Acts - Week 3 / Monday

Reading for today: Acts 5:1-11

This is one of those tough stories in the Scripture that doesn’t necessarily fit into our picture of grace. Here is a story of a man and a wife who conspire together to appear to give the proceeds of the sale of their property to the disciples, when in reality they hold back a portion of the sale for themselves. It was a premeditated action.

The interesting thing is that this appears to have been an unnecessary decision on their part. There was nothing compelling them to give all the proceeds. What they conceived in their heart was a lie, not to men, but to God. Satan was obviously behind what they had done. They certainly could have resisted Satan. But they let pride, self, and the love of money possess them, and that’s a bad combination.

So, when Ananias is confronted by Peter, obviously through a supernatural manifestation of knowledge given by the Holy Spirit, Ananias falls down dead. Now, why such a severe punishment? There are a couple of good answers to that. First, God wanted this new church to know what He thinks about unbelief, greed, and self-seeking hypocrisy that lies to God. Secondly, it is apparent throughout Scripture that in the time of beginnings, God tends to be more severe, perhaps to set the standard for what He expects. A couple of other examples of this are Leviticus 10, where the sons of Aaron are struck dead for offering strange fire on the altar, and in Joshua 7, where Achan and his entire family are struck down because of his stealing items that God had given definitive directions not to take.

Three hours later, Sapphira comes in, perpetuates the lie, and she, too, falls dead. The result of all this was that great fear came upon everyone. Can you imagine what went on in the minds of those new believers when they heard about what had happened? It was obvious that you didn’t mess around with the Holy Spirit, unless you cared little about your life. It’s a good reminder to all of us that our sin does not remain hidden. We may fool people for a time, but we never fool the Holy Spirit. The safest road is to be honest and upright---pure in heart, the Bible calls it.

Tomorrow: Why does God allow “freaky” stuff to happen?