Our third lesson is: _The Holy Spirit testing the money_. All the money
that is given, even in a time when the Holy Spirit is moving mightily,
is not given under His inspiration. But it is all given under His holy
supervision, and He will from time to time, to each heart that honestly
yields to Him, reveal what there may be wanting or wrong. Listen:
"Barnabas having a field, sold it, and brought the money. _But_ Ananias
sold a possession and kept back part of the price, and brought a certain
part, and laid it at the Apostles' feet." Ananias brought his gift, and
with his wife was smitten dead. What can have made the gift such a
crime? He was a deceitful giver. He kept back part of the price. He
professed to give all, and did not. He gave with half a heart and
unwillingly, and yet would have the credit of having given all. In the
Pentecostal Church the Holy Ghost was the author of the giving: his sin
was against the Holy Ghost. No wonder that it is twice written: "great
fear came upon the whole Church, and upon all who heard it." If it is so
easy to sin even in giving, if the Holy Spirit watches and judges all
our giving, we may well beware and fear.
And what was the sin? Simply this: he did not give all he professed.
This sin, not in its greatest form, but in its spirit and more subtle
manifestations, is far more common than we think. Are there not many who
say they have given their all to God, and yet prove false to it in the
use of their money? Are there not many who say all their money is their
Lord's, and that they hold it as His stewards, to dispose of it as He
directs, and yet who, in the amount they spend on God's work, as
compared with that on themselves, and in accumulating for the future,
prove that Stewardship is but another name for ownership.
Without being exactly guilty of the sin of Judas, or Caiaphas, or Pilate
in crucifying our Lord, a believer may yet partake with them in the
spirit in which he acts. Even so we may be grieving the Holy Ghost,
even while we condemn the sin of Ananias, by giving way to the spirit in
which he acted, and withholding from God what we have professed to give
Him. Nothing can save us from this danger, but the holy fear of
ourselves, the very full and honest surrender of all our opinions, and
arguments, about how much we may possess, and how much we may give, to
the testing and searching of the Holy Spirit. Our giving must be in the
light, if it is to be in the joy of the Holy Ghost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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