Ep. 065 - The Dangers of Wealth - Part 5 - Generosity in the Early Church

Episode Transcript

Austin
So in our last episode, we looked at Abraham and Lot and the paradox of prosperity. Today, we're going to dive into Acts 4 and 5 and see how wealth can lead us to be dishonest with those around us.

Spencer
Today will be fun because we're really talking about two vignettes in the early church. We've got acts 4:32 to 5:11. We see the story of Barnabas, and we see the story of Ananias and Sapphira. Now we have to say context is important here. This was in the early church. We had just had Jesus die, rise from the dead, send the Holy Spirit;
we had the believers in Acts 2 sharing everything in common, and that being a key part of how they were relating together, being in prayer, being able to share very openly even though they were being persecuted for it. So we see all of these different things kind of cascading, and their use of wealth, their open-handedness as stewards, was one of those things that's highlighted over and over again.
We see it in Acts 2:44, we see it now in Acts 4 with the example of Barnabas. But we also see again the reminder that they had everything in common. We have to be careful with this because we don't want to make a blanket statement, you know, across all possessions. There were still private ownership. That's why Barnabas could sell.
And we'll get into that and provide that. But we want to be careful in this and that, it's a different context. There are still things that we can learn from it. Of course, that different context; Peter and John had just been arrested for preaching Christ. There was physical persecution and the Christians were a minority group, all different than what we see today.
So can you kind of walk us through, a little bit more of, of what we're looking at here in these two vignettes?

Austin
Yeah, and I think even as I've read it from my own cultural perspective as a Westerner, someone that has spent a majority of my life in the United States, when I look at this, I'm really challenged because for the last 37 years, I have been, bombarded with messages about my individual life, my stuff; “What is your what is best for you?”
And it, in a lot of ways, grates on that individualism, exceptionalism mindset of “What is yours? Hold on to it as hard as you can. You don't need to share with others because they need to lift themselves up by their bootstraps or, work harder.” And so I think there's this, we need to come at this with the reality that the cultural milieu is in America,
we have to be the ones that provide for ourselves. We can't look to others. One of the worst sins in America is to be needy. And the reality is just we come into a very different look and perspective on the world. The ancient Near East people were communal. They lived together closely with one another. We see in Acts 2, Acts 4, that they're often together praying, breaking bread.
There was this sense that we are community, not just because we talk to one another, but we live closely. We are well-acquainted with one another's needs and with how God has provided for them. And so I think we need to come at this with tension and knowing that tension, knowing that perspective, but also knowing that when persecution arises in that time and age, it's not just a physical, “You could go to jail,” but you might be cut out of some economic opportunity sets.
And so there really needed to be a heightened level in the early church. If you are cut out from some of these other places, and how is the church going to care for one another? And so as we come into this, this sharing isn't bound by law. The reality is not, God didn't say, “Hey, you need to do this, or else you're not going to be part of this family of faith.”
It is abounding by love. They, the brothers and sisters in Christ, see that giving was in response to Christ’s generosity towards them. It wasn't because they felt that they had to do it. It was this necessity, this hurdle that they had to get over to participate with their family of faith. It was by joy. We see this in Acts 4:33 “And with great power, the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.”
We see them responding to Christ’s generosity. He has given us life, and he has given us eternal life, newness of life here in this day and age. And so that allows us to give abundantly to our brothers and sisters in faith. And I think what's also really unique here is the gifts were often given into a central pot.
They were given to the apostles to then be distributed to the world around them. So one thing I love about the church that we go to is earlier this year, there was an offering taken up to be given to the church so that then the church can disperse it to any that had need. And it's been really beautiful to see how God has been utilizing resources that were given into that central pot, go to people in need in the community that we have.
And so, that's kind of how we see it is set up in the early church. And so Acts 4:36 and 4:37, it tells us that Barnabas sold a field that belonged to him, and he gave it to the apostles. What I think is really interesting about what it says here is we're not told what he gives.
We're not told whether he gives the whole part or he gives a part of it. But we're told that he faithfully gives it. And so, yeah, he may have sold the land and given the entirety into what was the storehouse. He may have been just honest with his community and say, hey, this is what I sold.
This is what I gained from it, and this is what I'm giving. But we see that Barnabas comes in, and he is the “Son of encouragement,” his name means. And he gives it to the storehouse with joy to participate with the people of God. He doesn't hold anything back. He is fully honest and fully forthright with his brothers and sisters.
And so we see here that that is where joy lies. Joy lies in being able to participate with God. So can you just unpack a little bit about the contrast, then, with Ananias and Sapphira?

Spencer
Well, as you mentioned, the deep joy is he gives, he's open-handed. We don't know if he gave a piece of land that today might be worth 10,000 or 10 million. We don't know if he's, giving a piece of land that would be valued like Manhattan type prices or, you know, deep and buried in the mountains in East Tennessee where you couldn't even build a house, you know, prices
But, he's giving. And this is in contrast with the story of Ananias and Sapphira, you know, the key parts of this story. And it's right after the story with Barnabas. So we know that Luke as he's writing this, he's trying to give a point of contrast. And he's doing this in such a way that he's saying, “Hey, the early church didn't have everything squared away either.”
There were people in the early church that they didn't go the direction that everybody else was going here, and that was bringing great grace upon them. Instead, we have Ananias and Sapphira. So from the account they're in Acts 5, they sell a piece of property and they bring some of the proceeds to the apostles’ feet. It's the same language, you know, with Barnabas.
The insinuation in the text is that Ananias and Sapphira, though, were dishonest with the proceeds from the sale. So Ananias comes he places it at the apostles’ feet, and he says, basically, “This is the proceeds from the sale.” Now they know that that's not true. They know that he withheld some. Now, why did he withhold some?
You know, they're going to say later on “It didn't matter if you withheld some. Just don't tell us that you gave us all of it.” Yeah. You know, he was not compelled to do so, but he lies and he is not forthright, and his life is taken from him. Then his wife comes in and she's given the same opportunity, set to be able to just be open and forthright with the apostles.
Again, she's not compelled to give the entire amount of the property they had conspired to give and have the maybe the acclaim within the community of, “Oh, they're being really open handed, they're being good stewards.” Without being, completely honest about it. So whether they withheld, half of it or a quarter of it, or 10% of it, or 90% of it, we don't know.
But we know just the act of dishonesty. They're before the Lord as stewards and complicity, you know, together in doing this. This is not something that maybe they just, it struck, them and they said, oh, I'm fearful. I need to withhold a 10% here at the last moment or something. They had a conversation clearly about this. And we're going in this direction.
So their lives are, taken from this. So it's serious as stewards at that point.

Austin
Yeah, and just like you were saying, verse 1 and 2 says: “Ananias with his wife Sapphira, they sold a piece of property and with his wife's knowledge kept back some for himself, some of the proceeds, and brought only a part of it, and laid it before the disciples feet.” And I think the reality here is it's that greed for more, the greed to be able to keep.
It's that, the reality that they want to participate with the giving. But they also want to keep some from themselves. And again, there's not necessarily a wrongness of wanting to keep some. It's they want to show one thing but do another. And then the conspiring of “Hey, we sold this for this. Let's make sure that we keep some for ourselves, but let's not tell it.
We want the acclaim. We want the recognition of. “You have been a good steward” without actually being a good steward. It's that you greed for more to be able to keep for ourselves that I think is really the insidious nature here. It's that it's, again, it's not bad to have. We look at verse 4 when the apostles are directly confronting Ananias and it says “’While the property remained unsold, did not remain your own?
And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?” They're directly asking questions that say, “Yeah, you had ownership of this property. That's okay. You sold the property. The proceeds are at your disposal. Why have you lied? Why have you deceived the Holy Spirit?” It's so much more about this, this danger of wealth is, again, it's not about the ownership or the stewardship.
It is then about how are we honoring God and honoring our brothers and sisters when we give gifts? Are we looking to, like, ring that bell and say, “Look at my gift! It's so big, it's so incredible, it's so generous.” And maybe it was, but are you keeping so much more that you could have given, and then lying about, “Well, I only sold it for this much or that.” It's that dishonesty and it's that conspiring to be dishonest with your spouse to then, not be forthright with the Lord and be forthright with your brothers and sisters
that's so damaging here.

Spencer
You know, one of the things that strikes me, it's almost a little bit the green portion, the holding on to it portion. It's a little bit like J.R.R. Tolkien's, Fellowship Of The Ring. And then, you know, Two Towers, Return of the King; The whole series that, Lord of the Rings series, we see Frodo get the ring and be in his own right mind.
And then slowly, over time, just having the ring, it pulls on him to the point that at the end he cannot give up the ring. It's only that encounter with Gollum. Spoiler alert there. If you haven't read it, then you need to read that, you know, many years ago, but, it's, it's really, really hard to get away with that because once we have possessions, they kind of sink into us and we start to hold on to them.
And so getting rid of them is much, much harder the longer that we have them, just like it was for Frodo. Instead, if we can set limits on the front end and say, this is all I need, this is enough. We'll be getting into, you know, setting finish lines and lots of different ways here over the next few episodes.
But if we can set those upfront, then we the accumulation of wealth has less potential to impact us.

Austin
And so I think as we move forward, we look and see kind of two contrasting views of what we want to hold tightly to and what we want to hold loosely with. And Christian generosity is really loose with our possessions and tight with our community. We want to hold tightly to the people of God that draw us towards Jesus, and we want to hold really loosely to our possessions, because God is simply placing things in our hands to be stewards, for a temporary season, to manage them in ways that he would manage them and what we see from Ananias and Sapphira is they're really tight fisted with their possessions.
They're greedy for what they think is theirs. It is not an open handedness with God. They see the resources that God has placed in their hands as their own and not as theirs to manage on behalf of the King of the Universe. And so it's that tight, tight handedness over possessions that, like you were saying with Frodo in the ring, it's like the grip gets tighter and tighter and tighter
the longer we hold, the greed gets more and more, often times, as the level of resources grow and grow and grow. And if we see those as our own and not as what we ought to be as stewards, then we can become slaves to those things. We can want more. We can look to accumulate more, have more, to have greed for a comfortable life that may or may not be...to have comfort is not a bad thing, but to be greedy for a level of comfort that is maybe over-indulgent and that robs our soul of joy.
If we're becoming slaves to those things, it's a really dangerous place to be.

Spencer
Well, and it's a slippery slope, because wealth tends to accumulate slowly over long periods of time. And the anxiety likewise can grow slowly over long periods of time. If you told someone upfront, well, you know, you have very little here. You know, when Emily and I, were in seminary, you know, we're living in a space that's 400 square feet.
It's basically just kind of a small box, you know, there where you've got kitchen in one corner and bedroom in one corner and bathroom in one corner, and it's just all there. Well, there's nothing to worry about. You don't have any funds to worry about. It's just a very simple life. But then you add on wealth, you add on children, you add on a home, you add on a business, all these other things.
And there's a whole lot more to think about right now. Back then, you know, 20 some years ago, it's just, you know, “Hey, I'm waking up this morning, I have classes, I have an amazing wife. I have relationships. Life is very simple in some ways.” Now, there are a lot more complexities to it. And some of it is just, you know, the reality that you have kids, but some of it is also, “Okay, there's a level of accumulation and enough wealth that, you know, we never had back then.”
Very, very simple setup back then. You know, people gave us a couple of chairs and a bed to be able to put, you know, in that place. So it wasn't even ours, you know, to begin with. It was just the kindness of our families, you know, giving us some things to be there. So we weren't we weren't even concerned about those things necessarily, because they were all second hand.
But you know, then the other side of things, as we accumulate, we can fear the loss of those and going back to an older time, and the lack of choice, there. So that can generate all that anxiety that we want to stay away from. Right.

Austin
Well, I think if we're contrasting this looseness with our possessions; if we say, “This is not my own, I'm simply a steward, but rather we want to be tight with the people that are around us, our community,” if that is our aim in life, is to be surrounded by the people of God for long periods of time. I think that's in a lot of ways
another contrast to what modernity and especially modern America says of “Wherever that next job takes you, just pick up and go because it means more money.” If that's always the aim, is “More money, more money, more money,” then what trail of relationships do you have? What longevity of relationships are you leading? If your job is constantly asking you to go to a new place every 2 to 3 to 5 years, are you able to be tight with people?
Are you able to really know and live a deep life with the body of believers that God was put around you? I think it's challenging in a lot of ways, and especially if we're only pursuing the next job for the next higher paycheck or for the next set of acclaim or for the next whatever, fill in that blank is.
And I think this is where we have to start asking the Lord, really, really, poignantly and really directly: “God, would you have me move my family just for more money? Or do I need to be content with, man, I really love this community of believers that you've put me around, and I can be satisfied to not climb the social ladder, simply for more wealth.”

Spencer
Well, and we see that I think it's so much is a life of service too, because there are people that are called in different ways to move for different reasons. And if there's a calling there, you know, I think of, couple in a family that, you know, was in the military with, our church that they only were with us for a couple of years, but very, very focused on serving Christ.
And, had a specific calling that they felt like, they were called to within the military to be able to share faith and bless people, and engage and, beautiful family. That's rare though. You know, it's so much more common, like you're talking about you get with a large multinational, they want you moving maybe every 2 or 3 years.
There was a program that I was, that we were looking at that we would be living overseas and we were hoping that we would be able to share the gospel right out of business school with some different people. But as we really assessed, it was going to be, you know, at the time, it was going to be in one of GE’s leadership programs.
But they were going to have us moving every 6 to 9 months and just sounded terrible with the young family. It sounded kind of impossible to even be able to share faith if we were always on the move and traveling and doing these different things. It's just like, “how do you even build relationships that are deep enough with the people around you to be able to get into life so that, before you move, you know, for that next job?
And it just seemed like a poor fit, you know, for us. But that seems like that's much more of the expectation of professionals that really want to grow and flourish in the business world. Oftentimes, that they're just going to do that as part of success. But it can lead to tremendous, dissonance with faith.

Austin
Right. And so I think that's where we were just always come back to that “calling” piece of life. And I think we always hold we want to be a people that love Jesus, that love our community and are ingrained deeply in life with those people. And the early church gives us, I believe, just a beautiful model of that, where their first thought for those that were walking closely with the Lord is, “how do I help others around me?
How do I lift the rest of the body up if they're experiencing pain or poverty?” It was very much focused not on their own comfort, not on their own prosperity. It was, “how do we live in such a place of community and, understanding of one another and love for one another, that when needs arise that we get to be able to then to say, ‘hey, I just sold a piece of property, here is resources,
go and help the body of believers?” And I think if we have moved away from that, if we don't know our brothers and sisters in Christ, if we are seldom available to our church, then it becomes really hard to be a tight people of community. And then it becomes really easy to become tight with possessions. And I think that's where the contrast here that we see between Barnabas, who came in in joy sold the property and gave to the Lord, versus Ananias and Sapphira when they sold and were greedy for themselves.
So Spencer, I think really the linchpin here is the church really needs to manifest a different vision of life for the world around us. Where the culture is focused on accumulation and accomplishment, the Church should focus on servanthood and sacrifice. When ads tell us to buy more stuff, we respond by giving more to our needy brothers and sisters in Christ.
When we fall in hard times, instead of taking out a loan, we come and look towards the church and ask for help rather than just having this penchant for individual freedom and autonomy over our finances, let's come before our brothers and sisters. Let's confess our sins of where we feel greedy and I honestly often have to come back before the Lord and confessed my own greed and desire for more and say, “Jesus, I'd rather be a part of an abundant life-giving anti-consumer lifestyle that looks to the good of the Church rather than to my own, maybe abundance in terms of stuff.
Let me look to you, look to the needs of others.” If you enjoyed this episode, we really hope that you would be challenged to look at “what is contentment?” Where is the Lord drawing our hearts to really say enough is enough? Now, for our next couple episodes, we'll look at finish lines. What does it look like to set finish lines for income, for savings, for the next generation?
So we look forward to having those conversations. As always, leave comments down below and we'll see you next time. If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so that you don't miss the next episode.

Disclaimer
This content was provided by Second Half Stewardship. We are in Knoxville, Tennessee and you can visit our website at www.secondhalfstewardship.com. The information in this recording is intended for general, educational and informational purposes only, and should not be construed as investment advisory, financial planning, legal, tax, or other professional advice based on your specific situation. Please consult your professional advisor before taking any action based on its contents.