Thursday, Oct. 30

Thursday

 But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property,  and with his wife's knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and 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 for yourself part of the proceeds of the land?

 But Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord?   - Acts 5:1-3, 9

It is easy to ask why God dealt with Ananias and Sapphira so severely when He does not do so with other hypocrites in the church. One reason is that it was because the church was still in its infancy, and He needed to set before us a sober lesson of the seriousness of this sin among God’s people. God did the same thing in the Old Testament in the story of Achan (Joshua 7).

The charges that Peter brought against the couple reveal just how serious the sin was.  First, Ananias told a lie. Lying is the sin especially characteristic of Satan. Perhaps the most fundamental difference between God and Satan is that God is Truth, whereas Satan has no truth in him. 

Jesus said of Satan,  “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44). God was deeply concerned when lies and deception, the mark of His enemy, had entered His beloved church!

Ananias lied to God, not man. Specifically, he lied to God in the person of the Holy Spirit. In fact, he and his wife had lied to the church, but Peter identifies the church with the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit indwells the church and is responsible for its existence. 

In saying that Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit, Peter meant that Ananias actually imagined that he could fool God. Ananias thought that God Himself would fail to detect the lie and would bless the couple for their generosity. 

Before we think that Ananias was completely foolish for thinking he could get away with this, we should pause and recognize that he was no more foolish than any of us who think that God (and others) are not aware of our own little hypocrisies.  

What about us in the church today? We have the whole Bible, and our understanding of it is enriched by two thousand years of Bible study. This means that we have more knowledge than Ananias and Sapphira, do we really think that God will view our pretense and hypocrisy lightly!?  

In His mercy, He may not strike us down. Yet He will surely remove His favor from our attempts to serve Him, and our work will amount to nothing.  And He will absolutely work to wake us up to the true condition of our hearts. He may even bring pain and guilt into our lives to show us that we have taken the wrong path - all because He loves us too much to let us drift into cold and hypocritical lives.

Jeff Frazier