We Are Church | Come Out of Hiding - Acts 4:32-5:11 | March 30

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All right. Acts 4.32 through 5.11.

And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul,

and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own,

but all things were common property to them.

And with great power, the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection

of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all.

For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land

or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at

the apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each to the extent that any had need.

Now Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also called Barnabas by the apostles,

which translated means son of encouragement, owned a tract of land.

So he sold it and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.

But a man named Ananias with his wife Sapphira sold a piece of property and

kept back some of the proceeds for himself.

With his wife's full knowledge, and bringing a portion of it,

he laid it at the apostles' feet.

But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy

Spirit and to keep back some of the proceeds of the land?

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.

And as he heard these words, Ananias collapsed and died, and great fear came

over all who heard about it.

The young men got up and covered him up, and after carrying him out, they buried him.

Now an interval of about three hours elapsed, and his wife came in,

not knowing what had happened.

And Peter responded to her, Tell me whether you sold the land for this price.

And she said, Yes, for that price.

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.

And immediately she collapsed at his feet and died, and the young men came in

and found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband.

And great fear came over the whole church and over all who heard about these things.

Thanks, Eric. Good morning, everybody.

As I said earlier, and as Bree said as well, as she was praying.

And as she was leading, thank you all for being here.

It is just an incredible gift that we get to be here with the family of God,

that we get to lift our voices, we get to sing, we get to praise,

we get to be children of the Most High God in this place every week together

and then go out and continue to be those, I think. But we get to gather.

It's a privilege that we get to do this. And I hope that you guys realize that.

I hope that we can comprehend just what an amazing privilege it is to be here

together and sing our praises to God.

It's an exciting thing, and I hope that we understand that.

Today, we're continuing in Acts, and today's an interesting one because it is

a story in the book of Acts that we tend to forget about or ignore because it

makes us uncomfortable.

It is a story that has caused many to laugh it off as like a ghost story that

the early believers would tell each other and they tell their children to keep

them in line and scare them into some sort of generosity.

It's something that we are familiar with because we do the same thing with our children, right?

Like we tell them their faces are going to freeze or the really bad thing that

occasionally we'll do is ask them if they need to go to the hospital.

And then we realize we're probably scaring them more than we should be because

now they're afraid of the hospital, which is not a good thing.

But it's something that people have a familiarity with.

And so they're like, oh, this is obviously what's happening.

And in my own life, I can remember a time back in elementary school or middle

school where we were riding a bus home from some sports ball event or something.

I'm a little fuzzy on the exact details.

But what I do remember is as we were riding home at night, some of the kids

started telling scary stories to one another, as youth are prone to do,

especially at night, and especially when they're amongst their peers and they

want to feel some sort of street cred.

They want to act tough in front of those who care to impress. right

and so we're on this bus they're telling

these scary stories one one one kid i think

it was a girl if you think that that makes this story more embarrassing for

me then it's probably true anyway this one girl actually just recounted the

plot to the movie it which i'm not sure if you've seen it there it is so i'm

gonna have nightmares for the rest of the night tonight lovely she yeah In fairness,

I've never seen this movie.

I have no desire to. I never will. The remake or the original.

I will not watch this movie. I don't watch any horror movies.

She simply told the plot of the movie on this bus.

And then for the rest of my childhood, I slept on the floor next to my parents' bed.

Or I slept on a couch in front of a blindingly bright TV.

Or with the covers pulled so far over my head. And I basically did this until

I got married and Jenny forced me to sleep in a bed like a normal human being.

I understand what stories can do to scare us.

But the authors of Acts, the New Testament believers do not treat this as a

story that is used to just scare people. They treat it as something that actually happened.

And so we are to believe that this is a true story, which is shocking.

It's shocking to us because we tend to compartmentalize and we separate in our minds,

wrongfully so, but we separate the God that we see in the New Testament from

the quote unquote version of God we see in the Old Testament,

as if they are separate entities, or perhaps that God has evolved over time.

And this is not the case, but if this story did show up in the Old Testament,

we would hardly think about it. We wouldn't bat an eye.

It wouldn't be shocking to us. In fact, it almost would be expected.

We would almost expect to just react, oh, God's just smiting people again in

the Old Testament. That's what he does.

But God is consistent.

Actually, for example, there is an Old Testament story that is almost exactly

like this one in all the ways that matter.

In the details that don't matter, there's a lot of differences,

but in all the ways that matter, there's an Old Testament story almost exactly like this one.

In Joshua chapter 7, the Israelites had just won the battle of Jericho.

Joshua 7 · chapter mention

And as we all know, the walls came tumbling down.

So they won this great decisive victory by the mighty hand of the Lord.

And they think to themselves, this next town is much smaller.

It's much less fortified than Jericho. We could probably take it with just a few thousand men.

So they go and they fight and they lose.

And they're left thinking, what happened? What went wrong?

So God reveals to Joshua that they had sinned. That's what was wrong.

He told them that when they destroyed Jericho, they were to destroy everything in it.

And he said, somebody has sinned. Somebody has kept back from themselves,

for themselves of the plunder of Jericho.

And so Joshua has each tribe presented before the Lord and the tribe of Judah is chosen.

And then in the tribe of Judah, the clan of the Zerhites, and then the family

of Zimri, and then eventually Achan is chosen. And Joshua said to Achan,

my son, give glory to the Lord and the God of Israel and honor him.

Tell me what you have done.

Do not hide it from me. So he confronts Achan.

Joshua confronts Achan in much the same way that we see Peter confronting Ananias in this story.

But it turns out that Achan had hidden sin away in his tent.

He had hidden treasures from Jericho away in his tent that he didn't want anyone else to see.

He didn't want anyone else to find. And he had skeletons in his closet.

He had hidden away and was holding on to secrets. And those secrets were tearing

apart the people of God. They were tearing apart Israel.

So when we read this story with Ananias and Sapphira, it seems as though to

us that the Old Testament God is creeping into our covenant of peace and love.

And that the Old Testament God is ruining our stories of beauty from ashes.

These happy, dreamy.

Stories that we like to ponder on in the New Testament.

But the Bible says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

God is consistent. In Numbers 23, it says that God is not man that he should

lie or a son of man that he should change his mind.

It says, has he not said and will he not do it? Has he spoken and will he not

fulfill it? God is consistent.

If we look at the wealth of scripture. God doesn't heal every person who's infirm

and he doesn't strike dead every sinner on the spot, thankfully for us.

God didn't go around in the Old Testament smiting every evildoer either.

God is consistent.

And this may be one of the only stories of its kind in the New Testament,

but God is not establishing a rule of law as though this is what happens every single time.

What God is doing here through his people is establishing his character and

he is establishing the seriousness of sin.

And it further establishes as well that the church has an enemy.

The church has an enemy. I came across a video series on Right Now Media just

the other day that's called Your Story Has an Enemy.

And that's true because God has an enemy. Now, this enemy is not an equal to God by any means.

He is a wounded and defeated foe. But since God has an enemy,

his church has an enemy. Our stories have enemies.

And this wounded, defeated foe, it's his mission to just take as many of us down with him as he can.

And so that is a reality that we are prone to see, are apt to see here.

As Warren Wiersbe says, we must face the fact that Satan is a clever foe.

If he does not succeed as the devouring lion, which we just saw a few weeks

ago, we will continue to see, then he attacks again as the deceiving serpent or an angel of light.

Satan is both a murderer and a liar, and the church must be prepared for both attacks.

So not all threats are from the outside. We just saw some external threat stories.

We will see many more to come in the book of Acts. There are lots of external

threats, but equally so, the internal threats to the church are just as pervasive

and they are just as real.

And so that's why this story is here.

That the threats that we experience within the church are just as harmful to

us as those that we experience outside.

And those threats, the internal threats that we experience, they come from within our own hearts.

As we bury away sin in our tents, trying to hide it away, hoping that nobody will ever find it.

As we lie and as we deceive to keep some part of ourselves hidden.

We have divided hearts.

This story, this section of Acts is a tale of two hearts, as it were.

I think it was John Newton who said that there are two kinds of people in the

church, people who have had genuine experiences with the wonder and the love of Christ.

And there are people who have learned to be good imitators, that there are two

kinds of people in the church and they are imperceptibly the same from all external appearances that,

it is nearly impossible to distinguish them apart.

And Jesus even tells us to let them grow together until the end when his angels will separate them.

In Matthew 13, we hear this parable, that the kingdom of heaven is like a farmer

who planted good seed in his field.

But that night as the workers slept, his enemy came and planted weeds among

the wheat and slipped away.

When the crop began to grow and produce grain, the weeds also grew.

The farmer's workers went to him and said, should we pull out the weeds?

And in verse 29, it says, no, he replied, you'll uproot the wheat if you do.

Let both grow together until the harvest.

That some things in the church will have the appearance of the Spirit.

They will have the appearance of movement. If the church, as we've talked about,

is a movement of God's people, there will be some people who have the appearance of movement.

Some things will have the appearance of the spirit. We have to be aware of the possibility of,

of the possibility that the grain and weeds will grow together.

It has to be a reality that we're aware of. That's why this story is here.

And just because someone looks like their grain doesn't mean that they have

been inwardly affected and filled by the Spirit.

Equally so, just because we think someone looks like a weed doesn't mean that

they are a redeemed follower, beloved son and daughter of Christ.

It's a reality we have to be aware of, that there are two hearts in this story.

And I say two hearts because we are given two examples, two stories that contrast one another.

Chapter five of Acts starts with the word, but, which is a contrasting conjunction

for all the grammar nerds out there.

It is contrasting something. What is it contrasting?

What starts out with a picture of Barnabas in the early church.

It says in verse 32, all the believers were united in heart and mind.

They felt that what they owned was not their own.

So they shared everything they had.

Then we get down to verse 36 and it says, for instance, exhibit A is what we're presented here.

There was Joseph, the one the apostles nicknamed Barnabas, which means son of encouragement.

He was from the tribe of Levi and came from the island of Cyprus.

He sold a field he owned and brought the money to the apostles.

So the disciples were deeply devoted to one another.

They were united with one heart, one mind, praying in the same direction,

moving in the same direction. They were all filled with the spirit.

And so they held all things in common.

They were letting go of stuff, of possessions, of money, and they were holding

tightly to people as a way that we could understand this, that they had let

go of things and they were holding tightly to people,

that they were loosening their grip on stuff.

As the gospel takes root in your heart more and more, material wealth and a

comfortable lifestyle fail to be the goal.

As the gospel takes root more and more, all of these things fail to be the goal.

And you could say to yourself all you want, I don't really have a lot of stuff.

But the reality is, is we still build our lives around a comfortable lifestyle,

whether that be many possessions, a multitude of possessions, or very little.

And we, as the gospel gets a hold of our hearts, we let go of comforts.

We let go of these possessions.

Whether they be many or few, and we press into our spiritual family.

That's what we see with the picture of Barnabas. Barnabas is always laying down

his money, always laying down his stuff, and he's always lifting others up.

We see Barnabas several times through the New Testament. He is Paul's companion on many journeys.

Barnabas is the one who first recognizes that Paul is God's chosen vessel to

bring the gospel to the Gentiles. He's the one who defends Paul to the rest of the disciples.

He takes him under his wing and he goes out to build God's mission.

Barnabas is also the one that defends John Mark to Paul. And Paul,

when Paul rejects them and later Paul comes to him and says, you were right.

So Barnabas is always laying down stuff and lifting up people.

It actually says in Acts chapter 11, it describes him in this way.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and strong in faith.

And many people were brought to the Lord.

This is Barnabas. Actually, his name is Joseph, right? He is a Levite named

Joseph, but he is given the nickname Barnabas, which means son of encouragement.

And in the Bible, a name change always signifies a heart change.

It always signifies a heart change. And so Barnabas, who's a Levite who owns land.

So there's something suspicious going on because perhaps Levites aren't allowed to own land.

So there's some inferences that many scholars could make that about what his

life was like pre-Jesus that perhaps are beyond us.

But what we all can know and we can all tell is that his gaze had shifted.

It had shifted away from self and had shifted towards Jesus and therefore to

other people. This was Barnabas.

He let go of stuff and he held on tightly to his brothers and sisters in Christ.

But chapter five starts, there was a certain man named Ananias.

So this is exhibit B, who with his wife Sapphira sold some property.

He brought part of the money to the apostles, claiming it was the full amount.

With his wife's consent, he kept the rest.

So Barnabas's heart is so filled with the love of Jesus that there is no room

for any other affection.

His heart is so filled that no other affection dare compete.

And we are presented with this other picture of Ananias and Sapphira,

whose hearts were filled with something else.

Their hearts were filled with something other than God.

And they may have been genuine believers at one point in time or another.

The point of the story is not to determine whether or not they were weeds or

grain. That's not the point.

The point is that along the way, what they got really good at was hiding themselves

away, hiding parts of their hearts away, imitating what was happening around

them and hiding what they didn't want others to know.

They got really good at wearing masks, playing the part of the Christian while

keeping all that was hidden away so that nobody could ever find it in their tent.

And so the word that the Bible uses for this is the word hypocrite that we're familiar with.

It's literally an actor who wears a mask and plays a part, who pretends to be something they're not.

So Jesus confronts hypocrisy directly many times.

We see it in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, when you give to someone

in need, don't do as the hypocrites do, blowing trumpets in the synagogues and

streets to call attention to their acts of charity.

I tell you the truth, they have received all their reward they will ever get.

Ananias and Sapphira did what they did to be seen by man.

They were motivated by the praise and honor of people, and so they cared very

little about the fear of God.

They received their reward, though short-lived it might have been,

minutes or even mere seconds.

But the poignant reality, the complexity of the situation is that we all have

our Ananias and Sapphira moments.

We all keep parts of ourselves hidden. We all have skeletons in our closet.

Peter, the one who's confronting them, had experienced great failure as well, did he not?

He had denied Jesus three times, that he even knew him. He denied him three times.

Like Achan, we have all packed our tents full of things that we hope nobody ever finds.

We hold on to our stuff for the praise of people.

We presume grace and continue in our sin justified seemingly by our own self-righteousness.

But we cannot presume grace for the sake of sin.

Romans chapter 6, Paul asks us this question.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

Well, then should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace?

Of course not. Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?

Not even so that God's grace may abound should we continue in our sin.

He says, by no means get rid of the skeletons, come out of hiding,

open up the tents and let God's healing come in.

Our sin is a big deal. This section starts off talking about the unity of God's

people, that they were all together in one heart and mind. And then it shares

this dire story of when that all begins to break down and fall apart.

That sin puts at risk the unity of God's people.

Sin hurts our relationship with God. It hurts ourselves. It leaves us broken,

selfish, and self-centered.

It hurts others, causing pain and destruction.

Sin is a big deal. So we must take our sin, especially our sin, seriously.

It's easy for us to point out the sin of others, but we must take the sin within

our own hearts seriously.

Thomas Watson said, until sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.

I think Elliot shared a version of this in some premarital counseling book that

him and Anna went through.

Unless sin be bitter, Christ cannot be sweet or love cannot be sweet unless

sin becomes bitter to us.

Until we lose our taste for sin. I don't like bitter things.

That's why I don't drink coffee. I'm not a big fan of beer, dark chocolate.

Y'all can have it. It's bitter.

There's a reason people say, oh, you have to acquire a taste for it.

I don't want to acquire a taste for things that are gross.

Sin must become bitter to us. The bitterness of sin leads to the fear of God.

We read at the end of this section that great fear gripped the entire church

and everyone else who heard what had happened, that they were gripped by fear.

This intervention of God's spirit in his judgment in such an extravagant way

led the people to the fear of the Lord.

It led them to worship, to worship God.

Fear is a part of worship.

We can't forget about the judgment of God. Jesus saves us from it,

but the Bible says it will be a great and terrible day.

And if we go back to the words of John Newton once more, he famously wrote a

song that I'm sure all of us are very familiar with.

And one of the lines in the song is, "'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear

and fear great." What is it?

"'And grace my fears relieved." That's what it is. Apparently I don't know this song.

"'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved.'" The

grace is precious because the fear is real.

That God's first work in our lives is to help us understand the magnificence of who he is.

The radiant splendor of his all-consuming fire, the fear of the Lord,

the fear of God that intensifies the love of God.

That it is all mixed with intimacy, that it is both the fear of the Lord and

the comfort of the Holy Spirit working together.

Because the reality is that God knows the depths of our heart.

He knows all the things we try and keep hidden away.

In Mark chapter seven, it talks about how what comes out of a person is what defiles him.

It's what comes out from within, from out of the depths of the heart of man

that makes us unclean, that we cannot succeed in hiding our hearts because God knows all things,

that there's nothing covered that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be made known.

But we keep our hearts hidden because we're embarrassed.

We keep our hearts hidden because we don't wanna feel the cost of our sin.

We keep our hearts hidden and buried away in our tents It's because we are afraid of rejection.

We lie because we're worshiping something other than God. Whenever we lie,

we're worshiping something other than God.

Reality is that you're only as healthy as your secrets.

You're only as healthy as those things that you keep hidden away in the tents,

hoping that nobody ever will ever find them.

Shame is a powerful force that can undermine us and make us think that we are unlovable.

Shame is such a powerful force in so many people's lives, but shame's power

is completely dependent on secrecy.

And once that secret is let out, the burden of shame is lifted.

You're only as healthy as your secret. And so we could ask ourselves many questions

on the other side of this passage.

We could ask ourselves, has the gospel taken root in your heart or are you just putting on a show?

Is there a true encounter with the spirit of the living God that is in process of transforming you?

Or have we been really good at imitating? We could ask ourselves,

where is it that we are looking to the praise and approval of men rather than to the approval of God?

There's lots of questions we can ask ourselves. but I think for us this morning

right now, the most important point is just to invite you in to open up the

tents and come out of hiding.

Because the funny part about all of this talk about like skeletons in the closet

and secrecy is that it is completely unnecessary.

It is completely unnecessary.

Ananias and Sapphira didn't have to hide. They didn't have to pretend.

That was Peter's admonition to them. It was always theirs to do whatever they

wanted. They didn't have to hide stuff away in their tent.

First John 3.20 tells us that God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything.

They didn't have to hide. Your secrets are unnecessary.

The gospel is good news because the blood of Jesus has made it so that we can

stand before the judgment of God unashamed.

That's what makes the gospel good news.

Come out of hiding, bring it all to light. Bible says, take no part in the unfruitful

works of darkness, but instead expose them.

And when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible.

Or anything that becomes visible is light.

Confess your hearts, open up the tents, let God's healing come in.

Who knows? Maybe you'll just see one of the rarely given, but seemingly on the rise, Hoffman hugs.

That if that's a demotivating factor, then just forget about that.

I will not reject you. And not just because I don't have the emotional capacity for rejection.

We will not reject you. But most importantly, God does not reject us.

So our secrecy, the things that we hide away are unnecessary and they just cause us pain.

So what we're going to do now is we're going to respond.

We're going to pray together. We're going to confess. And then we're going to

celebrate at the end of that by taking communion.

We're going to celebrate together.

We're going to lift our voices together and praise adoration of our heavenly

father. There is this incredible story later in the book of Acts that we'll get to.

This is a preview for that, where they're in the city of Ephesus.

It says that the fear fell upon them all. So a very similar condition.

In the name of the Lord Jesus was greatly honored.

Worship ensued. And many of those who were now believers, they came confessing their sins.

And a number of those who had practiced magic, magical arts,

brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all.

So they removed what was in their tents. They confessed it and then they burned it.

They got rid of it so that the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

That was the result. So we're going to do what they did in the early church

and we're going to spend time. We're going to pray together.

We're going to confess and then we're going to pray some more.

And then we're going to celebrate and rejoice in the goodness of God.

So go ahead and break up into just some groups of like four or more.

Spend some time in prayer and confession and let's respond to this call that God has on our hearts.

Thank you for listening to Mountainside Church's podcast. We hope you found

inspiration and encouragement in today's teaching.

To learn more about our church, stay connected or partner with us,

visit mcboon.com. Thank you.

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