Partakers Bible Thought – The Spirit Explodes 06

The Spirit Explodes

Part 6 of 22 - And now for the not-so-good news
(Acts 4:32 – 5:42)
by Roger Kirby

The infant church begins to struggle with both internal problems and external ones. It is rather amazing that Luke tells us about some of the more difficult events. He clearly had a purpose in doing so. We will think about that in a few minutes. We have already commented on the problems of this sort of living. Barnabas, who is going to figure prominently in the expansion of the church, is mentioned with clear approval of what he did. There were huge differences of wealth between the landowners and the working people in those days and this is clearly a comment about how those differences should be overcome within the fellowship of the church.

It also highlights the problem that we read about  in Acts 5:1–11. In this podcast we ask the following questions. To learn more, download the mp3 and listen!

• Question 1: What exactly did Ananias and Sapphira do wrong? Why was the punishment so harsh? Christians probably do worse things these days. Why are similar punishments not visited upon the offenders?
• Question 2: Sapphira chose solidarity with her husband over solidarity with the Lord and his people. What are the rights and wrongs in what she did?
• Question 3: What was Luke’s motive in including this account 40 years after the events recorded when he could so easily have chosen to highlight other more positive events?
• Question 4: Acts5:13 “no one dared join them” and the next verse “more men and women were added to their number” seem to be saying two contradictory things. What can they mean?
• Question 5: Apart from a record of the facts what does Luke want us to understand as the significance of what happened?
• Question 6: Where should we follow what we read here; where the teaching of the verses from Romans?

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