Today’s reading is Acts 5:1-11

I want to thank Rev. Brian Johnson for writing our Rooted guides for the last few weeks!  I am blessed to work with some great folks, and I greatly appreciate Brian’s writing and teaching these past few weeks!

One of the misconceptions we see when people look at Scripture is this.  We think of the Old Testament as full of judgment with no grace, and the New Testament is full of grace with no judgment or accountability.  Well, when we read the story we read today, we see that is not the case.  We see that Ananias and Sapphira lied, and paid a great price. Yes. God is most assuredly a God of grace. But He is also a God of judgment.  When many people say only God can judge me, they honestly don’t think that God will. I do not want the sovereign God of Heaven judging me.  I know I will stand lacking.

Why did this happen? Why was this judgment so harsh?  They were under no obligation to give the money they made to the church.  They didn’t have to do any of that. But notice what they did. They sold it and said they gave more of the money to the church than they really did.  Why? To make themselves look better than they were.  They didn’t have to do any of this.  But they wanted to look good.  They were more concerned with impressing humans than with being faithful to God.

They were more concerned with human approval than God’s approval.  And we can, and often do, fall into the same trap.

So, let’s be careful there. Let’s see God first, and rely upon His approval over anyone else’s

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