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NASB | Acts 5:11 And great fear came over the whole church, and over all who heard of these things. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Acts 5:11 And great fear and awe gripped the whole church, and all who heard about these things. |
Subject: Why was there fear here? |
Bible Note: Bear another comment, this one on “telling the truth”. I hope it is not as bad where you are. The believers I know do not tell the truth. And that, as I have found out from them, is different from telling a lie. It is quite similar to the case of Ananias and Sapphira. They would say, “Yes, we got a thousand dollars for it” when they got two thousand. The idea would be that the thousand is included in the two thousand. Or they would say they just did not feel the need to answer the question exactly. They would say they will see you at three in the afternoon and never show up. That was a statement, you see, and not really a promise. You would see them three months later and they would apologize, and you would wonder if the reason they are giving is the truth. I came to the conclusion that people, even Christians, need to learn the need to tell the truth. I talked to clients about keeping their promises. “When you vowest a vow …” (Ecclesiastes 5). I showed them that it was better to say no, rather than to say yes when they meant no (Matthew 5:37). I encouraged them to refrain from making promises if they would not do everything reasonably within their power to keep those promises. One young lady stopped making promises. The fact is that people in church say things that vary from reality all of the time and I guess they just don’t think of it as lying. They say things that make them look spiritual and are not true. “I’ll call you tomorrow” sounds good but means nothing. “I talked to five people this week but none of them was really interested”. In a Sunday School class this gives the impression of having tried to witness, when it means I talked to at least five people. We used to say in our ministry that our job is to put ourselves out of work. We tell people we will see them for only a predetermined number of sessions and the idea is to motivate them to learn how to solve their own problems instead of becoming dependent on us. We hope they will internalize our methods, and this seems to work well. Yet it does not seem to put us out of business. People always have problems. But there is another kind of client that we like to see, and that is the type who wants to do God’s will and needs help setting up a ministry. A Sunday School teacher who wants to do a better job. A pastor who is discouraged and feels the need for a different approach. A newly-saved person who is wondering what the Lord will have them to do. One man is burdened now because he has just returned from Sweden, a prosperous socialistic country. It is a postmodern society, he says, where people see Christianity as a curiosity, a relic of the past, and laugh off any serious effort at evangelism. The brother would like to return to that country to do a ministry in evangelism, but he is not confident that he has the gift for it. Now we hope he will keep his word and come in for a gifts analysis and some training in line with his gift. We work with this type as well as those who have emotional or behavioral problems. But will he keep his word? Or was he just trying to impress me? There is no denying that Christians need to learn the importance of telling the truth. There are many Ananiases and many Sapphiras in the church today. With a lax attitude about integrity all around us, I think we have to be careful not to become a part of that lifestyle. It is so easy to pretend to be holy. But “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, … , false witness (Matthew 15:19). To tell the truth, we need to keep our heart with all diligence; for out of it are the real issues of life (Proverbs 4:23). |