Outlive Your Life_ You Were Made to Make a Difference - Max Lucado [28]
“What if we tell them we sold the property for just ten thousand dollars?”
“What?”
“Who has to know?”
Ananias thought for a moment. “Yeah, we’ll just let everyone think we closed at ten thousand. That way we get credit for the gift and a little cash for something special.”
She smiled. “Like a five-thousand-dollar down payment on a Jaffa condo?”
“No harm in that.”
“No harm at all.”
And so on the following Sunday, Ananias stood in front of the church again. He waved a check and announced, “We sold the property for ten thousand dollars!” and he placed the check in the offering basket. He basked in the applause and signaled for Sapphira to stand. She did.
They thought their cover-up was a success.
On Sunday afternoon the apostles called Ananias to a meeting.
“They surely want to thank us,” he told Sapphira as he tightened his necktie. “Probably wondering if we’d be self-conscious at a recognition banquet.”
“I’d be okay with one,” she assured him.
He smiled and walked out the door, never thinking he wouldn’t return.
According to Luke the meeting lasted only long enough for Peter to ask four questions and render a single verdict.
Question 1: “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself?” (Acts 5:3). So much for the cover-up. Luke’s phrase for keep back means “misappropriate.” The apostles sniffed out the couple’s scheme for what it was: financial fraud.
Question 2: “While it remained, was it not your own?” (v. 4). No one forced the couple to sell the property. They acted of their own accord and free will.
Question 3: “After it was sold, was it not in your own control?” (v. 4). At any point the couple could have changed their minds or altered their contribution. The sin was not in keeping a portion of the proceeds but in pretending they gave it all. They wanted the appearance of sacrifice without the sacrifice.
Question 4: “Why have you conceived this thing in your heart?” (v. 4). This deceitful act was not an impulsive stumble but a calculated, premeditated swindle. Ananias had every intention of misleading the church. Did he not realize he was lying to God?
Peter made it clear with this verdict: “‘You have not lied to men but to God.’ Then Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and breathed his last” (vv. 4–5).
The body of Ananias was wrapped and buried before Sapphira had any clue what had happened. When she came to meet with Peter, she expected a word of appreciation. Peter gave her a chance to come clean.
“Tell me whether you sold the land for so much” (v. 8). (Come on, Sapphira, tell the truth. You’re in over your head. Just shoot straight, and you may live to tell about it.) She doesn’t.
“Yes, for so much” (v. 8).
“How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out” (v. 9).
As they carry Sapphira to join her husband in the cemetery, we shake our heads. Dare we wonder out loud what we’re wondering inside? Ask the question we all think? Since no one else will ask it, I will.
Was that really necessary?
Ananias and Sapphira deserved punishment, for sure. They deserved a stiff sentence. But the death sentence? Does the punishment fit the crime? What they did was bad, but was it that bad?
Let’s think about it. Exactly what did they do?
They used the church for self-promotion. They leveraged God’s family for personal gain. They attempted to turn a congregation into a personal stage across which they could strut.
God has a strong word for such behavior: hypocrisy. When Jesus used it, people ducked for cover. He lambasted the Pharisees with this blowtorch:
All their works they do to be seen by men . . . They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, “Rabbi, Rabbi.” . . . But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!