Pages of Joy // John Greco

Read Acts 5:1–11.

Every six months, I pull out the ladder from the garage and change out all the batteries in our home’s smoke detectors. We had lived in our house for more than five years, and there have never been any mishaps with our detectors. But when I swapped out the batteries this particular time, I must have had a dud in the batch. A few hours after my chore was complete, the smoke detector in the hallway began chirping loudly—so loudly that my then three-year-old, Luke, started crying.

I ran back out to the garage as quickly as I could, grabbed my ladder, and swapped out the problematic nine-volt. But for days thereafter, Luke kept talking about the loud noise the smoke detector had made. He wanted to sit on my lap, and he needed me to tell him it wouldn’t happen again. The experience clearly rocked his toddler world.

In Acts 5, we read about an incident that rocked the world of the early church in Jerusalem. Ananias and Sapphira sold some acreage and gave a portion of the money they received to the church. It was a wonderful and kind act. But there was a problem: they lied and said their gift represented the entire amount they had received from the sale. Judgment came quickly. Both Ananias and Sapphira fell down dead when confronted with their sin. As a result, a tremendous spirit of fear came over the church.

To our modern sensibilities, this brand of lightning-quick judgment is unnerving. We’re not accustomed to God serving up justice immediately. And yet He has every right to do as He pleases. None of us are guaranteed a tomorrow.

Fear can be a wonderful motivator. Just as our smoke detector malfunction got Luke’s attention and he clamored for his daddy, so the fear of the Lord, if rightly received, can cause us to long for the embrace of our heavenly Father. As the book of Psalms says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (110:11). So when you’re afraid, let it drive you to the one who is bigger than every fear.