When Problems Arise

Introduction

Daniel’s work and picking out those songs to guide our thoughts and our minds heading toward the biblical content we’re going to look at this morning. I appreciate the song leaders always doing such a good job, not just picking random songs, but really thinking and putting some thought into what they’re doing. And that really does help our worship. So thank you, Daniel. Appreciate that this morning. It’s interesting. I always wonder why God has us sing. And then I sing songs like that, and it brings back pretty amazing memories. that song, we learned it, Katie and I learned it at probably when we were 16 or 17 years old at camp. And as we sang it, I can still remember sitting in this little hall where Matt Johnson was teaching us and Shane Scott teaching us that song, working through it, all of us, you know, y’all’s age, and just an amazing song, and here we are 26 years later, still singing it and praising God with these words.

And it’s meant to bring emotions and memories. That’s part of the purpose of singing, and to align our hearts with each other and to point our hearts toward God, and that’s why we do that every time we come together, singing with one voice and singing in praise and honor to God. Let’s look at Acts chapter 4. I want to look at the end of this text. a lot of these sermons, as we’re going through the book of Acts, are covering quite a bit of ground because we’re we’re thinking thematically, and today we’ll be no different. We’re gonna cover a few different stories. We’re gonna start with the story that is in Acts chapter 5 with Ananias and Sapphira, but I really want to set the scene by seeing where we are at the end of chapter four.

Things are good. I mean, this is the ideal situation, right? This is exactly what you would want a church to be. And so Luke is giving us these summaries. Here’s another one of them. He gives one at the end of chapter two, which is similar, and then we have this one at the end of chapter four. Now, the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power, the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all, and there was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses, sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

And it was distributed to each as any had need. Thus Joseph, who was called by the apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet. Luke’s doing a few different things with this text. He’s fronting Barnabas. He’s introducing us to someone who’s going to bring back up later. But Barnabas stands as this great example of the sort of person that you want within the Ecclesia. And he’s just representative of many others. This is something that’s happening with some frequency. People are selling their possessions and they’re come. You know, day to day, they’re laying these gifts, these offerings at the apostles’ feet, so that people who have needs can have those needs met.

And so Barnabas stands as this example. He’s the kind of guy who would do this sort of thing. They’ve just come off some huge victories, you might call them.

We talked a little bit about this a couple of weeks ago, about kind of the external conflicts, the problems from without, and how they’re challenging their authority and about this man who was healed, who is lame. And they say, Hey, if you want to know by what authority we healed this lame guy and gave him life, it’s by Jesus, the guy you killed. Right? So kind of these huge victories that they have just won over their oppression. And things are seeming really good. But it’s when the trouble begins. When you have people, you’re often going to have problems. And that’s just the reality. And Luke doesn’t try to hide that as he tells the story of the early disciples. Things are up, they’re really good. He doesn’t reshape history just to make it look good all the time.

1. The First Threat: Outright Hypocrisy and Deceit

That’s not what takes place in Luke’s account. We have this man, Barnabas, who sells his possessions. He gives it for others, but the story changes in Acts 5. But a man named Ananias with his wife Sapphira sold a piece of property. That sounds great. Right? Just in alignment with everybody else. They see a need, they’re willing to participate, right? And with his wife’s knowledge, this is important, he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles’ feet. From the outside, everything looks good. Sort of an important idea or concept for us to consider. And in this case, specifically, if it wasn’t for the Holy Spirit and inspiration, and God sort of leading the way through Peter, no one may have known.

It might have been that Ananias and Sapphira went their whole life being deceitful, portraying themselves as one thing when in reality they are something very different. God takes control of the situation directly here in this story. This is not something he always does, but it is interesting that in this first conflict, first of all, we have a married couple who are part of this first conflict, and then God directly intervenes this time with them. Sort of interesting, setting the stage for how he feels about things like hypocrisy and deceit and contriving things for our own self-glory.

And so we have these threats that come against a unified body. And I want to look at a few of these threats and I want to see the end result of what happens with them. In the early church, they’re they’re handled quite well. The first one, God handles, so hard to argue with God on that one. In the following stories, we see others step in, the leaders or Peter and John to handle the situations we’re going to look at. But we see the result of what takes place, even when you have threats to unity, when you have disruption and chaos, when things are handled in a good way, good results can still come from that. So I want us to see that as we work through the story this morning.

I’m not going to read all of these accounts because they would take a long time to read, but I will paraphrase through some of them. You’ll likely remember the story with Ananias and Sapphira. They sell this land. What we know if we keep reading carefully is they portray it as if they sold it for a certain amount, but in reality, they actually sold it for more, and they kept back part of the proceeds for themselves. Now, Peter makes it very clear that they could have done whatever they wanted to do. They didn’t have to sell the property. First of all, it was theirs. They didn’t have to sell it. Even when they sold it, they could have said, hey, we’re giving part of this to you, but we’re keeping part of it for ourselves.

The problem here, the sin that takes place, is not that they didn’t give all the money. That’s not the issue. It’s not that they should have sold it all and they were forced to give all of the proceeds from the sale to the apostles to then distribute. This is all voluntary. But this is the nature of what this ideal community is like. It’s not that people are being forced into giving their possessions to take care of others. No, they’re willing to do that. They’re not considering the things that are their own to only belong to them. They’re willing to give those to others. That’s the nature, the spirit of what’s taking place within this community. And it’s a voluntary offering, not something that is forced out of their hands.

But what we know is that Ananias and Sapphira contrived this deed. As Peter specifically is speaking to Sapphira, he makes this very clear. In verse 9, Peter says to her, How is it that you have agreed together to test the spirit of the Lord? This is something that they had worked on in their marriage.

We just talked about unity in the ecclesia. Unity is not always good. They’re united here on the wrong thing. They’re a husband and wife that are united, but they’re united in their deception. They’ve got their story straight. They’ve worked together on this, so that when he comes in, he says, Here’s what we made from the property. And then she comes in three hours later, and Peter says, Did you sell it for this much? And yeah, they’ve worked this out together. And she lies just like Ananias lies. And so not only are they united in their story and in their lie, but ultimately they are united in their death.

They want the prestige, they want the self promotion, they want the honor, they want everybody to look at them and praise them, likely how Barnabas or how others might have been praised for their full offering. And in the desire for their own self-glory, what’s happening here is not that they didn’t give enough money to the church. That’s not the problem. It is a failure of character. What the Holy Spirit is identifying in Ananias and Sapphira is not that they’re not generous enough. It is the intention or the motive behind why they’re doing what they’re doing. The reputation and the honor that they’re trying to gain through deceitful means.

Ananias and Sapphira are united in their self-promotion and their selfishness, their own glory was what they’re after. But there’s a couple we’ll encounter later. In Acts 18, you’ve heard their names before, Priscilla and Aquila, who are united in advancing the truth. They’re united in kingdom work. They teach together. They serve together. They risk their lives together. I mean, these are the kinds of people that Paul is speaking about and talking of because of the kind of people they are. They’re kicked out of Rome. And you know what’s interesting about this? They don’t go around complaining about how they got kicked out of Rome. Wherever they go, they work. You know, and Paul’s first encounter with them is he’s a tent maker. They’re tent makers, and they’re busy doing their work and they’re busy spreading the gospel and teaching in the kingdom.

They’re not going around complaining about the bad things that have happened to them in life. What they’re interested in is not themselves, but the progression of what’s happening with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Even to the point when the eloquent man Apollos is teaching some things that are a little bit inaccurate. They could have reprimanded him publicly. Interesting. He’s preaching Jesus, but he isn’t familiar with Jesus’ baptism yet. This is Acts chapter 18. He’s only familiar with the baptism of John. And in Acts 19, we see some other disciples that Paul encounters who are in the same situation. He asks them about the Holy Spirit, and he finds out they only know about the baptism of John, and so he then takes care of this, baptizes them into Christ.

They receive the Holy Spirit, which they hadn’t even heard about yet. And so we see this is somewhat of a problem here. But Apollos is this eloquent man. He’s teaching from the Old Testament, and he’s even preaching about Jesus, but he doesn’t quite have it all accurate. And if Aquila and Priscilla were Ananias and Sapphira type people, they could have publicly reprimanded him for their own glory, for their own attention. This eloquent man said, hey, before everybody, you’re doing it wrong. What’s interesting is Aquila and Priscilla take Apollos aside, and it says, They teach him the way of God more accurately. It’s just the kind of people they are.

And they see the ability that Apollos has and they realize what he can accomplish, but they know he needs some help. And so they take some time and they pull them aside and they work with him. As I said earlier, it is interesting that this first story of conflict and problem in the church is a married couple who have contrived this deed together. And what it makes me consider, especially when I compare it to a good couple, Priscilla and Aquila, is that it’s not really, are we united? I mean, as married people, those of us who are married, we’re we live in the same home and we are accomplishing a lot of the same sort of things. What are we not we’re united in something? What is it that we’re united in?

The question is, what are we united around? It could be, sadly, that maybe each of us are united around trying to get our own way. Maybe that’s how our marriage is going. That’d be not good, but we may be united in that effort to try to just do for ourselves. Maybe it’s trying to live the best life we can now, or maybe our uniting factor in our marriage is to educate our children and have them get a good job and grow up and do well in this world, or building our careers, or saving for retirement, or whatever it might be that we could be united around. But let me ask you to consider Aquila and Priscilla, particularly in contrast to Ananias and Sapphira and the direction they went.

And in our marriages, be asking ourselves, are we united in serving the kingdom together? And if so, how? How can I be united with my wife in serving the kingdom and progressing the work of truth and the gospel of Jesus Christ? Maybe it is just teaching your children right now about Jesus and about the story of Scripture. Maybe there’s some other way that we can help. But the principle here is just asking this question and thinking, how can we work together? We don’t want to be an Anonitis and Sapphira working just for ourselves, looking for our own self-promotion and for what’s good for ourselves in this world. This ended poorly for them. Let me point out that’s not how it always goes. Often we don’t see immediate reactions and judgment when we act deceitfully or we act wrongly.

Praise be to God for that. That we aren’t just judged immediately for our sin. But God saw something here in the story that needed to be dealt with. The corruptness of heart. The desire to present something about themselves that was not true, the hypocrisy and the deceitfulness that had the potential of major disruption. And this congregation that had been united in heart and in soul at the end of Acts chapter 4. I want us to understand when we see the action of God here, this immediate judgment. There’s a principle that I think is important. Because it doesn’t seem like a great evangelism strategy. You know, all these people have been gathered, the church has been growing, and then these two people are struck dead on the spot.

That’s not the sort of thing that we would typically think, hey, come be a part of this. But I want you to notice where the story ends. And I want us to understand that discipline is not a threat to unity. A lack of discipline is a threat to unity in reality. The story concludes and it says, Great fear. There’s fear. You could imagine there’d be fear. Someone acts deceitfully and they are struck dead on the spot, probably a great bit of fear. And by the way, this is the first time the word ecclesia is used in the book of Acts. The whole church is afraid when they hear the things that take place. But then Luke gives us another summary here, and it says in verse 14, and more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women.

Discipline and rooting out evil and wickedness is not a threat to the growth of the kingdom. In fact, it is a threat to do just the opposite and to ignore it. As Paul deals with a number of times in some of his epistles. And we’ll come back to this thought here in a little bit. When we come back to the third story, I want us to look at, but I want to kind of progress now. What I want us to see is at the end of each of these stories, when things are handled the way they are, the word continues to grow. As disruptive or as problematic as Anonites and Sapphira were, or even could have been, it could have been much worse. What we see at the end of this story is that the word is continuing to grow and people are continually being added to their number.

And so the first threat we see here to the unity of this ecclesia is just outright hypocrisy and deceit. And let me just stop here for a minute because this is often one of the things people complain about the most. Particularly people in the world who’ve been hurt by religion in some way or by a congregation they’ve been a part of, and these are realities that actually take place. Well, people are just hypocrites there. And the reality is that’s true. Any group can have people who are hypocritical, who are deceitful. And here we see God judging that very harshly. Just because there is the reality that with fallen people and people who are sinful, you can have people who are hypocrites, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be part of God’s people.

God does not view this positively. It’s not okay that they were trying to deceive not just people but the Holy Spirit with their deceitful actions, with their conspiracy to lie. Yes, you cannot avoid a situation with a group of people where you will not have some who act in wicked ways or act in evil ways, but that does not mean that we just now have no obligation to do the things of God. That’s not where the story goes. Peter didn’t say, well, everybody just give up. Because Ananias and Sapphira messed up and they were clearly hypocritical, just forget it all. This doesn’t work. No, they continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And people, though they had fear about what happened and the judgment that took place, now they were added even more to their number.

2. The Second Threat: An Unintentional Neglect

The second threat to unity is quite different in this story. As we continue, we’re going to go to chapter 6. And we see that what happens here is not something that is directly deceitful or some kind of intentional wrongdoing or wickedness. It is an unintentional neglect that takes place within the body. A really unfortunate one because of the way it takes place. Well, in chapter 6 and verse 1, it says, Now in these days, notice what says here in the beginning. Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, they’re continuing to grow. Despite Ananias and Sapphira and the problems that were caused there, they just continue to grow. But as they grow, there are some problems along the way. And there is a complaint by the Hellenists, they are Greek speaking Jews here, arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

Why is Luke including these stories? I would suggest to you that one of the reasons he’s including this story in Acts 6 is because it is a direct threat to the story of Acts 2 and 4. That’s why I gave you that summary at the beginning about how they’re one heart and they’re one soul, and things are good. There’s not a needy person among them. I mean, hear the language, right? Everybody’s taken care of and they’re selling possessions, and it’s all so good and wonderful, and yet as they grow, now there is this complaint that some people’s needs aren’t being met. There are widows who are being overlooked in the daily distribution. And even beyond that, there’s hurt feelings. Because there are cultural tensions that are a part of this.

And you think about you have the diaspora Jews who ultimately come back and the Hellenization that took place in the ancient world. And so you have a group of them who are speaking Greek. I mean, they’re Jewish people, but they’re Greek-speaking Jews. And then you have the Hebrews and kind of the tension that may exist on some level already about some of this, given their history. And now, for whatever the reason is, it seems innocent, but you can imagine, even when things are innocent, that’s not always how we view them, do we? The Greek speaking Jews feel neglected and hurt. And you do have to wonder why is it only their widows who are being neglected? Very much maybe an is oversight, but innocent oversights can’t be hurtful.

And the neglect that’s taking place can be a powerful message about a lack of attentiveness to certain people. I want to point out here that it mentions there’s a complaint by the Hellenists that arose. Sometimes complaints are legitimate. Sometimes complaints are selfish and they’re amount to whining, trying to get our own way. You know, we want something a certain way, or we imagine it should be a certain way, and we’re trying to push through our ideas and what we want, and we’re willing to grumble and complain about that, and certainly that can happen, particularly when it’s only for our own self-interest. So maybe that’s a good way to gauge it. If it’s just what I want and I’m going to complain about it, that’s kind of borderline whining or is whining, grumbling.

But I want us to understand that’s not really what’s happening here. This is actually a true hurt. This is an actual neglect. These are widows among their number who are being overlooked and are not being taken care of.

And so a complaint for the good of others is not mere whining or selfishness. They’re looking at what’s taking place and they’re saying, hey, there’s we’re supposed to be this group that’s one heart and one soul, no needy person, but we have needy people. But I want us to see what takes place when they bring this up. The leaders take the problem seriously, and they find a solution quickly that pleases the community. And at the same time, in the midst of all of that, as they’re solving the problem, they’re not neglecting the primary or the most important thing, which is the teaching of the word in prayer. The apostles have their specific ministry. It is for them, and this will come back up in the next story.

And they’re not going to neglect that to take care of other things, but they do come up with a solution. They don’t say, ah, this is not that important. Someone else can handle this. It is serious, and it does matter that it is taken care of, even if it’s not going to be them who directly do it. They listen. They ultimately empower others to act to take care of the problem. They don’t have to do it themselves necessarily. But they want to make sure, as the leaders here, that it’s getting taken care of, and they involve the whole congregation. Verse 5. And what they said, please the whole gathering. You know, pick out some people who can take care of this. Everybody’s happy with this arrangement.

And let me say here, just before I go too far into this, every problem is unique. And problems tend to be complex, as if you are a certain age, you understand. So this is great that they handled this one so easily. That’s not always how things work. But it is helpful, I think, to see the way they go about this, where they try to involve the group, they want to get everybody on board, pick some people from among yourselves to handle this. And at the end of all of this, as they deal with this problem, they deal with it quickly. I want us to notice there’s no ego involved. There’s no defensiveness, no protecting image, no excuses. The apostles don’t stop and saying, hey, listen, we’ve been busy teaching about Jesus.

Stop trying to blame us for all this stuff. That’s dismissive. If that’s the way we handle a problem or an issue. By saying it’s really just not as important as what we’ve been doing. So that’s why it got overlooked. Well, there may be some truth to that, but it doesn’t really seem like there’s a whole lot of interest there if that’s the way I handle it. They don’t, they’re not personally offended by the fact that somebody complained about what was taking place. They just humbly problem solve. Not just for the widows. I think that’s part of it, because they do know this needs to be dealt with, but ultimately for the sake of the mission itself for the kingdom. Problems like this, in and of themselves, they’re significant, they matter, but also they become distractions to what is the primary focus.

I mean, this community is supposed to be a community that has one heart, one soul, that’s working together. They are in common, right? And so this shouldn’t be happening. And when things aren’t happening the right way, it then distracts from what is the primary goal of what should be taking place, which is the progressing of the teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the growing of the kingdom. And so we might think, well, serving tables, maybe that’s not as important. But the reality is, if the tables aren’t being served, it becomes a distraction to something else that needs to be done. And in their wisdom, maybe in their inspiration, the apostles realize the importance of the story in verse 7. And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

Not only are they continuing to grow in number, but now they’re beginning to bring in some of the people who persecuted the Christians from the beginning. Some of the people who were involved in killing Jesus at the beginning of this story. Now some of them are starting to believe. It seems like things are going poorly. It’s bad. People are being neglected. And of course, that is bad. But what’s interesting is as they encounter these conflicts and these problems, and as they deal with them, the word of God continues to grow. There’s a testimony in this. In the world, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of interest, particularly before the time of Jesus. I can’t go into great depth on this, but the reality is the world changed with Jesus.

And I’ve talked in some detail about this in the past, but things like taking care of the poor or taking care of those who are marginalized or less significant in society is really not a storyline you find before the time of Jesus. Only within Jewish culture did some of these things take place because obviously Yahweh is their God, and some of these things are taught in Leviticus, but particularly outside of them, there’s not much interest in taking care of the marginalized. There’s no social justice. Nobody cares about the little people. This only begins when the pagans start seeing the Christians do this, and they’re losing people from their temples. But this is the nature of what it means to follow Jesus, that you care about the widows and the people who can’t care for themselves.

3. Unity Threatened by a Desire for Power

This is important to you. It’s important in the progress of the kingdom itself and in the growing of the word, there’s a there’s a testimony, there’s a witness being born here about what God’s people are like. And this is just one of those examples. Where there’s no needy among them. And when those who have needs are recognized, the ecclesia helps them because they’re one, and so that which could be a threat to unity when handled properly is actually a testimony to God’s plan and to what God wants to accomplish through his community of believers. And then we have the story of Simon, the magician. Unity sometimes is threatened by a desire for power. And in some ways, I think we can understand where Simon’s coming from.

This guy, as he’s introduced to us in the story, I mean, he is someone. Everybody’s following him, everybody pays attention to this guy. I don’t know how to envision what he was really like. I have been to some really interesting shows of magicians. Some of you may know Ben Jackson, the guy’s amazing. It looks like he’s working miracles. I know he’s not, but quite amazing, kind of the close even has cameras up showing what he’s doing to make it even more impressive, how he does all kinds of crazy things, and it’s like he can predict the future. And I’m sure he has trade secrets and all sorts of things of how he can do that. But what I envision Simon like is he’s kind of like that, right?

But he turns it off as if he really is working miracles. He really is someone great. He is telling people he’s someone great. That’s what the text tells us in chapter 8 and verse 9. And all the people are paying attention to him in Samaria, and not only that, they’re going around saying, This man is the power of God that is called great.

Now, there’s a lot of good things about Simon. I think sometimes he gets a little bit of a bad rap with people, you know, because of the way he reacts. But there’s actually, you know, if you imagine who this guy is, there’s quite a bit of humility in the way he reacts too. But what we see in the story is this little vestiges of the old man resurfacing. Do any of us ever feel that? Right? Like we’ve changed, we want to be different, but there’s just still little pieces of that reemerge that we have to push down. And so Simon, this magician, he’s amazed people for years in Samaria. He has all of this attention, and because of the persecution, right? Something that seems bad, the Jews are oppressing the Christians, those who are part of the way, and they scatter and they go out teaching the word of God.

Philip comes to Samaria. And when Philip comes to Samaria, he’s teaching the good news. He’s preaching the good news about the kingdom of God and about Jesus, and everybody’s baptized. Even Simon. So when you’re a liar and you’re a deceiver, you know what’s true often. And I think Simon realizes this guy actually has it. He knows what he’s doing and how he’s deceiving people. And when he sees some true miracles taking place, because it goes on to say that Philip is doing signs and he’s working great miracles, he knows what’s truly great. It’s not him. And he’s baptized, and Peter and John are told, and they come down and they begin to talk to the people, and they lay their hands on people, and the Holy Spirit is given to them.

Now remember, people in the early church aren’t walking around with these. They’re not carrying around a New Testament to tell them all the things that Jesus has inspired through his writers. And so there’s people with the gift of prophecy and the gift of faith. And so there’s prophetic messages that are given. And so Peter and John, they come, they lay their hands on people, and when Simon sees that, the old man comes back. Whoo. If I could just have that power, I’d be someone great again. Peter, I’ll give you some money. He’s got plenty of it because he’s been duping people for years with all his tricks. Peter says, May your silver perish with you because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money.

You have neither part nor lot in this matter. It’s not your mission. This is not your witness. The apostles are specifically given this role, and he says, Your heart is not right before God. Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that if possible the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you were in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. Man, that is that is harsh. I just, I have a feeling today that if someone reacted, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna go out on the limb here, but if someone reacted to somebody even in our church that way, man, that would not go well. We just, we don’t like rebuke. We don’t like being told we’re wrong or that we’ve sinned.

We have a hard time in our culture dealing with that. Peter is extremely direct here. He rebukes him in the moment directly and says, Your heart’s not right, your intentions are wrong. You are you are bound by iniquity right now and by bitterness, you’re trying to regain what you what you had before, and you see this, and you think you want to get the glory again. And so, in some ways, it’s similar to Ananias and Sapphira. I think there’s some big differences as well, particularly the response here. Part of it with Simon, I think, and maybe the lesson for us is kind of this impulse. Right? He sees this, and the old man is still there. Remember, he is he’s a new convert. He’s beginning to change his life, and he sees the thing, and the old man starts to emerge again in this sort of impulsive reaction.

Ananias and Sapphira know exactly what they’re doing. They’re fully aware of their deception and how they’ve contrived this in their heart. They have talked together, they’ve discussed what they’re going to do. This is not an in the moment impulsive sort of thing. With Simon it is.

Certainly Peter cared, but he knew it needed to be dealt with immediately and not allowed to continue. Allowed to continue, Simon may have ended up like Ananias and Sapphira, the kind of person who contrives things in his heart for his own self-glory and promotion. That’s where he used to be, right? And so Peter wants to stop that immediately. And to Simon’s credit, I think this is sometimes where the end of the story gets overlooked. When he is rebuked by Peter, his immediate reaction is pray for me to the Lord that nothing of what you have said may come upon me. Correction hurts. I don’t think I’ve ever been rebuked in my life, even when I was a kid by my mom or older by an older, more mature Christian, where I thought, oh, that was so fun.

We should do that more. But it doesn’t mean it should be neglected, or that it shouldn’t be done, or that wickedness and evil should be left ignored. Because the chaos and the problems come become even worse. Both for the person who is allowed to continue in their wickedness, and for others who are hurt and affected by it.

Even in the book of Acts. Paul warns the shepherds at Ephesus about wolves arising from within, speaking twisted things to draw away disciples after them, it says in Acts chapter 20 and verse 30. He warns Timothy and Titus that shepherds cannot be arrogant, right? They shouldn’t be puffed up. That’s that’s not the kind of people who should be leading because the problem of desiring power is an issue, and they shouldn’t be new converts either. He brings that into this. They must be able to give instruction to protect the flock against and silence empty talkers and deceivers. That’s part of their role. He warns them because of this reality. Because of the Ananias and Sapphira’s of the world. This is part of their role. In 3 John calls out Diotrophes who likes to put himself first.

He was talking wicked nonsense, John says, against John and against others. Sadly, power corrupts and can even find its way within the ecclesia. The threat is real. And that’s why it’s mentioned frequently in Scripture. It can be calculated deceit, like Ananias and Sapphira, or maybe it’s just impulsive selfishness that, if not corrected, can grow worse and worse. But yet again, as the story continues, it says in verse 25, at the end of this account, now they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans. Ananias and Sapphira and the neglected widows, Simon the magician, these stories that could have resulted in chaos, all of them ended with the word of God continuing to grow and increase.

Conclusion

Because of people committed to truth, committed to the kingdom. But I do want us to see that the way was not threatened most by prisons and by oppression. They celebrate those things when they’re over. They’re celebrating that they were counted worthy to suffer with Christ. It was threatened most by pride. And so in encountering this, if we protect image or if we crave a platform or influence, which is particularly a problem in our culture, or we’re seeking prestige or honor, or we avoid correction, or we’re worried about what’s going to happen, if we do that, we become more dangerous to the church than persecution would ever be. But if we continue to walk in truth, we welcome discipline and training, correction, even rebuke, though it’s not fun.

We handle complaints humbly, staying focused on the word, staying focused on the truth, not just feelings. If we’re willing to help immature believers grow. This is what I want us to see at the end of this with these summaries.

That’s the ideal.

They come in every group.

No one is needy, no one is neglected. But we have one voice proclaiming the truths of God together. You’re never going to find a group of people who never have a problem. The grass is not greener on the other side. Well, it may be for a while, but then it’s going to have its own problems. This life is just simply not perfect. And so rather than pretend like we can find that, we should equip ourselves to think about how to handle the conflicts and the problems when they come, just like the early church. And I hope that this is the way you see this group. That we work toward that end imperfectly at times. We have our own problems and our own struggles. But the goal is to progress the kingdom and do the will of the Lord.

If you realize you need that in your life, maybe it’s just a personal thing, like Simon the Magician this morning. You realize your heart’s been wrong. Your intentions have been have been off. You’ve been seeking your own self glory. You can make that right, whether it’s at this place or wherever you normally worship, this can be a work for good for yourself and for others. And that’s the kind of change that helps not just yourself in your own life, but the people who are around you. And Jesus welcomes you to make that change. You can give your life to him. If you haven’t been baptized, that’s the place to start. You’ll be baptized into Christ for your sins to be washed away, to come up a new person walking with him.

But maybe you’ve already done that and you realize you hadn’t been living the right way. Follow the advice of Peter to Simon. Repent. Get rid of the wickedness and begin living anew, seeking forgiveness from the Lord. Can we help you do that this morning? Why don’t you come as we stand and we sing?