2 October 2019

  • Daily Podcast
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Published by James Brown

Hello and welcome to Wednesday’s Foundations podcast. Wherever you are listening in – I hope these short devotions are of immense value to you today.

REFLECTION:

If you can find the time to read today’s passage I would totally recommend it. It is 11 verses long and is one of the trickier stories of the New Testament to get your head round. 

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.

Then Peter said, ‘Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.’

When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died.

His wife goes on to repeat the same behaviour and she dies also. 
When reading the story of Ananias and Sapphira I thought of two things. Firstly, you don’t often find this one being talked about on a Sunday. And secondly, why did Luke chose to write this one down? What is he trying to teach us?
This is not an easy story to read, and many of us struggle with the severity of God’s judgment in the passage. It definitely provoked me as a reader to ask the question again, who do I think God is? 
Firstly, I’d like to point out that this is not a criticism of Ananias & Sapphira’s lack of generosity. They had taken a plot of their land and offered it to the apostles.  The challenge is that Ananias & Sapphira lied & then co-conspired to continue not telling the truth. 
I once saw a sign in a church that said, “God does not ask from each person equal giving, but equal sacrifice.” The idea being, it’s not the number on our giving form that impresses God but the state of our heart that we would deny ourselves and be generous with any gift.
We may already know God as love & we might have already encountered His grace. But today we are challenged by his high bar of holiness & how essential unity within the church is to God, and how seriously God takes lies that threatens that unity.
Of course, none of us get it right all the time. We all make mistakes. But if the spirit leads us to repentance and the heart is willing, there is always forgiveness. Thankfully, we do not receive immediate judgment for our sins as Ananias and Sapphira did. Such judgment is very rare in the Bible. However, we can be sure that sin will be dealt with, and that the consequence of sin is always death (Rom. 6:23). Jesus did not choose to die for us because our sin was trivial. Our sin was great, but he chose to die for us because his love for us was greater.

PRAYER:

Lord, this was not an easy one to understand today but I pray we would each take some encouragement that you want the best for us. Teach us to be a people of integrity & holiness. Amen.

READING: Acts 5:1-11

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.

Then Peter said, ‘Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.’

When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. Then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, ‘Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that is the price.’

Peter said to her, ‘How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord? Listen! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.’

At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.