Facing Opposition With Truth

Just to remind you of where we are in the book of Acts and show you how all of this ties together, we saw in chapter 5 that there was the attack of satan inside of the church through Ananias and Sapphira and their hypocrisy. Their hypocrisy wasn’t that they kept back part of the price of the land that they sold, but their hypocrisy, their sin, was they made as though they were giving everything to God when, in reality, they had kept back part. They had a right to keep back part, it was theirs. They didn’t have to give anything to the Lord, but it was the hypocrisy that God was dealing with, so satan was attacking the church from the inside. No sooner had satan attacked the church from the inside, and God brought the purity by taking Ananias and Sapphira out, but now satan attacks from the outside. We see that satan does that, he attacks from the inside with sin and hypocrisy and false doctrine, and he also attacks the church from the outside with persecution.