the G sides

This is part of a e-vo series through the New Testament book of Acts. Today is from Acts 5:12-42.

We talked last week about what probably was the real issue with Ananias and Sapphira. But we’ll miss a larger truth if we don’t consider the chapter as a whole. Something is going on that will not be stopped. It’s the power of community.

Who sells their stuff to give away to those who need more? Who gets arrested and beaten only to be released to go do exactly what it was that brought on the arrest and beating in the first place? What turns a man who at one point get intimidated enough by a teenage girl to deny Jesus into someone who stands before the Supreme Court of the land saying things like ‘you killed him’ and ‘He rose again’ and ‘it’s better to obey God than man?’

“It was the Spirit of God.”

Hard to argue with that but it was the Spirit of God using community.

The only common item among them all was…Jesus. Not beliefs about Jesus but the actual person of Jesus. That’s a huge difference and it’s played out right here in this chapter.

Peter and John continue to tell Jesus’ story, get arrested, escape, return to the scene of the crime only to be beaten again and told not to do it again. Then they show back up telling the same story. The Spirit of God was using that community to embolden the faith of the followers. The community was the Spirit’s tool of healing, encouragement, and accountability.

The San Hedrin was the other side of the coin. They were unified by a cause or a set of beliefs…that their religion needed protection. That God need protecting. The ironic thing here is that God doesn’t need protection. He’s never asked for protection. He asked us to proclaim Him, obey Him, and love Him. But not protect Him.

And so stands the San Hedrin as an example of what happens to any organization that has beliefs or doctrine as their unifying battle cry - it eventually exists for the purpose of keeping itself alive. Churches who rally around beliefs or doctrines at the exclusion of Jesus suffer the same fate. Eventually their true mission statement reads “We exist to make sure we exist.”

At the other extreme is the community of Jesus followers. They are free to proclaim and follow…not protect their turf or idea of what God is. They’ll eventually fall into the same trap and have to deal with it (Acts 15) but for now what unifies them is Jesus. The real Jesus. The one they saw and touched and smelled and loved. That was their community and the source of its transforming power.