife Sapphira came in, we repeated the whole cycle over again, and it went the same way. And so it's a super, I feel like, unsavory event in this whole narrative that we've had. Of all the things that we've studied so far, from chapter one through now, we haven't hit anything difficult, or challenging, or that we'd rather sweep under the rug and tell this. And if I was writing this story, I would maybe be tempted to leave this out. If I wanted people to see this is what the church looks like, I probably wouldn't write about this, which probably underscores the accuracy of Luke as a historian. Well, the Lord inspired him, the Holy Spirit inspired him to include this, but it shows his accuracy, that he showed us the bad along with the good. And we know that Peter had a word of knowledge, or he had discernment from the Lord, but nowhere does this narrative imply to us that Peter himself sort of called down a curse. Peter wasn't the one casting judgment. In fact, he may have been just as surprised as everybody else when Ananias fell dead. So it wasn't Peter's doing, it was the Lord. So then we ask our question, what does this mean? And it's a real challenge to ask what does it mean, because the text doesn't tell us what it means. And so when we have a text that doesn't tell us what it means, we have to be careful that we don't process it through our own filters and say, well, I think it means this, or this, or whatever. We always want to, if we face something that we don't know, we want to use what we do know to process what we don't know. And that's what we want to do a little bit this morning, is use things that we do know. When we started this whole session in the introduction to the first days of the last days, we talked about the fact that God has seen fit in scripture to drop just bundles of breadcrumbs for us to pick up at really pivotal and monumental times in history. Creation, for example, the exodus out of Egypt is another example, the entry into the promised land, the incarnation, Jesus coming down to earth, the resurrection. Those are all points in history where God just ladled a lot of information in scripture for us to understand. And it's interesting that we find some things in those pivotal times of history that may help us understand what this means, because we find other examples of God dealing swiftly and decisively with sin during times that he is working supernaturally through his people. And I want to bring out some of those times. For example, when the children of Israel were brought out of Egypt, and they camped at the base of Mount Sinai, and Moses went up and supernaturally received the law, which was God's revelation of his character and how he wanted them to live, while that supernatural event was happening, do you remember what was happening in the base camp? The golden calf and the worship. And did God not bring a swift and decisive judgment immediately upon that event? Because that was not the time for his people to be engaged in that type of thing. Paul's going to get to Leviticus chapter 10 maybe next Wednesday, but that's another time when after having given the law in Leviticus for what the priesthood should be doing, and after eight days of Aaron and his sons being initiated into the ceremonies of being priests, and the first day on the job, Aaron's two sons, Nadab and Abihu, it says that they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord contrary to his command. We don't really know what that looked like or what they did, but the first day on the job they did it contrary to what God said. us in verse 2 of Leviticus 10 that fire came out from the Lord and consumed them, swift and decisive judgment on their sin, because that wasn't the time for sin to become normalized in the priesthood. And then, again, when Joshua was leading the people of Israel into the promised land, it was a time of supernatural guidance of the Lord into the land that he wanted them to possess, the land that he gave them. And they come and they take Jericho, and it is a great victory, quite a supernatural battle that happened, and they capture Jericho, and then the very next city that they go after, the city of Ai, they have a major fail. And as it is revealed, God had told them when they took Jericho, don't take any of the stuff. The stuff is devoted to destruction, don't take it. But we find that a man named Achan had gone against God's command, had taken a robe, had taken silver, gold, buried it in his tent, and didn't come clean about it, wouldn't admit that he did it. And here they were not able to battle because of the sin that Achan had done, and they had to go through this long thing of separating out until finally it was revealed that Achan had done this, and God dealt swiftly and decisively with the sin, because it wasn't the time for sin to become normalized in that group. And in a similar way, in the first days of the early church, this was a very important time on God's time clock. And it was a time when God's spirit was moving mightily and was moving supernaturally. It was a time when the most praiseworthy aspects of God's people were their unity and their care for one another. It was a time when the collective purity of God's people needed to be maintained. And it was not a time for the apostles to succumb to deception in terms of receiving something given in a deceptive way, in a concealed way. It was not time for outsiders to suspect corruption within the group of believers, and it was not a time for the believers to practice concealment or hypocrisy and for that to become normalized among them at that time. And so God dealt with this concealment and hypocrisy swiftly and decisively, just like he had at other times when his spirit was working supernaturally with his people. So we come then to ask, so what does it mean to me? I get what's going on now. I get why God did that. I understand the passage a little better now. So now we say, what does it mean to me? How can I process this? And I think that that word hypocrisy floats up to the surface for us because we can't know for absolutely sure the motives, but given how Luke laid this out for us, that Barnabas had done something and then Ananias and Sapphira came in and did a similar thing to look like Barnabas, but not actually be the same way, they didn't give it all. I think that we can see that hypocrisy comes into play and in your study guide, we pointed out that a hypocrite, the word basically means an actor. A hypocrite is someone who plays a part. They act like something or someone that they truly are not. And so we can probably process that. Have I ever wanted to appear more holy than what I actually am? Have you ever wanted to appear a little more holy than what you actually are? Have you ever wanted someone to think that you're a more fervent prayer than what you really are? Or have you ever observed someone else getting praise and accolades for something that they do for the Lord and you kind of think, well, I want people to think I'm like that too. We all have a little Ananias in us. We can all find that little baby Ananias in our hearts. It's a common experience because we all have the same sinful nature. And now, of course, we feel like in this election turmoil we have, our national hypocrisy has just risen completely to the surface and we're appalled at immorality in other people while we turn around and watch it for entertainment. And so we see that hypocrisy is something that is just common to sinful man. There's another haunting question that Peter says. He said to Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart? And it's something I want to camp on just a little bit because there's nothing to indicate that Ananias and Sapphira were not among the body of believers. And yet, Peter says, why has Satan filled your heart? And I don't think he was saying, why are you possessed by the devil? That's not it. It's just that your heart has become filled with things that are of darkness rather than things that are of the Lord. Because throughout our Bible study, are we not constantly running into this phrase, filled with the spirit? How many times have we hit that already? And then Peter, filled with the spirit. So that word filled has captured my attention. And when we get a little bit farther down, which we might not leave enough time for this morning, we'll see that the high priest was filled with jealousy. And next week, we're gonna see that term come up again and again. So I wanna spend some time talking about this concept of allowing our hearts to be filled with things. Because this passage helps us understand that even after the new birth, where we ask Jesus to forgive our sins, and he has entered into our heart, marked us with his Holy Spirit. It is a possibility to fill our hearts with things that are more of darkness. Fill our hearts with other things, with other motives. Fill that with a volume of sins that would absorb the space available, if we can use spatial terms for spiritual matters, that would absorb that space that God intends for us to be filled with the Holy Spirit. So it's why Paul said to the Galatians, he said, if you walk by the spirit in your daily experience, one step after the other, if you walk by the spirit or you are continually filled with the spirit, then you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Because the spirit will fill up that volume of space that you have. So could we say that the opposite is true? That if you gratify the desires of the flesh and fill up your space with that, you will not be able to walk by the spirit or be filled with the spirit. All analogies break down after a little while, but I still wanna talk about this filling and coming upon of the spirit, because it's the point of our study. The point of the first 10 chapters of Acts is the spirit coming upon them. And if you have read the supplement in the back, I just wanna use a little illustration to kind of review, point out, and like I said, bear with me, because all illustrations break down, they're not perfect. But our context here is, for us, what does it mean to me? Our context is, what about my heart? Can I possibly be filled with other things that would preclude me from being filled fully with the spirit? So I wanna start at the beginning with the Holy Spirit drawing us, the work of the spirit to draw us. And God seeks us out as sinners. He seeks us out and he begins to reveal who he is to us. And when we hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, and so I'm gonna use this cup to represent, if you were at retreat this weekend, you can take a little nap right now, okay? Because I did this at retreat this weekend, and I'll tell you when to wake up. But this is gonna represent that person, me, who is lost, destined to destruction because of the black sin within my heart. And so God draws me and he reveals and finds a way to explain the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I come to a realization to know Jesus died for my sins. And if I believe that, receive that, acknowledge that he's Lord, ask him to forgive my sins, God will be faithful to forgive my sins, and the blackness for destruction goes away. I am purified, I am clean, and the Holy Spirit marks me now as belonging to him. And this won't change, I am marked by the Holy Spirit. And that first moment, I'm pretty nice and clean, aren't I? Pretty sparkly clean. And so we have this work of the spirit to draw us, the work of the spirit, the spirit comes within us. But this book of Acts is teaching us that there's another work of the spirit to come upon us, and oftentimes we've called it the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but we also, in the text, it has been called the filling of the Holy Spirit. And so I'm gonna use this as a kind of illustration of God's endless power, and all a person needs to do, all a Christian needs to do is simply rest under the living water that is coming forth, and to be filled. by the spirit, for the spirit to come upon us, for power to be his witnesses. But we know in life, and this story of Ananias teaches us, that we can make other choices. First of all, we can just be over in La La Land and not even be asking God to fill us. That's one choice we can make. But as we go along, we have temptations that come our way. And so let's use Ananias' temptation to want people to think he was something that he wasn't, a temptation comes along. Just conceal the fact that you sold that land and then act like you sold it for what you did and that. And these temptations begin to fill our spirit. The reason I used white temptations instead of black ones is because I don't want to give the illustration that we have to get saved all over again. These are sins not to destruction, but yet they fill our space and they need to be dealt with. And so do we not have temptations all the time that come into our life? The enemy tempts us to hold on to bitterness, hold on to that bitterness. It feels kind of good. There can be something delicious about bitterness and unforgiveness. It gives us the upper hand over somebody, right? And all these sort of temptations that come, and we can allow these things of darkness, these sins to so fill us that our volume of space has been filled. And we want to sit under the faucet, but we have filled our space. And the work of the spirit is hindered because of what we have done. And so I love what surfaced at retreat this weekend in this 30 days of repentance, this understanding that we need to come daily before the Lord to confess our sins. To look at that fluff that is filling us and to say, would you forgive me? I confess my sins before you, I repent, I turn, I will not have those. And then to return under that unending reservoir and say, Lord, would you fill me now and fill me with your spirit. Next week, we're gonna talk about other things that we could fill our time and our life with that aren't maybe necessarily sins. But for right now, the context of Ananias, Peter said, how is it that Satan has filled your heart? And so it helps us to understand Peter's charge that Satan had filled Ananias' heart. And it reminds us of our privilege and our responsibility to do daily, like Amy led us in singing, make my heart pure. Help me purify my heart, I confess my sins to you. When we started this 30 days of repentance, Paul and I have been dialoguing about it, and he had a great analogy. He said, you know, it's like taking antibiotics. He said, you take an antibiotic the first day, and it goes out and it kills some bacteria, and that's a good thing. Just like confession, we confess our sins one day, and we think of some things. And we take the antibiotic the second day, and you know what? It goes and finds more bacteria and kills it. And we go to the Lord on day two, and lo and behold, there's some more sins to confess. And by day ten, the antibiotic has gone out and out and out and killed a whole bunch of bacteria. And the same cumulative effect happens in our hearts as we continue this daily process of confessing our sins. All of a sudden, by day ten, you're like, I had no idea. I didn't know that was there. I didn't know you're getting way back in the closet. And it's good. It is a good work. So if you weren't with us at retreat, I would just want to exhort us. This is a time in our national existence, in church life, in our American church life, this is a time for daily confession, for daily repentance, for daily asking, what is the fluff? What has Satan filled my heart with? Because anything of darkness, anything of sin is of Satan. It sounds scary, doesn't it? Sounds scary to say that, but it is the truth. And so we look this passage square in the eye and we say, okay, I have work to do because I don't want to allow Satan to fill my heart with that. Now, in the conversation with Sapphira, Peter also says an intriguing thing. He said to her, how is it that you have agreed together to test the spirit of the Lord? And Satan has been tempting people to test the spirit of the Lord from Eve on. And that just gives it maybe a different phrase or a different spin to it. How can we be testing the spirit of the Lord? I think we've all done it. We just say, where's the boundary? Can I go this far and be okay? It all seems the same. Can I go this far and be okay? To test the spirit of the Lord is to test the boundaries. How much fluff can I put in there and still have room for the spirit of the Lord? That's testing, right? And so Peter called her on that. And in summary, I think we would say that although God is not swiftly and decisively bringing physical judgment on his kids today, we still have a need for a work of purity to come upon us individually, purity to come upon the church, because purity ushers in power. Power is not in play until there is purity. And that is what this passage is teaching us. So let's look at the power of the early church, verse 12.

That requires power, right? It was a time for the church to have power. It was a time for the apostles to have power. It was not a time for them to have a lack of purity. Now the next and last section, we're gonna take verses 17 to 42 all together. And I would probably call it the persecution and the preaching of the early church. And we come to this element of persecution again, which we studied just in chapter four, the last time we were together. Satan always tries to destroy the work of the church. It's what his job is. And he tries three things. He tries persecution. And although persecution may discourage a church, it doesn't destroy a church. A church can only be destroyed from the inside. But persecution usually serves to build up a church in the end game. Satan tries corruption, which we see here. And corruption always destroys a church if it is not checked, judged, and eliminated. And the last thing that Satan tries is distraction, which we'll leave hanging right there because that's chapter six. So come back next week for distraction. But this section is about persecution again. And it tells us in 17, the high priest rose up and all who were with him, the party of the Sadducees, and look at this, filled with jealousy, okay? I'm gonna summarize this for the sake of time. They arrest the apostles, they put them into prison at night. An angel opens the doors, brings them out and says, I want you guys to go stand in the temple and speak the words of life and the apostles obey. And then the next morning, the high priest and the council, they send for the apostles. And the people come back and said, well, they're not there. The doors are locked, the guards were there, but there's no apostles. Somebody else comes and says, I know, I know, they're in the temple preaching, which is just awesome. So they finally bring him and they set him before the high priest. And here's what the high priest says. He said, we strictly charged you not to teach in this name. Yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you intend to bring this man's blood upon us. So they had two specific charges against him. First, disobedience to the Sanhedrin. And second charge was making them guilty of the blood of Jesus. Well, the apostles fearlessly. respond to the first charge by saying we must obey God rather than men. That's a good verse to have underlined in our Bibles. And so they pled guilty to the charge of the Sanhedrin. They were guilty, but justified, because they had a higher charge to speak the words of life. And then the second thing that the high priest had charged them with was making them guilty of the blood of this man. Peter says what he's been saying all along, it starts in verse 30.

It's almost like we used to say in the 90s, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it, as all Peter has to say, and he's gonna keep saying that. And it says when they heard that, they were enraged, and they wanted to kill them. And so there was this craziness that had come upon the whole group. But in the midst of all the madness of the Sadducees, this one Pharisee named Gamaliel is able to speak. And it says he was a teacher of the law, he was held in high honor by all the people. And I love this guy, if for nothing else, because he's logical and analytical. And in verse 35, he said to them, men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men. And then he goes on to cite two examples of other men who had risen up, gathered followers, and in the end, it had all come to nothing, which was a great observation on his part. This is just a good logical mind at work. And so he sums it up in verse 38 by saying, so in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone. For if this plan or this understanding is of man, it will fail. But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them, and you might even be found opposing God, which I think would be a terribly fearful thing to be opposing God himself, when here you are in a position that you're supposed to be representing him. And so Gamaliel's advice was very good, very sound, and it says they took his advice, and then they just beat the disciples. Aren't people just crazy? We are crazy. But I did lift out of a commentary, I just wanted to read this to you. Scourging was so common in the Roman Empire, even of men untried and uncondemned, and was so common a fate of the Christians at the time Luke was writing, that he mentions it here rather as a matter of course. It is the first time, however, that it was experienced by the apostles and was probably harder to endure than it ever was afterward. I just found that interesting. And so we finish up verse 41 and 42. It says they left the presence of the council rejoicing that they had, that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. And every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that Jesus is the Christ. Because that's what the angel had told them. Well, first they knew that they had that charge. But when the angel released them, he said, go stand in the temple and teach this name, preach this name, preach this life. And it says they did not cease, they kept doing it. And so obedience was a hallmark. And God had made level paths for their feet. Even though things seemed rocky from time to time, and things have seemed rocky in these first five chapters, God has made level feet for their paths, for them to be able to do what he has called them to do. And I think that too is something that we can take into our hearts and ask the Lord that he will enable us to do the things that he has called us to do. So I'm just gonna pray so that you guys can discuss. Father, I thank you so much for this passage. It's hard to take, Lord, when we come to passages that want to challenge the hidden places of our heart and those areas of our heart where we do not have purity, and Lord, we're studying this passage. We realize, Lord, that you want us to represent you. You want us to be witnesses of who you are. And Lord, we realize to have that power, we must purify our vessel. So Lord, I wanna ask you on behalf of all of us here that you would do a work, that your spirit would begin to do a work among us, and among our church body, and our families, and our marriages, that we would purify ourselves through confessing our sins, repenting, emptying out the white fluff that we allow to come into our spirit, so that we can be at rest under your faucet of living water, Lord, and that you can fill us, baptize us with your spirit, Lord, fill us with your spirit. Come upon us so that we have the power to do the things that you call us to do. Power with our little tiny babies at home, power with teaching our children, power with pointing our teenagers in the right direction, power with difficult marriages, power with coworkers, Lord, and neighbors, and people, extended family that need to see the grace of God in our lives. Lord, we ask you to do this work, and we ask that you would enable us, Lord, to be willing, and to be, and to do what you've called us, in Jesus' name, amen. ---