This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to our look together through the book of Acts. We're in
Acts chapter 5 today, our second day of our second week, and we're looking at
what the early church was really like, the tensions that they lived with.
Yesterday we talked about the fact that with boldness there is always
opposition.

To have boldness and to expect no opposition is just to live in an unreal world.
With boldness there is opposition, but when I pray, when I praise God, He helps
me to break through the opposition. We look at a second truth together today.

It actually begins at the end of chapter 4, but then we're going to see how it
breaks through in chapter 5. The second truth is with sacrifice there is
selfishness. We're going to learn from two men, Ananias and Barnabas.

One shows the church as it's meant to be, the other shows the church as it's
always in danger of becoming. First Barnabas, Acts chapter 4 verses 36 and 37,
the end of the last chapter, Joseph a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles
called Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, sold a field he owned and he
brought the money and he put it at the apostles' feet. What an act of sacrifice.

What a moment for this early church, how people must have praised God because of
Barnabas. But whenever there is a sacrifice there's the danger of selfishness.
Other people see the praise that comes and they want to be a part of it, but
maybe they're not willing to make the same sacrifice and so selfishness creeps
in.

It happened with Ananias and it happened with his wife, Sapphira. Acts 5, 1 and
2, here's what happened. 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. Satan's first approach to
attack the church is always from the outside and so he does that in the book of
Acts hoping that the arrest and the threats would frighten the leaders. When
that failed, Satan decided to attack the church from the inside and to use
people who were part of the fellowship and he uses Ananias and Sapphira.

They lie and because of their lie this early church is in danger of going down
the road of selfishness. Others would have known they didn't bring all of the
money even though they acted like they did and others would have followed right
after them. But that is not the end of the story.

God has an answer to this. Just like prayer and praise are the answer when we
face opposition, a healthy fear of God is the answer when we face our own
selfishness. What keeps us from living selfish lives?

A healthy fear of God, healthy respect for God, knowing that what God says is
true and even though it feels right to be selfish, the end of that selfishness
is not going to be a good end. The end of that road is not going to be where I
want to be. A healthy respect, a healthy fear even for God.

It certainly happened in this early church. Listen to what happened in verses 3
to 5. Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart
that you've lied to the Holy Spirit and you've kept for yourself some of the
money that 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've not
lied to men but to God.

" When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. The same happens to Sapphira.
She comes in, Peter asks her, "Is this what happened?

" She lies as well and then she dies. So in verse 11, great fear seized the
whole church and all who heard about these events. This was a godly fear.

They weren't afraid of what God might do. They were afraid. They were in awe
because of what he had done.

We read these verses and we think, "Why did God kill them? " There are people in
churches who have done far worse and lived. You may have done far worse and
lived.

People are deceptive and selfish and showy all the time. So why Ananias and
Sapphira? It was a matter of timing.

This is a young church and this young church is just bursting out into the
world. This was not the time for this kind of an example of selfishness and
their influence would have been devastating on this young church. But it's also
because pretense and pride are so destructive to the church and God is showing
us here how destructive they can really be.

Now, remember, Ananias and Sapphira, they are both believers. So God's not
destroying them here. He's taking them home to be in heaven early.

The rest of their lives of ministry are lost. Opportunities on this world are
lost and rewards in heaven are lost, but he's not destroying them here. He's
just taking them home because their example was so dangerous.

The answer to selfishness is a healthy respect, a healthy fear even, of God. It
makes me realize I trust God more than I trust my feelings. I trust God more
than I trust my own needs, selfish needs.

With sacrifice, there is always this temptation towards selfishness. We just
need to realize that. That's part of the church.

And we need to realize that God deals with it through a healthy fear of him.
There's a third thing to realize as we walk through these chapters and that is
that with success, there is always jealousy in verses 14 and then verse 16 and
17. Here's what happens.

"More and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their
number. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their
sick and those who were tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed.
Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of
the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy.

" Now, before we talk about their jealousy, just a word about the miracles.
Miracles are happening all the time as we're reading through these chapters. And
we all have the question, why don't we see the same kind of miracles today as we
see in the book of Acts?

I believe that people are praying with just as much faith today as they prayed
with then. And the truth of the matter is, Jesus said it only takes a mustard
seed of faith anyway. So I trust that God knows how to best work miracles so
that they bring people to faith in Jesus Christ.

So why they had greater miracles then and why we don't see the same thing now?
For some reason, it's how God is working to bring the most people to faith in
Jesus Christ. At the beginning of this early church, they needed to have the
miracles to draw attention to the church.

Now, I'm afraid sometimes that the miracles just draw attention to the miracles.
They become some newspaper story, they become some hype, they become a YouTube
video instead of drawing attention to Jesus Christ. But I'm just suggesting that
I don't know all the reasons.

I don't know the hand of God and how he works. But I do trust it. And I do trust
that people are praying today for miracles.

We hear about some of them. We don't hear about others. And I do trust that God
is just as powerfully at work in the world today as he was at work in the book
of Acts.

Just as powerfully. Because it's the same God. It's the same Holy Spirit.

It's the same call on believers to pray. Same spirit in our lives. Now, with
that said, what about this jealousy?

There is great success with these early disciples of Jesus. And there's great
jealousy with the leaders of the church. They begin to immediately criticize and
attack.

What about when somebody is jealous of you because of your faith? Well, first,
how do you know? It's so hard to know the motivations of others.

You don't know why you're being criticized. Some criticism will be legitimate
and some will be motivated by jealousy. That you can be sure of.

You don't know which is which always. You can't see into somebody's heart, but
I'll tell you this for sure. Knowing human nature and seeing what the Bible says
about our nature, some criticism will be legitimate and some will be motivated
by jealousy.

It doesn't matter the motivation really. You can learn from any criticism. Any
criticism that comes your way.

The question is, what do you do with that criticism? Well, you learn from
critics and you pray for critics, but you never let them become the focus. If
it's a legitimate criticism, they don't want to be the focus.

They want you to focus on what God can do in your life. If it's a criticism
that's motivated by jealousy, they would love to become the focus. They'd love
to become all you live your life for, thinking about them, answering them.

Not that you should never pray for a critic or answer a critic, but then you let
it go. You keep your focus on God and not man. In verse 29, in the face of this
criticism, Peter and the other apostles replied, "We must obey God rather than
men.

" That's the direction that you go. Let's take a moment to pray together. Lord,
as we pray today, we pray about our own selfishness first.

We see our selfish hearts like no one else does. Lord, we know ourselves and we
know that you know us even better than we know ourselves. Keep growing us and
instead of selfishness overwhelming our lives, when we feel the ugliness of
selfishness in our lives, let us turn to you and in respect and fear of you, let
us realize we can trust you to grow us and change us.

Lord, as we're living for you, if we're criticized, if there are those who
become jealous, those who become critics, help us to focus on you, to keep the
focus on you, praying for critics and serving those who are critics, loving you
all the way through, obeying you rather than allowing a criticism to cause us to
begin to serve a man, to serve some human institution. Lord, thank you for your
love for us. Thank you for the call that you have on our lives.

In your name we pray, amen. Tomorrow we're going to see that the growth of the
church brings some problems.