Acts 5.1 Incredible Christians

But a certain man named Ananias with Sapphira, his wife, sold the possession and kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles' feet. Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whilst it remained, was it not thine own? And after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and gave up the ghost, and great fear came on all them that heard these things.

The young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him. It was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in. And Peter answered unto her, Tell me, whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much.

Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out. Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost. The young men came in, and found her dead, and carrying her forth, buried her by her husband.

And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things. By the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people, and they were all with one accord in Solomon's porch. And of the rest does no man join himself to them.

But the people magnified them, and believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women, insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them. There came also a multitude out of the cities, round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them which were vexed with unclean spirits, and they were healed every one. Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him, which is a sect of the Sadducees, and were filled with indignation, and laid their hands on the apostles, and put them in the common prison.

But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said, Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life. And when they heard that, they entered into the temple early in the morning and taught. But the high priest came, and they that were with him, and called the council together, and all the senate of the children of Israel, and sent to the prison to have them brought.

But when the officers came and found them not in the prison, they returned and told, saying, The prison truly found we shut with all safety, and the keepers standing without before the doors. But when we had opened, we found no man within. Now when the high priest, and the captain of the temple, and the chief priests heard these things, they doubted of them whereunto this would grow.

Then came one, and told them, saying, Behold, the men whom ye put in prison are standing in the temple, and teaching the people. Then went the captain with the officers, and brought them without violence, for they feared the people, lest they should have been stoned. When they had brought them, they set them before the council, and the high priest asked them, saying, Did not we straightly command you that ye should not teach in this name? And behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's blood upon us.

Well that's a remarkable passage of scripture, may God by the Holy Spirit help us to grasp its full significance. Now if you do have a Bible with you, I'd be grateful if you would have it open at the fifth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Now you may recall last week I commenced my address on Sunday morning by making the observation that sometimes our familiarity with the Word of God, our knowledge of it, causes us to overlook some rather sensational statements that are discovered within its pages.

And if we were to read more carefully, more deliberately, and perhaps more slowly, we would be astonished at some of the things that our eyes very often just rush over in our reading. Some of the statements that are made, which are really quite incredible, like the one we studied in some depth last week when we fixed our attention upon an incident in the fourth chapter of the Acts, and we saw Peter and John on trial in Jerusalem in front of the Sanhedrin give an account of their belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, and they acquitted themselves admirably, making such an impression upon the magistrates, upon the judges, that they were forced to the conclusion that they, Peter and John, had been with Jesus. And I said it is nothing short of fantastic that the highest legal authorities in the land of Palestine should offer this accolade to Peter and John, unlearned and ignorant men, yet able to conduct their own defense and indict the judges and charge them with being accomplices to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore sharing corporate responsibility.

These judges took knowledge that Peter and John had been with Jesus. I say this statement is incredible. But how about this one then, for another incredible statement in the thirteenth verse of the fifth chapter of the Acts, for here we read of the reaction of a certain section of the population at Jerusalem to the growing Christian community in the holy city.

And this is what the historian says, of the rest, of this segment of the residents of Jerusalem, durst no man join himself to them, that is the Christian community, but the people magnified them. Of the rest durst no man join himself to them. I say that if you think that statement through, it's a remarkable one.

Let me set it into contemporary relief. I don't know how many churches there are in Worthing, I would guess about forty, and reckon that that guess would be relatively conservative. But do you know one of the churches in this town where people would be afraid to join? Because this is in effect what the historian is saying regarding the growing Christian community at Jerusalem.

They had such a power, such a presence, were making such an impact that they overawed certain of the citizens of Jerusalem, overawed them to the extent that some people didn't join the church, because it was such a powerful community. There's another statement similar to this, and is incredible, found in the gospels when reference is made to two men who really were opposites. One is Herod and the other is John, and by John I mean the Baptist.

It is said that when Herod reflects upon John and the association that he has had with John from time to time, he is afraid. Herod feared John. And I say that that is a sensational statement simply because you would expect an inversion of this.

You would rather anticipate that John the Baptist would fear Herod. Consider the two, Herod was a king, John was a pauper, Herod lived in a palace, John in the wilderness, Herod had a well stocked wardrobe and an overfilled pantry, John went around with the skin of an animal for his clothing and a diet of locusts and honey. And yet when John the Baptist is brought into the presence of Herod, or when Herod thinks about John, he's afraid.

And I say that statement is parallel with this that we discover in Acts 5.13, that there were people amongst the population at Jerusalem who were afraid when they came into contact with the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Of the rest durst no man join himself to them. And it's an indictment upon the twentieth century church, and let's be personal, upon the tabernacle, and let's be even more pertinent, upon its pastor and its members, that this sense of being overawed, overwhelmed, rarely happens.

In the experience of people who come into the sanctuary of this church. And what we want to do then this morning is to inquire into this particular statement and see what it was that these early Christians had that produced such a reaction. And by virtue of working this out, we'll see what we lack in the twentieth century, in as much as we are unable to create this sort of response amongst the townspeople here in Worthing.

I say that one of the characteristics that mark the life of the emerging church at Jerusalem, and so impressed and overwhelmed the citizens of that city, is the presence of God which the early Christians experienced personally and when they came together as a whole. There was a sense of the presence of God. It's unmistakable when you read the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, but don't get so hooked on the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles that you forget the significance of the third and the fourth and the fifth.

Because what is there in the second is merely developed in the rest of the chapters of the Acts of the Apostles and indicates this, that the early Christians par excellence knew the presence of God when they met together. A presence of God which they radiated on their own as they went from house to house in Jerusalem. Do you know what I pray for? Early on a Sunday morning before I leave the manse and I come to the church here, though I'm not an experienced preacher, my years in the ministry have taught me never to pray to be able to preach an eloquent sermon.

I've managed to put that temptation on one side, but what I do pray for most sincerely is this, that when we gather together in this building which is beloved by so many people, that we might sense God. I'm not often a member of the congregation, of any congregation, although I do appreciate being a member of a congregation and listening to someone else preach, but do you know what I want when I am in the congregation listening and participating in general worship? I want the preacher to bring God near to me. I can excuse a preacher anything, a stammering tongue, stuttering words, an inability perhaps to major on secondary areas of doctrine to my satisfaction.

That doesn't matter, provided that man is so borne along by the Holy Spirit, provided there's such a sense of God in the church that my heart is moved and I go out of the building believing that God has been in the place and that the Holy Spirit has plucked the cords of my heart. And I say, one of the characteristics of the early Christian community at Jerusalem was this, that they captured a sense of the presence of God. And if we meet together in the 20th century and we go away without that sense, then we've met in vain.

It's not been a Christian meeting in the biblical sense of that term. When the patriarch Jacob was at Peniel, you remember he didn't appreciate all that was going to happen during that incredible night. And when the day eventually broke, when morn came, he went on his way with these words on his lips, surely the Lord was in this place and I knew it not.

And when the apostle Paul writes to the church at Corinth in the first letter that he sends to this particular Christian community, towards the end he works out what is an ideal church, what is an ideal token of a successful gathering of Christian people. And says, Paul, you can test whether you've been successful on these grounds. When the stranger comes into your meeting, does he fall down and say that the Lord is with these people indeed? Now it was the sense of the presence of God that these early Christians knew that overwhelmed certain sections of the population at Jerusalem.

You see, we as Christian people, and I think, well, no doubt the majority of you are committed to the Lord Jesus Christ. We long to know the presence of God, but you know, my friend, the presence of God can be an awesome thing. The Bible says it is a terrible thing for a sinner to fall into the hands of the living God.

And when God is amongst his people in truth and in power, then those who are not committed to the Lord Jesus Christ might well react against such a community, might well say with Peter, depart from me for I am a sinful man. And so at Jerusalem there was this sort of, if you'll allow the word, repulsion on the part of some of the citizens to the Christian community. They dare not associate with them because the presence of God was so powerfully demonstrated in their midst.

But there's something else about this growing church at Jerusalem that contributes to the reaction that is here described on the part of some of the townspeople. And it is the holiness of the members of the early church. All right, I'm prepared to concede that the Acts of the Apostles would better be described as the Acts of the Spirit.

But when you talk about the Spirit, don't forget the adjective that describes him, that picks out his preeminent characteristic, the Holy Spirit. There is a lot being said in certain circles these days about the Spirit of God, and thank God for any interest in the Spirit. But it is the Holy Spirit of God, and one of his attributes, his main attribute is holiness.

And if I read my Bible aright, when the Holy Spirit deals with the life of an ordinary person, he makes him a holy person. I've never really been able to differentiate between the work of the Spirit in empowering and the work of the Spirit in sanctifying a life. When the disciples were quickened by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, not only were they empowered, I believe they were made more holy.

They were made more like Jesus Christ. And holiness is not a passive quality, it's an active one. Holiness is something that is seen, something that can attract or repel.

Go back to the Baptist for a moment, and think of him as, he has another confrontation with Herod. Why is Herod so afraid of the Baptist? Well because the Baptist has harnessed a power the like of which Herod has never known. With eyes blazing with righteous indignation, Herod is censured by the Baptist.

It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother Philip's wife. Herod, when he's mesmerized by the preaching of the Baptist, has to appreciate this, that there is within the words of the Baptist himself, there is within his life something that is compatible with the words that he speaks. There's no dichotomy between what the Baptist is, and what the Baptist speaks, what the Baptist utters.

And I am so bold to suggest, at least in its infancy, this was the case amongst the Christian community at Jerusalem. What they said they were, and what they were they said. But today we give ourselves the luxury of making a differentiation, a distinction between what we believe and the way that we live.

And the net result is that this radiant holiness is not present. And the net result of that one, if I can follow the logic through, is that people in Worthing are not overawed in our presence. As the people in Jerusalem were overwhelmed by the presence of the early Christians.

I tell you that one graphic illustration of the holiness of that early church is seen in this awful experience that's narrated in the first 11 verses, when Ananias and Sapphira endeavor to dupe all the Christians and to lie against God, and particularly the Holy Spirit of God. And when they attempt this in such a holy atmosphere, their sin is immediately exposed. But because of the deterioration in spirituality in the 20th century, we can get away with sin and it's not brought to the surface because there are too many of us engaged in it.

Someone has said that if the Holy Spirit still worked today, as he did in the case of Ananias and Sapphira, and they're lying against him, then the undertakers would hardly be able to cope with the business that would come their way. A cryptic comment, but there's no humor in my voice when I repeat it, because the comment is so profound and it's so deadly accurate and it hits me on the nerve, and I don't like being hit on the nerve, particularly by my own preaching. I say that one of the things that caused the people at Jerusalem to be afraid of the early Christian community was that they had harnessed a holiness which was not just a passive quality but an active quality, so demonstrated as they gathered together as a community that Ananias and Sapphira could have no part nor lot with them.

And we have the description of this awesome thing, Ananias and Sapphira dying, because they had lied against the Holy Ghost, though one believes that Ananias and Sapphira were Christians and at any rate the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, would have preserved their eternal salvation. Another characteristic that I reckon caused this reaction on the part of Jerusalem's townspeople was this, the early disciples unleashed the power of the Word of God. Wherever you read of the early Christians engaging in conversation, there's always the thought supplied that the topic of their conversation was God and His Word.

And when you read about Peter on the day of Pentecost, you find that having been filled with the Holy Spirit, he starts to preach and he stands up and he declares the Word of God, and all that he has to say is deeply anchored in Old Testament Scripture. And when he's brought in front of the Sanhedrin, because he has been preaching concerning Jesus of Nazareth, again his defense is largely rooted in the Old Testament. And throughout the Acts of the Apostles, and bear this in mind in the twentieth century when preaching is being devalued, you find that whenever the Holy Spirit comes upon a person or a community, the net result is that they start to preach.

They start to proclaim the Word of God. Look at the thirty-first verse of Acts 4. The prayer meeting had been held, or rather the praise meeting, because John and Peter had dealt so well with the Sanhedrin. And at the end of the prayer meeting, we find this happened.

When they, the Christian community, had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. Now what was the evidence of them being filled with the Holy Ghost, at least on this occasion? They spake the Word of God with boldness. And I say one of the things that made these people make such an impact upon the rest of the citizens at Jerusalem was this, they unleashed the power of the Word of God.

Charles Spurgeon was once asked if he would defend the Bible. In characteristic Spurgeonic fashion, Spurgeon said, what? Defend the Bible? I'd rather defend the lion. What was his point? Simply this, the Word of God doesn't need defending.

The Word of God needs unleashing, releasing. The Word of God is not bound. The Sanhedrin will soon discover their folly in trying to silence Peter and John.

They could no more silence these two than the Jewish authorities of old could silence the prophet Jeremiah. And he wanted to be silenced, do you remember, at one stage? And then he said, but there was within my very being, within my heart, a burning, and I could not stay. The Word of God, my friend, is not bound, and it wasn't bound at Jerusalem.

And when we realize that the Word of God doesn't need defending, but rather needs parading in the 20th century, then maybe we'll be on our way back to making the same impact as did the early disciples at Jerusalem. So then they unleashed the Word of God, and this itself can have devastating effects when people come in contact under the hearing of the sound of the Word. And what is more, these early disciples had an irrepressible boldness.

You couldn't shut them up. I've virtually worked out this point for you a moment or so ago, so I'll not develop it much further, apart from saying that when the Sanhedrin in the third chapter are described as trying to silence Peter and John, the fishermen respond, what are we to do, obey you or to obey God? And they set down this principle that if the law of Caesar, or the law of the Jewish Sanhedrin for that matter, was in opposition to the law of God, then the law of God has preeminence. And this has always been the case down church history.

The law of God is the one to which the Christian first of all subscribes, and he accepts. So all these qualities, if you put them together in the melting pot, to use that expression, this holiness, this sense of the presence of God, this unleashing of the Word of God, this irrepressible boldness, mix all this together and what do you get? A community that makes an impact, a community that is overawing, overwhelming as far as some of the townspeople in Jerusalem are concerned. There's something inexplicable, something super rational.

They can't understand it and therefore they are afraid. Now what's wrong with us today? In the 20th century, at least in part, perhaps things are not so bad as occasionally one feels they are. Maybe one of the things that is wrong is this.

There's nothing mysterious about us. Let me repeat that because you probably don't know what I'm talking about anyway so I'll try and develop it. There's nothing mysterious about us.

You see, there's something uncanny about these disciples. They don't understand it. The Sanhedrin, these men, they're not learned, they're not instructed in rabbinical thought and yet they conduct their case as though they've had three years at some Jewish academy.

There's something uncanny, something inexplicable about these men, something mysterious. And I'm suggesting it's that element of the mysterious that as ordinary Christians, as individual believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, we have not harnessed. Listen to A.W. Tozer who can always put things far more pithily than I can.

We have theological saints today, he says, who can and must be proved to be saints by an appeal to the original Greek. What we need are saints whose lives proclaim sainthood and need not run to the concordance for authentication. What's wrong with us today? There's nothing terrible about the church.

Nothing terrible about the church. Nothing that's really awe-inspiring. The church has been analyzed.

It's been categorized. It's virtually been fossilized. And people are not overwhelmed by the church and the ministry of the church, the impact that it should be making.

But you see, the early church couldn't be categorized, it couldn't be analyzed, and it certainly was never fossilized, not in the first hundred years. The people, when they looked at the early church, they saw fire in the bush and they were afraid. It's when the bush is burned out and only ashes are left that people have the audacity to come and take the ashes and analyze them.

And what I'm saying that we need today is more fire in the bush. And when the bush burns with fire, people stand back and they take their shoes off from their feet and they say, this is holy ground and we're somewhat afraid. But today, I say there are not many occasions when people are afraid of the church, rather they're coarsely familiar because we compromise wholesale, in a wholesale fashion, upon the things that we believe.

Nothing mysterious, nothing terrible, nothing awesome, and what we need to know again is this inspiring power of the Holy Spirit. And what is more, the church in the Acts of the Apostles was not merely an organization as we tend to be today. Not just an organization, no, she was a movement.

Not just a movement, though, because she was a walking incarnation of spiritual energy. She began in power, she continued in power, and she moved just as long as she had power. And when she stopped having power, she dug in and tried to contain her blessings as the Israelites, some of them, tried to preserve the manna.

And they discovered that you can't preserve manna because manna breeds worms. And the worms eventually made the manna completely un-eatable. And when the church tried to preserve its blessings, what happened? She bred the worms of monasticism, scholasticism, and institutionalism, and there was a complete and utter absence of power.

And what we need today, I say, is to forget the whole idea of being able to store up blessings and living on a past experience. The Apostle Peter knew the indwelling of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. He also knew the indwelling of the Spirit when he stands before the Sanhedrin.

He knows the indwelling of the Spirit when the church comes together in praise and in prayer, as I've intimated from the 31st verse of Acts chapter 4. And it was this constant walking with the Lord, this constant infilling of God's Holy Spirit that so empowered the early Christians that though some joined them because they responded to the message of the evangel, those who did not respond to the message of redeeming grace were afraid of them. And they didn't associate with them. These men had a power.

They were incredible Christians. And I believe, my friend, with all my heart, that as it was in the days of the Acts of the Apostles, though I will make provision for the unique apostleship of Peter and the other 11, but broadly speaking, as it was in the days of the Acts of the Apostles, so it must be in the 20th century, God has not changed. And I am unimpressed by some theologians and teachers of the Bible who try to explain the anemic condition of today by saying that God has changed in the way that he uses men and women in the 20th century.

I believe, as was it Shakespeare said, made Brutus say, or said of Brutus, the fault lies within ourselves. God is still the same. The Spirit is still the same.

But have we still the same dedication as the early men and women had who named the name of Jesus at Jerusalem? I reckon that there in the fault lies, and by attending to that, the remedy shall come. Amen. And for the rekindling of that fire, O God, we crave, may the bush burn and help us to make an impact, and may we have thy power to be able to cope with all the challenges and with all the strains that life in the 20th century brings.

Help us to do credit to the name of Jesus, as did the early ambassadors of the faith. And now as some of us take our leave at this juncture, we solicit your blessing, the blessing of the omnipotent, sovereign God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and until Jesus returns. Amen.