Great Grace, Great Fear

The Spirit produces deep unity and radical generosity among God’s people—but also calls His Church to holiness. This passage contrasts sincere faith with deadly deception, showing us that God’s grace cannot be treated casually. The same Spirit who unites and blesses also exposes hypocrisy. Here, we are reminded that the Church is not merely a community of shared values, but a holy people living before a holy God.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This morning I have the privilege of bringing the message from the book of Acts, chapter 4 and chapter 5. And we're continuing our sermon series. And so I invite you to open your Bibles there to Acts chapter 4 and verse 32. For the last few weeks, I've been thinking about two kinds of church stories. There are stories that make you smile, that encourage you, that make you even shed a tear of joy. And then there's church stories that make you cringe, that make you squirm in your seat. Well, our text this morning, Acts chapter, the end of chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5, actually has both of those kinds of stories. It's going to be a text that's full of wonderful things, encouraging things, inspiring things that are going to uplift us, and it's going to be filled with a major story that is going to sober us, maybe even shock us, challenge our faith and our even our view of God. Trying to follow the text, I'm titling this message Great Grace and Great Fear. Because those two phrases are repeated in these chapters several times. Great grace, great fear, and it sort of summarizes the message today. We're going to be unable to dodge some uncomfortable themes today. Here are just a couple examples. We're going to talk about how we steward our money and our possessions. I'm sure you signed up for that today, right? How about sacrificial financial generosity? Deep relational unity in the church. Real, tangible, and not fake accountability to one another. Number five, the theme of our hearts being laid bare before God's eyes, despite how we may project ourselves to others. That's a comfortable topic. And finally, the theme of God's judgment on hypocrisy in the church. I took those straight from the text. That's what we're going to be talking about today. So if you're if you're a little squeamish about those kinds of things, it's a great time to go refill your coffee and just keep walking out the door and come again next week and try again. The driving question this morning is this. What happens when the Holy Spirit that we sing about and preach about and talk about reveals that he's actually here with us? And that he demands true holiness in our hearts. Does he find us living out true faith and sincere love? Or does he find us playing games with God, going through the outward motions of the Christian life when our hearts are far from him? There are two parts of this sermon based on our passage, and the first is this in verses 32 through 37. The Spirit produces generosity in the church. This is the uplifting part. This is the exciting part. This is the part that we look back and we're amazed at the first church, the early church in Jerusalem, and we are encouraged by how the Holy Spirit was producing generosity among them. Brother Tyler read the text a little bit ago, but we're going to refer to several parts of it as we go along through here. Luke is essentially giving us another snapshot of the early church in Jerusalem, the very first church. And we see that the gospel was not just spoken there, it was embodied. These people were transformed by what they professed. For example, he says the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul. We've all been in churches, maybe most of us have been around churches most long enough in our lives to know that churches can have challenges and difficulties, and you know, people that are arguing over the color of the carpet or over how strong the coffee is, or someone said that someone else's kid was a brat, and then just go down the list. And there's all kinds of reasons that people might part ways and have infighting and clicks and all that stuff, right? That's the ugly stuff. Because guess what? We're all human. And if you've ever seen the office or you ever worked in a public space, you know that that's just very human. And we are not exempt here in the body of Christ. So it comes remarkably amazing that these Christians were, the full number of them, were of one heart and one soul. This did not happen automatically. This is not the way humans work. You get a bunch of people in the same room and they immediately start forming factions and cliques and everything. The spirit was at work. The full number were of one heart and soul. They were, they had deep spiritual, theological, relational unity. It was the culture of the congregation. In other words, the church was more than just a large crowd in the same building. It was truly a single organism, a body, as the Apostle Paul would talk about the church, a body that functioned in every part, laboring joyfully for the good of the whole. It was truly a family. He says it in a couple of different ways. He says, No one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own. That's a little countercultural, isn't it? No one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own. He puts it positively. They had everything in common. In other words, if one person hurt, the rest could not and did not pretend that it was not their concern. Now here's the key heart shift, I believe, that the spirit was producing. The death of self-preoccupation, of rugged individualism, the death of possessiveness and self-preservation. These are things that drive us, maybe more in America than in other countries, where maybe they have a stronger sense of tribalism and local identity and even the family structure. The church saw the death of self-preoccupation, rugged individualism, possessiveness, and self-preservation. And guess what? Their grip on their possessions, Luke says here, began to loosen. Their vocabulary began to change from mine to God's, and their aim in life changed from being protect at all costs to how can I serve God with what He's given me? How can I serve His people? Now, a key backdrop to this story is Deuteronomy chapter 15, and we're going to read just a couple verses there. Deuteronomy chapter 15, verses 7 through 10 gives a command that gives some context to this idea of God's heart for those in need and how God's people should be open-hearted and open-handed towards them. Deuteronomy 15, verse 7 says this If any, if among you one of your brothers should become poor in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God has given you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother. But you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. Take care, lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart, and you say, Oh, the seventh year, the year of release is near. In other words, an excuse. And your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother, and you give him nothing. And he cried to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin. You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. There is so much there. So every seven years Israel would have the year of Jubilee, or the seventh year release, and uh the year of Jubilee was every 50th. What would happen is all debts would be forgiven at the end of seven years. So if it was close to the seven year and you lent someone some money, then you'd be out that money for good because they couldn't, there would be no time for them to pay you back. Because in six or eight months, they're gonna be free of the debt. And so you realize you're really giving this away. And so it's like, oh yeah, the uh let me talk to my wife, right? Come up with an excuse, and you hold back and you leave them destitute. That's what's happening here. 1 John chapter 3, verses 16 through 18, uh, I'll just read those real quickly. He echoes the same language of Deuteronomy when he says this. By this we know love that Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, and here's the language of Deuteronomy, but closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. So this is not just an Old Testament law principle that was under the Mosaic covenant and now we're under Christ. This is something that reflects the heart of God that transcends the covenants and is a point of continuity, where God's new covenant people are now doing this from the heart in ways that the Old Testament people likely didn't. What the Old Testament law required, the Spirit now produces in New Testament believers open hearts and open hands. Now, what was the engine that was driving them? What was their, I mean, what could possibly move them to this radical generosity? The engine, he says in the text, is their message about the resurrection of Jesus. With great power, they gave testimony to the witness, witness and testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And in Acts 4.33, he says, God's great grace was with them. The truth of Christ's resurrection, and thus our future resurrection, created a resurrection culture that saw money and possessions as temporary stewardships and no longer as our savior, our security, our meaning, our status. The resurrection changes everything. You see, if Jesus really is alive as he is, then death is defeated. That is, the worst that can happen to us is gonna be undone. Our future is secure, and money is no longer the Savior that measures our status or our security. Fear can lose its leverage on us, and our hearts and hands can open. I'll put it this way Spirit-filled churches, saturated with resurrection hope, are freer with their resources because they're no longer enslaved to the anxiety of self-preservation or the misery of self-preoccupation. To paraphrase Jesus, they have learned that life is about more than money. And the result was stunning in the early church. It says there was not a needy person among them. Now, in a day when personal capital was tied up, not in the local fifth, third bank, but uh in real estate, land and house or houses, property. If they didn't have the cash on hand to meet someone's needs, it says they went and sold something. Now, in our day, we typically have a little more liquidity, I think. And we're probably just more wealthy in general than they were in the first century. They didn't have that liquidity, they would go sell something. We have less excuse, right? Because we don't have to go sell something, probably, to be generous. It says here that they would go sell something, lay the proceeds of the apostles' feet, and distribution would happen as any had need. Now, right now, some of you, especially if you're sort of political leaning, you may be thinking, this sounds more like Karl Marx than Jesus Christ, right? Here's how Acts chapter 4 differs in five ways, and there's probably more. Differences from economic collectivism or communism or socialism. This is radically different. At first blush, it might look like they're similar, they're really not. Number one, generosity in Acts 4 was a personal decision. It was completely voluntary, it wasn't forced. The believers gave because great grace had changed their hearts, not because an authority had imposed quotas or penalties, as you will find in socialism and in communism. Secondly, the right to private property was upheld. It's assumed in our text, in fact, even stated that these people owned property. In communism, you don't own property. The government owns it, they let you use it if you're nice. The message, the passage assumes real ownership. They were able to sell, their money was theirs to give. Thirdly, the goal of their giving was to meet real needs, not to redistribute wealth. Giving was targeted for the vulnerable, not for an ideology that flattens all economic distinctions. And this wasn't advocating a welfare state where you think like human nature, yeah, if we start being generous, if I really bend over backwards and sacrifice something, give it to you, eventually you're gonna start expecting it. If I don't do it next time, you're gonna resent me, and then you're gonna stop working and all this sort of stuff. The Bible doesn't allow us to do that. 2 Thessalonians 3.10 says this if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. The Bible takes very seriously personal industry, financial responsibility. The church isn't here to give free handouts for someone who's not willing to work. Again, 1 Timothy 5.8, if anyone does not provide for his own, he has denied the faith he uh professes and is worse than a pagan. In other words, if someone's not working, the church is not going to be giving them handouts. That is, if they're not seeking to try to work and that sort of thing. A lot of responsibility is here. It wasn't excusing a lack of personal financial responsibility. Whereas communism, socialism, all that, they actually deincentivize uh capital ventures and uh sticking your neck out for uh efforts to try to raise money and everything, they didn't deincentivize work in general. Number four, their motivation in Acts 4 was worship, faith, and love, not political ideology. Their lives had been changed by the resurrection. This wasn't about following Marx or Engels. Number five, this all was in the context of the church, that is a covenant community. The church was not setting a political blueprint for society at large to be enforced by the government. This is just a bunch of people transformed by the resurrection and the Holy Spirit and the gospel and God's great grace, and their hearts open to people in need and their hands open to people in need. It's interesting in verses 36 and 37, Luke mentions a man named Barnabas. Barnabas was a real man with a real field, and he sold that field and made a real sacrifice. And he brought that money and he laid it at the apostles' feet. There were lots of others who did this, but Barnabas is kind of a standout figure, and we learn why later in the book of Acts. Here it gives his nerd his uh his nickname, uh Barnabas. His real name was Joseph. His Barnabas uh name Barnabas means son of encouragement or son of consolation. And later in the book of Acts we find out why. This guy was amazing. When Paul didn't want, when Paul was like had written off young uh um uh what was his name? Not not Timothy, not Silas. John Mark, thank you. Good. Paul had written off John Mark because John Mark got a little homesick and he said, Paul, I'm going back. Paul wrote him off, said, Well, I'm done with you. Barnabas was the one that came along and said, I'll take him with me. Barnabas was a son of consolation. He was someone who was giving stuff, he was someone who was filled with the Holy Spirit, he was an amazing guy. And so he was obviously a standout kind of figure in this. He was sort of the preeminent example of what this kind of heart of generosity looked like. He would be willing to sell property just to meet someone else's needs. That is radical. He realized that his faith was more than words, it would actually cost him something. Let's just stop that. I mean, that just struck me today, or this this week. Do I think that my faith will actually cost me? I mean, isn't the name of the game in society at large to get as much as you can out of life and work and marriage and parenting and everything else and the church by investing as little as possible? I mean, why would you invest more than necessary? I mean, that is the game of a good investor, is you invest just enough to get everything you need, no more, don't risk any more than you have to. But that's not how Barnabas operated. He wasn't calculatedly investing in the church, he was giving freely. I can't help but think of a story from the life of King David. In 2 Samuel chapter 24, King David, there was this huge plague that went through, he was killing people left and right. David tells the Lord, I'm going to build you an altar. But he wanted a kind of a high location to build an altar to the Lord, and so he went and he found this plot of land on what would be called Mount Moriah. It was owned by a guy named Aruna, and he goes to him and he says, Hey, I would like to buy this plot of land. Aruna says, Oh, King. You know, he bowed to him and he's like, Um, uh, I've got a threshing floor there, and there's some uh there's some wooden instruments there, and there's oxen there. There's everything you need to just build an altar. I'm gonna give this to you: land, oxen, wood, everything. You just build your altar. And King David, as king, could have been like, All right, thanks. But this is what David said in 2 Samuel 24, 24. But the king said to Aruna, No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing. So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for 50 shekels of silver. This is personal for David. I'm not gonna relate to my God in such a way that costs me nothing. I'm not gonna do that. That's not a sacrifice. And guess what? God honored that sacrifice. The plague stopped. And guess what was later built on that very plot of land, which we now today call the Temple Mount, Solomon's Temple. God honored that sacrifice of David, and later his son Solomon would build the very first Jewish temple on that very land that David refused to take as a freebie. It cost him something. I love in our church when I see meal trains that are put together routinely for families when babies are born and um when people have major surgery, other occasions, it's very common at Sacred Mission Church. I love that someone took initiative to reach out and help, and others can join in. I love hearing that an envelope shows up on someone's mailbox that covers someone's rent in a tough season. My heart is warm when church members offer uh childcare or transportation or um job networking for someone who's in need, and and they come alongside people and they say, in effect, you belong here. We love you, you're not alone. These are the kinds of things that we do when our hearts are being transformed by the Holy Spirit who has brought us into God's family. We want to embrace those who are a part of that family. Now, if money and security are our functional saviors this morning, we might be a little uncomfortable right now. Because we're here not just to learn about what a church 2,000 years ago did. We're here to be confronted with what God wants us to do. This text hits us where we're most sensitive and most protective. Our time and especially our money. It strikes at the very heart of our individualistic assumptions, our self-focused desires, our spending habits. How we spend our time and our money reveals our true treasure. There's no way around it. If money is our master, our hands will clench towards need because if you have a need, what's that to me? I've got children to pay for, I've got college to save for, I've got retirement one day. I want to be on a beach. Why would I put threat in any of that by helping you out because you're irresponsible? That's how our hearts can be. Now, of course, if tragedy befalls me and I'm in the shoes of someone in need, I'm sure hoping you don't have that attitude towards me. Jesus said, Love each other like you want to be loved. We often tighten our grips because our true children. Treasure isn't Jesus. Our excuses pile up. But if Jesus is our Savior, our Lord, our true King, if He's what matters most, even if I actually don't get to retire one day, but I'm able to live generously up until that point, I will have been a success. Versus the guy who saved retirement. This happens all the time. I can't tell you how many times in the hospital where I work. Someone comes in, you talk to them before they go to sleep. I work in anesthesia. You know, what you do for a living? Well, I retired. Oh wow. Well, what'd you do? Well, I worked so-and-so, so-and-so for you know 35 years or retired, whatever. Guess what? Terminal cancer. That happens so frequently. What are we living for? If we're living just for that post-retirement age, we're trying to pat our pockets for that, and that's kind of what we do. We get out of bed and we do that just so we can. You may not get to experience that. Live as if you won't. Save as if you will. My prayer this week has not been, Lord, increase my giving. Lord, help me just pry it out of my hand, my cold dead hands. No, my prayer, and I mean this very sincerely, my prayer has been, Lord, increase my joy in you, my security in you, my love for you, my love for the family of God, my love for my neighbors, my surrender to your promptings. My prayer has been, Lord, free me from my relentless pursuit of self-preservation. That Jesus told me, if you save your life, the irony is you end up losing it. If you live your whole life clinging and clutching, and you still die, you wasted your life. Deliver me from wasting my short life, building a little kingdom that will soon wash away like a sand castle at high tide. Make me an instrument in your hands for your glory and each other's good. Now I want to say just a quick word to some of you who may actually feel yourself to be in the beneficiary camp. Maybe you're so broke and you're struggling to, maybe, maybe you're hoping that people around you will feel generous because you are so strapped. Let me just explain something real quickly. Let me urge you to not assume that tight finances or job loss or whatever exempt any of us from the Spirit's call to a heart of radical generosity. No matter our health or our situation, the gospel's call for generous love applies to each of us. Scripture never divides the church or churches into permanent givers and permanent takers. Maybe you truly have no money to give. Are you devoting yourself to praying for people and with people? Are you devoting yourself to giving the gift of presence? Not Christmas presence, but like personal presence. Of encouragement, of service. Maybe you have skills that other people don't have, of hospitality. Are you giving time and attention? There's lots of ways to be generous. Money's one. Maybe you don't have money. We're talking about a heart of generosity here that no one's exempt from if we're being transformed by the Spirit. Now, without overlooking any of the many things that we at Sacred Mission already do, I'm so thankful for. I've been asking this question this week. What if each of us was continually growing in greater awareness of the needs around us? Spiritual, emotional, physical, financial, etc. And then moving towards those needs and away from personal comfort. What kind of community does this come become over time, over years? The unity and the love and the mutual edification, just like the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4 says, we we build up. It's like a human being. It starts as a baby and it grows, and that little helpless baby eventually grows into a strapping warrior. That's what our goal is here at Sacred Mission. Now that's the first half of our text. But then we come to Acts chapter 5. And we find that the spirit exposes hypocrisy in the church. The spirit exposes hypocrisy. What a stark contrast this passage is to Barnabas at the end of chapter 4. Let's read verses 1 through 6 real quick. 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 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? You see, that's not communism at all. And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You've 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 it. The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him. What a story. What a contrast between Barnabas at the end of chapter 4, who's just lavishly giving, he's sacrificing, he's joyful, he's loving people. And here's Ananias and Sapphira, who did the same thing as Barnabas, who looked just as loving, who looked just as devoted, but in their hearts, even though they were generous, their hearts were radically different. Secretly, they agreed to keep back part of the money, though they were presenting the gift as if it were the full amount. That was the sin. Peter says they could have kept back half of it, or they could have given 10% of it. Said, hey, we sold some property, here's 10% of it. Use it however you want. Peter says that would have been great. They present it as if they gave all of it. Here's the question: why would they do that? What was going on in their hearts to where instead of being honest, they meant wanted to look better than they actually were, or more generous than they actually were. Why not be honest and say they were only donating part of it? Here's why. Their hearts were seeking something evil through a generous gift. Their hearts were seeking credit, human praise, esteem, not from God, but from their fellow church members. Maybe they were seeking an elevation of their status. Maybe they saw the way people fawned over Barnabas and flocked around him and loved him, and they're like, we want that too, for ourselves. Their sin was not in keeping some of the money, it was in faking love and devotion. Ananias falls dead. Three hours later, Sapphira comes in. She doesn't know that it happened. And Peter says, Um, how much do you sell the land for? And she cites the same exact price that Ananias did. Remember, they'd already agreed. They'd already agreed to the price. They'd already agreed on the lie. And he says, Why is it that you are doing the same thing? And she falls dead. And the young men come in, they're sweating from having just buried a guy, and they're like, Oh, come on, not again. Get her and they carry her out. This is remarkable. It was unprecedented. It had never happened in the early church. And everyone who heard it, it says, Great fear came over them. Now, what's sobering to me and most terrifying is that they had actually given a large sum of money. I mean, it'd been kind of ridiculous if they had sold a $10,000 property and brought $100 and be like, yeah, we sold it for $100. It'd have been obvious. They probably gave a lot of money. But it wasn't as much as they sold for more than they said. This is crazy. They were very generous in this cell and in this gift. But the Holy Spirit wasn't impressed at all. In fact, he was so grieved by their lying hearts and their greed and their hunger for human praise that he puts them to death on the spot. I meditated on this this week and I couldn't help but confess to the Lord, Lord, far too many times. This is me. Motives being mixed between love for Jesus and a desire for human credit or approval or just peer pressure. How often have I served or given or sacrificed from a motivation less than love for Jesus and love for you all? This is me. This is us. We learn that doing apparently generous things does not make us holy. Going through the motions of religious acts, even if it's all the time and it's there's full of industry, it doesn't ensure we're not playing Russian roulette with God. Think about Judas walked with Jesus three years. He was close, he slept next to Jesus, he handed food to Jesus. They went and they did, they even committed miracles together. Judas. Riding on Jesus' coattails. He looked genuine, but in the end, treachery churned in his heart. He betrayed Jesus with a kiss for some money. Jesus called the most revered religious people of his day, the Pharisees. He called them a den of vipers. Stay away from these guys. Their bite is poisonous. He called them whitewashed tombs or painted tombs that were beautiful and ornate, and people would come and they'd look at them and admire and awe. But inside, they were filled with the stench of rotting flesh. I wonder if the God we pray to and sing to and teach our kids about would ever actually strike someone dead for their sin. Scripture tells us that it wasn't the first time, and it wasn't the last. We might think of biblical stories such as God killing Nadab and Abaihu because they started in their own fire. They took strange fire. God had told them how to start the fire. They'd take it their own, they took it to the temple, and God's like, nope. How about Achan for stealing devoted things from Jericho? I figured he'd just get a misdemeanor, maybe a felony at most. Nope, he gets stoned. Azza was part of the delegation to bring back the Ark of the Covenant from the Philistines. He was doing a good deed. He was walking along the ark, the ox stumbles, the ark shakes, he reaches up to touch it irreverently, and God strikes him dead. King Uzziah was struck with incurable leprosy. In 2 Chronicles chapter 26, we find that King Uzziah, one of the most beloved and longest reigning kings of Judah, 52 years. He was amazingly successful. He was at the pinnacle, the peak of his kingdom. And he gets lifted up in his heart. He gets proud. The Bible actually says that. And he goes and he enters the tabernacle like only the priests were supposed to, and he's going to offer something to God. What is it with kings? Saul did the same thing. Instead of staying in their lane and ruling like God said, they want to usurp other authorities. So he, just like Saul before him, he goes and he enters the tabernacle and he offers a sacrifice. The priests come in, they're like, What are you doing? This is not what God prescribed. We need you to get out of here. And instead of him humbling himself and saying, Okay, you're right, you caught me. I don't belong here, it says that 80, Azariah and 80 other priests, they filled the tabernacle. Get out of here. Instead of repenting and walking out, it says he became enraged. There's some serious pride going on here. Who are you to tell me I can't be in here? And the Bible says, as the rage was on his face, leprosy, the boils of leprosy sprung up on his forehead in front of him, and they carried him out. He would spend the rest of his days isolated from life and from the kingdom as a leper until he died of his leprous wounds. Now, some of us may be puzzled by these stories of Nadab and Abihu and Uzzah and Uzziah and even Ananis and Sapphira. And we may think, like, what's the big deal? Don't we all make mistakes? I mean, I thought God was a generous and merciful and gracious, right? That's what I love about Jesus, is he doesn't do that kind of stuff. And then you come across passages that say he does. This very question was on the lips of Isaiah and Judah when their king Uzziah was stricken with leprosy. They're thinking, what's the big deal? This is the one, this is one of the good guys. And now he's his flesh is literally rotting off of him, and he's bound up, and he's he's bleeding and he's oozing and he's ugly, and we can't even be around him. You would do that as someone? If you do that to your friends, man, I would hate to see what you do to your enemies. And this was on their lips. And we read in Isaiah chapter 6 that God brings an answer to that objection. Isaiah chapter 6 opens like this: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord. The same year he had died of leprosy, when everyone's like, This is a travesty, how could God do this? God says, Okay, Isaiah, I'll show you why I did that. He sees the Lord high and lifted up. The robe of his glory filled the entire temple of heaven. And here's this minuscule, tiny Isaiah looking at the throne of God that would have been the size of Cincinnati, maybe. And above the throne of God were these seraphim, which literally means burning ones that are flying with two wings. They are hovering over the throne. And with two wings, they are covering their feet because they're reverent before the throne of God. And with two wings, they cover their eyes to shield themselves from the blazing glory of God. And they're crying so loud, continuously, shouting that the doorposts of this massive temple of heaven is shaking like an earthquake. And here's Isaiah watching all this and taking it in. And you know what those seraphimers are saying? They're saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of armies. The earth is full of his glory. What was Isaiah's response? All right, God, I want to have a word with you. You know that King Uzziah thing? Oh no. Isaiah falls on his face before God and he confesses that he's a sinful man with sinful lips. And Judah is a sinful people with sinful lips. And in God's mercy, he lets an angel come and take a coal off the altar and sear his lips to purge him from his sin of complaining against God. They had questioned God because they had no concept of God's glory and power and worth and holiness. And in questioning God, as fools, they had brazenly gone where angels dare to tread. Uzzah had disobeyed in using an oxen cart instead of the priest carrying it, and God didn't do anything against him, then he went one step too far. Uzziah had entered disobediently into the tabernacle, and God did nothing until he went one step too far. Ananias and Sapphira had contrived this scheme in their hearts, but then they went one step too far. And I've been asking this week, when will it be one step too far for me? When will it be one step too far for you? But that's the God of the Old Testament, we may say. Today God overlooks hypocrisy and other sins, right? Well, the story of Ananias and Sapphira bursts that illusion. And in fact, the Apostle Paul affirms this in 1 Corinthians 11, 27 through 32. He says that he says this of those who partake of the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner. He says, For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. And here's what he means by that. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. This isn't at all to say that all sickness and all disease and uh the death of loved ones and et cetera, is due to some secret sin. That would be wrong to claim. We're all fallen people and fallen bodies in a fallen world, we're all going to die of something, right? But we'd be grossly dishonest with scripture to say that God doesn't even still today kill people in the church. Hopefully it's seldom. The coroner's report upon autopsy may state that the cause of death is cardiac arrhythmia or cancer or pulmonary edema or a motor vehicle crash, but God knows if the secondary cause should actually say habitual hypocrisy. Or he played games with God for too long. Or she went one step too far. Now, lest you think we're reading this wrong, we know we're reading the story of Ananias and Sapphira rightly if it produces in us the same response it produced in them in that day. Twice in that passage in chapter 5 and verse 5, it says this When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last, he died, and great fear gripped all who heard it. Acts 5.11, and they carried Sapphira out and buried her beside her husband, and great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard these things. If you explain this away and you're not seized by fear before God that he could do the same thing to you, if you uh continue in unrepentance and rebellion against him, then you've misread it. I want to be conscious about this. If you're struggling with this kind of thing as I have this week in trying to process this, I humbly implore you to look at the cross. It was at Calvary that every illusion of our guiltlessness died. And all of our sin was exposed in the naked and bleeding and beaten and mocked body of Jesus Christ. How seriously does God take hypocrisy? How seriously does he take grudges we hold? How seriously does he take even us giving lots of money with a heart that doesn't actually love that person? Let us not look at Ananis and Sapphira or Uzzah or King Uzziah first. Let us look at God's son, falsely accused, mocked, beaten, scourged, jeered, impaled to a cross of wood and left to die. The cross was not God relaxing his holiness, it was God revealing it in full. Judgment was not canceled, it was carried. Divine wrath was not denied, it was absorbed. And the one who bore it was Jesus. The spotless Lamb who was pierced for hypocrites, pretenders, the greedy, and even begrudging, generous benefactors. Faith in Jesus, and I close with this, it's not simply citing church creeds, it's falling at the foot of the cross. It's coming clean before God before he forces you to come clean. God will not be trifled with. So that we would live honestly and sincerely and with joyful generosity as Jesus Himself lived and as he lives on behalf of those who trust in him. It's at the foot of the cross where we stop playing games with God and live by great grace and great fear. And it is there that I invite you to join me this morning.