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Acts 5:1-11: "But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, 2 and with his wife's knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles' feet. 3 But Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? 4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.' 5 When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it. 6 The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him. 7 After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. 8 And Peter said to her, ‘Tell me whether you sold the land for so much.' And she said, ‘Yes, for so much.' 9 But Peter said to her, ‘How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.' 10 Immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men came in they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. 11 And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things."

INTRODUCTION

We saw last week that one of the great benefits of having the Gospel preached powerfully to you is that it results in a softened heart for God and for others.  So much so, in the book of Acts, after the Church heard Peter preaching the Gospel in power, those that had land sold what they had and distributed to those who had need.  They saw that Christ's generosity towards them meant that they had all they needed and could release what they held on to so that others were cared for.  

The word and witness must never be separated in our lives.  The power of the Gospel being preached motivated their generosity and validated its reality.  The Gospel became tangible as the Church lived out of its reality.  The Apostles preached about the power of Christ's resurrection in words and the Church showed it in her deeds!

But what is it that keeps us from such radical generosity?  What stops us from loving our city and our neighbors enough to see that Gospel word and deed ministry are flowing from our lives?  

If we are going to be a church that loves the city in the way we believe God is calling us to, how are we going to see our view of money and time change so that our vision is engaged?  How are we going to be less selfish and more selfless?  How are we going to love one another in a way that gives evidence that the Gospel is true to all who are watching?  I believe it is through an encounter with the living God through His living Word.  

Today, we're going to look at two different encounters with God.  Both are traumatic, one is traumatic unto physical death and the other is traumatic unto the death of selfish self-focus.  

STUDY

We've been considering our missional vision as a church since we've been in the book of Acts.  We've been saying that we want to see more and more people come to Christ, become connected to the family of God so they can grow, and for us to be released into the city to seek the welfare of the marginalized, the rejected, the broken and hurting.

If we're going to love in this way we're going to need a new way of viewing our own lives and motivations.  We're going to need a reorientation of our material possessions so that we see all things as serving the purpose of God's glory and witness to Him.  

Robert Putnam wrote a book called Bowling Alone which lays out some fairly startling trends in our culture over the last three decades.

• In the last 25 years there has been a 25% decline in voting.

• There has been a 50% decline in participation in social, civic, and fraternal organizations.

• There has been a 10% decline in church attendance (which is alarming considering the growing population in America).

• But there has been a 50% decline in activities outside Sunday services.

• There is a substation decline to the proportion of both people who are giving as well as the percentage of what is being given to charitable causes.

• This trend is carried into the Church where:

• o The proportion of households that tithe their income to their church-that is, give at least ten percent of their income to that ministry-has dropped by 62% in the past year, from 8% in 2001 to just 3% of adults during 2002 (2003).

  • 9% of born again Christians tithed 10% of their income to a house of worship in 2004.

  • When contributions are examined as a percentage of household income, giving to religious centers represents about 2.2% of gross income (2003).

  • o In total, one out of every twenty households (5%) tithed their pre-tax income to non-profit organizations (2003).

  • o Americans inside and outside of the Church give significantly less than did the previous generation, and the previous generation gave significantly less than the generation before that.  

  • Yet our living standards have risen enormously over the last 50 years.

  • Volunteer serving in almost every age category has dropped significantly over the last 20 years both inside and outside of the Church.  The statistics are trending almost the same for non-Christians and Christians.

In other words, word and deed ministry is not doing well in our generation and unless there is a substantial change, our children will become more selfish, self-serving, and self-absorbed than we are.

In giving these statistics, it is easy to slip into a frustrated guilt tirade which will make the pastor feel better but doesn't change the hearts of God's people.  We know that only God's Spirit illuminating the Gospel can move us from such apathetic disinterest.  

How can we become less absorbed with our own individual wants and perceived needs?  The answer is an encounter with God.  

Let me just say on the outset of this study however, that an encounter with God may not look exactly like you suspect, as we shall see.

What does it mean to encounter God's reality?  It means we have:

        I.  A God-quake, which leads to

        II.  A Self-quake, which leads to

        III. A World-quake

Both stories of Ananias and Sapphira and Isaiah's vision have these three quakes but with very different results.  

I. God-quake

In the beginning of the story of Isaiah, Isaiah enters the Temple in his vision and sees the LORD, high and lifted up.  He sees God's glory permeating from His throne.  The earth is filled with His glory and the angels are crying out, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is filled with His glory."  At the cries of the angles the Temple shakes and is filled with smoke.  

What is glory?

The word "glory" literally means weight.  It means: the permanent vs. the temporary, the real vs. the unreal, the substantial vs. the unimportant.  When the Scriptures talk about God's glory, it's talking about His weightiness.  It means that compared to anything else in the universe, God alone is permanent, God alone is real, and God alone matters.  

Let's use a simple illustration.  If you drop a large rock into water there is a water-quake because the rock has more glory than the water.  If you drop an object heavier than ice onto ice, there is an ice-quake because the object has more glory than the ice.  And when the reality of God comes into your life it changes everything around.  When the reality of God comes into Isaiah's life everything was rearranged and his view of himself, his view of history, his view of everything is changed.  

This isn't new to Isaiah's vision.  Whenever God's glory comes down there is an earthquake.  God's glory is weightier than anything else.  When He came down on Mt. Sinai, the mountain trembled violently.  When He came down at Pentecost, and as we read last week when they gathered and prayed, the ground shook and trembled because God's glory is ultimate and weighty.  Compared to God, everything else has no weight and whenever God's reality comes down, things are shaken.  

What I want to talk about today is the difference between God as a concept and God as reality, about the difference between having an intellectual belief about God and experiencing His glory.  

Think about this: when Isaiah went into the Temple in his vision and saw the LORD on His throne and the doorposts and Temple shaking, he didn't think to himself "oh, God really does exist!"  Isaiah already believed God existed.  But God was just a concept until this moment, after this encounter God became a reality.  

What's the difference between a concept and reality?  It's all a matter of glory.  When God is a concept, He's lighter than you.  When you attempt to manage God as a concept in your life, you're attempting to shape God according to your concept of Him.  This god-concept fits into your life and existing patterns.  It doesn't move your life around, you move him around as a concept to fit into your life.  It other words, it doesn't quake you.  He's not weightier than you.  If you say you've believed in God yet remain essentially the same, God is just a concept to you.  

A god-concept can't change your existing beliefs, he'll just be molded to fit into your old ones.  You might believe in God for a variety of reasons.  You might say, "I believe in God because it makes sense since everything created needs a creator," or, "I believe in God because it helps society stay together with a common morality," or, "I believe in God because it gives me a hope for a future," or, "I believe in God to deal with my guilt and shame in the past," etc.  But this does not require a belief in God in such a way that He comes in a rearranges all our furniture.  He's not heavy enough in these views to radically change and shape us because He's still just a concept.  

In our city, many people will say, "I can't believe in this or that part of the Bible because it's so regressive and archaic and we've learned to get past all of that stuff."  This view doesn't realize that every generation has so-called "new reasons" not to believe and our grandchildren will laugh at those reasons as we laugh at many beliefs of our grandparents.  But our cultural moment seems so real and permanent to us.  Opinions about God seem so real because they are so prevailing and popular that we adopt them and they have weight over our lives.  They feel so permanent and real.  

But when people claim not to believe certain aspects of the Bible because of this or that reason, but still maintain a belief in God, it is a god that is only a concept and not reality.  That kind of god can never change some of our deepest held beliefs and contradict us because that god isn't weighty and important enough to do so.  He fits into you, you shape the god-concept, the god-concept doesn't change you.  You have more glory than the god-concept because the god-concept is lighter than you are.  And, the god-concept fits into our agendas, goals and plans.  He doesn't change or shape them.  

There are huge churches filled with people who get religious to help them succeed.  God is used as currency for them to get what they really want.  God is fit into their agenda and existing belief.

God as a concept is essentially useless and is only summoned when we need something because he's not weighty enough; but God as a reality is something entirely different.  

When the real God comes into your life and you come into the awareness of the presence of the real God, things give way in your life that you thought were so unbending and permanent because His glory is weightier than you.  Things that you believed very deeply and held onto tightly are changed by His word because He has more glory than your beliefs.  He can change things that you think.  

Instead of the god-concept being fit into your life and agenda, God as a reality becomes your life and new agenda.  He radically changes your priorities.  God calls you to put to death previously held fears and views because He has more glory and is weightier than anything you think or feel.  

When the reality of God comes into your life, things change.  Has He become a reality to you or is He still a concept?  Is your life weightier than His glory?  Does He fit into your agenda or do you fit into His?  Are you shaping Him or is He shaping you?

At some point, God has to have become more than a concept to you.  If not, you've created a god in your image and are worshipping an idol, breaking the first two of the Ten Commandments.  Has He become a reality to you?

It may not be like Isaiah's vision, but Isaiah's vision was unique to Isaiah.  Read the account of Jeremiah meeting God.  It's different.  Why? Because Isaiah and Jeremiah are different.  Isaiah was a proud man who was an elite aristocrat, well educated and confident; Jeremiah was a young, frightened kid who may have been no more than 15 and filled with inferiority.  When God shows us to Jeremiah He says essentially, "stop trembling," but when He shows up to Isaiah He says, "start trembling!"  But in both cases, God showed up and was a reality to them.  God was weightier than they were and they were radically changed by it.

What is so amazing about Isaiah's vision is that he is going into the Temple in his vision and the last person he expected to meet was God!  Who would have thought that God would show up at church?  God was a concept until this moment for Isaiah and then He became a reality and started to rearrange everything in His life.  Has that happened to you?  Is He contradicting you?  Is He changing you?  Has He destroyed and reengineered your agenda for your life?  Has that happened?  

If you're out of touch with God as reality, then you're out of touch with reality and everything is nothing more than a façade.  

How do you know that God has moved from being a concept to reality?  The second point shows us that there is a self-quake.  

II. Self-quake

A self-quake is when God has moved from a concept to a reality.  How do you know when this has happened?  Let's look at the two contrasts between the stories.

A. An experience of radical beauty vs. ugly self-worth

B. An experience of radical humility vs. sinful pride

A. An experience of radical beauty vs. ugly self-worth

Acts 5:1-4: "But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property,  2  and with his wife's knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles' feet.  3 But Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land?  4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.'"

What Peter is showing here is the ugly-self worth and self-importance that gripped Ananias and Sapphira's heart, so much so that Peter says that Satan has filled their hearts to lie to the Holy Spirit.  

This wasn't merely an issue of selfishness, though that was certainly part of it; it was an issue of self-worth.  God was a concept to them and they thought they were smarter than the god-concept.  They assumed they could outwit God and were wiser than He was.  They could concoct this lie and pass themselves off as important and worthy in the Church without God knowing.  God became a reality to them, but it was too late.  God was being used by them to get something they wanted, not for who He was in Himself.  

They didn't worship God for His value, but the value that it brought them.  God was being used a currency to inflate their self-worth.   

Look at Isaiah's encounter with God's radical beauty.  

Isaiah 6:2-4: "Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!' 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke."

Isaiah heard the Seraphim crying out, "Holy, Holy, Holy..."  This is called the trisagion.  In the Hebrew language, significance is portrayed by repeating something more than once.  By doubling a word in repetition, it is showing the significance of that thing.

In Genesis 14 there is a place that says they fell into deep pits, but in the Hebrew it says they fell in "pit pits."  They didn't just fall into pits, these were really deep pits.  

The repetition is a form of emphasis. When we want to emphasize the importance of something in English, we have different ways of doing it. We can underline the word, print them in italics or boldface type. We may attach an exclamation point following the words or put them in quotations.

The Old Testament Jew also had different techniques to indicate emphasis. One was the method of repetition. We see Jesus' use of repetition with the words "Truly, truly, I say to you" or in other words, listen carefully because this is more than just simple truth, it is true truth.

Only few times does the Bible repeat something three times. To do this in a succession of three is to elevate it to the highest degree.

For example, the judgment of God is declared in the book of Revelation by the eagle who cried in midair with a loud voice.

Revelation 8:13: "Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth."

In 2 Kings 25:15 we're told of something that is made of the "purest gold," but in Hebrews it says that it was made of "gold gold" which is not just gold but exquisite gold, the purest of gold.  Magnitude is shown by repeating something.

Only one time in scripture is an attribute of God elevated to the third degree. Only once is a characteristic of God mentioned three times in succession.

The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy. Not that His is merely holy, or even holy, holy. He is holy, holy, holy.  This is an entirely new category.

The Bible never says that God is love, love, love; or mercy, mercy, mercy; or wrath, wrath, wrath; or justice, justice, justice.

But it does say that he is holy, holy, holy, and that the whole earth is full of His glory.

What is holiness?

The Hebrew word kadosh is a word of superlativeness.  It conveys the idea of an infinitely unique superlative.  To say God's wisdom is "holy" wisdom is to say that God's wisdom is beyond any other kind of wisdom.  To say God's love is "holy" love is to say that it is infinitely beyond any kind of human love.  

It means infinite unique superlative, but it also means brilliance and beauty.

This is what you're seeing with the Seraphim.  They are constantly crying out "holy, holy, holy."  They are singing this always to one another.  They are fascinated with His holiness, they can't get enough of His holiness, they love His holiness, they are constantly adoring His holiness.

The Bible speaks of this when it says that they worship God in the "beauty of holiness."  What does that mean?  

The beauty of holiness

Imagine that you have some family money and someone finds out and marries you for your money only to find after a few years that they can't get their hands on that money and so they leave you.  How do you feel?  Violated, used, an object that is a means to an end?  Would you feel like you weren't loved for who you are in and of yourself?  Do you realize that almost all of us relate to God in this same way?

How many times have you spoken to someone who said that they used to believe in God and go to church but God didn't come through on something, or He didn't answer their prayer for something important, or they went through a tough time and feel that God disappointed them by allowing it.  

Do you see what they're saying?  They're saying that they think there is a huge bank of blessings in heaven that they deserve and God didn't give them what they wanted.  In other words, they married God for His money and not for Him.  God was an object in their thinking.

But the Seraphim are worshipping God for who He is, not on the basis of a cost/benefit analysis, not because God pays them off with power, comfort, control, or prestige for them.  They are serving Him and loving Him simply because of the beauty of who He is.  For the Seraphim, God's holiness is not useful; it's beautiful.  

We all have something that just blows us away and raises our emotions.  For most of us it's a particular song or group that when we play it our hearts swell and it raises our emotions.  Why does this happen?  What good comes of it?  Does it make money for us, does it give approval, does it give us prestige?  No!  It is a good in itself.  It isn't useful; it's beautiful.  It's satisfying in itself.  This is how God should be if we knew Him for who He was.

Jonathan Edwards on holiness

Jonathan Edwards makes the point that the power of God is something you can get selfishly excited about because it benefits you.  You want to serve a powerful God who can destroy the enemies of your life like selfishness, pride, bad feelings, etc.

The wisdom of God is something that you can get excited about because of the benefit to us.  You want to serve a God who can give you wisdom and make you smarter than others or give you guidance.   

You can even get excited about the mercy of God selfishly because it helps you to get rid of your guilt-feelings.  It's a benefit to you.

But Jonathan Edwards says that God's holiness is of no usefulness to you at all.  God's holiness can't be weighed on a cost/benefit analysis for you because His holiness is a threat to you.

Anyone who worships God for His holiness is doing so just because of who He is.  His holiness isn't useful but threatening to you.  How can this be?  How can you get to a point where you see His holiness and enjoy it?  

His holiness is superlative, His holiness is the fact that can't beat God.  His power is holy power and it can not be overcome.  His wisdom is holy wisdom and you can't question God or make Him subject to your intelligence or ideas.  You can't escape God because His presence is holy presence.  How can this be beautiful?

Well, Isaiah not only had an experience of radical beauty vs. the ugly self-worth of Ananias and Sapphira, he also had an experience of radical humility vs. sinful pride.

B. An experience of radical humility vs. sinful pride

When Peter asked Sapphira if the property was sold for a certain amount and she continued to lie like her husband, what was driving her was not just selfishness, but a hatred for God as she tempted God by lying to the Holy Spirit.  She was slapping Him in the face and assuming that she could get away with exalting herself over God and His holiness.  There was no repentance in either of them.  God summarily dealt with them without hesitation.  

They were confronted with God's holiness and instead of repenting and confessing before the Apostles and the congregation, they attempted to lie to God and to the Church to get their position of importance and prestige.  

Let's look at Isaiah's response after He is confronted with the holiness of God.

Isaiah 6:5: "And I said: ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!'"

When a prophet says, "Woe is me!" it is a curse upon his own head.  A prophet was sent by God to declare "woe" on those who would not repent of their sin.  Woe was a curse upon them in which the prophet knew God was coming to judge them.  Peter, in the same way is pronouncing a "woe" upon Ananias and Sapphira by confronting them.

Isaiah's response when he comes in the presence of God is one of great trauma as he sees how holy God is, it reveals how unclean he is.  Isaiah is essentially saying that he doesn't deserve to live because he is ruined, undone, unraveled at the seams, disintegrated.  Isaiah sees that he is a man who is unclean and he lives with a people that are all unclean in comparison to God.  God's holiness at this point in Isaiah's experience is nothing more than a threat.  

God has taken Isaiah's god-concept which is manageable and has thrown it out and Isaiah is now seeing God in reality for who He really is.  He's become real to Isaiah and it crushes Him.

This trauma is experienced on a much smaller scale even in human relations.  When you are in the presence of someone who is superlative to you, it is traumatic because it crushes your self-image.  For example, you may have moved to San Diego or LA because you were the best looking in your small town and you wanted to come and model or get into acting.  Then you move to Southern California and realize that LA and San Diego are filled with people who are far more attractive than you are.  They're smarter, faster, in better shape, and more talented than you.  But, you find this out the hard way when you are at your first audition and you're surrounded by dozens of others who make your mediocrity unbearable.  What does this do to your self-image?  It crushes you.  You feel undone and unraveled.

This is just in the presence of human superlativeness and you come undone.  Moving to a big city like LA or New York is a constant barrage on your self-image because you're surrounded by people far better than the thing you treasure.  

What happened to Isaiah?  He was traumatized.  We know from tradition that Isaiah was part of the royal family.   Jewish historians believe that Isaiah's father was a brother to the king.  Isaiah was the intelligent elite of his day.  He had beautiful oratory skills.  He was a skilled writer with a profound intellect and had the ability to speak in such a way that was compelling.  In an oral culture, this was a kind of power that caused you to rise to the top to be noticed and respected by all.

Isaiah was a brilliant young man who probably assumed that he had the answers to what was going on around him.  The culture was in disarray and I'm sure that he had his reasons for it and could point out the guilty culprits.

But when he comes into the presence of God, he realizes that he's the problem.  He sees that the problem isn't just with the sin of these people, though that's true too, but that the problem is him!  

Even the best part of him was unclean.  The mouth that spoke with such beautiful eloquence, in the presence of God was overwhelmingly inadequate, flawed, distorted, and twisted.  

Every place in the Bible where God moves from a concept to a reality, people immediately begin to despise their sinful and prideful selves.  Job, the most righteous in all the land said that now he had seen the Lord he repents in dust and ashes.  Isaiah says, "woe is me."  Peter says, "depart from me Lord, I'm a sinful man."  

Is this low self-esteem?

Some of you might be thinking that this isn't the God you worship because the God you worship is a God of love.  

Think through this with me.  Let's just say that there is a God with no other quality than love.  No holiness, no justice, no righteousness, no wrath, nothing but love.  Then what?

If in the presence of human superlativeness and greatness your confidence comes crashing down around you, how much more with God?  If you came into the presence of God with nothing but holy love, you'd hate yourself because you'd see how utterly unloving you are in comparison.  You'd see how cruel you've been and you'd see that you've never really loved anyone.  How could it be any different with God?  It can't.  

Here's how you know that you've moved into the presence of the real God and no longer just a concept, you immediately begin to see you're a sinner and you're lost.  You see that you're more capable of cruelty, more capable of evil, more selfish, more petty, more hypocritical, more small-minded, and more impatient than you ever thought you were and you know you need to be rescued by grace.  

If you think that's just being negative, c'mon, we just saw how we feel when around someone superior to us.  If there's a real God, you'd have to feel this way when you're before Him in all His glory and holiness.  It couldn't be otherwise.  

If you think that you couldn't worship a god that would make you feel so incomplete and like such a failure, then you haven't been around the real God, you've only been around a concept.  This is just common sense.  

This isn't so much a matter of low self-esteem.  When people with low self-esteem get in the presence of the real God, they realize that their low self-esteem was really nothing more than being overly self-absorbed.  The only way they're going to get out of their self-absorption is if something greater than them, more powerful than them, more weighty and important than them can come and contradict them and pull them out.  Then they'll be able to stop thinking about themselves and move their eyes upon the One who is greater than them.

Isaiah was crushed under the lowest of self-esteem that we could ever imagine, but God was doing something in this act.  

The moment he confesses his sin, God explodes in his life and sends the angel towards him.  At this point, I'm sure Isaiah was assuming that he was going to end up like Ananias and Sapphira!  The fire of God in the Old Testament was considered judgment.  The angel picks up God's fire with tongs because it's even too hot for him and flies towards Isaiah.  At this point, Isaiah knew that whatever judgment was coming, he deserved it.  

Yet instead of God wiping Isaiah off of the face of the earth, He brings him grace and wipes the sin away from his life that separated Isaiah from Him.  The moment Isaiah confesses his sin, God's purifying fire comes to touch his sin and burns it away.

He confesses of the filth of his lips and instead of God destroying him, the moment the coal touches his lips, though painful, he realizes that this was an act of love and grace, not judgment.  God pardoned him.  His guilt was taken away and his sins atoned for and he was cleansed.  

The very next verse is incredible.  

Isaiah 6:8: "And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?'"

One second after Isaiah realized he didn't deserve to live in the presence of God and that he was more wicked and flawed than he'd ever dare to believe, he is now more loved and accepted by God than he'd ever hoped.  

God invites him to participate in His plan for the world.  God calls him to be a messenger for Him to tell everyone who He is and what He's doing in this world.  

And oh, by the way, this job God calls him to is going to be difficult because no one is going to listen to him.  He's going to preach and preach and preach and they'll reject him as they're rejecting God.  He'll be totally ineffective and frustrated, and no one will follow him, and yet, what does Isaiah say?  "Here am I.  Send me!"

Would Isaiah have taken this job if God was lighter than him?  If God was a concept?

No, never.  

What happened to Isaiah?  Isaiah's self-image had been deconstructed and reconstructed on the spot.  Ananias and Sapphira were just deconstructed because they were unrepentant.  But Isaiah had an entirely new view of God and of himself.  He knew that he was far more sinful than he'd ever thought, yet God loved him and accepted him far more than he could have ever hoped for because of the grace of God.  Isaiah now had both humility and courage because he met the real God.

Before this moment, when God was a concept, Isaiah had to live up to standards by his own performance.  When he came into God's presence he realized he could never live up to God's perfect standard and it crushed him.  But God was gracious and healed him not by Isaiah's work, but by God's grace.  Isaiah didn't have to earn his salvation since God was the hero of the story.

You see, Isaiah could take on this job without worrying about his success or failure because his identity was found in God, not his works.  His salvation and approval from God were secure not by his works but by God's grace.  This meant he could take on a job for which there was no personal gain, because he worshipped the true God because God was worthy, not because God was useful.  

To the degree that God is a reality in your life, you'll look more like Isaiah than Ananias and Sapphira.  If he's a concept, you'll be gripped with selfish, self-serving, hypocritical, and prideful religiosity.  

A World-quake

Ananias, Sapphira, and Isaiah experienced a God-quake, and they experienced a self-quake.  But the difference is that Aninias and Sapphira held on to pharisaical pride and self-righteousness and Isaiah repented and was able to participate in God's world-quake as he continued to shake up the old systems and bring about salvation.

Years after Isaiah's death, the Temple was shaken again.  There was another earthquake because God's power and holiness came down again.  The Temple was so shaken that the doorposts were shaken and the veil that separated us from the presence of God's holiness was ripped from top to bottom.  Do you know when that happened?  

Matthew 27:45-51: "Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.  46  And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?' that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'  47  And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, ‘This man is calling Elijah.'  48  And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink.  49  But the others said, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.'  50  And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.  51  And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split."

What was happening?  In the garden, before Christ was handed over to be crucified, he said to Peter that his soul was sorrowful unto death.  He sensed the woe of the world upon himself.  But the difference between Isaiah's woe and Christ's was that there was no angel to come and heal Jesus of His sin because Jesus was the sacrifice on the altar.  Jesus Christ was shaken by the judgment of God.  But Jesus Christ was sinless and was taking judgment upon Himself to bear judgment upon Himself.  He was shaken at the depths, so that you and I would be unshakable.  

This was so that you and I could have the self-quake of having the glory of God come into our lives for God to move from concept to reality.  And now, now, if it's true that we're accepted on the basis of what Christ has done and it's given by grace, then God's holiness is now beautiful and not a threat to us. It's something we cherish, not something we run from.  We see Him for who He is and love him for His beauty.  

You don't serve God to get things; you already have everything.  You serve Him for the beauty that He is and because you want to know Him and show the world how beautiful He is.  

Now you want to be part of His plan for the world.  

If you've had a self-quake you're now sent out by God into this world to be part of the movement of God which is shaking the earth.  To become an agent in this plan, you no longer use Him but instead desire to be used.

You become:

Available.  "Here am I!"  Even before Isaiah heard the job description, he immediately volunteered. God becomes more real than your needs.  He's no longer a God you ask to be your assistant.

The result of the story of Ananias and Sapphira and Isaiah is still the same, God's mission was going on through the world, with our without us.  But God still wants us to be a witness to this world through word AND deed.  We need to be available not for ourselves like Ananias, but for God like Isaiah.