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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim
Well, good evening, folks. As promised from this morning, we're going to go back in Acts chapter 2. We're going to look at verses 44 and 45 and deal with some manners in which this text has been used.
I did not have time this morning to work through all of the misinterpretation and misapplication of these two verses, but I trust you've already seen in the book of Acts how various verses have been misinterpreted and misapplied.
Acts is one of those books of the New Testament that often gets mistreated. And so I just didn't think we had the time to look at that and consider that at length this morning. So we're going to turn our attention back there to Acts chapter 2 and read verses 44 and 45.
Now, all who believed were together and had all things in common and sold their possessions and goods and divided them among all as anyone had need. So those two verses, of course, are part of the larger context of the culture that Christ is building amongst His people.
Having believed and turned away from self and sin, turned to Christ as Savior, having accepted and trusted in this appeal and call to be saved from that perverse generation that was under the judgment of God, we see that Christ is building something new.
And in the middle of all this newness, we see love. We talked about that distinctive quality. By this all men will know that you are my disciples by the love that you have for one.
Another.
And when it comes down to it, that idea of love, of the saints loving one another, is not some kind of blank slate that we get to kind of fill in and say, I feel like loving others means. We don't get to do that.
Why?
Because love is already defined in the scriptures. What does it look like to love one another? God has already said what it looks like. He's given a definition. Love your neighbor doesn't mean anything somebody wants it to mean.
Love your neighbor is given very specific definitions in the Old Testament about how you love your neighbor. So in this case, as we see the union, the communion of the saints, we also see their love for one another, particularly when we think about the definition of love.
Let's briefly turn over, for some context, to 1 John 3 .16 and take a look at what the definition is. 1 John 3 .16, by this we know love, that He laid down His life for us. We know what love is. We receive definition of what love is when we look at who Christ is and what He has done.
So this is love. He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. He loved us. We ought to love the brethren. As He laid down His life for us, this is what it means to love.
So we're going to model that in our lives and love the brethren. And so here's now some practical outworking of how that's expressed. So verse 17, but whoever has this world's goods and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?
You see the practical expression of love? If you say, I love my brother in Christ, I'm acknowledging the fact that we're together in Christ, by our faith in Christ, we're united in Him. And even as Jesus affirmed the value of the Creator's design for family, that husbands are to stay committed to their wives, that parents are to bless their children and raise them in the fear and the admonition of the Lord, that children are to honor their parents and take care of them in their old age, Jesus was very family affirming in the way that God designed family.
But He also gave a new definition to community and fellowship in the church. He said, who is my mother and who are my brothers, who are my sisters, those who do the will.
Of God.
So He was pointing out that in the community of the church, in Christianity, there's a familial metaphor going on. When Jesus talked about the way that we address one another, even those who are in charge, He said, don't let anyone call you leader, don't let anyone call you rabbi, don't let anyone call you father, or as they address Catholic priests, father or pope, which is another word for father.
Jesus said, do not let them call you that, but just be called brother. Because it's about, it's a family in Christ, a spiritual family. So here, you see your brother, you see your brother in need and you say, I love him, you know, I love him because we're both in Christ.
And then you see him in need and notice the qualification, you have, you possess this world's goods, not the world, this world system of rebellion against God, but just, you know, you have, you have property, you have means, you have chickens, you have eggs, you have.
Whatever.
So you've got, you know, you have this world's goods and sees his brother in need. So first of all, you have possession of things that you're a steward of, and you possess knowledge of somebody's, someone of your brother in need, and then if you're going to shut up your heart against them and say, you're on your own, man, go in peace, be warm and filled, as James says, but you don't actually do anything for them, how can you say that you love them?
Right?
So love is not something that we get to say what it is, you know, it's just, you know, warm feelings of approval. We don't get to say what love is. God has defined love. By this we know love that Christ has laid down his life for us, and we have to lay down our lives for the brethren.
What does that look like practically? Well, here's one example. It's not the totality of it, but here's one good example. If you see your brother in need and you have this world's goods, help them out.
So that's a good, that's an expression of love. And that's what we see happening here in the book of Acts. We should be utterly unsurprised to find that those who are born again by the Holy Spirit, who believe in Christ, who have been spiritually awakened and are living together in communion, meaning they worship together, they gather together often, we have this hospitality from house to house, they're breaking bread, they're praying together, they're adhering to the preaching from the apostles, hey, this is church life, they're loving one another, it's unsurprising that some of them, having this world's goods, see others in need and then seek to meet them.
After all, it all belongs to Jesus, right? So that's what's going on in the text. It's just, Jesus said, by this all men will know that you are my disciples by the love that you have for one another. And so we see a wonderful example of generosity.
A little more positive understanding of the text is afforded to us from Acts chapter 4 and 5. So begin reading in verse 32 of Acts 4. Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul, neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, meaning they're not walking around saying, you know, making it their emphasis.
This is mine, right? You know, like the two-year-olds who see the newcomer come into the nursery.
Mine!
Okay?
Just so you know, marked my property, stay away, right? This is not their mentality, that they had all things in common. You know, we're all in this together, what resources has the Lord afforded us? Verse 33, and with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was on them all.
Nor was there anyone among them who lacked, for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold and laid them at the apostles' feet and they distributed to each as anyone had need.
And then there's two examples that follow. Barnabas sold a property and put the whole amount to the apostles. And then later on a man named Ananias and his wife Sapphira sold a property. Now, you see that the church is organizing themselves for communion to love God and love.
Each other.
That's the proper biblical religion. You organize yourself to commune with God, to love one another, to love God. Now Ananias and Sapphira, they take up religion in the wrong way. They use it for a covering to look good.
So they sell their property and say, we gave the whole amount, but they kept some back.
Look, we're, you know, Barnabas did this and we want to look good too, so we're going to do that, just like Barnabas, but they actually kept some of it back. So they lied to the apostles, they lied to the church, and Peter says, you lied to the.
Holy Spirit.
And then Ananias and Sapphira are killed by the holy judgment of God. And in the recrimination that Peter gives in his sentencing, he says, when that property was in your possession, it was yours to do with as you please.
You didn't have to sell it. You were free to do it. But once you did and you said that you gave all the money but didn't, that's where you.
Lied.
That's where you did wrong.
So I want us to see two things. First of all, that these folks had possession of this property, but they were not worshipping.
It.
They were not embracing it tightly, like this is my security, this is my hope. You know, Proverbs has that cartoon of making fun of the rich man. The rich man's wealth is his security. It's like a tall, a high wall in his mind, right?
He thinks he's safe because he has a lot of money. And Proverbs makes fun of that. These folks were not putting their faith and security in the fact that they had a lot of.
Wealth.
But they were being free with what God had entrusted them, and they were free to do so, and they were able to be generous and express their love. So another dynamic that we need to understand before I start getting to the way that the text is being misused.
Another qualification is that they didn't have a lot of motivation to hold on to property that was located in Jerusalem and in the surrounding countryside of Judea. The reason is, is that Jesus said, within this generation, Jerusalem is going to be surrounded by armies, and the amount of death and destruction is going to be so terrible that your only safety is to leave Judea and head for the hills.
So I can either hang on to property that's going to be burnt and destroyed, and if I stay there trying to guard it, I'm going to get killed, or knowing that this property value is going to be zero sometime in the near future, and I see so much need of my brothers around me, what if I sell that and then help people out, right?
Now, Jesus would have said in one of his parables that this was a very shrewd thing to do, right? When he said, you know, be wise with what's been entrusted to you. But also, there was great need in the church in the early days, and I think about, remember Jesus said, I did not come to bring peace but a sword.
Even though he affirmed the family, he noted that the gospel was more important than family. He said, I come and I divide two against three, three against two, father against son, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law.
Why would that happen? Because when the gospel was preached and people began to turn to Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies, were they going to continue to go to the temple and sacrifice animals when the Lamb of God had already died and rose again?
Of course not. Were they going to continue to go through all of the ceremonial washings and seek the shadow external cleanliness when they were given cleanliness in Christ anymore? Certainly not. Everything was going to change in their life.
And some parts of the family were going to look at the new followers of the way, the new Christians, and they were going to say, you are heretics! You're not going to celebrate the feast anymore. You're not going to offer the sacrifices anymore.
You know, you're the reason why God's judging us with the Roman oppression. You know, you're the exact reason why, because you're being unfaithful, right? You talk about difficulty at Thanksgiving dinner, right?
There's not going to be a whole lot of unity when some of the family turns to follow Christ and the rest of them stay clean to the shadows in the temple. And so there's going to be friction. And some people, maybe some parents who turn to Christ, are going to find that their children are no longer going to care for them in their old age.
Y 'all went apostate, we have no reason to take care of you. A widow that was dependent upon the tithes from the temple, having turned to Christ, will no longer be supported by the temple benevolence system.
We read in the book of Acts that priests who were working daily in the temple, praise be to God, were saved. And they realized that Christ is the high priest, and he's already died as the Lamb of God, and he's risen from the dead, and he's serving as the high priest in heaven at the right hand of God, interceding for me.
I'm out of a job. Out of a job, out of a living. That's a hard transition to make. There were all kinds of financial needs in the early church. First 3 ,000 turned to Christ, then day by day they start turning to the Lord, and another 5 ,000 later on, and then they stopped counting because there were so many.
And in fact, by Acts chapter 6, we see that the financial burdens of the church became so great that, of course, they were being supplied by the generosity of the church, but it was just too much work for the apostles to handle.
And that's why they called the church, and the first deacons were called, to handle the issues of the property held in common and the benevolence needs of the church. That's what's going on in Acts 2, and that's the happy backstory of the conversions and the growth of the church and the freeness of the people in their love for one another to be generous to one another.
So, how has this text often been read ever since the 60s in American church culture? Any ideas? I thought it was what's yours is mine and what's mine is mine. Now, this passage has been read for well over a generation that the true Christian approach is communism.
True Christianity is actually expressed in socialism, right? Because, look, those who believed were together and had all things in common. You should live in a commune, and all properties should be shared.
Many Christian communes have been started based upon this verse. All over the United States, it's not just a California thing.
Where we used to live in Middleton, Tennessee, a tiny little town just north of the Mississippi border in western Tennessee. About 40 minutes away from us, there was a commune of people living together and thinking that they were the true identity of the church because they lived in a commune, and nobody was allowed to own anything, and they had to hold all their property in common and live together on the same compound.
Because that's the way they read this verse. But just reading this verse in its context, seeing the expression of the definition of love from 1 John, reading what happened in chapter 4 and 5, we know that's not what this passage is saying.
But there's several reasons why this isn't talking about socialism and communism. And this is also not advocating the godless capitalistic idea of he who dies with the most toys wins. The answering bumper sticker is he who dies with the most toys dies.
So as Solomon would say in Ecclesiastes, you still die, what's the point?
Fear the Lord.
So let's think about what goes on here. First of all, in this passage, what we see here is something called generosity. Now this is a biblical value. And if we want to know what generosity is, where do you think we're going to find the best example ever?
Any ideas? Right. The Father has given us His Son, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? I have a question for you. Do we deserve, is it right and fair that God would give us His Son?
Not a lick. What does the Bible say that we deserve? The Bible says we deserve eternal damnation in hell because of our rebellion against God. Because we are self-centered when God made us in His image.
We were made in His image, which means we are to reflect Him, honor Him, and glorify.
Him.
And the happiest people in the world are those who fear the Lord, who are thinking of Him first, thinking of Him most, and orbit around Him, glorifying Him with their lives. They are the happiest people in the world.
And the most miserable people in the world are those who orbit around themselves. It's all about me, all about me, all about me. I am so in tune with myself. You must be the most miserable person on the face of the planet.
I am in tune with myself and everybody else ought to be as well. This is my self-identification and everybody else has to agree with me. I am the most important being in my world. Loving first of all means loving myself.
All these satanic ideas. Generosity is best seen in the gift of the Father in giving us His Son. And then again, the Son, the gift of the Holy Spirit. We don't deserve any of that. You don't deserve a lick of it.
It has nothing to do with what's fair. It has everything to do with what is abundant and kind and merciful. It's amazing. It's mind-blowing. So, that is the background of the generosity that we see here in this text.
We just read about it in 1 John 3, verse 16.
What is love?
Jesus gave Himself for us on the cross. So let's give of ourselves to one another.
This is true love.
Here's generosity. Now, the reason why this text is not socialism slash communism, which are inbred twins. The reason why this is not the same thing is that generosity does not exist in socialism. In fact, one of the stated goals in socialism and communism is to stamp out the idea of generosity altogether.
As long as this exists, you can't have socialism, you can't have communism. Why is that? Because the idea of someone freely owning property and saying, but I want to help this person, so I'm going to sell it for the best price I can get, and I'm going to give this over there to help them out, that whole idea doesn't exist.
What is claimed to be the issue in socialism and communism is that nobody should be owning their property at all in the first place. The fact that they already own property in the text dismisses the idea.
Plus, there's no clearinghouse of the state in this text. If socialism is what the Bible teaches, we should read in the text the following. All those in the church, having been born again and been enlightened about what is true justice, sell all of their property and they gave it to either Pilate or Herod, and then asked the state to redistribute all of their property in an equal fashion to everybody who lived in the area.
That's socialism and communism. What's in the text is they, as there was need, as they were aware of needs, were in the common habit of selling property and giving the money to those who were in need, who were in the church.
Galatians 6 says we should not be weary in well-doing. We should be generous and we should look first to the needs of those who are in the body of Christ. And then, once the needs in the body of Christ are met, then we should look to do good to those outside the body.
And God is good to always supply our needs within the body so that we may overflow and be generous to those outside. Praise the Lord. This is a very big deal to Jesus because in Matthew 25 in the description of the final judgment, as he separates the sheep from the goats, they are distinguished by those who have a love for Christ and those who do not have a love for Christ.
And those who do have a love for Christ demonstrated that by clothing the naked, visiting the prisoners, feeding the hungry, giving a cup of cold water to those who were thirsty, and Jesus says as much as you have done it to the least of these my brothers, you've done it to me.
He didn't say all mankind. He didn't say if you're going to give a cup of water, you've got to give one to every single person on the planet, otherwise you're being unrighteous. He didn't say that. He said prove your love for me by the way that you love your brothers and sisters in Christ with whom you are in fellowship.
And then once that is taken care of, then you have the overflow to those around you. So what we're reading is not socialism. This is not communism. This is generosity. Generosity is a beautiful thing.
It's a free thing. It's something that expresses love. In a socialist or communist state, this has to be erased. And what's put in its place is justice. Which they say, then, that if somebody has more than somebody else, that's unjust.
The fact that somebody has more than somebody else, that's unjust. And the only way to fix it, make everything right, is that all property must be filtered through the state, and then the state determines how everybody is supposed to get it.
In which case, the state is being proclaimed as savior. And the state arrogates to itself all manner of power, all manner of claims. The state then becomes in charge of all health, all education, in charge of your children.
They define everything in your life. They'll tell you what is right and what is wrong, what is healthy, what is unhealthy. And everything must go through the state, because the state is now savior and king.
The state is king of kings and lord of lords. The state is the one that will save you.
Now, that's not a new thing. It's a very old thing. But you don't want this. You don't want justice as divined by godless pagan men in the first place. But you certainly shouldn't be saying that what I want from God towards me is justice.
You don't want that. Right? You want mercy. You want grace. You want forgiveness. That's what you want from God. Now, when we consider the gospel, this is very important, when we consider the gospel, we do have a question.
How is God a just and righteous God when he forgives us of all of our heinous crimes against his holy name? The Bible tells us that God is just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. How is that?
Because he has imputed to Christ's account our guilt, our sin, our transgressions. He's the lamb of God. He's our substitute sacrifice. God made him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
And Christ dies on the cross under the justice of God, satisfying the righteous justice of God as God's lamb that takes away the sins of the world. And we look upon Christ as the lamb of God and we say, my savior, my salvation.
And so God accomplishes justice upon our substitute sacrifice in Christ. And God showed Christ no mercy on the cross that he might show us mercy and gives us mercy and grace and forgiveness and peace with him.
So, that's why it's important, I think, that when we come to a passage like this, we don't quickly listen to the parrots of our time and our age and say, see, see, nobody should own any property. That's not what the text says.
This text is actually a happy text about generosity and the freeness to give to one another as we have need, about showing love to one another in light of how God has shown us love and been generous towards us in Christ.
That's what the text is about. So, that's what I wanted to share with you this morning, but we didn't have enough time. Any questions or thoughts before we close our discussion tonight? We have to be prepared for Jesus to be different than what we think he ought to be.
We have to actually read what goes on in the scripture itself. There's a funny story about a lot of academics some years ago who decided that massive parts of the Bible were fiction and just made up. They were the experts in their fields.
And so, they began to study the Bible about the actions and sayings of Jesus, the four Gospels, and they tried to determine which sayings and actions were authentic and which were made up and false. And they were all in a room and they would all talk about it and debate it back and forth, and then they would vote.
And they had white marbles and black marbles. And they would put them in a little catch-all bowl, and at the end, they would gather them together and count the white marbles versus the black marbles.
And by this scientific approach, they would determine what was authentic in the Bible and what was not. Because after all, they were experts. And if an expert speaks, they're always right. When they were done, what was left of what Jesus said and did, what they thought was authentic, leaving everything else out of the way, someone observed that Jesus sounded a whole lot like a modern liberal, which of course, all the experts in the room were.
God created us in his image, and our sin is returning the favor, trying to recreate God in our image. In our pride and our self-focus, we think that God should be just like us. I'm the most well-thinking, well-balanced person around.
Obviously, God agrees with me. Jesus would agree with me if he was here. So we've got to be careful about that, where we try to use Jesus, and we try to create our own gods and create idols and say, well, Jesus would be just like me.
So I think that Jesus challenges everybody. He challenges everybody and calls us to follow him. Because socialism and communism deny God. You have to, in order to deny the providence of God. Paul saw a lot of the ancient world.
He traveled from one place to the other, and the Macedonians were poor, and the people living in Greece weren't. But everyone was trying to give to the people who were having famine out in Judea. They were collecting every week.
When the Christians got together, they were collecting funds to get funds back to Judea to the Christians who were living there, who were under famine. They've got to help each other. They've got to love one another.
And the Macedonians gave out of their poverty, and the other ones didn't give out of their poverty, but Paul didn't say, they're poor, you're rich, that's wrong. In fact, during this time, when he was going around collecting all those things, he also went to Athens and preached.
And he got up in front of the most celebrated philosophers of the day, and he preached and said, God made everybody and put them exactly where he put them. Which means what? God is no egalitarian. The people he put in Western Europe received all the wealth of having their rivers run out to the ocean.
The people he put in Eastern Europe became poor because all their rivers ran inland to inner lakes. God ordained that some would be poor and some would be more wealthy?
Yep.
That he gives us life at all is grace. That he gives us breath at all is grace. Don't deserve any of it. So we have to trust in the providence of God and the sovereignty of God, and then recognize whatever he has given us, we are accorded talents, what are we going to do with them?
We're accorded resources, what are we going to do with them? Again, there is a freedom in Christian generosity, which is absolutely done away with by a false doctrine of socialism, which attacks at the very heart of the gospel of what generosity.
Is.
We have to just be aware of the fads of the time, anchored in the word of the Lord, anchored in the fear of God. We don't want to be tossed to and fro by every wind of new doctrine. The fads that are going on today are going to be different five years from now.
I've been a pastor 15 years and every five years is another climax of controversy, another big thing that has to be fought and has to be dealt with. The current fad is going to go away and the people who thought it was the thing to do and the thing to be zealous for are going to be left holding an empty bag.
You've got to stick with the word. Let's close our time together by singing the doxology.
