Let us start with a word of prayer.
Father, as we approach this topic today of Your church, we recognize that we could never even get close to it without Your Son—without the sacrifice that has been made by Your Son, the price that was paid by Your Son. Lord, we praise You for opening the way to come into Your presence and to dwell with You together.
Father, I pray that You would cover the words that I speak this morning. Lord, I pray that what I have to say would be from You, and that I would only say the things that are from You.
I pray this in Christ’s holy and precious name. Amen.
Well, good morning.
I just want to start off with my standard disclaimer this morning: the fact that I am standing up here sharing does not mean that what I am about to share has been fully worked out in my life. What I am sharing is something the Lord has been showing me, working out in me, and explaining to me over the past several months. It is not complete, and it will probably never be complete in my life. But I believe the Lord has asked me to come up here and share these things with you today.
Also, nothing in this message is targeted toward any person. So please, if something strikes you as convicting, take it from the Lord and not as me preaching at you, because that is not the intent at all.
If you must have a title—some people need a title to a message—the title I gave this message this morning is “The Deadly Church.” To really get its full impact, you need to say it like it is on Fox: The Deadly Church.
What I am going to do is look at three different stories in Scripture. Hopefully, these stories will bring to light the seriousness with which the Lord looks at the church. We will also look at how the Lord has provided for us to take part in that, despite the fact that He looks at His church with deadly seriousness.
Let us start by reading one verse that is not in one of these stories, but is a keystone verse: Matthew 16:25. You have probably heard this many times. You may even have memorized it. But it is key to this whole issue that I hope to explain today.
And also, if I say something that does not make any sense at all, just smile and nod your head. It will be okay.
For whosoever would save his life shall lose it:
and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it.—Matthew 16:25
I keep this verse tucked away because it lays a foundation for these three stories. This verse lays out a pretty simple equation: there are two lives—our self-life, or soul-life, and our spiritual life. We can have one or we can have the other, but we cannot have both.
Our self-life seems the most real. It is right here at hand. We are living in it every day. We have emotions, feelings, and offenses; things happen. It is very real to us, but it is fleeting, and it is going to pass away.
The other life, our spiritual life, is less tangible, but it is more real. It does not seem very real right now because it is kind of nebulous. Trying to put your finger on it is like trying to put your finger on a shadow. It is very difficult to identify, but it is real, and it will last forever.
What I was thinking about is matter and antimatter. The two can exist, but you cannot have them together. It is like the soul-life and the spiritual life: the two exist, but the twain shall never meet.
This choice between our life and our anti-life—our self-life and our spiritual life—is a choice we make continually. Every hour, every minute, we are making a choice: which life are we going to live in?
We can be hopping along pretty well one day. We are really spiritual. We think, “The Lord is really working through us,” and then something happens, and bam—we are out of that. We are back into our self-life. Our self is back in action at full strength.
That happens every day, and logically it happens here as we take part in church life, fellowship with one another, and live as part of the church. The same decision happens: whether to live in our self-life or to live in our spiritual life.
Today, as I go through these three stories, I want to look at principles found in the stories and then provide some practical application for how those principles play out in our lives and in our day-to-day decisions about which life we are going to live in: our self-life or our spiritual life.
The three stories I want to talk about are David’s moving of the ark from Abinadab’s house into Jerusalem, Korah’s rebellion in the wilderness with Moses, and Ananias and Sapphira.
One thing these stories have in common is that people die. Hence the name of the message, “The Deadly Church.” There are a lot of other stories in Scripture where people die, but I am going to ignore those today.
Another commonality among these three stories is that they all deal with God’s dwelling place with man—how the Lord has chosen to be with man, either in the temple, in the ark of the covenant, or in His church in New Testament times.
God desires to dwell with His people, and that dwelling is central to His purpose. He takes that purpose very, very seriously—deadly seriously, as we see in these stories.
As we approach the dwelling place of the Lord, whether the church or whatever, it is going to cost us. It is going to cost us our soul-life, but it is going to reap a return in our spiritual life.
I hope, as we go through these stories and see this mixture of self-life and soul-life, and the Lord taking care of the self-life and growing the spiritual life, that this will encourage us. Yes, He takes it seriously. There are serious consequences to mishandling His dwelling place. But He gives us strength—the life—to live properly and to deal properly with His dwelling place.
The first story is the movement of the ark from Abinadab’s house into Jerusalem. Turn to 2 Samuel 6. I will read the story, beginning at verse 1.
Now David again gathered together all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand.
And David arose, and went with all the people that were with him, from Baale-judah, to bring up from thence the ark of God, which is called by the Name, even the name of the Lord of hosts that sitteth above the cherubim.
And they set the ark of God upon a new cart, and brought it out of the house of Abinadab that was in the hill; and Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, drave the new cart.
And they brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was in the hill, with the ark of God: and Ahio went before the ark.
And David and all the house of Israel played before the Lord with all manner of instruments made of fir wood, even with harps, psalteries, timbrels, castanets, and cymbals.
And when they came to the threshing-floor of Nacon, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen stumbled.
And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.
And David was displeased, because the Lord had broken forth upon Uzzah: and he called the name of the place Perez-uzzah to this day.
And David was afraid of the Lord that day; and he said, How shall the ark of the Lord come unto me?
So David would not remove the ark of the Lord unto him into the city of David: but David carried it aside into the house of Obed-edom the Gittite.
And the ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite three months: and the Lord blessed Obed-edom, and all his household.—2 Samuel 6:1-11
And it was told King David, saying, The Lord hath blessed the house of Obed-edom, and all that pertaineth unto him, because of the ark of God. So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom into the city of David with joy.
And it was so, that when they that bare the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed an ox and a fatling.—2 Samuel 6:12-13
This story deals with the consecration of the church—consecration being the separation of the church from the world. The church is not just another worldly institution. It cannot be dealt with using the same methods as worldly institutions or worldly organizations.
This principle of separation is illustrated in the moving of the ark. Levitical law laid down very clear guidelines and methods for moving the ark. They built the ark in the wilderness, and they knew they would have to carry it to the promised land. The Lord laid down clear principles: poles were to be put through the rings on the ark, and it was to be carried on the shoulders of the priests.
But in David’s first attempt to move the ark, he did not abide by those guidelines. He did not abide by what the Lord had commanded. David took a sensible approach. He had a pretty good way to travel from Abinadab’s house to Jerusalem, and he wanted to get the ark there quickly. So he had an ox cart built, put the ark on the cart, and planned to get it there quickly.
Arriving in Jerusalem was what the Lord wanted, so the quicker they got to Jerusalem, the better—or so it seemed. But I think it is interesting that the Lord is concerned both about where He is taking us and how we get there. We cannot get to where the Lord wants us without going through the journey with the Lord.
David did not use an old cart that had been carrying manure or whatever. He went out of his way and built a new cart. It was probably a very nice cart. It probably had all the modern features of a cart of that age. But it still was not what the Lord had commanded. The Lord did not want His ark put on a cart.
Then they had the little accident: the oxen almost turned the ark over, Uzzah touched it, and Uzzah was struck down. David learned a lesson from that, because in the second movement of the ark, David did it the right way. The Levites carried the ark on their shoulders. They did get to Jerusalem, and the Lord was pleased with both how it was moved and where it went.
One thing we notice is that the second movement of the ark was much more costly than the first movement. The first movement was pretty simple. They had an ox cart, they were celebrating, and they were making good progress, but it was not costing them anything.
The second movement of the ark cost David a lot. It would take three or four sacrifices—three or four oxen and fatlings—just to get across this room. Imagine carrying that ark miles and miles, every six steps stopping to offer a sacrifice. That gets pretty expensive.
It also required intimate involvement by the Levites. They could not just walk along, celebrate, or have a conversation with somebody. They were carrying the ark. It was on their shoulders to move it.
The Lord turned this progression, this walking with the ark, from something in which they were spectators into something in which they were participants.
The first practical lesson from this story is that the Lord’s ways are not the world’s ways in dealing with His church. The Lord is very jealous for His church, and He is not going to tolerate anybody else’s ways in it.
How did the ark get to Abinadab’s house in the first place? The ark had been captured by the Philistines several years earlier. The Philistines had it for a while, and it caused all kinds of havoc in their capital city. So they decided to give it back to the Israelites because they knew it was trouble.
The Philistines built a new cart, put the ark on the back of it, and had cows pull the cart back into Israel. So David did not merely come up with a different way of carrying the ark. He used the exact same method the Philistines had used to carry the ark back into Israel.
The Lord was not pleased with how David did that. When we conduct church life not by the Lord’s methods, things may seem fine. Things may seem as though they are working out okay. It may seem like the correct, most expedient, and most logical thing to do. But if it is not the Lord’s way, then it is the wrong way.
The world does things a certain way, and things seem to work out fine for them. They have certain methods of selecting their leaders, and that works fine for them. We go into a voting booth in November and select leaders for our worldly government. That may seem to work fine, but that is not the way the Lord would have us select leaders in the church.
Another practical lesson is that when we choose the world’s way, it may not be us who are harmed. Others may be harmed.
It is not clear who decided to put the ark on a cart, but it is pretty well implied that it was David’s decision. Yet David did not pay the ultimate price for that mistake. Uzzah did. Uzzah was pretty much an innocent bystander who paid the price for David’s failure to abide by the Lord’s commandments.
When we choose the world’s methods in dealing with the church or living in the church, things may seem fine to us. They may work out okay, but we may be harming others. Others may get taken out of action by these worldly ways.
The third point is that the world’s ways seem to be pretty easy on our self-life. They are usually a very easy choice to make. But the Lord’s ways are almost always costly to our self-life.
The way they moved the ark the second time—sacrificing an ox and a fatling every six steps—was very costly. Carrying it on their shoulders was more costly than having it ride on a cart. But the Lord had David do it that way because it was costly to them.
When we are evaluating which way to go in the church, maybe a good rule of thumb is to look at the alternatives and ask, “Which way costs me my self-life? Which one is going to cause me to lay down my life in order to go forward?” The world’s ways will very rarely cause us to lay down our life. In fact, they will usually build up our self-life and strengthen it. The Lord’s ways will cause us to lay down our self-life but strengthen our spiritual life.
For example, say a brother or sister is struggling with some problem, and they come to you and say, “I have this problem I want to talk to you about.” It may be pretty simple to say, “Why do you not go talk to a counselor? You know, a good Christian counselor. You go talk to them, and I will pray for you.”
That seems like a quick, logical thing to do—very simple—but it costs us nothing. We are able to push their problem off on somebody else and feel good about it. But the cost to us was zero.
Maybe what we should say is, “Tell me about it. I will stop what I am doing. I will put down what I had in mind for that day. Let us fellowship about this thing. Let us pray together. Let us spend time together, get to know one another, and deal with that problem one on one.”
Do not take me wrong: there is a place for Christ-centered counseling. A lot of brothers and sisters have been helped by that. But what I am saying is that following the Lord in the church is not going to be easy. It is not going to be cheap on our self-life.
It is going to cost us our self-life, but we will gain true life from it. We will gain true spiritual life from it. That is the whole point of functioning in the church. It is not that it is cheap or easy, but the Lord is going to use it to refine us, build us, and make us part of that bride that has no spot or blemish.
That is how He conforms us to His image: not by cheap solutions or quick solutions to problems, but by solutions that require us to cast ourselves upon Him.
When we do things His way, it is going to cost us our self-life. I do not think we should be too worried about that, because I think we have a seemingly endless supply of self-life to spend. But in return, what we get is His life—true spiritual life.
When we do things His way in the church, it is going to be a cross to us. It is going to be difficult. But it does take away our self-life, and we will end up being conformed to His image.
That is all I have to say about David and Uzzah.
As I was working on this message, I felt kind of bad because you could spend a lifetime studying these three stories, and I am going to cover each one in about fifteen or twenty minutes. So forgive me for skimming over them very quickly, but that is what I am doing. If you do not like it, take me out and stone me.
The next story is Korah’s rebellion, found in Numbers 16.
We will begin at verse 1 and read through verse 4, then skip around a little bit in the chapter.
Now Korah, the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, with Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, and On, the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men:
and they rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty princes of the congregation, called to the assembly, men of renown;
and they assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them: wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?
And when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face.—Numbers 16:1-4
So they gat them up from the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, on every side: and Dathan and Abiram came out, and stood in the door of their tents, and their wives, and their sons, and their little ones.
—Numbers 16:27
And it came to pass, as he made an end of speaking all these words, that the ground clave asunder that was under them:
and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their households, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods.—Numbers 16:31-32
In this story, we see a very serious principle: the principle of authority in the dwelling place of the Lord. Korah challenged the authority that had been delegated to Moses by God. He challenged that authority with a half-true statement.
The statement was, “You have gone far enough, for all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is in their midst. So why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?” That contains both a true statement and a distortion of the truth.
It is true that the Lord loves us all. He wants a relationship with all of us individually, and we all have a relationship directly with Christ. It is true that the Lord is not a respecter of the positions of men.
But the distortion comes when Korah extends the truth that we have a direct relationship with the Lord and assumes, because of that, that there is a lack of order and a lack of authority among God’s people.
Sometimes the same argument is made within the church. It says, “Because we are all one in God’s eyes, because we are all the same in God’s eyes, because Christ died for us all and we are all equally saved by Him, it is just us and the Lord. Because we are all equals, nobody can come and correct me. Correction has to come from Christ and from Christ only. It is me and the Lord and nobody else, and that is all that matters.”
But the Lord is a God of order. He has an order that He establishes both in heaven and on earth.
Korah challenged that authority and challenged that order which God had established. Through a series of actions that we skipped over, God showed the whole nation whom He had placed in authority among the people. Then He wiped out Korah, his family, his possessions, and everybody who followed Korah.
This issue of authority did not begin with Korah. It began way back before the beginning, when Lucifer rebelled against God because Lucifer thought he was as good as the Lord. This issue of challenging authority is at the root of the struggle.
I know that this issue of authority is very close to the Lord’s heart. Over the past couple of years, the Lord has really been showing me how close it is to His heart, but I still do not think I understand how close it is. I will probably be surprised one day when I fully understand how important His authority and His order are to Him.
At the root of Korah’s rebellion—and, I think, at the root of a lot of striving against authority—is arrogance. We get this arrogance because we overestimate our own ability. We overestimate our own strength.
Sometimes we look at ourselves, assess ourselves, and see the good part of our self-life. We assume that good part must be spiritual life. So we glom that together with the spiritual part and assume that we are much more spiritual than we are.
We mix the two together, get confused, and overestimate who we are. I wonder whether spiritual arrogance is a key to problems with authority that we see in assemblies.
First off, I have a confession to make: I have a problem with authority. This problem with authority is most evident in my dealings with traffic laws.
My wife will tell you that I have this attitude about traffic laws. I feel like they are really for lesser drivers—people who do not have as good control over the car as I have, and people who drive lesser cars than what I drive. So, because they do not really apply to me, I do not have to pay as much attention to them as other people who drive lesser cars or have less ability behind the wheel.
One day, actually after the men’s retreat, Noah, my eight-year-old son, was with me. On the way back from the retreat, I let him sit in the front seat of the car. Here in Virginia, if you are under twelve and the car has an airbag, that is against the law.
When we got home, Brenda asked Noah whether he had had a good time. Noah said yes. Of course he said yes; we had a men’s retreat, he got to play with fire and all kinds of fun things. He had a great time.
But then he had this guilty look, and he told his mother, “Daddy let me sit in the front seat,” because he knew that sitting in the front seat was against the law. He knew that I knew that it was against the law, and he knew it was kind of wrong.
So he asked his mother, “Why did Daddy let me do that? Why did Daddy let me sit in the front seat when that was breaking the law?” Brenda explained to him—trying to shine the best light on me and trying to be a very good, submissive wife—that I was confident enough in my driving ability that I felt I could avoid any accidents that might happen. Therefore, it was safe enough for him to sit in the front seat.
You know what Noah’s response was? Noah said, “He is kind of arrogant, isn’t he?”
After I heard that comment, I became much more aware about letting him sit in the front seat and much more aware of abiding by the laws of the land on the highway.
My arrogance toward my driving ability was causing me to ignore wise advice and laws set down by our lawmakers. It was causing me to endanger my son.
This arrogance caused me to act independently of what society had decided was best. I think that when we get an overestimation of our own spiritual strength, it can lead to a dangerous arrogance in our life in the church and in our life with one another.
It leads to a dangerous arrogance regarding the authority structure that God has placed over us. Just as my confidence in my driving ability led me to disregard or devalue the authority God had placed over me in the area of traffic laws, sometimes our own spiritual insight and spiritual knowledge cause us to devalue one another.
We devalue other believers in the assembly because we think we have better control over our spiritual ability than they do. When we have this arrogance of self-confidence, it leads to an independent heart—an independent heart that separates us from our brothers and sisters.
We can grow spiritually. The Lord loves it when we grow spiritually. We can gain all this knowledge, but there is no amount of spiritual growth or spiritual knowledge that should separate us from our brothers and sisters. If it is separating us from our brothers and sisters, then we have what Scripture calls knowledge that puffs up.
For example, we may be very confident in our own ability to handle problems in the assembly, or even to know what to do in the assembly. We may see an issue come up and think, “I know what to do about that. I am going to go ahead and do that.”
We do not fellowship with anyone else about it. Or, if we do fellowship, we disregard their cautions or insight into the problem. We move ahead independently, saying, “I know exactly what I am doing with this situation because I have seen it before or read about it. I know what to do.”
When we do that, we become sheep moving alone, sheep outside the flock. As we all know, no sheep—not even the strongest sheep—is a match for a wolf. If the sheep has a bloated head, it is even less of a match for the wolf. When we are independent, we are easy prey.
The opposite of arrogance is humility. The Lord commands us to act in humility toward one another. He desires this humility so that we can be one with one another. We really cannot be one with one another if we consider ourselves better than one another.
One thing we can learn from this story is that the Lord has not established authority over us as a punishment. It is not because we have been bad. He establishes authority in His church for our benefit and to help us out.
He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows that we need brothers and sisters to come alongside us and encourage us regularly. He knows that we need brothers and sisters to come alongside us and occasionally correct us.
He did not create this authority structure or place authority in His church to burden us. He did it because it is His nature. He is a God of order.
What is neat is that when His nature is expressed in the church—or in anything—it is a benefit to those who love Him. He is a God of love, and He is a God of order. When those two combine, you have loving order in the church. It is something we can depend on, something that is there to help us out.
If you search the Scriptures, you will find nobody with a better understanding of authority than our Lord Jesus Christ. He had no cause whatsoever for humility. If there was anyone who ever walked the earth who had the least cause to be humble, it was Him.
But He placed Himself in subjection to earthly authority, and He kept Himself in complete subjection to the authority of the Father. Everything He did, He did in subjection and dependence upon the Father.
He also remained in subjection to earthly authority. He paid His taxes to the Roman government. It was an evil, sinful government, yet the Lord recognized the authority that God had delegated to that government.
To take up the correct attitude toward authority, one must take up the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ will lead us to a proper attitude toward authority because He has the proper attitude toward authority. How does one get the mind of Christ? One gets the mind of Christ through the cross, and that is the only way to get the mind of Christ.
Sometimes it is difficult to accept correction from one another in the assembly because we know each other so well. We see each other’s mistakes. We see the things we do at work, whatever; we see each other’s children. We know that we are faulty.
It is difficult to receive correction from someone we know is flawed. But that is where the humility of the Lord comes in: recognizing that they are a brother or sister and that they have the life of the Lord in them.
Submitting to one another can be very difficult. It is a very difficult thing to do, especially when you are arrogant like me.
Christ, when He submitted to the Father and depended upon the Father for everything, was led to losing His life. He was crucified out of His dependence. When we are dependent upon the Lord and submitted to authority, it will cost us our self-life. It will be a cross to us. But out of that, we gain true life. We gain spiritual life.
There is also a lesson in this story of Korah that haunts me. That lesson is one little phrase in verse 27: “their little ones.” It really haunts me.
Just as my arrogance about my driving ability endangered the life of my son, it is the same in the assembly. When we have spiritual arrogance about our ability, we are endangering other people’s lives. We not only harm ourselves, but we harm our little ones.
In Numbers, it is clear that Korah’s little ones were his children. His children paid the ultimate price for their father’s rebellion. They had nothing to do with it, but they paid the price for it.
When we are bucking authority, resisting authority, and grinding against authority, it is going to affect our children. If we are fortunate, our children will just grow to be like us, grinding against authority. If we are not so fortunate, if our children really see what we are doing, they may just walk away from Christ and want nothing to do with Him because they see us constantly pushing and kicking against the goads.
I also think the phrase “little ones” can mean those who look up to us. It may surprise you, but there are probably other adults in this assembly who look up to you and have a high regard for you. They probably do not know you very well—that is why they have a high regard for you—but they do.
When you start thrashing about, kicking against the goads, and saying, “This is not right, that is not right. I cannot submit. I cannot do this. I cannot do that,” it discourages them.
They can begin doing the same thing and imitating you, which is not good. Or they will be discouraged because they see somebody they respected stumble and kick against God’s authority.
You can say, “Well, they should not be looking to me. We should not depend on any man.” That is true: we should not ultimately be looking to others. But it is also true that we should consider others more highly than ourselves. We are going to look at each other, love each other, and respect each other.
It does not mean we should follow a person into a fall. But when we do fall, it is not their fault that they fell with us. It is our problem.
When I think about how my attitudes affect my children—not only physically in the car, but spiritually in church life—it can only lead me to great humility. It is quite a responsibility to have four little lives dependent upon, or somewhat dependent upon, how I am following the Lord.
We need to approach this principle of authority with the mind of Christ. We need to have the mind of Christ toward authority. This mind of Christ lays down its own rights, and it only comes from losing our self-life and taking up the life of Christ.
Again, I apologize for making short work of that very important story. The third story I want to discuss is Ananias and Sapphira.
This can be found in Acts 4, beginning in Acts 4 and reading into Acts 5—Acts 4:32.
And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and soul: and not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.
And with great power gave the apostles their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.
For neither was there among them any that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,
and laid them at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto each, according as any one had need.
And Joseph, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, which is, being interpreted, Son of exhortation, a Levite, a man of Cyprus by race,
having a field, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.—Acts 4:32-37
But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession,
and kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back part of the price of the land?
While it remained, did it not remain thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thy power? How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thy heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.
And Ananias hearing these words fell down and gave up the ghost: and great fear came upon all that heard it.—Acts 5:1-5
This is a very familiar story. We talked about it recently in our Friday-night meetings as we were covering the book of Acts.
It is pretty simple. The people in the New Testament church, the early church, were selling all they had, sharing everything with one another, and using their money to help one another. They had all things in common.
I do not think any of us can really imagine what that would be like: having all things in common, not having any possession to call our own, but laying it all before the church and sharing equally in the church.
They loved each other and loved the church so much that they could not stand to see each other in need. So they were sharing everything they had. Into this environment came Ananias and Sapphira.
If you read commentators, there are a lot of opinions about their motivations—what motivated them to deceive the apostles and lie to the Lord. I do not know. I am not going to make any great hypothesis about their basic motive.
But I think it is evident that they wanted the appearance of being followers of Christ without actually following Christ. They wanted people to think highly of them, so they came up with a scheme of giving only part of the money while saying that it was all the money.
There was another person, Joseph, who was later called, or renamed, Barnabas by the apostles. He gave everything he had and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
Ananias and Sapphira wanted to be esteemed in the eyes of others. They wanted to be esteemed for their spiritual walk, but they also wanted to hold something back for themselves—to protect themselves or to have that little security.
Maybe they did not really trust the Lord to provide fully for them. Once they gave away everything they had, they would be fully cast upon the Lord. That would be a scary thing: to know, “Okay, I have given it all away, and now I am completely dependent upon the Lord and upon the proper functioning of His church for my day-to-day existence.”
One commentator, Matthew Henry, said that Ananias and Sapphira were mocking God by pretending to live the Christian life in the power of their own flesh. The mockery is that the Christian life cannot be lived in the power of our own flesh. Christ gave us His life to live in.
When we turn around and try to live it in our own life, we are mocking the life Christ gives us. Whatever their motive was, whatever they were thinking, the Lord did not tolerate it, and they were struck down immediately.
When you compare that to Barnabas, it is a very interesting comparison. Barnabas sold his land, brought the proceeds, and put them at the feet of the apostles for service to the church. Barnabas was so spent on the church that he even lost his name. He was no longer called Joseph, the name his parents gave him. He was called Barnabas.
There are practical lessons we can learn from Ananias and Sapphira concerning service in the church. The first is pretty simple: the Lord is not pleased when we try to live in the church through our soul-life and self-life.
He has paid an extremely high price to provide us with resurrection life—the life in which we are to live in the church. It is offensive to Him when we turn around and use our soul-life to live in the church.
I think I agree with Matthew Henry. When we do that, we are, in some ways, making a mockery of what Christ did.
The second lesson is that we should serve each other in the church out of no other motive than selfless love: selfless love for one another and selfless love for the Lord.
Sometimes when I help somebody, do something nice for somebody, lend them a hand, or whatever, I hope that I get noticed. I hope that people notice me serving. That is terrible.
I do not know why you have such a terrible person up here speaking, but I desire the praise of others. It is in my self-life to want other people to think highly of me. Sometimes I even find myself tailoring my service in the church to that desire to be noticed and praised.
What is to become of me—such a tainted servant, with such mixed desires, such a double-minded servant? If we look at the story of Ananias and Sapphira, I think we learn what the Lord will do with a tainted servant who has a double mind.
But thankfully, the Lord is merciful. He does not immediately strike me down when I render service with a double mind. His mercy causes Him to work in me, to eliminate that self-life and work out of me the desire to serve from selfish motives.
I believe that is a very hopeful thing: He is patient and merciful with me. His goal is to conform us into the image of His Son. He is going to do that by working out this selfish serving.
A third point in this story is that servants cannot be choosy about how and when they serve.
Ananias and Sapphira tried to serve under their own terms. They said, “We are going to give something, but we are going to hold something back for ourselves. We are going to keep a little safety net for ourselves.”
I can empathize with them and what must have been going through their minds: “We are going to give all our money into this assembly, and we are going to completely depend on them for support and daily sustenance.”
Ananias was probably a confident man. He owned land. Before he met Christ, he was probably pretty self-confident. To fall onto the Lord completely like that was probably a very scary thing for them. I am not making excuses for what they did, but I can empathize with the trepidation they may have felt.
If we look at serving in the church and serving others, and count the cost from a worldly perspective, it will probably cause us to pull back from serving. When we start counting the cost of what it is going to take to serve, it is going to seem like a very high price.
It is like when Mary poured out her expensive perfume upon the Lord. Some people said, “What a waste. That money could have gone to the poor, or this or that.” But she poured out herself, her savings, her life, upon the Lord. To the world, that looked like a waste, but it was not.
Serving the Lord can be very expensive when seen from a worldly perspective. Sometimes it just does not make sense.
When people at work find out that I occasionally speak in front of the assembly like this, and hear about the amount of time it takes to prepare a message, it just does not make any sense to them. They say, “Well, cannot you hire somebody to do that? Cannot you pay somebody to do that?” You are probably thinking right now that I should have paid somebody to do that.
But from a worldly perspective, it does not make any sense. When we try to count the cost from an earthly perspective, we are going to pull back.
But when we count the cost from a spiritual perspective and see that laying down ourselves—laying down our soul-life—is going to reap spiritual benefit and spiritual life, then it makes complete sense.
We cannot hold on to our self-life and give it away at the same time. It cannot be done.
Barnabas spent all that he had on the church. Not only did he sell his land and give the money to the church, but he gave up his name. I was impressed by the changing of the name from Joseph to Barnabas.
He ended up being greatly used by the church from that point on in Scripture. Barnabas was completely spent, completely consumed with the New Testament church. He was a critical person in the church in Antioch, which was the first church to send out missionaries.
He was critical in Paul’s life, bringing Paul into active life in the church. He did that twice, not just once, but twice. He traveled on many missionary journeys, which in those days were very dangerous and risky. He spent his complete life—everything he had—on the church.
In the end, tradition has it that he was martyred for the church, martyred for Christ. Barnabas was conformed to the image of Christ by being spent in service to the church.
He did lose his life. He lost his self-life. He lost his physical life. But he gained life incomparable from the Lord.
Ananias and Sapphira lost their lives too. They lost their lives struggling against the Lord, and they gained nothing.
I do not think we are always aware of how seriously the Lord takes His church—how seriously the Lord takes His dwelling with man. That is key to His purpose.
I know that I frequently take very lightly what it means to be involved in church life. The Lord does not take it lightly at all. He has paid a tremendous price for the church, and He has a great purpose for the church.
When we mishandle the church or mishandle church life, He does not take it lightly either. As we can see from these stories, the Lord has taken, and can take, very swift and terrible action to protect His dwelling place.
But thankfully, as we can see from other places in Scripture, He also acts with tremendous longsuffering and tremendous grace to groom the church and shape the church into a bride without spot or wrinkle.
The end results are the same: our self-life, our fleshly life, is removed from His dwelling place, and all that remains is the resurrection life of His Son.
He does this as He teaches us His ways—not the world’s ways, but His ways for living in His church and being in His church. He teaches us through His Word and through His Spirit.
He also conforms us into His image through humility. As we see what He has done for us, how can we be anything but humble in His presence? As we see what He has done for each other, how can we be anything but humble in His presence?
He teaches us how to serve fully with His life—not with our own life, but with His life.
As we look at the church, we can either try to live in it through our own fleshly life. If we do, Scripture shows us time and time again that the results will not be desirable to anybody—to us or to the Lord.
Or we can seek to live in the church in the life that He has given us. When we do that, He will change us. He will conform us into the image of His Son.
That conforming will shed our self-life, our fleshly life. We will end up living in the church, being part of the bride, in His life that He has given us and for which He has made the way.
It is a deadly church. We are involved in a deadly church. It is going to be deadly to our fleshly life and our soul-life, but it is also going to bring forth the true life—the beautiful life that comes from His Son.
Let us pray.
Father, thank You for providing the way, Lord, for us to be part of Your bride, for us to be in the bride of Christ by putting us in Your Son and giving us His life to live in.
Father, I pray that these lessons today of service, authority, and sanctification—or consecration—will be from You and that You would help us take them to heart. Lord, I pray that You would remove anything that is not of You.
I pray, Father, that You would lead us to serve one another with Your life and humility.
I pray this in Jesus Christ’s holy name. Amen.