Pure Life Ministries Podcast

Tongues of Fire: The Early Church Part 3

When a prominent couple did not allow their hearts to be purified by the fire that was burning in the early church, it led to their death. This fearful act of judgment filled the Church with holy fear and brought many outsiders to repentance and salvation. Don't miss Part 3 of our short series, “Tongues of Fire: The Early Church.”

Broadcast on:: 19 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

Hey, this is Patrick with Pure Life Ministries. When our hearts are truly transformed by God, significant changes should be occurring in our lifestyle. But this goes far beyond just stopping porn use or avoiding illicit scenes in movies. How we spend our time, where we go, what we pursue in life, everything, should be radically altered as we begin to walk on the narrow way. And many Christians just don't think deeply enough about the way they live, and it's not uncommon for those in the church to base their daily decisions off the media and the culture rather than on the moral principles of Scripture. We want to see that change. Please join us on Saturday, October 12th at 10am Eastern on our YouTube channel for another episode of Pure Life Live. I'll be sitting down with Pure Life's President and Founder, Steve Gallagher, and our Executive Director of Counseling Programs, Jordan Yoshimine, to discuss the influence of the media we ingest, the limits we should put on our devices, the impact of spiritual atmospheres in and out of the home, and much more. Our hope is that this will help you learn to lead a lifestyle that honors God and helps you get free or stay free from sexual sin. We'd also love to respond to your questions about this topic, so send those to live@purelifeministries.org. When one couple would not allow their hearts to be purified by the fire that was burning in the early church, it led to their death. This fearful act of judgment filled the believers with holy fear and brought many outsiders to salvation. This is part three of our short series, Tongues of Fire, the Early Church. Steve Gallagher has joined me in the studio, Steve as the Founder of Pure Life Ministries. Steve, it's great to see you again. I'm always happy to be here. Steve, we're going to continue our discussions in a series that you have in a video format on your website entitled The Early Church, and we're looking today in Acts 5. Tell us a little bit about the backdrop of this chapter. At the end of chapter 4, Luke gives a somewhat lengthy summary statement of the condition of the church at that time. I'll just put it to you this way, Mike. The church was on fire. They were going after God with all their hearts, and that was the atmosphere in the early church at that time. And as part of that, then Luke kind of eases into this next story by bringing up Barnabas. Barnabas had done something that was noteworthy, which was to sell a piece of land and bring the proceeds in and give that money to the disciples to be used for the church. So that all establishes the backdrop for the story we find in chapter 5. Okay. Well, go ahead and share with us what that story is, what actually did happen. Well, this couple there had become part of the church, and they saw what Barnabas had done, and no doubt, people were really expressing their gratitude, their love for Barnabas. You know, he was a very good man, and they saw something in that that really attracted them that they wanted for themselves. So they also had a piece of land. They sold it, kept part of the money for themselves, but presented it as if it was the entire proceeds of the sale because they wanted that same kind of honor that they had seen Barnabas receive. You know, so in essence, they were blatantly lying to the Holy Spirit. So basically, God struck them down dead on the spot. Why do you think that the Lord dealt with them so severely? I mean, striking them dead, why so severe? Well, first of all, the Lord was intent on starting the church off as pure a form as possible, you know, and he wanted to preserve it from corruption, at least keep that purity as long as he possibly could. But there's something deeper than even that, and that is, it is just one of the laws of the kingdom of God that the more intimate you become with the Lord, the greater the consequences. You know, in other words, you can come into a tremendous knowledge of God and the things of God, or if you abuse that position, you can bring upon yourself severe judgment. So that's really what a lot of this is. For instance, let me just give you an example, Judas was numbered amongst the 12. He was with Jesus day in and day out for three years. And so his crime was not so much that he turned Jesus into the authorities. His crime was against that intimate relationship that he had with Jesus Christ. He had so much light and he rejected it, and that's really what Ananias and Sephira did. At the time, Steve, the church was a very close-knit community. This must have had a real impact on that community. Well, Luke says that great fear fell not only on the Christian community, but actually upon the whole city, because the Jewish community was also pretty tight-knit, I believe, in that city, and they kind of knew what was happening. And when these two people were struck dead, I mean, it really affected people. They were, it kind of forced Jewish people to make a decision about what they believed about this new Christian sect of Judaism as they would have seen it. And as far as the believers in the church, I think that that fear of the Lord became so strong in the early church that it really caused believers to think seriously about the ramifications of their actions and so on. And this seemed to spawn a whole fresh new wave of revival as well, because after this happens, more good things begin to happen. More people started getting saved. You would almost expect it to be the opposite, but actually more people started coming to the Lord because of this incident. Yeah. It makes you think maybe we need something like that in the church today. That makes me think something like that's going to come our way. Yeah. Well, talk also, Steve, about how the Jewish religious leaders responded to this. Well, of course, they were absolutely entrenched in their own doctrinal orthodox thinking and teaching and they would not open their minds up to anything outside of that. So all of this sort of thing did was just drive them into anger and they hauled the disciples in. But God bless Peter, he takes the opportunity again to get up in front of the Sanhedrin and to preach his heart out and most of the Sanhedrin wanted to kill all those disciples. And really, I believe the Lord used Gamalayl to bring some wisdom into the council and it wasn't God's time for them to be martyred then. So anyway, they backed off that and they basically just gave them a good beating and sent them out. It just gave them good beating since it's the law. Well, at least they didn't kill him. That's true. It's true. You know, Steve, as I alluded to earlier, when we look at the condition of the church today, I think we can't help but notice that there is a real lack of a genuine fear of God. And how much we need to have that revived in us as believers in the current day that we live. Yeah, you really see a lack of reverence for the Lord, almost as if you can obey Him if you feel like it, if you don't feel like it, it's no big deal. God understands just that kind of laissez-faire attitude and, you know, there's very little power in the church. There's very little life in the church. So we see the lack that we have because of those attitudes that have become so enmeshed in our thinking. Yeah. And you mentioned earlier, Steve, that because of this happening, that there was a growth of the church, there was an increase of power of the church in that early day. And we know that in the last days that there's going to be a tremendous power that comes over true believers. And so something's going to have to happen, as you mentioned, to bring that about. And you know, you can be in fear of that, but we can also look forward to it that in these dark days that we might be a church full of power and full of light for a very lost world. Well, and that's partly why a lot of people believe that a persecution is coming and that is going to act as a purifying agent in the church. And then that, out of that, will spawn a new, powerful wave of revival like we've never seen before. [MUSIC]