But a certain man named Ananias with Sapphira,
his wife, sold the possession and kept back
part of the price, his wife also being
privy to it, and brought a certain part
and laid it at the apostles' feet.
Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine
heart to lie to the Holy Ghost and
to keep back part of the price of
the land?
Whilst it remained, was it not thine own?
And after it was sold, was it not
in thine own power?
Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine
heart?
Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto
God.
Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and gave
up the ghost, and great fear came on
all them that heard these things.
The young men arose, wound him up, and
carried him out, and buried him.
It was about the space of three hours
after, when his wife, not knowing what was
done, came in.
And Peter answered unto her, Tell me, whether
ye sold the land for so much?
And she said, Yea, for so much.
Then Peter said unto her, How is it
that ye have agreed together to tempt the
Spirit of the Lord?
Behold, the feet of them which have buried
thy husband are at the door, and shall
carry thee out.
Then fell she down straightway at his feet,
and yielded up the ghost.
The young men came in, and found her
dead, and carrying her forth, buried her by
her husband.
And great fear came upon all the church,
and upon as many as heard these things.
By the hands of the apostles were many
signs and wonders wrought among the people, and
they were all with one accord in Solomon's
porch.
And of the rest does no man join
himself to them.
But the people magnified them, and believers were
the more added to the Lord, multitudes both
of men and women, insomuch that they brought
forth the sick into the streets, and laid
them on beds and couches, that at the
least the shadow of Peter passing by might
overshadow some of them.
There came also a multitude out of the
cities, round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks,
and them which were vexed with unclean spirits,
and they were healed every one.
Then the high priest rose up, and all
they that were with him, which is a
sect of the Sadducees, and were filled with
indignation, and laid their hands on the apostles,
and put them in the common prison.
But the angel of the Lord by night
opened the prison doors, and brought them forth,
and said, Go, stand and speak in the
temple to the people all the words of
this life.
And when they heard that, they entered into
the temple early in the morning and taught.
But the high priest came, and they that
were with him, and called the council together,
and all the senate of the children of
Israel, and sent to the prison to have
them brought.
But when the officers came and found them
not in the prison, they returned and told,
saying, The prison truly found we shut with
all safety, and the keepers standing without before
the doors.
But when we had opened, we found no
man within.
Now when the high priest, and the captain
of the temple, and the chief priests heard
these things, they doubted of them whereunto this
would grow.
Then came one, and told them, saying, Behold,
the men whom ye put in prison are
standing in the temple, and teaching the people.
Then went the captain with the officers, and
brought them without violence, for they feared the
people, lest they should have been stoned.
When they had brought them, they set them
before the council, and the high priest asked
them, saying, Did not we straightly command you
that ye should not teach in this name?
And behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your
doctrine, and intend to bring this man's blood
upon us.
Well that's a remarkable passage of scripture, may
God by the Holy Spirit help us to
grasp its full significance.
Now if you do have a Bible with
you, I'd be grateful if you would have
it open at the fifth chapter of the
Acts of the Apostles.
Now you may recall last week I commenced
my address on Sunday morning by making the
observation that sometimes our familiarity with the Word
of God, our knowledge of it, causes us
to overlook some rather sensational statements that are
discovered within its pages.
And if we were to read more carefully,
more deliberately, and perhaps more slowly, we would
be astonished at some of the things that
our eyes very often just rush over in
our reading.
Some of the statements that are made, which
are really quite incredible, like the one we
studied in some depth last week when we
fixed our attention upon an incident in the
fourth chapter of the Acts, and we saw
Peter and John on trial in Jerusalem in
front of the Sanhedrin give an account of
their belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, and
they acquitted themselves admirably, making such an impression
upon the magistrates, upon the judges, that they
were forced to the conclusion that they, Peter
and John, had been with Jesus.
And I said it is nothing short of
fantastic that the highest legal authorities in the
land of Palestine should offer this accolade to
Peter and John, unlearned and ignorant men, yet
able to conduct their own defense and indict
the judges and charge them with being accomplices
to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and therefore sharing corporate responsibility.
These judges took knowledge that Peter and John
had been with Jesus.
I say this statement is incredible.
But how about this one then, for another
incredible statement in the thirteenth verse of the
fifth chapter of the Acts, for here we
read of the reaction of a certain section
of the population at Jerusalem to the growing
Christian community in the holy city.
And this is what the historian says, of
the rest, of this segment of the residents
of Jerusalem, durst no man join himself to
them, that is the Christian community, but the
people magnified them.
Of the rest durst no man join himself
to them.
I say that if you think that statement
through, it's a remarkable one.
Let me set it into contemporary relief.
I don't know how many churches there are
in Worthing, I would guess about forty, and
reckon that that guess would be relatively conservative.
But do you know one of the churches
in this town where people would be afraid
to join?
Because this is in effect what the historian
is saying regarding the growing Christian community at
Jerusalem.
They had such a power, such a presence,
were making such an impact that they overawed
certain of the citizens of Jerusalem, overawed them
to the extent that some people didn't join
the church, because it was such a powerful
community.
There's another statement similar to this, and is
incredible, found in the gospels when reference is
made to two men who really were opposites.
One is Herod and the other is John,
and by John I mean the Baptist.
It is said that when Herod reflects upon
John and the association that he has had
with John from time to time, he is
afraid.
Herod feared John.
And I say that that is a sensational
statement simply because you would expect an inversion
of this.
You would rather anticipate that John the Baptist
would fear Herod.
Consider the two, Herod was a king, John
was a pauper, Herod lived in a palace,
John in the wilderness, Herod had a well
stocked wardrobe and an overfilled pantry, John went
around with the skin of an animal for
his clothing and a diet of locusts and
honey.
And yet when John the Baptist is brought
into the presence of Herod, or when Herod
thinks about John, he's afraid.
And I say that statement is parallel with
this that we discover in Acts 5.13,
that there were people amongst the population at
Jerusalem who were afraid when they came into
contact with the followers of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Of the rest durst no man join himself
to them.
And it's an indictment upon the twentieth century
church, and let's be personal, upon the tabernacle,
and let's be even more pertinent, upon its
pastor and its members, that this sense of
being overawed, overwhelmed, rarely happens.
In the experience of people who come into
the sanctuary of this church.
And what we want to do then this
morning is to inquire into this particular statement
and see what it was that these early
Christians had that produced such a reaction.
And by virtue of working this out, we'll
see what we lack in the twentieth century,
in as much as we are unable to
create this sort of response amongst the townspeople
here in Worthing.
I say that one of the characteristics that
mark the life of the emerging church at
Jerusalem, and so impressed and overwhelmed the citizens
of that city, is the presence of God
which the early Christians experienced personally and when
they came together as a whole.
There was a sense of the presence of
God.
It's unmistakable when you read the second chapter
of the Acts of the Apostles, but don't
get so hooked on the second chapter of
the Acts of the Apostles that you forget
the significance of the third and the fourth
and the fifth.
Because what is there in the second is
merely developed in the rest of the chapters
of the Acts of the Apostles and indicates
this, that the early Christians par excellence knew
the presence of God when they met together.
A presence of God which they radiated on
their own as they went from house to
house in Jerusalem.
Do you know what I pray for?
Early on a Sunday morning before I leave
the manse and I come to the church
here, though I'm not an experienced preacher, my
years in the ministry have taught me never
to pray to be able to preach an
eloquent sermon.
I've managed to put that temptation on one
side, but what I do pray for most
sincerely is this, that when we gather together
in this building which is beloved by so
many people, that we might sense God.
I'm not often a member of the congregation,
of any congregation, although I do appreciate being
a member of a congregation and listening to
someone else preach, but do you know what
I want when I am in the congregation
listening and participating in general worship?
I want the preacher to bring God near
to me.
I can excuse a preacher anything, a stammering
tongue, stuttering words, an inability perhaps to major
on secondary areas of doctrine to my satisfaction.
That doesn't matter, provided that man is so
borne along by the Holy Spirit, provided there's
such a sense of God in the church
that my heart is moved and I go
out of the building believing that God has
been in the place and that the Holy
Spirit has plucked the cords of my heart.
And I say, one of the characteristics of
the early Christian community at Jerusalem was this,
that they captured a sense of the presence
of God.
And if we meet together in the 20th
century and we go away without that sense,
then we've met in vain.
It's not been a Christian meeting in the
biblical sense of that term.
When the patriarch Jacob was at Peniel, you
remember he didn't appreciate all that was going
to happen during that incredible night.
And when the day eventually broke, when morn
came, he went on his way with these
words on his lips, surely the Lord was
in this place and I knew it not.
And when the apostle Paul writes to the
church at Corinth in the first letter that
he sends to this particular Christian community, towards
the end he works out what is an
ideal church, what is an ideal token of
a successful gathering of Christian people.
And says, Paul, you can test whether you've
been successful on these grounds.
When the stranger comes into your meeting, does
he fall down and say that the Lord
is with these people indeed?
Now it was the sense of the presence
of God that these early Christians knew that
overwhelmed certain sections of the population at Jerusalem.
You see, we as Christian people, and I
think, well, no doubt the majority of you
are committed to the Lord Jesus Christ.
We long to know the presence of God,
but you know, my friend, the presence of
God can be an awesome thing.
The Bible says it is a terrible thing
for a sinner to fall into the hands
of the living God.
And when God is amongst his people in
truth and in power, then those who are
not committed to the Lord Jesus Christ might
well react against such a community, might well
say with Peter, depart from me for I
am a sinful man.
And so at Jerusalem there was this sort
of, if you'll allow the word, repulsion on
the part of some of the citizens to
the Christian community.
They dare not associate with them because the
presence of God was so powerfully demonstrated in
their midst.
But there's something else about this growing church
at Jerusalem that contributes to the reaction that
is here described on the part of some
of the townspeople.
And it is the holiness of the members
of the early church.
All right, I'm prepared to concede that the
Acts of the Apostles would better be described
as the Acts of the Spirit.
But when you talk about the Spirit, don't
forget the adjective that describes him, that picks
out his preeminent characteristic, the Holy Spirit.
There is a lot being said in certain
circles these days about the Spirit of God,
and thank God for any interest in the
Spirit.
But it is the Holy Spirit of God,
and one of his attributes, his main attribute
is holiness.
And if I read my Bible aright, when
the Holy Spirit deals with the life of
an ordinary person, he makes him a holy
person.
I've never really been able to differentiate between
the work of the Spirit in empowering and
the work of the Spirit in sanctifying a
life.
When the disciples were quickened by the Holy
Spirit on the day of Pentecost, not only
were they empowered, I believe they were made
more holy.
They were made more like Jesus Christ.
And holiness is not a passive quality, it's
an active one.
Holiness is something that is seen, something that
can attract or repel.
Go back to the Baptist for a moment,
and think of him as, he has another
confrontation with Herod.
Why is Herod so afraid of the Baptist?
Well because the Baptist has harnessed a power
the like of which Herod has never known.
With eyes blazing with righteous indignation, Herod is
censured by the Baptist.
It is not lawful for thee to have
thy brother Philip's wife.
Herod, when he's mesmerized by the preaching of
the Baptist, has to appreciate this, that there
is within the words of the Baptist himself,
there is within his life something that is
compatible with the words that he speaks.
There's no dichotomy between what the Baptist is,
and what the Baptist speaks, what the Baptist
utters.
And I am so bold to suggest, at
least in its infancy, this was the case
amongst the Christian community at Jerusalem.
What they said they were, and what they
were they said.
But today we give ourselves the luxury of
making a differentiation, a distinction between what we
believe and the way that we live.
And the net result is that this radiant
holiness is not present.
And the net result of that one, if
I can follow the logic through, is that
people in Worthing are not overawed in our
presence.
As the people in Jerusalem were overwhelmed by
the presence of the early Christians.
I tell you that one graphic illustration of
the holiness of that early church is seen
in this awful experience that's narrated in the
first 11 verses, when Ananias and Sapphira endeavor
to dupe all the Christians and to lie
against God, and particularly the Holy Spirit of
God.
And when they attempt this in such a
holy atmosphere, their sin is immediately exposed.
But because of the deterioration in spirituality in
the 20th century, we can get away with
sin and it's not brought to the surface
because there are too many of us engaged
in it.
Someone has said that if the Holy Spirit
still worked today, as he did in the
case of Ananias and Sapphira, and they're lying
against him, then the undertakers would hardly be
able to cope with the business that would
come their way.
A cryptic comment, but there's no humor in
my voice when I repeat it, because the
comment is so profound and it's so deadly
accurate and it hits me on the nerve,
and I don't like being hit on the
nerve, particularly by my own preaching.
I say that one of the things that
caused the people at Jerusalem to be afraid
of the early Christian community was that they
had harnessed a holiness which was not just
a passive quality but an active quality, so
demonstrated as they gathered together as a community
that Ananias and Sapphira could have no part
nor lot with them.
And we have the description of this awesome
thing, Ananias and Sapphira dying, because they had
lied against the Holy Ghost, though one believes
that Ananias and Sapphira were Christians and at
any rate the blood of Jesus Christ, God's
Son, would have preserved their eternal salvation.
Another characteristic that I reckon caused this reaction
on the part of Jerusalem's townspeople was this,
the early disciples unleashed the power of the
Word of God.
Wherever you read of the early Christians engaging
in conversation, there's always the thought supplied that
the topic of their conversation was God and
His Word.
And when you read about Peter on the
day of Pentecost, you find that having been
filled with the Holy Spirit, he starts to
preach and he stands up and he declares
the Word of God, and all that he
has to say is deeply anchored in Old
Testament Scripture.
And when he's brought in front of the
Sanhedrin, because he has been preaching concerning Jesus
of Nazareth, again his defense is largely rooted
in the Old Testament.
And throughout the Acts of the Apostles, and
bear this in mind in the twentieth century
when preaching is being devalued, you find that
whenever the Holy Spirit comes upon a person
or a community, the net result is that
they start to preach.
They start to proclaim the Word of God.
Look at the thirty-first verse of Acts
4.
The prayer meeting had been held, or rather
the praise meeting, because John and Peter had
dealt so well with the Sanhedrin.
And at the end of the prayer meeting,
we find this happened.
When they, the Christian community, had prayed, the
place was shaken where they were assembled together
and they were all filled with the Holy
Ghost.
Now what was the evidence of them being
filled with the Holy Ghost, at least on
this occasion?
They spake the Word of God with boldness.
And I say one of the things that
made these people make such an impact upon
the rest of the citizens at Jerusalem was
this, they unleashed the power of the Word
of God.
Charles Spurgeon was once asked if he would
defend the Bible.
In characteristic Spurgeonic fashion, Spurgeon said, what?
Defend the Bible?
I'd rather defend the lion.
What was his point?
Simply this, the Word of God doesn't need
defending.
The Word of God needs unleashing, releasing.
The Word of God is not bound.
The Sanhedrin will soon discover their folly in
trying to silence Peter and John.
They could no more silence these two than
the Jewish authorities of old could silence the
prophet Jeremiah.
And he wanted to be silenced, do you
remember, at one stage?
And then he said, but there was within
my very being, within my heart, a burning,
and I could not stay.
The Word of God, my friend, is not
bound, and it wasn't bound at Jerusalem.
And when we realize that the Word of
God doesn't need defending, but rather needs parading
in the 20th century, then maybe we'll be
on our way back to making the same
impact as did the early disciples at Jerusalem.
So then they unleashed the Word of God,
and this itself can have devastating effects when
people come in contact under the hearing of
the sound of the Word.
And what is more, these early disciples had
an irrepressible boldness.
You couldn't shut them up.
I've virtually worked out this point for you
a moment or so ago, so I'll not
develop it much further, apart from saying that
when the Sanhedrin in the third chapter are
described as trying to silence Peter and John,
the fishermen respond, what are we to do,
obey you or to obey God?
And they set down this principle that if
the law of Caesar, or the law of
the Jewish Sanhedrin for that matter, was in
opposition to the law of God, then the
law of God has preeminence.
And this has always been the case down
church history.
The law of God is the one to
which the Christian first of all subscribes, and
he accepts.
So all these qualities, if you put them
together in the melting pot, to use that
expression, this holiness, this sense of the presence
of God, this unleashing of the Word of
God, this irrepressible boldness, mix all this together
and what do you get?
A community that makes an impact, a community
that is overawing, overwhelming as far as some
of the townspeople in Jerusalem are concerned.
There's something inexplicable, something super rational.
They can't understand it and therefore they are
afraid.
Now what's wrong with us today?
In the 20th century, at least in part,
perhaps things are not so bad as occasionally
one feels they are.
Maybe one of the things that is wrong
is this.
There's nothing mysterious about us.
Let me repeat that because you probably don't
know what I'm talking about anyway so I'll
try and develop it.
There's nothing mysterious about us.
You see, there's something uncanny about these disciples.
They don't understand it.
The Sanhedrin, these men, they're not learned, they're
not instructed in rabbinical thought and yet they
conduct their case as though they've had three
years at some Jewish academy.
There's something uncanny, something inexplicable about these men,
something mysterious.
And I'm suggesting it's that element of the
mysterious that as ordinary Christians, as individual believers
in our Lord Jesus Christ, we have not
harnessed.
Listen to A.W. Tozer who can always
put things far more pithily than I can.
We have theological saints today, he says, who
can and must be proved to be saints
by an appeal to the original Greek.
What we need are saints whose lives proclaim
sainthood and need not run to the concordance
for authentication.
What's wrong with us today?
There's nothing terrible about the church.
Nothing terrible about the church.
Nothing that's really awe-inspiring.
The church has been analyzed.
It's been categorized.
It's virtually been fossilized.
And people are not overwhelmed by the church
and the ministry of the church, the impact
that it should be making.
But you see, the early church couldn't be
categorized, it couldn't be analyzed, and it certainly
was never fossilized, not in the first hundred
years.
The people, when they looked at the early
church, they saw fire in the bush and
they were afraid.
It's when the bush is burned out and
only ashes are left that people have the
audacity to come and take the ashes and
analyze them.
And what I'm saying that we need today
is more fire in the bush.
And when the bush burns with fire, people
stand back and they take their shoes off
from their feet and they say, this is
holy ground and we're somewhat afraid.
But today, I say there are not many
occasions when people are afraid of the church,
rather they're coarsely familiar because we compromise wholesale,
in a wholesale fashion, upon the things that
we believe.
Nothing mysterious, nothing terrible, nothing awesome, and what
we need to know again is this inspiring
power of the Holy Spirit.
And what is more, the church in the
Acts of the Apostles was not merely an
organization as we tend to be today.
Not just an organization, no, she was a
movement.
Not just a movement, though, because she was
a walking incarnation of spiritual energy.
She began in power, she continued in power,
and she moved just as long as she
had power.
And when she stopped having power, she dug
in and tried to contain her blessings as
the Israelites, some of them, tried to preserve
the manna.
And they discovered that you can't preserve manna
because manna breeds worms.
And the worms eventually made the manna completely
un-eatable.
And when the church tried to preserve its
blessings, what happened?
She bred the worms of monasticism, scholasticism, and
institutionalism, and there was a complete and utter
absence of power.
And what we need today, I say, is
to forget the whole idea of being able
to store up blessings and living on a
past experience.
The Apostle Peter knew the indwelling of the
Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
He also knew the indwelling of the Spirit
when he stands before the Sanhedrin.
He knows the indwelling of the Spirit when
the church comes together in praise and in
prayer, as I've intimated from the 31st verse
of Acts chapter 4.
And it was this constant walking with the
Lord, this constant infilling of God's Holy Spirit
that so empowered the early Christians that though
some joined them because they responded to the
message of the evangel, those who did not
respond to the message of redeeming grace were
afraid of them.
And they didn't associate with them.
These men had a power.
They were incredible Christians.
And I believe, my friend, with all my
heart, that as it was in the days
of the Acts of the Apostles, though I
will make provision for the unique apostleship of
Peter and the other 11, but broadly speaking,
as it was in the days of the
Acts of the Apostles, so it must be
in the 20th century, God has not changed.
And I am unimpressed by some theologians and
teachers of the Bible who try to explain
the anemic condition of today by saying that
God has changed in the way that he
uses men and women in the 20th century.
I believe, as was it Shakespeare said, made
Brutus say, or said of Brutus, the fault
lies within ourselves.
God is still the same.
The Spirit is still the same.
But have we still the same dedication as
the early men and women had who named
the name of Jesus at Jerusalem?
I reckon that there in the fault lies,
and by attending to that, the remedy shall
come.
Amen.
And for the rekindling of that fire, O
God, we crave, may the bush burn and
help us to make an impact, and may
we have thy power to be able to
cope with all the challenges and with all
the strains that life in the 20th century
brings.
Help us to do credit to the name
of Jesus, as did the early ambassadors of
the faith.
And now as some of us take our
leave at this juncture, we solicit your blessing,
the blessing of the omnipotent, sovereign God, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, now and until Jesus
returns.
Amen.