Pastor Marty Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 3:10PM This sermon was preached on September 25, 2022 by Missionary Robert Specter of Rock of Israel Ministries.
There will not be an article on this sermon, but the audio is now available.
Email Article | Print Article | Share Article | tagged Belief, Evangelism, Israel, Jews, Revival, Salvation Pastor Marty Monday, September 19, 2022 at 6:56PM Acts 5:7-11. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on September 18, 2022.
Last week, we dealt with the death of Ananias, and today we will deal with the death of his wife, Sapphira.
Ananias is a Greek form of the Hebrew name Hananiah. It means ‘the favor of Yahweh,” or “the grace of Yahweh.” Sapphira’s name is a reference to the sapphire gem.
Though one could think of their names as ironic in this story, it is more likely that they serve to emphasize the tragedy of their lives and their fall into judgment. God was pouring out the greatest grace and favor that the world had ever seen in the work of Jesus. He followed this up with the amazing gift of pouring out the Holy Spirit upon those who believed in Jesus. How tragic to fall short of the grace of God.
Similarly, Sapphira’s name should remind us of God’s ultimate goal for believers, which is spoken of in the Old Testament. Daniel 12:2-3 says that the righteous who are resurrected will “shine like the brightness of the firmament,” and “like the stars forever and ever.” This imagery of shining stars is used in the Bible for spiritual beings. It also is connected to gems. Read Malachi 3:15-18. God speaks of a day in which He declares that the righteous will become His. “’They shall be Mine,’ says the LORD of Hosts, ‘on the day that I make them My jewels. And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.’”
This story is a tragedy of the highest level. May God hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
Let’s get into our passage.
It might seem strange to us that Ananias is buried without his wife’s knowledge, but it would have been similar to her husband being in the morgue. In those days, a family would typically have a tomb that had a platform in the middle. The dead body would be laid on the platform and allowed to decompose over the course of a year. Later the bones would be gathered up into a bone box called an ossuary and deposited within one of several niches that would be in the walls. Whole families would be buried in the same tomb this way. Also, It would be necessary to deal with a body right away due to the heat.
Verse 2 tells us that Sapphira knew what her husband was doing. We should pause and discuss the difficulty of having a spouse who is pursuing sin. Many Christians have had to deal with being married to unbelieving spouses. In fact, the Apostle Paul encourages such to stay married as long as the unbelieving spouse is open to it because you never know how God may use it to save their soul. It can be more nuanced if you have a “believing” spouse who is serving their flesh rather than Jesus. Regardless, Sapphira had a choice to make. She could refuse to stand with her husband in this sin, or she could join him in it. Sadly, she chooses to join him in his sin.
Don’t get me wrong. There is no reason to make Sapphira to be the instigator, or innocent bystander. Perhaps she was like Jezebel goading Ahab on in worship of Baal. Maybe she was not. All spouses should recognize that their life deeply affects their spouse for good or for bad.
It is three hours after the death of Ananias that Sapphira shows up. It would stand to reason that she is looking for him, wondering why he is taking so long. She gets there minutes before the men who have buried her husband make it back to the place where Peter is.
It is at this point that Peter questions Sapphira about the value of the property sold. It would be easy to blame Peter here. Couldn’t he have led with the fact that her husband had lied and had been struck dead by God? Yes, he could have. However, Peter questions her to see if she is in on it. I mentioned last week that I don’t believe Peter knew up front that Ananias was going to die. Otherwise, we would expect him to pronounce something so, like he does here with Sapphira. God had made it shockingly clear to Peter that this was to be taken seriously, and Peter is only taking this seriously. How bad has this wickedness spread?
Tragically, Sapphira lies to Peter, and therefore, lies to the Holy Spirit as well. Peter rebukes her for her sin, and adds some further light to why this is taken so seriously. Sapphira will fall down dead and breathe her last as her husband did.
The first part of this rebuke is in reference to the Holy Spirit. Sapphira had agreed with Ananias to “test” the Holy Spirit. The Greek term it translates is often used of the devil tempting us. It typically means to test so as to make someone fail. A test can be a good thing that measures your progress and helps you to see where you need to improve. In general, teachers are not actually trying to fail their students, but they do have a duty to make sure that the kids are learning the material. This will ensure that the student is able to get more work on the failed problems.
The plot of Ananias and Sapphira is not devised to strengthen the Church, Peter, or God. They hope to get the social reputation of donating all the proceeds of their sale without having to do it. Their lie is selfish, and somehow, they believe that God won’t do anything about it. This begs a lot of questions. Were they actually saved, or only going along with the group because amazing things were happening? Did they actually believe God was behind these things, or did they somehow believe it was more like magic, the involvement of an impersonal force? Of course, we cannot know.
I believe that America is testing the Holy Spirit today, and has been for a long time. We have been coasting on the grace that prior generations have won for us, but now, the judgment of God is in our land. Everywhere around us, we see the crumbling culture. The principle of death is being breathed into the land through every action of sin. Yet, there is still hope. We can see the turmoil and repent.
In fact, God generally sends his judgment in increasing waves. This makes me wonder if Ananias and Sapphira hadn’t had some warnings from God earlier.
Peter tells Sapphira that the same men who were coming in the door from burying her husband will now bury her. She then dies as Peter has prophesied. No leader should ever dare to utter this kind of statement unless it is really from God. As I said, God had made it clear that He wasn’t letting this pass.
Whether I am judged by God on the spot or after 80 years of this life, the testimony of Scripture is that Jesus is a righteous judge. He knows the thoughts and intents of our hearts. You cannot fool God.
Yet, none of us can be good enough to merit grace in that hour. I don’t believe that God wants us to be unsure of that day. 1 John 5:13 states that we can know that we have eternal life. Still, there is a tension between being confident of our salvation, and yet not letting that become an excuse for sin. The saved person will fight their own sin. There will be losses and wins in that battle, but the Lord will deliver them from them all. This tension can be described as a tension between being afraid of God and having a healthy fear of the Lord.
Luke mentions twice that fear came upon everyone who heard about the story (vs 5, 11). For Christians, it would be the fear of the Lord that wisely fights against sin in their life. For unbelievers, it is more than likely a fear of the unknown. It would be a fear of not knowing what is really going on among those people.
Just because this is the Age of Grace does not mean that God is no longer making judgments. If we eat up His grace and spend it on our lusts, instead of putting our faith upon Jesus, working to become like him, then we will pay with our life. We will receive eternal life or eternal death, eternal glory or eternal shame.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It teaches us to stop asking how close to the cliff we can hang out without falling. The whole point is to want to be close to Jesus, to have intimate communion with him. I fear the holiness of God too much to try and lie to Him.
Of course, any time we tell Jesus that we love him, we are somewhat like Peter was in John 21. My words may be greater than my flesh can back up right now, but Lord you know my heart. You know that my spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak. God is gracious and is not looking for an excuse to take you out. That tells me something drastically wrong was going on inside of Ananias and Sapphira. I should not try to look like anything more than a sinner being set free from my sins as Jesus helps me.
Now, let’s come full circle on God’s love for us. Remember, God is not willing that anyone perish, but that all come to repentance and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. More than that, God wants for you to be the recipient of His grace and favor. He wants you to be at His side shining like the stars. In fact, a beautiful thing about gems is that they don’t have internal light. At His side, we will not only be gems, but the most dazzling light of God will be shining through us. What a day that will be!
Email Article | Print Article | Share Article | tagged Glorified Body, Holy Spirit, Judgment, Lying, Sin, Testing Pastor Marty Monday, September 12, 2022 at 10:43PM Acts 5:1-6. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on September 11, 2022.
What a horrible thought it is to lie to the Spirit of God. What a horrible thought it is that a sin might be judged by God on the spot by striking a person dead. It sounds like it must be something in the Old Testament, but today’s story is here in the New Testament at the beginning of the Church.
These are the things that God would have us contemplate today. Furthermore, they are the things that should convince us that God is not playing games, and that this day of grace that we are in is still deadly serious.
I think that we might be surprised at who did not survive if God were to strike dead every single person who was lying to the Holy Spirit in the American Church. Through the prophet Moses, God warns “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23 NKJV).
Of course, it is rare for God to strike people dead on the spot for even gross sin in this life, but the question is not when will it happen. The question is will He strike me with eternal death. Whether during this life, or when you stand before Jesus the judge after death, if you have not been living for Christ, then it won’t matter much that He gave you more time.
Let’s get into our passage.
Last week, we looked at Barnabas and how he was an encouraging example, or an exemplar, for believers. It is not by accident that the very next story is a cautionary example about a person doing something similar to what Barnabas did, but lying to the Holy Spirit about it.
We all can think of examples in our lives of people to emulate and others to avoid. However, you may not have someone that is at the level of an apostle like Barnabas, or on the other side, at the level of Ananias and Sapphira for bad. Ultimately, this lesson teaches us that following Jesus is not a game that we can play. Of course, Jesus is the perfect encouraging example. However, people like Peter, John, Barnabas, and Paul show us that we can rise above our sin and weakness through Christ.
Of course, to do so, we must take our sin seriously, and we must take Christ’s salvation seriously. There is a tendency for us to think of the Church Age as a time of grace in which sin is no longer a big deal. It is all covered by the death of Jesus, hurrah! Yet, the writer of Hebrews warns us in chapter ten that if a person was put to death without mercy under the Law of Moses if two or three witnesses testified, then an even worse punishment awaits those who trample the Son of God underfoot, treating his blood of the new covenant as a common thing, and insulting the Spirit of Grace (28-29).
Luke leaves out many details that we would like to know. However, it is apparent that Ananias sells a plot of land of some sort and then donates the money to the church. From Peter’s reaction, we can know that in some way Ananias has made it known that he is donating all the proceeds of the sale. This could have been a legal stipulation in the sale document itself, or it could have simply been a public declaration before the church and, or, its leaders.
In verse 2, the phrase ‘kept back’ has a connotation of embezzlement, which lets us know in advance that he is doing something wrong. The point of the story is not for us to judge for ourselves the scenario. We don’t have all of the facts to do so. The point of the story is to caution us against a severe sin. Notice the difference. Luke is not trying to put us in the judgment seat. He is trying to keep us out of the defendant seat.
When Ananias brings the money to the Apostle Peter, he is rebuked on the spot for his sin. How did Peter know? He knew by the help of the Holy Spirit. In terms of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we would say that Peter was given a word of knowledge by the Spirit.
Of course, any leader in any group could covet such near omniscience. Thus, tyrants will do openly to get information on everyone what cults do openly, but with more seduction in getting the information. Such leaders will build networks and systems of gathering information on all of your secrets so that they can use it against you in order to further their power. Woe to those who would pervert the Church of Jesus for their own empowerment and glory.
Yet, this is not what Peter is doing. This is something that is pure and clean and comes from the pure and clean Spirit of God. Peter rebukes Ananias, and it is a fearful day for those who are sinning. Yet, rebuke also opens the door for repentance. Thus, it is a strange day in which things can go in vastly different directions. I will either repent and be cleansed, or refuse and be hardened even more.
When we look at the specifics of the rebuke, Peter twice refers to his sin as, vs 3, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit,” and vs 4, “You have not lied to men, but to God.” Of course, he did lie to men, but his sin is far worse than that. He is lying to God Himself.
How has he lied to God? First, he has lied to leaders whom he knows to be full of the Holy Spirit. He has lied to a body of believers who are Spirit-filled. Interesting question here, had Ananias been filled with the Holy Spirit? Is it possible that a person could be filled with the Holy Spirit, but then lie to the Holy Spirit? We don’t know specifically with this case. However, King Saul had the Holy Spirit come upon him and he prophesied. Yet, he later turned to the witch of Endor for occultic help because his rebellions against God’s Spirit had caused God to leave him.
Peter mentions Satan. Satan is at work here, and Peter knows about Satan stirring your baser notions in order to get you to resist what God is doing. Listen friend, don’t play fast and lose with the things of God. It won’t be worth it in the end. Even if you get away with it for all of your life, you will regret it when you stand before Jesus. Just as Israel drew near God with their lips while their hearts were far from Him, so can we. In fact, all of life is a challenge asking us if our worship and strong talk was all lies. From time to time, Jesus challenges us, “Will you too go away?
In verse 4, Peter describes just how needless this sin was. It was his property. No one forced him to sell it. After the sale, it was his money to do with as he would. No one forced him to declare that he would give all of the money to the church. Why didn’t he just make it clear that he would only give part of the proceeds?
Let’s say it was a plot of land that was worth $10,000 USD. If he simply gave 10%, it would have been a $1,000, which is a significant donation. Even $100 would be helpful to people. In fact, any gift you give for the work of Jesus is significant, whether $1 or $10,000, because it is given to God. It is holy. The widow only gave a mite, and yet our Lord said it was greater than those who gave bags of Gold. God does not judge value as we do.
Jesus does not force people to give to his mission. You are free to give what you want. But, the case of Ananias shows that, though we are free from constraints by the Lord, we are not nearly as free from sin in our hearts. Ananias was free to give in relation to God, but his sin held him in bondage and led him to the slaughter. Sin had taken root in his heart somewhere along the line, much like Judas before him.
And that is where the problem lies, in his heart. In verse 3, Peter says, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie,” and in verse 4, “Why have you conceived this thing in your heart.”
Peter is not saying that Satan made Ananias sin. Satan can’t make anybody sin. In fact, you are quite capable of being tempted by your own flesh without his help. However, he is a real influence, a real interloper, nonetheless.
It is one thing for a temptation to “fill” our heart or mind. This is being a fallen human being in a fallen world. However, you can keep from playing with that temptation. Notice the use of the word “conceived” by Peter. This should bring to mind the picture that James gives us in James 1:14-15. “Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death.”
Notice the progression. It begins with the temptation within our heart and mind. If we do not nip it in the bud in that moment (bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ), we will then be dragged away and enticed by our own desires. It is not Satan dragging us off. It is our own desires. At some point your desires conceive. You have given yourself over to do the sin. You first want to do it, and then you plan to do it. Eventually conception leads to birth. This sin will come out into the world through words and deeds. They may be hidden and done in secret, but into the world the little sin babies will be hatched. And, when sin has grown to full maturity, it brings forth death.
We must guard our hearts! O, how our hearts are laden down with impure desires that only serious warriors will rise up against and slay by the power of the Holy Spirit. Yet, you actually have to take possession of your heart before you can then guard it. This picture can be seen through Israel’s conquest of the Promised Land. Picture the Promised Land as your own soul. When you get saved, your life is full of many gigantic strongholds of sin. You look like a Lilliputian compared to them, and you are! However, God has promised to give you victory if you will attack the strongholds relying on His help. Too many Christians have settled for a small plot of victory, and have allowed the enemy quarter in their own hearts and mind. Such activity will not last us because the Holy Spirit is always calling us to rise up and fight!
After Peter’s rebuke, we are told that Ananias falls down and breathes his last. He dies on the spot. There is no sense that Peter knew that this was going to happen. Though God revealed the sin of Ananias, that is not reason to automatically believe he knew death was coming.
So, why was God so harsh? Perhaps, He determined that it was important at the onset of this group to make it clear that, even when God is being gracious, He is not to be mocked. Every man is a liar and the judgments of Jesus are righteous and true. We can be assured that sin has take deep root in the heart of Ananias, and he is boldly lying in the face of the powerful working of God through the Apostles. It is hard to understand how he could be so bold, but such is sin. It blinds us to our true condition and danger.
Our theology can so promote grace that we no longer have people who are afraid to sin. In general, you do not have to fear that God will strike you dead for sinning today, but in the words of Johnny Cash, “Sooner or later, God‘ll cut you down.” Sin that is not fought by the help of God’s Spirit will breathe death into your life and the life of people around you. It is not just a matter of your eternal destiny. It is also a matter of whether you are a source of sin and death in this life, or a source of life that comes from the Spirit of God.
God’s desire is for you to fight the sin that He reveals in your life. His word shows us what sin is, and His Spirit helps us to see it in our life. In short, the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin, and points us to the righteousness of Jesus. Yes, we are to believe in Jesus for salvation, but we are also to continue believing in Jesus for taking possession of our soul, sanctification. The Holy Spirit really can strengthen you and help you to get victory over strongholds of sin in your life, but He won’t repent for you. He won’t get you out of your bed in the morning and force you to pray for strength.
The problem is not that God is mean and scary. The problem is that we don’t take God serious enough to take sin serious enough. Imagine that your sin is so horrible that God Himself had to become a man in order to pay the price for it. Yes, it is easy to imagine that Hitler’s sin is so bad that it would take that, but not mine (of course, we would never say those words). To the degree that you think sin is not a big deal is to the degree that you diminish the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. However, the more you see the glory and majesty of the righteousness of Christ, then the more you see the depths of shame and dishonor our sinful ways are towards God and one another.
Christian, we must become convinced that sin is breathing death into our life and the lives of the people we love. We must desire to destroy its hold on our hearts, and we must learn to lean on Jesus for victory in the way that David did when standing against Goliath.
We have to stop here today. We will pick up with the story next week. Until then, I pray that the love of God will convince us to cast off any dalliance we may have with sin, and to turn our eyes unto Him. Only He can give us victory against sin, the world, and the devil!
Email Article | Print Article | Share Article | tagged Death, Donation, Heart, Holy Spirit, Judgment, Lying, Offering Pastor Marty Tuesday, September 6, 2022 at 4:31PM Acts 4:32-37. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, September 4, 2022.
Today, our passage deals with a theme that we saw back in chapter 2, verses 44-45. There Luke was giving a summary of the daily life of those who believed in Jesus, and how they took care of one another.
Essentially, Luke is showing that they took care of one another like family. Yet, it was more than that.
This was a special time in the Church in which the Messiah had come and the promised Holy Spirit was being poured out. This Holy Spirit was moving powerfully among God’s people. It was quite common for people to stay in Jerusalem even though they lived somewhere else. They did not want to miss out on the almost incredible things that God was doing. Similarly, they were gathering every day in the temple where the apostles preached Jesus and encouraged the believers. This dynamic led to a period of time where there were many reasons why people would put off normal matters of business, work.
How we need to once again become a people who are led and impassioned by what the Holy Spirit is doing. Don’t be so sure that you have the same kind of heart. The Holy Spirit is not inactive in our day and age, and yet many act as if He is. Only through prayer can we get to a place where we recognize what the Holy Spirit is doing, and where He is leading. God help us not to settle for a good life that is ignorant of what the Holy Spirit is doing in our day and age.
Let’s get into our passage.
The issue of lacking what one needs from day to day is front and center in this passage. Jesus spoke about this in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:25-34. He basically tells believers not to be anxious about their daily food, clothing, or shelter. If they would seek the Kingdom of God first in their life, then they would find God supplying these things as needed.
Notice that the emphasis is on our primary focus. Of course, we will need to work, budget, and buy food. However, we should never let this become our priority. Jesus is speaking to people who often found themselves in poor circumstances. They could have all kinds of reasons to become anxious and then be led into complaining against God (remember Israel in the wilderness).
In desperation, we can often live life at a very surface level that is focused upon survival and our fleshly needs. Don’t get me wrong. A person needs to eat, and be clothed, and have shelter. Yet, when our life first worries about these things and then becomes consumed with them, then we are never happy. People, who are eating and dressing quite luxuriously, people who are living in houses, or apartments, that are orders of magnitude higher than kings in the past had, can still find themselves anxious about that stuff because it has come to mean more to them than God and His kingdom.
Only Jesus and his purposes can satisfy our inner needs. We have a promise from him that we don’t need to worry; we just need to put his kingdom first.
In this passage, we have a practical expression of how the early Church was making sure that no one among them fell into circumstances where they were going hungry, without proper clothing, or without shelter from the elements.
We should also note that there are two sides to this issue. In Matthew 6, Jesus was speaking to the needy (really all of us). The person in need is not told that they shouldn’t worry because the Church will cover all their needs. They are told to make the Kingdom of God their focus, and then God would make sure that they had enough to eat, etc. However, God wants to help us is His business. Our job is to refrain from worry, and trust God to provide, as we do our best.
However, the other side of the issue is about those whom God wants to use to meet those needs. God is amazing. Whenever somebody lacks anything, God always makes sure that there is somebody who has plenty enough to meet that need. This is not a matter of law or commandment. God’s people are called to be volunteers out of love for Christ. We give as the Lord Jesus puts it on our heart. That said, this can become a cop-out for the person who is greedy and doesn’t want to give. We can say that God hasn’t told us to help anyone, all the while our fingers are deep in our ears. God is calling us to maturity. If God has blessed you with anything, then you need to be asking for what purpose has He done this? Only for you to consume? This is more than unlikely. We will be accountable for how we have used God’s things that He has entrusted to us, within this life that He has given to us.
Lastly in this matter, a person who lacks financially still has areas in their life where they can be used of God to help others. Also, a person who is financially wealthy still has areas in their life where they have needs that only others can meet. No one is wholly in one category or another. This takes spending time in prayer in order to understand the ways in which we can meet others needs, and the ways in which we are still quite needy ourselves.
In verse 32, Luke says that the believers were of one heart and one soul. This is similar to the phrase “in one accord,” which focuses on having a singular passion for God’s purposes. The words heart and soul have lots of overlap and basically point to that inner life as opposed to our body. The heart is pictured as a kind of control center of our thoughts on one hand, and of our desires on the other. In essence, the believers were living in a way that was as if one person was doing all of the thinking and desiring.
The only way that a group of people can have one heart and one soul is by the help of the Holy Spirit. Tyrants will use brute force and manipulation to control the people, but God doesn’t operate in this way, and neither should the leaders of the Church. This can’t be done in the flesh. Paul tells us to let the mind of Christ be in us (Philippians 2). With this in mind, we can see our need as believers is to let the Holy Spirit direct our heart and soul to be like that of Christ. He needs to direct our heart. We need to have our thoughts conformed and our desires conformed to those of Jesus daily. This is not an internal taking over by God, but a cooperation. The only way this can successfully be done is through reading the Word of God, daily times of prayer, and walking with Jesus in obedience. This is where we fight the giants internally in our soul.
Let’s look at verse 33 before we talk about the way the early Church dealt with financial needs in their midst. It is pretty common in Acts to have a specific story about something that happened, and then follow it up with a general summation of what God was doing in the Church. This verse is one of those summary style verses that lets us know that God was answering the prayer of the early Church. We are once again reminded that God was working powerfully through the apostles as they preached about the resurrection of Jesus. The great power is the dunamis power of God’s amazing work. It is literally mega-dunamis. God did extraordinary things through these apostles. Just like the man lame from birth being healed in his 40’s, we are going to see more amazing miracles in the book of Acts. These powerful demonstrations would not only let the leaders of Israel know that Jesus was multiplied in his followers, but it would also let Israel know that God had not abandoned them. He was still pouring out His mercy and grace upon them.
This is an amazing thought. They had taken the greatest gift of grace possible, God’s only Son, and crucified him. Yet, here is God; here is Jesus showing them great and powerful signs and wonders. He was essentially saying, “Even now, I will forgive. Simply put your faith in my Son, Jesus!”
Just as there was great power through the apostles, so too, there was great grace upon the believers. This is literally saying that grace, and that greatly (mega grace) was upon them. It is easy to only think of grace in terms of salvation, but this term is broader than just salvation here. It speaks to the favor, or good-will, of God resting upon them. Jesus was not only dispensing mega powerful works by the disciples, but he was also pouring out mega grace upon his Church. Jesus by his Spirit is the source of this overall atmosphere of God’s favor upon these believers. This would be a supply in which they would display God’s grace among themselves, and it would then overflow into the larger community around them.
The early Christians were a people marked by the favor of God. We can be mistaken in such judgments. Perhaps, we may believe that the American Church is the most favored of God in every generation. If we use the mind of the flesh to determine God’s favor, then we are guilty of the same sin of Job’s comforters, and the disciples themselves who thought wealth was a sign of God’s favor. This was not the case with the early Christians. The favor of God was upon them as obviously as the pillar of fire was to Pharoah that day.
Now let’s talk about the fact that the early Church took care of those who were needy in their midst. When verse 34 says, “Nor was there anyone among them who lacked,” it does not mean no one ever had a need. This is not some declaration that you will never have a need if you really trust Jesus. No, many of them did have a need, a lacking. However, those needs were being met by other brothers and sisters in the faith of Jesus. Just like an adult son would take care of his aged mother when she is widowed, so they took care of those who encountered difficulties in life. Most likely, they saw this number increase as persecutions led to many being arrested, imprisoned, and even executed.
Down through the ages, the righteous have always wrestled with such things. We are told that John Bunyan (author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, and The Holy War) spent years in the Bedford County Jail. It bothered him that his wife and child were home penniless. However, God used believers to care for them during this time. It was humbling, but John knew that he was doing God’s work. So, his family lacked in the sense of having need, but they didn’t lack because God laid it on the hearts of believers to supply their needs.
Luke describes further why these needs would be taken care of. In Acts 6, we are going to see that they had a daily distribution of food for widows, for example. Verse 32 says that their attitude towards their possessions was not a selfish one. Instead, they had all things in common. This doesn’t mean that they liquidated everything and joined a commune as some cults promote today. It doesn’t even mean that they treated all their property as belonging to the poor. In truth, they knew that their wealth was God’s in every way. Therefore, they were merely stewards of God’s stuff in this life that He had given them. It is much easier to give when your heart is not stingily clinging to the things “you have amassed by your hard work.”
In verse 34-35, we see how they were covering the needs. When it says, “all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them,” it does not mean that no one had houses anymore. It simply means that, as it was needed, those who had an excess of possessions would sell them from time to time. This money was then given to the apostles, and they distributed it to those in need. This was all done voluntarily and as God moved on their hearts.
Luke gives an example of a man named Joses. This is not the ½ brother of Jesus mentioned in Matthew 13:55. This man is a Levite who was from the Island of Cyprus. The name Joses is a diminutive form of Joseph. Clearly, Joses had been in Jerusalem early on. Was he one of those people in the crowd hearing Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost? Or was he one of the 120 who were filled with the Holy Spirit in the upper room? Some even speculate that he was one of the 70 sent out by Jesus. Of course, those possibilities are merely conjecture. Yet, Joses became a very influential person in the early Church.
We are told that the apostles called him “Barnabas.” In fact, this is the name that will be used of him from here on in the New Testament. Barnabas is Aramaic and means “Son of Encouragement.” Interestingly, the term encouragement is from the same root as the term Paraclete that is used of Jesus to refer to the Holy Spirit. It is essentially one who comes alongside of another to help in whatever manner that will help. It is a very broad term. In this passage, Barnabas encourages people by giving money to the apostles so that no one in the Jerusalem Church will lack what they need. Later, we are going to see Barnabas standing alongside of Saul of Tarsus when he believes on Jesus. Barnabas came alongside of Saul, who came to be known as Paul, and helped the apostles to accept Paul into their fellowship.
Just as there are cautionary tales in the Bible (think of Cain, King Saul, Nebuchadnezzar, Judas, and many others), so there are many who are encouraging examples to us, even exemplars of what we should aspire to be. Clearly, Jesus is the Exemplar of exemplars, but it is good to see righteous individuals who do particular exploits in the name of Jesus. Pay attention to the negative examples in Scripture that we should avoid becoming, and the positive examples that we should allow to inspire us to follow Jesus more avidly.
So, what about us today? Our culture is not as conducive to being aware of everyone’s needs. In fact, 1st century Jerusalem was a far different culture than 1st century Rome, or Thessalonica. Paul actually tells the Thessalonians that some of their people were being lazy, not working, going from house to house eating food, and being busybodies. Paul said that such people need to work hard and eat their own food in quietness. This corrective teaching has a fine edge put on it in the statement, “If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10 NKJV).
Our culture loves to give lip-service to concepts like love and grace. However, it often becomes perverted and twisted into something that is contrary to what God calls us to do. It is not the Church’s job to make sure that no one ever goes hungry. Sometimes a person has to experience powerful hunger pains in the natural before they ever come awake to the powerful, spiritual hunger pains that they have been running from. It is our job to follow Jesus in truth. It is our job to be led by the Spirit of Christ as we minister to and care for those who are believers and those who are lost.
May God help us to be open enough that others in the body would know if we are hurting. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It is an opportunity for Christ to demonstrate his compassion in us and through others.
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