Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I now can sing Since I've been redeemed I'm on the everlasting, everlasting rock I faith in Christ my redeemer King I'm on the everlasting, everlasting rock Then roll, roll, billows roll I'm on the everlasting rock of ages Roll, roll, billows roll I'm on the everlasting rock
[00:00:35] Speaker B: welcome to the Voice of Hope. I'm your host, Anthony High.
Today we continue our study in the Book of Acts. Joining me is Jeremy Sensnick, a team member here at Heralds of Hope, as well as a pastor, husband and father.
Over the next two episodes, Jeremy is going to walk through Acts chapters five and six.
In this first episode, we examine two groups of people in the the Jewish religious leaders and the apostles.
While both claimed to represent God, their motivations and the outcomes of their actions stood in stark contrast with one another.
Join us as we explore these themes together in Acts chapter chapters five and six.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Let it be said of us that the Lord was our passion, that with gladness we bore every cross we were given, that we fought the good fight, that we finished our course knowing within us the power of the risen Lord.
Let the cross be our glory and the Lord be our song.
By mercy made holy by the Spirit made strong.
Let the cross be our glory and the Lord be our song Till the likeness of Jesus be through us made known.
Let the cross be our glory and the Lord be our song.
[00:02:36] Speaker C: Integrity matters to me and it matters to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
But you know, I've realized as I've studied these chapters that the lack of integrity simply illustrates a misplaced loyalty.
That loyalty is what really, it's the lenses through which we discern truth.
Our primary loyalty is the lens through which we identify integrity.
And our primary loyalty is determined by our primary fear.
Those are some of the words. The integrity, the loyalty, the fear are words that have struck me as I've studied these scriptures.
[00:03:25] Speaker D: Yeah, well, that's why we wanted to bring you on, too, because you have some history of working with these kinds of things.
And looking at Acts 5 and 6 here, there's definitely some messiness going on and just reading through it again, preparing for it, just realizing people are people wherever you go.
[00:03:44] Speaker C: One mentor, one man that influenced my life, he always, he said often we're all made of the same stuff.
And it's so true. As we look back in Acts 5, it reminds me of today, the things that I wrestle with, the things that I hear counselees wrestle with, or people in our church, congregation, or around the world. It's. These are common things that we, we face, that we wrestle with as we look through these two chapters. Just. Let's just do a quick overview, if we can.
Acts 5 starts out with Ananias and Sapphira.
Well known story. They lied to God, were struck dead, verses 12 to 16, then records some of the miracles and the powerful teaching. I mean, those guys were on fire. I don't claim to be at that level here today, but I am passionate about what God has done and what he's doing in our hearts and what he's done in my own heart, because I'm in need of this. I'm part of the broken this. As you mentioned, Tony, one quote from a book you've read, the line between good and evil runs through all of our hearts.
[00:05:01] Speaker D: Yeah, it's. Alexander Solzhenitsyn mentions that. And that's after he spent years in the Soviet prison camps, is what he was kind of his conclusion of people.
[00:05:13] Speaker C: So we're broken. That's both a comfort in some ways, but it's also a sobering reminder of reality that we're facing.
So then in verses 17 through 26, we have the story of the apostles being imprisoned. The angel opens the doors, sends them right back into the chaos, the mayhem of the temple. The fact that they were being persecuted while teaching in the temple is something to consider.
And then verses 27 through 47, we have them on trial.
And Peter makes what I consider to be the most crucial statement of this passage. It's kind of the crux of the issue, the determining factor for all of us. Which side of this issue are we going to be on? He says we ought to obey God rather than man, and they rejoiced in their suffering.
Also. Then you have Gamaliel's defense. He was the voice of conscience and reasoning that eventually was overruled in their fear.
But he did speak up.
And so kudos to Gamaliel and I'm inviting all of us to be a Gamaliel.
[00:06:27] Speaker D: But it doesn't seem like he was terribly successful.
[00:06:30] Speaker C: He wasn't. We don't know what the outcome of his story was either. He may have been ousted.
[00:06:35] Speaker D: Yeah, that's true.
[00:06:37] Speaker C: Then in Acts 6, two more stories. We're not going to be reading as much from Acts 6, but we want to consider them. We have, in verses one through seven, we have church administration and working through varying viewpoints, varying challenges that they were facing as they grew. They were implementing systems and they worked through the Challenges they were facing to bring good to care for their own but also keep the mission of the church going, that of sharing the good News.
And then 8 to 15 we see the power of Stephen being used by the Holy Spirit and it just angered the religious leaders again.
Two sets of religious leaders that we're going to be looking at in this passage.
If we could. I'd like to just go ahead and read those verses.
[00:07:31] Speaker D: Yeah, I can read that. You said Acts 5, 1, 11.
[00:07:34] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:07:35] Speaker D: But a certain man named Ananias with Sapphira his wife sold a possession and he kept back part of the proceeds. His wife also being aware of it and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles feet. But Peter said Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land of for yourself while it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control?
Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God.
Then Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and breathed his last.
So great fear came upon those who heard these things.
And the young men arose, wrapped him up, carried him out and buried him.
Now it was about three hours later when his wife came in not knowing what had happened. And Peter answered her, tell me whether you sold the land for so much? She said yes, for so much.
Then Peter said to her, how is it you have agreed together to test the spirit of the Lord? Look, the feet of those who buried your husband are at the door and they will carry you out.
Then immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. And the young men came in and found her dead and carrying her out, buried her by her husband.
So great fear came upon all the church and upon all who heard these things.
You know I'm just thinking that Ananias and Sapphira, like that wasn't fair, was it? People lie all the time, right? And yet they were struck dead.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: God isn't fair. And I agree with you, he isn't fair.
[00:09:21] Speaker D: I thought we say he's just, he's merciful.
[00:09:24] Speaker C: If he were fair, you and I would be toast right now. We'd be dead.
So even the fact that he gives us chances to repent, that's an act of mercy. Repentance is really a gift.
It's a gift that I don't deserve.
And so we have, we're going to come back down Nias and Sapphire in a little bit but we have in between here we're going to read a few more verses, but we have the record of them preaching in the temple and then getting thrown into prison. The stakes were pretty high back then.
I don't know if they realized at the time what the stakes were, but they were. It didn't stop them. They were passionate. They were motivated. I'd like to consider that in a little bit.
Then we have the story of the angel setting them free after they got thrown into prison, sending them right back into the temple. And then they were hauled in for questioning. And I'd like to just pick up reading again in verse 25, if we could.
[00:10:23] Speaker D: So one came and told them, saying,
[00:10:25] Speaker B: look, the men whom you put in
[00:10:27] Speaker D: prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people.
Then the captain went with the officers and brought them without violence, for they feared the people lest they should be stoned. And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest asked them, saying, did we not strictly command you not to teach in this name? And look, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine and intend to bring this man's blood on us. But Peter and the other apostles answered and said, we ought to obey God rather than men.
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you murdered by hanging on a tree. Him God has exalted to his right hand to be prince and savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.
And we are his witnesses to these things. And so also is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.
[00:11:24] Speaker C: So we're getting an inside look at two very different sets of religious leaders.
The one was the religious leaders of Israel, more the cultural religion. And yet Jesus commanded the disciples and his followers to not dishonor them. He said, don't do what they tell you, but don't be like them.
So that was the one set of religious leaders. The other set of religious leaders were the apostles or the church leaders.
Both claim to be God's people. Both claim to be representing God.
I would suggest that the one set knew a lot about God.
The other set knew him.
The one looked right, the other lived right. And it's difficult to do, to have both as your primary target, your primary reality. Think about Jesus.
He fellowshiped. He took criticism for hanging out with the wrong crowd.
The one was concerned about protecting and holding on to their own power and their own reputation.
And the other was primarily concerned about living into God's power and his reputation. One was loyal to the system and the other was loyal to God.
And as I think about that. It really. It stemmed from their fear.
The disciples knew God. They knew that what he said was true. They had experienced Christ and they knew that he was coming back again. So there was. And they saw what happened with Ananias and Sapphire. It mentions two different times in the first 11 verses that we read that the church with Ananias and Sapphira, that they feared God.
So their fear motivated a primary loyalty to God.
The passage also tells us. We didn't cover that in our reading, but it's in chapter six there that the religious leaders were making their decisions based on their fear of the people, their fear of man. Proverbs tells us that fear of man brings a snare. And ultimately they feared the people because they feared losing control of the people. They feared losing control of the situation. They feared losing their power. So I like to focus on the positive, if we can, because that's where you can learn the most, what to be as opposed to what not to be. And I think about three points that stand out to me with the church leaders. The positive example have some words that start with P. The church leaders were powerfully pure, passionately preaching and purposefully practicing. I'd like to just do some thinking about those. They were powerfully pure.
Back to Ananias and Sapphira.
How many of you would like to be. And I don't know about you, Tony, Any volunteers for being a part of a church like that?
You come to church and you put up a facade. You deceive people.
We have a lot of creative ways that we tend to trick people into thinking things are not what they really are.
And you do that, and bam, you're dead.
[00:14:45] Speaker D: Well, I'm not so sure you'd have a lot of takers.
[00:14:48] Speaker C: And yet it was so effective.
It produced some very dramatic results in the church. We see it in the text. It mentions that they feared God. And today I wonder how much I've been a proponent of having a relationship with God. And I am all for that. I don't want to diminish that in any way. But as I studied this passage, I've wondered, what have we lost as we have diminished the fear factor of a whole holy God? God says about himself, I change not.
And so if that's true, if it was true back then, it's true today.
And what would that fear, if that.
Yes, we tend to look today at the fear of God as being a reverence. But I've wondered, like, I believe this passage has more entails, more than just reverence in that Fear, it embodies that terror in a sense. The trembling that the children of Israel had back at the mountain when God was giving Moses the ten Commandments. There's an element where I feel like we've lost some of that today.
[00:15:58] Speaker D: So I'm going to push back on that a little bit because going back to the negative, church leaders, people feared them because you could end up in jail or in the case of the apostles, they were beaten.
And so there was a sense of fearing the Sadducees or whatever their label was at that point. But they were religious leaders and there's a fear there. I thought that leading well meant that it's done out of love more than it is out of fear.
Now I think, I don't know if this will help you out a little bit, but there's a different fear. We're placing our fear somewhere else.
But I think there would be some pushback to, well, what's with a God that we need to fear all the time? Like how does that work?
[00:16:46] Speaker C: I wouldn't say our primary motivation and word that I would describe our relationship, the relationship with God is fear.
It should be loving.
I believe that to be the case. As you look at scripture, you study into what God says about himself.
He describes himself with the word love. That's not used as an adjective, that's a noun. And he doesn't describe himself with many nouns. I think light and love are the two nouns and that's. That talks about the essence. So that gives us a clue that I do believe love comes before fear. But I think we've almost diminished the fear piece to an unhealthy level to we. Actually he's my buddy and he's not necessarily our buddy. He's more than that. Yes, he is our friend and yes, there's a love relationship there, but I think there's a place too to have that, that trembling in a sense.
[00:17:44] Speaker D: Would you say that Peter and their other apostles had that fear of God but the religious leaders, there was, there was not a fear of them, is that what you're trying to say?
[00:17:56] Speaker C: Yeah, there was no.
Operationally the fear of God didn't enter into their decision making processes from what
[00:18:03] Speaker D: we can reve as in the religious.
[00:18:05] Speaker C: Religious leaders.
[00:18:06] Speaker D: But for the apostles it did.
[00:18:08] Speaker C: It did. Absolutely.
[00:18:09] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:18:10] Speaker C: If it, if it struck Ananias and Sapphira, Ted, it could be them next. And so that's. There's a certain amount of motivation that provides you that, hey, I'm going to be honest because if I don't it might kill me.
[00:18:24] Speaker D: Right.
[00:18:24] Speaker C: We tend to think I'm going to be honest even if it kills me. Well, you know, back in that situation, it was reversed. I'm going to be honest because if I don't, it's going to kill me.
[00:18:33] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:18:34] Speaker C: And it's fascinating that God did that. He. There's no surprises with God. He knows all things. He knew what was going to happen in advance and he did it because he wanted the results. He wanted the purifying results that that fear produced in the church.
Secondly, I mentioned passionately preaching they had experienced him. This was not a check the box thing that they needed to get off their to do list. I've sat as I've sat with people over the years. I can't tell you how many of our people, in fact I was just sharing with a group of men, 30 men the other Saturday morning, and I asked them, how many of you struggle getting in your quiet time with God?
And every hand went up or every head nodded. You know, everyone is in there and we wrestle with that.
And I have too.
I'm probably not a poster child for checking the box and getting it done every single morning, but I wonder what is God looking for in that time? He's looking for us to experience him.
He's looking for us to enter into relationship with him.
And these guys had done that. These church leaders had. They knew he was real. They were convinced there was no, this was not a thing I've got to do because I know I should.
This fascinating as I sit with those same people, as I sit with young men, even older men, counseling. I never once heard them share in their story, their life story when they if times that they were dating.
I never once heard them say, you know, I really struggled getting my dates. You know, I just, I know I should, but I just.
So many other things. And why? Well, because they're experiencing a relationship and they want to be there with their girlfriend. And so if there's a large separation, one is, I should.
But man, it's sure struggle because there's so many other things. The others, there's a lot of other things. But, you know, this is where I want to be.
Why is that?
And I think there's a bit of a dichotomy there in a separation, a gap of reality that we tend, by and large, many of us tend to do it out of duty.
These apostles, when I'm doing out of duty, it's through that experience.
I mean, he is a person. Christ is not a historical figure. Yes, he is that, but not primarily. He's not a. Primarily a set of theological facts. He's not a checklist.
He's a person.
[00:21:21] Speaker D: Right, right.
[00:21:22] Speaker C: Like you are.
And experiencing him that way, we do
[00:21:27] Speaker D: diminish him down to a set of facts. Like, do you believe Jesus? Well, he was this, this and this and this.
Well, yeah, you could say that I am a father and a husband and, you know, but that doesn't mean you know me. Right.
[00:21:40] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's like I've been telling people at church in the series, we've been going through lessons from his story.
Our actions and our responses to the storms of life tell us far more about how we were, our view of God, than our mouth will when we're in church on Sunday.
Like our, our storms actually indicate our proximity with Jesus, our responses in those storms.
And so as we, as we wrestle with life, as we go through those storms, as we hit the bumps, what do our actions say about, about how I am sitting with Jesus, how I'm experiencing Him?
That is one piece that I've been pondering a lot lately. I'm really, I'm passionate about it. I am learning. I, I think I'm a first grader and like, I don't claim to have it mastered, but just learning to enter into his presence and, and be with him, to spend time with him,
[00:22:50] Speaker D: it
[00:22:50] Speaker C: is, it is so powerful. And it's, rather than, it's a, you know, it moves when we, when we do that, it, our time, our quiet time moves from that place of that thing of I know I should to I don't want to leave.
[00:23:04] Speaker D: It's a powerful spot to be for sure.
[00:23:07] Speaker C: Thirdly, then they were purposefully practicing and we didn't, again, we didn't read this in the, what you read on the session here today, but as they considered the needs of the church and they heard of the needs of the widows, they entered into, there was conflict involved. They didn't walk away from it, they didn't steer away from it, but they entered into healthy conflict and they engaged. They put their heads together, came up with a plan to both care for the widows and continue the spread of the gospel as a win win.
So often we tend to avoid the conflict until we can't avoid it anymore. And then we come out in an attack mode and we lose so many opportunities when we do that, because then we tend to start seeing each other as adversaries rather than allies.
And so I'm passionate about inviting teams, inviting people into healthy conflict in wise ways so we can Grow together and, and simply care for each other.
[00:24:12] Speaker D: It strikes me that when they. So this is a little bit, maybe getting ahead of you, but when they appointed those deacons to care for it, they were actually releasing control of the resources.
[00:24:23] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:24:23] Speaker D: Like they were letting go of the money and letting someone else do it.
[00:24:27] Speaker C: Yeah. And the church leaders didn't seem to mind that. They trusted them.
So as they, as they worked through their differences, it allowed the church to increase.
And it's just one of the blessings of systems. I enjoy systems. I've enjoyed seeing the team here. And Tony, you've done an excellent job as director at Heralds of Hope, bringing in systems. Much better. I think we've worked together while we've sometimes worked together like baking soda and vinegar, maybe, but we have, we've had a lot of fun in it. And you do a lot better job of actually building the systems than what I ever could. But that's just. That's an example of what the church leaders did in working together.
They. They said, this is our calling. This is our gifting. Let's appoint brothers that can do this job of caring for the widows better than what we can and allow us to keep doing what we do. Well, that's an ideal picture of what the church can be like as we work together, recognizing each other's gifts. And if I can be as a leader, if I can be secure enough to just be okay with that, God can bless that.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: This concludes today's episode of the Voice of Hope.
Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us today. This study in Acts chapters 5 and 6 challenges us in the way we think about our walk.
The one thought I'm taking away from this is that our primary loyalty is the lens through which we identify integrity. And that loyalty is ultimately determined by our primary fear.
It's easy to fall into the trap of the religious leaders who feared losing control or their reputation among men.
But the apostles showed us a different way, a way marked by obeying God rather than men.
I hope our listeners take to heart the three points that you, Jeremy, shared about the early church leaders.
May we strive to be powerfully pure, passionately preaching, and purposefully practicing.
And thank you for joining us for today's teaching. If you've been encouraged by this study in Acts, we'd love to hear from you. Your stories and responses mean so much to us.
You can connect to us at heraldsofhope.org contact or email us at hopeheraldsofhope.org or you can call us at 866-960-0292.
To explore more Bible teaching and encouragement, visit heraldsofhope.org programs. You can also listen and share the Voice of Hope wherever you get your podcasts.
Join us the next time as we continue our journey into acts. Until then, may God's Word strengthen your faith and remind you that his work in the world is far from finished. Thank you for listening to the Voice of Hope.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: Let it be said of us we were marked by forgiveness we were known by our love and delighted in meekness we were ruled by his peace, heeding unity's call Joined as one body that Christ would be seen by all.
Let the cross be our glory and the Lord be our song by mercy made holy by the Spirit made strong Let the cross be our glory and the Lord be our song Till the likeness of Jesus be through us made Let the cross be our glory and the Lord be our song Let the cross be our glory and the Lord be our song.
