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Acts 5:1-16  If you haven’t read this passage, you’re going to need to.  Here’s a link to one translation. 

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%205%3A1-16&version=NLT

Unfortunately there are always people who want the praise of their peers but have no desire to earn it. Enter Ananias and Sapphira. Like many people, they gave a generous gift, but unfortunately they did it to earn people’s praise.  They wanted to be impressive.  They wanted to be honoured for their generosity.  Only, is it generous to give something just so that you can get something that is even more valuable to you?  So they lied.  They acted like they were giving every dime they had earned on the sale of their property.  They planned together to lie about it.  It was such a completely unnecessary thing to do. They could have said, hey we have a property.  We can live without it.  We want to help too.  We want you to take part of what we earn on the sale to help out.  That would have been such a great thing to do, so honouring to God, such a blessing to the church.  Peter tells them that.  But it wasn’t about loving their fellow believers, it was about elevating themselves above them using generosity as a weapon.  

I’m not going to lie, I’ve always found this story unsettling.  I know I have lied before, and I am grateful to report that I have yet to just drop dead.  What happened to Ananias and Sapphira feels unusually harsh.  I don’t have a great explanation.  All I see is an example to learn from.  When Peter confronted each of them with the truth, he said that what they did wrong was that they lied to the Holy Spirit and tested him. Yes, they had lied.  That was wrong.  But Peter indicates that the big problem was that they had conspired together to try to fool God.  It was their heart attitude in the deceit that really concerns Peter and God.  God really does care about our hearts.  Peter actually tells Ananias that Satan has filled his heart! 

He’s giving money to the church.  That looks like a good thing. We can do and say all the right things.  We can look like really good people, but if it’s an act intended to somehow manipulate God, he is really not ok with it. 

Let’s also be clear about another thing, Peter doesn’t strike them dead.  Peter is not their judge or executioner.  When they are confronted by the truth, they die.  God sees their hearts.  He knows what they planned in secret.  He knows they have no remorse. Apparently, God didn’t want that kind of heart in his church.  I need to remember that God sees my heart. I might fool the people around me, but if my motivation is my own glory and not his, he knows it.  

Another take away for me is that there have always been people in the church who are only pretending to love God and his people.  There will always be those who are trying to manipulate the church for their own glory and agendas.  God wasn’t ok with it then, so it’s reasonable to guess that he’s not ok with it now.  They may not drop dead during the offering at church, but God is not oblivious.  He isn’t fooled.  He can deal with it.  This means I don’t have to waste a lot of time on it myself.  My time is much better spent examining my own heart and trying to keep it on track. 

So some scary miraculous things were happening in the very early church but there were far more wonderful, happy miraculous things. We see the apostles, Peter especially, carrying on the mission of Jesus. This is exactly what we read was going on when Jesus was on earth.  People are being healed, demons are being removed from people’s lives.  People are coming in droves just like when Jesus was walking among them.  In fact, we have this weird comment that people were laying their sick friends on mats along the roadside where the apostles walked so that Peter’s shadow fell on them.  I feel like that detail is added, not as a recommendation for how we should heal people, but as a demonstration of how well received the apostles were among the common people in the early days.  

We find out people were nervous to be counted among the disciples because the authorities were already opposing them, but they were following them around to watch people be healed and helped.  I’m visualizing a bit of a celebrity mob scene, but maybe of someone who is on the verge of being cancelled.  People are fascinated by them and want the selfie, but they aren’t really wanting to be in the entourage in case things go bad.  So ya, in a lot of ways, Peter and Jesus’ other friends are picking up the work Jesus had been doing exactly as he said they would.