But if it’s from God…
But if it’s from God…
Acts 5
by William Klock
There was a package slip from Canada Post below the mail slot when I got here last Friday. I was kind of annoyed, because not only did I have no idea where the package was from, for some reason I had to go all the way over to the post office in Comox to pick it up. And when they handed it to me I was perplexed. The sender was just some distribution company. The box was large and heavy. A mystery. And when I got it home and opened it up, it was still a mystery. A boxed set of about fifteen books from a ministry called Be United in Christ. Nice looking hardcovers. The set looks expensive. A few of them were reprints of books by Jonathan Edwards, Jeremiah Burroughs, and Charles Spurgeon, but frustratingly none of the others say a word about their authors and I couldn’t find much online about the ministry itself or who’s behind it. The books are a generous gift. But do I just put them out for you all to take home and read? Edwards, Burroughs, Spurgeon are okay. Puritans, not Anglicans, but still part of the same general theological tradition—for the most part. But are they there just to get me to trust the other anonymous books? I don’t know. This is the shepherd’s dilemma. I don’t have time to read them or really even to meaningfully skim them. The problem would be solved if I knew something about who sent them.
And I think that illustrates well what St. Luke is getting at in our text today. We’ll be looking at Acts 5. [Page 1084 in the pew Bibles.] And at first Acts 5 might seem like a series stories or events that are related only because they happened in the order Luke presents them, but are kind of otherwise “random”. But the more I thought about the Chapter, the more a common theme started to take shape. So far, Luke has shown us the birth of the church through the preaching of Peter and the work of the Spirit. And then he’s shown us the church taking shape, not just as some new religion—which I think is how we’re often (wrongly!) prone to seeing it—but as the fulfilment of God’s promises to Israel. Luke shows us the church as the new temple. God has returned to his people as he promised, but not to the bricks-and-mortar temple on the mountaintop above Jerusalem. Instead, he’s come to indwell the people whom Jesus has purified with his blood. This is a human temple meant to one day fill the whole earth and with it God’s presence. And Luke has shown us the church not just as a family, but as the family that Israel was always supposed to be, but failed to be; the family in which God is fulfilling his promises through Jesus and the Spirit; the family in which his kingdom, his new creation, his renewed humanity is being born. It’s a community meant to take up the vocation of Jesus and to be prophets, priests and kings, proclaiming the good news about the lordship of Jesus to Jerusalem and Judah—and eventually to the whole world.
But as we’ve seen, it’s not just the proclamation. It’s not just the preaching. That’s absolutely necessary. But it’s the lived community—the “family-ness”—of the church that backs up the message and says that this is the real deal. Because Israel had been talking the talk for a thousand years. But Israel ended up in exile in Babylon because she failed over and over to walk the walk. You can’t preach light while living in darkness. You can’t claim to be God’s people while you worship idols. You can’t proclaim new creation while living like the old. That’s why, at the end of Chapter 4, which we saw last week, Luke talked for a second time about the way the church in Jerusalem became a family and took care of those in need. They were actively living out the bounty and generosity of God and his new creation. As the new Israel, they were a little land of milk and honey. And Luke held up Jospeh the Levite as particularly exemplary, because he unselfishly sold some land and brought the proceeds to the apostles to help their ministry.
It wasn’t a requirement for church membership. It sounds like Joseph was wealthy and so he used his wealth to build up the church and it was his way of living out new creation. And it was obviously unique—not something everyone did—because they nicknamed him Barnabas, which means “son of encouragement”. And that leads straight into Acts 5 and the story of Ananias and Sapphira. This couple wanted the same sort of attention Barnabas was getting. Luke writes, “There was, however, a man named Ananias with his wife, Sapphira. He sold some property and, with his wife’s knowledge, kept back part of the price. He brought the rest and laid it at the apostle’s feet. ‘Ananias!’ said Peter. ‘Why did the Satan fill your heart to make you tell a lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the price of the land? While it was still yours, it belonged to you, didn’t it? And, when you sold it, it was still in your power. Why did you get such an idea in your heart? It isn’t men that you’ve lied to; it’s God!’ When Ananias heard these words he fell down and died. Everyone who heard about it was scared out of their wits. The young men got up, took him away, wrapped up his body and buried him. After an interval of about three hours, his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter spoke to her. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘did you sell the land for this much?’ ‘Yes,” she replied, ‘that was the price.’ ‘So why,’ Peter answered, ‘did you agree together to put the Holy Spirit to the test? Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door and they will carry you out too!’ At once she fell down at his feet and died. The young men were just coming in and they found her dead, so they took her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear came upon the whole gathering and on all who heard about these things.”
Great fear! No kidding. Now, growing up—and for years afterward—I thought this was a story about “tithing”. In Sunday school we would sing a song about how Ananias and Sapphira got together to conspire a plot to cheat the church and get ahead. They knew God’s power but did not fear it, tried to cheat the Holy Spirit. Peter prophesied it and they both dropped dead. Uh! (That “Uh!” was the good part—one of the few times you could be rowdy in church.) And the chorus of the song went on to sing about how God loves a cheerful giver, give him all you’ve got. It had me terrified as a kid. I didn’t have any income, but I knew that someday when I did, I’d better give God his due or I might drop dead. No one ever talked about the part where they lied about what they were giving. And no one ever paid attention to the context of the story.
It is a terrifying story. Even the people in the church who saw it and heard about, Luke writes, were pretty terrified. But the way we usually hear about Ananias and Sapphira, I think, gets us worried about the wrong thing. Because, Brothers and Sisters, this is isn’t a story about tithing; it’s a story about the need for holiness. It’s a story that reminds us that if we’re going to be God’s temple, if we’re going to be the place where he dwells in the person of his Spirit, if we’re going to be the place where the world meets God, we need to take holiness seriously.
The first thing that ought to tip us off here is the way these first chapters of Acts are all centred on the temple. More specifically, they’re focused on how the church has become the new temple and how it—particularly through Peter and John spending their days in the old temple—how the church is confronting and challenging the old: the old temple, the old Israel, and the priests and elders associated with both. The second thing that ought to tip us off is the nature of the story. It’s not a common thing, even in the Bible, for God to just suddenly strike someone dead. But the few times we do see that happen, what’s it associated with? Think Nadab and Abihu, Aaron’s sons, playing around with the holy things of God and offering “strange fire” on the altar. Zap. Dead. Instantly. And poor Uzzah when David’s men were rescuing the ark of the covenant from the Philistines. They didn’t carry it the way God had told them to. Instead, they put it on a cart. And the cart started to tip and Uzzah—well meaning, but horribly wrong—reached out to steady it. And zap! Uzzah was struck dead on the spot. I can think of a few other slightly less dramatic. There was Achan who, in the ruins of Jericho, stole some of the treasure that belonged to the Lord. His sin had consequences for the whole community of Israel in their next battle, but maybe most importantly, it was the Lord who revealed the guilty to Joshua. And Achan and his family died. Or King Uzziah who arrogantly entered the temple to burn incense and was immediately struck with leprosy.
The point is this, Brothers and Sisters, if you’re going to walk with God, holiness is not an option. The wages of sin is death. For the vast majority of us, living and then dying is just so normal that sometimes we need a reminder that life is God’s gift, that sin separates us from God, and that we die because of that separation. Sometimes the reminders are instantaneous, dramatic, and terrifying. Other times they play out over generations. Like Israel herself: generation after generation of faithlessness and idolatry that eventually led, for the northern kingdom, to annihilation—national death—and for the southern kingdom exile. St. Paul warns the Corinthians that some of them are sick and dying because they’ve abused the Lord’s Supper. In John’s revelation, Jesus warns the churches that if they aren’t faithful, if they fail to properly represent him and his kingdom, he will take away their lampstands. They will, as churches, die. God requires holiness of his people and holiness is serious business. The church is God’s means of making the good news of Jesus known. The church is God’s means of making his new creation visible and real in the world. And if we undermine the credibility of the gospel through unholiness—well, God is patient—most of the time—but if we refuse to repent, he will make us witnesses to his power and sovereignty through his discipline rather than his blessing.
Ananias and Sapphira lied because they wanted a reputation they hadn’t earned. How do we misrepresent the gospel and the kingdom and Jesus? In what way do we or does the church compromise our witness? What idols have we set up alongside the cross? What things do we do that bring public shame on Jesus and the Spirit? What compromises our holiness? And do our compromises and our idolatries and our hypocrisies run so deep or are they so common that maybe we no longer even see them. But people out there do. And God does. Brothers and Sisters, that’s what the story of Ananias and Sapphira is about.
But Acts 5 is more than a terrifying warning to holiness. It’s also an exhortation. Look at verse 12: “Many signs and wonders were performed by the apostles amongst the people. They were all together in Solomon’s Porch, while none of the others dared join them, though the people spoke highly of them. But more people, a crowd both of men and women, believed in the Lord and were added to their number. They used to bring the sick into the streets and place them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on them as he went by. Crowds gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing people who were sick or infested with unclean spirits. All of them were cured.”
God struck down the people who were compromising the church’s gospel witness, but he blessed the ministry of Peter. As Luke notes, after the confrontation with the Jewish authorities, no one dared to join him, but when Peter went out with boldness to proclaim the good news, God made him a walking pocket of new creation. It makes me think of the dead temporarily raised on Good Friday, as if the shockwave of life was so powerful it had an almost undiscriminating effect as it went out from the cross. The same sort of thing happens with Peter.
I think when we read this, our modern democratic mindset has us wondering why we don’t see this happening today. Why doesn’t this happen when my shadow falls on people when I’m walking around. And again, I have to come back to the biblical witness itself. The point of miracles is that they don’t happen every day. And when they do happen, even in the Bible, they cluster around those times and places where God is doing something new. They clustered around Jesus and now we see them clustering around the apostles, validating them in the same way they validated Jesus. And they’re happening right at the gate of the temple—God’s not so subtle way to announce that, yes, he’s come back to dwell with his people just as he promised, but he’s not dwelling in the holy of holies in the bricks-and-mortal temple; he’s come to dwell in this people purified and made even holier than the holy of holies by the blood of Jesus. Think of it like a rocket launch. There’s a blast of almost uncomprehensible power that launches a rocket off the ground and into orbit. Once it’s up there, it just needs a little nudge from time to time to keep it there. This was God’s way of launching the gospel.
Now, verse 17: “Then the high priest got up and all who were with him, namely the group called the Sadducees. They were filled with zeal [think “righteous indignation”] and seized the apostles and put them in the public jail. But an angel of the Lord came in the night, opened the prison doors, and brought them out. ‘Go and take your stand in the temple,’ he said, ‘and speak all the words of this life to the people.’ When they heard this, they went in at early morning and began to teach. When the high priest arrived with his entourage, they called the official assembly and all the elders of the sons of Israel, and they sent to the prison to have the apostles brought in. But when the attendants went they didn’t find them in the prison. So they came and reported back. ‘We found the jail shut up with maximum security,’ they said, ‘and the guards were standing in front of the doors. But when we opened up we found no one inside.’ When they heard these words, the commander of the temple police and the chief priests were at a loss about them, with no idea what had happened. But then someone came with a message for them. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘The men you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people.’ Then the commander went with his attendants and brought them. They didn’t use force, though, because they were afraid that the people might stone them.”
Luke has a sense of humour. So does God. The high priest is full of zeal. This idea of “zeal” characterised what the Jews of those days thought of as faithfulness. Their heroes were men like Phinehas, who speared a law-breaking idolater to the ground; like Judas Maccabbeus, who led a revolt against the pagan Geek rulers of Israel. They were zealous for God and for his law and they burned with anger at anyone who compromised it. And that’s how they felt about the apostles. Peter and John, just like Jesus, were challenging the temple. The temple leaders wanted them dead, but they also feared the people. Everyone else could see new creation and the power of God—life—bursting into the world, but all these guys could see was a threat to the status quo. And so they throw the apostles into jail. And God sends an angel to set them free and not just that, but to send them straight back to the temple, to the place where they were arrested. And there’s an urgency to the angel’s words. “Go back the temple. Take your stand. Speak the words of this life to the people.”
The miracles were wonderful. The miracles said that God was doing something, that new creation life was breaking in. That there was something about the apostles. But Brothers and Sisters, miracles without preaching lead to superstition. Good works without preaching leave people applauding the people doing the good works. It’s our proclamation, our preaching, our announcement of the good news about Jesus, crucified and risen and lord, that makes sense of the miracles and the good works. It’s the preaching that points people to Jesus—not just in a generic sense to “God”, but specifically to Jesus. It’s the preaching that makes clear that in the Messiah, God has provided a sacrifice that purifies us from the stain of sin to make us fit to be his temple, filled with his own Spirit, to bring his grace and his mercy and his love and his holiness and his new creation to the world. It’s our life as God’s working model of new creation that attracts people, but it’s our preaching that calls them specifically to Jesus in repentance and faith.
This whole chapter is a reminder that preaching alone without holiness and without living out new creation is not enough, but that it’s also not enough to live out that new creation, to be a heaven on earth people, even to work miracles. It has to be accompanied by the proclamation of the good news about Jesus. Otherwise we’re like the mystery box of books. Who’s this from? Should I trust it? So the angel sends them back to preach. And there they are preaching in the temple just as the priests assemble to hold court. And they send for the accused and no one can find them, until someone runs in and shouts: “They’re back preaching right under your noses!”
“So,” Luke goes on in verse 27, “they brough them and stood them in the assembly. The high priest questioned them. ‘We gave you strict orders, didn’t we?’ he demanded. ‘We told you not to teach in this name, but look what you’re doing. You have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you’re trying to bring this man’s blood on us.’ ‘We must obey God, not men!’ responded Peter and the apostles. ‘The God of our fathers raised Jesus after you had laid violent hands on him and hanged him on a tree. God exalted him to his right hand as leader and saviour, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. We are witnesses of these things and so is the Holy Spirit, which God gave to those who obey him.’ When they heard this, they were infuriated and wanted to kill them. But then a Pharisee by the name of Gamaliel stood up in the assembly. He was a law-teacher, highly respected by all the people. He ordered the men to be put outside for a short while. ‘Men of Israel,’ he said to the gathering, ‘be careful what you do to these men. Before these times Theudas rose up, claiming to be someone special and about four hundred men went off to join him. But he was killed and all the people who trusted him were dispersed. The movement came to nothing. After that Judas the Galilean arose in the days of the census and drew a crowd after himself. But he was killed and all those who trusted him were scattered. So my advice to you now is this. Leave off from these men; let them be. You see, if this plan or work is merely human in origin, it will come to ruin. But if it’s from God—well, you won’t be able to stop them. You might even be found to be fighting against God.’ They were persuaded by him and called the apostles back in. They beat them and told them not to speak in the name of Jesus. Then they let them go. They, however, went out from the presence of the assembly celebrating, because they had been reckoned worthy to suffer disgrace for the name. And all day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the Messiah.”
The assembly has the apostles beaten, but they know the scriptures. They’ve seen how Jesus suffered and died as part of his ministry to fulfil those scriptures. So Peter and John and the others take this opposition as confirmation. And Luke goes into these details here, because this is going to be a pattern throughout the book of Acts. Suffering for the name of Jesus is a privilege. But he also highlights the importance of the church’s integrity to its—to our—witness. Again, we are God’s temple. He’s returned as he promised, not to the stone building that once sat over Jerusalem, but by filling us—the people purified and made holy by the blood of Jesus. The beauty of a human temple is that it can grow and grow and grow until it fills the earth with God’s presence, with his wisdom, with his gospel life. But it’s also important that the temple remain pure. Jesus has purified it. The Holy Spirit has sanctified it. But we’re still human. We’re not perfect—not yet. Brothers and Sisters, this is why, as Paul puts it, we need to put on the Messiah. To put off the old, corrupt, sinful and selfish way of being human and put on Jesus and the new life of the gospel, the new life of the Spirit. To be the holy people Jesus and the Spirit have made us. To walk in integrity: in our personal affairs, in our relationships, in our marriages, in our business, in our politics, in our finances, in our life together as the church, as the temple. We really do need to be the new humanity and God’s new creation. We need to be—so much as Jesus and the Spirit make it possible—to be God’s future right here in the present. And we need to take our stand and proclaim the name of Jesus so that when people notice our holiness and our integrity, they’ll also know that it’s not just us, but that it’s all about this Jesus who died and rose again—for us, for them, for the sake of all creation—to forgive, to purify, to heal, and to set to rights. I can’t say exactly what it’s supposed to look like. Acts was unique. The rocket ship was launching. Now it’s in orbit. Our shadows are highly unlikely to heal anyone, and yet Peter’s shadow and Peter’s preaching really do represent the ministry of the faithful church to bring healing to the world, to wipe away tears, to announce what Jesus has done and what Jesus is doing and what Jesus will, finally, one day finish as we bring hope to the world. Do it with integrity, Brothers and Sisters. And do it in holiness.
Let us pray: O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not our hold on things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.