The book of Acts gives an eyewitness account of a serious hypocrisy found within the church of Jerusalem. Despite the Lord’s blessing of adding uncountable numbers of people to this congregation, He still dealt with the problem at hand. This takes us to chapter 5 and Ananias and Sapphira.
In the previous chapter, Luke describes this fast-growing church as having one heart and one soul.
This was significant since Christians were flooding in from the surrounding areas, ready to join and serve. They would have been from different backgrounds and classes. In fact, some were very poor and destitute having been kicked out of their devout Jewish families.
They were so in tune with each other that acts of compassion were the norm. It says that nothing that they possessed did they consider being their own and all things were common. Persecution by its nature makes poor people, but those who had helped those who didn’t.
Nobody suffered for food or clothing. In this spirit of giving, one person stood out and that was Barnabas. Being described as an encourager he must have been a true delight to be around. An encourager comforts and consoles the oppressed and needy. I imagine that he was well loved by this congregation.
But, there was a problem.
We see this at the beginning of chapter 5. The church was of one heart and soul except for one couple. Verse 3 confirms this when Peter tells them Ananias that, “Satan filled his heart.” I think that this husband and wife saw the attention that Barnabas received and they wanted that admiration for themselves. It was jealousy mixed with greed and a whole lot of deceit and deception.
Peter reminds us that they were under no obligation to sell their land and the amount that they gave was entirely voluntary. Instead, they decided to lie to the church and to God by only giving part and claiming that they gave the full. It was a studied, deliberate, and pre-meditated hypocrisy. They were pretending to be what they were not. And the penalty dealt by our Lord was death.
I couldn’t imagine sitting in that congregation that morning.
How would you feel if God struck a fellow Christian people down in front of you for hypocrisy and then you had to go bury them in the parking lot before lunch at Applebee’s? If you are like me, this story should cause you to think about God’s anger towards your own hypocrisy.
Conclusion
At the end of this section we see that all is well by verse 12. Notice that the congregation is described as being of one accord again. The hypocrites are dead and the unity of the church is restored. However, verse 13 describes people outside the church as being fearful and nobody cared to join this church. It’s obvious that they did not know the power and grace of God. But, verse 14 shows that there still was tremendous growth of the body of Christ.
It seems that a pure church is a powerful church. This is a lesson for America today. Do not have hypocrisy when applying the word of God. The lost souls around us are attracted to the Gospel message, but only if it is a genuine faith.
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