When Ananias was judged and killed for his crime, his wife still had the chance to do the right thing.
And she made the wrong choice and that's why she died too.
Now there are people out there who teach that the wife must always obey her husband even when he's telling her to sin.
That's a false doctrine.
Now I'm all for wives obeying their husbands.
The Bible is really clear that wives should be obedient to their own husbands and everything.
You know, that the husband is the head of his wife and that the wife is to obey her husband.
I also believe that children should obey their parents.
The Bible says children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.
And the Bible tells us to honor our father and mother and fear our father and mother, obey our father and mother.
But wait a minute, God's law is supreme and trumps man's law.
And it's no coincidence that in this exact chapter, what does it say later in this very chapter?
We ought to obey God rather than men.
Now we should seek to obey God and men whenever possible.
We should try to obey God and our parents when we're children.
Wives should try to obey God and their husband.
Employees should try their very hardest to obey God and their boss at work.
And the vast majority of the time you can do both.
You can find a way to do both where you're obeying God and man and the authorities.
But wait a minute, there comes a point where we have to be subject unto the higher power which is God.
The Bible says in Romans chapter 13, let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.
For there's no power but of God, the powers that be ordained of God,
whosoever therefore resists at the power, resists at the ordinance of God,
and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
For rulers are not a terror to good works but to the evil.
Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power?
Do that which is good and thou shalt have praise of the same.
So the Bible's telling us that authority on this earth is put there in place by God.
The powers that be are ordained of God, but he starts out by saying be subject unto the higher powers.
There's a chain of command in this world, okay?
And I think the best illustration for this is in the military.
In the military there's a chain of command.
And I've never been in the military so I can't speak from experience.
But from what I understand, you know, you're going to have your sergeant that's above you.
But then at the very top there's going to be a general.
And then at the top of that is even the president of the United States who is the commander in chief of the armed forces.
Now here's the thing. If you get a command from your immediate commanding officer.
I'll ask brother Segura since he was in the Marine Corps.
If you got a command from your immediate commanding officer and then the guy above him contradicts that command.
Or they're telling you two different things, who are you going to listen to?
You're going to listen to who's the higher ranking guy, is that right?
So there you go. I mean it's a chain of command.
Yes, obviously your immediate officer, you're supposed to obey him.
You know, the guy who's right above you, of course you're supposed to obey him.
Of course you're supposed to do what he tells you to do.
Unless he starts telling you to do stuff that's contrary to the higher power.
And all of these guys, whether they're in the military or in the police or in the government.
They swear an oath to faithfully uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.
So that oath means something.
The authority of the Constitution means something.
So that's a higher power.
The general is a higher power than the lieutenant.
The Constitution is a higher power than say a local law.
That's why the Supreme Court has ruled that any law that is repugnant to the U.S. Constitution is null and void.
So if a law goes against a higher law, it's null and void.
So we need to be subject to the higher power in our life.
Well here's how it works.
Wives, your husband is in authority over you, but he's not the highest authority in your life.
The highest authority in your life is God.
The reason that you obey your husband is because God told you to obey your husband.
The reason that children obey their parents is because God told children to obey their parents.
But wait a minute.
If your authority figure, whether it be your parent, your husband, or your boss at work tells you to lie,
or tells you to steal, or tells you to commit murder, or tells you to commit adultery,
you do not have to obey.
And in fact, if you do, you're going to be judged by God because God does not tell you to sin when you're told to sin.
If somebody tells you to sin, I don't care who it is, you don't do it.
Now a lot of people, they don't want to obey the authorities in their life,
so they kind of dream up these conflicts between God and their authority that aren't really there.
For example, a wife will say, my husband forbids me to go to church,
but I'm going to go anyway because we ought to obey God rather than men,
but it turns out that he actually might have just forbidden her to go to a certain church.
Well, if he forbids her a certain church but she can still go to another good Bible-believing church,
then she should bring both into conformity, obey God by going to church,
and obey her husband by going to a church that he's not offended by.
Now if he's demanding that she attend a wicked church or something that's of the devil,
then she shouldn't obey that.
But she should try to find a way to make things right and line things up between God and her husband.
And children should try to find a way to obey their parents and God at the same time
and try to work something out and try, if at all possible, to live at peace with all men.
But folks, there comes a point in time where you have to draw the line.
If your husband is telling you to sin, you can't do it.
I mean, there are women out there that have been told to have an abortion by their husband.
And they just say, well, you know, the Bible says to obey my husband, so I guess this is on him.
No, that's on you. That's on you if you go and commit that murderous act or whatever.
So we need to understand that obedience to the authorities in our life, it has a limit.
And here, Sapphira could have at this point done the right thing,
but instead she chose to lie with her husband, to lie for him.
And he's telling her to lie. He concocted this plan.
And she goes along with it, and you know what? She gets her own individual judgment from God.
This story could have ended differently if Sapphira would have walked in and Peter confronts her.
Yea, did you sell the land for so much?
I mean, at that point she should have known something was up.
And at that point she could have said, no, I'm sorry, it's a lie.
Here's the actual amount that we sold it for.
And you know what? She wouldn't have died.
But because she was given the chance to do her own right thing, then she did it wrong and she died.