Acts 4:32-5:16

Welcome back WonbyOne! Happy New Year! Hope everybody had an awesome holiday with their families, and is now ready to get back into some fun games, glorious worship and serious Bible exposition. I know I am!!! =)

Okay, so our text was 4:32-5:16. Go ahead and read it again, and become familiar with the text.
Friday night we broke the text up into three headings:
-The product of the Paraklete (comforter or encourager)/Holy Spirit (4:32-37)
-The piety of the pretenders (5:1-11)
-The perseverance of the possession (5:12-16)

1)The product of the Holy Spirit

Remember to look at 5:11, and notice that this is the first time in the book of Acts that this group of now over 5000 people is identified as the church (though it has been the church since the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, 2:1-4).
What is the product of the Paraklete (The Holy Spirit)? We started in James 2:14-17, and then got into John 3:9-10, 11-18 and 4:7-8. The product is none other than love. Christians love because God loves, and His children increasingly demonstrate His nature, as God, by His grace, sanctifies (sets apart from sin) His children.

2) The piety of the pretenders

Remember that “lie” in 5:3 can be translated “falsify”. Falsify means that they’re faking. So, to falsify the Holy Spirit, means to fake His presence in your life, through empty loveless religion. We identified this action as “hypocrisy”. Read Matt 6:1-18 to get a clearer understanding of hypocrisy. Ananias and Sapphira’s “gift” was not given in love, demonstrated by their “keeping back” some of the profit from the sale of their property (v3). In keeping back some of the profit, they actually stole (much better translation of “keep back” in v3) from the church; obviously not an act of love (Rom 13:8-9).
God’s hatred of hypocrisy is clearly demonstrated in His immediate judgment of both Ananias and his wife. We took a little bit of time to get a biblical foundation for God’s hatred of hypocrisy. Texts that teach this include but are not limited to (there are many more) Amos 5:21-24, Isa 1:11-17, 65:3-5 and Matt 23:1-36.

3) The perseverance of the possession

Christ identifies the church as being His possession in Matt 16:18. He promises that nothing will keep Him from building His church! =) Salvation has always been and will always be a work of grace! Even though the horrifying event of Ananias and Sapphira’s death caused many people to be afraid to even associate with the believers (5:13), Christ was still building His church, and those whom God called to Himself were being saved (5:14-15).