Unstoppable - Two Things that Destroy God's Work in Our Lives, Part 1

Did you realize that the Christian life is grace from beginning to end? We come to Christ by faith through grace. We live by faith through grace. But there are grace stoppers. There are two things that will destroy grace in your life.

That's today. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher on this daily discipleship program motivating Christians to live like Christians.

I'm Dave Drewy and we're nearing the end of our series, Unstoppable, God's Agenda for Planet Earth, including you. Now the message you're about to hear touches on a very sensitive but important lesson that the 21st century church desperately needs to grasp. So get your notes ready and then be sure to stick around after the message to hear some more practical insight from Chip.

With that, here's Chip with his message, Grace Stoppers. Well, as we get started, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever had one of those like what happened moments?

You know what I mean? A number of years ago, I visited where our family lived about 15 years earlier and had not been there in ages. And so I was near that town and you know, I was by myself. I thought, well, I'll just drive by the old neighborhood. Have you ever done this?

Any of you? So I drove by the old neighborhood. It was, you know, 10, 15 years later and I'm sure part of it was my perception, but it seemed like a nice neighborhood when I lived there. And I drove back and there were like weeds over here and a car like this and something else like this and a house that looked like this. I mean, the place was just like a dump. And I remember driving through and thinking like 10 years ago, this was kind of a, you know, not fancy, but it was a nice clean little street. And I just like what happened?

I mean, what happens like in 10 years that this thing just went completely south? Or maybe you've had this experience at a reunion or maybe you grew up someplace else and there's that family or that couple that just had a huge impact in your life. And they were kind of like the kind of marriage you want to have some days and you met their kids and someday you want your kids to turn out like their kids.

And you go to a reunion or some event and you get back maybe at the old home church, wherever that is. And you say, hey, hey, how is Bob and Mary here? Oh no, no, no. Bob, Mary, they're not here. You haven't heard? Heard what? They got a divorce. What? I've been married like 33.

No, it was 35 years. And then they just after all day. Yeah. And what do you say? Right? Have you had some of those? What happened here?

What happened? When I study with you, Acts chapters one, two, three, four, and five, there's some things that I see. Just a casual observer, what I learned is the church in Acts is powerful. The church in Acts is bold. The church in Acts is ridiculously generous with one another. The church in Acts is loving. The church in Acts healed the brokenhearted, the outcast, the poor, and the rejected. The church in Acts, they just grew literally, not weekly, daily. The church in Acts expected and saw the miraculous. And when I see the church in Acts and I travel quite a bit, and I've been to churches here and all over the world, and I look at the anemic, selfish, inwardly focused, non-dynamic, basic church today, I look at this church and I look at the church of Acts and I say, what happened?

Now, there's wonderful exceptions, obviously, but the research is overwhelming. Most Christians, quote, don't live like Christians. Most churches have very little impact. Most churches are filled with very religious people, but not people that make much of a difference in their communities. So what happened?

How could that be? And what I want to suggest is the answer is in Acts 5. Here's what I want you to see. The early church was birthed.

Let's remember what happened. Acts 1, he ascended, the call to all. Acts 2, the Holy Spirit came.

A movement was birthed. Acts 3, they started taking baby steps toward what? The way God changes the world. Acts 4, after those baby steps, there's some persecution and we're gonna find them praying and God does amazing things and Acts 5, these normal, regular human beings just like us, whom Jesus is now living inside of in the person of the Holy Spirit, expressing his words and expressing his love and caring for people and now there's thousands of people that are living the way Jesus lived, caring the way Jesus lived, sacrificing the way Jesus did and I mean there's a revolution occurring, thousands and thousands of people. Now the church that Jesus gave birth to gets attacked. In the first 16 verses, it gets attacked from within. In the verse 17 through the end of the chapter, it gets attacked from without and what you're going to see is there are two things, two things that are grace stoppers. There's two things and they happen to good people like you and good people like me, literally two specific things that will destroy God's work in your life. These two things will sap the power out of you, your small group, this church and every church.

You ready? Let's look at attack number one. To pick up the story, we need to back up just a little bit because you get a sense of what's going on at the end of Acts chapter 4. Remember, we had the persecution, they were warned and they were released and then they started back, gathered all the people together and they had a prayer meeting and after they prayed, look at chapter 4 up at verse 31. After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke the word of God boldly. So God is affirming what they're doing and then it's though there was like a lens of the camera and it backs off and it kind of gives you this general picture of well, what's it like to be in the early church? They met in big groups, they met in homes but what was the spirit like?

What was it like? And so the spirit of God gives us a snapshot of that. Verse 32, all the believers had were one in heart and mind.

No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own but they shared everything that they had. With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and much grace was upon them. There was no needy person among them for from time to time, those who owned lands or houses sold them and brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet and it was distributed to anyone as he might have need.

And then that big lens kind of zeroes in like I wonder what that would look like in an individual's life. Verse 36, Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus who the apostles called Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, sold a field that he owned and he brought the money and he put it at the apostles feet. Now in your bibles there's a chapter break but probably would be nice to not have that there because the story begins where I read it and now we've heard of Barnabas and now we're going to get another example, a negative example. Now a man named Ananias together with his wife Sapphira also sold a piece of property. With his wife's full knowledge, he kept back part of the money for himself but brought the rest of it and put it at the apostles feet. Then Peter said to him, Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you've lied to the Holy Spirit and you've kept back for yourself some of the money you received from the land?

Didn't it belong to you before it was sold and after it was sold wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God. When Ananias heard this he fell down and died and great fear seized all who heard it and what happened. Then the young men came forward and they wrapped his body, they carried him out, they buried him. About three hours later his wife came in not knowing what had happened and Peter asked her, tell me is this the price that you and Ananias got for the land? And she replied, oh yes brother Peter, yes we did. It was a big sacrifice but we saw the needs of all the people and Ananias after hearing about Barnabas and his generosity, we just felt like that's something God wanted us to do.

We're actually pretty wonderful, aren't we? I'm reading into the text just a bit but I do that because that's what's behind all this. Peter said to her, how could you agree to test the spirit of the Lord? Look, the men whose feet buried your husband are at the door and they will carry you out as well.

At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and finding her dead carried her out, buried her beside her husband and great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events, I guess so. Now I didn't grow up as a Christian, I'd never opened the Bible till I was 18. In fact my view of Christianity was very very poor but at 18 I went away to school and there was a brick layer there that was a Christian and helped me begin to grow spiritually and I soon learned that I really liked reading through the New Testament and when I got to this part it was like spooky and scary because I was thinking, no.

I mean lying I know is bad but death and it's like isn't that kind of harsh or worse I was thinking okay now if I'm a Christian if I lie and start pretending a little bit I mean am I going to get zapped? In other words what's going on in this passage? What's really going on here?

What's the attack? What was the sin? Why did God judge it severely?

And then maybe more importantly what in the world's it got to say to you and to me today? We've given you the story and I'll make a few observations in a minute and then we're going to look at a temptation. We're going to look at the judgment verses 5 and 10. You have a man die and then three hours later a woman dies. Then we'll look at the reason and the result.

It's very interesting the external attack follows exactly the same line and I want you to catch that. So the story a few observations is this is the first sin in the church. This is the first time satan is introduced.

We never hear his name first time we see his name. This is a not this wasn't a oops I messed up. They talked about it. They came up with a plan. It was willful deception.

This isn't that I was seeking to live the life and I blew it today. This is two people that came together and decided how do we get people to think that we're way better and way more spiritual than we are. Fourth observation that's a very interesting theological passage you notice in verse two he says you lied to the holy spirit and you drop down to verse four and then it says you lied to God.

So this is a very important passage on the the deity of the holy spirit that God the father God the son God the holy spirit are co-equal one essence three persons and then you get this amazingly powerful harsh judgment. So what's going on here? Let me suggest that the temptation is to pose. It's to pretend. Failure to reach our ideals is not hypocrisy. We all fall short.

Hypocrisy is deliberate deception trying to make people think we are more spiritual more loving more kind. It went something like this. They were in one of their home groups because they met in the big temples and they were one of their home groups. I'm reading into the text just a little bit and people there was a buzz. Hey did you hear about Barnabas? Yeah yeah it's like downtown Manhattan island.

That's what Cyprus was like. I mean this was a very choice piece of property. He he said you know what I've got a lot. These people don't have much.

You know I'm not gonna keep score and look at my gross or net worth. I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna sell it and I'm gonna give it and help these people because all these slaves are coming to Christ and there's all this need and then pretty soon people are talking. Wow man that Barnabas is a generous guy. I mean he really loves people and I think Ananias and Sapphira were hearing that and what they wanted is they wanted the applause of people.

They wanted the people to think really well of them and the sin here is they pretend. The sin is they pose. We've all done it right? We all pose.

We all project. Oh I would have called you back. I just missed you so much when the fact of the matter is it was on your answering machine or you saw it on your phone and you're like oh man I'm so glad I didn't pick up on that one.

Right? Oh could you help us out? Oh I really wanted to come. I really really did.

When you're thinking I'm so glad it was out of town I hate going to that stuff. Just the other day I was texting a friend and I learned in the last 24-36 hours that I had to change my schedule and I met to text him to let him know I had to change my schedule and I procrastinated and then last night you know I'm thinking oh it's tomorrow I'm not giving him any notice and so I just before the service I text him said hey you know I really need to change our time we're going to meet and then I added this line. I just found out about it. I'm really sorry but and now I'm preaching this passage right and I'm thinking well I just found out about it 24 hours ago which I could have told you but I was posing. I didn't want him to think that he was unimportant. I didn't want him to think that I would just not give him more notice if I could.

I wanted him to think better me. Any of you all do that? We all do that and you say to yourself well if we all do that why does God judge it so harshly? Because at the core of posing is hypocrisy. At the core of posing is I will tell you this this story tells us that Ananias and Sapphira reveal how seriously God regards his church as an authentic manifestation of his character. This is a brand new baby and if he lets in authenticity and hypocrisy and people begin to play games and use the church as a political place and to get the applause of people and if it's not for real if the people aren't for real if they don't live it out then like cancer the thing would have been gone in the first few years. God emphatically serious when he says the world should be able to look at the lives of his fellow servants who walk with Jesus and see something different significant perfect no but progressively Christ-like and honest and real and when they blow it they say things like I blew it I'm sorry they own their stuff. See it's the sin of pretending to be more devoted to God than we really are it's a sin of portraying outward actions that don't correspond to inward reality. At the essence it's playing games with God in order to gain the applause and the approval of people and at the core according to this text and the Holy Spirit it's lying to God it's lying to others and it's lying to yourself and here's the danger of posing once you start getting the applause of people for misrepresenting where you're really at with God I will tell you what you'll start believing your own stuff and you'll start thinking you're really kind and you're really loving and pretty soon there's this image this almost spiritual hologram that you portray and the reality is back here you know what's Saphira's name means beautiful this is her name means beautiful and her behavior is ugly you know what Ananias's name means God is gracious or God is generous and he's one greedy dude in his heart but he wanted to come off as gracious and generous and when I do this and when you do this and it starts I mentioned the texting it starts in little things oh I'll really pray for you that's bigger and then it's like oh yeah I really want to follow you God whatever you want me to do but I'm not consulting your word I'm not talking to you I'm not reading I'm not doing anything but I just expect you to bless me and then the pretension and the posing and pretty soon who you are and what you purport to be tells two different stories and when unbelievers get up close and they smell us and see us and and you know what they see that difference they say you know what I don't believe in your message I don't believe in your savior that's why the judgment was so harsh God was protecting his church I've done this passage once with the group of pastors and I said guys you do understand that if God was acting like this that most of us would have to change jobs and instead of being pastors we'd have to be undertakers and we just have to bury all these people in our church and then I said no no not really probably there wouldn't be any undertakers because pastors pose as much or more than anybody else so it wouldn't be anybody around to bury people but when God wanted to make the point and he wanted to stop the attack and this is satanic okay this is serious and and some sins once they get going here's the problem since we know everybody else kind of poses since we know that everyone else has levels of hypocrisy we say stuff like well no one's perfect God's not asking to be perfect he's asking and demanding that you be authentic listen carefully purity is a prerequisite for power you want to know why the church today or the small groups today aren't like the small groups and the church in acts it's posing it's lack of purity I think it's also interesting as you look at this passage that it has to do with finances I mean Jesus talked more about finances than heaven and hell combined you say well why because see Jesus said in Matthew you might jot this down Matthew 6 verses 19 to 22 according to Jesus wherever your treasure is there's a chain connected to it and that chain is connected to your heart so wherever your treasure is that's the revealer that's the MRI the x-ray machine of the Holy Spirit of God if you ever want to know where you're at spiritually just look at your money wherever your money flows it tells you where your loyalty is it says where your priorities are it says what really matters according to Jesus are you ready for this according to Jesus the two gods are not God and Satan said Satan's not a god he's a tempter he's a beautiful powerful created angel you know what Jesus says you read that passage in Matthew 6 Jesus says there's me God or mammon those are the two things that are vying for your heart and my heart it's money it's materialism now interestingly you got your bibles open skip back up to verse 31 and after God is affirmed verse 31 and after God is affirming them right chapter 4 verse 31 it says they were all filled with the Holy Spirit that word literally means to be controlled by and notice in verse 31 there chapter 4 they're controlled or they're filled there's one baptism you trust Christ and you're put in the body of Christ there's many fillings so what happens to their behavior when Jesus is controlling their behavior look at verse 32 33 34 they have one heart one mind unity everyone says they don't claim anything is their own this isn't socialism they weren't in a commune they didn't have to give anything but it was since Jesus is living in them and controlling them and their values it's like look all that I have comes from God so if I have a lot and you have a little of course I would share because that's what the Holy Spirit would do and I know that he'll meet my needs so there's generosity and then there's boldness and there's power when you're filled with the spirit now skip down to about verse three or four of chapter five and Peter says Ananias how has Satan filled your heart you ready for this same word exact same word he was being controlled by he was being influenced by but where did it come from it came from envy it came from jealousy it came from I want people to think of me the way they think of Barnabas but I don't trust God I don't believe if I sold a piece of property that God will meet my needs so I'm going to keep control it's not about money it's about control and it's about under the control a lack of faith so what I'm going to do is I'm going to pose and I'm going to sell this keep this for me his sin was he said he paid this for the land before he didn't have to sell the land and after he sold the land he said Peter tell you what my wife and I really been praying we're convinced that 4.7 percent of this ought to go to the church and Peter would have said thank you very much appreciate it he could have said 72 percent of it he could have said five percent of it but what he said was we paid this is what we got for the land and we're giving it all because we're so generous hypocrite see money is one of those things that it's like real objective you know what I mean I can say oh I get this really great feeling man when we worship I get this great feeling or I feel close to God when I did this or listen to the song or prayed or I and all that's kind of subjective and I'm all for all those subjective things but let me tell you where there's no power in the church the average believer in America gives 2.8 percent of their money to the church of Jesus Christ in America across the board of all the millions of people who go to church over half the people in any church give absolutely nothing see there's this lack of connection between oh my mouth this is what Isaiah said when he was bringing down the judgment of God upon people he says Israel you honor me with your lips but your deeds and your ways are far from me and so when I say I love God you're the most important person in my life I have these needs I'm really praying I really need your help and my money says what I love is me and I have all this debt and I have all this stuff see it's not about the money it's about who's controlling my heart which desires are getting fed and then at the end of the day it's really about faith well I would like to be generous and help people but and then the but is you just list why is it that over half of all the marriages that fail are around financial issues money is never a problem in marriage money just reveals values and when there's lots of debt lots of stuff you can't afford lots of credit cards that you pay part-time on what you're saying is I don't tremble at God's word basic biblical stewardship would just have certain things like God says give the very first off the top so you remember that I own it and so that my mission gets done and then he says things like don't spend more than comes in that's a radical idea you know and and by the way I own it all and so what I want you to do is it's not just about giving I actually want you to save even if it's just a little I want you to actually invest even if it's just a little and then what comes in each month I want you to keep the number that comes in bigger than the number that goes out you do that for three years and then five years and then seven years and 20 years and 30 years I will tell you will end up with surplus and greatly blessed now you understand why see it's just a revealer now if you happen to be brand new by the way or you're brand new in Christ you know this is a journey you know this isn't this isn't some big message on finances you know why we're talking about finances because we're in chapter five okay chapter one chapter two chapter three chapter four this is what happened and it is the greatest clearest revealer of where your heart is you've been listening to part one of Chip's message Grace Stoppers he'll be right back with his application on this teaching from his series Unstoppable God's Agenda for Planet Earth Including You that title comes from Chip's comparison of God's grace to a tsunami it's unavoidable inescapable unstoppable now that's not meant to sound scary or intimidating but it really is a perfect picture of God's mission to cover this lost world with his love and grace and as we're learning through Chip's teaching in the book of Acts Chip desires us his church to be a part of that plan I hope you'll join us for each message in this series to discover your role in God's unstoppable wave of grace visit livingontheedge.org or call 888-333-6003 for information about our resources for this series app listeners simply tap special offers Chip we're living in a day and this always happens in crises where you hear stories of Christian organizations that are using the funds that people give in a way that wasn't intended there's just some abuse and lack of integrity out there now how do we communicate with our listeners about what we do and where their gifts go well Dave unfortunately that is a reality I mean from New Testament times for the last 2,000 years there's always been people in the name of Jesus that basically use and abuse people touch on their heartstrings and the money doesn't go where they say it's going to go and so we want to be transparent we don't do an annual report we actually do two reports a year and we ask people for very specific things and then we give a very specific report about this is what you gave this is what we did these were the results and what I want to remind you as many of you read that report and that you gave to Living on the Edge especially in the last six months you're going to see numbers that are astounding I mean they're humbling and astounding to us but it's not what I did it's not what Living on the Edge did it's what we did together I mean we responded globally and we responded directly in America and you're going to see these astronomical responses in the midst of the COVID-19 and that is what we got to do together that's how the body works and so right now if you happen to be one of those people thinking you know this teaching seems to be helpful and I had no idea about what they're doing globally and resources they make I'd really like to check Living on the Edge out before I make a decision to give let me encourage you to go to livingontheedge.org one long word livingontheedge.org slash ministry update and I think you'll see exactly what we do what our goals were the numbers are there we want you to know what we do and why we do it and then I would ask you to pray and I don't know what God wants you to do but I would ask you to read that and then say Lord do you want me to be a part of this ministry and then sit quietly and listen for his voice and then whatever he tells you to do you do that and if you do that what I know we'll have all that we need to do all God wants us to do thanks for taking that kind of time and being wise about the money that God has entrusted to you that's called being a good steward well if you're already praying and supporting the ministry of Living on the Edge thank you we couldn't do what we do without you and if you're ready to step up and join us or increase your commitment today would be a great day to do it thanks to a small group of financial partners every gift we receive between now and july 6th will be doubled if you've been looking for a way to make a difference this is your opportunity and right now your gift will have twice the impact to send a donation give us a call at triple 8-333-6003 or if you prefer donate online at livingontheedge.org app listeners just tap donate on behalf of chip and the team thank you in advance for your generosity well now here's chip as we close today's program you cannot listen to the story of ananias and sapphira this internal attack on god's grace and this harsh harsh judgment where both are killed not because they didn't give not because they didn't give enough but because they pretended to be something that they were not the sin was hypocrisy you know the sin by the way do not get confused hypocrisy is not the same as not measuring up to what you want to be every single one of us we're all going to fall short but when you own up to falling short that's one thing but when you begin to project something that's entirely untrue of you to win the favor of people and to project an image that lack of authenticity god cuts to the quick and does this harsh judgment to tell his church we can't live that way it destroys the complete credibility of the message now here's the hard question you need to hear and i had to process when i was preparing this where in your life are you tempted to be a hypocrite or where in your life right now is it just not true you say one thing you project one thing but honestly your life in how you really live doesn't correspond and you're willing to let other people believe that you love god that you're more generous you're more caring than you really are and so obviously you have the first application here is our finances you know to say that i really love god but don't give the first portion of my finances then i'm saying one thing with my mouth and my behavior saying something else if i say i love people and yet i'm critical and selfish and uh make no time for them in my schedule then then something's wrong here grace stoppers occur in our own heart of hearts when we begin to project something that we want others to think about us that simply isn't true grace flows in fact the core word grace generosity goodness they all have a common theme it's when you understand there is an abundance that god has much that he loves you that he cares that he wants to give and entrust things that you can care and entrust to others but the motive is not to impress people the motive is to love people and so i want to leave you today with just this opportunity to say god will you search my heart we all struggle with hypocrisy would you show me anything specific in my heart or life that i need to address and then let me encourage you to a very close trusted friend own up to it confess it come clean let god forgive you and then take the opposite step if it's in your finances then be generous if it's with your time then do some act of kindness not for how you appear but because you actually want to express your concern for another person that will release the grace of god afresh in your life again god bless you and go for it just before we close our mission at Living on the Edge is to help christians live like christians and one of the ways we do that is by giving away free resources so when you hear a message that's especially helpful we hope you'll pass it on to others they're easily shared from the chip ingram app or by forwarding the free mp3s from our website Living on the Edge dot org and don't forget to include a note about how it made a difference in your life well be sure to be with us again next time when we continue our current series for chip and the entire team here this is dave druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge