Sermon Transcript
Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and with his wife’s knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a portion of it and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.
When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it.
Christians have a long history of philanthropic aid. There are hospitals all over the world founded by Christians, which goes back millennia, actually way back to even year 369, Saint Basil built a hospital with hundreds of beds. Just last year in 2020, 4 out of the top 10 charities by donations, by number of donations, were explicitly Christian. Whenever there’s a national disaster, you see the Salvation Army and Samaritan’s Purse spring into action. The question for today is, what did aid look like in the earliest church?
We have a little bit of an idea of what it looks like today, but what did it look like then? And as we study their benevolence, we will see how their approach to benevolence corrects 2 of our common errors that we make today, how their approach prioritized relationships, and how their approach reminds us of Jesus. So, first, their benevolence corrects 2 of our common errors. Not surprisingly, our society is polarized on everything, but on the dynamic between those with resources and those who need resources. Everyone can see that some people have and other people have not.
Everybody agrees on that, but then we get all flustered with each other about what happens next. On one extreme, people talk about that it’s wrong to have. They will talk about the evil rich or the fat cats taking too much. On the other extreme, people will look at those in need and say, that’s their problem. It’s not my problem they’re in need.
If they don’t want to be needy, they should do something about it. But what we see in the earliest church really confronts both of those ideologies, both the evil rich ideology and the that’s their problem ideology. It confronts both of those and it presents a rather unique way of looking at the dynamic between the haves and the have-nots. So first, let’s talk about the sentiment which is carried by some in our country and looks with disdain upon the haves. This is the millionaire and billionaire language that we hear from some, or over my years, much more personal than that, when I was working with college students and young adults, sometimes Some of them could feel guilty if they had access to resources.
Like maybe mom is a VP at some company and she helped them get an internship. And then somebody asks, how’d you land this internship? And they’re like, well, and they get all squeamish and they don’t wanna say, my mom helped me get the job. Or maybe dad helped them buy their first house. Or their first car or paid for college so they didn’t have any debt coming out of college.
Like they benefited from generational wealth and now they’re embarrassed by that. Like they’ve done something wrong by having access to a resource. They realize they are a have and not everyone is. And they feel it is somehow wrong to have. Have you encountered that ideology in our society?
If you have, what happens next? I mean, if a society believes it is wrong to have, what happens next? The law comes and takes it from them, which makes sense, right? I mean, if the whole society believes it is wrong to have, then through taxes or whatever else, what you have is removed from you. And that is the political platform of some, take from the haves because the haves are evil.
But that’s not what we see in the earliest church. We don’t see the community taking from the individual because they believed it was wrong for the individual to have. In fact, Peter tells Ananias what Ananias does with his own money is up to him. Let’s get caught up on the scene here. Going back to Acts chapter 2, Peter preaches, 3,000 people put their faith in Christ, and everybody starts living in community with one another, and more people join their group every day.
But not everybody in that growing mass of people came from the same socioeconomic situation. Some were haves, others were have-nots. And the haves would sell what they owned to provide for the have-nots. And then along comes Ananias. Verse 4, Ananias sold some property, great, and he gave the money to the church to help those in need.
Well, that sounds wonderful. What’s the problem? The problem is he lied about how much money he received from the sale. Of his property. He told the church, I am giving you all the money from the sale of my property, when he was only giving some of the money.
He was trying to make himself look better than he actually was. Maybe he thought it was wrong to have, so he decides to lie about it. Like, similarly, maybe some of our young adults downplay how much their parents have helped them because they believe it’s wrong to have. But Peter tells him, verse 4, that’s silly, man. You didn’t need to do that.
Specifically, Peter says, while the land, your property, remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Peter is like, you can do whatever you want to with your property. It’s yours. It’s not wrong for you to have it.
Your property doesn’t belong to the collective unless you say it does. We’re not going to take it from you. It’s at your disposal. Lying about how much you got from the property was completely unnecessary. Like, how foolish for you to lie about something like that.
They weren’t like in a commune. Where you might need to sell everything you have and give everything you earned to the collective. It wasn’t like that. People retained their own property and decided what to do with it. We said last week, remember, the earliest church often met in people’s homes?
They met in people’s homes, which means at least those people didn’t sell their homes. Right? If everybody had sold their home, they wouldn’t have had homes to meet in. So what you did with your property was entirely up to you. Giving was not compulsory like taxes.
It was voluntary. The collective didn’t take your property and the collective didn’t decide what to do with your property. You decided freely. And as Peter made clear to Ananias, it was not wrong for someone to keep property or resources. Now apparently, before Ananias made his decision, the rest of the group was freely, individually, voluntarily deciding to share all of their property and belongings with each other.
Luke records up in verse 32, the full number of those who believed were of one heart and one soul, and no one said, that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. When we hear that, that they had everything in common, again, we shouldn’t think that they liquidated all of their assets and lived on a farm together. It was more like, hey, if you need something, you can use mine. Like, your car is broken down? Well, you can drive mine.
You need a place to crash? You can sleep on my couch. It’s probably how we might treat those people in our immediate family if they had some need, right? We don’t sell all of our stuff to take care of our family unless it was really necessary. We share what we have if they need it while retaining ownership ourselves.
That is how the earliest church treated everyone in their community, which brings us to error number 2, the that is their problem ideology. There are those in this country that look with disdain not upon the haves but upon the have-nots, who feel superior to those who are in need. They say things like, why don’t you make something of yourself? Your poverty is entirely your problem, it’s not my problem. Or, the best thing I could do for you is nothing so that you will be forced to provide for your own needs.
It is the idea that everybody is self-made, your destiny is entirely in your own hands, everyone can achieve without any assistance from others, and if everyone can achieve without any assistance from others, then offering assistance is not necessary. Maybe it is even wrong to offer assistance, they would say. Have you encountered that ideology? In our society. It is also a political platform and it is also not what we see in the earliest church.
Let’s read this, this is verse 34. There were no needy people in the earliest church, none, right? Zero. But why were there no needy people in the earliest church? What does it say?
There was not a needy person among them because What comes next? All the needy people had made something of themselves? Is that what it says? There was not a needy person among them because unemployment was at an all-time low? Is that what it says?
No, there was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of land or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.
There was no needy among them because those with resources gave up their resources to provide for those in need. They had the attitude, I’ll use my resources to help your problem. Later, Paul would write a letter to the Ephesians and he would say it like this, Ephesians 4:28, let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his hands so that— why do you do honest work with your hands? So that you may have something to share with anybody in need. Paul tells them why they work.
I mean, number one, so you don’t have to steal, but after that, after you have earned resources, what is the point of resources? What is the point in having resources? To share with those in need. If someone was in need, they didn’t say, That’s their problem. Instead, they said, that’s our problem.
There was no such thing as individual problems. There were only communal problems, and they addressed problems as a community. The way in which the earliest church approached benevolence is not represented by any modern political platform. Right? No one says what the earliest church says because on the one hand, in the earliest church, all generosity was completely voluntary, right?
No one was forcing anyone to contribute any amount of their financial resources, and it was okay for an individual to keep his or her financial resources. So, in that way, they’re very individualistic.
On the other hand, poverty was seen as a communal problem, not an individual problem. And therefore, those with means sacrificed their resources to help those without resources. So, on the one hand, we have full freedom of the individual, and on the other hand, they sacrificed individual gain for the sake of the community, right? There is not a political platform today advocating for both of those simultaneously. Okay, so the benevolent approach of the earliest church corrects 2 of our common errors.
It also prioritized relationships. A number of commentators note the far majority of references to charity in the New Testament are associated with charity to fellow believers, charity to those within the community of faith, to insiders, not necessarily to outsiders. So for instance, James 2:15, James writes, if a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled, giving— not giving the things that are needed for the body, what good is that? Right? James is like, you can’t just pray for somebody when they’re— when they have physical need.
You have to actually help them. But he begins that that saying, if a brother or sister is in need. He doesn’t say, if anyone is poorly clothed. And here in Acts, you’ll notice something similar, verse 32, it is the full number of those who believed who had everything in common, or verse 34, there was not a needy person among them, right? There were still those with dire physical needs in the Roman Empire at large, and Christians didn’t have everything in common with every outsider who was not within their community.
So there was a prioritization, we will say, of insiders. But that doesn’t mean they neglected those outside of their community. They weren’t saying, oh, sorry that you’re hungry, but I can’t give you anything to eat because you’re not a Christian. That’s not what they did. They had read Proverbs, right?
Like Proverbs 14:31, whoever is generous to the needy honors their maker. I mean, of course, Jesus in Luke 10:27, Jesus commands all of us to love our neighbors as ourselves. And Jesus defines neighbor as really anyone in need, not just those within the faith community. So, the earliest church didn’t limit their generosity to insiders. In fact, they were so generous to both insiders and outsiders, they eventually caught the attention of the Roman Emperor Julian who was mad at Christians for being so charitable.
So what was happening was the Christians were caring for so many people in the empire that the empire started to look bad. And apparently, if you needed help in Rome, you knew you should go talk to a Christian. Don’t go talk to the government, they’re not gonna do anything for you. Go talk to a Christian. And Julian didn’t like that.
He wrote to one of his officials, for it is disgraceful, he means for us, for the Roman Empire, it is disgraceful that when no one Jew has to beg, and the pious Galileans support not only their own poor but ours as well. All men see that people— that our people lack aid from us. Julian said, hey, everyone is noticing when our people need help, we don’t really do anything.
But the Christians do. The Christians are helping them. So we got to do something about this because we’re looking bad. The earliest church helped everyone, but they didn’t help everyone in the same way or to the same amount. Paul said it like this in Galatians 6:10, so then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are in the household of faith.
You can see a clear emphasis on those within their own community. Which you should know, this is what we try to do here at Bridges. Whenever there is a disaster, we first look to send aid through one of our mission partners. California wildfires, we often partner with a local congregation who is in our association of churches. Like, let’s find a pastor on the ground who knows some specific needs and we can get aid directly to the people.
Who need it. Or Steve mentioned last week when we heard about the earthquake in Haiti, his first reaction was like, let’s call our mission partner who lives there. Like, who do we know and how can we resource that person? We do the same with our benevolence fund. We, which we try to help anyone who has a need.
As we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone or for everyone. So come in off the street, need something to eat, we’ll really try to get something worked out for you. But typically, we can go a lot further with people who we actually know. Maybe we’ve watched the whole situation of need develop over a period of years, right? If we know someone personally, we know a lot more comprehensively how it affects them, how it affects all their family members.
So we have a better idea how to truly help, right? Someone just walks in off the street and says, I need money for groceries, is different than someone who maybe, maybe we know what your last 5 jobs were. Maybe we know what your skills are. Maybe we can connect you to someone. Maybe we could recommend a specific educational program that would be suited for you.
We can’t do that if we don’t know the person. And listen, if we really know the person in need, then maybe we know some of the underlying causes behind the need. Like maybe the person lost a spouse or a child a few years ago and then understandably unraveled emotionally and hasn’t been able to hold a job since. Or maybe the person was taught from a very young age, why would you try to make something of yourself? Why would you try to succeed?
The world’s just gonna get you down. And that was all the voices that they ever heard and they’d never met anyone who wasn’t not on some type of assistance. And that was, that was their whole world growing up. And now that’s etched in their brain, right? So now they have a need.
And it’s like, okay, so let’s take care of the actual need that’s right in front of us. But let’s also talk about this deeper burden that you are carrying, right? If we know the person, we can see the comprehensive picture. Or if the person in need should be corrected in some way. Right, like maybe he keeps applying for CEO jobs, but he’s really only qualified for entry-level jobs, and now he’s about to get evicted from his apartment.
How do we help? There’s an immediate, like, okay, let’s get you to next month in your apartment, but we also need to work with that guy so he begins pursuing realistic possibilities, right? And if the person isn’t willing to do what is really necessary, and keeps making poor decisions, even when we’re trying to coach, then we can’t really just keep paying rent because that wouldn’t actually be helpful. Paul mentioned this type of situation when he was writing to the Thessalonians, excuse me. Apparently in Thessalonica, there were some people taking advantage of Christian charity.
And instead of trying to be productive with their lives, apparently work was available, These people were just not. It appears they were spending their time like socializing and spreading gossip instead of working. But then they were asking for help. And so Paul says, wait a minute, that’s not right. He says, 2 Thessalonians 3:10, for even when we were with you, we would give you this command.
If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. Paul says, we’re not gonna enable your bad decisions. Because that wouldn’t actually be helping you. Just like any of us, right, if we had an alcoholic relative who came to us and asked us for money, we would probably say no. And we would say no because money isn’t what is actually needed in that situation.
Now, we would probably all bend over backward to help with the actual need, right? Like, I will pay for the rehab facility if there’s a cost. I will watch your kids while you are in recovery for a month, right? I will do absolutely anything to help you with the actual real need, but I’m not going to enable your bad decisions. Listen, the only way to get down into the roots of what is truly going on to help someone is if you really know them.
So someone just comes in off the street and asks for assistance, or this is probably what happens with governmental programs, right? Because they can’t really get to know the person. They don’t really know what is really going on with the person. You can’t size someone up by looking at them or talking with them for 5 minutes. You can’t say, oh, I know what you really need.
What you need is some tough love right now. You don’t know, right? You can’t judge somebody like that. You just met them. You have no idea the web of relationships and history that has brought them to this moment.
You won’t know how to really help unless you’ve spent considerable time actually in community with that person. So Paul says, yeah, we’ll help anyone, of course, but we will especially help those in the family of faith. We are going to prioritize people with whom we have a relationship. Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking, phew, that means I don’t need to help the person who asked me for money on the street.
I don’t have a relationship with anybody like that, so I don’t have to help anyone like that. Not so fast. I think that’s probably the wrong instinct. We aren’t off the hook for helping just because we don’t personally deeply know someone who is in need. Instead, we’re on the hook to develop some new relationships.
This is the real benefit, in my opinion, of what the Panthulus do with their Much Hope organization, what the Mignots do as well. Like, yeah, sure, they provide some meals and clothes, sure, but because they provide some physical needs, they, they are able to develop a relationship with people so they know how to better help what is really going on, and because they know the person. So if you don’t know anyone with needs, I’d say stop insulating yourself. And get to know some people. Okay, lastly, the benevolence of the earliest church reminds us of Jesus.
I’m sure it’s not a surprise to you that all Christian behavior is derived from what Jesus did for us, but let’s go through it. Jesus corrects us from our 2 common errors that we mentioned before. Jesus corrects us from the it’s wrong to have error and he corrects us from the that’s their problem error. Because number one, Jesus has everything. So of course it’s okay to have, right?
Psalm 50, every animal of the forest is his and the cattle on a thousand hills. The whole universe is his. We are his. He made us. He couldn’t have more.
It’s okay to have. God isn’t sinning because he has. If we want to put Jesus into a box of and ask, is Jesus a have or is Jesus a have-not? He’s a have and it’s okay and he’s free to do whatever he wants with what he has. If he’s generous with what he has, it is completely voluntary, not compulsory.
But at the same time, Jesus never looks at our poverty and says, that’s their problem. You know, good luck getting right side up in your life. He never says that. Instead, He made our problem His problem. He that knew no sin became sin that we might become the righteousness of God, right?
The ultimate have, Jesus, became the ultimate have-not. On the cross, Jesus gave up all of His resources. He gave it all up in order to help us. To help us who have failed to help ourselves. And lastly, Jesus prioritized relationship, right?
Did Jesus stay off, stay far off? Did he stay away from us? Did he sit up in his castle, just look at us from a distance? No, he got involved. He came here.
He put his hands in the dirt with us. He knows each one of us intimately. He’s personally working with each of us through our individual issues and not on a surface level, right, but down to the deepest roots of what is going on in our heart. And while he is generous to the whole world, right, he is generous to the whole world. We all have life, we all can experience joy and friendship and love, right?
Everybody gets those to some extent. He’s generous to everyone. But He is especially generous to the church because only the church receives His Holy Spirit who conforms us to His image and seals us for eternity with Him. Jesus has prioritized the relationship with those of us in the community of faith. Let’s pray.
Jesus, thank you for not looking at us from far away, but for coming here, for rescuing us, Lord. Thank you for giving up your resources that we may have life, that we may have eternity. Lord, I pray that what you have done for us will sink so far into our heart that we will reflect the same benevolence that the earliest church did. Help us take steps, Lord. Help us not look at the world as a bunch of individuals, but as a community.
Help us prioritize as you have, voluntarily, freely. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
