Acts 5

Hypocrisy - now, there's a word: the pretending of having virtues, principles, or beliefs that one in fact does not have.
Synonyms: cant, dissembling, dissimulation, insincerity, piousness, sanctimoniousness.
Related Words: deception, deceptiveness, dishonesty, falsity, pretense, pretension, pretentiousness, self-righteousness, self-satisfaction; duplicity, fakery, falseness, fraudulentness, shamming; artificiality, glibness, oiliness, smoothness, unctuousness

The church wasn't even "five" days old when hypocrisy had already shown up, here in Acts 5. I believe that hypocrisy is the main reason that people leave the church or never even give the church a try. I think the world can forgive a Christian for what seems to be a "natural" - for lack of a better word -sin, but a true deception of our beliefs the world does not let us off the hook...and they will use it against us. In this chapter, God kills the couple that lied to Him...tried to pull one over by only giving part of what they promised. I was thinking, wow, little harsh don't you think. But no...God knew and knows how hypocrisy kills the church, kills the Christian witness...it had to be dealt with severely. Maybe if it was handled this way today, the hypocrisy would be less. The people in Jerusalem that saw this punishment were scared! "And a great fear came over the whole church," v. 11

Now, having said that, the world has it's responsibility too. The Christian is not Jesus, only human and the world needs to look at Christ and the Bible for the truth, not pin it all on the example of the follower; we will mess up. But we need to recognize the severity of the consequences of some of our actions especially the more public they are. In my own life I have been involved in a very public sin, and I know people that will probably never turn to Christ because of me and what I did...I am just so grateful that God let me live so I could come to a point of return and repentance. I'm just so sorry for the people that I misrepresented Jesus to, and I wish I could turn back time.

The last part of the chapter starts the real persecution of the apostles for proclaiming Jesus Christ. Here they are flogged. The persecution and martyrdom will continue even through today and into the future, until Christ returns. People get mad when you talk about Jesus, don't they? You can bring up any other religious leader and people can have a normal debate, but boy, bring up Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, and people's dander gets all worked up and they don't want to hear it or talk about it. Jesus' name carries an amazing amount of power.

The power of the Holy Spirit inside the first century church is a beauty to behold, because no matter the beatings, whipping, killings the church went through, they kept proclaiming the Gospel. And it is only with the Holy Spirit that we would be able to do the same. How real Jesus must have been to them. How real and precious the Word of God. We could only hope that it is that for us.