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, okay.
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, okay.
And it's no coincidence that in this exact chapter, what does it say later in this very
chapter?
"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 under the higher power,
which is God.
The Bible says in Romans chapter 13, "Let every soul be subject under 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, I'll ask Brother Sagora, 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, okay? 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, okay? 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 US 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, okay. You know, for example, a wife will say, "Well, you know, 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.
That's 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.