Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts 4:32-5:11, discussing the importance of holiness and unity within the church. He emphasizes that while the early church exhibited great power and grace, the hypocrisy of Ananias and Sapphira serves as a warning against hidden sin and deceit. The sermon highlights the necessity of genuine authenticity and integrity in the life of believers, urging the congregation to reflect on their own spiritual foundations and to prioritize truth and holiness in their lives.
Welcome and Church Information
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Thank you, choir, for singing. If you have your Bibles, we'll be in Acts chapter 4. If you've got a child that needs to be dismissed to Children's Church, that's available at this time. Acts chapter 4, we're going to finish up chapter 4, verses 32,
through the end of the chapter, and then we'll jump into chapter 5 this morning as well. So any children being dismissed, be great. Acts chapter 4, verse 32, we ended last week.
We're talking about the unshakable boldness of the apostles and Peter and John there in the face of opposition and how they responded to that opposition that came against them.
Today, we're going to begin talking about the holiness of the church, the cost of holiness and what that looks like, and how the church can be stronger through unity,
through boldness that we have. And your notes may look daunting, but I'm just going to spend a little bit of time on most of them.
You may think, man, Pastor James, you're going to be here forever, but I've got a little bit of time, so we'll see where the Lord leads. So if you have your way and you found your way in Scripture, we'll stand out of reading to God's Word. Acts chapter 4, verse 32,
through chapter 5, verse 11. The Bible says, Now the entire group of those who believed were of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possession was his own, but instead they held everything in common.
With great power, the apostles were given testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was on all of them. I think those two phrases there, great power and great grace, are massively important.
For there was not a needy person among them, because all those who owned lands or houses sold them, and they brought the proceedings of what they had that was sold, and laid them at the apostles' feet. And then this was distributed to each person as any had need.
Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus by birth, and one of the apostles called Barnabas, which is translated the son of encouragement,
sold a field who he owned, and brought the money and laid at the apostles' feet. Chapter 5, verse 1. But a man named Ananias and his wife Sapphire sold a piece of property. However, he kept back part of the proceeds,
and with his wife's knowledge, brought a portion of it and laid it at the apostles' feet. Ananias, Peter asked, Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back a part of the proceeds of the land?
Wasn't it yours while you possessed it? Then after it was sold, wasn't it at your disposal? Why is it that you planned this thing in your heart? You have not lied to the people, but you lied to God. In verse 5, When he heard these words, Ananias dropped dead.
In great fear came all who heard, and the young men got up and wrapped his body and carried him out and buried him. And about three hours later, his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Tell me, Peter asked her, Did you sell this land for this price?
Yes, she said, for that price. And Peter said to her,
Why did you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look at the feet of those who have buried your husband. They're at the door, and they have come to carry you out. Verse 10, Instantly she dropped dead at his feet.
When the young man came in, they found her dead, carried her out, and buried her beside her husband. And then great fear came on all the whole church and all who heard these things.
Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. We thank you for your blessings. I pray that you would give me power and boldness as we preach this morning. Give me the words to say that would honor you. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
I think it's interesting that Luke left this story in there, right?
If you're writing the biography of the church or of a family or of some type of organization, sometimes these details you may leave out, right?
You want to leave the high moments. Jesus empowered Peter, and Peter got up and preached, and 5,000 people came to know Jesus. And the magistrates came, and they healed this man, and they stood up with boldness, before the government, and the Lord blessed, and 5,000 people came to the Lord.
Consequences of Sin in the Church
But then we get to the church, sort of organizing at the church, and this sin happens. This moment happens in the church, and it would have been real easy for Luke to say, you know, maybe the church doesn't need to know about that. Maybe everything's been doing good up until now.
Do we have to talk about this? And that's sort of how, when I approach this, I'm like, man, this is a story that's a little difficult. It's a little fun to think through, but why is it here?
And I think there's some nuts and bolts of why it's here that we're going to look at today. But as I like to do, I like to give a sort of a story that helps bring us into the mindset of where we're at. And in 1940,
the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington was held as an engineering marvel,
stretching over the pungent sound. It was one of the longest, largest suspended bridges in the world at the time. It was sleek. It was modern. Everyone loved it. Everyone looked at it. Everyone wanted to take pictures of it. It stood as a symbol of progress in America,
connecting and linking communities and provided vital transportation between one place to another. People marveled at its beauty, at its strength, but beneath the impressive exterior was a fatal flaw, an unseen weakness in its design.
The engineers had underestimated how the bridge would react to wind, just like we've had today. Instead of remaining steady, the structure would begin to sway and ripple as gusts began to pass through. It earned its nickname, the Galloping Gertie.
At first, the movement seemed harmless, even onlookers were amused and would come out to watch the bridge sway with the wind blowing by.
But on November 7th, 1940, strong winds began to push the bridge to its limits. The swaying began to intensify. It began to twist the bridge in such a terrifying dance that within hours, the stress became too much. The massive structure began to tear apart, crashing into the icy waters below.
Many people have asked, what happened to that bridge? Why caused it to collapse?
Many people have said it wasn't the beauty or the strength of it. The beauty of it was wonderful to look at. It was caused by its hidden weaknesses.
The engineers began to see these weaknesses and they left it unaddressed. And because they did not address the weaknesses that led to destruction, what looked solid on the surface could not withstand the pressure of the outside pressuring in.
The same danger exists in our spiritual lives in our church. Outwardly, we can appear strong and unified and faithful and acting like we've got everything put together.
The Dangers of Hypocrisy
But on the inside, beneath the surface, there's sin as hypocrisy and pride and deceit that slowly begins to eat away at our foundation. And left unchecked, these flaws will begin to deteriorate our soul and begin to deteriorate our churches until they're not even recognizable.
As any good builder knows, you must lay a good foundation before you build the house.
And if there is not a good foundation, as the Proverbs say, then the house will no longer stand.
And you've been there, you've ridden down roads, maybe you've got one of these houses on your land, maybe it was a grandparent's house that was built hundreds of years ago that is still standing because they took time on the foundation.
And they took time to build it the right way. But you may be like me as you're riding down the road and you see some houses that the house is there, but you only maybe see the chimney.
Maybe everything else has fallen down because there wasn't a good foundation and the house wasn't kept up and the maintenance wasn't taken care of. And the foundation is the building blocks of everything that we do.
And when we began to look at the church, Luke understood that this foundational principle of honesty and unity and holiness was so vital to the church. This passage begins to ask ourselves, what is the strength of the holy church, of this early church that came together?
They were unified, they were generous, they were empowered by the gospel, but we begin to see some dangers as well. Some dangers of sin and dangers of things that are around that hypocrisy begins to come in and threaten the unity of the people.
The passage forces us to ask ourselves a couple of questions. Are there hidden sins and weaknesses in my faith?
Am I pretending to be stronger than I really am? Right?
As a husband, as a father, as a pastor, there are times where we put on these facades of strength to make sure that we are standing in strength, but oftentimes we are weak underneath. And ultimately, the third question is, are there sins that I'm ignoring that could one day lead to spiritual collapse?
The early church was marked by explosive growth. Man, as we look through these first couple of chapters, man, the church was growing. It was exciting. Things were happening.
They were meeting. The Bible says every day from house to house, breaking bread together. There was an excitement. There was an energy about the church that was bringing people together.
And the passage here shows the beauty of unity, but it also shows the danger of the hidden sins. The danger of us knowing that there is a necessity for living in truth and holiness.
And God's holiness today demands a wholehearted dedication to genuine authenticity in the Bible and genuine in authenticity as our life, as we live for Christ, but ultimately where our integrity is at.
And we're gonna begin to walk through some of these things and understand what this is in our life. And as we begin, we see the detail in here in verse 32 through 37, the unshakable unity that happens here in this church. The unity that begins to come in right here.
This is on the tails of Peter and John thrown in jail. Peter and John been released and they come to the disciples. They come to all the churches gathered there.
They begin to tell them what happened. And as they're there, the unity that we see was not surface level. The unity they see here was rooted in something that was greater than themselves.
Unity Through the Gospel
The Bible says that they were selling everything they had and they were of one heart and one mind. They were so in love with the gospel and so in love with Jesus that that was their unity that brought them together.
And we have to ask ourselves, is this the unity that brings us together? Right? We may have differences in preferences.
We may have differences in other things, but at the bottom ground level of the foundation, what brings us together is the gospel of Jesus. And this is what they were grounded in. The very first one, they were grounded in the gospel.
The Bible says they were of one heart and one soul. This unity was more than just being in the same room. Right?
We can be in the same room with someone and not really like the person next to us. You've maybe been to a doctor's office and you walk in and as you sit down, you look up and you see your high school rival that's across the way from you.
And you begin to see these memories of these high school rivals that this person picked on you, this person gave you a hard time and you're in the same room. You're going to see the same doctor, but you have nothing in common with them.
And this morning we must ask ourselves, are we in the same room, aligned with the same purpose, aligned with the same love, aligned with the same mission? The gospel transforms our priorities.
We no longer focus on personal gain, but we begin to focus on this mutual care of things that were around.
The Bible begins to say how they began to look and reason with one another and they began to see what the needs were of everyone around them. And they looked at their own possessions as not their own,
but to be given to other people. As I began to think through this, I wanted to use North Wilkes as an example and we probably still could.
North Wilkes played in the state championship game last night, the women did, and unfortunately they lost that game, but they had a 12 game winning streak. Right, these were girls that have played from different backgrounds,
from different walks of life, from different ideas of the way they were raised, from different moms and dads, and they come together on this court despite having differences played together in unity. As Cole said, the devils won. I don't ever cheer for the devils. I try to cheer for God's country.
He made this guy Carolina blue, as I was telling Miss Pat the other day, that's God's color, it's God's team.
And so, but you think of sports in general, right? These are people from all different shapes of life, all different backgrounds. They come together and they play with one common goal in mind, to win.
The common goal is, I'm gonna do the best I can in order to come home with a trophy at the end of the day.
And in our mind, it's not about winning, it's about God being glorified and Christ being lifted high.
And when we have that as our mindset, when we have that as our goal in life, it doesn't matter who gets the glory. It doesn't matter who gets the prize at the end of the day, because Christ is lifted high.
Had the opportunity this week to go and share my story at West Wilkes High School and had two hours where I shared ministry and missions with about 12 to 15 teenage girls and boys that had a World of Opportunity Day and got to do it last year.
It was a blessing to be able to do it this year. And one of the statements I made as I was talking to these young people is I said, in ministry and really this principle can be through all of our life is it doesn't matter the title we get.
You can have the title as president or vice president. You can have the title of toilet cleaner. It doesn't matter the title we get as long as we're obedient in our life. And I made this statement, as long as we're obedient to Christ in our life.
If you are serving the Lord with all pleasure and saying, God, I don't care what I'm doing today as long as I'm doing it for you, then it doesn't matter who gets the glory. And this is what they understood here in this early church is no one cared who got the glory.
The question we have to ask ourselves today is, what is the foundation of our unity? Is it the gospel?
Or is our unity based on preferences or conventions or things that we have or things that we like or things that we want? And because that's done, then we're going to have unity.
Or is it that God is going to be glorified and therefore we are going to come together?
And how can we reflect the gospel in a greater way to the relationships around us so that as I said last week, when people from the outside look at the church, they will say that those people have been with Jesus.
Those people had spent time with Jesus and therefore their life is greater than their own and they have this purpose in their life that is greater than anything else because they are grounded in the gospel.
The gospel must be everything to us and everything for us every single day of our life as we continue to press forward for Christ. Not only were they grounded in the gospel, but they were growing in the gospel.
This is something that is so massive because if we are not growing, then we are dying.
Growing in Faith and Relationships
If we are not pressing forward and exerting ourselves to grow further in our faith, to grow further in our marriage, to grow further in our relationships with our children, then those relationships will eventually die. And we have to ask ourselves, are we continuing to grow in the gospel?
Or was the gospel some event that happened when I was five years old and I got saved and I got my ticket punched to heaven and now I'm on the way that I need to go and I'm not even thinking about the gospel anymore?
Oftentimes I fear that that is the movement of the church. The church gets their ticket punch. We stir the baptism waters and all those things are great, but then where is our discipleship? Where is our growing in our faith?
Any farmer would tell you if they plant a hundred acres of corn and they only got a couple of bushels of corn, they had a failure that year because their goal was to harvest much more than they planted.
In church this morning, we have to ask ourselves, are we harvesting more than we plant?
Are we reaching out and gathering the fields that are wide in the harvest, as Jesus says, and growing ourselves in the gospel, but also growing the churches that are around us for the sake of the gospel? As we look through here in these couple of verses, we see four types of sharing.
Sharing that happens that is extraordinary in many different ways. The first one is we see extensive sharing.
You see in verse 32, the second part of that, it says that instead they had everything in common. You see, each and every one of them did not claim any type of ownership, but they began to share everything, breaking down barriers of selfishness.
And we have to ask ourselves, church, are we in this room, a growing church that is growing in generosity?
Are we growing and sharing our time, our talents, our treasures, as we begin to look at what God has given us? And we say, all this is a gift from God. I'm gonna turn it around and give it back to the Lord. I'm gonna turn around and say, God, this is,
you've given it to me and I'm thankful for it, but I'm going to share it with other people. I'm gonna share my time.
I'm gonna share my talents, the things that God has given me. I'm gonna share the treasures that God has given me with other people so that the gospel can move forward. Not only was there extensive sharing, but there was empowered sharing. The apostles shared the gospel with great power and great grace.
It enabled the people to meet the generosities of those that are around them. You see, when we get in our vehicles and we turn the key to start our vehicle,
electricity flows through the motor, the motor begins to turn and all of a sudden this car that could do nothing without you enabling it now has this extraordinary, this empowered sense to take you from point A to point B. And this is the thought of this electricity
energizing this car is the same way as the gospel. The gospel is the electricity that energizes us, that gives us the boldness to go out and to tell the people about Jesus because we have been empowered by God Almighty to step out by faith and say, this is what the Lord has done.
And unashamedly say, this is what the Lord has done.
When we are scared, when we are afraid of what people are gonna think about us, we are allowing Satan to come in and take our power away. The Bible says that we must be empowered to share not only what we are doing, but what the Lord has done through us.
Sacrificial Giving and Sharing
But there was also extraordinary sharing in verses 34 to 35. Look at what it says here. It says that,
for there was not a needy person among them because all that owned sold them and the proceeds that were sold, they laid them at the apostles' feet and then they distributed all those that had need. No one lacked in this community.
No one lacked anything that was around them because there were people who were responding with sacrificial giving.
They challenged them to go beyond their means and to live beyond their means in a way that God is gonna be glorified.
And I have to ask ourselves, is this the challenge that this church has is that we're looking out for our possessions and we're not looking to hoard things, even though my wife has a room upstairs with all of her crafting stuff that she loves to hoard.
And I've got some hoarding stuff as well, but are we looking at it in a way to say, how can I bless other people?
How can I take what God has given me in order to turn it over to the Lord and say, God, I want you to use this gift to bless someone else. There was an extraordinary means of sharing that we have not seen since this day in my mind.
And then there was an exemplified sharing. It exemplified from this man named Barnabas who was translated the son of encouragement. And Barnabas exemplified this.
It says that he sold his land to help the church and his name means the son of encouragement. His actions matched his character.
He didn't care who got the glory. He just cared about helping other people. And imagine for me if a moment, if every single one of us was known for one characteristic,
one thought, one defining faith around our life, if someone were to come to you, would they say, James Seyfried, the son of blank,
the son of encouragement, the son of discouragement, the son of woe is me because life is never working out the right way?
Or is it James, the son of power, the son of boldness, whatever it may be in our life where our name is exemplified in what we're doing.
You see, when we give in a way that stretches us and challenges us, we live in a way that's not comfortable always. God works in tension moments.
God works when we begin to be stretched and prodded and moved in a way that is outside of our comfort zone. And we begin to sacrificially give and give in a way that is a way that only God can define. A sacrificial giving, as Jesus defined,
was the widow lady who came to the temple and gave two pennies because that's all she had.
Sacrificial giving isn't some check, some marking that is greater than what you and I think, but it's up to the Lord to determine what that sacrifice is. Sometimes it's sacrificing our time.
Sometimes it's sacrificing some things that are very, very important to us. But we must set the example of generosity and how we live and how we lead. But not only do we see the unshakable unity, but we begin to see over the next 11 verses some hard truths in the church.
I label it like this, the hypocrisy of half-heartedness. While unity in the gospel brought this life together, hypocrisy began to threaten and bring it to death.
My husband and wife by the name of Ananias and Sapphira, they got together and they conspired to make themselves look better than everyone else.
Hey, we're gonna sell this. And there was nothing wrong with them keeping a portion to themselves.
But they said that we sold it and we gave all of the proceeds to the church. And when they did this, they began to lie to the men of God.
They began to lie to the Holy Spirit and they began to bring fear among all the church. And so I wrote down seven attributes as I saw as I looked through these first couple of verses, four verses, and I saw a couple of things. The first one is this.
They were pretenders of spirituality. These were a couple here who wanted the reputation of generosity without the sacrifice.
They wanted to have the title without the sacrifice. They wanted to have this overarching theme in their life. They wanted to look like this. They wanted to look spiritual on the outside.
But as Jesus said, they were dead men's bones on the inside. They looked really good on the outside.
I've been to Israel where they have these mausoleums on the side of the hill of all these.
Don and Latricia's been there where they have all these different caskets and stones where the bodies are laid at and they're clean and they're white and they're beautiful sepulchers.
And Jesus looked at those and he said, this is what the religious people are. They're whitewashed tombs and on the inside, they're dead men's bones because they care about themselves and they don't care about anyone else around them. They were pretenders of spirituality.
But not only were they pretenders, they were pursuers of praise. You see, they craved recognition more than God's approval. When we do things, we must ask ourselves, is this what God wants me to do or is this what man wants me to do?
Am I doing this out of the intention of God working through these things? I don't care who gets the glory. I just want to see that God be lifted high. It's like someone taking a picture and taking their face off of it and photoshopping their image into a masterpiece of an image.
It could be a modern day politician or a modern day social media influencer and all of a sudden we forge a picture so that we can get the glory and we can say, look, I've been here. I've been with this person.
It may look good on the outside, but it's not reality on the inside. Not only were they pretenders of spirituality and pursuers of praise, they were professors of lies. They lied to God.
They thought that they could hide their motives from the God Almighty who looks down from heaven and earth and says, this is my creation and this is how I want you to live.
The Impact of Greed
And they thought they could lie and get away with it. And God said, not today. They were also possessed by greed. They valued their possessions more than God's holiness.
They were so attached to the things they had and the possessions that God had given them that the holiness that God wanted for them was as farthest to the thing as they could be.
They were as far as the east is from the west, as far as their desire to be holy. And they were practicing deception among people around them.
And then Peter revealed that they were pawns of Satan. He said that Satan has filled your heart.
Satan has began to sow this unity inside of you. He's beginning to work. And as I said this last Wednesday, Satan is the author of half-truths.
He came to Adam and Eve in the garden and he didn't give them this grandeur plan.
He just said, did God really say? He gave just enough false in the statement to give them a way to sin in the garden. This is what Satan has done.
He came into their hearts and he said, listen, you've worked hard for this land. You've worked hard for these things. It's okay to lie to these men. It's okay to lie to the church. If you do this, you're gonna be lifted high. You're gonna be brought up on pedestals.
You're gonna be the son of encouragement. You're gonna be the next Barnabas of the church. And they began to think, man, yeah, I could do that. I can have these things for myself. And ultimately, it cost them their life.
And then we see that they were provokers of the spirit. They grieved the Holy Spirit. They brought judgment among themselves. It would be like a person drinking poison, thinking that it's water.
Thinking that it's not gonna cause them any harm whatsoever, but yet death is imminent and death is coming.
As we talk through those seven things, are there areas in our lives where we're pretending that we're something that we're not.
There are areas in our life where we are thinking that we're one thing, but as we take an honest and authentic look at who we are, we begin to say, I've got some sin.
I've got some hard times in my life. I've got some things that I need to be honest about. I've got some things that I need to work and get right at.
And ultimately, I have to ask ourselves, what are the steps that we can take not to live in these seven attributes of ungodliness and unholiness and provokers of the Spirit, but to say, God, how can I step out?
How can I step out and trust you today to guard myself against the hypocrisy and against the deception that Satan wants to bring in?
We should be so in tune with God that when Satan's voice comes in, as I shared on Wednesday, that we know that it's Satan and we push him away. And we say, that's not the true gospel. That's not the truth because the truth will always triumph.
As we look at number three, the triumph of truth. In verses five through 11, you see his wife came in and his wife had the opportunity to make things right. And yet she chose to stand by the lie. She chose to stand by the hypocrisy. She chose to stand by the wrong
and began to see the judgment that happened. God's response to his hypocrisy and his church is swift. It's sincere.
And it reminds us that God values holiness and truth over all else. You see, when we begin to look at this, we say, well, if I lie to the Holy Spirit, is he going to strike me dead?
I don't believe that. I believe that God is saying, this is an example for us. He's going to sear our conscience. He's going to allow us to not live a righteous life.
And there may be other places in our life where he brings death and destruction and swift moments to our life. And he does this for some main reasons, but I want to bring out three this morning, the priority of truth. God's judgment shows that integrity is not optional in his kingdom.
God says that I need men of justice, men of ethics, men of righteousness that are going to stand up, women who are going to stand up and say that truth is more important than lies. And I'm going to live as honest as I can before God and before other people.
You've been around those people who are habitual liars, who go through their life and they can't say a true statement just to save their life.
Like everything that comes out of their mouth is a lie.
I've got family members like this who I cannot trust them when their mouth is open because they have told so many lies. They've told so many things that are wrong and unjust that I just have to filter everything through what comes out of their mouth as this is a lie.
It is sad that we have to do that but God in the same way says that if we are going to be people who are going to live for him that truth must be part of our life. Truth must be part of who we are and what we do.
Oftentimes as I've got some young kids we'll bring them home and I've shared some stories where I'll ask them what happened and when they begin to fumble around and begin to try to tell the story and even though
I know what happened you begin to catch them in their lies. This is God.
He knows the truth and he says why are you lying to me? Just come as he says here in verse 32 come with one heart one mind with truth and great power and great grace. I don't think we fully understand how much grace God has for us.
How much grace and overwhelming grace that God continues to shed on us and he says if you'll just come to me just come to me as a son coming to a father I'll take care of the rest I'll
give you grace I'll give you comfort I'll give you the help that you need but we've got to come with truth as our priority. Also we see here number two is the price of holiness. Ananias and Sapphira they valued possessions over purity and they paid the ultimate price.
God's Purification of the Church
God said I'm going to remove them so that the infection in the church is no longer there. Imagine you're going to the doctor and he says hey there's a mass
of course like I said a couple weeks ago my dad had Hodgson's disease lymphoma where his lymph nodes were expanded and he had to take chemotherapy
and imagine he had to have surgery and different things imagine a doctor coming in and saying there's a mass I see it it's cancerous we're going to go in and we're just going to take out about half of it.
We're going to we don't need to worry about the other half let's just deal with part of it and let's just see what happens. You would look at the doctor and say doctor can we take the whole thing out?
The surgery may be a little more in depth but can we take it all out?
Can you remove every trace of infection to prevent further harm?
If he looked at you and said I don't know about that let's just see what happens. You'd say well let me go find another doctor.
Let me go find another opinion of someone who says yeah we can remove all the infection out of your body.
We can remove all of everything that's going to harm you because that's what happens here the price of holiness God says I'm going to purify my church and in order to do that I've got to sometimes take radical action to purify my church and that's what he did here.
He radically purified his church and that was the price of holiness in this moment and because of it we begin to see the power of fear. It says that the whole church was gripped with fear.
the whole church began to see what happened and they found the dead they carried him out and great fear came upon the entire church and all who heard about it.
Deep respect for God's holiness began to fall among his people. Deep respect for living the right way and living a life that is going to glorify God that's going to allow us to grow closer to him was this ultimate procedure that happened here in the church. You see fear
was not an unhealthy fear it was a fear of respect and honor and reverence of God's holiness and who God is and what God is doing in our lives. Oftentimes we have to ask ourselves what do we value in our life?
Do we value the sin in our life or do we value the health of those that are around us and ultimately ourselves? How do we cultivate a healthy reverence of God's fear?
How do we begin to get to this point where we do something and the Holy Spirit convicts us and we immediately repent we immediately go before that person and say I've done wrong I've hurt you I've said things
that were wrong and I need to make it right.
That is what a healthy church does and we need to ask ourselves God give me this opportunity to bring these things to surface in my life so that I can fully trust in who you are.
We begin to think through that and as Terry comes and plays I want to sort of wrap up by understanding the holiness of God. R.C.
Sproul writes a book called The Holiness of God it's one of the most powerful books I've ever read because it talks about who God is and what he does and one of the statements he says is this God cannot and will not tolerate sin among his people.
God will not and cannot tolerate sin among his people. We must respond wisely.
We must just like this early church begin to cultivate a holy fear and a holy reverence for God in our lives and begin to understand that when something happens when things happen in our life when we've done things
that are wrong when other people have hurt us we begin to understand and yield to the Holy Spirit for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of the unity of the church. You see you wouldn't
if you were riding in your car come around a turn and you begin to see the road narrow and a cliff getting there you wouldn't get as close to that cliff as possible you would get as close to the wall as you possibly could to avoid falling off the cliff
and God is saying the same thing in our life as we care about his holiness we must approach God's holiness with an awe and reverence that he is in control and we're going to get as close to God
as we can as close to the security of God as we can and as far away from the danger of sin that's around the corner.
About a year ago in March my buddy of mine he said hey let's go to this preaching conference up in Ridgecrest a guy was speaking up there in February I think it was last year then I went and
I'd heard about this man before his name was Steve Lawson and great expositor a great lover of the word and man I grew so much in that little day and a half seminar where he got up and he
taught on how to preach and how to apply and even the things some of the things that I do today is because of his teaching and training about a year ago
a couple weeks later we left and I got a notification someone had sent me a text and said did you hear what happened to Steve Lawson this man he's in his 70s and he's been
pastoring and teaching at Master Seminary in California under John MacArthur John MacArthur who's been there for 56 years has had one man that's ever preached eight consecutive weeks to fill the full pit it was Steve Lawson he loved
this man he cared about this man he knew this man was a godly man and he said I'm gonna allow you to step into my pulpit while I've got surgery coming up about a year ago it came out that he was having an affair with a 22 year old woman
my heart broke I called a buddy of mine I'm like dude I've learned so much from this guy what's going on he said I don't know I don't know all the details and I began to see that John MacArthur had done an interview and one of the guys asked him John
what's going on with Steve he's a trusted friend of yours he's a trusted confidant you've let him fill the pulpit you've done these things and John MacArthur who's in his 80s sat back in his chair looked at the interviewer and he said took a breath
he said in all my years of preaching and teaching I know one thing God will always purify his church for it to be more holy and I thought as I heard that
to trust the Lord in that moment to trust and know that God cares about his holiness he cares about the holiness of his church above any other person in this world and if that person is doing wrong he
will remove that person in order for his church to be holy and in this moment in this psalm that church and the churches that were around he was pastoring in Texas he removed him in order for the church to be more holy
it's a great evaluation of our life as I've meditated on that over I've got several of his books on my bookshelf because it begins to ask ourselves am I half-hearted in my devotion to the Lord are we
Call to Confession and Commitment
this morning half-hearted in our devotion to the Lord are there sins are there things in our life that we need to say God I've done wrong in this area I need to confess I need to come forward and say God I need you to work in my life today
how can we live our life daily with a greater appreciation and a greater awareness of who God is
because God is a holy God God is a just God God cares about us more than we'll ever know he sent his son to die for us to redeem us of all humanity and all of our sin he cares intimately about us
and yet oftentimes we'll smack him in the face and say I'm gonna do my own thing God I don't care what you want me to do I'm gonna do my own thing and God just
breaks his heart he says I have a plan that's for you I have this awesome opportunity for you I just need you to come and confess and serve me with your whole heart
maybe that's you this morning I don't know why the Lord laid this passage in this order at this time but maybe you're listening online maybe you're here with us and you just need to respond appropriately this morning I
don't know what it is but let's close in prayer Lord we love you we thank you for your blessings God you're so holy as I've been studying through this all week as you begin to penetrate my heart on who you are and the holiness of you
God help us this morning to trust in you more help us this morning if there's hidden sin if there's hidden wrong in our life that we would come closer to you we would avoid all hypocrisy that we would grow so close to you that the world
begins to ask those people have been with Jesus Lord help that to be our church this morning in your name we pray Amen Thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio of Pleasant Grove Please subscribe to get our latest sermons each week
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