HelpFinder Bible - Flipbook - Page 1357
ACTS 7
page 987
26 “The next day he visited them again and
saw two men of Israel fighting. He tried to be a
peacemaker. ‘Men,’ he said, ‘you are brothers.
Why are you fighting each other?’
27 “But the man in the wrong pushed Moses
aside. ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over
us?’ he asked. 28 ‘Are you going to kill me as you
killed that Egyptian yesterday?’ 29 When Moses
heard that, he fled the country and lived as a
foreigner in the land of Midian. There his two
sons were born.
30 “Forty years later, in the desert near Mount
Sinai, an angel appeared to Moses in the flame
of a burning bush. 31 When Moses saw it, he was
amazed at the sight. As he went to take a closer
look, the voice of the Lord called out to him,
32 ‘I am the God of your ancestors—the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses shook with
terror and did not dare to look.
33 “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your
sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.
34 I have certainly seen the oppression of my
people in Egypt. I have heard their groans and
have come down to rescue them. Now go, for I
am sending you back to Egypt.’*
35 “So God sent back the same man his people
had previously rejected when they demanded,
‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’
Through the angel who appeared to him in the
burning bush, God sent Moses to be their ruler
and savior. 36 And by means of many wonders
and miraculous signs, he led them out of Egypt,
through the Red Sea, and through the wilderness for forty years.
37 “Moses himself told the people of Israel,
‘God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from
among your own people.’* 38 Moses was with
our ancestors, the assembly of God’s people in
the wilderness, when the angel spoke to him
at Mount Sinai. And there Moses received lifegiving words to pass on to us.*
39 “But our ancestors refused to listen to
Moses. They rejected him and wanted to return
to Egypt. 40 They told Aaron, ‘Make us some
gods who can lead us, for we don’t know what
has become of this Moses, who brought us out
of Egypt.’ 41 So they made an idol shaped like
a calf, and they sacrificed to it and celebrated
over this thing they had made. 42 Then God
turned away from them and abandoned them
to serve the stars of heaven as their gods! In the
book of the prophets it is written,
‘Was it to me you were bringing sacrifices
and offerings
during those forty years in the
wilderness, Israel?
7:31-34 Exod 3:5-10. 7:37 Deut 18:15. 7:38 Some
manuscripts read to you. 7:42-43 Amos 5:25-27 (Greek
version). 7:44 Greek the tent of witness. 7:46 Some
manuscripts read the house of Jacob. 7:49-50 Isa 66:1-2.
7:51 Greek uncircumcised.
43
No, you carried your pagan gods—
the shrine of Molech,
the star of your god Rephan,
and the images you made to worship
them.
So I will send you into exile
as far away as Babylon.’*
44 “Our ancestors carried the Tabernacle*
with them through the wilderness. It was constructed according to the plan God had shown
to Moses. 45 Years later, when Joshua led our
ancestors in battle against the nations that God
drove out of this land, the Tabernacle was taken
with them into their new territory. And it stayed
there until the time of King David.
46 “David found favor with God and asked for
the privilege of building a permanent Temple
for the God of Jacob.* 47 But it was Solomon
who actually built it. 48 However, the Most High
doesn’t live in temples made by human hands.
As the prophet says,
49
50
‘Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
Could you build me a temple as good as
that?’
asks the Lord.
‘Could you build me such a resting place?
Didn’t my hands make both heaven and
earth?’*
51 “You stubborn people! You are heathen* at
heart and deaf to the truth. Must you forever resist the Holy Spirit? That’s what your ancestors
• Persecution
A C TS 7:51–8:3
The central message of Christianity, that
all have sinned and are lost apart from
Christ, is offensive to most people. After
all, we humans are proud, and we don’t
like to think that we are ever in the wrong.
Because Christianity is offensive, those
who bear its message are perceived as
offensive also. Stephen became the first
Christian martyr because the Jewish
leaders who sent Jesus to the cross were
enraged by his ringing accusation of their
sin. As believers, we must ask God for
the courage to speak the truth and the
grace to endure any unjust treatment
that may result. When we consider the
impact of Stephen’s death—the eventual
conversion of the young man Saul (later
called Paul) and the spread of the Good
News (Acts 8:4)—we see that even
terrible persecution, in God’s hands, can
lead to great good.