What is the most common criticism leveled at churches? That churches are full of
hypocrites. Who hasn’t heard this
criticism? And who are these hypocrites, I want to ask. It’s such a generic criticism that I
would like to ask can the accusers
provide a list of names?
Calling someone a hypocrite is a very harsh judgment to make of another
person, so shouldn’t the accuser be required to back up their claim with some
proof? It also seems to me that
people ought to be consistent with that criticism and stay away from everywhere
hypocrites might be found, but then we could never leave the house.
The real problem, I think, in calling another
person a hypocrite is that we can’t see inside the mind and heart of another
person. None of us consistently
live up to our ideals and principles, but that doesn’t mean we are hypocrites;
it merely means we are human.
But there are times when we see hypocritical
behavior on the part of others, those times when we see an obvious gap between
who a person claims to be and who they really are.
This morning, we are studying a passage from
the book of Acts that tell us about the first two church hypocrites on record –
a husband and wife by the names of Ananias and Sapphira.
1 But a man named Ananias, with his wife
Sapphira, sold a piece of property,
2 and kept back some of the price for himself, with his wife’s full knowledge,
and bringing a portion of it, he laid it at the apostles’ feet.
3 But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan
filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land?
4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?
And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it that you have
conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”
5 And as he heard these words, Ananias
fell down and breathed his last; and great fear came over all who heard of it.
6 The young men got up and covered him up,
and after carrying him out, they buried him.
7 Now there elapsed an interval of about
three hours, and his wife came in, not knowing what had happened.
8 And Peter responded to her, “Tell me
whether you sold the land for such and such a price?” And she said, “Yes, that
was the price.”
9 Then Peter said to her, “Why is it that you have agreed together to put the
Spirit of the Lord to the test? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your
husband are at the door, and they will carry you out as well.”
10 And immediately she fell at his feet and
breathed her last, and the young men came in and found her dead, and they
carried her out and buried her beside her husband.
11 And great fear came over the whole
church, and over all who heard of these things.
This passage of Scripture is one that is often overlooked. It’s overlooked, I think, because there
are some very uncomfortable truths contained in this passage, and we’ll study a
few of those truths this morning, all of which fall under the theme of Being
Honest About Ourselves.
This passage cannot be separated from the final
verses of chapter four. It helps
to understand that the earliest versions of Scripture were not divided into
chapters and verses. The beginning
of chapter five separates the story of Ananias and Sapphira from the end of
chapter four, but this is all one story; you cannot separate this great vision
of the church in chapter four from the sin and the fate of Ananias and Sapphira
in chapter five.
The end of chapter four provides us with a
utopian description of the early church.
In those verses we see that people were giving freely of their
possessions and there were no needs among them, there was great power in the
church, the church was of one heart
and soul, and the church was growing. It’s a beautiful, idyllic picture of the early church,
perhaps the greatest portrait of the church in all the New Testament.
The first word of chapter five is the
connecting word – but. Some
translations use the word now, but I
prefer translations that use but. Have you had someone say something positive
to you and then added, but... That conjunction takes all the air out of
the positive words, doesn’t it? Perhaps
a teacher said you did well at the
beginning of the semester, but…
Your boss called you in for your annual review and said you did okay in this area of your work, but… Or maybe your spouse opened your
Christmas gift, looked at it and said I
appreciate your thoughtfulness, but…
The conjunction but looms large in this story. Things are going along great in the church but...; there is great power in
the church ...but. The people are of one heart and soul...but. That one word gives us this
great sense of foreboding.
It’s an interesting question to wonder why this
story is connected with this beautiful description of the early church. After reading of this idyllic church
situation, we immediately read this unpleasant episode involving Ananias and
Sapphira.
The similarities between this event and the
fall in the Garden of Eden are really striking. This is, really, a New Testament version of the Garden,
complete with the Fall. The
picture of the church at the end of chapter 4 is about as close to a
restoration of the Garden of Eden as was possible. But just as in the Garden, it was not to last. Everything is
wonderful and beautiful, and then it starts to go downhill. It did not last for the same reason it
did not last the first time – because of our sin.
This is the Bible in its total, unflinching
honesty. The incredible honesty of the Bible is, I believe, one of the reasons
why the Bible resonates with us so powerfully. If you are simply manufacturing a story you don’t include
all the bad parts about the people in the story, but the Bible is absolutely
unflinching in its presentation of people; even the people of God. As one author says, in that perfect
church there were some imperfect people (Wind and Fire: Living Out the Book of Acts, Waco,
Texas: Word Books, 1984, p.
65). Some imperfect
people? More correctly – all were
imperfect people.
The Bible never seeks to hide the sins and the
failures of people – especially, interestingly, God’s people. The Bible is not at all afraid to
describe the reality of people’s lives – that we are frail, that we are
prideful, and that we are sinful, and the Bible presents us with this mirror because
we are not to forget this.
The Bible, we could say, is the original
reality show. I’m not a fan of
reality TV, not because it shows the failures of people, but because they seem
to enjoy the dysfunctions of people and turn it into entertainment. There is nothing entertaining about the
reality of broken and struggling lives.
There is nothing entertaining about using the failures and struggles and
conflicts of people entertainment and in doing so raising the brokenness of
humanity rather than raising the hope for humanity.
The Bible is a different reality. The Bible is very plain about who we
are as people, but it presents that reality as something for which we were not
created and as something from which God desires to lift us beyond.
For everyone who suffers under the illusion
that churches aren’t full of difficulty we can say those people haven’t read
the New Testament very closely.
Read through the letters of Paul and you will find great conflict and
dysfunction. Read through the book
of Acts and you will find the same.
Read through almost every book of the New Testament and you will find
the gory details of the difficulties, failures, and sins of people – especially
God’s people – on full display. The
honesty of the Bible is a very big, very sharp needle that punctures any
illusion we may have of being perfect.
So, follow along with me now in chapter five as
we go through the story of Ananias and Sapphira. As we begin, Luke has just written of Barnabas, who sold a
piece of property and gave the money to the church. Ananias and Sapphira also sell a piece of land but do so
with an attitude very different from that of Barnabas.
Luke says that Ananias and Sapphira sell their
property but kept back some of the price for themselves. Ananias brings the money to the
apostles and Peter immediately confronts Ananias and accuses him of lying to
the Holy Spirit, because they kept some of the money back for themselves.
Ananias and Sapphira were not wrong because
they kept some of the money for themselves; Peter even says this in verse 4 – While
it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? It wasn’t a question of how much they
were giving; it was that Ananias and
Sapphira had conspired together to present themselves as being something they
were not. That is the textbook
definition of a hypocrite – presenting yourself as being what you are not. Ananias and Sapphira wanted people to
believe they were giving all of the money from the sale of their land. Ananias and Sapphira were pretending to
be generous; they sought to deceive people into thinking they were something
they were not; they were pretending to be as generous and committed as the others,
but they were not.
People today – as always – desire authenticity,
and this passage cuts to the heart of being authentic. Our culture can be very tough on those who are discovered to be less
than authentic, and it’s because we have been disappointed too many times. Too many times we’ve witnessed public
figures – politicians, ministers, or others in the public eye – who serve as
examples to us and we find out they were living a lie. The disappointment causes us to turn
against them.
Ananias and Sapphira came before the church and
sought to deceive the church; they broke their covenant with the body of Christ
and God takes that very seriously.
We cannot take lightly what it means to live together as the body of
Christ. But we often do take that
very lightly. We too easily break
that sense of one heart and soul that
is spoken of in 4:32, we too easily forget that we have responsibility to and
for one another, and when we do forget we bring dishonor to the name of Jesus
and disappointment for those who were looking for role models.
John Claypool makes an interesting point
about this passage. He says, if
they had just said: "Here is where we would like to be – with Barnabas'
kind of trust and generosity. But we find we are not there yet.... All we can
do now is give part of the proceeds. Would you help us grow toward what
we would like to become?"
Peter called out the sin in the lives of
Ananias and Sapphira, not because they were sinful, but because they were
dishonest about who they were.
Phony spirituality is a deadly disease that can spread throughout the
church.
In 1963 Edward Lorenz gave a presentation to
the New York Academy of Sciences about his theory called the butterfly effect. His theory postulated that when a
butterfly flapped its wings it would set into motion air molecules that, in
turn, would cause other air molecules to move, and could eventually influence
weather patterns on the other side of the planet. As you can imagine, this was viewed as little more than myth
for many years. How could
something as insignificant as the movement of a butterfly’s wings affect
something as great as a weather pattern?
By the mid 1990s, though, physics professors from several universities
found that the butterfly effect was indeed a reality.
All of us have the capacity of deception and hypocrisy;
all of us have the potential to influence others, either for good or ill, and if
we deny this we have already started down the road of self-deception.
And in an ironic twist, don’t we sometimes
practice these very same traits in the most unlikely of places – the church? Maybe in a small way such as when
someone asks how are you doing and we say I’m doing great because
we wouldn’t dare allow our carefully constructed facade to crumble under the
truth that we’re really not doing great?
Are we tempted to let someone think we have been more sacrificial or
more holy than we really are? How
often have we “stretched the truth” to cover up something we have done? How often do we point out the sins of
others as a way of diverting attention from our own failures and sins?
So we should ask ourselves three questions,
which serve as a check on our own level of honesty with ourselves –
1. How often, when asked how we are doing,
do we answer with an expression such as I’m
doing great, when the reality is very different?
2. How often do we “stretch the truth” in
order to hide something we wouldn’t want others to know about us?
3. How often do we point out the
shortcomings or failures of others in order to keep the focus off of ourselves
and our own shortcomings and failures?
What really matters – the appearance of
spirituality or the reality of spirituality? Ananias and Sapphira chose the appearance, rather than the
reality, of spirituality. They
wanted to look as good as Barnabas without paying the price as did Barnabas.
The Bible doesn’t use the brokenness and
difficult realities of life as entertainment but as a tool to bring us to an
honest assessment of who we are.
Is it perfect here? Far from it.
Has it ever been perfect here?
No. Will it ever be perfect
here? No. Let us never suffer under the illusion
that things are perfect or that we are perfect. Instead, let us confess our imperfections and subsequent
need of the grace of God to heal our imperfect and sinful lives. The early church was clearly not
perfect, and neither are we.
But we can, at least, be honest.
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