Acts 5- Leadership in the early Church- PLEASE READ

The Church is now an infant. raising up form the death of Christ. The Jews were not accepting that Jesus was the Messiah. The Jews were looking for a "Martin L. King", someone who could pull them out of the mess they were in.
The leadership of the first-century church was not focusing on growth. No were did they plan on providing comforts that would draw people into the Church. The first Church was built on the revelation of Peter, not Peter himself. The revelation that Jesus was the Son of God. The death of Ananias and Sapphira was setting a president that one of the founding principles of the Church would be integrity. So many pastors have used this text as a verse to encourage people to tithe when in the verse it said it wasn't about the money, but the lie in-itself. The next foundation was power. The reason its second is because without integrity power can be twisted and misused. The third thing was allowing persecution to strengthen them. We cannot allow persecution to stop or slow them down. Persecution needs to strengthen you and make you excite you about what God has for you. The Apostles rejoiced that they were worthy to suffer persecution for the name of Jesus. The leaders of the early Church still proclaimed their message besides the fear and reality of persecution. It wasn't like they were saying "You think they will through us in jail if they catch us." They knew they would be persecuted because they already have been for the same thing. We have trouble preaching the gospel at the job because you don't want your reputation being messed up. Who cares if people think you are a fanatic for Christ because you should be. The word rejoice in verse 40 mean dancing about wildly, with anticipation on returning to the place that they just were arrested from. The priority of the Church should be preaching Jesus Christ, not the Youth or Children ministries. The last thing mentioned in this chapter is perseverance. No matter what happened they just kept trying to complete the mission that they KNEW God had celled them to do.

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