Read

Acts 5:11 "Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events."

Think

One sentence changed the atmosphere of the entire early church. "Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events." Fear. Not excitement. Not warm feelings. Not a fresh wave of enthusiasm. Fear. And Luke, the historian, the doctor who chose his words with surgical precision, uses the word "seized." Fear seized them. It grabbed hold of them. It did not knock politely and wait to be invited in. It took hold of them and would not let go.

In our culture, we have largely removed fear from the vocabulary of faith. We have traded holy reverence for comfortable familiarity. We talk about God like he is our life coach, our spiritual companion, our cosmic barista serving up blessings on demand. And there is truth to the intimacy of our relationship with God. He is our Father. He does invite us close. But the God who invites us close is also the God whose holiness made Isaiah cry out, "I am undone." The God who holds us is the same God who holds the oceans in the palm of his hand. And when we lose sight of that, we start treating him like something small.

I was sitting on the beach a while back, watching the waves roll in. Small waves. Nothing dramatic. Just the steady rhythm of the surf against the sand. And I thought about something that stopped me. That little wave, the one I could practically step over, was caused by something 238,000 miles away. A moon so massive it pulls the entire ocean toward itself. We go through life and we see the little waves of God’s glory. A sunset that takes your breath away. A child being born. A moment of unexpected provision when you had no idea where the money was going to come from. And we think, "Nice little wave." But we rarely stop to consider the sheer magnitude of what is behind it.

The fear that seized the early church in Acts 5 was not the fear of a bully. It was the fear of magnitude. These believers had been living in the presence of God’s power for weeks and months. They had watched the lame walk and the sick recover. They had seen lives transformed by the preaching of the gospel. And then, in one staggering moment, they saw the other side of that same power. They encountered the full weight of a God who is not to be trifled with. And it changed them. Not into cowering, frightened people who were afraid to come near God. It changed them into people who understood exactly who they were approaching.

Here is something interesting that is easy to miss. This is the first time Luke uses the word "church" in the book of Acts. He has been describing this community of believers, this gathering, this fellowship. But it is here, in this moment of collective encounter with God’s holiness, that he first calls them a church. As if the encounter with holy fear is what forged them into one body. A group of people who have not reckoned with the holiness of God is a gathering. A group of people who have? That is a church. There is a weight to the word that we have lost in our culture, and this is where it comes from. The church was born in awe.

I said in a sermon once that the number one attribute of God is not love. And I could see the heads snap back. We would rather have a God who is happy and peppy and bursting with love. The Prozac Jesus. The pale, frail, blue-eyed Jesus who just kind of follows us around and when we need him, we call on him because he is there to make us happy. But the Bible says from cover to cover that the chief quality of God is one of holiness. Not love? No, not love. His love is real, but it flows from his holiness. Everything does. His grace is a holy grace. His mercy is a holy mercy. His forgiveness is a holy forgiveness. Remove the holiness, and none of the rest means anything.

That wave on the beach looked small. Easy to step over. Harmless. But behind it was a force that could swallow a coastline. The early church had been walking alongside the gentle waves of God’s grace. And then they saw the moon. They saw the magnitude. And they were seized with the kind of fear that does not paralyze but transforms. That is the fear the Bible invites us into. Not the fear of punishment, but the fear of proximity to something so vast, so holy, so other than anything we have ever known, that the only appropriate response is to fall to our knees.

Apply

Sit with his magnitude – Spend time today simply acknowledging who God is. Not what he can do for you. Not what you need from him. Just who he is. Holy. Set apart. Vast beyond comprehension. Let that reality reshape how you approach him.

Pray

God, I confess that I have been too familiar. I have treated you like a comfortable companion and forgotten that you are the holy, sovereign, all-powerful Creator of the universe. Restore in me a reverent fear. Not a fear that drives me away from you, but a fear that drives me to my knees before you. You are worthy of that kind of awe. In Jesus’ name. Amen.