The Apostle Paul, in the eleventh chapter of
the first epistle to the Corinthians, urges Christian
people in the first place, members of the
Corinthian church, but he encourages Christian people generally
to examine themselves from time to time.
He says this, for example, Let a man
examine himself, and especially at a time when
we come to the table of our Lord.
It comes in that very context.
Let a man examine himself and so let
him eat of that bread and drink of
that cup.
And again he says in verse thirty-one,
If we would judge ourselves, then we would
not be judged, that is, of God.
If we were rigorous in self-examination, then
there would be nothing in our lives for
God to condemn, and no occasion for his
chastisements of his people.
Now it is because of that I feel
free this morning to continue with our series
in the life of Simon Peter, and to
base our meditation upon the first eleven verses
in Acts chapter five.
We have entitled this, The Holy Spirit and
Discernment.
The title calls attention to the gift that
was given to Simon Peter, whereby he as
a leader of the Christian church at that
time, a God-appointed leader, was enabled to
discern certain things that were evidently amiss.
In a sense we all need that gift.
If we have not that particular gift in
some measure, then we may fail very radically,
very dismally, in judging ourselves and in examining
ourselves, and of course in many other ways.
Now one thing I need to say again
this morning, though we have been saying it
many occasions recently.
Coming to this particular passage, we are primarily
concerned in what the Holy Spirit has done
for one man, namely Simon Peter.
It is not a purely historical interest of
course, but we want to see how God
really transformed this ordinary man, this man of
real flesh and bone, this man who is
so like ourselves or to whom we are
so alike.
Now I want to say again this morning,
we shall be omitting many things in the
narrative and in this passage, many things to
which we would have to refer if we
were attempting to expound the passage as a
whole.
I am only referring to the things that
are germane to our immediate purpose and goal.
I think it is evident to all of
us, evident upon a moment's reflection, how very
necessary it was for the early church, and
particularly the leaders of the church, to have
this gift of discernment as they sought to
lead the accumulating numbers of young converts through
the moral quicksands and theological quagmire of that
ancient world.
How very necessary it was for them to
be able to discern truth from falsehood, what
was right from what was wrong, what was
of God from what was of man.
It was necessary at every conceivable step in
their pilgrimage.
And yet the remarkable thing is this, God
chose as the leaders of that early church
the most ordinary men.
And among those very ordinary men who became
the apostles, the leader among the apostles was
certainly one of the most obtuse and spiritually
insensitive men among the twelve.
Naturally speaking, he was totally incapable of knowing
and understanding things and seeing the wood for
the trees.
For example, this is purely one example, one
moment he could be sensitive to the Spirit
of God and make his great confession at
Caesarea Philippi, Thou art the Christ, the Son
of the living God.
The next moment he's on an entirely different
wavelength.
And his master has to turn to him
and say, Get behind me, Satan, because you
do not savor, you do not understand the
things that are of God, but the things
that are of men.
He was that kind of man.
He oscillated from the one to the other,
and you could never depend upon him.
But you see, omnipotence can afford to choose
men like that to leadership.
Divine omnipotence can afford to choose a man
who is a natural failure to be a
spiritual leader.
Because omnipotence can provide everything that is necessary.
And that's the miracle that we have here.
A man who naturally was incapable, a man
whom you would not expect to be discerning
of truth from falsehood, understanding what's going on,
seeing the significance of things, that very man
is the man whom divine omnipotence endows with
a needed grace.
And it is Simon Peter, if you please,
who is here above everybody else, given the
gift of discernment.
Paul speaks of, in 1 Corinthians 12, 10,
as the gift of discernment of spirits.
The capacity to discern between evil spirits and
the Holy Spirit of God.
Now, before we say anything else about this
somber scene that we have here, let us
first take encouragement.
Our God is able to do things like
this.
He is able to communicate to the weakest
and the neediest the gift that may be
necessary in order for that person to fulfill
his appointed ministry in the world or in
the church.
God, the omnipotent God, is able to do
that.
But now come to this very challenging scene
in Acts chapter 5.
We begin by looking at the apparent expression
of Christian charity.
The context describes the infant church leaping joyfully
forward from one victory to another.
Oh, there is opposition, bitter opposition, consistent opposition.
But it seems that everything that the enemy
can thrust in the way of the onward
march of this little community in the name
of the risen Lord, everything, everything comes to
naught.
Each attempt to silence her witness, the witness
of the church, and to extinguish her light
has fizzled out like a damp squib and
generally backfires to the confusion of the church's
opponents.
And so Satan decides to change his tactics.
Instead now of concentrating upon opposition from without
the church, from outside the church, he decides
to concentrate his efforts within the church.
And so he sets about it.
Now, he has as his servants in this
sad scene two men, a man and his
wife, very devoted to what they believe, full
of zeal, full of ingenuity, but the servants
of Satan.
I'd like you to notice the pattern that
they allegedly follow here.
When Ananias brought his gift to the apostles,
he was emulating an example which had already
been set.
He brings his gift of money, the proceeds
of the little bit of property that he
has sold, at least allegedly that, and he
is following a very noble example.
Something very remarkable took place at Pentecost.
The experience of the coming of the Holy
Spirit resulted in the gushing forth of what
our Lord had referred to in anticipation as
streams of living water, rivers of water gushed
out of the hearts of the Spirit-filled
community.
And one such river was the river of
love.
It was the river of a joyous affection
and concern and compassion for men in their
need.
And this early community, in the flush of
Pentecost, they loved one another so dearly they
would do anything for one another.
So that you remember, right at the end
of Acts chapter 2, we read that many
of them sold their possessions, brought the proceeds,
laid them at the apostles' feet, and no
man had need, no man lacked anything.
Do you know the same thing proceeded later
on?
Exactly the same thing.
We read of it in Acts chapter 4
again.
And a classical example in this recent history
was a man whose name was Barnabas, son
of consolation or son of encouragement.
What a name to have.
His original name was Joseph, but they called
him Barnabas because he was a man who
always encouraged, who always comforted others.
And part of the divinely inspired encouragement was
this.
He sold his property, if you please, brought
the entire proceeds, laid them at the feet
of the apostles and said, all this is
for the community.
Just dispense with this according to the needs
of the people.
Ananias and Sapphira, or rather, to be strictly
accurate, in the first place Ananias alone, the
head of the household, the man, the husband,
he comes sanctimoniously into the presence of the
apostles and he too, if you please, has
sold a plot of land or a piece
of property.
And ostensibly what he is doing is emulating
the pattern of the God-fearing Barnabas.
There is something wonderful about this, to the
undiscerning.
Here is a man who is disclaiming his
absolute right over his own property and saying
in other words, if you have need, mine
is yours.
Communism says, yours is mine.
Christianity says, mine is yours.
And this man says, anything that I have
is yours if you need.
Now Ananias and Sapphira, his wife, were allegedly
following such an elevated example as that of
Barnabas.
The principle apparently practiced was this.
They are hereby pretending that they are as
keen as the keenest, as godly as the
godliest, as holy as the holiest, as dedicated
as the most dedicated.
They will do for the sake of Christ
and his church what a man like Barnabas
was willing to do.
Now move from the apparent expression of Christian
charity to the actual, what I must speak
of as the actual, manifestation of blatant hypocrisy.
Things are not always what they appear to
be.
Judged solely in terms of its social benefit
to the needy of course, Ananias' act was
as good as that of Barnabas.
Ananias' money would also help alleviate the need
of the poor.
So judged purely on that level, the one
deed was as good as the other.
Morally and spiritually, however, Ananias' deed was as
perverted as Barnabas' was pure.
Ananias' act was as black as Barnabas' deed
was white and glorious.
Two things I want to say.
Ananias and his wife are pretending to be
what they were not.
Approaching the apostles with his money, Ananias was
pretending obedience to the Spirit, the Spirit of
Pentecost, the Spirit of God.
He was pretending obedience to the Holy Spirit
and love for the saints.
Both claims were fraudulent.
He was not personally moved by the Holy
Spirit, nor primarily motivated with love for the
saints.
The inspiration of his deed was satanic, not
divine.
And the goal of his apparent generosity was
self, not others.
His charity was but a cover for selfishness
and self-esteem.
He was not parting with his money to
enrich the needy, but to ingratiate himself and
his wife upon what he deemed to be
a gullible community.
Ananias did not love his fellows, but he
loved himself.
His money represented the price he was willing
to pay for the reputation of being holy,
rather than the expression of the reality of
holiness.
He wanted to be known as a man
of God, not to be a man of
God.
And in order to be known as a
man of God, he was willing to do
what the godly did.
But he wasn't a man of God.
Pretense is no paltry plague.
Don't play nor pander with pretense or hypocrisy,
because it earns the holy wrath of God.
To pretend to the people of God, or
the God of his people, that we are
what we are not, is a sin of
the deepest dying, and can only result in
conflagration.
Not only did they pretend what they were
not, but they desired what did not belong
to them.
This is involved in what we've said already,
but let it be clearly recognized that Ananias
and Sapphira find themselves in the solemn situation
described here, because they coveted what others had,
but which didn't belong to themselves.
They dearly coveted the reputation of being filled
with the Spirit of God in order to
get in among the leadership of the church,
and thereby exercise influence for Satan.
But the bold truth is, they were neither
filled with the Spirit nor fitted for leadership.
Their inspiration was alien, and their motives were
not God-like or God-honoring.
An apparent expression of Christian charity, an actual
manifestation of blatant hypocrisy.
And thirdly, we look at the piercing gaze
of spiritual sagacity.
When everyone else was apparently impressed, everyone else,
impressed by the evident magnanimity of this deed,
and more probably tempted to classify Ananias as
yet another son of consolation or son of
encouragement, one man, one man, sensed
something alien.
I wonder how Peter felt, I wonder how
he reasoned inwardly, when everybody else thought that
this was such a marvelous deed, this was
such a wonderful thing, another Barnabas coming into
the church, another man with such love and
such tokens of the Spirit's power upon him
and grace within him.
And Peter alone among them sensed something wrong.
He must have felt abysmally lonely, like a
man in an abyss when everybody else is
up there somewhere in the clouds.
And Peter alone among them, Peter alone sensed
there's something wrong about this.
Despite the apparent spirituality of the act, despite
its evident generosity, and also despite the studied
secrecy with which Ananias and Sapphira are practicing
their studied hypocrisy, Peter sensed something wrong.
God gave to the church in that decisive
hour one man, and to that one man
one gift, the gift of discernment.
And mark you, did he not have it,
the infant church would have been spiritually stifled
at birth, and polluted and poisoned in infancy.
But one man had this one gift that
saved and extricated the church from what might
have been a very sad tale in its
history.
Now what was it that Peter discerned?
What did Peter recognize?
What did Peter see that others did not
see?
I want to say three things very briefly.
Negatively, by means of the gift of spiritual
discernment that was given him, Peter sensed an
absence of fidelity to the Holy Spirit.
Peter sensed that this man was not really
honoring the Holy Spirit.
You say, where did you get that from?
I believe it was as surprising to the
rest of the community as it was painfully
disarming for Ananias to hear Peter say this
to him.
Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to
lie to the Holy Ghost and to keep
back part of the proceeds of the land?
Ananias has just come bouncing in in all
the enthusiasm of his religion and his profession,
and he's laid this down so sanctimoniously at
the apostles' feet.
This is a great gift.
And out of the blue, to the consternation
of everybody, to Ananias particularly, Peter senses that
this is not honoring the Holy Spirit.
This deed is not born of the same
source as the similar act performed by Barnabas,
son of consolation.
Far from its being an action which honors
the Spirit of God, Peter says it is
violently and seriously dishonoring him.
And Ananias is charged later on in the
passage with lying to the Holy Spirit and
with tempting the Holy Spirit with his wife.
Of course, the significance is this.
The Spirit of God dwells among his people.
And the Spirit of God reigned in those
early leaders of the Christian church so that
to lie to them was to lie to
the Spirit.
This sensitivity to the honoring or dishonoring of
the Spirit of God is a rare but
necessary gift in every Christian community.
If that community is to be saved from
some of the most sinister attacks of Satan,
it is something for which we ought always
to pray for ourselves, for our church and
every other church.
But let's turn to the positive.
Negatively, the Holy Spirit was not honored in
this deed, though it appeared that it was,
that he was.
Positively, Peter discerned the presence and activity of
Satan himself.
You know, this must have been a little
bit of a shock.
When everybody else thought this is but another
token of the upsurge of the Spirit of
God in generosity and in kindness and in
charity, and all done ostensibly in the name
of Jesus.
Peter said it's not the Spirit of God
at all, it's Satan.
Peter did not simply uncover a spiritual condition
of soul which negatively failed to give honor
to the Spirit.
The condition was even more serious than that.
Behind the camouflage of generosity towards the needy
saints, there was the malignant influence of Satan
himself.
Satan is so eager, you see, he is
so eager to do something at this point
that he is willing, he is willing for
his servants to pay the same price as
the saints of God are paying, to join
the saints of God so that he can
act from within and to become known as
a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and
one who allegedly has benefited from the outpouring
of the Spirit.
And it is all a satanic move.
Now the satanic goal is not actually stated
here.
But it can hardly be denied that the
whole purpose of Satan was to disrupt the
work of the church.
We can put it like that generally.
It was so to disrupt the work of
the infant church that ultimately he would silence
the witness of the community to the risen
crucified Lord and thereby bring the whole movement
to nothing.
To gain that objective, he would gladly inspire
one of his subjects to sell his possessions,
join the church, claim to be baptized with
the Spirit and thereby wriggle and worm his
way into the leadership of the community.
Satan has not changed.
And lastly, Peter discerned something else here.
How can I speak of it other than
in terms of a fullness that was a
veritable counterfeit to Pentecost?
Over and above the absence of fidelity to
the Holy Spirit and the presence of the
influence of Satan, I believe the language suggests
that Peter uncovered here the beginnings of a
counterfeit fullness, namely the fullness of satanic indwelling.
Peter asked Ananias, Ananias, why has Satan filled
your heart to lie?
Satan filled your heart.
What happened at Pentecost?
They were all filled with the Holy Spirit.
What happened to Ananias and Sapphira?
They were filled with the satanic spirit.
The one fullness is in opposition to the
other.
No, not that only the one is a
counterfeit to the other.
Don't forget, Satan can be as religious as
the saints.
He can be as generous as Barnabas.
He can be as orthodox as the saints
of God.
But his motive is, when he gets to
the position, to disrupt and to break and
to poison and to dishonor the Christ of
the cross and the risen Lord of the
church.
And someone has to discern the ugly thing.
And where the gifts of the Spirit are
not abroad, there is no one to discern.
This is what is happening in our churches
today.
One of the many things.
You hear people speak of the most liberal
Christ, dishonoring preachers abroad.
Wasn't he good?
Wasn't he marvelous?
You hear ostensible saints of God lauding the
ungodly.
It is all because there is no spirit
of discernment, no understanding of things, no penetrating
vision, no capacity to discern.
Oh God, give us this again.
You know, it seems that every major act
of God is aped by Satan.
Way back in the book of Exodus, when
Moses was able to do something, you remember
the story.
The magicians of Egypt could ape it.
Not by the power of God, but by
the power of Satan.
When the Holy Son of God became incarnate
in flesh and blood like to yours and
mine, it seemed that all the demons of
hell became incarnate.
There was more demon possession in that first
century than in any subsequent century, probably until
this.
This one.
A counterfeit movement.
God becomes incarnate in man.
Satan takes possession of man.
So here, when the Holy Spirit came down
at Pentecost and came to take possession of
His saints, the spirit of Satan made this
one mighty sweep to baptize the agents of
Gehenna with a power that would make them
acceptable even in the courts of the saints.
We live in a world where our enemy
is sinister and strong, and the whole day
would have been lost, and the whole church
would have been polluted and diverted from its
task because it would have been robbed of
the glorious witness to the resurrection of Jesus
Christ were it not for one man.
One man.
One man of God, called by God, endued
by God, equipped by God with the one
gift necessary for the hour.
And that one man was Simon Peter.
Oh, let us note that this very solemn
scene points to the presence and sufficiency of
God to guard His people.
It was He who gave Peter the gift.
It was He who called Peter.
Now, though I'm not going on into the
details of it, it was He, not Peter,
who brought death to these two.
John tells us there is a sin unto
death.
By that he means this.
Every sin, of course.
Every sin comes into the category the wages
of sin is death.
But not every sin is meted or is
judged immediately with physical death.
We all die physically as the result of
sin, in due course.
The years of our life are three score
years and ten, and we may have a
few extras, and we have to die, and
death is the result of sin.
But there is a sin which brings forth
death immediately.
Here is one of them.
It was not Peter who was the judge
here who condemned Ananias and Sapphira to die.
It was God.
Can I repeat, as I close?
Just as Achan, Joshua chapter 7, kept back
part of the price and pretended to be
what he was not, as the ancient people
marched into their promised land of old, into
Canaan, so has the new Israel moved into
their Canaan of Pentecostal benefits.
The same subtle sinister foe has not an
Achan but an Ananias who will keep back
part of the price because Satan's agents can
never go all the way with the children
of God.
They can only appear to go all the
way.
Ultimately, they will always have a reserve.
Ultimately, they cannot honor Christ as Lord.
I then close with this.
As you and I bear our hearts before
the Lord this morning, what goes on there?
Are you professing what is not true?
Am I pretending what is false?
Am I creating an impression that is altogether
wrong?
What spirit generates my action and motive?
Ultimately, you do not judge that spirit in
terms of generosity.
The test is the test of truth.
And of loyalty to the Christ of God
who died on the cross and who rose
again and who sent forth His Holy Spirit
and who is the one Lord and Head
of the Church.
Let us, therefore, with honesty and sincerity, as
we come to the table of our Lord
today, let us do it as we have
never done it before.
Let us examine ourselves.
Don't let's look around.
Never mind who is sitting next to you.
I am not looking at you.
I must look at myself.
For be sure of this, them that destroy
the temple of God, them will God destroy.
1 Corinthians 3, 17.
Ananias and Sapphira He will die the death.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Let the wicked forsake his way and the
unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return
unto the Lord and He will have mercy
upon him and to our God, for He
will abundantly pardon.
Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall
be as wool.
Though they be red like crimson, they shall
be as snow.
Come now and let us reason together, saith
the Lord.
Let us pray.
The Father in heaven, whose love
profound a ransom for our souls hath found,
before thy throne we sinners bend, to us
thy saving grace extend.
O Spirit of God, who didst grant to
this thy servant of old the discernment that
was able to save the early church, give
us such discernment particularly in relation to the
things that go on in our own hearts
and in our own lives and to those
who lead in holy things such discernment as
they need to lead thy people in the
way of holiness and of righteousness and of
thy word.
Cleanse us from our sin who confess and
acknowledge our wrongs before thee now that we
may come to thy table as a penitent
people but rejoicing in the plentiful grace and
thy inadequate pardon.
O Lord, receive us, clothe us upon with
the righteousness of thy Son that despite the
memory of things done in the body and
in the spirit and in the mind we
may now come to thy table and benefit
and profit eternally and enjoy the fellowship which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen.