The Holiness of God's New Temple - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Acts 4:32-5:11, we hear how the early church is becoming a supportive community, and we learn from the example of Ananias and Sapphira about the significance of God’s holiness.
Transcript:
Tell me if this has happened to you before. You're sitting at a table, maybe at home, maybe at a restaurant, and a delicious meal is plated before you. And you begin to eat. But as you take your next bite, you feel something strange in your mouth. It's hanging in your teeth. It's nothing that was on the menu.
It's a strand of hair. Has that happened to you before? Yeah, few of you. Now I don't always mind surprises in my food. A rogue onion ring in a bag of fries is a welcome delight, but I must say. I don't keep munching down when I find a hair in my mouth, I remove it with a shiver of disgust, and I, I trust your reaction is the same.
Perhaps even for some of you, it would just spoil the whole meal. Now we react this way because strands of hair do not belong on our plate. It's not something we eat. It's completely out of place. We are jealous to protect the sanctity of our meals. Now, I want you to take that experience and your reaction and to use that as a touch point, as an analogy for understanding the holiness of God.
Sin before God is like hair in the plate. He has no taste for sin. He only welcomes righteousness and goodness in his presence. Anything less than that is picked out and thrust from his presence. Adam and Eve once enjoyed God's presence in the Garden of Eden, but when they sinned, they were evicted. When God blessed the people of Israel with his presence, guardrails were put in place through the sanctuary of the tabernacle and the temple.
No one could just stroll into God's presence without risking their life because of sin, only the high priest could enter the inner sanctum, the holy of holies, and that only once a year, and when Israel persisted in their sins despite God's exceeding patience, God spit them out of this promised land into exile, and the temple was destroyed.
Now, later on, the temple was rebuilt and this standard remained and every human being, continued to fall short, every human, until the son of God was born. The Son of man, Jesus of Nazareth. He was righteous and good and holy. He offered himself as our atoning sacrifice on the cross, a sacrifice of obedience acceptable to God.
He was raised from the dead and he ascended into heaven entering the heavenly temple, the real deal. The Son of God, born the son of man, standing in the presence of the Father. He did this so we could stand alongside them. He did this so that with himself as the cornerstone, we who believe will be built upon him as the living temple of God, God's presence, resident in us individually and collective as a whole.
Now I tell you this because it is only with this background in mind that you can adequately understand the account that we're gonna read today. Only by understanding God's holiness, his intolerance for sin and our redemption to be his temple, will you understand the judgment that he brings when sin appears in these early days of the church.
But before we get to sin, we see testimony of the goodness that God is producing in his church. So we first look at the end of chapter four, verses 32 through 37. Once again, I'll read it says, all the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions with their own, but they shared everything they had with great power.
The apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them for from time to time, those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
Joseph a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, sold the field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostle's feet. What we see here in these verses is, what we see is the fingerprints of the Holy Spirit. Luke notes that they were all one in heart and mind.
You see unity in the, among the body of believers. We also see that through the apostles, they continue to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. It says with great power, they did this testimony. So again, hinting at the work of the Holy Spirit ongoing here. And just as kind of an aside, just notice how central the resurrection is to the gospel message for them, this is why everything hinged on. If, if Jesus is not alive, if he's not raised from the dead, then they have nothing to say. Paul says as much in First Corinthians 15: 14, if Christ is not raised, then we're stuck in our sins. But because Jesus was raised from the dead and the apostles said, we saw him, we ate with him, we talked with him, we saw him ascend.
Then we truly have good news to share. And so they're preaching. But besides this preaching, you have this just awesome way of life as being cultivated among the believers by the spirit. Now we saw this testified to earlier in Acts 2 verses 44 through 45, where it says that the believers had everything in common and that, and that's what this passage is reiterating once again, is that they all cared for each other.
There was no needy persons among them. They shared with one another what they had. And again, this is just fulfilling what God's intention was all along for his people to be. God told the people of Israel in Deuteronomy 15:4 that there shouldn't, there should be no need for poor people to be among you.
You should be taking care of each other. When we hear the prophecy, anticipating the coming Messiah, a testimony that Isaiah gives in Isaiah 61 verses 1 through 2, a prophecy that is upon the lips of Jesus as he preaches to his hometown of Nazareth. It says, the spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
There's all kinds of spiritual benefits that we can talk about in terms of the good news, namely our forgiveness from sins. Our deliverance from judgment. We also look forward to the resurrection of the body, but there is good news for the poor also in the gospel, and we see it coming to life here in this community that the poor are no longer going to be neglected, but rather the people of God are going to care for one another, they're going to care for their fellow believers. And in fact, we can say that this is, this is surely good news for the world because we can see the impact that church has had upon the world. We would not see charity in this world the way it is, and we can always do better, but we wouldn't even see it as it is, if not for Jesus Christ, if not for the establishment of the church.
Our culture of charity in the United States goes back to our Christian foundations, that didn't just pop out of thin air. So when Jesus shows up, it is good news for the poor and we see it coming to life in the church and again, isn't, there's an especial responsibility we have though for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.
Paul says in Galatians 6:10. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. Yes, we should do good to all people, but especially we need to care for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ and in James 2 verses 14 through 17, James is talking about faith and works, and how if you really have faith, it's gonna show up in your actions. And just as an example of that, he points out the fact that if a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food, if one of you says to them, go in peace; keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?
What he's pointing out there is that as a Christian family, yeah, we should be praying for each other, but we can do more than that too. We can go and fulfill the need of, of that prayer. We're saying, God, please help Brother so and so, please help Sister so and so meet their need. Well, maybe God wants you to help meet their need.
The point is is that as Christians, we are responsible to care for each other, and we see this being lived out in the early community now. I, I think I addressed this when we looked at Acts two, but we shouldn't think as though they had like some communist system going on where they had to throw everything in a pot and no one had any property rights or anything like that.
We see, clearly that's not the case, but they, because they're still owning land, they're selling to help those who are in need. What's being called for here in terms of their example is if you have excess, if you have things that you can dispense with, then do so to help a brother or sister. And Luke points out one particular fellow who will become significant later on in the book of Acts.
A fellow named Joseph, better known as Barnabas, Barnabas meaning son of encouragement. Now that's a nickname. Wouldn't you love to have that? Maybe not actually Barnabas, but son of encouragement, that you're just so well known for being one who encourages other, that they call you a son of encouragement or or a daughter of encouragement as it would be.
And it's noted that he was from Cyprus and that he was a Levite, and at least one commentator, Patrick Shriner, suggests that maybe this is, Luke is pointing out these details because once again, it's demonstrating the fulfillment of God's call for his people. Because if you're a Levite, you're part of the, the tribe of priests.
And here Barnabas is truly fulfilling God's command by offering this sacrifice of obedience and helping care for the poor in their church community. He had a field, he sold it and he laid the proceeds at the feet of the apostles as telling them, do with this as you see fit. Now this example from Barnabus sets us up for a notable contrast, a contrast in how good practices can be twisted and perverted for wicked purposes. So we continue on into Acts five, verse, looking at verses one through six. Luke writes Now a man named Ananias, together with wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife's full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostle's feet. Then Peter said, Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn't it belong to you before it was sold and after it was sold?
Wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God. When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. Then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body and carried him out and buried him. We have two new figures on the scene.
Ananias and Sapphira, members of this early church community, they were following in the footsteps of what others were doing. They had a field and they figured, okay, we'll sell it and we'll give the proceeds to the church, but there's a twist. They sold their field. They got the proceeds, but they did not give all of the money to the church, but that's not the problem.
The problem wasn't that they didn't give all the money to the church. The problem was that they didn't give all the money to the church, but they told the church they gave them all the money from the sale of that field. And why would they do that? Well, there's some cultural factor here that I think help our understandings. When it came to great public works in ancient society many times, if those works came about, like a fountain was to be built, for instance, or baths, it wasn't always built by taxes. Sometimes they just didn't have the tax funds to do it, or maybe the emperor was pocketing too much of it for himself. And so a great patron in the community would say, I will build the fountain for the town.
You know, something like that. And the benefit for him is he gets all this glory, because look, that's the guy that built the fountain. So you have that, that culture in that, in this time and place of patronage. And so it could be a point of pride in terms of saying, we sold this field and we gave all the money to the church.
Ananias wants that kind of glory without the complete sacrifice. Now it's interesting, we wonder how Peter came to knew, know that they had lied about this. Perhaps the spirit simply revealed it to him, perhaps there was just other people in the church that knew and they said, Hey Peter, they're saying this, but they actually kept some of the money for themselves.
They talked with the buyer, he said he paid that much. You know, that kind of thing. Whatever the case may be, Peter, Peter knows and he confronts Ananias, and notice what he says. We've been talking a lot about the Holy Spirit, notice the reversal here. We expect that as a believer, Ananias would be filled with the Holy Spirit, but instead Peter says, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit?
Ananias is the complete opposite of what he's supposed to be. And this language of Satan filling him hearkens back to descriptions of what was ongoing with Judas. For instance, in Luke 22 verse three, it says, then Satan entered Judas. So you have kind of like some Judas kind of activity going on here.
And it's in keeping with Satan that Ananias would lie because Satan is the father of lies. Jesus says in, in John eight, speaking to the religious leaders. He says, you belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth.
But there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language for he is a liar and the father of lies.
Satan loves a good lie. We see it all the way back in the beginning of Eden where he, he twists God's words, saying, oh, God told you not even to touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, telling Adam and Eve that God doesn't really have your best interest in mind here. It's interesting to think about how much brokenness in this world proceeds from lies. They take on a life of their own so that Satan doesn't have to be in all places at all times, because he's not.
But he can wield a whole lot of influence through lying and as we would expect, God hates lies. From Proverbs 16, 6 rather, verses 16 through 19 says, there are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him, and now notice that three out of the seven things have something to do with lying, haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes.
You got some lying going on when you're devising a wicked scheme. Feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a person who stirs up conflict in the community. God hates that stuff. He hates deceitfulness.
It's that kind of way of life you would expect to find in a temple of Satan. It's the kind of thing that you should not find in the temple of God. It is important. We, we recall here that that's exactly what the body of believers are. They are this new temple of God formed in Jesus Christ. And as we see in Zephaniah 3 verse 12 through 13, this remnant, speaking about us, this remnant should not find any lies on their tongues. It says there, but I will leave within you the meek and the humble. The remnant of Israel will trust in the name of the Lord. They will do no wrong; they will tell no lies. A deceitful tongue will not be found in their mouths. They will eat and lie down, and no one will make them afraid.
So that's pretty clear. The, the believers are to be the temple of God. They shouldn't, they shouldn't be lying. Lying is in keeping with Satan and this is why what Ananias is doing is so out of place, but there's more to this also. It's not just that it's out of place, it's that he hasn't just lied to man.
Peter says that he has lied to God. Now this is an important thing to note here, because remember what he says. He says, you have lied to the Holy Spirit. And then he says, you have not lied just to human beings, but to God. So if you're trying to keep track in your Bible of verses that help us understand the Trinity, this would be a great one to underline here because first thing we note here is that the Holy Spirit is God, you've lied to the Holy Spirit, you've lied to God. The other thing you notice here is that clearly the Holy Spirit is a person of God. Because you cannot lie to a force, you cannot lie to the wind. You cannot lie to gravity. You can only lie to people. And what Peter says here is that Ananias has lied to the Holy Spirit.
And so, adding that all together, remembering that God does not tolerate sin, we remember in the Old Testament of the judgments he brought upon the people of Israel, we think about the sin of Achan. They took stuff from Jericho that was supposed to be devoted to God, brought judgment on Israel, and then when they found out Achan and his family did it, they judged him.
We see in the Old Testament, we see Paul's testimony to God's accountability. In First Corinthians 3:17, it says, if anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person. For God's temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.
So God does just that. God destroys Ananias. He strikes him dead.
Now, if we just took verse text and we just read it, we'd say, oh, wow, that seems kind of harsh.
Well, remember what we're talking about here. We're talking about sin being present in the Holy Temple of God.
We so easily forget the seriousness, seriousness of our sin. We, we so easily forget that. Wow, this seems like a pretty brutal punishment, that in fact, at the end of the ages, on the final day, all people are going to stand before God and have to give an account for themselves, and that those outside of Christ are gonna be cast out into destruction.
Jesus makes the stakes clear in Matthew 10: 28. He says, do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body and hell. So yeah, it is serious, but it's a preview of what God is going to do ultimately to those who remain committed to their wickedness.
This is sin definitively expelled from the community of the church. They come, they bury, take him out and bury him. And it kind of seems like it's, it brings to mind how those who did not live in accordance with God's commands were sent outside of the camp of, of Israel.
But there's one more person remaining who knew about this lie. It's Sapphira. Picking up in verse seven, Peter confronts her, says about three hours later, his wife came in not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land? Yes, she said, that is the price.
Peter said to her, how could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord? Listen, the feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also. At that moment, she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband.
Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events. Something that I, I think is just worth noting here, it's how Peter is not content to allow their lie to remain in place. Peter sees it as his responsibility to address their sinfulness. And in fact, this is a responsibility that didn't belong to just Peter alone, but rather it was the responsibility of the church on the whole.
Paul notes this in First Corinthians five, makes it clear that yes, God is the one who judges those who are outside the church, but as far as those who are within the community of the church, it is our responsibility to judge sin. He says in First Corinthians 5: 13, God will judge those outside. Expel the wicked person from among you.
And then in the next chapter he talks about how the church is fully capable of judging in in these sorts of matters. Now, Peter only takes one step in that accountability here, and God just takes over. Jesus lays out a whole process of accountability in Matthew 18 where you first confront sin, then you bring other people from the church in.
But here, God basically tells Peter, I've got it from here, Ananias and Sapphira were playing games with God. They lied to God. Peter says that she was testing the spirit. She's not respecting God's holiness. And so Peter says that God would bring the same punishment upon her, and if it was not God's intent that she would receive this punishment, it's not as though Peter just has this natural power to strike people dead, it's not because Peter says it that it will happen, it's because he, he knows this is God's intent, that he's going to bring this punishment upon her.
There's a function that this punishment serves. It serves as a warning to the community of the church as if everything we hear from the Old Testament wasn't a sufficient warning enough to dissuade us from embracing sin, even as we call ourselves Christians. Paul says in First Corinthians 10 verses 5 through 11, talking about these examples we have from the Old Testament, especially as it appears in the Exodus.
It says, nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them. Their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things, as they did, do not be idolaters as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
We should not commit sexual immorality as some of them did; in one day, 23,000 of them died. We should not test Christ as some of them did and were killed by snakes, and do not grumble as some of them did and were killed by the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warning for us on whom the culmination of the ages has come.
Isn't that interesting? I think so often in this age of Christ, we say, oh, that Old Testament stuff, that was when God was really harsh and adressed sin seriously, now, now God's really nice. He doesn't deal with sin in that kind of way. That's not Paul's reading here. Paul says, this is a warning. This is a warning to us, especially that we are now in this position in which we are living.
In the time in which the culminations of the age, ages has come upon us, the Messiah has appeared. What sort of people are we gonna be when Jesus returns? How is he going to find us? So we see that in verse 11, in the wake of Ananias and Sapphira being struck dead, says that great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events. Rightly so! All of us would be seized with great fear if that happened. Right?
God was making a point. He is fully justified in making that point.
It is only when we take seriously God's perfect holiness and the seriousness of sin that we can seriously comprehend the wonder of God's grace towards us Ananias and Sapphira are an example to us. An example of what not to do. An example of what sin deserves in the presence of a Holy God. No wrong was done to them.
Sin has no place in God's temple, and this and this couple was expelled because of their sinfulness. It's certainly a sobering realization that God does not wink at sin.
But I would be remiss if I did not mention God's grace here. It does remain the case that while Ananias and Sapphira receive the punishment they deserved, there is an opportunity for us to heed what happened to them, to instead, repent from our own sins and receive the mercy of Jesus Christ.
The Apostle John perfectly captures the reality of our brokenness and our new reality as those who are united with Jesus. In First John two verses one through six, he says, my dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father in Jesus Christ, the righteous one.
He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world. We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, I know him, but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anybody obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.
You can call yourself a Christian. If your life isn't adding up, if we cannot find evidence that you know Jesus, we can only conclude that you are a liar. Ananias and Sappira may have claimed they knew Jesus, but their deceitfulness revealed their whole life was a lie. They were filled with Satan instead of the spirit.
It is a terrible thing if we sin, but hope remains when we recognize our sin and throw ourselves upon Christ as our advocate. We can begin again. We can begin once again, pursuing a life without sin, reckoning that we are the temple of God. And that we must be set apart and we must be holy for he is holy.
Let's pray.
Dear Father, after hearing your word and this testimony of what happened to Ananias and Sapphira Father, we are humbled. Because I know for myself, father, I consider my own life. We consider how casual have we been sometimes in our sinfulness when you have called us, you've created us. You've claimed us in Jesus Christ to be your temple.
Father Impress upon us your holiness, impress upon us the seriousness of sin.
Father, we praise you that in Jesus Christ we do have an advocate. We have one who can intercede and make amends for the wrong that we've done. But Father, we pray that we would not sin so that grace would abound.
Rather Father, fill us with the spirit, cast out the work of the devil that seeks to make us be self-consumed as Ananias and Sapphira were, deploying lies to increase their their own praise.
Father, fill us with the spirit so that we would just offer ourselves completely to you so that you would be glorified with no concern of our own gain and benefit. Father, even though we, we gain all things in you, father, we gain all things in Christ.
Father, we make this our prayer and we repent of anything we have been doing, father, and we devote ourselves to beginning again in Christ. In His name we pray. Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we continue our series The Spirit and the Church. It's our joy to welcome you into our community.
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)