The church of our Lord Jesus is compromised.  The hearts of many have grown cold.  The impact on morality in the 21^st century is rapidly waning.  Church attendance has been abandoned for every kind of activity from shopping, recreation, children’s sports, family outings, and just plain complacency.  And, to make a profit on Sunday’s, businesses are open to cater to all the people who live devoid of any honor of God on the Lord’s Day.  We have no fear of the God of the Bible.  Most would not admit to atheism, but just live as those who deny His existence. 

In the Book of Acts, a couple sought to receive the praise of people and disregard the holiness of God.  God judged Ananias and Sapphira for their flagrant dishonesty and façade of being holy when their hearts were filled with greed. He has not changed…..

Ananias and Sapphira’s story is told in the context of the actions of “all the believers” (Acts 4:32). They knew of the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3), and Ananias’s lie reversed an earlier promise that he would give the whole amount of the sale to the Lord. Ananias and his wife had conspired to garner the accolades of the church; but their conspiracy led to the sin unto death. 

The case of Ananias and Sapphira illustrates the fact that even believers can be led into bold, flagrant sin. It was Satan that had filled their hearts to lie in this way (Acts 5:3) and “to test the Spirit of the Lord” (verse 9). Covetousness, hypocrisy, and a desire for the praise of men all played a part in their demise.

The sudden, dramatic deaths of Ananias and Sapphira served to purify and warn the church. “Great fear seized the whole church” (Acts 5:11). Right away, in the church’s infancy, God made it plain that hypocrisy and dissimulation were not going to be tolerated, and His judgment of Ananias and Sapphira helped guard the church against future pretense. God laid the bodies of Ananias and Sapphira in the path of every hypocrite who would seek to enter the church. 

The sad story of Ananias and Sapphira is not some obscure incident from the Old Testament regarding a violation of Mosaic Law. This occurred in the first-century church to believers in Jesus Christ. The story of Ananias and Sapphira is a reminder to us today that God sees the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), that He hates sin, and that He is concerned for the purity of His church.

(this section on Ananias and Sapphira was taken from www.gotquestions.org/Ananias-and-Sapphira.html

In 1982, “ABC Evening News” reported on an unusual work of modern art; a chair affixed to a shotgun. It was to be viewed by sitting in the chair and looking directly into the gun barrel. The gun was loaded and set on a timer to fire at an undetermined moment within the next hundred years. The amazing thing was that people waited in lines to sit and stare into the shell’s path! They all knew the gun could go off at point-blank range at any moment, but they were gambling that the fatal blast wouldn’t happen during THEIR minute in the chair.

Yes, it was foolhardy, yet many people who wouldn’t dream of sitting in that chair live a lifetime gambling that they can get away with sin. Foolishly they ignore the risk until the inevitable self-destruction.  (Copied).