Introduction
The book of acts was written by Apostle Paul with the greater intention s of creating a realistic understanding of the word of God and the promises he made as it was portrayed through the inspirations of the God to people to deliver on his behalf. In the first congregation there was the temptation of the church concerning the finances and they realized that these could not go without being solved in a realistic manner. There were internal and external problems both inside and outside the earlier church this is according to the acts chapters 6and 7.they were problems in all local churches and these needed to be confronted. The very first problem according to the Acts of apostle was an internal illness concerning the collecting of the funds. The funds brought a lot of misunderstandings in the church and this was proven by the case of Ananias’s and his wife Saphira in acts chapter 5. Despite having promised to sell the piece of land and delivering all the money gotten out of it to the house of God they succumbed intro temptations of hiding some amount of the money yet they were bold enough to say before the leaders of the church that they had brought the whole amount. After the first problem of the collecting of the money the second followed whereby money distribution became hectic. The finances in the church brought a lot of conflict and this has been a continuing trend into the modern day church. What made Ananias and his wife hide some share of the money is multiplied in the modern church. Out of these happenings the people of the church are given the chance to learn a lot. The teachings of trustworthiness, honesty and sincerity are born onto our lives. The modern day believers should be people who are to be trusted with the church funds and they should be honest on the way they use them. People who tried to joke with the affairs of the church earlier did suffer greatly and no current believer should be subjected to it due to his or her greed for money.
Daly, Speedy and Jackson refers to the book of Acts chapter 6:1-7; the Bible talks of the complaints by the Greek speaking Jews on the way the church did take care of the widowed in the society. These Hellenist did complain that their widows were not taken care of with the same magnitude as the others. As a result of this the apostles did decide that men be appointed to oversee the process and take care for the sake of fairness. These men had to be righteous and not just any men of which the local church should follow the spelt out determinants according to Acts chapter 6 where the lord had promised to give out the specifications to guide though choice of the right men. Under all this fuss was the problem of what poor people should the church care for using its funds. Out of this issue their followed advocacy concerning the independence of the local church whereby each and every local church was to decide in itself what local poor people it should care for. Rather than this the modern day church does form the unit such as the board and institutions to with the aim of centralizing and conducting a supervisory role of the local churches. Supervisory roles were never done in the times of New Testament nor did the leaders assume the same role in evangelism and duration benevolence times. Each of the local church was free to make decision without any guidance from the earthly institutions. The church of the older times did take care of its destitute widow’s physical need and as a result the highest ranked leaders did not take such work as their primary core. The leaders of the church did delegate the material concerns to the local churches and they instead majored on teachings on the spirituality of the members of the early congregation. According to acts for any local church to prosper in Gods work it should be mandated to deal with is internal ills. From this perspective of the first congregation the modern day church should earn on the importance independence and delegation of the roles by the highest ranked leaders of the church. There should be no need of having to centralize the authority that shall be overlooking the actions of the many local churches. The local church needs to be left free to made rational decisions on how to utilize its funds. There should be no units that literally do govern the sub branches from a remote place.
Stephen’s Preaching
According to Stephen’s preaching which led to his arrest, he said that corrective action to the religious leaders were healthy to ensure they stuck to the dos and don’ts of the Christian life. Due to this, he was exposed to the opposition of the today’s congregation which said that the religious leaders should not be corrected and we should tolerate the other people’s perspectives and should not say that other religious people are wrong. Similar to the apostles and the few faithful leaders of the church, throughout the book of Acts Stephen is portrayed to correct men who commit sins. According to Acts chapter 4 and 5 the Stephen’s preaching of the truth effectively led to great opposition. People did disapprove his teaching and instead turned to the world of lies and prosecution which proved the prophecy made by Jesus in the book of Mathew 5:10-12. As the members of the modern day church we should not be ignorant of the facts and victims of evil just like the people who opposed Stephen. People of the modern church should be bold enough to stand firm and face the truth of the word of God just like Stephen.
According to Daly, Speedy and Jackson (2004) Joseph was sold to Egypt by his brother due to envy as he was the most preferred son of his father. Through him the descendants of Abraham became slaves in Egypt though God blessed him in many ways till he became the governor of the land. When hunger struck the land, Joseph the governor had set Egypt into the right preparation but the brothers on the other hand were caught unawares and resulted to Egypt to buy food where they met with him. Joseph did recognize them and he forgave after which he offered to provide for them. The moral of this incident is that the people of the present day church should never envy each of the other persons luck and should instead glorify at their attainment because no one knows when the craving will strike. Secondly people should learn to forgive and forget as per their capacities and let the rest be the work of the Lord (Thomas 1997). People should not revenge any bad doings for it causes more harm than good to their reputation and relationships. From the story of Joseph we also learn that we should not be biased and prefer others at the expense of their counter parts. Our love and liking of all the people should be same and not divided.
Story of Moses
From the book of Acts it’s told of how Moses was brought up as the son to the king’s daughter yet he was an Israelite. He witnessed the brutalities that were faced by his people and he was chosen by God to liberate them. Due to the Gods power he escaped death as a child from Pharaoh. In acts 7:23-29, Moses fled Egypt after having killed a person who was mistreating the Israelites and had realized that people knew he had killed when he wanted to make peace between two Israelites who were fighting. Afterwards, through the burning bush, God calls Moses and sends him back to Egypt to free the enslaved Israelites. He gives him the power to perform great miracles through which Pharaoh is defeated and releases the Israelites. This fulfils Gods promise to the Israelites. Despite all these the people of Israel did not stick to their promises yet God did deliver them to the Promised Land. At one time they even worshipped the idols yet they were supposed to stick to the Lord who had liberated them from Egypt the land of slavery.
Conclusion
The promises given to the people of Israel and the teachings derived from them do not have any ambiguities and the people do not need any more of teaching from the teacher of word in order to understand them. The persons who have heard these promises do not need any further clarification in order to benefit from them. They just need to be rational enough and seek the right understanding of the real implications and the benefits sought shall be attained. According to Thomas (1997) God made promises and fulfilled them and these need not to be further stressed for there to be any understanding of their implications and derivation of the relative benefits. Hearers of these promises do have nothing left to make them gain from the promises.
References
Thomas, S 1997, Book of acts unique contribution, Adelaide University.
Daly, J, Speedy, S & Jackson, F 2004, Teachings according to Acts, Elsevier, Sydney. Web.
Kenneth, B 1984, Holy Bible, New International Version, World Publishing, Johnson City, CN, USA.