BETTER TOGETHER
ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA
DR JIM DIXON
ACTS 5:1-11
FEBRUARY 27, 2011
An ossuary is a small box that contains the remains of a human being. An ossuary generally contains bones and ashes and dust. In the Jewish world, in the time of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Jewish people buried their dead, but after a period of time when there had been decomposition, they would take the remains and put them in these little boxes, these ossuaries. Many ossuaries have been discovered in the region of Jerusalem and the region of Israel. This is a significant area of exploration for archeologists.
A lot of controversy surrounds some of these ossuaries. For instance, most recently an ossuary was found with these words inscribed: “James, the son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus.” The question arises, was this James the son of Mary and Joseph and the brother of our Lord Jesus Christ? Was this the James who came to head the great Jerusalem church? Some scholars say yes, and some scholars say no. They used radioactive dating on the ossuary and they believe it is first century, but some believe it is a forgery and some believe it is legitimate. There is a split in the scientific community. The science is not precise or accurate and sometimes presuppositions influence the interpretation of the data.
Now, we know this: In 1924 two ossuaries were found in the city of Jerusalem, right next to each other, side by side. One was inscribed with a name Ananias and the other inscribed with a name Sapphira. This has been recorded by F.F. Bruce, the great Christian scholar, and also by Geoffrey Bromiley, who was the principal translator of Barth and Kittel and a great church historian. The question is, was this the biblical Ananias and Sapphira? Was this the Ananias and Sapphira of Acts 5? We know that they did indeed die together and were buried together; perhaps their ossuaries were placed together. We don’t know for sure.
We do know that Ananias and Sapphira lived a life that was poisoned by sin. We are going to take a look at their marriage and the sin that was within that marriage as it relates to finances and even beyond problems in the area of finances. We are going to look at this, this morning. We know that Ananias was a common name, same as Hananiah. It means that God is gracious. We know that Sapphira is a name less common, a name from which we get the word sapphire, which means beautiful. We are going to look at their marriage and lessons from their marriage.
The first lesson has to do with the dangers of money. As we look at Ananias and Sapphira, let’s take a look at the dangers of money. First of all, money can be dangerous to your marriage. Some of you have heard of the movie The Joy Luck Club, based on Amy Tan’s best-selling book. This movie was very popular some years ago. In The Joy Luck club, the couple shares “everything 50-50, so our love is always equal.” But as the wife narrates, you realize that their relationship is not truly equal, as they debate the “gray areas” of who should pay for what and the wife feels like somehow “50-50” always plays out in his favor.
Now in the movie, and also in the book, this couple winds up getting divorced, and it is all because of money. Many studies show that the leading cause of divorce (and divorce is pandemic in the western hemisphere) is not sex, or religion, or faith, or parenting. The leading cause of divorce is money. Many studies have shown that. 72% of married couples of the United States of America confess that they are struggling in the relationship because of money. It is a huge issue.
Certainly, money can destroy a marriage. I have a book here called The Couple Check-Up. This book was written three years ago, in the year 2008. It is not an explicitly Christian book, but it is a significant book. It poses the question: would you let your car go 100,000 miles without getting an oil change? I think the answer is no. If it is, your car wouldn’t go 100,000 without an oil change. Would you go 25 years without a dental check-up? Again, I think the answer is no. Would you have a physical exam only once in your lifetime? Again, I think the answer is no. So, the question is, why would you go throughout your entire marriage life without a checkup? That is what people do; they go through their entire married life without a checkup. So, this book is written called The Couple Check-Up. The idea is that you might get a little checkup in your marriage. This book covers everything from financial issues to relational issues to spiritual issues.
As I went through the book, I thought it was really a pretty solid book. Now, on the financial side of things the book points out that in some marriages you have a spender who is married to a saver and that produces a lot of stress. Sometimes you have a giver who is married to a hoarder and that can produce a lot of stress. There is a lot of debt stress. According to this book, in the United States of America, the average American has nine credit cards and $27,000 dollars of credit card debt, the average American. If I had heard that about Highlands Ranch, if I had heard that about Douglas County, I would not have been surprised, but it is the average American. I assume you understand that this means that people are very poor financial stewards, that they are paying much more than the sticker price on the products they purchase. Because of this credit card debt, they are paying double, triple, and even quadruple the sticker price because of all the interest that is accrued.
In marriages, all of this debt brings tremendous stress. The issues of security… both men and women have some heartfelt desire for security. They want some security now, but they want some security for their future. All of these areas are huge and we don’t have time to go over the complexity of subjects that relate to finance in marriage today. We do have classes here at the church, as Blake mentioned. One starts Tuesday night; this is called Money Makeover Workshop. In addition to signing up online, you can go in the lobby and we have a table there where you can sign up for Tuesday night. We have many other classes here at the church that are designed to help you in your financial management that you and your wife or you and your husband might have a marriage that is healthy financially and that your finances might be pleasing to God.
In addition to the fact that money can destroy a marriage, money is dangerous because money can also destroy your life. So, we look at Ananias and Sapphira, a very tough passage, and their lives were quite literally destroyed by issues relating to money. Now, Ananias and Sapphira were relatively wealthy people. They owned property. It said they sold a piece of property. The phraseology in the Greek would indicate it was not their primary residence. They may have had many pieces of property because they were relatively wealthy. They sold a piece of property and they decided to give a gift to the church in Jerusalem. But they wanted glory, they wanted praise, they wanted recognition, they wanted popularity, so they told the church leaders, “We sold a piece of property and we are giving the entire proceeds to the church.”
Now secretly, as husband and wife, they decide to hold some of the money back, they would just give part of the proceeds to the church and keep the rest for themselves. They perpetrated this lie to the church in Jerusalem. The deed was done, and Peter received by power of the Holy Spirit a word of knowledge by which he knew what Ananias and Sapphira had done. Peter pronounced the judgment of God and their lives were taken from them, first Ananias and then his wife Sapphira. It’s a very, very difficult passage.
I want to preface what I am going to say with these words: I hope you understand that we are saved by grace through faith. I hope you understand what happened to Ananias and Sapphira was inordinate. It was not normal. It is not the way God normally deals with our sins. Ananias and Sapphira committed the sin of lying, they committed the sin of greed, but God does not normally deal with our sins in that way. If he did, there would be nobody in church, and there would be nobody in the pulpit. It was inordinate.
As God began the church, the early church in the city of Jerusalem, God wanted the church forever to know that he takes sin seriously and he made this example of Ananias and Sapphira. I also want you to understand that this doesn’t mean that God was without grace towards Ananias and Sapphira. He merely judged their bodies. He merely took their physical lives. There is no statement here that he took their soul, or that he damned their soul. It may very well be that Ananias and Sapphira will be in heaven. I don’t want you to read this passage and deny the grace and mercy of God. This passage is difficult. You will find some commentaries, some scholars who argue that the only sin here is lying, that this is really all about lying and it has nothing to do with money. I couldn’t disagree more. I hope you understand that lying is virtually always a surface sin; it is not a root sin. So, when people tell a lie, usually, they are trying to cover up a deeper sin. When people tell a lie, they are seeking to cover up a root sin.
When we look at Ananias and Sapphira, we want to take a deeper look. We don’t want to have just a surface view of this passage of Holy Scripture. We understand that there was a deeper sin. They lied for a reason. The deeper sin was, first, pride. They wanted to be popular, they wanted everyone to be impressed, and they wanted to be exalted in the church. They wanted everyone to look at them and say, “Wow!” They wanted to be like Barnabas, who was very popular because he had made a very magnanimous gift to the church in Jerusalem.
Now, if pride had been their only sin, they could have accomplished their purposes simply by giving their entire proceeds of their sale to the church. They were relatively wealthy and could have done that. They could have accomplished their purposes and had all the glory and recognition that they wanted, simply by holding nothing back, taking their entire proceeds and giving them to the church, if pride had been their only sin. But there was another sin, and it is greed and covetousness. You see, they wanted their popularity, but they also wanted their money. So, they wanted their popularity, and they wanted their money and the only way to have both was to lie. They lied. The judgment of God came upon them. God wants us to understand that no sin is hidden from him. He knows our sins of pride, he knows our sins of greed, and he knows our sins of relating to truth and lying. He knows it all and he wants us to know he takes it seriously. He wanted the early church to know that, and he wants the church in all generations to know that.
Money is a scary subject. It is dangerous to marriages; it is dangerous for life, and it is also dangerous with regard to faith. Look at 1 Timothy 6 and the words of the Apostle Paul to his beloved disciple Timothy. Paul says, “There is great gain for godliness with contentment. We brought nothing into the world; we can take nothing out of the world. But, if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.” I don’t know about you, but that is a hard passage for me. Generally speaking, I am not content with just food and clothing. I don’t think, in America, the average Christian is satisfied with food and clothing. If we have food and clothing, Paul says, with these we will be content. “For those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, fall into a snare, fall into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evil. It is through this desire, through this longing, through this craving, that many have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pains.”
The problem, Paul says, is not money, but the love of money. “Philarguros” is the Greek word—the love of money. It destroys faith. Because of the love of money, many have wandered away from the faith. I don’t think this is some kind of premeditated event. I don’t think it is done with intentionality; I just think in our culture there are many people who have left the faith who do not live the faith because of their love of money. You can’t love money and follow Jesus properly.
This same word, “philarguros,” is used in 2 Timothy 3, when Timothy is told is by Paul, “Understand this: In the last days there will come times of stress.” The Greek word is “thlipsis,” which means shaking. “In the last days there will come a great shaking. People will be lovers of money,” philarguros, “lovers of self,” philautos, “Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,” “phildonos” rather than “philotheos.” These are the last days when people will be lovers of self, lovers of pleasure, lovers of money, but not lovers of God.
We might say, “This has been true in all generations.” It has been true in all generations. In all generations people have tended to love self, pleasure and money more than they have loved God. This will be particularly true in the final times. There will be a great love of money. The love of God will grow cold. What God wants us to understand is that in our marriages, as a husband and wife, you have got to look at your hearts and you have got to say, “What do we love most? Let’s be honest with each other. Do we love God most? Do we love self most? Do we love pleasure most? Do we love money most? What do we love most?” The warning of Scripture is strong.
This leads us to the subject of stewardship. I would like us to look at our marriages in terms of stewardship. We will leave subject of the dangers of money and look at how to use our money in the sight of God. I want you to understand the meaning of the word steward. It is not a Greek word, and it is not a Hebrew word. It is an old English word. The word steward comes from stiward, which comes from stigweard or stigwearden. This old English word literally refers to a stig, or sty, which is an enclosure. It may keep pigs, but it also might keep cattle, or it might keep chickens. The weard, or the wearden, is the warden, the person who cares for the sty or the stig. The warden is the guard who protects and provides for what is within the enclosure, the animals. That is a steward, a stiward a stigwearden.
This steward is not an owner. From the perspective of the Bible, this is the most basic thing we have to understand: we are not owners. We are stewards. God has entrusted certain things to us there within our enclosure. We are to be guardians, and we are to provide and protect, but they are his. Nothing belongs to us. Everything belongs to God. You look at the words of Jesus in Matthew 25, the Parable of the Talents and Luke 19, the Parable of the Pounds, the message is clear that Jesus is the owner. He is “Kurios,” he is Lord, he is master, he is owner and one day he is going to come again. He has entrusted to us his property. Someday, we are going to have to give an account for our management.
What is foundational to our Christian marriages is a mutual understanding between husband and wife that we own nothing. We can’t live right in this world, we can’t live properly in this world unless we understand this basic principle: we own nothing, we are just keeper of the pigs. My house is not mine; my house belongs to God. My car out in the parking lot belongs to God. My wallet belongs to God. My bank account belongs to God. My equity belongs to God. It all belongs to Christ. Barb doesn’t belong to me; Barb belongs to Christ. My own body does not belong to me, it belongs to Christ. We are stewards and someday going to have to give an account for what we do, even to our bodies. You understand this basic principle taught in the Bible, the central theme to the Parable of the Talents and the Parable of the Pounds, the words of Jesus. We don’t own anything. We can’t live right unless we understand this. We don’t own anything. One day we are going to have to give an account.
When we do that, I promise you Jesus wants to see generosity in our lives. If you look at 1 Timothy 6, you have this charge from God, through the Apostle Paul. “As for the rich of the world…” By the way, we are the rich of the world. When you look at the entire globe, when you look at the two-thirds world, the relative poverty, the absence of material provisions, we are the rich of the world. “As for the rich of the world, charge them not to be haughty but to associate with the lowly. Do not put your trust in uncertain riches, but in God, who richly furnishes us with all things to enjoy. Let them be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous.”
There are two different Greek words there, liberal and generous. They mean the same thing. The word liberal is a Greek word meaning generous, and then there is also another word used for generous. “As for the rich of the world, let them be generous and generous.” That is what it says! I promise you, when it comes to an accounting, to whom much is given, much is required. God is going to be looking for generosity.
One of the things I love about my mom and dad… my mom and dad are in heaven now, but one of the things I have always loved about my mom and dad is their generosity. Rarely in this life have I met people more generous than my mom and dad. When Barb and I were married, we were married at the First Baptist Church in Temple City, California, on a very hot summer day. We, after the wedding, came out to Barb’s Volkswagen because we were taking her Volkswagen for our honeymoon. Our friends had taken shaving cream and rice and buried our Volkswagen in it and they somehow got ahold of the key and did the inside of the car as well. This was a real mess. We took off after a time of cleaning.
That first night we went to the Santa Barbara Biltmore. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I borrowed the money from my dad for our honeymoon; I borrowed the money from my dad and mom for the wedding ring. With dad’s money and mom’s money we went to the Santa Barbara Biltmore. We get there, and we are kind of nervous because we had saved ourselves for marriage. We had lived celibate lives, and we are coming to our wedding night, our first night, and we are nervous. We are excited but nervous. We are heading to our room at the Santa Barbara Biltmore. It was very embarrassing, the guy carrying our luggage to the room turns out to be one of my old college buddies. Just a really weird coincidence.
We get to the room and Barb and I are in there and we are nervous and talking meaninglessly. We turn on the TV as a distraction. The phone rings and it is room service. They say, “Mr. Dixon, can we bring something up for your special night? Would you like some wine or champagne? Would you like red or white, dry or sweet?” I didn’t know what any of those words meant because at that point in our life we had never had anything to drink. I know you think, “Wow! Jim and Barb grew up in a bubble.” No. At that point in our lives we had just never had anything to drink. I didn’t even know what all those words meant. So, I just said to the guy, “Sure.” It was a special night, sure. There is silence and then he said, “Mr. Dixon, we will send you something up.”
A little while later someone is at the door and they have champagne for us in a nice container of ice. Barb and I figure out how to open this thing. We get it open, get the cork off and we taste it and we think, “Ugh.” It did not taste good to us at all, so we set it aside. The next morning, I go to pay the bill at the Biltmore and the cost of the champagne was greater than the cost of the room. It was Dom Perignon as it turns out. Barb and I were stunned and we thought, “Wow! We better take this with us, we can’t just throw it away, it is Dom Perignon.” We stick the cork back on and put it in the back of the VW and we are heading out towards Yosemite. We haven’t gone very far and BOOM, the cork blows off the champagne flies all over the car.
We have our honeymoon in Yosemite and come back to Pasadena where we are going to live. We get back to Pasadena and suddenly smoke starts coming out of the back of the VW. The engine is just overheated and almost on fire. Smoke is just rising from the back of the car. We pull over and I open up the back and everything is so hot that I have to get something to pull out the dipstick and see if there is any oil in it. There is no oil. I say to Barb, “When was the last time you checked your oil?” Barb said to me, “Oil?” It turned out that Barb’s dad had taken care of her car for her, and Barb really didn’t know you had to put oil in the car. Really my fault, the gauge must have been going way into the hot and I never noticed anything.
We check out the engine and it is destroyed. I tell my mom and dad and I can tell they are just like, “Oh no!” because they love us. My mom and dad huddle and say, “We have been thinking about getting your mom a new car anyway. Why don’t we give your mom’s car to you guys and you will be set.” My mom had a ’65 Mustang. I shared a few weeks ago how my dad sold my ’65 Mustang out from underneath me—my ’65 Mustang, fire engine red, four on the floor Mustang. I didn’t tell you that he gave me another Mustang, my mom’s Mustang. An amazingly generous mom and dad. They taught us to be generous, but they didn’t teach us just to be generous to people or to family members or to our kids. They taught us, first and foremost, that you need to be generous towards God. This is what they taught us: First and foremost, you need to be generous towards God. You need to give the first fruits to Christ, his kingdom and to his church, his bride.
My mom and dad modeled this. They gave the first fruits. They gave the first ten percent of everything mom and dad made without question. I believe when you are faithful, God does prosper you and your pockets no longer have holes in them. God prospers the faithful. I believe as time went by, my mom and dad began to double and triple tithe because they sought first the kingdom of God and its righteousness. They taught us this, and Barb’s parents taught her this. We were taught that when you get your first job, even when you get an allowance when you are really little, you tithe it. You take the first fruits, the first ten percent and give it. It is all his anyway, you are just a steward. This is what you do.
I hope that you as husband and wife can sit down and figure this out. I can promise you, it is not happening now, not with most of us, not in this church. We are $500,000 dollars behind budget. I have never seen this happen before. Dutch Franz, our executive pastor, and I before he left on vacation sat down and noodled on this and said, “What are we going to do?” I have had a number of elders suggest I preach more sermons on stewardship but I don’t think that you would like that. We need to be more faithful. It is really about our hearts, and it is about what we love and it is about whether or not we really believe and what we believe. Do we want to see the Word of God go forth? Do you want to see light in the darkness? Do you want there to be salt on the earth? Do you want to serve the higher purposes of heaven? Do you want his kingdom to flourish? It is about our hearts.
In our marriages, we need to talk about this and see what we can do. I tell you one of the great principles of financial stewardship is that the two shall become one. This isn’t just sexual, it is not just physical, it is not even just emotional or relational, it is spiritual and it is even financial. One of the things that just grieves me when I watch a clip like the Joy Luck Club is the fact that, clearly, they have not become one. He had his stuff, she had her stuff, and they had not become one. I think there is this great principle from the very beginning that it is the Lord’s and we are just co-stewards and we do it together because it is all his. We may need counseling to figure this out, we may need to read some books to get some advice but it is important that we do this and that we teach our kids because we have been a generation that has failed. We have failed to disciple our kids and we have a generation of non-givers out there. It has probably been a process of failure that has now encompassed two generations, because many adults no longer give. The master is going to return, and he is going to look at what we have lived for and examine the priorities of our lives.
As we close, I want to say just one word about fear. You can’t read a passage like Ananias and Sapphira and Acts 5 and not notice and even feel some fear. In this passage it says, “Great fear came upon the whole church.” I mean, God just struck two people dead, a husband and a wife. Great fear came upon the whole church, upon all who heard these things. This is said three times in the passage, “great fear,” “megaphobos,” great fear. Of course, this word “phobos” can sometimes mean terror or fright, just being scared, terrorized. It can mean that. It is not how God wants us to feel. This word “phobos” can also mean reverence, respect, and awe. I have no doubt that God wants the latter to be the message. He wants us to respect him. He wants us to reverence him. He wants us to hold him in awe. I don’t believe God wants us to live our lives in terror and fright.
The Bible says in 1 John that perfect love casts out all fear, and here I think “phobos” means terror and fright. Perfect love casts out all fear. Fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love. God wants us to love him and God wants us to bask in his love. He wants the motive for our obedience to be love. God is not wanting to motivate us with terror and fright, he is not wanting to scare us into obedience, he wants us to have a tender love and that tender love to bring us to obedience. Jesus said, “No longer do I call you servants for a servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends.”
I know when Barb and I were first married, Barb had grown up in some pretty harsh fundamentalism and Barb had a pretty hard view of God. She was kind of afraid of God and viewed God as distant and angry, righteous but filled with indignation and God wielded a club and loved to use it. Barb had this view of God. In our first years of marriage we would huddle and we would pray and we would talk about what God is really like. Over a period of time Barb has come to see and feel and sense the tenderness of God and that God loves her and holds her and cares deeply about her.
My problem with a passage like Ananias and Sapphira is people can build a false theology out of it. I am saying don’t do that. God is warning the church; he wants us to take sin seriously. It doesn’t mean there is no grace and mercy; it doesn’t mean that God wants us to be motivated in the wrong way. He wants us to be motivated by love and a deep gratitude for his grace and mercy, while taking sin seriously. It is a tough subject, isn’t it?
Remember, this is such a vast subject, this subject of finances that I can’t begin to cover it and I might not be the best person to cover it anyway. We do have wonderful classes here at the church; I want to encourage you to take advantage of those classes for Christ’s sake and his kingdom’s sake. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.