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About Jesus Steve Sweetman This Section - Chapters 5 ch. 5:1-11 ch. 5:12-17 ch. 5:17-42 Ananias
And Sapphira (ch. 5:1 - 11) Chapter
5:1 begins by saying, “now a man named Ananias, together with his wife
Sapphira, also sold a piece of property”.
We have just seen Joseph, the Levite selling property and giving
the funds to the apostles, now we have another example in Ananias and
Sapphira, but with a much different outcome. Verse
2 says that “with his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the
money for himself”. The
rest of the money was brought by him to
the apostles. Right
away Peter knew something was not right.
Peter asks, “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.
The
question should be asked, “what sin did Ananias commit”?
I don’t think that Luke has told us all of the details of this
event. Peter did tell Ananias
that the property belonged to him to do as he wished.
What was wrong with selling the land and keeping some of the sale
for himself? Perhaps
what had been happening was that when people were selling things, they
were bringing all of the proceeds from the sale to the apostles.
Therefore when people saw Ananias bringing his money, they thought
that he was bringing all of it and did not let on that it was only a
portion, giving a wrong impression to those who stood by, making himself
look good in front of others.. There
might not have been anything actually wrong with keeping some money for
himself, but there was something wrong with his hypocritical
behaviour. Luke
does tell us that “with his wife’s full knowledge…” suggesting
that they had discussed this among themselves and decided to carry out
this act of hypocrisy. Peter
might have asked Ananias if this was the total amount of the sale of land,
as he did ask his wife later. If
Peter indeed did ask Ananias this question and Ananias answered by saying
“yes’, then that was obvious a lie.
But we don’t know this for sure if Peter asked such a question.
We do know that Peter perceived the whole event as a lie since he
said that Annanias had “lied to the Holy Spirit”.
Therefore the lack of truthfulness might have been the sin
committed. In
my thinking, Ananias’s sin was a combination of both hypocrisy and lack
of truthfulness. Somehow Peter
had figured out what was going on and demanded a response from Ananias.
How did Peter know? This
we can only speculate. This
could have been a “word of knowledge, one of the gifts of the Spirit on
Peter’s part. (1 Cor 12) We
should note as well, that it is Peter once again doing the talking and
taking the lead in this situation. We
also should note that Peter believed that Ananias had given himself over
to the temptation of satan in this situation.
This was not merely a human frailty, or human based sin.
This was a satanic situation. Peter asks, “how is it that satan
has so filled your heart”? Peter
goes on in verse 4 to say, “what made you think of doing such a thing.
You have not lied to men, but to God”.
Hypocrisy is actually acting out a lie.
It is not only telling a lie, but living a lie.
Ananias acted out a lie, and most likely told a lie.
Peter says that in reality the lie was directed towards God.
Ananias might have told Peter that he was giving the complete
proceeds of the sale, so in that sense he was lying to Peter.
Yet in the long run, he was lying to God Himself.
The punishment for this lie was death.
“When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died”. (ch. 5:5)
Obviously
this judgment came from God. Luke
does not tell us that Peter pronounced a judgment and caused this death.
All that Luke tells us is that once Peter asked this last question,
Ananias died without being able to answer.
Was this a harsh judgment? It
seems to be. Did this ever
happen again? Not that we know
of. Does God always deal this
way when we are caught in a hypocritical lie?
No. So what was God doing with such a harsh judgment.
We can only guess. It
may be possible that God was telling the infant church that He took things
very seriously, and that no sin should be tolerated. This
is only conjecture, but I wonder if God does not withdraw his power from
people when they are not living as they should.
This can be seen with The
judgment does not stop with Ananias.
A little later on his wife comes into the place where
the apostles were and Peter asks her if the money that her husband
gave was the total amount of the sale.
In verse 8 she answers by saying “yes”, which was an out and
out lie. Luke tells us in
verse 2 that Sapphira knew from the start that Ananias was planning on
only giving part of the money to the apostles.
She knew she was lying. This
tells me that this was their plan all along, that is to lie if asked about
the money. Peter
had a quick response. He said, “how could you agree to test the Spirit
of the Lord”? With Ananias,
Peter said that he had lied to the Holy Spirit.
Here Peter tells Sappfira that she "agreed to test the Spirit
of the Lord”. So you
might conclude that there is another sin to be dealt with here, beyond
lying, and that is “testing” God.
In
this case with Sappfira, Peter did give some kind of word of judgment.
He said, “the feet of the men who buried your husband are at the
door, and they will carry you out also”.
She, like her husband fell to the ground and died.
Luke
records in verse 11 that “great fear seized the whole church…”.
And why wouldn’t it. God, through his actions was telling these
new Christians that He does not think kindly towards sin, including
improper motivations of our hearts.
Also
we should note that this is the first time the word “church” is used
in the book of Acts. The Greek
word for “church” is “ekklessia”, which simply means a gathering
of people. This gathering does
not have to be a group of believers. “Ekklessia” could, and was used
in the first century for any gathering of people.
It was not a religious word, and definitely was not a Christian
word. It
did not take very long before the infant church had its first problem with
sin. Ever since this time, the
church has continued to find itself burdened down with sin and wrong
doing. It seems, that even as
“saved people”, we cannot get away from the falleness of our
situation. We cannot get away
from the legacy that Adam and Eve has left us, even though we have the
Holy Spirit within us to help us out. The Apostles Heal Many (ch. 5:12 - 16) These
next few verses show again, as in Acts 2:43 that it was the apostles who
performed the miraculous signs, and not the general Christian public,
although I cannot conclude for sure that some of them might not have been
performing miraculous works. Yet
still, here in Acts 5:12 it was the apostles that performed these great
deeds, of course through the power of the Holy Spirit.
In this context, right after the miraculous death of Ananias and
Sappfira, Luke notes that many more miracles were done.
The death of this couple was only one example of a miracle. The
second half of verse 12 states that “all of the believers used to meet
in Solomon’s Colonnade”, which was part of the In
this passage we have 3 groups of people mentioned by Luke.
We have the apostles doing the mighty miracles.
They are doing these miracles among the people.
The believers meet at the Luke
says in verse 14 that “no one else dared to join them”.
The “no one” refers to the people, or the general Jewish
public, while the “them” refers to the believers.
So
this is the picture. We see
the apostles doing many miracles among the Jews.
Many people were added to the group of believers, even though many
others were afraid to join their numbers because of these awesome
miracles, which includes the death of Annanias and Sapphria.
You would probably feel the same way if you saw 2 of your friends
die in judgment because of hypocrisy. In
verse 15 you see the result of all this activity.
People would bring sick and those bothered by demons to Peter and
the apostles, hoping that even Peter’s shadow might fall on them,
causing healing to come to these sick people.
Luke says that “all of them were healed”.
The text does not actually say that people were healed because of
Peter’s shadow. It only says
that people were hoping that at least his shadow would fall on their sick.
Luke
paints a very interesting picture of this infant church.
When was the last time you heard of people not wanting to join the
church because of the awesome miracles that are being done through us? The Apostles Persecuted (ch. 5:17 - 42) In
verse 18 the conflict between the apostles and part of the Sanhedrin,
mainly the high priest and many of the Sadducees began to boil over.
Luke exposes the root
of this conflict when he says that these men were “filled with
jealousy”. The apostles had
a growing following that threatened greatly the authority of the Jewish
leadership, and therefore the leaders had to do something about this
problem. To
deal with this problem the But
as was the case with these men, they lived a miraculous life, and a
miracle took place in the jail cell. During
the night “an angel of the Lord” appeared to them and opened up the
doors of the jail and led them out. Obviously
the guards had no idea what was happening, which would have been
miraculous in itself. The
angel told the apostles to “go stand in the The
Lord had miraculously intervened on the apostles behalf.
Just in case some of these men were beginning to get a little
afraid and timid, the Lord boosted their spirits with this miracle and
with this command to teach the gospel to the people.
Once again, as noted before, “the people” is in reference to
those Jews who would be at the The
thrust of preaching by these apostles was towards the Jews and in their It
is clear in Scripture that Jesus came to His own people first and His own
people did not received Him. It
is also clear that the gospel was supposed to be preached first to the
Jews before being taught to the Gentiles.
Once the message was refused by the Jewish leadership, not
necessarily the Jewish people, then the Lord gave the word to go to the
Gentiles. We
should note the angel told the apostles to speak about “this new
life”. Indeed, faith in
Jesus should produce “a new life” in the believer, if it doesn’t,
then one might question the validity of the person’s faith.
The nature of true repentance will
make one see everything in a new light. At
the same time the apostles were teaching in the Temple, the full Sanhedrin began to gather to address their problem.
Certain men were told to go and release the apostles from jail and
bring them to the hearing of the Sanhedrin, but these men discovered the
apostles were gone. The door
of the jail was locked and the guards had not even known their prisoners
were long gone. Verse 24 says
that “the captain of the While
these men were pondering their situation, someone came running to them and
told them that they had just seen the apostles in the court of the Temple
preaching, doing exactly what they were told not to do.
So once again the captain of the guards went and arrested the
apostles. Yet Luke says that
they did not use any force because “they feared that the people would
stone them”. The Jewish
leaders progressively saw their dilemma
worsening. They not
only feared loosing their respect from the people, they feared the people
themselves. This could only
make their anger and rage worse than ever.
Once
again the apostles found themselves before the Jewish leadership.
At this point you might think that these men were getting a little
dizzy with the motion of going back and forth from the Verse
28 says, “we gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet you
have filled Jerusalem
with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s
death”. There are a
few things to note here. One
thing is the Sanhedrin does not mention the name of Jesus.
They say, “this name”, instead of the name of Jesus, and the
say, “this man’s death”, instead of “Jesus’ death”.
I can only imagine that these people are so upset with the
disciples and this talk of Jesus that they refuse to even say His name.
Another
thing to note is that the apostles appear to still be saying that the
Jewish leadership, along with the help of wicked men killed Jesus.
They claim that the apostles are trying to blame them for the death
of Jesus and make them guilty, something that they would not want the
general public to agree to. Verse
29 says, that “Peter and the other apostles replied…”
Once again, as in every other instance, Peter takes the lead in
what was said to the Sanhedrin, yet this time it appears that the other
apostles at least said their amen as Peter spoke, or maybe even added
words of their own as well. If
you remember from before, Peter had asked the Sanhedrin whether it was
right for them to obey God or man. Obviously
everyone knew the right answer to that question, although the Jewish
leaders would question whether the apostles were really obeying God, or
just going off on their own tangent. Yet
this time Peter does not ask them any questions. He simply tells them that
they “must obey God, rather than man”, just another step in boldness.
In
response to the Sanhedrin’s accusation that the apostles were blaming
them for Jesus’ death Peter and the rest
say, “ the God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead, whom
you had killed by hanging Him on the tree”.
So once again the apostles do not shrink back from the idea that
the Jewish leaders killed Jesus, and they confidently re-affirm that again
in the presence of their accusers. We
can also note the words “God of our fathers…”.
By saying this Peter is telling the Sanhedrin that they are all of
the same Jewish heritage by having the same fathers, meaning Abraham,
Isaac, and so on. And it was
their God, the God of Abraham that raised Jesus.
So do you see the point the apostles are making here?
They are saying that you killed Jesus, but your God, the God of
your fathers raised Him from the dead.
Therefore your actions are in direct opposition to
the God you claim to serve. So what kind of subjects are you to
your God if you would do such a thing?
The
apostles carry on in verse 31 by stating that “God exalted Him (Jesus)
to His own right hand”, that is the supreme place of authority in the
universe, both spiritual and material.
This in turn would infuriate the members of the Sanhedrin because
this, if it were true, would make them subject to the very Jesus they
killed. Peter
in his first address to the people in Acts 2 called Jesus both Lord and
Christ. Here he and the others
say the same by calling Jesus both “Prince and Saviour”.
Jesus is Lord of all, and Saviour for all who trust in Him. This
obviously was a great threat to the Sanhedrin.
They liked to think that they had great authority over the people,
even though that authority was only granted to them by the Roman
government to make them happy. They
also liked to think that the Old Testament Law, and all of the other rules
and regulations that they had added to the Law was the only means of
salvation. So each and every
word that these apostles spoke only made their situation worse.
Each and every word made the Jewish leaders more angry than ever. The
apostles go on to say that Jesus could “give repentance and forgiveness
to We
often think that repenting is something that we do on our own, and the
same with believing, but that is not altogether true.
Here we see that repentance is something that God gives us.
We are so deprived as Paul so clearly points out in Romans 1 and 2
that we cannot repent on our own. True repentance is a gift from God.
God enables us to properly repent, if we cry out to Him from the
bottom of our hearts. We see
the deprived nature of man in this verse, along with the grace of God.
If not for God’s grace we would be totally lost.
Repentance
is not the only part of salvation that is granted by God.
We might often think that faith, our trust in Jesus is something we
do on our very own. But Paul
does not believe this. A study
of Paul’s letter to the Romans will show you that God grants faith to
people as well. (Rom. 12:3 and 6) If
God truly is the one who grants repentance and faith to people, then it is
our responsibility to pray to God that He would do such a thing for those
we want to see saved. In
verse 32 we see that the apostles were witnesses of these things, along
with the Holy Spirit. One
thing that Peter and the others clearly realized is that they were to be
witnesses to the life, death, resurrection
and ascension of Jesus. (Acts 1:8)
Yet they told the Sanhedrin that they weren’t the only witnesses.
The Holy Spirit was also a witness.
I am sure that any talk of the Holy Spirit was not understood by
the Jewish leaders. Then
concerning the Holy Spirit they state that He is given to those who obey
God. What does this mean?
The obedience that Peter is speaking of here is what Paul would
call the “obedience of faith”. That
is , obeying God in the things pertaining
to one getting saved, not the daily obedience to His word.
We all need to obey God when He tells us that salvation comes only
by repenting, and giving ones life to Jesus.
It is this that all men need to understand and obey God in.
If we obey God in this way, we will receive the Holy Spirit into
our lives. As
I just said, obeying God in what He commands concerning how we can be
saved is the way in which we receive the Spirit of God.
Yet once we have received the Holy Spirit, obeying God’s Word
will increase the Spirit’s involvement in our lives.
Not obeying God’s Word will therefore limit His involvement.
In
verse 33 Luke tells his readers that the Sanhedrin was so “furious”
that they wanted to kill the apostles. Yet a man named Gamaliel convinced
his peers to settle down and
think about what they are thinking of doing.
Gamaliel gave 2 examples (Theudas and Judas, two Galileans) of men
who had a following but amounted to nothing, and were killed in the
process. He concludes his
defense of the apostles by saying that if these men are really of God,
then how could we possibly fight against God.
If they were not of God, then they would fizzle out like the two
examples he gave. Really
this was sound reasoning for the Sanhedrin to hear.
The apostles at this point had a massive following.
They were more popular than the Sanhedrin.
If the Jewish leaders did anything drastic to these 12 men, they
would have to answer to the people, who would probably mount a revolt.
The Sanhedrin was backed into a corner and could do nothing.
So
after the decision was made not to kill the apostles the Sanhedrin had
them “flogged”, and told them (once again) not to teach in the name of
Jesus. So now at this point in
time the apostles were warned, were put in jail, and now beaten.
How did this effect them? In
verse 41 Luke says, “the apostles left the Sanhedrin rejoicing because
they have been accounted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name”.
Luke goes on to say that the 12 kept on teaching in the name of
Jesus, in the Temple Courts, and from house to house.
The threats, the imprisonment, and the flogging, did not change
their minds in the least. They
felt compelled to preach the gospel.
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