The Purity of the Church (The Book of Acts #8)

One day a young man in his early twenties came into my office, back when I was serving as a young adult pastor at a church in Cedar Rapids. I’ll call him Kevin.

Kevin was tall, good-looking, had a solid job, and had one of the steadiest personalities you’d ever meet. He was the kind of guy dads want their daughters to marry.

But the reason he was in my office was that he was not doing well.

Kevin had been dating a young woman — I’ll call her Kelly — for about two years. It was serious. He was probably weeks, maybe months, from proposing. And the week before, she had discovered a secret he’d kept hidden for the entire relationship. She was irate.

You’re probably imagining something dramatic. Here it is: Kevin smoked. About one or two cigarettes a day, usually in the evening, as his way of unwinding.

He knew it wasn’t good for his health. He also knew Kelly wouldn’t approve. So he kept it hidden.

What happened was that Kelly, still in college, had a class canceled and thought it would be fun to swing by his work and surprise him. Kevin had been going through something extremely stressful at work that day and took a rare daytime smoke break, stepping outside to calm down.

And his girlfriend of two years came walking up and found her boyfriend with a cigarette in his hand.

So I sat with this remorseful twenty-something, and I thought I knew what needed to happen. I arranged to meet with them together, and I basically said to Kelly: you need to forgive him. If God can forgive you of your sins, you’re going to need to forgive him for this and for hiding it.

And she said, “You’re right. But it isn’t the smoking that bothers me.”

She didn’t like it — she’d had a grandmother die of lung cancer. But the deeper issue was that he had kept it hidden for two years. She told me there were times she’d smelled smoke on him and asked about it, and there was always an excuse. I was around so-and-so and they smoke. We went to a bar. It’s the restaurant.

He had numerous opportunities to simply say, “Yeah, I do this once or twice a day.” He never did.

And her fear was simple: if he can keep this from me, what else is he keeping from me?

The Avalanche

It turned out I was right — she did need to forgive him.

It also turned out she was right.

About two weeks later she discovered he wasn’t the casual drinker she’d believed. Not once or twice a month with friends. Each night when he had that cigarette, he was also drinking — often two or three times a day.

They started working through that. And in the middle of it, she got a text from a friend who had just seen Kevin at a restaurant with another woman.

Kevin’s explanation: just a coworker, they’d been out on a job, they stopped to eat. Not what it looked like.

But the more Kelly pressed, the more she found. That coworker was the ex-girlfriend he’d dated immediately before her. And at one point, having had too much to drink, he had kissed her.

Within two months, Kevin went from being on the verge of proposing to having his reputation completely shredded in Kelly’s eyes and in her family’s. The relationship ended.

Now Imagine He’d Gotten Away With It

Imagine Kelly never showed up at his work that day. Imagine she never discovered the drinking, never learned about the ex.

He proposes. She says yes. They get through premarital counseling. They stand on a stage and commit their lives to each other.

And then a year, two years, three years in — all of it starts coming out.

How does Kelly feel then? She’d believe she married one version of Kevin and discover she’d married someone else entirely. She would start doubting the whole relationship, retroactively.

I’ve been a pastor long enough to have done a lot of premarital and marriage counseling, and I’ll tell you plainly: as painful as these things are before the ring, they are far easier to deal with then than after the vows. Because as Scripture puts it, when a husband and wife commit to each other they become one flesh. So those struggles and trials are a tearing at that flesh. It hurts.

So yes — that discovery hurt Kelly badly during the dating years. It would have been immeasurably worse inside a marriage.

Which means the day she caught him on that smoke break — the day the dam burst — was a blessing. It was painful. It was humiliating. And it spared her far more grief than she would have known otherwise.

Have You Had a Mixed Blessing?

Have you ever had something like that? Something painful, maybe shocking, that stunned you — where you may have prayed, God, why are You letting this happen? — and then years later, with hindsight, you looked back and realized it was actually a good thing?

Maybe it was a brutal breakup. Maybe getting fired. Maybe applying for a job you were certain was yours and not getting it. Maybe a plan you’d built, or a business you started, that failed spectacularly.

It hurt enormously in the moment. And now you can see it was a blessing.

Today we’re going to see a blessing of exactly that kind. We’re going to watch God protect and purify the church — in a deeply shocking way.

Let me forewarn you: some of you are not going to like this passage. It’s going to bother you. Some people use this text as a reason to leave Christianity, or to avoid it entirely, because they read it and think, there is no way I would follow a God like that.

My hope is that as we work through this awkward passage, you’ll discover God’s heart for you — and see that this is genuinely a blessing.

Why We Don’t Skip the Hard Passages

Open to Acts 5, verses 1 through 11.

If you’re new here, our normal diet is book-by-book teaching, working section by section. We aren’t opposed to topical sermons — we have a couple of topical series coming this year, and they can be genuinely good.

But one of my fears about a steady diet of topical preaching is that it makes it very easy to simply never encounter passages like this one.

Second Timothy 3:16 says that all Scripture — not some, not most — is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

Which means even the awkward, uncomfortable, question-inducing passages are useful for exactly those things.

So as tempting as it is for someone like me — who hates confrontation and would love to skip this — I think we have to stop and look, and let God confront and even shock us. Because I think He has something here for us.

Acts 5:1–11

But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and with his wife’s knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.”

When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it. The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him.

After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. And Peter said to her, “Tell me whether you sold the land for so much.” And she said, “Yes, for so much.” But Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.”

Immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men came in they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things.

Why Luke Put This Here

At the end of March we finished chapter 2 with an extraordinary, almost idyllic description of the church. Two weeks ago we finished chapter 4 with another one. Put those together and the church looks like a work of art. Nearly perfect.

And it’s as if Luke wants us to know: not everything was perfect.

But he doesn’t show us a minor blemish. Not a birthmark on the cheek. Not one foot slightly shorter than the other. He wants us to see something genuinely ugly.

In chapters 3 and 4 we saw the outside pressure coming against the church. Now he shows us the potential problem inside.

At the end of chapter 4 we met a man named Joseph, better known by the nickname the apostles gave him — Barnabas. He sold a field and gave the proceeds, and he’s presented as an illustration of the church’s generosity.

And now Luke shows us a couple who wanted to look like Barnabas on the outside while being the exact opposite on the inside.

Two weeks ago I mentioned that when Scripture repeats something, God has a purpose. And He does it again here. Look at the structure: an intro sentence setting the stage, then the setting with Ananias, then Peter’s confrontation, then the judgment and burial — and then the whole sequence repeats with Sapphira, closing with an outro in verse 11.

Why not simply append this to chapter 4? Luke could have written, “Barnabas gave a generous gift, but a couple named Ananias and Sapphira attempted the same thing fraudulently and were struck down.”

Because in chapter 4, verse 32, we were told the church was of one heart and soul — completely unified. And now Luke is showing us that not everyone was. At least one couple was emotionally and spiritually split off from the body.

And to illustrate that, he splits their story — showing us that each of them was independently complicit.

The Question Everyone Is Actually Asking

As a preacher, the tempting move is to work through the setting, then the confrontation, then the judgment.

My fear is that if I do, you won’t hear a word until I reach the judgment. Some of you have barely been listening already, because you’re still stuck on: God killed them. For fraud.

That doesn’t match our picture of God. I stand up here constantly telling you how God demonstrates His love through the cross — and now He strikes down a couple.

If they’d been mass murderers, we’d understand. Thank You, God, for protecting Your church. But fraud? We’ve already tried the case and decided God got the sentence wrong. Maybe they should have been removed from the church. Maybe they should have been made to bring the full amount. But death?

So this morning I’m going to share my theory.

I’m using the word theory deliberately, because the text does not say this explicitly. I came into this week with the idea, and the deeper I studied the more comfortable I became with it. But since Scripture doesn’t state it outright, there is a real possibility I’m wrong — which may mean you need to go study this further yourself.

And let me set aside a question we’re not going to spend time on: how did they die? That’s a fruitless discussion. The question worth asking is why.

My theory: Ananias and Sapphira were not Christians. They were false converts — wolves in sheep’s clothing, worming their way in, with the potential to destroy the church. And God was protecting His church through this.

Here are three reasons from the text.

Proof one: “Satan filled your heart.”

Verse 3: “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?”

That word translated “filled” — used by the majority of translations — can also be rendered “exercised control over.”

In Ephesians 5:18 we’re told not to be filled, or controlled, by alcohol, but rather, as followers of Christ, to be filled with the Holy Spirit — controlled by God’s Spirit.

So if you follow Jesus, if you understand His work on the cross and through the empty tomb and have placed all your faith there, you have received God’s Spirit, and you’re to live in such a way that His Spirit controls you.

And if you are being filled and controlled by God’s Spirit, you cannot simultaneously be filled and controlled by Satan.

Satan is God’s adversary, intent on ruining anything God is doing. And the church in Acts is growing at an astonishing rate — numerically and spiritually. No wonder he’s trying to stop it. He tried in chapters 3 and 4 through the Sanhedrin threatening Peter and John. We’ll see more of that. It didn’t work.

So now he tries to ruin it from the inside.

If he can get Ananias and Sapphira, he gives them a plan: mimic what Barnabas did. Sell some land. Present the gift. People say, “That’s wonderful,” and welcome them in.

And now they’re not just accepted — they have influence. People start thinking, maybe we should hear what Ananias and Sapphira have to say; after all, they gave that large gift. And they worm their way in, and Satan uses them like a cancer to rot the church from the inside out.

But if you’re a follower of Jesus, you cannot be filled by Satan. You are filled by the Spirit — and the Spirit is working toward unity. What we’re watching here is not an attempt at unity. It’s an attempt to be accepted and admired in order to gain leverage.

Proof two: the manner of their deaths.

I did a lot of digging this week trying to find comparable instances — people who died suddenly like this. And every one I could find happened to people who were not God-fearers.

There are plenty of people in Scripture who fear God and commit serious transgressions, and they are never struck down in a moment like this.

Think about one of the worst sins in the Old Testament. King David — a man after God’s own heart — commits adultery and then tries to cover it by having Bathsheba’s husband placed on the front lines to be killed. Murder by proxy. And God does not kill him. In fact, God uses David’s line to bring the Messiah.

Or in the New Testament, Peter denies the Son of God three times — and Jesus restores him rather than destroy him. And as we’ve already seen in Acts, Peter becomes one of the primary voices of the church, with roughly five thousand people coming to faith under his preaching.

But there are people who drop dead in an instant, and they aren’t God-fearers.

In Leviticus 10, Aaron the brother of Moses is a priest, and so are his sons Nadab and Abihu. They offer what the text calls strange fire — worship outside of what God had commanded, done their own way — and they are killed instantly.

And this one’s on my mind because of where we are: in Acts 12 we’re going to watch Herod drop dead in an instant. A crowd will declare his voice to be the voice of a god rather than a man, he’ll accept that worship, and in that moment God strikes him down.

God seems to act this way only with people who are not His. Those who genuinely worship and follow Him commit transgressions and face consequences — but I could not find a single instance of a believer dying instantaneously like this.

Proof three: they were killed for sin.

Look at why they die. Verses 3 and 4 both say it: they lied to God. They are killed for their sin.

And if you follow Jesus, what does Scripture teach? Jesus already paid for your sin. When you place all your faith on His work on the cross and through the empty tomb, your sin has been paid for.

I think that’s precisely why we never see a follower of God have his sin paid for through his own death — because it’s already been paid for by a death.

The fact that these two die in that moment makes me believe they never truly put their faith in Jesus. They may have understood these things cognitively. But they never surrendered their lives. They weren’t there because God had drawn them to the church. They were there to use the church.

If they had been genuine believers who somehow concocted this plan — maybe they were lonely, maybe they felt unloved, maybe they were socially awkward and thought this was how to make everyone like them — there would still have been consequences. There would have been discipline. But I don’t believe it would have been death.

The fact that God went to such an extreme makes me think something far more serious was happening. I believe they were genuinely trying to ruin the church — to work their way in and slowly rot it from within.

Which Means This Was a Blessing

If that’s right, then this extreme action was protection. God was purifying His church so that this couldn’t happen from the inside — because He knew what was coming from the outside.

He knew the persecution that was about to fall on them. And if they were rotten at the core when that storm hit, the whole thing would have blown over.

So yes, God took an extreme measure. But sometimes paddles are applied to a chest to shock a heart back into rhythm. Maybe God used this shock to keep the church’s heart beating in rhythm with His own.

So What Does This Mean Tuesday Morning?

What difference does this make when you go back to work, or back to school?

First, if you are a follower of Jesus — if you have placed all your faith in the gospel — you can be at peace. You do not have to fear that yesterday’s lie means you’ll drop dead today.

Does your lie have consequences? Yes. So confess it. Make amends with whoever you hurt. But your sin has been paid for. Ask God to keep empowering you to live out the identity He’s given you in Christ. Don’t revel in your sin — confess it, move on from it, and be at peace.

Second, what if you’re here today and you know deep down you’re not a follower of Jesus — but your family is, so you go along with it and pretend?

Stop pretending. Give your life to Jesus.

God loves you so much that He didn’t merely protect His church at extreme cost. He loves you so much that He paid for your sin Himself, dying on a cross.

So you don’t need to keep performing. You don’t need to be careful about which words you say around which people, or make sure the radio is tuned to the right station when certain people are in the car, while being someone else entirely on your own.

God does not want you living with one foot in the world and one foot in His church. Jump all in.

We’re named Riverwood after a river — the one in Ezekiel 47, the river that brings life. I believe that river represents Jesus. I want to see you jump all the way into the river. Stop straddling. Let Jesus become your identity. Let Him fill you and control you.

He doesn’t want you living in two worlds, because it is tearing at you. And one day it will come out — and there will be people who pull away from you the way Kelly pulled away from Kevin.

Don’t live that secret life anymore. Come fully into God’s light.

Third, if you’re here and you’re not a follower of Jesus and you’re honest enough to say so — first, thank you for your honesty. And second, I give you exactly the same invitation.

Don’t let this passage frighten you into thinking God is going to strike you down. What we see here is extraordinarily rare. God almost never works this way. For every instance like this in Scripture there are hundreds of instances of grace.

God gives you grace because He loves you, He is for you, and He wants you in His family. He has already done everything necessary. He has already paid the penalty for your sin. He now simply invites you to give it all to Him.

Giving It All

And “all” does mean all. When you put your life in Christ, you’re saying: I’m in. I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit and controlled by Him. Which means everything you have belongs to Him.

That does not mean you have to sell everything and hand it over. Look at what Peter actually says in verses 3 and 4: while it remained unsold, wasn’t it your own? After it was sold, wasn’t it at your disposal?

They didn’t have to give any of it. They could have given a portion and simply been honest — we sold it for this much, and we’re giving a tenth, or half, or eighty percent. That would have been fine.

The problem was the lie, told in order to root themselves into the church and cause the damage they intended.

God does not want you living apart from Him. He has already done everything to bring you in. He only asks that when you give yourself to Him, you give it all — emotionally, spiritually, mentally, financially, physically.

To some of us that sounds terrifying. And it is actually the freest place you will ever stand. It’s where your greatest joy is found.

The world insists your greatest joy is in riches, or fame, or power, or something else. And time after time the world lies to you.

God says the greatest life you could possibly have is found in Him.