30th March 2025

New Testament Heroes 11 – 30/03/25 – Martin Mowat

First reading: Romans 3:20–26, Ephesians 2:8–9, and Hebrews 4:16

Second reading: Acts 4:34b to 5:6

A few weeks ago, when we were studying Acts chapter 2, we saw that the first converts to Christianity did several things devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.  All the believers were together and had everything in common.  As we’ve just heard they sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Today Luke has given us two concrete examples of believers selling property and possessions so that the proceeds could be given to those in need. The first one was very positive, but the second one was far from positive.  

Nowadays, when we’re about to watch a programme on television we are often warned that it contains “content of a sexual nature”, or “violent scenes “  That gives us a choice, we can either turn to a different channel, or turn the TV off completely, or watch the programme anyway, and maybe avert our eyes when the naughty bits come along, or not, as we wish.

Reading the Bible is a bit the same.  When the grizzly bit’s come along, we can either put the Bible down and read something different, or read nothing at all, or we can decide to read it anyway, knowing that one of its aims is to teach us about life, real life, and to challenge us in certain areas of our hearts and lives. It can only do that if it shows us both sides of the coin. It’s “the good, the bad, and the ugly” but starring Jesus instead of Clint Eastward.

“Why does God let these terrible things happen?” we cry indignantly.  “Why doesn’t he just stop them before they do?”

Fair questions, and ones that we’ve been asking ourselves recently both on Wednesdays and on Sundays!

Let’s go back to our story, then.

First of all, a Cypriot Levite called Joseph, to whom the apostles gave the nickname Barnabas because he was by nature an encourager, sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles’ feet.

It was a voluntary act of generosity, and he was leading by example.  Barnabas went on to become an apostle.  He’ll be one of our heroes because he and Paul undertook missionary journeys together, making thousands of converts, planting many churches. Later, in about AD50, he participated in the Council of Jerusalem, an apostolic conference in Jerusalem that decreed that Gentile Christians did not have to observe the Mosaic Law of the Jews, when it came to things like circumcision.

So, a good story, with a very positive outcome.

But when a married couple called Ananias and Sapphira, maybe following his example, also sold a piece of property, things didn’t turn out so well.

We’re told that “with his wife’s full knowledge Ananias kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.”

The thing is that he was perfectly within his rights to give only a part of the proceeds. But the trouble started when he lied to Peter, telling him that the money was the full proceeds of the sale.

When Peter challenged him about it and said “You have not lied just to human beings, but to God.  What on earth made you think of doing such a thing?” (italics added), Ananias promptly just fell down and died.  Some young men had to carry him out and bury him.

Can you imagine?  I can’t.  Who’d want to come to church on Sundays if that sort of thing was going to happen? 

But it got worse, a lot worse, because when his wife Sapphira, who hadn’t been there and knew nothing about what had happened, when she turned up about three hours later, Peter challenged her, and asked her too whether the money was indeed the full proceeds of the sale.  When she claimed that it was, she too just fell down and died, and her body had to be carried out and buried next to her husband’s. 

Yes, “scenes of a violent nature”, grizzly stuff, not nice. Should parts of the Bible have an age restriction on them, be X-rated perhaps?

But the point is that it happened, whether we like it or not, and it makes us feel very uncomfortable, and so it should.

So now we have another elephant in the chapel.

Why did God, if he is so gentle and loving, deliberately treat this couple so harshly, when they were actually being very generous?

Not to mention the huge question that I mentioned earlier, namely “Why does God let terrible things happen both in Bible times and today?”

Two HUGE questions to answer in the few minutes that I have remaining, and so I’m just going to give you some thoughts about the nature of God which I hope will help you.  The list is not exhaustive.

First of all we need to remember that God’s nature is very different from ours, as different as chalk is from cheese, as day is from night, to borrow the French expression, and I think that in the specific case of Ananias and Sapphira, God was deliberately showing the church that he expects total integrity.  Would that we would learn that lesson.

We also have to understand that God is perfect, and that we aren’t – I’m sorry, but it’s true, and I talked about that last week.

God is wholly good. He can’t compromise on that, obviously, so nothing that he has ever done in the past, does now, or will do in the future, is not good. 

God is ‘omniscient’, all knowing.  There’s nothing to know that he isn’t totally aware of already. Nothing EVER takes him by surprise. 

God is wise. His wisdom is way higher than ours, which means that understanding his decisions and actions is often going to be beyond our reach. He knows best. If you’re a parent, I’m sure you’ve said to an argumentative child “Mummy knows best – end of story”. That’s not a cop-out. You can’t always explain something to a child before he’s old enough and mature enough to understand.  So it is with God and us. 

God sees the world, and everything in it from a completely different perspective. His goals, and ours, are not necessarily always the same. 

God gave man free will, the freedom to consult him or not to consult him before making decisions and taking action, as well as the freedom to obey him or to disobey him.  I talked about some of these things when I preached about Adam and Eve.  All of what goes wrong in our world is today is OUR fault, not his. Yes, he could prevent it, of course he could, but in his wisdom, he chooses not to.

God is unique.  As Isaiah prophesied
“Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.”

God is sovereign.  This is the big one. Sovereign means possessing supreme or ultimate power and authority. What he says, goes.  

But lastly, and most importantly, God is love.  Love is an overused word these days. If you’ve ever been in love with someone, or if you’ve been a parent, you have an idea of what real love is. But that love, however all consuming it was or is, pales into insignificance compared to God’s love for his creation as a whole, and his love for you as his child.

In his love for us, God is faithful, just, forgiving and gracious. As we heard in our first reading, the Apostle Paul was so amazed by the life-changing experience he had with the Lord, he sought ways to describe it as he wrote his letters to the fledgling churches, and he actually invented a new Greek word to describe it—grace. 

Apparently, he used the word “charisma” which means gift and shortened it into “charis” grace. With this new word, he showed that God’s grace is a gift—not deserved, earned, or purchased. God’s grace means forgiveness, cleansing, acceptance, and is a vivid expression of God’s love. We seldom see the giving of gifts that require nothing in return, but God’s love and his grace are always freely given.

So let me leave you with what is probably the most quoted verse of the Bible.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. And then, later, Jesus said Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command.

So, to conclude, I don’t think that we have to feel TOO sorry for Ananias and Sapphira in the sense that they don’t seem to have suffered physically, and as they were Christians they would have gone straight to heaven, despite their misdemeanours.

I hope that pondering these things will help you to answer some of those tricky questions.