Fruitless Trees (10/05/26)

The events that unfold in this passage and the next are quite familiar to us, and rightly so.  God designed that the example made of these two ought to persist.  But the design was not simply to have a tale by which to scare new believers straight.  The design was to guard against the most common poison which enters the church, the corrupting leaven of hypocrisy.

We need to understand the crime if we are to properly appreciate the punishment.  When we read about the actions Ananias took, it doesn’t sound like an issue, does it?  He kept some of the proceeds for himself.  What of it?  This certainly doesn’t seem like something deserving of the death penalty.  Mind you, we don’t account much to be worthy of that severe penalty, reserving it for the most foul of murders.  And even then, we debate the propriety of such a sentence.  It’s so final.  And what if the jury was wrong?  But it was intended to be final, and the jury system is intended to guard, as best it can, against any such wrong.  Well, certainly, there has been no murder committed here.  On the other hand, there is sin, and sin, whether slight or gross in our opinion, is punishable by death.  Why?  Because sin is, at base, a rejection of Him who is Life.

But again, what is the problem here?  It lies somewhat hidden in the terminology.  When we read that he ‘kept back some of the price for himself,’ it is speaking of an act of embezzlement.  Okay, you may say, but embezzlement presupposes that the funds belonged to someone else.  It’s not as though he could embezzle from himself.  Valid point.  So, how did the funds cease to be his?  In point of fact, Peter lays out the very same question.  Ananias, the land was yours to do with as you pleased.  You owned it.  You had say over it.  When you sold it, that same right of ownership applied to the proceeds of the sale.  You were free to do with it as you wished.  You see, the sin was not in retaining a portion.  There was absolutely nothing wrong with doing so.  This goes back to a point I made in the last study.  What was happening here in this first church was not an early case of communism.  The selling off of property was not something commanded by the Apostles, or demanded as the cost of membership.  There hadn’t even been a pledge drive, as some churches today might undertake, a promissory note issued against intentions to give over the course of the year.  No.  The problem lay in the pretense.  This is left tacit in the depiction of the scene, but the point is that in giving a portion, he claimed to have given all.  It was the pretense that was at issue, the desire to appear other than what was truly the case.

Pretense – hypocrisy:  If you call it by that latter term, the issue becomes more plain.  We are quickly put in mind of just how poorly Jesus responded to hypocrisy.  It was his chief charge against the Pharisees, the leaven against which he warned his disciples.  “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees!” What is that leaven?  “Hypocrisy.”  And what comes of it?  “There is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, nothing hidden that will not be known.  What you say under cover of darkness will be heard in the light of day.  What you whispered in private will be shouted from the rooftops” (Lk 12:1-3).  Or, go to that other scene of confrontation.  Jesus pronounces woes upon the Pharisees and scribes for their hypocrisy, and lays it out before them.  By their practices, they cut off men from heaven, blocking the way.  They make their prayers a posturing of piety, using them as cover for raiding the widows’ provisions.  They make grand oaths, but always with an escape clause, and by their oaths, they make clear their true god:  Gold (Mt 23:13-21).  But oaths invoke God as witness, whether acknowledged or not.  Prayers get God’s ear, whether earnest or not.  The posturing hides nothing from Him.  The God of Truth knows in truth.  And He will have His children to walk in the Truth.  They, after all, represent Him.

There is the fundamental issue.  What you are doing is for public applause.  What you put out there as your true self is an act, and what lies behind the mask of piety is rotten to the core.  Ananias, by his pretense, declared himself rotten.  The embezzlement lay in the fact that he was claiming to have given the full proceeds of the sale.  After all, he had seen Barnabas do it, and see how the Apostles honored him!  Why, they called him son of encouragement.  Ananias saw honor and acclaim given another, and wanted part of the action.  He just didn’t want to pay full price for it.  He missed the point entirely.  Barnabas gave because he wanted to do so.  He gave because having come to faith in the Son of God, he truly trusted that God would be providing for his needs as he committed himself more fully to matters of ministry.  His was a true setting aside of former life, a true choice to follow the Way, wherever God might lead.  His giving was in keeping with his new nature, an act of encouragement, given in support of God’s work and God’s people.

For Ananias, giving was an act calculated to garner praise.  But praise garnered by deceit is no praise at all.  The praise is, of necessity, as false as the presentation that led to it.  This is the root issue.  Hypocrisy in the realm of worship is false in the extreme.  To lift up one’s hands and wave them about because everybody’s doing it is no act of worship.  It’s an act of compliance.  It’s not the response of a heart consumed by the love of God.  It’s a seeking to fit in, to be thought consumed by the love of God, or at least sufficiently consumed by it to be accepted by His people.  It’s false, and that’s the issue.

I recall a brother of mine, whom I generally appreciated, insisting that those who serve to lead worship ought to always have smiles pasted on their faces as they do so.  But is that not pretense, if in fact the heart is not smiling?  Well, the suggestion ran, if one cannot feel that joy, perhaps they ought not to serve on this occasion.  Okay.  I suppose that sort of covers the case.  But then I look at the Scriptures, and I find so many of the Psalms are hardly in this cheery place of gaiety.  They present the heart in its real state.  Likewise our prayers.  We may find ourselves fairly inundated with requests to pray for this one or that, for some distant relative of an acquaintance of a cousin of a parishioner we barely know other than as a face in the pews, and we may feel it an obligation to do so.  But at heart, we don’t know the guy and can’t really say as we care about his issue.  Maybe it just doesn’t seem worth praying about.  Maybe it just feels cheap to be praying for some health issue when the kingdom is about eternal souls.  Far better, I would think, should we pray because we meant it.  Far better that our worship should be in Spirit and in Truth.  Who knows but that there are those in the congregation who need words to express the anguish within them.  There’s a place in the biblical record of worship for songs and prayers that cry out, “How long, O, Lord?”  But we’ll have none of that.  We want songs of confidence and joyful hope.  And there’s a place for those, as well.  But surely, worship consists in both.  Surely, if we trust God in His promises, we ought to trust Him with our doubts and concerns.

You see, it’s not just in giving that we can slide into the heinous sin of hypocrisy.  And it is heinous – truly heinous.  After all, to play the hypocrite with God is an act of rebellion against Him.  And to play the hypocrite at all is to do so with God, isn’t it?  Just like those oaths sworn by the Pharisees in such fashion as to allow the oath to be broken, if necessary, at least so far as they were concerned, are in fact an invocation of God as witness, so every pretense of hypocrisy is in fact a claim that God is blind, does not know all.  It is a denial of God as He truly is.

Add to this that as a professing Christian you lay claim to being a true son of His household, one who represents Him in having a like character, being a man after God’s own heart.  We can make the claim.  We can pray the prayers, sing the songs, recite the verses together, but if they don’t represent how we really think, who we really are, then what value can we possibly think they hold?

These are concerns which we ought to be addressing in ourselves constantly, repenting as needed, which is likely to be often.  I come back to those questions from Gong’s third album again.  “If you’re a believer, what do you believe and why do you believe it?  Don’t you ever wonder if it’s really true?  Do you?  Really?”  Do you believe it?  Really?  It’s the question Jesus asked Mary.  “Do you believe this?”  It’s not a question of, “Didn’t you learn this in Sunday School?”  It’s not a matter of reciting memorized chapter and verse.  It’s a question of whether it is become a part of you, inherent in your thinking and in your response to the events of life.  Do you have a name or do you have character?  I go back again to the letter Jesus sends to Sardis.  “You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead” (Rev 3:1b).  May we never find ourselves in receipt of such a letter!  May our faith not be a matter merely of reputation.

Look at this man!  His very name proclaimed what was evident in his circumstances and ought to have been in evidence in his character.  “God has been gracious.”  There is the name of the man.  And his wife?  “Beautiful.”  God had blessed him, it would seem, with abundance.  He had blessed him sufficiently that he could contemplate selling off this property and not be concerned with having still a house over his head, and a means of income.

Fausset’s article on the man before us observes a parallel between this matter of Ananias’ actions and those of Achan, back when Israel was first entering into the land of promise.  Going up against Jericho, all the wealth and the populace of that place had been put ‘under the ban,’ devoted to God, to be a burnt offering, as it were.  Nothing was to be kept.  No pillaging.  But Achan took some of what he found in the rubble, and hid it away.  Wouldn’t want that money to go to waste, after all.  Sin had entered the nascent nation of God’s people.  A son of God had taken what was His.  But God will not share His glory.  This was to be dealt with severely, publicly, that all the nation should know for certain that one doesn’t trifle with God (Josh 7).

Here we are again at the outset of a new phase in God’s unfolding work, as the Church founded by the Son of God begins to form up and come together.  And here again is one come to take for himself that which was devoted to God.  Here again is one who thinks he can hoodwink his Creator.  And here again, the sovereign God of all Creation makes it very clear that no, he cannot.  For Achan it came by the slower process of lots, narrowing in on the man step by step.  First, the tribe identified, then the family, then the chief, then the man himself.  He must have felt the trap closing around him as things proceeded.  He could see each result unfold before him, and knew, as no other, the accuracy of the lot.  And the lot, you may recall, was designed to preclude human connivance in the outcome.  So, here, as Ananias presents his falsehood, Peter’s exposing of it comes without any possibility of informants.  Who would have told him how much the land sold for?  How would he even know what particular piece of property was involved, let alone what it might have been worth?  It’s not like there were trade papers circulating, listing the real estate transactions of the week.  I suppose Matthew might have had some contacts who might be aware of such transactions, but where is there time for him to have inquired, even if we consider that a possibility?  No.  Peter’s information was coming from the One to whom Ananias was lying, and he makes this every bit as plain as the fact that Ananias could have simply given what he chose to give and left it at that.  “You have not lied to man, but to God.”  The enormity of the crime needed exposing.

This wasn’t about exerting Apostolic authority, though it most assuredly was an exercise of that authority.  This was divine imposition of justice.  You have lied to Me.  I will repay.  Neither was it merely because God was offended.  This was, as with the punishing of the sin of Achan, a matter of protecting the freshly begun work.  Israel was barely begun to become a proper nation, and here was a first setting aside of God who had led them out of Egypt, through the years of wandering, to arrive at this place.  That generation which had doubted God’s promise of the land was dead and gone, apart from Joshua and Caleb, who had not doubted.  This was a new generation, a fresh start.  But the freshness went out of it with Achan, and God would not have that spoil the whole.  Likewise, with Ananias.  The Church was establishing the true Gospel, in spite of the opposition of the old order, and that opposition would continue, would become the more stringent as it felt the more threatened.  The people of God needed to be firm on their foundations, and what Ananias was doing here was a threat to that work.  If he got away with it, pretense and hypocrisy would spread.  The new work would become like the old, all ritual and no reality.  And God would not have it.  This had to be cut out immediately.  And it was.  Very publicly.  And to very good effect.

I note another parallel in my choice of title for this section.  You may recall that odd event of Jesus becoming upset by a fig tree that had no fruit for him to eat.  It is, of course, a matter of something far more significant than a snack along the road.  The fig tree had all the appearances of being in fruit.  There should have been some figs to eat.  Any good gardener would have known it to look at it.  And yet, when He went to pick a few, there was nothing.  And He spoke death to that tree for its falsity.  It was a hypocritical tree.  And its message was for Israel and its temple practices which were, to a great degree, all show and no reality.  It had become empty ritual, necessary to get along in life, perhaps, but really of not much more consideration than, say, a membership card at Costco.  We do what good people do.  We are seen at temple every week, every day.  You’ll find our candles burning.  We will take care to do no work on the Sabbath.  You can count on it.  But it means nothing to us beyond the inconvenience.  Oops.

We go to church every Sunday.  We bring our offering and put it in the plate.  Cost of doing business, if you will.  It’s what right-thinking people do, after all, and we surely wish to be found right-thinking people.  So, we stand when we’re supposed to stand, sit when we’re supposed to sit, seek to look attentive during the sermon, and bow our heads eyes closed when it’s time to pray.  We’ve got the motions down.  We know most of the words to some of the songs, and can even sing in tune.  We look the part, and we welcome the acceptance of our fellow parishioners, whoever they are.  But find us a half hour past the end of fellowship time and would we be recognizable?  Would any suspect we believed in Jesus, or cared a whit for His opinions?  Trail is in the workplace.  Any evidence of faith?  Any signs of godly character to be had?

This is our problem.  At least, it is my problem.  Pretense comes easy, and it shouldn’t.  Covering up faith so as to gain acceptance comes easy, and it shouldn’t.  Playing a game of “when in Rome,” comes naturally to the man of flesh.  But we’re developing new character, new concerns, new ways of thinking and dealing with the world around us.  Surely, this must show.  Surely, if it does not, we are as guilty of hypocrisy as we would be for putting on pious airs in the house of God.  It cuts both ways.  And in both cases, the fundamental issue in playing the hypocrite is that we are, at core, robbing God.  We are taking from what is His and claiming it as our own.  That is never going to work out well.  What is done in secret will be exposed.  For the good of the Church of the redeemed; for the good of our own eternal soul, will we but come to true repentance for what is exposed.

May we be found fruitful trees, watered by God, nourished by the Light, growing in faith, abounding in love, demonstrating a true likeness to our Father who art in heaven.  May our obedience to His commands be as instant as that of angels.  May our love for Him truly abound, and our trust in Him be complete.  May our anchor hold within the veil.  For He is our Rock, our Firm Foundation, our Lord and King.  And we, gladly, by choice, are His servants though we are accounted sons and daughters in His household.  May we be found serving faithfully, representing truly, loving deeply.  May He be pleased to guard our sincere faith from any worldly corruption, and may we be swift to change if in any way worldly corruption has crept its way into our practice.  May we, in short, be honest in our faith, before believer and unbeliever alike.

God of Truth (10/06/26)

I suppose this section of the study is really continuing much the same point as the last.  I want to come back briefly to the act that marks out Ananias’s sin.  It is an act of embezzlement, and yet, this is to be understood of what was in fact his personal possession.  As Peter himself observes, the man was perfectly within his rights to do what he wanted with his land, and to do what he wanted with the proceeds obtained from the sale of that land.  There was no crime there.  It was his, and as such, he had both the freedom to do as he pleased in regard to it, and he had the capacity to so.

I want to come back to that point, but from a different angle.  First, though, let’s proceed with the matter of embezzlement.  If it was his, how could it be a case of embezzlement?  I mean, it was his!  He was within his rights.  Ah, but recall that business with Achan after Jericho.  What had that one done?  He had taken for himself that which was put under the ban, that which had been devoted to God.  What has devoted to God becomes His personal property, and the power of ownership transfers to Him.  In the case of Ananias, by his claim to have brought the full proceeds to give into the work of the Church, he effectively put those proceeds under the ban.  He was devoting them to God, and had he simply declared that he was devoting that portion he brought to God, all would have been well.  But he claimed to devote the whole, and having claimed so, he had done so.

This is interesting, isn’t it?  When it comes to our dealings with God, perhaps it is not the case that actions speak louder than words.  Words matter.  Claims matter.  We may find we need to accept that at the very least, actions and words speak alike before God, and if the one does not accord with the other, there is trouble.  That’s pretty much the root issue of hypocrisy, isn’t it?  The words, the outward evidence, are at odds with the deeds of the inner man.  Before God, I’m not sure we could ever find any lie to be good.  I say I’m not sure, because we do see cases, such as Rahab’s lie to the guards of Jericho when she hid the two sent to spy out the city, which are commended.  Indeed, Rahab finds a place in the lineage of Jesus, and unlike Bathsheba, there are no quibbles in the author over naming her name.  So, it does seem that there are occasions where duplicity in the service of protecting the lives of God’s children is somehow acceptable.  Though even here, I’m not sure we could construe this as God actually approving of the act of lying.  Sin, after all, is sin, and any claim to truth is made before God, Who is Truth.  And any lie spoken is by definition a claim to telling the truth while knowingly concealing it.  Every claim, whether it acknowledges it or not, calls upon God as witness, and is in fact witnessed by God.

So, then, though Ananias lied in claiming to have brought the whole proceeds from the sale of his land to give to God in the giving of it into His work, the Church, God chose to hear it as truth.  Making the claim, he did in fact devote the whole.  It was now God’s, and as such, his keeping back of a portion for himself constituted theft, embezzlement.  I think we have need of being reminded just how terrible a thing it is to lie to the God of Truth.  It may be that lying in service to His purposes can be found excusable.  It may be that lying to the father of lies is but dealing with him on his own terms.  But this is God we’re talking about now.  This is trying to put one over on the omniscient Lord of all.  Worse, it is doing so in pursuit of claiming allegiance to Him, in the course of professing to be His child.  How are you a child of Truth if you lie in the very claim?  How are you representing Him when by your false words, your untrustworthy demeanor, you misrepresent Him whom you claim to follow?

Here’s the thing, the core, most fundamental point.  If you claim to be a Christian, you claim to be one of changed heart, in whom the Holy Spirit, which is to say, God Himself, has come and undertaken this transformative work.  You have declared yourself a temple of most holy God.  You have claimed to represent.  If you are a Christian, then by definition, you ought to be such a one as men can look upon and discern the character of Christ, which is in turn to see the Father.  No, I am not so foolish as to suppose any man born of man can arrive at such perfection of character as was found in Him.  Were that possible, His advent, death, and resurrection would have been to no purpose.  Our need for a Savior was and remains very real.  But there’s that thing I might call the trend line of a changed life.  There ought to be a trajectory to our growth, evidence of developing, maturing character.  That, after all, is the goal of the Christian life, the purpose of the Church which Christ established and of which we proclaim ourselves to be part in that we claim to be a Christian.

It does no good to disassociate oneself from the church militant.  It makes no difference in the situation if you have somehow concluded that you can forsake the gathering together of the saints and still claim to be a good little Christian.  Much like what we see going on with Ananias here, the words claim a certain thing as true, whether actions align or not, and God, being True, hears the truth claim; measures the deed in light of the claim.  What, then, when such assessment leaves Him cross-eyed because they refuse to align?  Can He be well-pleased?  Can He really be well-pleased when you act in ways directly at odds with the clear teaching of His revealed truth in Scripture, and claim to be doing so on His word?  This, it seems to me, is treading very dangerously.

The God we serve, whatever else we may say of Him, is True.  He is so True that James, speaking of Him, observes that in Him there is no least trace of shadow, nothing at all that is shifty, nothing that changes with circumstance (Jas 1:17).  His word is not yes today and no tomorrow (Jas 5:12).  His yes is yes, period.  His no is no, period.  His children, sharing His character, ought to be likewise reliable.  This is not some call to give definitive answer, even if you don’t have the facts upon which to supply definition.  This isn’t some call to erase the word maybe from your vocabulary.  It’s a matter of oaths, of truth claims.  If you say you will, then do.  If you say you will not, then don’t.  Be true.  That’s all.  If you don’t know, say as much; and if you say you do know, then you had best know truly, and act truly upon that knowledge.  You serve the God of Truth.  You cannot serve Him by being false.

I said I wanted to come back to this business of freedom and capacity from another perspective.  Those two terms combine to give definition to what it means to have something under your control.  It is how Peter spoke of Ananias’ right to do with his own as he pleased.  I want now to bring that to bear on the God we profess to belong to.  Hear that.  We profess to belong to Him.  When we say, “I am Yours,” it’s not just the stuff of lovers overwhelmed with emotions and longing for the one they love.  It is a transfer of ownership.  In saying, “I am Yours,” we are simultaneously declaring, “I am not my own.”  Like Ananias claiming to have given all the price of that property to God, our claim is to have given all that we are to God.  You cannot call out to Him, “Lord, Lord!” with any honesty except this full devotion lies at base.  And look at that word: devotion.  If you are devoted to God, you have essentially put yourself under the ban, declared yourself exclusively His, exclusively for His use.  And if you are His, then both by innate right and by covenanted agreement, He has both freedom and capacity to do with you as He pleases.

This is the fundamental reality of the God Who Is.  He is Sovereign.  He has full freedom and capacity to do with you as He pleases.  As an aspect of His innate right, it lies in the simple fact of His being the Creator of all that is.  He made you, and as such, He has full right to make You has He pleases, to assign you whatever role in life He pleases, to situate You as He pleases, and to make such final disposition of you as He pleases. This holds true whether you acknowledge Him at all, let alone whether you acknowledge Him as Lord.  He is Lord.  As concerns His right and power, it makes no difference whether you accept that fact or not.  It is fact.  Fact doesn’t much care if you accept it or not.  Yes, you have the right, for whatever it’s worth, to your own opinion.  But your opinion does not change the facts, only your relationship to the facts.

God is Sovereign.  Whatever freedom and capacity you may have in regard to your worldly possessions, much like your authority, it is a delegated freedom, a delegated capacity.  There is One Whose freedom and capacity in regard to you overrules your delegated capacities.  He may or may not choose to act otherwise than you would have Him to do.  You are not in control, except within the bounds in which He chooses to allow you control.  And if He chooses to overrule you, so it shall be.  His word does not fail to achieve all that He purposes (Isa 55:11).  How we need to nail this down in our thinking and in our response to Him.  His word goes.  His truth stands.  He speaks and it is.  When we claim to be His children, His bondservants, it ought to be that our words are as reliable as His own.  That is not some promise that we can speak whatever thing we choose, tack “in the name of Jesus” on the end, and be assured that He will make it so.  That is an abuse of privilege, honestly.  The claim, as I reiterate constantly in these studies, is that He has authorized what we speak, that what we speak reflects His will, not our own.  Where that claim is falsely made, what can it be but a lie?  And on what basis can we expect God Who is True to back our lie?  We cannot.  We ought not even to be able to conceive of such a thing.  But we are a thoughtless people.

God is True.  God is Sovereign.  God is Holy.  His Holiness will not, cannot tolerate sin in His presence.  And He is present everywhere.  It ought to come as a shocking surprise that He has permitted life on earth to continue at all, that He continued the experiment beyond the Flood.  He knew, after all.  He’s not blind to sin.  Yet, He chooses to allow this heinously sinful world to persist for a time, all in the certain hope of seeing all who will be saved come to Him.  He knows the full number of the elect, has known since the first work of Creation was ever undertaken by Him.  Now, what exactly things like before, or patient waiting mean in the perspective of eternality I’m not entirely sure.  He sees the end from the beginning (Isa 46:10).  Is that because both beginning, ending, and everything in between are happening simultaneously from His perspective?  I don’t know.  But if time is a function of created order, and heaven is timeless, then perhaps that is the deal:  The full span of eternity all happening at once.  It defies to me to even begin to imagine what that might be like.  How does perception work in that setting?  How are the databanks of thought not overwhelmed by the input?  But He is God.  He is above all created things.

And He has set us here, we who say we belong to Him, to serve as witness to Himself.  He is evident, as Paul reminds us in Romans, through that which He has made.  All Creation, by its wondrous variety and order, declares to us what God is about, what He is like.  Nowhere is this more true than in the wonder that is man, made in the image of his Creator.  Does that mean God has feet and hands and hair and face like ours?  No.  What it should mean is that our character, our ways, are like His.  We are made to resemble Him in who we are.  The course of our maturing in Christ is a course of coming more and more to perceive as He perceives, to think along the same lines He thinks, to act as He acts; and withal, to love as He loves.  That is a high calling indeed.  And I will say again, it cannot be answered by lies and false claims, but only with earnest desire and honest assessment.  We may not as yet be prepared to give all.  Be honest.  Give Him what you are able, and claim no more than you have in fact given.  God is not afraid of your honesty.  God will not rebuke your honesty.  He invites you to come both worshiping and confessing.  He just wants to hear from you, to hear the truth you have in your heart.  He wants you to hear the truth you have in your heart, and then, perhaps we can work together with Him to expand and improve the truth we have in our hearts.

Sovereign Lord (10/07/26)

Once again, I find I have already explored the matter I had in mind for the section I have before me.  God is our Sovereign Lord.  He has the ability and the authority to establish us or dispense with us as He pleases.  It’s His call.  That is a truth that we find difficult to accept, and more difficult still to hold onto if once we do accept it.  It’s all well and good that He is Lord, but I think we oftentimes rather wish He would remain a distant Lord, there, but not particularly relevant.  It is something of the American ethos, I suppose, especially for those of a conservative or libertarian leaning.  We are enamored of the idea that he governs best who governs least.  And there is something to that, I believe.  But it is, at root, worldly wisdom, not divine.  When it comes to God, He governs absolutely, and quite thoroughly.  And while there is opposition to His reign, there is no opposing it in actuality.  Even the devil, though he acts the usurper in this earthly realm, is in fact still himself fully contained and constrained by God’s Sovereign will.  Like the ocean, he must heed.  “Thus far, and no further” (Job 38:11).

It is most telling, isn’t it, that this declaration by God of the extent of His involvement in Creation occurs in that book?  Job, of all people, had experienced the vitriol of Satan.  He may not have known his tormentor as directly as all that, but he had felt the effects as no other before, and I dare say, no other since.  Oh, we may bewail our situation.  We may suffer loss and hardship in our lives, may be troubled by lifelong issues of disease.  Yet even then, I don’t really think we could say we have undergone the same degree of trials as he did.  And here, as he finally comes before God, we have God reasserting just how Sovereign He is.  He tells the sea where to stop.  He puts the dawn in its place.  He, as we continue in that passage, takes hold of the ends of the earth and shakes the wicked out of it (Job 38:13).  That is more directly attributed to the dawn, but only as He has caused the dawn to know its place.  Amazing!  And it just keeps going from there.

God decides.  One thing He decided was that He had had quite enough of Satan’s accusations against His children, particularly after that one had provoked the crucifixion of the Son.  And again, let me put this down plainly.  Satan could have done no such thing except that God granted the doing of it.  And why did God grant it?  Because it furthered His good purpose.  Peter has made this point repeatedly in his various sermons, as we have them preserved in this book.  You men did what God had already determined should happen.  It doesn’t remove your guilt, for you acted of your own will and desire, just as Satan did in putting you in mind of such actions.  But you remained free as to your choices, though you could hardly have chosen otherwise.  And as such, you remain culpable for your choices.  Yet, your choices could never, not for the briefest of moments, put God off His course.  He is Sovereign.

And here, that sovereignty is fully on display as He pronounces judgment and enforces sentence.  There can be no doubt about who has caused things to fall out as they do.  Considering Peter’s involvement, what has he done, other than to ask the question?  And even this, we ought to understand, is as fully orchestrated by God, through the Holy Spirit, as were the events of that man being healed, or Peter’s message to the Sanhedrin, or their decision to release Peter and John in spite of their antipathy.  All transpires according to God’s good purpose.  And on this rare occasion, I will insist that all truly does mean all.  It may remain all within a set, but the set, in this case, encompasses the whole of heaven and earth and everything in it.  Jesus observed that not so much as a sparrow falling from the sky transpires apart from His awareness (Mt 10:29), and not just awareness that the thing happened, but the awareness of being the One who ordained that it should and would.

This is the God with Whom we have to deal.  This is the God to Whom we have sworn allegiance.  He is so fully in control that by the mere proposal of a question through His bondservant Peter, this man saw himself fully exposed, and as well, swiftly in receipt of his due punishment.  You lied to God, not man.  And your sentencing is from God, not man.  You have been judged and found wanting (Dan 5:27).  Judgment begins now.  The wages of sin is death (Ro 6:23), and you, who had known from birth the rich graciousness of God, having rejected His provision in favor of your earthly security, all the while telling one and all how you trusted Him and committed your all to Him, shall pay in full.  You held back a portion of the property, but now you yourself are under the ban, and there can be no retaining of a portion for yourself.

I will say it again.  This is our true situation.  It is the true situation of every man, woman, or child ever to be conceived in the whole record of human existence, and shall remain true for every individual yet to be born.  Let’s go further.  Every individual yet to be conceived.  We are His whether we choose to acknowledge that fact joyfully, or whether we belligerently insist that we answer to no one.  In the latter case we are quite frankly entirely incorrect.  There is no man who answers to no one.  There is no power or principality in heaven which answers to no one.  Only One can make that claim, and He is God.  There is no other.

My thoughts have been drawn back to Psalm 139 as I read through this passage and prepared my notes.  Lord, You have searched me and known me.  You know my every movement, my every thought.  You scrutinize my ways, fully acquainted with every last detail of them.  Before I even speak, You know what I will say and why.  And this:  “You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me” (Ps 139:1-5).  Do you see the sovereignty of that statement?  Do you see the full compass of God’s knowledge, His power, His involvement?  David continues his psalm with what are to me very familiar words, and most often, heard with a soft Irish accent, given the Dave Bainbridge CD from which I generally hear them.  “Where can I go from Your Spirit, or where can I flee from Your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, You are there.  If I descend the depths of Sheol, You are there.  Should I travel to the farthest extents of the sea, to dwell in some remote place, even there Your hand will lead me; Your right hand will lay hold of me.” (Ps 139:7-10).  Whether David spoke these things in a time of agonized repentance, or whether he penned them from a place of confident faith, it would be hard to say.  I’m not so sure we need to make a distinction.  Even in repentance, we as believers ought to know the full confidence of faith.  God made me!  He designed this individual, and He had a good purpose in doing so!  All my days were ordained for me before the first moment of my life (Ps 139:16).  So much in this Psalm just causes the heart to soar.  “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too exalted for me to fully apprehend” (Ps 139:6).  But it fundamentally asserts the Sovereign God intimately involved in the life of His subject; fully aware, and fully in control.

So, too, the case of Ananias.  God knows.  God knew before the man acted.  God had purpose in allowing his action.  God has greater purpose in so directly and publicly dealing with that action.  It was permitted, but it was not condoned.  It was permitted in order to expose the hidden sin.  It was brought about very early in the life of this intimate church community so as to inoculate against the disease present in Ananias’ false piety.  It enforced upon the minds of the believers this same truth that David is presenting in his Psalm.  “You know all.”  “Your right hand lays hold of me.”  The right hand; the hand of power.  There is nothing hidden from Him Who judges.  There can be no deceiving of the God of Truth.  Nor can there be any hope of escaping His judgment.

We are enclosed behind and before by His will.  For the believer, this is strong comfort.  It’s not the loss of personal choice.  It is not reduction to some automaton-like state.  It’s not even an acceptance of fate, as the Greeks would have understood it.  It’s not that we are condemned before we have a choice in the matter.  Well, I suppose, in a way it is.  But not so as to have removed the choice.  Judas chose.  Caiaphas chose.  Pilate chose.  Nothing forced their decisions such that they found themselves compelled to speak and act contrary to their own will.  Yet, their will being part of their design, and their design being by God, their will would never have chosen otherwise.  Still, moral agents all, they remain answerable for their will.

Here we face an aspect of God that we find difficult.  We have been seeing it in our review of the Revelation in men’s group.  God’s judgment is as much a basis for glory as His mercy.  Granted, we would far prefer His mercy, but mercy apart from judgment is no mercy.  We see that playing out in cities across the nation, as judges simply release criminals back to the streets.  That is certainly no mercy to those who will become their victims  Neither is it just.  And God is Justice every bit as much as God is True or God is Love.  He is all of these, all of these perfectly and at once.  It’s not a menu from which we get to select.  It’s not a menu from which He gets to select.  We are addressing matters of essence, things that make God God.  Remove a piece, and what remains is less than God, and that cannot be.  He is unchanging.

My goto passage for understanding the glorifying nature of God’s judgment is the judgment upon Aaron’s sons for their sin of presumption in disregarding the ordained order of divine worship.  Fire from the altar, the altar they had thought to use according to their own ideas, came out and consumed them.  “Not your altar.”  Just to say, how this ought to give us pause as we consider how to tailor our services so as to reach the current generation.  How this ought to give us pause as we attempt to repackage and market our church anew.  “Not your church.”  Let us take great care lest we find, like Aaron’s sons, that we are consumed for our presumption.  But back to the scene.  Aaron, being father to these sons, is understandably inclined to mourn their loss, even for so serious an issue.  And many today would look at that and see nothing terribly serious about it, nothing deserving of the punishment of death.  But it was rejection of God’s righteous rule.  It was rebellion against God Most High.  And if this was happening with His most public officials, and it was allowed to go unanswered, what would become of the people they oversaw?

At any rate, Aaron is told in no uncertain terms.  “You are not to mourn your sons.”  (Lev 10:6).  Why?  The Lord had spoken in regard to the priesthood.  “By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, and before all the people I will be honored” (Lev 10:3).  God’s judgment is an aspect of upholding His honor.  How we respond to that judgment is likewise an aspect of how we honor God.  Going to the example of the Revelation again, it is striking that repeatedly, where matters of God’s judgment falling in full upon the bulk of humanity in its unrepentant state are concerned, the redeemed do not cry out against God for His violence.  They rejoice to see God’s Justice.  This is not some excitement akin to the crowds at the Roman coliseum enjoying a gladiatorial competition, or watching victims thrown in to face lions.  This is Justice, God’s perfect Justice.  For the redeemed, there might be a note of vindication involved.  But then, the redeemed are redeemed not for some quality of personal holiness, but rather, on the basis of Christ’s holiness.  They, too, could quite rightly have been subject to this same Justice.  But God.  God, in purposing the mission of the Son, together with the Son and the Holy Spirit, had seen to their pardon, their rescue.  He had shown mercy to whom He would show mercy, and they received the benefit of it.  One expects that in the course of their lives, that trend line had been evident, the change wrought by God within causing a change in their actions without, that God might be glorified by their service to Him while in the flesh.  Yet, their final estate came not by their righteous deeds, but by their righteous Lord, Who died that they might live.  And well do they know it.