The Sins of the Saints

Acts 4:32--5:11

     Turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 4, we're going to study the passage that was read earlier, verses 32 through chapter 5, verse 11.  We've entitled this message, "The Sins Of The Saints," and we'll see the reason for that as we go along.  We've been studying in the Book of Acts now for some months.  The church has been born, in all of its' pristine beauty and freshness and vitality, it is unstained as of yet.  And these early days of the churches history are bright, and they're happy days, and they're days that are full of love, and fellowship is real.  The joy is overwhelming and the love is all inclusive, and it's deep and consequently their testimony is loud and it is clear, and the results have been that some 15 to 20 thousand have come to name the name of Jesus Christ, in just a few days or weeks since the crucified leader died, and rose again.  And then when Satan began to try to thwart the purpose of the church by external persecution, they were victorious, and they only prayed for more boldness, and more boldness came and more people were saved and it grew beyond that.  God was very real and Christ was very much alive, and the Holy Spirit was very much displayed in great power, in those days.  Really, there had never been days like those days since before Adam fell.  For never before had Messiah come and sins been forgiven and full fellowship with God been restored and new life been implanted and new natures been put within the believers.  Never before had there been a resident Holy Spirit, this was not so since the days of Adam.  But you can be sure that if all was well and all was beautiful and God was moving and Christ was exalted and the Holy Spirit was powerful that Satan would be active.  For Satan has long ago declared himself in open rebellion against God, and the one who would design to thwart every purpose of God, old or new.  And so we do not even get past chapter 5, the church only having been born, in chapter 2, until we see it already beginning to be cut, and torn, and ripped by Satan.  And as we come to our message this morning, we are going to see the first occasion of sin in the church.  There are many first's in the Book of Acts, this is the saddest of all.  Satan, by his effort to persecute the church had failed and as so often is the case he had over reached himself, in an effort to persecute Peter and John, he had only given them the opportunity to preach the gospel to the Sanhedrin.  In an effort to stop the churches boldness, he had only allowed them the privilege of increasing it.  In an effort to halt the number of conversions, he had only multiplied it.  And Satan found out that external pressure only tends to fan the flame.  And Satan knew that he had to get at the very base of the fire, and put it out there, and so he began to infiltrate the church and what begins in chapter 5 is still going on today.  We are face to face in this passage then with the first incident of sin in the church.  And it's a heart­breaking text, because this is the beginning of that which has contin­ued to plague and disease and cripple and even in some cases, kill the church, throughout history, the sins of the saints.  And I'm not talk­ing about the sins of unbelievers, and I'm not talking about external persecution, I'm talking about that most devastating thing in existence, the sins of believers within the church.  And as I studied this week and as God spoke to my heart and I made some commitments in my own life, and prayed some deep prayers from within my own heart, I prayed at the same time, that you would in hearing this respond to the Spirit as I have.  Just as a footnote, I think it's interesting and we should al­ways note this, that this passage is a kind of a classic portrait of the fact that the Bible has a kind of stubborn honesty.  You see God could have painted a glossy picture of the church, but that would have only confused the issue, because if we thought the church then, was perfect and we look at the church now and see what imperfections it has, we might be a little bit hard pressed to understand that it is the same thing.  And besides, God never leaves the truth out, even though it's painful and ugly.  The church is not perfect.  People always say, well I'd go to the church but there are too many hypocrites.  And I always think, well that's all right, we have room for more.  That's a hypocritical answer.  We know that there are hypocrites in the church, there were hypocrites in Acts 5 in the church, we know that.  But the very presence of a counterfeit is the greatest vindication that there is somewhere a real.  We know that the church is a hospital for the spiritually sick, but at least they know they're sick.  The church is not what Henry Knox Sherill said, quote, "A nice clean refrigerator designed to keep a few select souls from spoiling." That's not the church.  The church is imperfect, it always has been.  Once a court painter was commissioned to paint a portrait of the great Cromwell, and of course wanting to win favor with Cromwell, he decided he'd have to doctor it a little, because Cromwell's face was rather ugly, being dis­figured with a whole group of warts.  And so the painter thought, well I'll just remove the warts, so he painted the portrait thusly, present­ed it to Cromwell, Cromwell took a look at the picture and said take it back and paint me warts and all.  And it's interesting to realize that this is exactly what God has done throughout the revelation of the Word of God.  God never glosses over anything.  God is never involved in covering the issue.  Whatever hero it may be in the Bible, he's painted warts and all.  And so it is in the picture of the early church God is honest, as always, and we see it as it was.  And there's a certain kind of encouragement in it, you say, well how could you be encouraged by sin? I'm not encouraged by sin, I'm only encouraged by the fact that they had the same problem then that we've got now.  Because that gives me a little bit of comradery with some of those early men.  I mean I even rejoice when I realize that on some occasions Paul baptized the wrong person, when he wasn't really a believer, you say, are you glad that the guy wasn't a believer? No, I'm only glad that what I'm seeing today in the church and what happens in my own life isn't something brand new, but that it's always been a problem that the church has been infiltrated by hypocrisy.  It's nothing new, and you know the apostle Paul went through a lot of things, but the thing that tore him up the most were the sins of the saints.  Over in Second Corinthians chapter 11, verses 24 to 28, he makes a big long list of things, and he says, I've been shipwrecked three times, and I've been stoned, and I've been beaten with rods three times, and I've been whipped with lashes, 39 lashes repeatedly, and I've suffered in perils of waters and perils of the sea, mine own countrymen, the gentiles and all of these things, and I've been a night and a day in the deep, and I've been in cold and nakedness and hunger and thirst and I've been through all of this, but let me tell ya my biggest problem, the care of the churches.  You say, what's the problem? There's a lot of converted people there.  The pro­blem is the sins of the believers that are in there.  That's the problem, that's the crying thing, that aches and pains the heart of every man of God, and has since Acts chapter 5, and it began with poor Peter.  And he came face to face with the sins of the saints and nobody who has ever worked with the saints since has been free of it.  And it's the thing that eats and tears away at the work that God would do in His church.  And the apostle Paul was forever talking about this.  He never wrote one letter in the New Testament that didn't have something in it of a major consequence about the sins of believers.  In the Roman letter, he says in 16:17, "I beseech you, brethren, mark them who cause divi­sions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you have learned; and avoid them." And he says in the next verse, "For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own body, and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the innocent." Watch out for those who are goin' get in there and they're goin' cause division.  To the Corinthians he said the same thing.  I can't speak unto you as spiritual, but unto carnal, you're fighting all the time.  To the Gala­tians he said the same thing in chapter 3. He says, Oh foolish Galat­ians, who tricked you, have you begun in the Spirit and now you're go­ing to be perfected in the flesh? They got caught in legalism.  He said to the Ephesians, come on, he says people, walk worthy of that which you've been called to do, humble yourselves and endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.  He knew what the potential for problems was in the church.  To the Philippians he says, if there's any comfort of love, if there's any consolation in Christ, if there's any compassion, if there's any of this stuff, be likeminded.  And then he even named two women, he said now I wanta mark out Euodia and Syntyche, those two women that are hassling in the church, and I wanta tell you true yoke-fellow, which is in the greek, suzugos, and may have been a proper name, he may have been saying, now you tell Suzugos to go over there and shape those two up.  He even got so brass as to name some of the individuals in a public letter for the whole church to hear.  The sins of the saints was a sad thing.  It was a blight that Paul never got away from.  In the third chapter of Colossians he repeats a whole list of things and he says Colossians, will you clean it up? In that church, will ya clean it up? There's sin in your church.  He told the same thing in every letter that he wrote, because that's the problem of the church.

     So here in Acts, the sad process of the sins of the saints gets it's beginning.  And it's a stark contrast I dare say to the sweet joy and the beauty of the unity of love that exists up to chapter 5. You only have two chapters, really, chapter 2 and chapter 3 and part of chapter 4, and we see the sweetness of this thing and it's gone in chapter 5. And from then on, throughout the whole New Testament it's a plea for unity and a plea f or love and a plea f or f ellowship and a plea f or bel­ievers to clean up their lives.  And we're not done pleading even yet.

     So the text is divided into two parts and we'll just see those two parts this morning.  There's a beautiful backdrop from 32 to 37 of the purity of the church, it's beautiful.  And then there's a black sick picture from 1 to 11 of the impurity of the church.  We'll call it the sharing of the saints and the sins of the,saints.

     First of all, let's look at the sharing of the saints.  The shar­ing of the saints is in verses 32 to 37 and it portrays for us just a little glimpse, so small and so concise and so terse, and it dosen't really say much, in terms of detail but it says much in terms of truth about the sharing of the saints.  It's a positive picture, before we look at a bleak negative, and it's for the sake of contrast as so often is done by the Spirit of God in the text.  Now there are four features that we'll consider under the sharing of the saints, just to help you divide the text up, and we'll elutriate 'em so you can kinda remember them.  First of all, spiritual participation.  The first thing that he mentions about that congregation that is now burgeoned and blossomed to include maybe 15 to 20 thousand, the first thing now they've multiplied and, and it says in verse 32, and the multitude of those that believed were of one heart, and of one soul.  The first and beautiful thing about it was that there was a real spiritual participation, not just that they all belonged to the same organization, not an organizational thing at all, but a real thing, they had one heart and one soul.  They felt what everybody felt unitedly.  They thought unitedly, they were like one big brain, they were the truest sense, the body.  They had one heartbeat and one soul.  There was a commonness, among them.  Notice in verse 32 it says, and a multitude of those that believed.  You know that this is a new group, added to the other group, because in chapter 4 verse 31, it says, they went out and spoke the Word with boldness and the multitude of those that believed.  It's growing now, and you notice that they don't number them anymore, it's getting too big to even num­ber, so many are comin' to Christ.  You say, well what was it that was bringing them? It was this fantastic testimony of love and unity.  Jesus had said in John 13, ah, here's a new commandment I'm goin' give you, love one another, and he said, by this shall all men know that you're my disciples, they'll be drawn to you if they see your love and they did and they were.  And in John chapter 17:21 Jesus said, if you'll only be one, the world will know that God sent me.  And they were one, and the world knew, and the world watched and many believed.  And so the church had grown to the place where they don't even number it anymore, and as big as it was, over 20,000 people they were one.  You say, it's impossible, no, it's not.  It's not impossible.  You say, what made them one? Two things, a preoccupation with each other, and a pre­occupation with taking the gospel to the lost.  They were so busy worry­ing about the needs of each other they couldn't have cared less about their own glory and their own self esteem and their own satisfaction.  They were so busy running around making sure everybody else's need got met that they couldn't have cared less about themselves.  Secondly, they were too busy winning the world to Jesus to bother with trivial­ites.  They had two priorities that Jesus had given them, get together and reach the world.  That's all He ever said for them to do.  Just be one and reach the world.  And they were too busy doin' that to get lost in anything else.  And so there was a kind of genuineness and a kind of unity that has never existed since in the church.  To the shame of the church.  One heart, one soul.  Oh, how dif f erent it would be today, how different! You say, well how do you get that unity? And we've talked about it so many times, only just a review, quick.  Unity comes from love, love comes from humility, humility comes from a correct evalua­tion of yourself, the right spiritual knowledge.  If you really see who you are in relation to Jesus Christ, there's only one thing you can be, humble.  And if you're really humble there is only one thing you can do, really love, and if you really love there's only one thing that comes out of it, unity.  And they had it.  And they were preoccupied with each other, and with winning the world.  They were too busy winning the world to worry about their own needs and their own selves, and so con­sequently everybody was caring for everybody else and you didn't have to care for yourself.  What a beautiful kind of preoccupation, oh my, how rich and how sweet their fellowship must of been, and how ours could be, if we ever got to the place where we understood our two priorities.  Love and care for each other and reach the world and let everything just drop.  So, and we'll go fast, 'cause we've covered that same theme so many times.  The first feature then was that they really had spiritual participation.  The second one, strong preaching, And this picks up kind of where we just left off.  Verse 33, and we'll go back to the end of 32 in a minute.  But 33 says, "And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and great grace was upon them all." Boy, they had kind of a holy boldness, that just continued.  The word gave is an imperfect in the greek, which means they were continuing, the word gave also has implied in it an obligation and the very word itself they were discharging a debt.  The apostle Paul said, I am debtor.  Remember that in Romans 1? I mean I know something the world needs.  I'm a debtor.  If I go down the street and I see a man's house burning down and his children are in the living room playing and they don't see the fire, I don't stand on the curb and say, my, I wish I knew them.... I'd certainly tell them.... or I've got to get down to the office and figure out a strategy to reach them, or print up some little notes that say, your house is on fire, and drop them down the chimney.  You know there are so many circumventing methods.  They were busy just proclaiming, you see.  Busy proclaiming, strong preaching and they were giving witness it says of the resurrection, and that's the fantastic thing, because that's just what they got in trouble for doing.  Back in chapter 4, verse 2, they had just been seized upon by the leaders, and the leaders were grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead.  They didn't like that doctrine of resurrection.  They didn't like the idea that the crucified criminal Jesus was up and alive again.  And they didn't wanta hear them preaching that anymore.  They forbade them to preach it, and of course that just added fuel to the fire, and away they went preaching it with all the more boldness.  It's a fantas­tic thing to realize, but they never suppressed their message because it offended somebody, now mark that.  So many times, we've talked about this, we worm our way around the offense, you know.  You wanta hear something shocking? Do you know that a man who lives in this world without God, is an offense to God, every second of his existence? I mean if a man can live his whole existence as an open offense to God, I think we can offend that man for a moment or two, by letting him know that he is offensive to God.  Now that dosen't mean you put your heel on his neck, and that dosen't mean that you offend him with your breath.  That means that you offend him with the offense of the cross, and with sin, and you don't water down your message because you think it might offend.  Don't you ever tone down the great doctrines of the Word of God to remove the offense.  The offense better be there or there won't be anything for him to fall over, do you understand that? Do you know that in Romans, Jesus is called a rock, of what? Of offense.  He must offend them at the point of their sin.  And so they preached, and they were offensive to -L:he world, but they were a sweetsmelling savor to God.  So it should be.  And just because they were told not to preach, they didn't stop.  They had a higher command.  Remember what Peter and John said, you judge whether we ought to obey men rather than God.  He told us to preach, so we'll preach.  And it says at the end of verse 33, with this strong preaching going on, great grace was upon them all.  The grace was unloaded on 'em.  You say, what does that mean? IVell, that can mean two things.  The word grace is the same word trans­lated favor, earlier when it says, and the favor of all the people was on them, so likely it means that the people couldn't resist them, they were something marvelous.  Something marvelous, now the leaders hated them, but to the people initially they had a kind of a refrshing kind of flavor.  I mean I think everybody loves somebody who believes in a cause. lvho gives his life for it, and then to see people who loved each other like this, how could you resist that? And they found favor with the people.  But I think there's another thing implied in the favor, and I think that's why it's not qualified as God's favor or the peoples favor, because I think it means both.  They had the favor of the people, but secondly they had the favor of God.  God was blessing them.  They were so richly blessed that God was pouring out sweet favor upon the church, and let me say this, God only pours out His sweet favor on a church that has two characteristics, loving unity and evangelistic zeal.  A church apart from those two things exists with limited favor from God.  Great grace, watch it, great grace is reserved for the church that is one, and the church that is out after the world for Jesus Christ.  No church will ever know the richness of great grace from God, apart from real loving unity and evangelistic zeal.  And so, the sharing of the saints involves spiritual participation and strong preaching.  And God responded with great grace*

     Third thing, it also involved sharing practically.  You know there's such a thing as theoretical unity, and there's such a thing as ah, sorta musical unity, we are one in the Spirit, you know, and we sing it.  It's terrific.  Then there's such a thing as real unity.  Which may or may not be related to musical or theoretical unity.  And they had the real stuff.  The real stuff, and I want ya to see this, verse 32, "And the multitude of those that believed were of one heart and of one soul; (now listen) neither said any (not one person said this) that any of his things which he possessed was his own;" Nobody said, wait a minute, that's mine, you can't have ... whata ya ... no.  Nobody said that, every­body said hey, all that I have belongs to all of you.  You sayo you mean they all said that? You say, well who sent down those orders? Nobody.  It dosen't say that Peter made a edict that all people admit that all they had was everybody's.  Tt says this, "Neither said any of them that any of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common." They all said it.  They all said hey, whatever I have belongs to you if you need it.  You see they had the right view of money and they had the right view of possessions.  You know what God's view of it is? lvhatever you have, in total dosen't belong to you.  That's principle number one.  None of it.  You say, wait a minutes I paid for it, 36 months I paid for it, right? Let me tell ya somethin', it's not yours.  It isn't yours.  You say, who's is it? It's God's, and