We Care Far Too Much About What Others Think

Businesswoman Being Gossiped About By Colleagues In Office

Father, I am grateful for some downtime as well as the opportunity to work on things for Sunday’s services and some other important things. May our time together here be fruitful. Amen.

Acts 5:1-11 (<<click here to read the passage)

At the end of my high school / middle school route, I have a turnaround. I have one student on that stretch of road, so I drive down to a crossroad and turn left, take another left, and then take a right. So, where I was heading south, after the turnaround I’m now heading north. A huge water tower sits in the middle of that triangle.

I don’t know why it bothers me, but if someone is behind me, or coming towards me, just about every time I think to myself. “There probably think I’ve lost it! Any normal driver would have taken a left at the first road I come to, instead of going the long way around!”

But doing it that way gets me the result that I need – to drop that one student off in the safest manner possible. There’s no other way for me to do it.

Why do we care so much about what people think? Many of us struggle with what we wear, how our yard looks, or who we hang out with (or who we avoid!) all because we care far too much about what others think of us.

As we’ve talked about in these first verses of Acts, many in this new fellowship were selling properties and giving the proceeds to the apostles to help the less fortunate. It was a great idea, and many benefited from their generosity. The thing is nobody made anybody else do it. There was no real pressure placed on anyone to take part.

More than likely Ananias and Saphira were overall pretty good people. They saw others selling and donating and decided to do the same. We can only speculate as to why they decided to hold back some of the proceeds. And truth be told, nobody would have thought twice if they had done so. But the thing is they must have thought someone would think less of them if the truth were known. So, in essence, the only pressure to make it look like they were giving all they had received from the sale of their property was the pressure they placed on themselves. Basically, they just cared far too much about what others might think. And they paid the ultimate price for their pride and hypocrisy.

Now it’s easy to think that their punishment for lying – of all things! – was pretty harsh. As my Life Application Study Bible states, “I thought God was supposed to be loving and forgiving. I thought all that wrath stuff was for Old Testament times.” With an emphasis on grace and mercy, it’s easy to overlook the equally important truth of God’s holiness. We must remember that God has not changed (Malachi 3:6). He still hates sin as much as he ever did…even today.

Lord Jesus, I pray that we all will see the seriousness of sin. Help us to forsake it all, for serving You has greater rewards than anything we might be able to achieve here. Amen.

Feb 3^rd, 2022, Thurs, 4:00 pm