Bible Guys Classics: Acts 5 Part 1

Well, today we're gonna find out how sin can kill

you dead. Wow.

So I'm sure you're glad you're tuned in on a

Monday to hear about that. I'm Jeff, He's Chris, and

we're the Daily Bible guys.

Mm. So today we're gonna just try to make each

other laugh real.

Quick, that's what we're gonna do.

Yeah. Well, I mean we have like a personal segment

that we just kind of you know, goof around a

little bit. That's good and uh so I'm just gonna attend.

Pretty easy mark on these kinds of things. Right. Well,

we've just proven that kind of a giggler yeah and fall.

Kickoff, we figured that out. But so so yeah, So

here's what I'm gonna do. I want you to turn

away for three seconds and then turn turn back around.

Hang on and get you hang on.

Now, you know you have a lot of listeners too,

Well that's okay, so you have to describe for them

what you're doing. All right, Look, am I supposed to

turn around?

Yeah? I made a face, ladies and jentlemen made face

was hideous? Okay, okay, make me laugh.

So Polar Bear walks into a diner and he says,

give me a hamburger and fries, and the service says,

why the big pause. He goes, Oh no, I was

born with him. You know that's funny.

Come, it is funny. But I didn't laugh.

You worked really hard at that one.

I did. I worked really hard. Okay. I'm more sixth

grade trying to make you laugh.

Okay, Nope, not gonna laugh at that one. Never laugh

at those. That's not even sixth grade. That's my my

three year old grandson. He was doing that for this morning.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, come on in junior high,

sixth grade. Knock, knock, Yes, who's there?

Control freak?

Control for now?

You taken control freak? Who gotcha?

Okay, that was pretty good. That was pretty good.

Yeah, I win. I'm the winner.

Yeah, you're the winner. Okay.

Hey.

By the way, for those who don't attend our church,

we're pastors both at Heritage Church and last week last Sunday, Yeah,

we did a tortilla challenge on stage. That's right, and

the goal is to make one another laugh by slapping

them with tortillas with a mouthful of water. So we

had three services, and.

I'm sure if you're allowed to do that in church

or not, but we did.

Yeah, and uh, anyway, I lost two of the three services.

So Jeff has a belt, an actual victory.

The UFC belt, a championship belt.

Yeah, what's in your office?

It's incredible.

Yeah, it's really great.

So yeah, whatever, So before we jump into the study

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Yep, that's right. Okay. So we are continuing along in

the Book of Acts, and we're just looking at how

God began to send this message of Jesus, this good

news all around the world. And it's really extraordinary because

he's using everyday ordinary people to do this work. And

so we're reading in Acts, chapter five, verse one.

So this is.

Months maybe after the Holy Spirit came. This is months

after Jesus has sent it back to heaven. The Holy

Spirit came like a my rushing wind. And then they

begin to preach and share the good news of the Gospel.

And at this point now to give some context this passage,

there were so many Christians that had traveled from all

around the world to come for Passover in Pentecost, and

now they're kind of stuck here. They don't have a

lot of money, they don't have a lot of resources,

they're running out of things, and there's beginning to be

just a little bit of social pressure, and so the

Christians begin to sell what they have to share with

the other Christians who maybe were stuck in Druce lom

Er didn't have anything. So that's what we're picking up

with here. In Acts chapter five, verse one, and it says,

but there was a certain man named Annonius who, with

his wife Sephirah, 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. Then

Peter said, Anonius, why have you let Satan fill your heart?

You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you kept some

of the money for yourself. The property was yours to

sell or not sell, as you wished, and after selling it,

the money was also yours to give away.

How could you.

Do a thing like this. You weren't lying to us,

but to God. And as soon as Anna and i

As heard these words, he fell to the floor and died.

Everyone who heard about it was terrified. Then some young

men got up and wrapped him in a sheet and

took him out and buried him. About three hours later,

his wife came in, not knowing what had happened, and

Peter asked her, what is the I'm sorry, Peter asked her.

Was this the price you and your husband received for

your land? Yes? She replied, that's the price, and Peter said,

how could the two of you even think of conspiring

to test the spirit of the Lord like this? The

young men who buried your husband are just outside the door,

and they'll carry you out too. Instantly, she fell to

the floor and died. When the young men came in

and saw that she was dead, they carried her out

and buried her outside beside her husband. Great fear gripped

the entire church and everyone else who'd heard what had happened. Yeah,

this is a kind of a crazy story.

Yeah, now are we continue on to verse sixteen?

No? Oh, yeah, yeah, we'll keep going. The apostles were

performing many miraculous signs and wonders among the people, and

all the believers were meeting regularly at the temple in

the area known as Solomon's Colony, but no one else

dared to join them, even though all the people had

high regard for them. Yet more and more people believed

and were brought to the Lord, crowds of both men

and women as a result of the apostles work. Sick

people were brought out into the streets on beds and

mats so that Peter's shadow might fall across some of

them as he went by. Crowds came from the villages

around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those possessed by evil spirits,

and they were all healed.

Okay, So yeah, sort of two parts there, which is

the apostles.

Are healing many he left punch man.

Yeah, the right ones and last and the left punches

as the farrs. You know, it's a fair question. It's

a fair question to say, why would God do this?

It's a fair thing to think like that doesn't sound

like that sounds more like the God of the Old

Testament versus the God the New Testament. People would say, sure,

you know, and why would God kill somebody? Because I mean,

you know, lying he's a big deal. But but why

would he do this? And by the way, is this

the I think this is the only place right in

the New Testament where God strikes somebody down. He did

in the Old Testament for disobeying sure, like when they

touched the ark of the Covenant and whoop, they just

died disobeyed God.

Yeah, I think that there are a few others he

struck down Herod and a couple others, but I think

this is the only one where we were seeing Christians, Yes,

that are struck down within the church.

Yes, So do you want to you want to try

to comment on that, like why would why would.

I, well, loving God do that? Yeah. Yeah, So the

way you framed the question, you're asking why you know

this sounds more like the God of the Old Testament

than the God of the New Testament. Yeah. Well, for

one thing, it's the same God, right, So there's that, right,

and and I know you know that, but it is

kind of surprising people feel like, oh, no, God's wrath

and judgment is only in the Old Testament and now

it's all grace and mercy. So thank God for God's grace.

Thank God for mercy. You know. Book of Romans is

all about God's mercy and God's grace and it's so

incredibly important. And in the Church, God's message is not

a message of judgment. Well, God is trying to say

to the people, those that are non believers, especially that yes,

judgment will come at the end, we'll all stand before

Christ and give an account, but mercy is available now.

God doesn't want you to be running in fear all

the time. God wants you to respond to his mercy

and grace so that with regard to salvation is always available.

But sometimes I think we can tangle up all. God

just is kind of winking at my sin, whereas before

I used to be mad about it. And God has

not changed his opinion. So in this situation what they've done,

they're not in trouble for lying. They're in trouble for

lying to the Holy Spirit. They're lying to God, and

they're lying to all the other Christians for the sake

of their own personal pride. And that's the confrontation that

you have from Peters. All this stuff was yours. You

didn't have to give any of it. You could have

chosen any portion of it, but you held.

You didn't have to sell the land.

Yeah, you didn't have to do anything right right, but

you chose to lie. And that's the issue. You're lying

to God and you're lying to God's people, And God said,

I'm going to draw a line here. I think all

of the Christians needs understand. How you behave, particularly with

the the attitude of your heart, the pride in your life,

there is a consequence to those things.

You know. What it reminds me of is in the

Old Testament. Remember Haffnei in Phineas. Yeah enough, sure, if

that's how you Haffnai or haff Yeah. So they were

elis sons and they were the ones that were blaspheming

in the temple. And you know in that story, Eli

would have been the high priest and those were his sons.

And Eli was demonstrated himself as somebody who used to

be close to God and hearing his voice but was

so far removed, you know, just sort of going through

the motions so that you know, we can find ourselves

spiritually that way sometimes related to Eli, but it's a

whole different category for Hoffney and Phineas because they were

doing things, you know, running the church basically, and it

says they were sleeping with women at the temple. They

were manipulating their position to sleep with women as they

were coming, as women were coming to give their sacrifices.

And then the sacrifices were you know, like oftentimes like

bulls and cows, and they were actually eating the meat

that was supposed to be sacrificed. So think about that.

You know, they bring an offering to God for their sin,

and instead of seeing it like an offering to pay

for sin in the Old Testament. They thought, hey, that

looks like a good steak, and they ate it. So

all that to say that I believe that this to

me smells like you know. Peter's response says, listen, either

make the commitment to God himself or don't make the commitment.

That's up to you. That's the grace part, right. God

wasn't going to judge it because of it. There was

any requirement at all, There was no pressure. There was

no you have to thou shout thus shah not. None

of that was there, right, But what you chose to

do is you chose to look in the face of God.

In this case, it was actually a very specific thing

that was happening amongst the early Church. And you said,

in front of God and everybody, we're so holy, we

sold this amount, We're sacrificing everything to this whole thing.

And God said, nope, I'm not going to have it. Yeah,

And God God punished them for the category of blaspheming, right,

because that's what Peter says. You've not lied to us,

You've lied to God. You've told the Holy Spirit this

and it's a blaspheming kind of a thing. And you

know what it's a reminder to all of us, especially

those who are pastors. And you don't have to be

a pastor for this, but especially if you're a vocational

minister or you or you spend the majority of your

time in a leadership role, that when you cross over

into the line of blaspheming, that's a really dangerous place

to be.

Yeah, and I think the threshold for blasphemy is lower

maybe than many of us would think.

Right, Yeah, it's.

So so this is you know, Anonius was just a

certain man and it doesn't say that he was one

of the leaders, right, He's just a certain man. His

wife just they're just normal business people, probably in the community,

something along those lines. They had a little bit of extra.

But this reminds me of you remember in a book

of Proverbs, it talks about that there's six things that

God hates. It says in the King James, six things

does God hate? YEA seven are an abomination, right, right,

And it talks about one of them would be a

lying tongue, that's one of them. But the other, the

last one says, a prideful look is one of those.

Right.

This pride issue, this pride that puffs us up is

one of the things that God is particularly despises. It's

literally it's an abomination. The word abomination in the Bible

means it makes God want to throw up. And so

I think we need to be very careful about minimizing

the consequences of our sin or the offense that our

sin causes to God. Just because He's willing to give

me of my sin does not mean that there's not

going to be some kind of consequence if I'm flippantly

running around doing you know, all kinds of sins against God.

So his opinion of it, of my sin has not changed.

His opinion of my behavior, and my attitudes have not changed.

And so as Christians. Even though now I do not

believe that antonisis fire went to Hell. I just think

he cut their mission on Earth short because he couldn't

trust them anymore. Well, if that's where you're gonna live,

it's not a bad.

Day for analysis to fire.

They go to heaven.

Oh no, I go to heaven. I go to heaven early, right, right.

But it is a shock to everybody else, going, oh wow.

I need to mind my p's and q's. I need

to pay attention to my attitudes I need to be

paying attention to my pay attention to my intentions, and

I think that's incredibly important. So what we're seeing here

is a couple of things are happening in this season

Acts four, five, six, seven, eight. One is there's a

lot of external pressure. Persecution is beginning to bubble up

in a skin and it gets hotter and hotter and

hotter over the next couple chapters. So persecution on the

outside is happening, but on the inside we see in

this situation there's dishonesty and there's greed. In just a moment,

we're going to read about the difficulties that they're having.

From an administrative standpoint, leadership is struggling. There's a lot

of disappointments I think among the Christians in the way

that the other Christians in leadership are behaving.

And I think it sounds familiar.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think both of us have dealt

a lot with that. So how do you deal with

Christian leaders or other high profile Christians who have failures

or who you know don't always live up to the

ideal that Jesus has called us to Because right now

we live in a cancel culture, right, So our culture

believes if you make any mistakes at all, particularly if

you break a couple of rules that we've all established

as being unbreakable, then you're canceled. And so it doesn't

matter all the good you've done. You make this one mistake,

we're gonna you know, we're going to cancel you. So

how have you dealt with or manage through without saying

any specific names the failures that are inevitable because we're

all still sinners here in Nis and Sapphira, who are

Christians just prove to us Christians still give in to temptation.

Yeah, so, you know, I've never had a problem with

separating the imperfect people who run the church and the

perfect God that I love and serve. Now, there's a

lot of people that cannot separate those two. And so

if they go and they have a bad church experience

and all of a sudden, the pastor is a jerk

or you know, or you know, some sort of a

leader volunteer leaders a jerk, or you know, or somebody

does something dishonest or even sinful, right, you know, even malicious.

There are people who what will happen is is it

will destroy their you know, faith and by the way,

it's gonna you're gonna get beat up. If you're a

part of a church and you believe in that those

people and all of a sudden something like that happens,

You're going to get beat up. But in the end

you have to wrestle through it and say, Okay, you

know who offended me? Was it God himself or was

it his people and his people? It's just disappointing. It's

it's you know, it's that whole like, you're my friend,

you're my family, you've offended me. I'm super hurt. And

then that's a person to person forgiveness. But there are

people who they just say, I give up on you know, God,

I give up on church experiences. And so I don't

know why, but I've just been able to, probably because

God's wired me that way. So my number one spiritual

gift is faith above anything else, and so I think

that that's what makes it easy for me to say, Okay,

I can separate these two. But let me just say

this too. There are also people who you know, they're

ninety nine percent, they're betting nine hundred right. There are

people who just are faithful for years and years and years,

and then that person maybe is going through a really

bad season. I've known pastors who were faithful for twenty

years and they were just amazing, and you can just

tell they're worn out, they're discouraged. Maybe they go through

a really hard time financially or medically or whatever it is,

and just like all of us do right, and what

ends up happening is that they start running on fumes

and then you know, it's not necessarily driven by the

power of the Holy Spirit, it's driven by their own reservoir,

and it just ends up being not good. And you

have to look past that and give them grace too,

because it's like, you know, we're supposed to give each

other grace, but it's really hurtful though. For a lot of.

People, we tend to expect more from the other people

around us than we want them to expect from us.

We want them to extend more mercy and grace to

us than we desire to extend back to them. Most

of the time, especially the people we look up to,

and we have this false idea that the leaders that

are in our life are holier and better, somehow supernaturally

more moral than we are, supernaturally protected from temptation and

all these kinds of things, and that they are then

to be put on a pedestal. And that's the mistake

I think that we make a lot of times as

we put people on a pedestal. And even Paul in

his writings, and we'll get to this eventually, I'm sure,

but Paul tells the Corinthians follow me as I follow Christ.

He's giving them permission to not follow him when he's

not clearly following Jesus, right, So what he's really trying

to say is follow Jesus. And of course, you know,

you can't see Jesus right now. We can read his words,

but you can't see him. And so a lot of

times God will give a leader, but there is no

perfect leader apart from Christ, there's no perfect leader. Moses

was a great leader, but he wasn't perfect. David was

a great leader, but he certainly wasn't perfect. You can

just go on down the line name all the leaders

in the Bible. There's some really great heroes of the

faith that had moments that we should all aspire to

when they did do the best thing, but they all

had moments when they also had failures. And God still

chose to use them knowing what the their circumstances be like.

And so I think we can celebrate the good and

overlook would be the wrong word, but give grace in

the bad. And I mean, how many times you've been

a pastor for a long time. It's always interesting to

me somebody who's been attending for you know, the church

for you know, several months or several years, and they

come and say, this Sunday was a travesty. I'm never

coming back, right.

Yeah, Oh, I've heard that sure over the year.

Show And that's always an interesting conversation to me. So

so let's say, all right, so we had fifty two

weeks over the last from this week, from this week

until the same week last year, fifty two weeks, and

we blew it on this week. So we're going to

draw the line. The other fifty one doesn't matter. Yeah,

they were great, right, right, but this one's the one.

Right, But what have you done for me lately? Yeah?

And I think sometimes when it comes to church, when

it comes to leadership, when it even comes to our

Christian friends or the Christian people, we look up to

one mistake, We're out one issue, We're done there's no

no grace extended. We we need God's grace, but we

you won't extend grace. And I would just say be careful.

You know the passage everybody loves to quote in Matthew

or the Bible, Jesus says, judge not right. They love

to tell us, Oh, the Bible says judge not, that

you be not judged, because then he goes on and says,

because with the judgment you judge others is the same

judgment God's going to judge you with. So think about

that for a minute. That's huge. So we love to

quote the judge not, but we miss the fact that

Jesus says the level that you judge other people at

is the same level God's going to judge you at.

On that one. And so if you figure that if

you were in that leadership position, you would have never

made that mistake, or if you were a Christian and

you saw some other Christian make a mistake and you think, oh,

I would never make that mistake, well then don't judge

them unless you want God to judge you at the

same level of judgment in the future. And I think

that that's a big issue. So in this circumstance. What

you see is, Yeah, over the next couple pages, there's

going to be a lot of persecution the outside. Persecution

never destroys the church. Persecution never kills the forward movement

of God. He always finds a way. And we've seen

that all through the twentieth century with communism spreading around

the world, and the Church just goes underground and keeps spreading.

The largest church in the world right now probably is

in China. It's not even free, but it's happening. So

it's not the outside, it's the inside. It's when we

begin to eat each other alive. It's when we begin

to rise up in pride, when we begin to try

to take advantage of others whatever. That's when we wind

up destroying church, the church and destroying Christianity.

Well, that's certainly a great lesson learned from this, you know,

passage here, and then I would just wrap it up

because our time is up by saying that the fear

of the Lord is a healthy thing. You know, when

it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning

of all wisdom, and let's fear the Lord. You know

that word fear can be a healthy fear and the

way that you love and respect your mother and father,

and you fear them because you fear disappointing them if

you're you know, not living up to what they've asked

you to do what you deserve to you know, pay

them back for all these different things. So the fear

of the Lord is a healthy thing. I think that's Uh,

those are great thoughts for this passage today.

So yeah, so that's great. We wrap that up with that,

just honor and respect the Lord and make him who

he is. And then tomorrow we're going to be jumping

into more of that. What we're talking about the believers.

Now we're going to start experiencing opposition. I think a

lot of people, a lot of our listeners have experienced

opposition in their lives, and so these things can be

a real encouragement to us to see how God brings

them through this opposition. Yep, we're talking about tomorrow. Yep.

We'll see you next time on the Bible, guys,