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SECTIONS:
God's Wrath
Grave results
Hypocrisy never fools God
Options and Choices
Pulling it together |
BECAUSE THE Bible tells us
that more will be required of the person to whom more has been
given, we have to take God's call very seriously. He is merciful
and loving, but he is also just.
GOD’S WRATH REVEALED
People often say, “How
could you believe in a God who strikes you dead if you play up?
What kind of monster do you follow?” It’s a good question.
Does God strike people dead for minor sins?
I used to know a fellow who made a practice of blaspheming, and
challenging God to strike him dead. When God didn't do it, he
said, “Well, he didn't do much this time!” I pointed
out that what God had done was to leave him to his own devices,
which was probably harsher than sending a bolt of lightning,
but he didn't get the point.
God struck Ananias and Sapphira dead, but not with bolts of lightning.
That is rarely God’s way. In fact, the bolt of lightning
idea is more associated with the Germanic god, Thor, or with
the Roman Iupiter than with our God.
As the Bible says,
It is a terrible
thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
But that can work in many ways.
God sometimes does pour out his wrath on evildoers, but he equally
lets us do what we want and reap the results.
Adolf Hitler did wicked things, and, for a time, it seemed that
evil had fully gained the upper hand in Europe and across much
of Asia. God didn’t step in at the first signs of trouble
and send Adolf to his room until he could calm down.
But Hitler did what he wanted. He persecuted, he destroyed, and
he destroyed the very foundations of his own society. Finally
he got himself into a corner from which there could be no escape.
He killed his mistress and he killed himself. It was the only
way he had left for himself.
What if he had repented? What if he had stopped, surrendered,
given in? There was a chance he’d escape with his life.
Even if they did execute him, at least they’d do it cleanly
and with some honour. There were possibilities. But Hitler followed
the logic of his own situation right to death in the dirty cot
in the dim end of his Berlin bunker.
Ananias and Sapphira followed the logic of their own situation
right to their own deaths. There is no sign of any intention
to repent.
We all need to ask ourselves the question, “What am I sowing?”
because, as the Bible tells us,
What you sow
you shall also reap.
The story of Ananias and Sapphira
is so simple, we can almost deal with it in a few sentences.
LITTLE THINGS HAVE GRAVE RESULTS
Sometimes we don’t
grasp the magnitude of the things we do. We do what everyone
else does, or we do what just seems a minor thing, but the repercussions
ring around the world.
I’ve told the story of Gavrillo Princeps before. He was
a young man, about 19, who belonged to a group of people plotting
to free his part of Jugoslavia from Austrian rule. He took a
rifle to a rally, where everyone lined the streets of Sarajevo
to welcome Archduke Ferdinand. When the carriage came past Princeps,
he shot the Archduke, and killed him. Princeps was arrested,
tried and executed.
And World War I began. All of Europe and a lot of the Middle
East was embroiled in a war that lasted for four years and killed
millions.
Do you think that Princeps and his co–conspirators understood
that that would be the result? Of course not. They weren’t
interested in International Treaties. They just wanted to upset
the Austrians, make them come down harder on the Montenegrans
so that more of them would feel rebellious against the Austrians
and maybe rise up against them and drive them back to their own
land.
Did Ananias and Sapphira have any idea of the repercussions of
what they did when they chose to lie to the church? They probably
just said to themselves, “We can say we gave everything
we gained from the sale. No one will know, and we’ll be
just like Barnabas.” They probably even justified it to
themselves. They probably said, “Everyone must be holding
something back. Who would give everything they got from selling
a block of land? It’s just a way of talking when they say,
‘This is what I received.’”
When everyone else is actually giving everything and someone
only gives part, that’s alright, isn’t it? We are free.
We can be mean or generous as we choose. Each of us stands or
falls before is own master. We answer to Christ the Lord, rather
than to each other.
HYPOCRISY NEVER FOOLS GOD
But when we are hypocrites,
when we pretend to be what we are not, then we damage the whole
fabric of the church, and set the work of the gospel back.
This wasn’t a simple minor peccadillo. This was two people
tearing a great hole in the perfection of God’s new work.
They were idolaters as much as the people who made the golden
calf while Moses received the law from God were idolaters. They
worshipped reputation and image. They wanted to be something
they were not. And God could not allow the church to start out
on that footing.
So Ananias died. It doesn't actually say anywhere that this was
a punishment from God. I’m sure that, if you got an autopsy
done on each of them, you wouldn’t find entry and exit burns
from lightning. No one would be saying, “Wow! Thunderbolts
on a clear day!” There’d be advanced heart disease,
or a ruptured aneurism or a stroke or something like that.
Of course, in a sense, you have to say that God did it. Nothing
occurs without him. If we say that all the good comes from God,
then we have to admit that he lies behind the bad, because the
devil can’t make anything, he only misuses the good things
God has already created.
But, at the same time, Ananias and Sapphira had put themselves
outside God’s protection. They stood outside his grace.
Instead of showing humble reliance that God accepted them, they
were trying to get everyone else's favour.
Some years ago, someone phoned me about a difficult work situation.
This person had started a new job and it turned out to be a very
cliquey place. She was the newcomer and no one would talk to
her. She was wondering what to do to get to be liked. She was
going to buy little gifts, do nice things for them. I said, “Kind
of, buy their friendship?” She was shocked to hear it put
in those words, but realised that she was going about it the
wrong way. She persevered with them and they finally came around
and became her firm friends.
Ananias and Sapphira were hoping to buy friendship and reputation
in the church and, in this way, to get favour with God. Except
they weren’t even willing to pay the full price. They gave
themselves a discount and expected gift wrapping as well. Their
whole action cut absolutely across the idea of God’s free
and undeserved grace. They were proclaiming by their actions
that God can be bought. But he can’t be!
So they died.
WE HAVE OPTIONS AND CHOICES
A lot of people miss
the point, though. God didn’t strike them dead for withholding
money.
I suppose I should think more carefully about why some people
look uncomfortable when offering time comes. I thought it was
about dragging bulky wallets out of tight pockets. But maybe
these are people who are scared that they’ll be struck dead
if they don’t give their full tithe!
The comedian, Danny Kaye, used to do a routine about The Lone
Psychiatrist. It was about a frontier psychiatrist riding
from ranch to ranch and town to town, treating people as he goes.
In one place he comes on a woman whose husband thinks he‘s
a chook. The Lone Psychiatrist asks the lady if she should treat
her husband. “No!” she says, “I’d get you
to do it, except I need the eggs.”
Well, if you feel uncomfortable when the offering time comes,
because you are afraid of getting a bit of whammo if you don’t
tithe, I’d better ask you not to listen to the rest of this
sermon. We need the cash!
But, for the rest of you, of
course, the issue wasn’t anything to do with whether or
not Ananias and Sapphira had given to God or not. It was all
about the fact that they were lying to the congregation, and
that meant that they were attempting to lie to God.
The story is that there were needs among the people. Some were
quite poor. So the church people decided to help each other.
Several members, including Barnabas, owned property, so they
sold it and gave what they gained to the poor.
Isn’t this what Jesus taught? Become giving people, don’t
become acquisitive. Don’t need to have more and more. Don’t
be like our own society which has made a virtue of affluence.
These Christians gave what they had so that others could have
what they needed. It’s like the saying from the environmental
movement, “Living more simply, so that others can simply
live.” But they were doing it out of the sheer joy of giving
to one another. They had no needy people among them, because
they all shared. No one was pressuring them: it was their own
decision.
You know how these things go, though. Once one catches on, others
follow. A few did it, and others said, “That’s a good
idea! We’ll do it, too!” In the end, it spread through
the entire church.
Ananias and Sapphira wanted to be on the bandwaggon, too. So
they sold the property they owned — a block of land —
and they made a donation, too.
So far, that’s fine.
The trouble comes in where they said that what they were giving
was the whole amount they had received, but it wasn’t. They
were trying to make themselves out to be generous like Barnabas
and others who had given everything they had. They were using
the generous giving attitude of the people they mixed with to
build themselves a reputation. It was exploitation.
PULLING IT TOGETHER
I want to pull this together
here. If you recall the rest of the passage, think about how
people reacted to this. No one dared join the Christians, but
more and more were becoming believers.
What we see here is how seriously God takes the need for the
Church to reveal him in all his glory. And one of the surprising
things is that the first way we reveal him is not by our preaching,
nor by the signs and wonders worked through us, but by the quality
of our relationships with God through Jesus and with each other.
Elaine often reminds us that Jesus prayed that the believers
might all be one. She says, “We are always asking Jesus
to answer our prayers, but what are we doing to answer his prayer?”
It's a good question!
Jesus said, in that same prayer in John 17, that, when the world
sees us as one then it knows that the Father sent his Son into
the world.
Ananias and Sapphira had cut right across that prayer of Jesus.
God is merciful to us, and gives us plenty of room to repent.
But there’s always a principle, that he deals very firmly
with those who choose to be the first to spoil his pictures of
what his Kingdom is like.
There were idolaters in Israel who lived all their lives in idolatry,
repeatedly rejecting the words of the prophets. But about 3 000
were killed when they worshipped the golden calf while Moses
was on the mountain establishing the covenant with God.
Moses himself was rejected from entering the promised land because
he had spoilt God’s picture.
When the people travelled through the land and were dying of
thirst, God told Moses to strike a certain rock with his staff,
and water flowed out. It was a picture of Jesus, the Rock whose
life was poured out when he was struck for our sins.
But when they were thirsty again, and angry with Moses for their
distress, God showed Moses a similar rock and told him to speak
to it so that water would flow. But Moses struck it again with
his rod. Jesus doesn’t have to be struck repeatedly; he
doesn’t die annually. He died once for our sins. Now we
speak to him and gain a fresh filling of the water of life. God
was showing this truth to Israel for the first time, and Moses
ruined it. He was punished.
And, for the first time, God was showing the Church the truth
that a real church is a loving and sharing community, and Ananias
and Sapphira ruined that demonstration by a demonic act of their
own. Satan filled their hearts to lie to God.
God hasn’t changed his standards, though he might not act
as sharply against our sin today.
An effective church, one that grows, will be a loving, sharing
church, a true community in Christ. And sometimes God has to
cull people right out to get the picture right again.
We have lost many people over
the years, and I’m sure that we still have a lot of grief
about those losses. I don’t want to say that all of these
losses were to clear the decks for us so that we could go forwards
in God, but I am sure that some were exactly for that reason.
God wants us to be straight players
in his Kingdom’s cause. He is telling us that truth today:
so now is the time to decide that, by his grace, we will be.
May we make that decision, and may God’s grace overflow
to our district from us, bringing many into the number of believers.
AMEN |
