This morning’s reading yielded some thought. Amongst the passages of the persecution of the church in Acts, I find in chapter 9 verse 31, “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.”
It brought to mind too Proverbs 1:7, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
Many in the church have lost sight of this. And maybe we misunderstand what it means by “the fear of the Lord.” Let’s start there.
The fear of the Lord for the believer is not the same as that which should be felt by those to whom Jonathan Edwards was speaking in his famous sermon, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God.” Edwards got that from Hebrews 10:31 – “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” And maybe that’s what people always think when they think “fear of the Lord.”
But look – in Acts 9 they say the church “had peace and was being built up,” and that in its fear of the Lord it was “walking…in the comfort of the Holy Spirit.” And we see in Proverbs that walking in the fear of the Lord is the way of knowledge. These aren’t passages that are telling us to cower in sniveling fear, afraid to do anything useful with our lives. These are passages that point to joy and peace and understanding. It’s a matter of completeness in God.
And the Church multiplied. All before it was some big political power. Even while its members were being hunted down, imprisoned, and in some cases, put to death.
The Church multiplied.
But the true Church doesn’t multiply when it becomes tethered to political power. It shrinks. Because we know that the Church is the people of God, not some building where people go that they may gather with others to condemn the world around them.
There are so many people with which I’d rather spend my time than some of the people of the “church.” I’d rather pour myself into them and show them what I feel and believe. Because I think it’s so easy for them to think Christians only want to “Jonathan Edwards” them right into hell. Don’t get me wrong – there is certainly a place for warning. There is a place to show people their sin in the face of God. But Peter tells us we must do it with “gentleness and respect,” not with words of hate.
Rosaria Butterfield wrote a wonderful book (well, a couple of wonderful books now) called The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. Butterfield was an English professor at Syracuse – a lesbian who was heavily involved in the Feminist and LGBTQ movements – until she met a pastor who showed her the true love of Christ. And what was striking to Butterfield was that the community from which she came was so much better at doing life with others than many of the Christians she had known. And sure, we Christians have our potlucks and our breakfasts, and occasionally we throw a bone to the poor in the community, but something’s missing. And Butterfield noticed that, and it she gets to the heart of it in her next book, The Gospel comes with a House Key.
So we see right there in Acts 9 that the church in those places was being built up, walking in the fear of God and the comfort of the Holy Spirit and we have to wonder, where did we lose it? Where did it become so much “us against them?” Where did it become “the fear of man?” The fear of the “Blacks” and the “Mexicans” and the “Democrats”? What on earth caused so many of the “church” to run into the arms of such sinful men of low character over the past several years?
I’ve posted recently about a Youtuber from Colorado who’s just been so much fun to watch. I see the people with whom he spends his time and I know their views and I’m convinced that a great many churchgoers would scorn the man and his friends. But I see lost opporutnity. I’d love to hang out with him and show him someone who understands the sinfulness of others (and myself) but loves them anyway. Someone who knows that It’s not my place to condemn and that God’s taken care of all of that.
Who knows? Maybe it’s the life I lead right now that takes me down this path. That has me so interested in a persecuted first century church whose secret is simply the fear of the Lord and letting him take care of it.
Peace. Knowledge. The comfort of the Holy Spirit. All things that I can live with. That anyone should be able to.
Where did we go wrong?