Acts 4:32-5:16 - Dying To Give and Pastor Talks Bibles

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Welcome to Tabernacle Talk, A Bible Study Podcast, hosted by Bryon Self, pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church. We hope this time in God's Word will be an encouragement to you. Let's dive right in.

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. Today, we are continuing. We've had a lot of great things happen in Chapter Four.

5,000 people get saved, Peter and John get arrested, but the elders say we can't do anything to Peter and John because everyone knows that this guy was really healed by God. And so Peter and John went back to the rest of the believers.

They prayed, they sang Psalms together. The Holy Spirit worked in them in a big way, and they preached the Word of God with boldness. And then we come to where we are now in verse 32.

All the believers were united in heart and mind, and they felt that what they owned was not their own. So they shared everything they had.

The apostles testified powerfully to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God's great blessing was upon them all.

There were no needy people among them, because those who owned land or houses would sell them and bring the money to the apostles to give to those in need.

For instance, there was Joseph, the one the apostles nicknamed Barnabas, which means son of encouragement. He was from the tribe of Levi and came from the island of Cyprus. He sold a field he owned and brought the money to the apostles.

But there was a certain man named Ananias, who with his wife, Sapphira, sold some property. He brought part of the money to the apostles, claiming it was the full amount, with his wife's consent, he kept the rest.

Then Peter said, Ananias, why have you let Satan fill your heart? You lied to the Holy Spirit and you kept some of the money for yourself. The property was yours to sell or not sell as you wished.

And after selling it, the money was also yours to give away. How could you do a thing like this? You weren't lying to us, but to God.

As soon as Ananias heard these words, he fell to the floor and died. Everyone who heard about it was terrified. Then some young men got up, wrapped him in a sheet and took him out and buried him.

About three hours later, his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, was this the price you and your husband received for your land? Yes, she replied, that was the price.

And Peter said, how could the two of you even think of conspiring to test the spirit of the Lord like this? The young men who buried your husband are just outside the door and they will carry you out too. Instantly, she fell to the floor and died.

When the young men came in and saw that she was dead, they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear gripped the entire church and everyone else who had heard what had happened.

The apostles were performing many miraculous signs and wonders among the people and all the believers were meeting regularly at the temple in the area known as Solomon's Colony.

But no one else dared to join them, even though all the people had high regard for them. Yet more and more people believed and were brought to the Lord, crowds of both men and women.

As a result of the apostles' work, sick people were brought out into the streets on beds and mats so that Peter's shadow might fall across some of them as he went by.

Crowds came from the villages around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those possessed by evil spirits. And they were all healed. So I want to look at a couple of things with this passage.

Everything is kind of in an odd juxtaposition because there's great things happening there's unity, there's the poor being taken care of. And on the other side of the passage, you have tons of people believe in crowds of men and women.

There's such a heartfelt belief in the power of what Jesus' church could do, that people were hoping that a Christian's shadow would fall across a sick person and they could be healed if even a shadow passed over them.

But we see here the incredibly sneaky sin of pride. And it comes because people want accolades, they want praises, they want to be thought of as particularly pious and whole.

It does not happen because people tried to change the doctrine of the church. Here this incredibly sad story doesn't happen because there are people who are trying to say, Jesus wasn't really God.

It doesn't happen because there were people trying to say, well, I think this sin is okay, or this sin is okay. No, it was people attempting to say, look how righteous, look how pious I am. But they were lying.

But they were proud in a heart. And I want to note in verse number three of chapter five, where Peter says, Ananias, why have you let Satan fill your heart?

As we've been reading through the book of Acts, if my memory serves me correctly, we have not in the book of Acts encountered Satan even once.

We've seen some of the rulers of this earth, specifically some of the religious rulers of Israel, those who wielded tremendous political power. We've seen them at work, but we haven't seen Satan at work again.

And here he does not show up in the evil outsiders. He does not show up in Roman soldiers coming to take everyone away. He does not come in the form of Herod.

Not yet, anyway.

He comes through two believers, through two people that named the name of Jesus, that regularly met with the church, that had such a commitment to the church, that even in their lying and even in their pride, they were giving a sum of money to the

church. These were not uninvolved people. They were people that were known. They were people that were generous.

They did give. But these were Christians that allowed Satan to work pride and lying and status in their hearts and in their minds. And they didn't fall alone.

Just like Adam and Eve, they didn't fall alone. They fell together. Can I encourage you?

Satan will often work so that you do not fall alone. You're falling with someone else.

I think even in Matthew 16 where Jesus tells Peter, get the behind me, Satan, there it's because Peter, in front of all the other disciples, is trying to rebuke Jesus and say, Jesus, you're not right.

And he's trying to get all of the other disciples to agree with him. He's trying to get even Jesus to agree with him, which is why Jesus says, get behind me, Satan. Satan doesn't often want us to sin alone or he doesn't want it to stay that way.

He wants our pride and our lying to wrap more people in. He wants our sexual immorality to draw more people in. He wants our slander and our gossip and our bitter words to not just flow out of us, but begin to flow out of other people as well.

Can I encourage you? Don't allow Satan to lie to you. Don't allow Satan to use you to influence others.

And don't allow others who are being influenced by Satan, don't allow those people to influence you. You go, how do I know if it's Satan?

Well, we read some verses today from the time of recording in connection with sin and in connection specifically with communion and looking at our own hearts before the Lord.

Galatians 5, it says this, When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear.

Sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these.

Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God. So you want to know what Satan's works look like? It looks like that.

He says, but the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives. And this is the kind of fruit that we see on either end of this sad story. He says, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

And here that is really the main focus of these verses. There is a note that Satan was not completely absent. He was not not at work.

But the enemy, the true enemy of the early Church, the first Christians to die in the Book of Acts, were not those martyred by outside people.

It was Christians with hearts filled by Satan to try and lie to the Holy Spirit, to try and lie to God, to manipulate God's people into giving them accolades and praises. Are we looking for the praise and accolades of men?

Or are we trying to live our lives to be pleasing to God? Who are we working to please in our life? I want to note again something that I said a couple episodes ago.

Here, all the believers were united in heart and mind there in chapter 4, verse 32. They felt that what they owned was not their own, so they shared everything they had. Here in the US, we can so often become very territorial with our stuff.

We love our things and we think, I have earned all of this money and so it all belongs to me. I have earned this house and so it is for my use only. But I'd encourage us, everything we have is a gift from God.

And if the belief of the early church was that what they owned was not their own, how much more true for us today that we ought to have a spirit of continual generosity and love and a care for God's people.

We're going to come across Barnabas's name several more times. And he is the son of encouragement. I won't take much time on him now, but I find it amazing.

He was from the tribe of Levi, came from the island of Cyprus. He sold a field he owned and brought the money to the apostles. If I'm tracing this correctly, he came from the island of Cyprus.

He was so good of a businessman that he had even bought fields in Israel, not the country that he was from, but that he had bought a field.

Hopefully, perhaps he was hoping that he would sow some food there, that he would have maybe seeds, grow those. Maybe he was hoping to build a home there in Israel instead of back in Cyprus.

But whatever his aspirations were, he gave them up so that other people could have food, so that other people could have clothing, so that other people could have whatever they needed, whatever the early church needed.

And I think that's such an incredible testimony that Barnabas here says, hey, whatever was mine, whatever my goals were, I'm giving it all up so that Jesus is glorified, so that people are loved and taken care of.

What if Christians today had that mindset? What a difference it would make in our world.

I think one other note that I want to make from the story of Ananias and Sapphira is why did these two die out of all the people over the past couple thousand years that have sinned? Many of us have sinned.

Why haven't we dropped to dead like Ananias and Sapphira?

And I think there could be many reasons that are given, but I think at the very least, this gives the example that the God who in the Old Testament was serious about his worship, that those that violated the Ark of the Covenant, those that offered

sacrifices that were not supposed to offer sacrifices, those that did not take the worship of God seriously, died. You can think of Uzzah who touched the Ark of the Covenant when he wasn't supposed to.

You can think of kings that tried to offer incense on the altar of the Lord and were struck with leprosy. And I think for us today, we need to realize that we do not just worship the Lord on a Sunday. Every day of our life is worship.

But are we worshiping in a way that honors and obeys and glorifies God, or are we worshiping in a haphazard way that says, God, I can worship you however I want, regardless of what you say in your word.

It's just whatever I feel like doing, whatever I feel like saying, whatever I feel like thinking about, whatever kind of friends that I want to have in my life. That's what I'm going to have. Can I encourage us today?

Let's take the worship of God seriously. Every action in our life is worship in some way. Are we worshiping the way that God calls us to?

Many other things could be said. We'll see next week some more opposition that comes, not from inside the church now, but from outside. And we'll see how the apostles deal with that.

But I'd like to encourage us today. Let's have the heart of Barnabas that says, God, whatever you want, my goals, my aspirations, my dreams are nothing. I'm giving it all to you.

Whatever you want from me, you've got it. And let's not have the heart of Ammonias and Sapphira that says, I just want pride. I just want accolades.

I just want people to think that I'm really great. Let God determine how great or not great we are.

Let us determine to be servant-hearted, that we would give, we would be generous, we would love, we would give our lives in faithful service and worship to our King. Hope you have a great day. See you tomorrow.