The First Front | Acts 5:1-11

This week we come to one of the most disturbing scenes in the New Testament — Acts 5:1–11. A husband and wife. A sold field. A hidden portion. And one of the strangest questions Peter ever asked: "Why has Satan filled your heart?" It's a question most modern Christians don't know what to do with. The devil sounds like a Halloween costume. We'd rather translate Peter's question into something more respectable — bad psychology, social conditioning, anything but a real enemy. But Luke won't let us off that easily. He's writing under the inspiration of the Spirit, and what he wants us to see is that the serpent is back in the garden — only now the garden is the church. And that means every one of us, this Sunday morning, is sitting on a battlefield we didn't know we were on. This is the first of three sermons walking through Acts 5–6, where Luke shows us three different fronts of the same war: the devil, the flesh, and the world. We'll start with the most ancient enemy and the most surprising front — your own heart.