Scripture: Acts 2.42-47;
4.32-37; 5.1-11; 6.1-7; 11.27-30
Translation:
2.42And they were focusing on the teaching of the Apostles and to
sharing, to the breaking of bread and to prayers. 43And fear was
coming into every soul, and many omens and signs were happening through the
Apostles. 44And all the people who were believing were at the same
place and they were holding absolutely everything as shared. 45And
they were selling their property and possessions and distributing them to all
the people as much as anyone would have a need. 46And daily they
were focusing their time in the Temple with a shared impulse, and they were
breaking bread house-by-house, they were sharing food with heartfelt
celebration and simplicity [lit. celebration and sincerity of heart], 47praising
God and having generosity towards/before/with all the people. And the Lord was
adding those who were being saved daily at the same place.
4.32And
the heart and soul of the huge group of people who believed was one. And not
even one was saying that any of the possessions belonging to him were his.
Rather absolutely everything was shared for them. 33And with great
power the Apostles were giving out the eye-witness-testimony of the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace/generosity was on all of them. 34You
see, there was not even any poor person among them, because all the people who
really were owners of pieces-of-land and houses, after selling [them], were
bringing the prices of the things being sold 35and putting them at
the feet of the Apostles. And they were giving out to each person as much as
someone was having need of. 36And Joseph, the one nicknamed Barnabas
by the Apostles (which is translated “son of encouragement”), a Levite, someone
born on Cyprus, 37sold a field that really did belong to him [and]
brought the money and put it before the feet of the Apostles. 5.1And
some guy with the name Ananias with Sapphire his wife sold a piece of property.
2And he [secretly] kept back some of the money paid for himself, and
his wife was in on it. And after bring a part [of it], he put before the feet
of the Apostles. 3And Peter said, “Ananias, why did Satan fill your
heart, such that you lied to the Holy Spirit and kept back [some] from the
money paid for the land? 4Didn’t it stay yours and wasn’t what was
sold really in your power? Why is it that you put this action in your heart? You
didn’t lie to humans, but to God!” 5And when Ananias heard theses
words, he fell down and breathed out for the last time. And a great fear came
on all those who heard. 6And young men got up and gathered him up
and took [him] out and buried [him]. 7And it happened after an
interval of three hours that also his wife, who didn’t know what had happened
came in. 8And Peter responded to her, “Tell me if you were paid this
much for the land?” and she said, “Yes, that much.” 9And Peter
[said] to her, “Why is it that lying to the Spirit of the Lord was agreed by
you? Look, the feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door and they
will carry you out!” 10And she fell immediately before his feet and
breathed out for the last time. and the young men came in and found her dead.
And they brought her outside and buried [her] with her husband. 11And
a great fear came on the whole church and on all those who were hearing these
things.
6.1And
in those days when the followers were multiplying, grumbling of the Hellenists
came against the Hebrews, because their widows were being looked over in the
daily serving. 2And the Twelve summoned the huge group of disciples
and said, “It is not pleasing that we should be neglecting the message of God
to serve tables. 3But, brothers, examine 7 men from yourselves who
are attested , full of the Spirit and wisdom, who we will appoint over this
need. 4And we will dedicate ourselves to prayer and to the serving
of the message.” 5And what was said was pleasing to the whole group.
And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and Philipp
and Prochoros and Nicanoras and Timon and Parmenas and Nicolaos, a proselyte
from Antioch, who they stood before the Apostles. And praying, they put their
hands on them. 7And the message of God grew and the number of
followers in Jerusalem multiplied greatly, and a huge crowd of priests obeyed
the faith.
11.27And
in those days, prophets came down from Jerusalem into Antioch. 28And
one of them with the name Agabos got up and signaled by the Spirit that a great
famine was about to be over the whole known-world, which happened during
Claudius. 29And from the followers, just as anyone had plenty for
themselves, each of them determined to send to the brothers living in Judea for
sake of serving. 30Which they also did by sending [it] to the elders
through the hand of Barnabas and Saul.
Interpretation
1.
Structures
a.
Acts 2.42-47
b.
Acts 4.32-5.11
i.
Summary: General State of
the Church: Generosity
ii.
Transition: Barnabas is
introduced and used as a positive example of Generosity
iii.
Ananias and Sapphire
1.
Intro: the sell land and
hide some of the money
2.
Ananias lies and dies
3.
Result: fear came over all
who heard
4.
Sapphire lies and dies
5.
Result: fear came on the
church and all who heard
c.
Acts 6.1-7
i.
Problem: Widows neglected
ii.
Solution: Appoint Godly men
iii.
Resolution: Godly men
appointed
iv.
Result: the church grew
like crazy, even priests got saved
d.
Acts 11.27-30
i.
Setting: Prophets come to
Antioch
ii.
Issue: Agabus prophesies a
famine
iii.
Response: the Church gives
money to the Jerusalem church to help with the famine
2.
Themes
a.
Generosity
b.
Grace
c.
Holy Spirit
d.
Unity
e.
Growth
f.
Sincerity
g.
Sharing the message of
Jesus boldly
3.
Doctrines
a.
Christians are really
generous naturally.
b.
The Holy Spirit empowers
Christian generosity to a crazy level.
c.
There are consequences for
sins sometimes
d.
Trustworthy men should
handle the money
Applications
1.
Generosity is a natural
impulse for Christians. it just is. For Christians the question is not can I be
stingy or do I need to be generous, but how generous can I be.
2.
This generosity is crazy.
They sold their stuff for the sake of their Christian family. They sold houses
and land so that their brothers and sisters could have enough to live off of.
Even crazier, 4.34 said that there were no poor people among them, because
people were so generous that no one was in need. This means that Mr. Levinson
sold his condo in Bermuda so that the Goldberg family wouldn’t get evicted and
starve. This means Mrs. Clark gave some of her social security check to the
church, so that Ms. Aemilius would have a dowry for marriage. It would mean
today that some gipsanim would sell his 68 Camero so that someone from a poor
family could go to college. It would mean someone lets me live in their house
with them for little rent, because I can’t afford it. And actually someone does
do that.
3.
There is a profound danger
however that our generosity if it becomes the norm could tempt some of us to be
generous for the wrong reasons. One of the craziest elements of Christian
generosity, of how these early Christians used money, is that were generous
with the proper motives, with pure hearts. They were generous because they
wanted to be generous. They were generous because they actually loved one
another and because they actually loved God and they were all about living out
the Gospel! Ananias and Sapphire died, not just because they lied, because
surely someone somewhere in the church had lied before this. No, they died, 1)
because of Who they lied to; but also I think 2) because of what they lied
about, and in so doing they violated not just the trust of the whole community,
but they provided a strong temptation for people to let their generosity be
corroded by the prospect of personal gain. The problem was that they wanted to
be generous enough to be thought of as generous. But the problem is that in so
doing they overturned generosity. If they had been honest and given part of the
money there wouldn’t have been a problem But they wanted to be thought of as
good and superspiritual. They wanted people to believe their hypocrisy. And the
truth is that doing the right thing can quickly be compromised with wrong
motives. And there is a temptation to be Godly not because we love God and our
fellow believers and even non-believers, but because we want people to think of
us a certain way. Which means that then what we do is not really generosity or
goodness, it is simply a tool of social manipulation. Let’s say someone comes and
they are a really good drummer, and so they ask to join the praise team and we
all are thankful that God sent us a drummer and that he has lots of talent. But
while on the outside this person talks about how he is doing it for the Lord,
out of a desire to worship God, on the inside he is only doing it for the
attention—not because he loves God, or loves us, or even loves expressing his
gifting, but simply because he loves the attention. Is he being generous with
his talent, or is his using his talent to manipulate us into gratitude and
attention-giving to him? Or what if a poor person joins our youth group, and we
know that they are really poor, and they sacrifice and give us a great gift of
an amazing new speaker system. But what if that person has made such a generous
gift, not to be generous but to thought of as a generous person? What if on the
other hand, a rich person gets saved and joins our group, and this person as
tons of money, but chooses to sell a jersey he had signed by Michael Jordan and
give the money to fund all our missions trips for the next 10 years. But no one
knew about his amazing generosity but me and the elders and deacons who handle
the money. Was he generous? Yes, I think so.
4.
Look at how natural the
responses are of all the Christians. they see a need, and the people who can
provide abundantly. And we are going to see next week even more clearly that
this was not just something rich people did, but even the poor sacrificed to be
generous.
5.
Bluntly put, being a
faithful Christian will probably cost you something, not just in terms of
identity, destiny, autonomy, and other things like that, but also it will
likely cost you money. And if you are not willing to part with money, there is
something seriously lacking in your Christian growth and development. Because
the natural impulse of Holy Spirit-filled Christians is to really be really
generous.
6.
Being generous was so key
to the church that when a problem came up where some people were not being
treated as generously as they should have been, the Apostles have the church
appoint 7 Godly men to make sure the whole church is benefiting from the
generosity of the church.
7.
Ok fine, but sharing
everything sounds a bit like Communism. Well ok fine, if you think so, there
are some distinctions, such as the Church is a Spiritual entity that exists
beyond geopolitical boundaries, where as the government is a state. Also, the
sharing is pretty clearly in the Bible, so if you don’t like it because of
Marx, I would suggest you get over your predisposed opposition, since just
because someone you don’t like also suggested something similar, that doesn’t
mean you should get rid of all ideas that are in anyway similar. Moreover, if
anyone stole from anyone Marx clearly stole concepts from the Bible than visa
versa. On top of this, this crazy kind of generosity was natural for the
Christians, they couldn’t have stopped if they had wanted to, so perhaps the
better question is how much do we love our money that we have such a strong
opposition to crazy generosity? Also, the money was being handled by Godly men,
rather than the Communist Godless men. The money was not be redistributed based
on merit, but based on needs.
8.
A further implication of
the general tenor of the stories in Acts seems to be that this crazy generosity
drew many non-Christians to trust in Jesus and become Christians, at least when
it was coupled with the bold witness of the message about Jesus. So, one reason
our church has not been growing, among others is that we are NOT known for our
generosity, nor are we really focused on bringing the Gospel to our friends and
coworkers and whoever. Look, Christians who act like Christians are incredibly
compelling. Our love for God and especially for one another is what hooks
people. But our love has to be being lived out clearly and be matched with the
gutsy sharing of the Good News about Jesus with the people we know and meet.
9.
Questions:
a.
How can you be generous if
you don’t have any money?
b.
How generous are you
personally? And how generous are we as a community? Scale of 1-10. What makes
you say that? Be specific J
c.
What is keeping us
individually and us as a community from embodying the generosity of God in our world
like the early church did in theirs?
d.
What would it look like for
us to be really generous personally, as a group, as a church, as part of the
Universal Church (all true Christians and churches everywhere)? How crazy
generous are we willing to be?
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