Intro
It’s been quite the year here in British Columbia, and quite the last month. This is a very wet place. We get a lot of rain, especially in November- it’s our rainiest month. But a few weeks ago, a storm ripped through parts of our province that brought more rain in one or two days than would usually come in the whole month. The town of Hope’s previous one day record rainfall was 35mm. Two Sundays ago, they got 174mm. Imagine Elias Petterson scoring 450 goals in a year, 5 times more than Gretzky ever did. Anyone got some odds on that? Who says I only use basketball analogies? All of this, combined with a record wildfire season that wiped out trees and an early snowfall, led to gigantic landslides and flooding, along with mass evacuations. People have said it will be the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history.
What almost always happens, at least here in Canada, is that when there’s a disaster or tragedy of some kind, people respond. There is an outpouring of support and compassion in the immediate aftermath as people are desperate to help. There have been so many stories in the last couple of weeks along those lines. We have a number of friends and family in Abbotsford who were offering their beds and couches to anyone in need, others who were spending every hour sandbagging and trying to help neighbours. A camp that Carolyn and I have spent a ton of time at, Camp Squeah north of Hope, took in 100-200 stranded travellers and provided them with food and shelter. I mean, there’s a gofundme that’s raised $10,000 for good drinking water for animals in Abbotsford.
There’s so much about that response that is to be commended. If you ask me, I’d say it reflects the way humanity bears the image of God. Even though we are deeply sinful people living in a deeply broken world, there are events that provoke God’s character traits to emerge in humanity. Traits like compassionate generosity. I’m so thankful for that.
However, it’s another thing for that generosity to characterize the whole of someone’s life, or the whole of a community. It’s another story for that kind of open-handedness to extend beyond a crisis and for it to be a lifestyle. I want to show you a church this morning that would put every community, even post-tragedy Canadians, to shame in terms of radical generosity.
32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. 33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all 34 that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. 36 Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”), 37 sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles’ feet.
Acts 4:32-37
1. The form of generosity
Enough said, right? What an incredible church! What a ringing endorsement of the Kingdom of God! I’d say let’s pack this up and go home, but I want to really get into this because it’s so good. The first thing that hits us is the generosity of these early believers. Let’s talk about what form that generosity took, and then look at the basis for it.
a. Sharing possessions
The first thing we read about what this generosity looked like is that they didn’t claim that any of their possessions were their own, but shared everything they had. This is different from what we read later, which is that some sold homes and properties and gave the proceeds for those in need. In verse 32, the believers have stuff, but they no longer treat their stuff– for example, their homes and properties- as their own. They share them so readily and openly that for a brother or sister, the property would feel as much theirs as the one who actually owns it. What could lead them to such a radical place? The old saying, “mi casa es su casa”, was not an empty motto in the early church.
This kind of sharing is a challenge to at least two groups of people. On the one hand, you’ve got those who are very protective of possessions as being theirs alone to enjoy. For example, toddlers. But it’s also a challenge for people who struggle with pride and self-sufficiency. Which is probably a lot of us. It’s a challenge because an Acts 4 mindset requires receiving a gift from others. It means admitting that you have something I don’t but would be a blessing to me. I own about 8 tools and I possess enough knowledge about how to fix things that I could write a book. If that book was two paragraphs long. In other words, I’m useless. I’ve got a neighbour who has every tool ever made and lots of knowledge to go along with it. Because he’s a good neighbour, he’s more than willing to share and help out. But it’s a bit of a shot to the pride and I hesitate to receive that at times.
This is also a challenge not only for individuals but for churches too. Biblically, according to 1 Corinthians 12, we are all members of one body of Christ. Instead, though, we often end up feeling defensive of our particular church and almost find satisfaction if our church is thriving and others aren’t. We promote our church but are hesitant to share resources and gifts with other churches. Hundreds of years ago, Richard Baxter lamented how many people “will pray hard for the prosperity of their party, and rejoice and give thanks when it goes well with them but if any other party suffer, they little regard it, as if it were no loss at all to the Church.” That’s the nature of the human heart turned in on itself, but it is not the way of the early church that experienced so much of God’s blessing.
I think we’ve all experienced how good it is to live like this, despite the challenges. Back in the spring, BC finally gave the go-ahead for churches to have outdoor, spaced out, masked services where nobody was allowed to talk to each other. Except if you were praying for each other, in which case you could do it for 10 minutes and no closer than 1.2 meters. No joke. Those were the good old days. But our new facility was still a construction site, we had no office space, and we really wanted to get people together in person. In stepped Westlynn Baptist in Lynn Valley, offering their property for us to use for an outdoor evening service. They even provided a couple of people from their church to help host us and make sure we were 2 meters / 1.2m apart. This was pure generosity, allowing us, who had nothing at the time, to use their property as if it was ours. Our heart is and should be to do the same for others now that we have our space! Openhanded sharing of resources, that was the early church.
B. Sacrificial giving
The second thing we might take note of about the form of generosity is how sacrificial it was. We read that from time to time people sold their homes and properties and gave the money to be used for those in need. We read the same thing in Acts 2:45. Apparently, this was a really distinctive characteristic of the early disciples. It’s about as extreme as you get in terms of giving, isn’t it?
I remember seeing some of the documents our church used years ago to encourage people to give towards this new building. There were examples in there about how people could practice “sacrificial giving”. For example, you could give up one Starbucks drink every week- what does a grande latte go for these days, $40 or so? Not really, but if you give up one per week, you’d have about $250 to contribute to the building project every year. That’s not nothing. There were examples of giving a lot more too, that’s just the one I remember. But I don’t know if we ever suggested that anyone sell their second home and give the proceeds. If sharing possessions to the point that nobody claimed that what they had was theirs alone is a challenge, how much more this level of sacrificial giving?
C. The result
Accounting for these two forms of generosity, here’s the incredible result we read of: “there were no needy persons among them.” None. They wouldn’t allow it. “Among them”, meaning the church. It’s not that there were no needy persons in all of Jerusalem, and I’m sure the early church extended generosity beyond the boundaries of the church. But among the brothers and sisters, there was nobody who had need. The believers made sure of that, regardless of the cost to themselves.
D. Differences from our day
We need to admit that this is not what we have seen in Western Christianity. Instead, large parts of the Western church, maybe especially evangelical Christianity, have been co-opted by some of the worst elements of our capitalistic culture. We’re talking about a consumeristic mindset that leads people to treat church the same way they treat their internet provider. “What kind of deal can you give me, what do I get out of this?” We’re talking about a competitive mindset that leads to buying bigger houses and better cars to keep up with others. We’re talking about a status mindset that drives us to accumulate possessions as a way of marking our worth in the world. We’re talking about a comfort mindset that seals us off in affluent communities where we don’t interact with those of different socio-economic positions. Generally speaking, we do not exhibit what we see in Acts 4.
Here are some statistics to illustrate. These are all pre-pandemic, bear in mind. A popular framework among Christians is tithing: giving 10% of your income to the ministry of the Kingdom of God, your local church being a primary recipient. Some argue that this is the biblical number. I’m not sure about that, but I think the 10% mark is a good minimum target, with the goal to give more if you’re able. However, statistically, less than a quarter of practicing Christians actually tithe. The average percentage of income Christians give to their church is 2.5%. You know what the number was during the Great Depression, maybe the most severe economic downturn in recent Western history? 3.3%. People give less now, in a time of abundance, than during the Great Depression. In fact, in the US, the richer you are, the less likely you are to give a tenth: people with a salary of 20k or less are 8 times more likely to tithe than people who make 75k plus. And the trend is accelerating. Boomers (born ‘46-’64) make up 42% of financial donors but only 30% of total US population. Millennials (born ‘81-’97) are 7% of donors but more than 30% of total US population. (All of these statistics, including those below, are summarized here.)
The good news is that being a follower of Jesus does apparently make a difference: again in the US, people who attend church twice a month or more give an average of $2900 a year to charities. Those who never attend give an average of $700. 96% of practicing Christians have given to a non-profit compared to 60% of secular/agnostics. However, I think we can admit we still fall well short of the church in Acts 4, and that the idolatrous aspects of capitalism have influenced the church more than we might care to admit.
Some of you might be thinking, ok, so Craig is a socialist. Did he vote for the Communists in the last election? Can we get a review of his voting record?
But Acts 4 is not about promoting socialism either, at least not how it’s practiced in governance today. This is true for at least two reasons. First, socialistic governments impose their principles from the top down. And when taken to extremes, as with Communist governments, the results have been cataclysmic to say the least. But that’s not what’s happening here in Acts. When people sell their homes and give to the needy, it’s completely voluntary. This isn’t imposed, it’s not required. We see that in the very next passage. After a man named Ananias sells land and lies about how much of it he’s giving away, Peter reminds him that the land he’s sold belonged to him, “and after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal?” (Acts 5:4) Nobody was forcing anybody to give in this way.
We also see it through the many different forms generosity took in the early church. We’ve already talked about sacrificial giving and open sharing of possessions. We also see food distribution in Acts 6, an offering taken up for famine-struck believers in other parts of the world in Acs 11, and hospitality for visitors in Acts 16, among others. There were all kinds of ways that believers freely gave and shared in the early church. The constant was generosity, not some uniform amount or method.
The other major difference is that socialism tends to demotivate hard work. Why work harder if you don’t earn any more or provide for your family? But what we see in Acts 4 actually motivates hard work. Here’s Paul in Acts 20:35: “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive’”.
See, the problem with human attempts at utopia is that they leave the heart untouched. What we see in Acts 4 is so different because it is rooted in and based on the transformation of the human heart.
2. The basis for generosity
a. Unity
So let’s talk about the basis for this radical generosity in Acts 4. Here’s one: the unity of the early church. Verse 32, “all the believers were one in heart and mind”. This state was not achieved by some advanced mind-melding technology. It was based on a commonality that transcended every other commonality known to humanity. It was bigger than common interests. It was bigger than having a shared stage of life. It was bigger than an allegiance to a particular political position.
It transcended socio-economic status. In the Greco-Roman world, friendship was based on reciprocity. Friends were people who could return whatever blessings you could give them. That’s actually still the case in some ways today, of course. Someone might look at another person and say, “I can’t be seen with that person! Their position or occupation is beneath me, there’s no way I could relate to them!” But we’ve already seen that this was irrelevant in the early church, where there were no poor because the wealthy sacrificially gave to ensure everyone had enough. The doctors and the lawyers and the big estate owners were hanging out with the blue-collar, rough-around-the-edges people. That old status distinction carried no weight in the life of the church.
It transcended ethnic or cultural background. That was also a common divide in the ancient world, especially but not limited to the divide between Jew and Gentile. As we all know, race and ethnicity have been a barrier to unity in many cultures, and I would suggest that the current, growingly popular ideology in the West will only make things worse. But as we see in the book of Acts, one of the most vivid signs of the Kingdom of God was that Jews and Gentiles worshipped together in the church. We even get a hint of that kind of unity in this passage, because we’re told about Joseph, or Barnabas, as he became known. We’ll hear a lot more about him later in Acts, but here we find out he was from Cyprus. That meant that he was a Hellenistic Jew. Hebraic Jews grew up in Palestine and were immersed in Judaism everywhere they went. Hellenestic Jews were Jews who did not grow up in Palestine. They grew up in other cultures, speaking other languages. You could see how there could be some tension between the two groups, which is manifested in Acts 6. But that’s not evident with Barnabas and his act of generosity.
And it transcended family bonds. Jesus himself said that families would be divided over him (Matthew 10:34-36). He said that his brothers and sisters and mother were not primarily those who were biologically related, but those who did the will of God the Father (Mark 3:35). The early Christians spoke of themselves as brothers and sisters. They behaved and lived like a family. In a biological family, you may have all kinds of other differences but you are a family because you share a family name. You share parents. The bond in the church is even deeper. Yes, you share a family name- the name of Jesus. And you share a Father. You also share in the Holy Spirit. You share an experience of being loved by God and forgiven of your sins. You share a common hope and a common vision of the world and a common purpose for life.
And if you have that kind of family bond with other believers, how can you withhold anything from your brothers and sisters? John puts it this way in his letter: “if anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?” (1 John 3:17) The basis of the kind of radical generosity we see in Acts 4, then, is a unity that transcends other human bonds, which gives rise to a deep love for brothers and sisters.
B. Grace
But I believe there is an even deeper basis for generosity than unity. In Acts 4, we read that the disciples testified to the resurrection of Jesus and that God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all. The basis for their distinct view of possessions was the grace of God that was at work among them. It was because of the magnitude of the unearned, undeserved gift of God’s love and salvation that they could give to others so freely.
In Luke’s Gospel, we read a story about a woman who had lived a sinful life. She had received God’s grace in Christ. Entering a home, she poured perfume on Jesus’ feet as she wept with gratitude, kissing his feet and wiping them with her hair. Some of the people in the home were shocked, especially given her reputation. In response, Jesus told them a parable with the conclusion that those who are forgiven large debts will love their forgiver more, but “whoever has been forgiven little loves little” (Luke 7:47).
You are generous in accordance with what you have been given. If you believe you have been given little, you will hold on to whatever you have very tightly. If you believe someone has given you an abundance, you will be much more eager to give in the same way. And instead of talking about this more, I want you to hear a story of someone in our church who discovered this first hand. This is a powerful story. It is also a story that reveals some of the darkest parts of human experience and nature.
When I think about Maggie’s story, I think about 1 Corinthians 6: “you are not your own; you were bought at a price.” (6:19-20) You were bought at a price. This is true of all who trust in Jesus. It’s not that if you lack a testimony like Maggie’s, or you grew up in the church and never had a big period of rebellion, that you can never have the kind of generous spirit we read of in Acts 4. Forget about comparing yourself with others. You are a sinner. You were dead in transgressions. In a hundred ways, all of us have turned away from Him and thought and spoke and lived in ways that were a rebellion against God. The issue is not whether you’ve sinned a lot or a little bit less in comparison with others. The issue is whether you understand your state before God and His mercy in forgiving you. Every one of us needs a fresh comprehension of the Gospel. You were bought at a price. The full price. Jesus gave his life for you> He would have gone to the cross even if you were the only human being in the world!
And when we grasp that, and when we recognize the unity we have, then generosity flows. This isn’t about legalism. It’s not about giving 10% and doing whatever you want with the 90%. It’s about living with an open hand towards God and towards the cause of the Kingdom and saying, “what can I give? You’ve given me everything, just show me the way.”
How will you respond? There are countless outlets for generosity. But I would suggest that you start here: pray for a fresh apprehension of how much Jesus has done for you. Of what he’s given to you. And let him lead you from there.
