The resurrection isn’t the end of the story: it’s the beginning of the revolution. Following Easter, join us for our Sunday gatherings at Midtown as we explore the book of Acts, which follows the earliest years of the church and provides a profound glimpse into the revolutionary nature of the Kingdom of God. This isn’t simply the start of a new religious sect that we reflect on appreciatively; it isn’t simply another social group we recall and draw inspiration from; it is the reporting of the cosmic drama of God and humanity, together in partnership to bring flourishing to all things, the same cosmic drama we participate in today. This is the remarkable next of the resurrection.
Listen as Pastor Clint explores one of the more challenging passages from the book of Acts in the story of Ananias and Sapphira, and the way it teaches all of us to ruthlessly eliminate deception from our lives.
Sermon Resources
1. Study of lying on resumes: https://standout-cv.com/usa/study-fake-job-references-resume-lies#how-many
2. "Humbuggery and Manipulation: The Art of Leadership," by Frederick George Bailey
3. Review of presidential statements: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarkowitz/2021/04/30/who-lied-more-during-their-first-100-days-biden-trump-or-obama/?sh=3cd74a6a1a89
4. “The majority of politicians…are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.” -Harold Pinter, "Art, Truth, and Politics"
5. Study on middle schoolers lying: https://brandongaille.com/24-nose-growing-statistics-on-lying/
6. “There is perhaps nothing that so marks us as human as the gift of speech…By speaking, we can reveal the hiddenness of thought, we can express the subtlest as well as the most devastating of emotions, we can heal, we can make poems, we can pray. All of which is to say we can speak truth—the truth of what it is to be ourselves, to be with each other, to be in the world—and such speaking as that is close to what being human is all about. What makes lying an evil is not only that the world is deceived by it, but that we are dehumanized by it.” -Frederick Buechner, "Wishful Thinking"
7. “If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors' prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities - and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared.”―Wendell Berry, "The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays"
8. “The Holy Spirit releases all the resources of God into the life of the believer so that, in response, they can release all of their resources to God. Then, in turn, the Spirit utilizes those surrendered resources for the needs of the people in our lives–not just our lands, but our love and affection, our caring and assistance, our listening and sharing, our comfort and courage. Any time we withhold ourselves in refusing to give affirmation and assurance, we sin against the family of God.” -Lloyd John Ogilvie, "The Drumbeat of Love"
9. “There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.” -C.S. Lewis
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