Deceit And Death

DECEIT AND DEATH

a prayer to open

Holy Spirit, come. Center my heart.

Fill my mind. Guide my steps.

There was a certain man named Ananias who, with his wife, Sapphira, sold some property. He brought part of the money to the apostles, claiming it was the full amount. With his wife’s consent, he kept the rest.

Then Peter said, “Ananias, why have you let Satan fill your heart? You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you kept some of the money for yourself. The property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished. And after selling it, the money was also yours to give away. How could you do a thing like this? You weren’t lying to us but to God!”

As soon as Ananias heard these words, he fell to the floor and died. Everyone who heard about it was terrified. Then some young men got up, wrapped him in a sheet, and took him out and buried him.

About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, “Was this the price you and your husband received for your land?”

“Yes,” she replied, “that was the price.”

And Peter said, “How could the two of you even think of conspiring to test the Spirit of the Lord like this? The young men who buried your husband are just outside the door, and they will carry you out, too.”

Instantly, she fell to the floor and died. When the young men came in and saw that she was dead, they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear gripped the entire church and everyone else who heard what had happened.

The apostles were performing many miraculous signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers were meeting regularly at the Temple in the area known as Solomon’s Colonnade. But no one else dared to join them, even though all the people had high regard for them. Yet more and more people believed and were brought to the Lord—crowds of both men and women. As a result of the apostles’ work, sick people were brought out into the streets on beds and mats so that Peter’s shadow might fall across some of them as he went by. Crowds came from the villages around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those possessed by evil spirits, and they were all healed.

In this story of Ananias and Sapphira, we discover an amazing (and heartbreaking) parallel to the story of Adam and Eve. Satan and human sin were alive and well at the beginning of the church, just as they were in the Garden of Eden, yet this story is sandwiched between a report of the supernatural generosity of early believers and the telling of Peter healing the sick simply by virtue of his shadow falling upon them. The lesson is not that Ananias and Sapphira should have given 100 percent of their property over; Peter makes that clear. The sin that so undermined the church was deceit and a desire to seem more generous than what was true. Although such harsh and immediate judgment from God is rare, we see how destructive he views deceit and how protective he is of the church.

• Read this passage again. What word or phrase stands out to you? Sit quietly, reminding yourself that you are in God’s loving presence, and ask him to show you how that word or phrase connects to your life.
• Why do you think deceit is so destructive to a community? In what circumstances have you seen its detrimental effects?
• Reflect on your own words and actions, and consider in what areas of your life you may be acting in a less-than-honest way: saying untrue things, exaggerating the truth, or failing to disclose the whole truth. What underlies the way you are behaving? Fear, insecurity, greed, lust, or something else? What is one step toward living truthfully that you can take this week?

Father, thank you for the reminder about how destructive lying and deceit are to your church and how offensive they are to you. How easy it is to allow half-truths or exaggerations to escape my lips in order to build myself up and be seen as important or right or better than I am. And how easy it is to withhold the truth if it will make me look good. Forgive me. Transform me. I want to be honest and authentic and to stand firmly in the truth. Give me the strength to live with full authenticity. May it be so.