“The Devil’s Chapel”

A Sermon Based Upon Acts 4: 32-5:11
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
May 24^th, 2015

"Peter asked, "why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land?" (Act 5:3 NRS)

In the Wartburg Castle, where Martin Luther was in exile for challenging the excesses of the church of his day, he spent most of his time translating the New Testament into the German language.  That translation singlehandedly united all German dialects and basically became the German language spoken today.   

I’ve been in that castle, located in Eisenach, and in the room where Luther did his translating.  When you walk into the room, you will see a small table and chair where Luther sat.  Most interestingly, on the wall behind the table is a large splash of ink, still visible, where Luther is said to have thrown his ink well at the devil who, at that time, was attempting to torment and interrupt him.

Luther had his ‘demons’ to fight against, as all of us do.   Luther was able to stand up unafraid of his opposition, essentially saying, without fear, “The Church stands on the Word of God….Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise”  When you have someone doing great good, as Luther did, standing up against corruption and vice, you will also find opposition, struggle and the potential for evil to raise up its ugly head in resistance.  Luther understood this, and once he made another statement we must hear today because it is well-represented in the text before us.  Luther said, “Whenever and wherever God builds a church, the devil also builds a chapel.”  “And most often,” added Daniel Defoe, the author of the story of Robinson Crusoe, “the devil has the larger congregation.”

INSPIRING GENEOSITY

It is certainly true, especially in the text before us, that the devil will try to build a chapel beside the church God is building.  But before we take a closer look how the devil’s chapel may spring up at any time, I want us to begin by looking closely at the good, glorious, and generous church God wants to build. 

Ever wonder what would it have been like to be part of the electrifying beginnings of the early church?   Luke tells us that ‘the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul….” (4:32).  When I ride up and down the countryside, and see small little churches barely existing, but not far apart from each other, I dream about what all these little churches could do if they would were one church, one people, and one congregation, standing together rather than standing separate to confront the loveless world. 

If this is how it once was, what happened?  Why are we the scattered instead of the gathered?  Of course most of our churches developed before modern transportation, but that’s not the whole story.  Today churches can seem to be more competitive than cooperative.  Jesus prayed that we would be ‘one’ (Jn. 17:11), but today we are more used to be “many minds” than “of one mind.”  While I don’t think we can repeat the miracle that was the early church, we can certainly learn from it and we can see our own potential to do great good as being an ‘alternative’ community to the world we know. 

Luke tells us that the church in Acts were of ‘one heart and soul’, everything they ‘owned was held everything in common’ (4:32, they gave ‘testimony’ to Christ alive in their own lives, and they share ‘great grace’ from God.  The major impact was that: “There was not a needy person among them….” (4:34. We even read ho one among them, whom they nicknamed ‘son of encouragement,’ showed his own generous spirit by ‘selling a field’ and giving the proceeds for the needs of the community.  How can we imagine a church in the Spirit that is also generous, selfless, giving and caring?

As landowners, farmers with a common heritage, we can remember times when there was more sharing, helping, and working together to bring in the harvest or survive against elements of life.  Among some this still goes on, and it should continue.  The generosity we share together as a people together instead of people apart makes life worth living.  This text in no way implies giving up ‘private property’, as was wrongly forced in the failure of communism, but it encourages voluntary sharing of our time, talents and treasures with each other for the benefit of the community good.  The good of community is important because nothing is really ‘ours’ alone, and because we also know that the more we share and the more we spread care around, the more it comes back to us and we dare to build the kind of living that makes sense and build the kind of communities that makes sense up against the coldness and cruelty of the world around us.

In the book, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations,  Robert Schnase, a Methodist Bishop, tells of how one of the churches under his care, had a special baptism service, where the several families were up front after the service taking pictures.   One of the mother’s needed to get something out of her purse, an elderly man close by  offered to hold the baby for a moment.  As people continued to come by to offer their congratulations, the elderly man would say to them,  “Oh, this is not my mine, I’m just holding him for a moment…”   The next day there was a knock on the pastor’s study door.  It was that elderly man who wanted to speak to the pastor.  The pastor at first, worried whether or not this might be some kind of complaint about  the service, but as the elderly man sat down, he shared with the pastor how he wanted to change his will to include the church.  He said that while he was holding that baby, he realized that when he was holding the baby of those new members, that we at this church are not many families, but we are also one family, and that I have a responsibility to help that family and that child just like I have a responsibility to help my family and my grandchildren.

What would a ‘generous’ people look like among us?  It has many difference faces, but from this text we can know it starts by being more than a people apart, but to be a people together, for the good of our children, their children, and all the children of the world.  A generous community is a bold witness kind of community that is rightly called both spiritual and Christian.  This is the kind of community that still runs against the grain of our very selfish world, and reminds us all that what can have is not just counted in dollars and sense, but is also counted with sense and sharing.   Can you imagine a church filled with God’s generous spirit?  It’s not just about the money, but it is what we treasure because, ‘where our treasures are, our hearts will be also’.  The greatest wealth is to care and to be cared about.

INIVITING EVIL
Unfortunately, in a fallen world, we find that ‘the devil’ also works to build his own chapel out of the ‘good will’ of the community.   As they come to lay their gifts ‘at the apostles feet’ (4.37) ‘an act of deceit interrupts … the progress of the people of God’ (FF Bruce).  The forward momentum stops when text says, “BUT a man named Ananias, with the consent of his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property…. and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles feet” (5:1).   What is being underscored here is not the lesser value of their gift, but it is their insincerity, their pretense, and their deliberate deception and dishonesty in this scheme.  Twice Luke tells us that this man did this ‘with the consent of his wife’ (5.1) and ‘with his wife’s knowledge’ (5:2).  This is a big deal because they were purposely undercutting the grace and generosity of God, trying to privately gain off of the compassionate giving of others, making it appear they too wholeheartedly with them, when in reality, they were holding back. 

Peter confronts them directly: “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds…?” You have not lied to us, but to God! (5.3, 4).  It is the ‘lie’ against the Holy Spirit that has invited evil into this caring, compassionate, and generous congregation.  It is the lie of pretense, of saying one thing, but doing another.   It is the lie of saying that you are a giving, caring, and compassionate person, but the truth is that all you care about is you, yourself, your own benefit, and your own advancement.  Self-serving, insincere hearts interrupt and violate the spiritual flow of God’s grace. 

While the people of God worked to build a community that cares, “the devil was also at work constructing his perpendicular chapel.   Len Sweet continues, that  the devil’s chapel has grown so large and tall that it has been able to take its choir on the road, a choir that happily sings the devil's favorite song.  The tune the devil loves to hear is the discordant sound of a million voices all singing their own song no harmony, no melody, no chorus only a devilish din of solos.   The devil’s song has only one rule of composing: The first person singular.  The “I” or “the devil’s I” is all there is. There is no “we”, no “she”, no “he”, nor is there a “they” to consider.  Everything is intently focused on ‘me, mine and I” to the exclusion of everyone else.

How many have left church, or refused to be part of a church, exactly because they have encountered some like Ananias and Sappharia, who only ‘pretend’ to share in ‘the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit (2Co 13:14 NAS) only for their own sake?  It doesn’t take long for someone to see through the scheming of an inauthentic life or faith, and when people see it, often they are repulsed and disgusted, and rightly so. 

It’s important for us to see, however, that even the early church was not ‘a perfect church’ (FF Bruce).  Even the most pure, good, and pristine fellowship can invite the opportunity for insincerity and hypocrisy.  In a fallen world, even the greatest good still creates an opportunity for evil to rise up.  Think of how technology invites new ways of identity theft, or how new conveniences and advances for living can create a culture of leisure rather than a culture continues to work for the common good.   In this world, you can’t have the good without the probability that evil will corrupt or make some twisted use of it. 

IGNITING JUDGMENT

Because the flow of grace can be corrupted, even among good people and in a good, growing community, we need to take this story seriously and consider our own way being or doing church.  Are we for real?  Is our faith sincere?  Are we putting our hearts into it, or are we still holding back?   While this story is not given to us as a threat, it is given to us help us resist the accuser and to expose his own trickery within us.  Luke would have us realize just how destructive Satan’s lies really are, not only because they put the community of faith at risk, but because they also put the “pretenders” at risk.  

Exactly what happens to the ‘pretenders’ in this text is both messy and strange.   After Peter confronts the lies of both Ananias and his wife Sapphira, without another word they die---they both lie and die.   “If you lie, you die… makes a captivating sermon title, but it’s not what what normally happens.   Most people get away with it a bit longer.  Peter, lied too and denied, but he didn’t die.  Strangely, in this story there is also no chance to offer repentance or forgiveness to this couple.  They die within three hours of each other and in between Peter and the whole church just sit and wait and watch what happens.   It’s a very strange story, but the meaning is clear. “The deceit of one’s self or one’s brothers or sisters in the church leads to death.  The story is harsh, severe, uncompromising in the telling, but how is falsehood ever confronted except in a manner which always seems severe to the one tangled in deceit?” (Will Willimon) “O what wicked web we weave, when we first practice to deceive” (Sir Walter Scott).  

Most always, the one most deceived, when we deceive, is us!   Just like the Rich Fool (Lk 12: 31-21) who deceived himself into thinking he could store up goods, not realizing he would die that very day,  the money that Ananias and Sapphira hold back to make themselves secure, is exactly the money that brings them down.  

People still think that the money or wealth that is held on to tightly will secure their future and the future of their own children.   Statistics tell us that over 8,000 Americans have a net worth of over 100 mission dollars, but they give less than 2% of that large wealth to charities.   What are they keeping it for?   Rock singer Sting made a lot of sense when he said recently, “I’m not leaving one cent of my millions to my children so it will ruin them….”  His wisdom is even more than saying money can’t buy happiness, but he’s also saying that holding on to money too tightly can actually bring more misery, more emptiness, and it can rob your soul or the soul of children of the most important qualities of life?   Money is most deceptive, as Dave Ramsey has said when he asked, “Why do people spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need to impress people they don’t know?  Those who try to secure their own future through greed, covetousness, and acquisition, are deceiving themselves in the worst form. 

The church, of all places, is supposed to be the place where people get real about the things money can’t do and learn about the things money should do.   Church is supposed to be the place, where we learn, as John Wesley taught, “to earn all we can, to save all we can’ so we will also “give all we can”.   If we don’t learn such important life lessons, and pass them on to our own children, we only fool ourselves and we fool them in thinking we will ever really hold anything back from God.

Interestingly, the very first time Luke uses the word ‘church’ in Acts comes right at the end of this story (5:11).   What is Luke trying to tell us?   Could it be that even the community of the truth will struggle with truthfulness?   

While Luke paints a very positive picture of the early church, it’s not over idealized.   The church then, as now, is filled with real people who are pulled in different directions by the same temptations then that still tug at us now.   Right in the third pew from you, you’ll likely find someone struggling to be faithful or scheming to be foolish in how they handle what they have and who they are.  Someone has have already put their hand to the plow are looking back.  Someone thinks they have better things to do, than to give their whole hearts to God.  And some of these are Ananiases and Sapphiras who look a whole lot like the best of us.  Amen, or it is Oh me!