Acts 4:23-27; Acts 5:1-16
The connection between the early part of Acts 5 and the end of chapter 4 is easily apparent. In the fourth chapter we hear of the apostles, and those with them, having a prayer-meeting, and we get the result. “When they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness” (vs. 31). This was the normal condition of things at the beginning of Christianity. Every one possessed the Holy Spirit, and knew it. As a Divine Person He was on the earth, and dwelt in every believer. The Church was a large company by this time. Five thousand men had been converted, but we do not hear of the introduction of a woman till the fifth chapter. Afterward we hear of numbers of men and women being added.
It must have been a lovely spectacle that met the eye, in these Pentecostal times, recorded in the end of Acts 4. The Church then made everything of Christ. It was not a community, formed and maintained, on a dead level, by law, but the result of the working of the grace of God in the heart, so that everyone was thinking of everybody else — no one of himself. It was the spontaneous outcome of Divine love in the believers, as they found out the place of blessing and privilege they had in Christ. We read that, “With great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and great grace was upon them all” (vs. 33). Great power and great grace are here seen, and the two ever go together; wherever you have great grace, you will find great power.
“Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the price of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.” I have little doubt there was a common fund. Very likely many a young believer lost everything by becoming a Christian, but they counted it all joy to suffer shame for Jesus’ name. Yet none were allowed to lack, for all were supplied by the love of the rest. Those who had goods came and laid them down at the apostles’ feet, as they liked; there was nothing to compel, it was all voluntary.
This you have Barnabas beautifully illustrating (vss. 36-37). He makes a beautiful start, for there is the complete surrender of all that he had to Christ. I wonder if you, my reader, have started so. I do not believe there is a real start, if Christ has not become everything to the soul.
The beauty of this scene is great. It is a sort of spiritual Eden. But, alas! as the serpent entered that scene of joy, so does he enter this. Eden was the habitation of man, with God as a visitor. Satan entered to spoil it. The Church is the habitation of God by the Spirit, who has formed it by His presence. It is here seen in its first beauty formed of God, and being His habitation. The Holy Spirit of God dwelt there, and ruled for a while. Alas! the flesh soon entered, for Satan could not bear to see unbroken communion, an unalloyed attachment to Christ.
In chapter 5 the imitation of this lovely attachment of heart to Christ is before us. Undoubted! Barnabas was looked on as very devoted to the Lord. Things among men are often merely imitative. We have such hearts that even the desire to seem devoted may be imitated, and, evidently, Ananias and Sapphira desired to appear as devoted, in the eyes of men, as Barnabas really was. Alas!! they did not think of how their actions would appear to the Lord. Ananias posed as one who would appear more devoted than he really was; but God will not be mocked. Ananias appears in the guise of a man devoted to the interests of Christ. Peter comes to the front again, and, led of God, at once detects this unreal state of matters.
“A certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession, and kept back part of the price, his wife being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back part of the price of the land?” Did that man tell a lie? We do not read, at that moment, of any words being spoken. He came and laid down his money at the feet of the apostles, for the common need of all. But God was there, and He could not be deceived. Peter simply says, “Thou halt not lied unto men, but unto God. And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost” (vss. 4-5). This man wanted to appear to possess a devotedness that was not real, but God was in the midst of His assembly, and the unreality was detected, exposed, and judged by Him. How solemn! Yet, if there be anything that it is truly blessed to learn, it is that God is in the midst of His people, in the bosom of the assembly, and He will have reality. What burning thoughts must have possessed Ananias’s soul at that moment, as he felt — God has detected me.
“I will be sanctified in them that come nigh Me, and before all the people I will be glorified.” God had long ago said, as He judged the impiety of Nadab and Abihu (see Lev. 10:8). They offered strange fire, and died. Again, Achan took of the accursed thing, and died too (Josh. 7).
Here Ananias dies, for the Lord will have reality. The two priests betrayed impiety; Achan, cupidity; Ananias, unreality. These are solemn lessons. The Lord would have every one of us weigh them in His presence, and feel that it is a solemn thing to enter God’s assembly, and to take His name upon our lips. I believe the nearer we get to the truth, the more sure we are to be detected if we are not real. If you want to have mammon inside, with a cloak of religiousness outside, do not you come to the Lord’s table. Do not come near the place where the Lord is, for you will be detected. Such is the lesson of Acts 5.
A little later Sapphira comes in, “And Peter answered and said unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much.” She is bold, and defiant in her lying. “Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord?” God knew what had taken place — they had talked over the matter, and made an agreement. What did Peter mean by tempting the Spirit of the Lord? How could they do that? Israel tempted God in the desert, saying, “Is the Lord among us, or not?” (Ex. 17:7). They were not sure of His presence among them. Ananias and Sapphira, evidently, were not sure if the Lord was in the assembly after all. But God was there! The great, the grand truth of the Acts is, that a Divine Person is dwelling on earth in the bosom of God’s assembly. The Lord showed that His Spirit was there, by unveiling the heart of both husband and wife to His servant Peter, and then judging the evil and the evil-doers.
God is ever intolerant of evil in His assembly. He judges evil amongst His saints, just because He is amongst them. He cannot allow evil even where He does not dwell; how much less where He does dwell. The more His presence is manifested, and realized, the more intolerant is He of what is unsuited to Him. It cannot be otherwise. God is holy, and He will have holiness among His saints. What makes this scene so sad is the subtle way in which the evil came in to at first corrupt the Church. Ananias and Sapphira pretended to follow an impulse of the Holy Spirit, whose actual presence they disregarded — yea, even doubted — and they fall dead in the presence of Him whom in their blindness they forgot they could not deceive, though they might deceive His servants.
No testimony to the presence of God in the assembly could be more mighty, albeit that it be most painful in its effects. The presence of God in the midst of His own is a truth of the deepest importance. Its seriousness is only equaled by its blessedness.
But, you ask, had Ananias and Sapphira been really converted? Were they Christians? I do not know. They were, outwardly, members of God’s assembly on earth, and they were unreal in the position they occupied. The hand of the Lord came upon them in judgment; and, as a direct result, “great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.” The assembly itself, and those outside it too, were greatly moved. All felt God’s presence was there, and, as a holy consequence, “of the rest durst no man join himself to them.” People were not in a great hurry to come into God’s assembly in those days. Those who wanted to be thought something of, said, It will not do to go in there; if we are not real, we shall be found out. I fancy I see a number of half-hearted souls, hangers-on round the divinely gathered company of that day, and when the news comes out that God would not have unreality, they feared to go in.
“And of the rest durst no man join himself unto them; but the people magnified them,” is a striking word. “The rest” were clearly those who had some place in the world; religious or otherwise. They fear to offend the world that has given them a position; for the more place man gives us the less we like to forfeit his approval. “The people,” — the common people, I presume — however, were not so affected by the world’s favor, or its fear. They had nothing to lose, and everything to gain by receiving Christ; and being simple they received the truth. Among them were found plenty of real souls. “Multitudes both of men and women,” “were added to the Lord.” Here, after Sapphira, we have the fact noticed of the introduction of women into the assembly, and they come in, in multitudes.
I believe the lesson we have to learn from such a solemn scene is, that God’s eye is on us. He keeps a long look-out, and eventually always deals with unreality; but if a soul is simple and honest, it says, and loves to say, like the Psalmist, not only, “O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me,” but adds, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psa. 139:1-24). The simple and dependent soul that clings to the Lord is always safe, and always kept.