Mon Apr 7 20:01:50 PDT 2003
James is out this week. A conference in the back half of the week and some visiting family means he can’t make it to Bible study this week, so I get to lead it again.
Acts 4:32-5:11
This is a passage about unity, and a lesson about giving.
Part 1: Unity, sharing and giving Acts 4:32-42
- v.32
-
- The congregation, referring to all the believers – 5000+ at this point
- One heart, they felt alike, common interest, actually the intellectual side
- One soul, speaking of the emotional side of the Christian life
- Interesting, given that the believers are believed to come from all
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walks of life (but presumably still Jewish) and yet they are together Remember "Real Faith" from Sunday’s sermon? Here’s the proof of their faith
– They don’t view material posessions as their own, and share with each
other as they have need.
v.33 Apostles are giving testmony and preaching about Jesus — these people were with Jesus and witnessed him die, get buried and raised from the dead. They are now witnessing about this.
v.34-35 The believers are choosing to give their posessions to the leaders so that they can be distributed to those in need. To this day the Church still upholds this strategy. At SHCC we call it the benevolence fund. Keep in mind here that the funds here in the 1st century are used for belivers.
Some people interperate this passage as supporting a view that individual ownership of material posessions is non-Christian. We can see examples of this in a number of communial Christian groups, mostly from the 19th century. The Shakers, and the German Pietious groups who formed colonies in Harmony, Old Economy and Ephrata in Penn, and Aurora Oregon, which was founded by a gentleman who disagreed with Old Economy’s move to become a celebate community.
Interestingly we’ll see that communalism doesn’t work very long in most situations. The early church in Jerusalem starts to have issues in chapter 6 and they have to appoint deacons because of complaints of unfairness. Paul speaks of issues in 1 Corinthians 11:21 where the rich have food, but the poor go hungry. Similarly in James, he talks about favortism in the Church which strongly implies that they aren’t living communally.
Historically, most of the 19th century groups don’t continue past the first generation. Basically it takes a very strong leader to suppress people’s natural selfish, sinful nature. One of the major exceptions are the Shakers, but they believe that their founder, Mother Ann Lee, was the female incarnation of Jesus Christ, and took on many orphans to keep their ranks filled despite being a celibate community.
The Hutterites, named after Jacob Hutter who was marytered in 1536 are the largest and oldest communial Christian society. Similar in beliefs to the Amish and other Menonites are about 40,000 strong in the US and Canada. They have communes in Eastern Washington, Montanna and Alberta, Canada. They are pacifists, which during WW1 landed some of them in jail and a few of them died because they refused to wear the US Army uniforms and froze to death. That caused many to move to Canada at that time.
Just as an aside, Aurora eventually folded due to attrition, largely because their beliefs weren’t that different than the Lutherans down the street (who, ironically were the people the Germans who came to America to escape persecution from). So the young people, two groups with similar beliefs, but the Lutherans didn’t have the downside of giving up individuality and personal ownership.
So the situation in Jerusalem is somewhat unique, as also the sale of property because of the year of jubilee. Every 49 years (7*7) the 50th year, real properity is returned to the original tribe. See Leviticus 25:10, 13. So it is possible that this is effectively a lease, not actual sale, as the property should eventually return to their families.
Barnabas is a Levite – land doesn’t stay in his family, he probably purchased it at some point, or perhaps it was his wife’s before they married.
This is also the first we hear about Barnabas, who later will join Paul on his missionary travels. His name "Barnabas" is tricky to translate. The commentary I had had it as "exhortation" or "encouragement" or "consolation" or "comfort". He’s so well know for this characteristic, that people call him that.
Part 2: Lesson about how not to give Acts 5:1-11
