Web Of Lies Series

Depending on where you get your news, from the newspaper, internet, or TV, you most likely have heard of this terrible virus called Ebola. It has been all over the news lately. I will be honest; I really don’t understand that much about the disease other than what I have gleaned through the news. One thing that seems to be clear is that people are getting nervous in the United States about the disease because we thought it was isolated on the continent of Africa, but lately we have seen that it has invaded our own continent. So people are getting very nervous about this thing called Ebola. So much so that you have the CDC and all sorts of government agencies getting involved and trying to keep it from spreading. They are paying a lot of attention to the ports of entry, particularly airports. They actually are starting to step onto planes to prevent people from getting off the planes that may have this disease. We will show you this on the video really quickly. (Video shown here.) Did anybody see that news story this week? Does anybody think that is excessive the way they handled that? Somebody said they sneezed. Somebody said they had Ebola. Does that look like excessive when the guys in the blue suits come on? Nobody. I think you wouldn’t think it was excessive especially if you were the people on the plane or possibly in a school where somebody was suspected of having it or some other public place. You would take whatever measures are necessary within your power to begin to deal with the possible spread of this virus.

That is what we see in today’s story out of the book of Acts. What we see is God doing whatever is within his power to deal with the spread not of Ebola but this thing called sin. If you want to follow along, we are going to be looking at chapter 5, probably the first 10, possible 11 verses. You may recall that we are in the midst of the series called The Story that began at the beginning of the year and hopefully will be finished by the end of the year. We are talking about God’s story as told through the people, places, and events of the Bible. We are in the portion of the story called the book of Acts. Last week, if you were here, we began to talk about how Jesus, following the resurrection, wasn’t immediately taken up to heaven. Instead, he hung around with some of the disciples and followers. Some believe up to 500 people saw him, and he continued to do what he does best. He continued to teach and preach. Basically, he told the group of disciples, I know you are probably anxious to get out and begin to share the good news about the resurrection and that sort of thing, but I want you to wait because I am about to send you a gift. And the gift was the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus says in Acts 1:8 “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit come son you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” You may recall how I said that this one passage kind of serves as Luke’s outline for the entire book of Acts because the first eight chapters deal with the church in Jerusalem. The next four or five chapters we see the church beginning to expand out into Judea and Samaria and then the last 15 or so chapters we see the church really begin to expand out into the farthest corners of the known world. This particular passage serves again as an outline for the book of Acts. We are going to be talking about each of these individual areas, but I am going to have to do kind of a high flyover of the book of Acts because of our need to get done by the end of the year.

Today, we are going to look primarily at chapter five. We have to look at a few verses to put it in context before chapter five. You may recall that at this particular time in the book of Acts the church is doing phenomenally. It is growing by leaps and bounds. As we saw last week, the people came together, the Holy Spirit came down, the people were filled with the spirit, and Peter went out and gave a phenomenal sermon. So much so that 3,000 people were baptized right on the spot. They were saved and went on to meet in homes and teach and fellowship and that sort of thing. We see in the next few chapters that Peter and John went out and continued the work of Christ. They continued proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. Began to proclaim the resurrection and the kingdom of God that is here. They began to perform miracles and healings so much so that it began to get people attracted to this new thing that really didn’t have a name at that time but this new off-shoot of Judaism that was inspired and catalyzed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The church in those early chapters just began to grow by leaps and bounds. As good as it was, it wasn’t without persecution. As exciting as this new thing was, there was a group of people known as the Pharisees, or the Jewish elite, who really weren’t as excited as some of these early converts. So much so that they decided to persecute the early church in any way they could. They went after them. You would have thought that the persecution would have resulted in the division of the church and people fleeing, but actually the persecution tended to band the people together. It tended to unite the people. They would be united against this particular persecution. We see this in one of the early verses in chapter four where it says “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.” This was something that was probably necessary at this time of the church. They were very vulnerable and meeting a lot of resistance not only from the Jewish elite but the other Jews. These could have been family members, employers, whatever. They were joining in the persecution of these early believers. So the believers had to band together. They had to be united. So much so that they began to sell their possessions and put the proceeds into a fund that everybody in need could draw from. We see this clearly in chapter 4, verse 34 where it says “There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time, those who owned lands for houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostle’s feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.” This is an amazing thing. Everybody was taking care of one another. That enabled the church to really begin to grow and be unified. What we see in these early chapters is an amazing work of the spirit. We see the church begin to expand. We see people that are out there facing persecution but not cowering. They are standing up against it. We see this sense of brotherly love. Brothers and sisters coming together in a united cause. We see this intense devotion to the teaching of Jesus Christ.