Acts 5:1-11
A preacher was preaching on our text today, about Ananias and Sapphira who were struck dead when they told a lie. He said to his congregation, “God doesn’t strike people dead for lying in these modern times. If he did, where would I be?” The people in the congregation smiled and then he continued. “I’ll tell you where I would be. I’d be right here preaching to an empty church.”
We all have lied at one point or another in our lives and that is what makes this story of Ananias and Sapphira so strange. They made a gift to the church, a substantial gift to the church, and instead of the church leaders doing cartwheels and back flips because of this generous gift, Peter condemned them for lying and in God’s judgement of them, they were struck dead.
This is a strange and bizarre story. At the end of the account Luke wrote that
Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.
Is it any wonder? If this happened in our church, wouldn’t you think twice before giving or doing something for the church? Wouldn’t you be asking a lot of questions? What if your motives for giving were not pure? Would you be judged for that? And since when have any of us ever had pure motives for anything we have done? This was a very unsettling experience for the early church and it continues to be an unsettling story for us to read.
I’m not sure we can completely understand this story. It is one of those stories in the Bible we will not completely understand until we are in Heavenly University taking Bible 101 with an angelic professor and perhaps a guest appearance by Ananias and Sapphira themselves.
But even without complete understanding, this story teaches us three things.
First, this incident points out the seriousness of sin. Sin does matter. Sin is significant. We understand that we are all sinners and separated from God. All sin has the same effect in that it pulls us away from God. So we understand that sin is significant from a spiritual perspective. But even from a human, temporal perspective, sin is significant.
One problem is that we live in a culture where sin is relative. There are no absolutes. What is considered sin changes over time. Although sexual immorality is a constant across all cultures and all times, the public view of what is acceptable changes. Pre-marital sex used to be viewed as sin but is no longer considered sinful behavior. In fact, what is considered abnormal is someone who decides not to have sex before they get married. Having an affair while married is still not considered good behavior, but then so many people have affairs that one has to get used to a new reality. Divorce used to be scandalous; today it barely raises an eyebrow.
Cheating on income tax forms or insurance claims is not too big a deal. Lying to make yourself look better is expected behavior.
Murder is still a big deal as is pedophilia, using children as sexual objects. Pornography, although many people are involved with it, is still viewed negatively but is moving toward acceptability.
There is a shift taking place in which homosexuality is not a sin but believing homosexual practice is a sin, is a sin.
Marriage has been expanded to include gay and lesbian couples and it is unlikely that this expansion will stop.
We are adrift and where we will go, who can tell. What offends us today can become the norm of tomorrow.
When a culture cuts itself off from the anchor of the Bible, it drifts and much of the culture will celebrate because they are now free to move as they like, no longer held prisoner by the anchor of Biblical morality. But, in fact, the culture now moves into bondage to sin as it drifts away from Biblical morality and is less free, not more free. But that is another sermon.
Human society likes to be free from the anchor of Biblical morality because it does not really like the idea of sin. There must be many reasons for this but three came to my mind.
The first I have already illustrated and that is that sin betrays the relativity of our age. We value being progressive and changing and becoming more and more enlightened and the concept of sin puts quite a damper on that progressive movement. How can I grow in tolerance and acceptance if sin keeps on hammering down on the process and telling me some behavior is not acceptable?
A second reason that society likes to be free of the anchor of Biblical morality is that it betrays the philosophy that man is basically good. This mainstream philosophy says we are basically good and only need to be enlightened to be set free of the limitations and restrictions that prevent us from being free. To say that we all have sinned and are separated from God is a direct challenge to this philosophy so any concept of absolute morality needs to be confronted. We are basically good or we are sinners. One opposes the other.
A third reason that culture likes to be free of the anchor of Biblical morality is that it betrays the current emphasis that what we most need to be happy in life is positive self-esteem. It does not matter if I do the right thing or not, what is important is that I feel good about myself in what I do. To say that someone who acts on a desire is a sinner is to attack his self-esteem and that is not healthy.
For many reasons, modern culture cannot abide the notion of sin and so it changes the name. Sin is changed to an addictive personality. It is not the fault of an alcoholic that he is an alcoholic. It is not the choices an alcoholic has made that have led to this condition. It is his addictive personality that has led him to this behavior.
We are no longer sinners. We do have, from time to time, dysfunctional behaviors, but we are not sinners. This is what our culture tells us.
We live in a culture that tends to be pretty casual about sin. But contrary to what the culture says, sin is serious and has serious consequences. Lying and cheating weaken public trust which begins to break down public civility. Pre-marital sex and marital sexual affairs weaken marriages. Divorce seriously wounds the children in those marriages. The social fabric depends on strong families which depend on strong marriages. Sin weakens an entire culture. Sin is serious. Sin has spiritual and eternal consequences and it has temporal consequences. Sin is a serious matter.
The second lesson from the story of Ananias and Sapphira is that the human conscience is important, even sacred.
Our conscience is created by God to help guide us through life. In Paul’s letter to Rome when he wrote about Gentiles who did not have knowledge of God’s law, he said that at the final judgement their consciences would bear witness to whether or not they lived according to the law written on their hearts.
In Genesis 20 it was because Abimelech had a clear conscience that God did not judge him when he took Abraham’s wife, who Abraham had said was his sister.
Paul repeatedly defended himself to authorities and others who accused him by saying he had a clear conscience. To the Corinthians he wrote:
Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, in the holiness and sincerity that are from God.
When he urged Timothy to hold on to the grace which had been so abundant in his own life he instructed him:
Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, 19 holding on to faith and a good conscience.
He told Timothy that deacons:
must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience.
The writer of Hebrews in talking about the effect of the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus encouraged us:
let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.
Mark Twain wrote a wonderful short story about a man who was bothered by all the tramps showing up at his door seeking food. He wanted to kill them and bury them in the basement but his conscience would not allow him to do this. One day a short, ugly man showed up at his door and he recognized that this was his conscience. He set out to kill him but every time he tried, his conscience was so light he could spring from place to place in the room. When Mark Twain became sorry for trying to do so bad a thing, his conscience became heavy and could barely move. But as soon as Twain sprang for his conscience to kill him, his conscience was once again light and jumped away.
Our conscience is a sacred part of our being and when we pay attention to it, we avoid a lot of the mistakes we would otherwise fall into. Our conscience works to protect us from getting into trouble, unless we choose to ignore our conscience. Think of all the people you know or read about who get into big trouble because they do something wrong and then do not listen to their conscience and do what is right. They ignore their conscience and compound their mistake with more and more mistakes that get them deeper and deeper into trouble.
Your conscience is your guide. When you cannot look someone in the face and be honest and transparent with them because you have to shut down your conscience that is sending you a different message, then you have a serious problem. The human conscience is a tool God uses to keep us walking in line with him.
Thirdly, the story of Ananias and Sapphira points out the need for church discipline. We may think the punishment of Ananias and Sapphira was a bit extreme but the need for punishment was there. The early church was in a precarious and fragile state and the purity of the church was especially necessary. Perhaps because the early church was especially fragile, the punishment for Ananias and Sapphira was so severe. But the church continues to need to be pure. When the church accepts sinful behavior in its fellowship, the church is weakened and less able to influence the culture around it.
The practice of excommunication in the church existed in Jewish synagogues before the time of Jesus but the New Testament picked up on this. Jesus said a brother who sinned but would not repent should be put out of the fellowship. Paul told the church in Corinth to expel a man in the church who had married his father’s wife.
The goal in church discipline is always to bring the one who is willfully sinning to repentance and the consequence of not exercising church discipline is that the church becomes weaker and weaker and has less and less of an impact for Jesus on the world around it.
The church is weak today in part because it accommodates sin and lacks the moral and spiritual strength to exercise proper church discipline.
We may not like the story of Ananias and Sapphira, but it points out to us the seriousness of sin, the importance of human conscience and the necessity of church discipline.
With this in mind, let me prepare ourselves for communion this morning.
Paul wrote to the church in Corinth to address a number of issues that troubled him. One of these issues was the way they handled the Lord’s Supper.
The Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion, was a regular, weekly part of the early church’s life. It had its origin with the meal Jesus shared with his disciples the night he was arrested. They sat down to the Passover meal and in the part of the Seder service that follows the meal, Jesus instituted this sacrament of the church.
And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
The early church met weekly for worship which included a meal during which they shared with each other the bread and the wine. Over the centuries we have gotten away from the fellowship around a meal and have extracted from it just the part where we share in the bread and wine and few of us come from church traditions where we share in Holy Communion more than once a month. This may be an unfortunate distancing of ourselves from what Jesus intended for us. Think how different our church experience would be if every week we shared a meal together after church during which we observed the sacrament of Holy Communion.
Paul wrote to the church in Corinth because he heard that in their weekly meal together, people were not sharing their food. Some were sitting there without food and others were stuffing themselves with an excess of food and drink and getting drunk. In German there is a distinction between the way humans eat and drink and the way animals eat and drink. Humans essen and trinken. Animals fressen and saufen. The Corinthians were using this meal to eat and drink like animals and were abusing the sacred meaning of the meal.
What was intended to be an act of spiritual strengthening and unity in the church had become a source of weakness and disunity.
So Paul brought them back to the meaning of the meal they shared. He took them back to the beginning.
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Paul brought them back to the sacred meaning of this meal and then warned them:
Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. 28 A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself
When I was twelve years old our family attended for that year a Dutch Reformed Church that later became part of the United Congregational Church. We went because my parents were friends with the pastor and the pastor’s son and I used to sit in the balcony during the service. Buzz was his name and he used to put hundreds of pennies in the gum ball machine to get the toy that was in the glass ball. So we would eat handfuls of gum during the service and when the communion bread and juice was brought to the balcony, we were usually alone and would grab handfuls of bread and drink all the little cups of juice on the tray.
What we did we did in ignorance. But there are adults who similarly abuse the communion bread and wine.
It is the first Sunday of the month and time for communion. You come forward, dip the bread into the wine, put it into your mouth and then go back to your seat. What has happened?
In the Catholic church they believe that the bread and wine are transformed and become the spiritual body and blood of Jesus. In Baptist churches they believe the bread and wine are only symbolic of the sacrifice of Jesus for us. Presbyterians stand in the middle and say that this sacrament is a mystery, as are all sacraments, and although the bread and wine are not changed, in a mysterious way, we are spiritually fed and nourished from Jesus through this meal.
Whatever your background, you need to take Paul’s advice to the Corinthians:
A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself
Are you willfully sinning? Is there sin in your life that you are trying to hide from others or even ignore yourself?
How do you know if there is willful sin in your life? Pay attention to your conscience. Some of us get very good at dulling our conscience so that we have difficulty hearing it. Clear out your earwax and pay attention to your conscience. Pray and ask God if there is anything in your life you need to confess or deal with before you come forward for communion. Then sit and pay attention to what comes to your mind. Pray and then when you are ready, come forward for communion.
If you come forward without doing this, then you run the risk of harming yourself. It is like the scene in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford and his enemy stand in a room with a number of chalices. If they pick the right one, the one used by Jesus at the Last Supper, then they will have eternal life. If they pick the wrong chalice, they suffer a hideous death.
We do not have a number of chalices from which to choose. There is only one chalice and you will all dip your bread into it. But when you do so and have not prepared yourself by confessing sin and taking steps to turn back to Jesus, you eat and drink judgement on your self. When you come forward in faith, having prayed and prepared yourself, then you drink and eat life that will nourish you and sustain you in your spiritual journey.
Just a word about children. We are an international church and do not impose one denominational view on sacraments on everyone. In some church traditions, children come for communion after they have been baptized. In church traditions where infants are baptized, it is after confirmation classes that communion can be taken. There is no rule here at RPF. You are free to bring your child with you, but I do ask that parents talk with their children and help them understand what is meant by taking communion so that if you do bring your child, it is a meaningful act for them.
Communion is a time of remembrance and thanksgiving. We remember not just the suffering of Jesus for us but his life and triumph over death. We remember and we give our deepest praise and appreciation for all Jesus has done for us.
Communion is a time of refreshing and communion with Jesus. As we participate in this meal, we are being spiritually nourished and empowered from the risen Christ through the Holy Spirit.
Communion is a time of recommitment and anticipation. We are to examine ourselves and partake in a worthy manner. In so doing we renew our dedication to Christ and his people, in hopeful anticipation of his return. Then we will share with him in a meal at which he will be physically as well as spiritually present.
Normally we have people come up by rows for communion. I ask today that you sit in your pew and pray. Ask God to open your conscience so you can reflect and confess sin that needs to be dealt with. If you are willfully sinning, make the decision to cut off that behavior. Decide this morning to turn around and come back to Jesus. If you need to do something when you leave church today to make a change, resolve this morning that you will do so. Tell a friend about your decision and ask that friend to hold you accountable so you do make that change. Then come forward for communion.
If, when you examine your conscience, you uncover areas of sin that need to be dealt with and decide that today would not be a good time to come forward for communion, then stay seated and take this next month to prepare yourself for communion the first Sunday in August.
We will not have ushers telling your row when to come forward. Come when you are ready. Come when you have prepared yourself for this meal with Jesus. Remember what Jesus has done for you. Be thankful for what Jesus has done. Be refreshed by this meal that brings you life. Recommit yourself to Jesus and eagerly anticipate the meal you will share with him when you enter into his heavenly kingdom.
