The Curious Case of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5.1-11)

Introduction

I thought I’d start off with a bit of investment advice from one of our greatest entrepreneurs, Richard Branson. “How do you become a millionaire?” someone asked him. So he replied “It’s easy. Start off as a billionaire and then go into the airline business.” I thought that was quite helpful.

If you’ve been following our series on Acts you’ll have noticed that we’ve moved a few readings around in the last three weeks. Today’s passage on Ananias and Sapphira was not really appropriate for the baby Oliver’s Thanksgiving Service two weeks ago and it seemed unfair to land it on our visiting missionary family last Sunday so we shuffled the pack a little bit.

So let me very quickly set today’s passage in the context in which God gave it to us.

The end of chapter 4 tells us about the amazing generosity and communal living of the earliest church. They shared everything in common. It was not at all unknown in those days for people to cash in their savings or sell land and hand the proceeds to the leaders of the church to be shared out among the destitute. The result was that there were no needy people among them.

That’s counter-cultural. We live in a world that says “What’s mine is mine.” That sounds fair doesn't it?

Our best read daily newspapers waste no time condemning those in our society who say “What’s yours is mine.” They are labelled as scroungers and parasites. We live in a “What's mine is mine” world. 

But our society usually commends generous people who say “What’s mine is yours.” We admire footballers for example who give away their testimonial money to charity and who say "What's mine is yours." 

Which of these three attitudes do you think the earliest church had? 

The big picture is of widespread sharing and amazing generosity inside the church and (as we saw last Sunday) extraordinary signs and wonders, healings and conversions outside it. 

But I would be wary of going to a particular hospital if no one ever got better there. If no one never actually grows in faith in a particular church we should ask why on earth not?

The answer is none of them. The benchmark for Christians, past and present, is “What’s mine is His.” All of it, all of me. That is what it means to say “Jesus is Lord.”

Incidentally, have you ever wondered why there were so many people in need of material support when the church was young? How come it took the sale of valuable assets like houses to ensure no one was in need? It’s because people were coming to faith in their thousands and many of them were losing their jobs and therefore their livelihoods as a result. The general mood in Jerusalem was one of outright hostility to this new sect (as it was seen).

That’s why it says in 5.13 that the crowds admired the first Christians but didn’t dare join them. People could see there was something very attractive about the gospel but they knew that it might cost them everything to embrace it.

So when we read these troubling verses about Ananias and Sapphira here it’s important to see that this is not the whole picture of the way the early church was. Yes, it was scandalous. Yes, it was shocking. Yes, it was embarrassing. But whenever you read something in God’s word, it’s always wise to read around it and get a sense of the context.

So if you’re ever tempted to say something bad about the church, well okay, but point to something good about it too. Don't go on and on about one bad apple if there's an orchard of healthy ones.

The second thing I want to say before we get into the text itself is that, however much this story bothers us, we should be thankful for it. Be glad that the God’s word always tells you the truth, and the whole truth, about human beings.

So the Bible won’t just tell you about a hero like David’s courage in taking on Goliath and that he wrote psalms and that he had a heart for God. It will also tell you the unpalatable truth that he seduced and stole another man’s wife and then had him killed.

Every character in the Bible is presented to us with their strengths and weaknesses, their successes and failures, their bright side and their dark side.

There is only one exception – and it’s Jesus. More is written about him in the Bible than about anyone else. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John shine four bright searchlights on him - the words he said, the things he did, how he reacted to traps, how he responded to those who did violence to him, how he spoke to royalty and wretches - and not one blemish is recorded.

The story of Ananias and Sapphira tells us that if something goes badly wrong in the church, if there’s a scandal of some kind, own up to it. Never try to hide it or cover up the evidence or go into denial.

Here, two people were deceitful, were dishonest, and they dropped dead in what must have looked like suspicious circumstances to those who had not witnessed the event.

The Bible doesn’t claim that this was a church with no problems. It tells you that the perfect church doesn’t exist - and never will until Jesus comes back.

I’ve found wherever I’ve lived as a Christian that there are people who butterfly around from church to church, looking for the perfect one. Someone like that came and saw me once and moaned for about half an hour about the church they had just left. And they finished by saying “The people in that church are always complaining!”

I suppose the complaint I hear most often by people who don’t go to church about those who do is that they are hypocrites. There is hypocrisy in the church but what would you think about someone who refused to go to hospital because it was full of sick people?

Jesus said he didn’t come for the healthy; he came for the sick and he is in the business of changing lives.

Is your life changing? Are you growing? Are you learning? Are you maturing to become more like Jesus? I hope you are.

Ananias and Sapphira – 3 Questions

So let’s look a bit closer at the passage, Acts 5.1-11.

Ananias and Sapphira are a married couple who, like Barnabas (4.36-37), own a piece of land and sell it. They give some of the money to the church and they agree to keep some of it for their own needs.

Peter confronts Ananias in the severest terms and Ananias drops dead. Hours later Sapphira, unaware of what had happened earlier, is asked about the money, and she gives the same answer. Peter prophesies that she too will die and, sure enough, she falls down dead.

That’s… really harsh isn’t it?

1. Didn’t Ananias and Sapphira have the right to keep some of the money?

2. Even if they didn’t, wasn’t the punishment disproportionate to the offence?

3. If it was a sin, wouldn’t it have been fairer if Peter had given them both an opportunity to repent?

1) Wasn’t the Money Theirs?

Let’s take those questions in turn. Firstly then, didn’t Ananias and Sapphira have the right to keep some of the money? Was it theirs?

The answer is yes it was. They had every right to keep it. It’s very clear. Peter says so in v4. “Didn’t [the property] belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal?”

In other words, “Look, it’s your property and it’s your money. You could have held on to the asset if you wanted to and you could have kept all of the sale price for your own requirements.”

The issue is this; they decided to sell some land. Let’s say they got £10,000 for it. They could have said “We’d like to give £5,000 to the church and keep £5,000 for our own needs.” And that would have been fine. The money was theirs. But they thought it would look really good if they said “We received £5,000 for the land and we’re giving all of it to the church.”

The problem was not that they kept some for themselves. If I have £10 in my wallet, give £5 to you and keep £5 for me, that’s fine.

The problem was that they wanted to look more generous, more holy, more charitable than they really were. It was deceit. It was pretence. It was hypocrisy.

 “The world is not offended to discover that Christians have faults, but it is mightily offended to find Christians with faults parading themselves as holy Joes who have none.” (Roy Clements, Turning the World Upside Down).

I think we subconsciously classify sin as more or less serious. Up there with the really big sins for most of us are things like adultery, theft, assault and taking drugs.

Then there are smaller sins that include things we’d openly admit to - laziness, overeating, a bit of jealousy, that sort of thing.

No one likes hypocrisy but I reckon many of us secretly place it towards the more acceptable end of the scale than the scandalous end. 

But Jesus didn’t. Nothing provoked Jesus to exasperation more than hypocrisy.

He wasn’t fazed by a woman taken in adultery. He went to parties with prostitutes, alcoholics and thieves. In fact, so much so that people slated him for it and accused him of being a glutton and a drunkard. 

But hypocrisy, especially religious hypocrisy, really upset him. Over and over again in the gospels Jesus tore into the Pharisees for their pretence. They were false.

The word “hypocrite” is from the Greek hypokritēs which came from the stage. It means “actor” or “play-actor.” It literally meant someone who wore a mask in the great Greek dramas which is what actors used to do so people could see their facial expressions from the back of the amphitheatre.

Wearing a mask. Projecting an image to be thought of favourably.

2) Wasn’t the Punishment Too Harsh?

The second question is this; wasn’t the punishment disproportionate to the offence? Pretending you put a bit more in the offering than you actually did is hardly commendable, no one’s saying it’s okay, but isn’t double death a bit excessive? It seems really unfair.

But when you read the text carefully, you find no trace of Ananias’ and Sapphira’s death being called a punishment. It might seem like it but we mustn’t read into God’s word what isn’t there. At no point does it say “God struck him down” or something like that.

Peter confronted Ananias over his hypocrisy in the strongest of terms and we’re told that he heard those words and then fell down dead. Whether he had a heart attack coming from the shock I don't know but it’s presented to us as a natural – though certainly dramatic – occurrence. 

When Peter confronts Sapphira later, and she lies about the money, he seems to have some kind of prophetic revelation - a word of knowledge perhaps - that she will die in the same way as her husband did and says so.

But once again, Peter could have said “may God’s judgement fall on you for this wickedness” or something like that but he doesn’t. So the second question “Wasn’t the punishment disproportionate to the offence?” I think reads into the story what isn’t there. A coroner would have to report an open verdict.

3) Why Weren’t They Given a Chance to Repent?

And consequently the third question, “Why didn’t Peter give them both an opportunity to repent?” doesn’t quite fit either. They both died suddenly before they had an opportunity to amend their ways. 

Life can be like that. In 2010, a woman named Deborah McDonald was run over and killed by a car in Ohio, hours after celebrating winning a big prize on a TV game show. 

In 1934, the Montreal Gazette carried the story of a man who died of shock when he was told he had won the lottery.

I don’t suppose in either case it was the judgement of God on them.

Jesus told a story about a rich man who accumulated huge wealth for himself, building ever bigger storehouses to stash away all his assets. But before he had a chance to spend any of his fortune and enjoy the reward of his labour he suddenly died.

Life can be brief and death can be sudden.

Ending

I want to end by looking at the effect this episode had on the church – and what it should say to us this morning.

It says twice in our short reading that “great fear” gripped those who heard about these things. Verse 5; “And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.” Verse 11; Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.”

It’s normal for fear to grip people who have witnessed a sudden death. You may have watched a passenger being interviewed this summer after she learned that the plane she had been due to board had crashed with no survivors. She was ashen faced and quite shaky. There is a natural adrenaline-fuelled shock when we brush with death.

But I think what we read about here is more than that; it’s the fear of God which is quite different. I can only remember a few occasions in my life when I have been seized with the fear of God.

Once was when a very disabled man Kathie and I knew well called Arthur was dramatically healed by the power of God in a prayer meeting. Arthur had been bent over with severe spondylosis, which is a degenerative arthritis of the spine. Having only been able to move very slowly and painfully before prayer, he was instantly healed and was able to run up and down the stairs of his home.

Another time when I have been seized with the fear of God was hearing someone who didn’t know me, prophesy to me, revealing the secrets of my heart. He was so accurate, it was scary. He spoke to me for about five minutes, he revealed my name, the nature and exact focus of my ministry, my main gifts, what I was being called towards and my biggest weakness. It’s as if he could see into my soul.

In both cases I felt I was in the presence of the holy. Both events sent a tingle down my spine. My heart raced. I became aware of God’s nearness. I wanted urgently to be right with him, to repent of sin and be totally his.

The fear of God, the awareness of his power, the sense of his holiness, awe before him – how we need it! Pray for the fear of God to seize us all.

But here’s the question; do I want to belong to a church like this?

Acts 5 goes on to say there was amazing growth as many came to faith. Do you want to see the church grow? Even if it means you no longer get to sit where you always sit in church because somebody new, and more fired up than you, always gets there first?!

Let’s pray…

It says that God released people who were tormented by evil spirits. That’s usually noisy and a bit messy. Do you want to see people being delivered from evil? Even if it rather interrupts the liturgy of the Sunday service?

There were signs and wonders and extraordinary blessing, there was deep unity, radical sharing of assets and great fear seized them all.

Do I want to belong to a church like that?

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 17th August 2014