Here are two church members who apparently did not take Satan into consideration. They listened to a lie and were divided, first of all, from God's church and then from life itself. What did Satan do? He moved them toward self-satisfaction to the point—here was the actual sin—that they lied to take credit for a greater sacrifice than they actually made.
The sad part of this is that no one asked them to donate the entire sale price of the piece of land. What happened was they committed themselves to it and then undoubtedly began to feel put on. "Hey, Sapphira, that's too much money." Or, "Hey, Ananias, I agree with you." Maybe they began to think, "We didn't expect we'd get so much money from the sale of this and that is too much to donate to the common cause." They began to think, undoubtedly, of other uses that they could put the money to. "We could buy clothing. We could improve a part of our house. We could buy another piece of land as an investment and reap even greater rewards from it."
They had apparently already told those who were in charge of the collection that they would contribute the entire amount of the sale and then, when the time came to give the contribution, they only gave a part of it but let on like it was the entire sale price. The difference between the two they kept for themselves.
I wonder who it was who led them to dare to lie? Do you see the process? Satan has modus operandis and he is always going to move us in the direction of self-satisfaction at the expense of obedience to God, or at the expense of service to God, or at the expense of service to others, so that we elevate ourselves over the others.
