Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] You know that. That feeling that you get sometimes when you experiencing something just really, really sweet and you don't want that moment to end.
[00:00:19] Maybe it's a. It's a really rich date night with your spouse or a really deep conversation with a really good friend, or maybe just a really sweet moment as you're putting your child to bed, or as I've heard from some of you, when they sneak into your bed in the middle of the night and you wake up and they're there. It's this sweet moment that you don't want to end.
[00:00:39] Or maybe you're at the beginning of a good book or a good movie and you can just tell it's going to be. It's going to be amazing. Like when I was watching Dune 2 or Interstellar for the first time, you're just like, I don't want this moment to end.
[00:00:53] Brad's laughing because he still has not seen Dune 2, or 1 for that matter, to his shame.
[00:01:00] But we all know what this is like, and we know that on this side of eternity, these moments are fleeting.
[00:01:06] These moments are fleeting. And as we've been reading the first few chapters of the Book of Acts, you can almost sense that feeling. Jesus has been risen from the dead. He's ruling in heaven. He sent his Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The apostles are preaching the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit. The church is being built up. Thousands of people are coming to faith in the early weeks and months of the planting of the Jerusalem church.
[00:01:34] And yes, there's been persecution, as we saw last week. But even in that, there's much rejoicing and continued boldness in the Gospel. The church is being built up. There's sacrificial generosity and love among the people of God. And you get that, that sense at the end of chapter four that maybe this is what life in the Holy Spirit looks like. Especially if you put yourself in the position of saying, hey, I've never read this text before, and I'm just reading it through.
[00:02:05] You get the sense that maybe this is what life in the Holy Spirit is going to look like. And then Luke gives us chapter five, completely knocking the wind out of our sails, completely dumbfounding us. We're left saying, ananias and Sapphira, why, What are you doing?
[00:02:23] And if we're honest with ourselves, we're all saying, God, what are you doing?
[00:02:29] Such swift judgment.
[00:02:32] And in a sense, it's meant to be shocking. It's meant to keep us from becoming prideful, to keep us from thinking that we've arrived.
[00:02:42] And I think ultimately what the text is trying to show us is that God is holy.
[00:02:50] God is holy. And so that's what we're going to look at today. We're going to look at the holiness of God. We're going to see what that means for us and the problem that we have as a result of that. And then the solution for that problem is, as we know, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how that speaks into it, and then what does that mean for us as the people of God?
[00:03:12] So we're going to walk through and see what this looks like, the holiness of God that we might, as the author of Hebrews says, that we might worship God in reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. And so my question for us this morning, my question for you is, do you fear God?
[00:03:38] Do you fear God? If you're, if you're not a Christian this morning, do you hear this story that was just read about Ananias and Sapphira? And does it make you tremble or does it make you shake your fist at God?
[00:03:51] And if you are a believer this morning, if you've experienced the grace and mercy of God and the forgiveness of your sins through Jesus Christ, do you worship God in reverence, in awe? Do you fear God?
[00:04:09] Not do you.
[00:04:11] Are you terrified of God? That's not what I mean by the fear of God. If you're, if you're not a Christian this morning, the reality is you should be terrified of God because you're still under his just judgment.
[00:04:23] We're going to talk through what that means and the solution for that reality as we go through. But if you're a Christian, the terror of God has been completely vanquished on the cross.
[00:04:35] The question is, do we worship God with reverence and all? That's what I mean by the fear.
[00:04:42] And so there's an, there's an Old Testament scholar that, that's commenting on the book of Deuteronomy, and he, he has this to say about the fear of God, he says, and it'll be up on the screen, he says, Moses urges the Israelites to both love and fear God.
[00:05:02] To both love and fear God. These ideas are not incompatible.
[00:05:07] Rather, they complement and need each other.
[00:05:11] Love without fear becomes sappy sentimentality and fails to result in obedience. This is the air we breathe in our modern culture. This idea of love that boils down to a sappy sentimentality and it does not produce obedience. Likewise, fear without love becomes terror and drives people away from an intimate relationship with God Together, love and fear produce a healthy relationship with God and result in obedience to his will.
[00:05:52] And so we're going to. We're going to take a look at our text today in a broad sense. It's a long text as we heard it read by Joshua. I almost called you Joshua by Josh.
[00:06:03] But we're going to take a more broad look and we're going to. We're going to focus in on the story of Ananias and Sapphira and what this has to. What. What God has to reveal to us through it. Okay, so at the end of chapter four, we see Luke. We see Luke creating this contrast between these two stories.
[00:06:25] So at the end of chapter four, verses 35 to 37, we see Barnabas is voluntarily selling his land and giving the proceeds to the apostles to distribute as needed for the good of the church. And this is meant to be an example of the. A positive example of the transformative nature of the gospel.
[00:06:48] The transformative nature of the gospel that experiencing the grace and mercy of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, it is changes you.
[00:06:59] And so we see Barnabas is. He's no longer defined by his wealth.
[00:07:04] He's no longer defined by the amount of honor he can receive from the community, which is a big deal in that culture. But rather he's defined by his new Lord Jesus. And he's called to follow his Lord in. In sacrificing for the good of others and in walking in humility.
[00:07:24] And so Barnabas is our positive example of somebody that has been converted to Christ. And as the Scriptures talk about this, it's often you see this phrase in Christ, in Christ, this means that we, through faith in him, have been united to him by His Holy Spirit. And this isn't just about forgiveness of sin. This is about transforming your entire being to be changed in an instant when you are declared just or righteous in God's sight. And we see the Bible describing this reality in various analogies throughout Scripture. For example, we are a new creation in Christ.
[00:08:08] In Christ, we are sanctified or holy and set apart. In Christ, we are no longer slaves of sin. We're free of sin, but we are slaves to righteousness in Christ.
[00:08:25] We are no longer orphans, but we are adopted children of God, brothers and sisters in Christ. This is the reality. If you are in Christ by faith, you have been radically changed.
[00:08:40] And Barnabas is our positive example in this story. But we get chapter five as a contrast. The beginning of this section starts as but.
[00:08:50] And It's. I know it's separated as a chapter, but we have to remember that in the original text, there's not separation by chapters. This is these. This is one story, and we get the contrast. But.
[00:09:03] And so this scene with Ananias and Sapphira, it's taking place most likely at Solomon's portico.
[00:09:10] We see this at the end of our text today and back in chapter three, after Jesus had healed the lame man and he's preaching the gospel, this is taking place in Solomon's portico. And this is around the periphery of the temple. And so this is where the early church would often gather in Jerusalem. They're ministering the Gospel to one another, they're caring for one another, they're building each other up, and people are coming in and out of the temple constantly. And so this isn't a scene where it's just Ananias and Sapphira and the apostles. No, there's. There's probably hundreds of people around that are seeing these things happen.
[00:09:46] And so Ananias and Sapphira are caught up in this reality. They've, at least on the outside, they've responded favorably to this message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They're breathing in this air of sacrificial generosity, and they see people selling their goods and bringing it to the feet of the apostles.
[00:10:08] And they weren't forced to do it. We have to remember this. This isn't something where the apostles are saying, you must go sell your land and give it to us, and we'll distribute it as needed. This isn't some sort of proto socialism. This is a voluntary reality. As we see in chapter five, verse four, Peter's talking to Ananias, and he says, while it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?
[00:10:33] And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?
[00:10:38] So why did they sell their property? Why did they do this? They didn't have to do it.
[00:10:44] And it seems pretty clear when we take in all of the context. And again, there's people all around.
[00:10:51] What's likely going on here is that they are seeking to do something that's going to gain them the honor and in praise of those around them.
[00:11:02] And so they make a calculation.
[00:11:05] They determine how much they're willing to invest in this act of gaining honor and then deceitfully hold back the rest.
[00:11:15] They could have told them, hey, we sold this, but we're gonna keep this amount back, and the apostles would have been fine. That's what Peter is saying.
[00:11:23] But they didn't want to do that they wanted to be seen as generous, they wanted to be seen a certain way so that they might receive honor and praise.
[00:11:33] Sure, that resonates with everyone in here. And like the, a lot of Eastern cultures today, the, the ancient world, the Greco Roman world was a heavily, heavily honor, shame culture.
[00:11:47] And so what this means is that much of life was about gaining as much honor as you can and avoiding as much shame as you can.
[00:11:56] And we see in the story, some people even speculate that, that if you, if you imagine the amount of shame that they would have gained in that moment, that they're exposed as frauds, they're, they're immensely gaining, gaining shame and losing honor, that some even speculate that they would have just died from heart failure. It would have been that undoing to them.
[00:12:17] And that's possible. It seems a little bit of a stretch to me that they both would have died of just natural means like that.
[00:12:24] It's possible. But, but the reality is whether they died from natural means or supernatural means.
[00:12:30] What, what Everybody agrees when we look at this text, the judgment of God is clearly on display.
[00:12:38] The judgment of God against their wickedness is clearly on display.
[00:12:43] And so why does God do this?
[00:12:47] It's not normative, right? This isn't how God normally acts. If he did, then if he just judged everybody every time they lied or were deceitful, the earth would be a pretty barren place. This isn't, this isn't normative. So, so why does he do this? And before I answer that, there's a similar situation that occurs in the Old Testament. There's actually several that are similar, but one strong parallel is in the story of Achan in Joshua, chapter seven. The Israelites have just come into the promised land. God is giving it over to them. And God has given them the city of Jericho and commanded them to not take anything for themselves.
[00:13:28] And Achan goes in and he sees the gold and the silver and a cloak apparently, and he covets those and he takes them and he goes and deceitfully buries them in his tent.
[00:13:40] And we see immediately God judges Israel, they lose their next battle.
[00:13:45] And then Achan's exposed for his deceit. And we see the judgment of God swift upon him and his entire family.
[00:13:52] They're stoned and put to death. The judgment of God on display.
[00:13:59] And in stories like this with Achan and Ananias and Sapphira, if we're honest, they leave us saying, what is going on? Why God, aren't you gracious and merciful and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
[00:14:20] What's going on? Why are you doing this?
[00:14:23] And of course, the reality is, yes, he is all of those things.
[00:14:27] So much so that I think we start to presume upon his grace and mercy. We start to think that that is the only thing he is, because we experience it so much as Christians, to the infinite degree, being reconciled to him through Christ. But even all of life, everybody experiences the grace and mercy of God.
[00:14:49] Just as an example, if you think about this, when a plane crashes, it's a terrible event, right? Everybody's left, just kind of the heaviness of it, especially when there's a loss of a lot of life and there's often commentary on it where people are questioning why God, how could God allow this to happen?
[00:15:08] And understandably, right, this is a difficult thing.
[00:15:12] But when we take a step back, we realize, I actually did a little bit of research on this, that every time a plane crashes, there's a million other planes that have taken off and landed safely without a hitch. And when there's a fatality in a plane crash, there's 6 million other planes that have taken off and landed safely.
[00:15:32] And the point is that even the reality that we can fly across the sky is the common grace of God giving us this technology and his providence. And then in a flight, not to scare you from flying, but there's thousands of things that could go wrong in any moment and it would be a catastrophe.
[00:15:49] And the reality is that we.
[00:15:52] Yeah, sorry about that.
[00:15:56] You fly a lot, don't you?
[00:15:59] The reality is that it's God's grace and mercy that allows us to fly into land safely, so much so that we presume upon it.
[00:16:11] And I'm not saying that when a plane falls out of the sky, that's God's judgment. Don't take the analogy too far. I'm not presuming to make that comment. But the reality is we presume upon the grace of God. And so why does he carry out this swift judgment on Achan, on Ananias and Sapphira?
[00:16:29] Why them and not others? You know, obviously I can't answer that question. That's in the Council of God.
[00:16:35] But I do know, because Paul tells us in First Corinthians, chapter 10, Paul tells us that these stories that are written down for us, these narrative historical events that have taken place, are written down for our example. They're written down for our instruction.
[00:16:54] And so I think what God is trying to show us in this, it reveals to us that God is holy.
[00:17:02] H O l Y holy.
[00:17:04] And so what does it mean for him to be holy? What does that mean?
[00:17:10] In its most basic meaning, it means for God to be separate.
[00:17:15] But more specifically in relation to God, it's a transcendent separateness. A transcendent separateness.
[00:17:24] He is outside of creation. He is so far above and beyond anything that we can comprehend.
[00:17:32] His power has no limits. His knowledge is incomprehensible. His glory is unviewable.
[00:17:40] His majesty is unsurmountable. He's utterly distinct. There is no one or anything like God. He is holy.
[00:17:53] At the same time, there's another element of God's holiness. And this has to do with his moral purity.
[00:17:59] His moral purity. God is perfectly pure and good. And there's no spot or blemish or imperfection in. In him.
[00:18:09] This is who he is. This is who God is inherently.
[00:18:13] He is utterly transcendent, and he is utterly pure.
[00:18:19] And He's. He's made humans, he's made humanity in his image.
[00:18:26] We've been created in the image of God. And that is a hotly debated topic as to what that exactly means. But at its core, it at least means that we are moral to creatures in. Every human being that's ever been born is morally accountable to God.
[00:18:44] And the call is God is holy. And so we are to be holy.
[00:18:50] And even just this brief overview of God's holiness, we have a problem, right?
[00:18:55] Everybody's conscience testifies whether you're a Christian in here or not, that you are not pure, that you are not holy.
[00:19:06] And because of this, we know that we have a problem.
[00:19:11] And so before we get to the solution to that problem, let's. Let's look at Isaiah chapter six together.
[00:19:18] I want us to take in this Old Testament passage. It's a vision that Isaiah is given by God. He's lifted up in this vision to be in the presence of God in his Holy Spirit temple. He gets a vision of God in all of his glory.
[00:19:34] And so in chapter six, it should be up on the screen for us starting in verse 1.
[00:19:39] In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. That means the glory of God filled the temple.
[00:19:54] Above him stood the seraphim, these angelic creatures. And each had six wings. With two he covered his face, and with he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
[00:20:04] And one called to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
[00:20:13] The whole earth is full of his glory.
[00:20:17] And the foundations of the Threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, woe is me, for I am lost or I am completely undone.
[00:20:29] For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
[00:20:35] For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
[00:20:41] Isaiah gets a glimpse of the glory and holiness of God and he is completely laid bare.
[00:20:48] And in the. In the Hebrew language, when they want to emphasize something or, or to have a comparative or superlative, they wouldn't say God is most holy. They would repeat the word to emphasize it. And as far as I know, from what I've been able to find, this is the only place in the Hebrew scriptures where a characteristic of God is taken to the third degree.
[00:21:11] God is holy, holy, holy.
[00:21:16] God is most holy.
[00:21:20] These amazing angelic creatures cannot even bear to look upon God's glory.
[00:21:26] His utter perfection and holiness is too much for even them to bear.
[00:21:34] And so this, this situation in the scriptures, as we see with, with Isaiah, this is a typical response to the presence of God. We see it all throughout the Old Testament in particular, where somebody gets a vision of God and they are undone.
[00:21:50] This is the complete opposite of what we see in our day now, where people are claiming to go to heaven and, and basically giving Jesus a high five and then coming back to tell everybody about it. This is not the picture we get when we are in the presence of a holy God.
[00:22:06] Isaiah was a prophet. He. He probably in his normal life when he wasn't getting a vision of heaven. You know, he was a. He was a humble guy for sure, but he's a human, a sinful human. And just like all of us know, he was probably prone to comparing himself to other people, probably feeling like he's pretty good at times.
[00:22:26] But when he gets a glimpse of God, his creator, he hits the appropriate mirror to see who he is. And his. His brokenness is exposed and he's completely undone.
[00:22:41] And just as a. As a human example to articulate this point, this would be like, sorry, sorry ahead of time, Matt.
[00:22:50] This would be like me and Pastor Matt playing pool, basketball, which we've been doing for the last decade in my backyard.
[00:22:59] And most of the time when we're playing, I'm feeling quite good about myself. I'm usually dominating. You can ask his wife. She's not in here. But it's. I'm usually left feeling very good about myself.
[00:23:12] We used to keep tallies of it. We don't do that anymore. But we've Grown up.
[00:23:16] But think about this. The reality is I'm swishing free throws and Matt's crying in the corner. And then just imagine that MJ walks through the gate, hops into the pool and challenges me to a game of basketball.
[00:23:30] Any sense of worth or value that I had in dominating against Matt would be completely exposed and crushed in the presence of the goat, I would be laid bare.
[00:23:42] And I know that's a silly example, but the reality is when Isaiah is in the presence of God in his holiness, he's exposed.
[00:23:52] He's completely exposed to the eye of God and he has nothing to stand on. Even this great prophet of God.
[00:24:01] When you're exposed to the all seeing eye of God, you will be undone.
[00:24:07] None of us can stand, not even the morally pure Seraphim can bear to look upon him.
[00:24:15] And so we have a problem, right? He's utterly transcendent. He's utterly pure. He is holy, holy, holy. This is the God we worship. This is the God who is. He's not a soft and squishy God that our modern age wants to make him.
[00:24:34] So we have a problem.
[00:24:40] I mean, right, Like Ananias and Sapphira, they're lying, they're deceitful. Haven't we all lied or been deceitful at times?
[00:24:48] Even as Christians, we have to admit that it's at points in our life and at times there's this desire in us to do things for the praise and honor of, or to receive praise and honor ourselves, to receive the glory ourselves.
[00:25:04] And when we glimpse, glimpse God's holiness, we must be undone. We are undone. If we're not undone, we're not looking at the right God.
[00:25:19] And so, as the Apostle Paul reminds us in, in Romans chapter three, that, that every single person, we all fall short.
[00:25:28] We all lack the glory in and of ourselves to stand in the presence of God.
[00:25:34] And then later in Romans chapter seven, he's. He's lamenting this reality of life under the holy law of God, that it has no ability to give life, it only leads to death because it exposes our sin all the more. And Paul is left crying out, wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death?
[00:25:56] And we as well must be brought to the end of ourselves. We must realize that if we are hoping even in the slightest bit, that salvation is going to come from within us, we have no hope in the presence of a holy God.
[00:26:13] We must, like the Apostle Paul, say, wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death?
[00:26:22] We must be laid bare. We must realize that the Scriptures say the salvation of the Lord doesn't come from within us. It comes from the Lord himself.
[00:26:31] It comes from outside of us. We must look out for our salvation.
[00:26:38] And so, as we continue to work towards this solution, let us go back to Isaiah, chapter six.
[00:26:44] Let us see what the Lord does for Isaiah and his moment of great despair, his moment of. Of exposure before a holy God.
[00:26:56] In verse 6 it says, Then one of the seraphim flew to me, and having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar, and he touched my mouth and said, behold, this has touched your lips.
[00:27:12] Your guilt is taken away, your sin atoned for.
[00:27:19] In this vision that the Isaiah is getting his, his lips are pictured as defiled, as impure.
[00:27:28] And rather than God judging him for his defilement, God provides cleansing, he provides atonement, he provides forgiveness of sin. Rather than God pouring out his wrath, his just and holy and righteous wrath, as we've seen on Ananias and Sapphira. Rather than that, he gives him mercy and he gives him forgiveness of sin. And this fire is pictured as a purifying fire.
[00:27:53] It purifies Isaiah of his sin.
[00:27:58] And then later in the book of Isaiah, as we see this picture that we're getting, it's pointing forward to a greater day of atonement. And this is what the entirety of the Old Testament is doing. From the law of God in the Old Testament to the tabernacle and the sacrificial system where God is making a way to be in the presence of his sinful people.
[00:28:19] And in Isaiah 53, he's pointing towards the day when this suffering servant's going to come and he's going to be pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquity.
[00:28:30] It's all pointing forward to the day where this forgiveness of sin will finally be here. It will be complete.
[00:28:39] As King David says in Psalm 103. This, this forgiveness that's going to take away our sin as far as the east is from the west. The Bible is pointing towards this reality into the awe and wonder, to the awe and wonder of even the angels in heaven, as we see in the Scriptures, that they are even in, in wonder, that this salvation, this day of reckoning where God is going to save his people isn't going to come in him judging his enemies as the Israelites were looking towards, rather than coming to judge his enemies, the Lord himself, this Lord that Isaiah got a vision of in his throne room steps off of his throne and enters into the world, takes upon himself human flesh, a human nature, and the Son of God, the Eternal Son who's ruling and reigning in heaven, doesn't come in His. He's not born into a throne room or a mansion.
[00:29:42] He's born in the most humble of means, the Virgin Mary in a manger next to farm animals. And he lives a life of poverty.
[00:29:54] He lives a life of poverty, as 2 Corinthians 8, verse 9, says Paul. The Apostle Paul says that for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, meaning Jesus had everything in the heavenly places, he owns everything. Everything is his.
[00:30:13] Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, that through his poverty you might become rich, you might have everything in the heavenly places that was Jesus's, that is Jesus's, namely, that you might be reconciled to God.
[00:30:35] And so where Israel failed to live up to God's righteous standards, to where you and I fail to live up to this holiness that we've been made for, Jesus Christ comes in the flesh.
[00:30:51] He obeys this holy law perfectly on your behalf.
[00:30:57] He obeys it perfectly.
[00:31:00] And not only that, this wonderful Lord Jesus, he doesn't just obey the law perfectly, but then he willingly goes to the cross and is crucified and is brutally murdered.
[00:31:14] And the Father is glad or happy or willing to pour out his wrath on His Son so that we might not receive the righteous judgment that we deserve. This is the insurmountable problem that we found ourselves faced with that's been solved not by us, but completely outside of us. Jesus coming in the flesh, living, dying, and then three days later, raising from the grave.
[00:31:44] He's not dead. He's in heaven, ruling and reigning. What wonderful news is this? This is the story that we are wrapped up in.
[00:31:53] If you are a Christian. This is the reality that we find ourselves wrapped up in. A God who didn't come to judge us, but who came to save, who came to forgive.
[00:32:05] He is holy, holy, holy, but he is also love.
[00:32:12] It's the Father's love that spurs him to send His Son into the world to save sinners, as the Apostle Paul says, came to save sinners, which he is the worst of.
[00:32:26] So even the worst of sinners can be saved by this grace, by this wonderful news.
[00:32:34] If you turn from your sin, if you stop trying to earn it yourself, and you are exposed to the holiness of God and despair of yourself and grab hold of the Lord Jesus Christ, the salvation could be yours.
[00:32:49] So if you don't Know the Lord Jesus. If in your heart you have not been transformed by his grace, today is the day. Repent of your sin. Believe upon the Lord Jesus that He alone can save you, because he can. Amen.
[00:33:06] So this message, this glorious truth, this wonderful news that's been given to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, this is what we see at the end of chapter, chapter four in the Book of Acts. It's. It's taking Jerusalem by storm.
[00:33:24] Jesus Christ is alive and he's reigning in, in heaven. He's sent His Holy Spirit into the world. He's bringing people from death to life.
[00:33:33] And as we've seen as his gospel message, isn't just. It's not just forgiving sin, but it's transforming the people of God. People are being built up in the faith, unified together as one in one body, walking in repentance, walking in the light, putting to death the deeds of the flesh. This is what we see in the positive example of, of Barnabas at the end of Acts, chapter four. This, this story is being summarized and then again, the story of Ananias and Sapphira, it's, it's not meant to be normative. It's not normative, but it's, it's meant to teach us not to trifle with God.
[00:34:13] He is, he is patient with us. He's immensely patient with us. But his kindness is meant to lead us to repentance, not to lead us to walk in sin.
[00:34:25] It's meant to lead us to repentance. So let's not be sleepy any longer. Let us awake for the day of our Lord draws near. Let him find. Let him find us rejoicing in his salvation, repenting of sin, walking in the light, being built up together as one body, loving one another deeply with a true heart.
[00:34:49] With a true heart.
[00:34:52] And so again, my question for you is, do you fear God?
[00:34:58] Do you fear God?
[00:35:01] Or have you allowed your heart to become hardened in sin like Ananias and Sapphira? Maybe you look okay on the outside, but inside you're full of deceit.
[00:35:13] Maybe Satan has filled your heart with something.
[00:35:18] Just for example, a few examples. This was one I was thinking of because I've been convicted of this many times as a Christian, that maybe you, you want to be seen a certain way, and so you want to be seen as a person of prayer. And so you tell people, I'm praying for you, I'm praying for you. And you, of course, genuinely mean and intend to do that. But when you look at your private life, that's that's not what's happening.
[00:35:41] Or maybe, maybe you believe the lie, the lie of Satan, that, that it's just too shameful to bring your lust into the light.
[00:35:50] Maybe your lust, that's, that's manifesting itself in pornography or some other way. You, you believe the lie, that it's just too dark, it's too shameful, and so you hide it. You. You try to grab control of it, or maybe even worse, you just, you just give into it.
[00:36:06] Maybe you try to control the rest of your life to try to make yourself feel good about it. How deceitful our hearts are that we do things like this.
[00:36:15] Or maybe I've experienced this more as a pastor, seeing this play out, this reality that we just loathe confrontation, right?
[00:36:24] Nobody likes it, but I think we, especially in our culture, we just tend to loathe it.
[00:36:29] So maybe there was an interaction or there's been interactions where it just didn't quite go right.
[00:36:34] Maybe you didn't even realize it at the time, but you find yourself playing it over in your mind afterwards and you become frustrated or, or maybe even bitter.
[00:36:44] But what I see as more, more dangerous in this reality is at some point you just convinced yourself that you've moved on.
[00:36:50] When in reality there's still tension, there's still friction, there hasn't been reconciliation. And so we're just walking around with a lot of micro fractures in our relationships. We're not taking these things to one another and being willing to absorb sin, being willing to be quick to forgive as Christ has forgiven us.
[00:37:10] Maybe you're, you're hiding these things, maybe even deceived yourself.
[00:37:16] So the point is, as we behold the holiness of God and we see the wonderful reality of our salvation in Christ, we're spurred on to walk in repentance. We don't have to walk in the dark anymore. We can walk in the light, confessing our sins and the power of the Holy Spirit.
[00:37:38] And so I want to give you one quick example just to relate this a little bit.
[00:37:44] I was convicted deeply, as I was preparing this sermon of a sin. I had lied to my wife about something and I had justified it. I had rationalized it in my head so much that I actually convinced myself that it was okay. And I moved on.
[00:38:02] And as I'm preparing this sermon, as I'm reading this text, I'm just struck. The Spirit just strikes my heart, and I realize I'm Ananias.
[00:38:11] I'm Ananias. I had been. I had deceived myself.
[00:38:15] But God in His grace and his mercy and his kindness. He led me to repentance. I struggled, I wrestled with it, but he softened me. I confessed to my wife, we had a hard conversation.
[00:38:30] And her grace and mercy, by the Holy Spirit, she forgave me.
[00:38:35] And that, I mean the relationship. I've got to rebuild trust.
[00:38:39] It's not like everything is great, but in the Holy Spirit's work in our lives, as we bring things into the light, we have reconciliation. I didn't even realize where there was that conflict there, because I was. I had deceived myself and my heart had become hardened in it.
[00:38:58] So I understand how. How difficult it is to walk in repentance.
[00:39:04] The reality is we have to fight the temptation to harden our own hearts or to allow Satan to harden our hearts. We have to. We have to grab hold of the blood of Christ and Satan will flee. We have to remember we have been bought with a price, the precious blood of Jesus, so we can walk in the light. We have nothing to fear because we've been reconciled to God.
[00:39:28] So let us go forth walking in the forgiveness we have. And so. Oh, shoot, I got to wrap up. Okay, in closing, I'm going to. I'm going to move through this very quickly, but I do want us to see at the end of our passage. So after Ananias and Sapphira, in verse 12, we see that God is purifying his church as the people walk in the fear of the Lord. They're not watering down the Gospel message. They're not making it more palatable to the culture around them. But the church is walking in holiness. They're being built up in the faith as one body unified around the Gospel, walking in repentance and professing the Gospel.
[00:40:12] We see that in this, the mission of God is going forth, and more and more sinners are being brought into God's kingdom.
[00:40:22] Verse 12.
[00:40:24] Now, many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon's portico.
[00:40:32] None of the rest dared to join them, but the people held them in high esteem. These are probably people that are walking, not part of the church, but they're seeing what's happening.
[00:40:41] There's an awe and a fear of. Of these realities that are happening among the apostles. But. But look at this. Verse 14. This is what happens in the midst of what the Holy Spirit's doing in building up his church.
[00:40:54] Verse 14 says, and more than ever, believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women.
[00:41:05] So the. The Jerusalem Church was not perfect by any means, but the Holy Spirit was active, was giving the disciples boldness to preach the gospel and to walk in the fear and humility of the Lord.
[00:41:22] And so if we want to be effective for gospel ministry, we must together as one body, be built up in the holiness that God has for us.
[00:41:34] When we start to look like Jesus. As we walk in repentance of our sin, as we become creatures of God's word, that we might see God as he really is, as he reveals himself to us. And as we together as one body and individually get on our knees and plead with God to move, plead with God to build us up, to make our ministry to the lost fruitful.
[00:42:02] As we proclaim the gospel with our mouths and. And as we adorn the gospel with our lives, as the apostle Paul says, God is glorified and he delights to save.
[00:42:16] So pray with me, Father God, we come before you.
[00:42:22] Confess that you are a holy, holy, holy God.
[00:42:26] And we confess God. And we. We proclaim with one voice together that. That the gospel of Jesus Christ is true. That your son came and lived the life that we couldn't and died the death that we deserve and rose from the grave bodily that we might be justified, that we might be declared righteous in your sight. And so we praise you for that reality. Build us up as one body in the church, growing in faithfulness and holiness and in the ways that you would have us walk, Please lead us in repentance. Help us to walk in the light together.
[00:43:00] And if there be anybody here this morning that doesn't know you, would you make yourself known by your spirit and lead them to faith in Christ, in your name we pray. Amen.
[00:43:25] It.
[00:43:51] Sa.
