Acts 5 NLT

People struck dead for lying to God; the apostles performing many signs & wonders; angelic jail breaks; floggings...pretty uneventful chapter...

The story of Ananias & Sapphira (vs 1-10) on the surface is a bit hard to swallow. They gave a bunch of money to the church and were struck dead right after. The problem had to do with their selfish and deceitful hearts. Certainly the lesson is not that we cannot keep money for ourselves if we sell something, but that we must not lie to God and we should give from a pure heart. 

The divine judgement upon them set a strong precedent at the beginning of this church era. It was also not out of character as this had happened before. (See the story of Achan in Joshua 7).

"Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events." (vs 11) It certainly got everyone's attention.

As their confidence and influence grew around Jerusalem, the apostles were seeing God doing amazing things - huge crowds, healings, people coming to the Lord. This also disturbed the Jewish leaders to the point where they again had them arrested, put into jail (an angel gets them out that night) and finally confronted them: "We gave you strict orders not to teach in his name..." (vs 24) THAT NAME AGAIN!!!

Peter's response was exactly what you would expect: "We must obey God rather than men!" (vs 29) And the familiar theme continues: "...God...raised Jesus from the dead - whom YOU had killed...We are witnesses..." (vs 30-32)

Then one of the coolest scenes unfolds as the furious leaders wanted to put them to death. A pharisee named Gamaliel stood up and made a persuasive case to let them go. Citing several other examples from the past where there were movements that ended up dying out, he concluded:

"Therefore in this present case I advise you to leave these men alone. Let them go. For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God." (vs 38-39)

Lord, let this be the standard that we use to view all of our purposes and activity - is it from God? If so, there's no stopping us. And there was certainly no stopping these courageous followers of Jesus either. "...they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news..." (vs 42)