Sunday, September 02, 2007

ACTS 5:1-11 - The Great Pretenders

SERIES #8: Acts of the Apostles - Witnesses to Jerusalem
TOPIC: Hypocrisy; Deception, Duplicity, Fear of the Lord, Sin
[PLATTERS] During the late 1950’s The Platters sang a classic song called “The Great Pretender”; telling of a love which wasn’t sincere. Today’s mes-sage is about something even more egregious.
TITLE: THE GREAT PRETENDERS -- The Cost of Doing Business with Satan!
TEXT: Acts 5:1-11 [4:29-5:16]

INQUIRY: What was the sin that precipitated such severe discipline?
CONCISE OUTLINE
I. One of many was PRETENSE!
II. One of many was UNBELIEF!
III. One of many was ARROGANCE!
IV. One of many was THE SIN OF EDEN!
TRUTH/CONTEXT:
[F. F. Bruce] The great Scottish scholar says of this event: “An act of deceit interrupts the victorious progress of the people of God.” [Cited in Stott, Acts, p.109]
In this passage we are given a positive and a negative of early church life … notice the word “But” in verse one, contrasting Ananias and Sapphira’s niggardliness with the preceding events and Barnabas’ generosity.
[ROGERS] A few years ago Adrian Rogers, pastor of Bellevue BC of Cordova, TN, spoke on the subject of sin to the student body of one of our seminaries … he named three prominent precursors to a person’s fall into sin:
  1. an undetected weakness
  2. an unexpected temptation
  3. an unprotected life.
[FAME] Andy Warhol, that weird artist of the post-sixties era, is credited with having said, “Everyone gets fifteen minutes of fame.”

Little did Ananias and Sapphira imagine theirs would come in this way.
We can agree this was probably not this couple’s first temptation to sin, nor was it the first occurrence of sin by them. Is it God’s warning to the church? Yes!

REVIEW: This passage is great for the purpose of recalling the threefold theme of the book of Acts:
  1. the Preeminence of Christ
  2. the Prominence of the Holy Spirit
  3. the Power of the authentic church.
Authentic fellowship is marred; the authentic followed by the counterfeit.

Sadly we have many people today who are either disbelieving or offended or shocked by this story. When we compare it to others there is no reason to be; for example: Achan or Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, Jephthah, and the Levitical Priest who divided his wife into 12 parts and sent a part each to the tribes of Israel.

INQUIRY: What sin precipitated such severe discipline?
EXPANDED OUTLINE
I. One of many was PRETENSE!
They took the name of the Lord their God in vain! And their selfish desires got the best of them.
A. The desire to belong
B. The desire for the esteem of others
C. The desire to be seen
D. The desire to appear
  1. fruitful among the fruitful is strong
  2. righteous among the righteous is strong
  3. spiritual among the spiritual is strong
Note: taking the Lord's name in vain is not using God's name when cursing (though it is a sin), it is calling yourself a Jew or a Christian when you are not one!
II. One of many was UNBELIEF!
They did not trust the Lord to meet their needs if all was given!
A. They didn’t truly trust God to care for them in the present
B. They didn’t truly believe that if they gave all, the Lord would meet their future needs
Conclusion: giving it all taxed their faith too much
C. They had no reality of relationship
[RELEASE] Susan Smart wrote about an experience as a student pilot. It seems she did well with all of the in-flight training except recovering from stalls. She previously panicked every time; her instructor told her she must master it to be licensed. On her first attempt she froze, her hands glued to the controls, the Cessna 150 flip-flopping in the air, spin-ning downward out of control. She tried to recall what her instructor had told her … “If you ever get into a spin in a Cessna 150, just let go of the controls. It’s built to pull out of a spin on its own.”

Instead she fought for control. Finally, in desperation, she called on God and shouted at herself, “Let go!’ She released the controls. After some wild yawing and pitching, the craft leveled out. She had descended al-most a mile but she was safe.
Smart pointed to similarities with our relationship with God. We’re told to trust and let go in spite of how fearful it is and in spite of how hard it is to release the controls of our lives! Before Cessna designed it into their aircraft, God had designed it into His plan for our future with Him.
III. One of many was ARROGANCE!
Like the Jews of old they thought God could not see what they were doing!
He says to himself, "God has forgotten; He has hidden His face; He will never see it."
Psalms 10:11

They have said, "The LORD does not see, nor does the God of Jacob pay heed."
Psalms 94:7

Then He said to me, "Son of man, do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are committing in the dark, each man in the room of his carved images? For they say, 'The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land.'"
Ezekiel 8:12
IV. One of many was THE SIN OF EDEN!
They heeded Satan and one another rather than God!
A. The text says, “Satan filled his heart.”
“You’re of your father the devil, & the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, & doesn’t stand in the truth, because there’s no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar & the father of it.”
John 8:44

“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
Luke 16:13

“And Elijah came to all the people, and said, ‘How long will you falter between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.’”
1 Kings 18:21
B. In the same way that God needed to make a point in the Garden, make a point with the Tabernacle (i.e., the sons of Aaron), in the Promised Land (Achan), and with two kings (Saul & David) … He needed to make a point at the inception of the authentic church.
APPLICATION: There were many other sins committed by this couple besides lying to the Holy Spirit ... the story here begins in the hearts of the two antagonists: it is their inward disposition not their outward operation that reveals the problem.

Wheat can only recognize the tares among us when we reach maturity.

CHALLENGE: What lessons may we learn?
  1. The non-discrimination of iniquity; even you can be its victim
  2. The Enormity of Sin: God hates it; it ruins fellowship, unity
  3. The commonness of guile (deception, fraud, duplicity, etc.); Jesus called Nathaniel “a man without guile.”
  4. The unfortunate necessity for church discipline.
  5. The deceitfulness of our heart and the need for the Holy Spirit to goad our consciences.
God desires transparent, real people for His Body; as the east African church is fond of saying, “[God wants a people] without ceilings and walls.” (Stott, ibid)

Most Christians are oblivious to what is going on around them in the visible Body of the Church today.

Many are living a lie, faking it: hoping no one notices … believing God will not hold it against them … knowing but not comprehending the Living Word of God.

For examples I give you the following links as examples of church leadership in the past two years: Bynum & Weeks, Paula & Randy White, Tommy Tester, Carlton Pearson, the Paulk brothers, Jason Christy, Dick Dewert, Lonnie Latham, Ted Haggard … and hundreds more who are hiding in sinful deception as I write this!

Romans 3:18 warns us about "the fear of the Lord" ... where is the fear of the Lord in all of this?

This discipline of Ananias and Sapphira, however, got everyone’s attention: see 5:5 and 11 ... “great fear” … I wish it would today … for He is the same God today as He was back then!

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