Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Acts 6 - 8
Introduction (1:1-2)Christ's resurrection ministry (1:3-11)The period of waiting for the Holy Spirit (1:12-26)The filling with the Spirit (ch. 2)The healing of the lame man and the resultant arrest of Peter and John (3:1;4:31)The community of goods (4:32;5:11)The arrest of the 12 apostles (5:12-42)- The choice of the Seven (6:1-7)
- Stephen's arrest and martyrdom (6:8;7:60)
- The scattering of the Jerusalem believers (8:1-4)
- Philip's ministry (8:5-40)
ACTS 6 NLT
1 But as the believers rapidly multiplied,
there were rumblings of discontent. The Greek-speaking believers complained
about the Hebrew-speaking believers, saying that their widows were being
discriminated against in the daily distribution of food.
2 So the Twelve called a meeting of all
the believers. They said, “We apostles should spend our time teaching the word
of God, not running a food program.
3 And so, brothers, select seven men who
are well respected and are full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will give them
this responsibility.
4 Then we apostles can spend our time in
prayer and teaching the word.”
5 Everyone liked this idea, and they chose
the following: Stephen (a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit), Philip,
Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas of Antioch (an earlier convert
to the Jewish faith).
6 These seven were presented to the
apostles, who prayed for them as they laid their hands on them.
7 So God’s message continued to spread.
The number of believers greatly increased in Jerusalem, and many of the Jewish
priests were converted, too.
8 Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and
power, performed amazing miracles and signs among the people.
9 But one day some men from the Synagogue
of Freed Slaves, as it was called, started to debate with him. They were Jews
from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and the province of Asia.
10 None of them could stand against the
wisdom and the Spirit with which Stephen spoke.
11 So they persuaded some men to lie about
Stephen, saying, “We heard him blaspheme Moses, and even God.”
12 This roused the people, the elders, and
the teachers of religious law. So they arrested Stephen and brought him before
the high council.
13 The lying witnesses said, “This man is
always speaking against the holy Temple and against the law of Moses.
14 We have heard him say that this Jesus of
Nazareth will destroy the Temple and change the customs Moses handed down to
us.”
15 At this point everyone in the high
council stared at Stephen, because his face became as bright as an angel’s.
ACTS 7 NLT
1 Then the high priest asked Stephen, “Are
these accusations true?”
2 This was Stephen’s reply: “Brothers and
fathers, listen to me. Our glorious God appeared to our ancestor Abraham in
Mesopotamia before he settled in Haran.
3 God told him, ‘Leave your native land
and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you.’
4 So Abraham left the land of the
Chaldeans and lived in Haran until his father died. Then God brought him here
to the land where you now live.
5 “But God gave him no inheritance here,
not even one square foot of land. God did promise, however, that eventually the
whole land would belong to Abraham and his descendants—even though he had no
children yet.
6 God also told him that his descendants
would live in a foreign land, where they would be oppressed as slaves for
400 years.
7 ‘But I will punish the nation that
enslaves them,’ God said, ‘and in the end they will come out and worship me
here in this place.’
8“God also gave Abraham the covenant of
circumcision at that time. So when Abraham became the father of Isaac, he
circumcised him on the eighth day. And the practice was continued when Isaac
became the father of Jacob, and when Jacob became the father of the twelve
patriarchs of the Israelite nation.
9 “These patriarchs were jealous of their
brother Joseph, and they sold him to be a slave in Egypt. But God was with
him
10 and rescued him from all his troubles.
And God gave him favor before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. God also gave Joseph
unusual wisdom, so that Pharaoh appointed him governor over all of Egypt and
put him in charge of the palace.
11 “But a famine came upon Egypt and
Canaan. There was great misery, and our ancestors ran out of food.
12 Jacob heard that there was still grain
in Egypt, so he sent his sons—our ancestors—to buy some.
13 The second time they went, Joseph
revealed his identity to his brothers, and they were introduced to
Pharaoh.
14Then Joseph sent for his father, Jacob, and
all his relatives to come to Egypt, seventy-five persons in all.
15 So Jacob went to Egypt. He died there,
as did our ancestors.
16 Their bodies were taken to Shechem and
buried in the tomb Abraham had bought for a certain price from Hamor’s sons in
Shechem.
17 “As the time drew near when God would
fulfill his promise to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt greatly
increased.
18 But then a new king came to the throne
of Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph.
19 This king exploited our people and
oppressed them, forcing parents to abandon their newborn babies so they would
die.
20 “At that time Moses was born—a beautiful
child in God’s eyes. His parents cared for him at home for three months.
21 When they had to abandon him, Pharaoh’s
daughter adopted him and raised him as her own son.
22 Moses was taught all the wisdom of the
Egyptians, and he was powerful in both speech and action.
23 “One day when Moses was forty years old,
he decided to visit his relatives, the people of Israel.
24 He saw an Egyptian mistreating an
Israelite. So Moses came to the man’s defense and avenged him, killing the
Egyptian.
25 Moses assumed his fellow Israelites
would realize that God had sent him to rescue them, but they didn’t.
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 life-giving 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?
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 ‘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?
50 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 did, and so do you!
52 Name one prophet your ancestors didn’t
persecute! They even killed the ones who predicted the coming of the Righteous
One—the Messiah whom you betrayed and murdered.
53 You deliberately disobeyed God’s law,
even though you received it from the hands of angels.”
54 The Jewish leaders were infuriated by
Stephen’s accusation, and they shook their fists at him in rage.
55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit,
gazed steadily into heaven and saw the glory of God, and he saw Jesus standing
in the place of honor at God’s right hand.
56 And he told them, “Look, I see the
heavens opened and the Son of Man standing in the place of honor at God’s right
hand!”
57 Then they put their hands over their
ears and began shouting. They rushed at him
58 and dragged him out of the city and
began to stone him. His accusers took off their coats and laid them at the feet
of a young man named Saul.
59 As they stoned him, Stephen prayed,
“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
60 He fell to his knees, shouting, “Lord,
don’t charge them with this sin!” And with that, he died.
ACTS 8 NLT
1 Saul was one of the witnesses, and he
agreed completely with the killing of Stephen. Persecution Scatters the
Believers A great wave of persecution began that day, sweeping over the church
in Jerusalem; and all the believers except the apostles were scattered through
the regions of Judea and Samaria.
2 (Some devout men came and buried Stephen
with great mourning.)
3 But Saul was going everywhere to destroy
the church. He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to
throw them into prison.
4 But the believers who were scattered
preached the Good News about Jesus wherever they went.
5 Philip, for example, went to the city of
Samaria and told the people there about the Messiah.
6 Crowds listened intently to Philip
because they were eager to hear his message and see the miraculous signs he
did.
7 Many evil spirits were cast out,
screaming as they left their victims. And many who had been paralyzed or lame
were healed.
8So there was great joy in that city.
9 A man named Simon had been a sorcerer
there for many years, amazing the people of Samaria and claiming to be someone
great.
10 Everyone, from the least to the
greatest, often spoke of him as “the Great One—the Power of God.”
11 They listened closely to him because for
a long time he had astounded them with his magic.
12 But now the people believed Philip’s
message of Good News concerning the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus
Christ. As a result, many men and women were baptized.
13 Then Simon himself believed and was
baptized. He began following Philip wherever he went, and he was amazed by the
signs and great miracles Philip performed.
14 When the apostles in Jerusalem heard
that the people of Samaria had accepted God’s message, they sent Peter and John
there.
15 As soon as they arrived, they prayed for
these new believers to receive the Holy Spirit.
16 The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon
any of them, for they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
17 Then Peter and John laid their hands
upon these believers, and they received the Holy Spirit.
18 When Simon saw that the Spirit was given
when the apostles laid their hands on people, he offered them money to buy this
power.
19 “Let me have this power, too,” he
exclaimed, “so that when I lay my hands on people, they will receive the Holy
Spirit!”
20 But Peter replied, “May your money be
destroyed with you for thinking God’s gift can be bought!
21 You can have no part in this, for your
heart is not right with God.
22Repent of your wickedness and pray to the
Lord. Perhaps he will forgive your evil thoughts,
23 for I can see that you are full of
bitter jealousy and are held captive by sin.”
24 “Pray to the Lord for me,” Simon
exclaimed, “that these terrible things you’ve said won’t happen to me!”
25 After testifying and preaching the word
of the Lord in Samaria, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem. And they stopped
in many Samaritan villages along the way to preach the Good News.
26 As for Philip, an angel of the Lord said
to him, “Go south down the desert road that runs from Jerusalem to Gaza.”
27 So he started out, and he met the
treasurer of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under the Kandake, the queen
of Ethiopia. The eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship,
28 and he was now returning. Seated in his carriage,
he was reading aloud from the book of the prophet Isaiah.
29 The Holy Spirit said to Philip, “Go over
and walk along beside the carriage.”
30 Philip ran over and heard the man
reading from the prophet Isaiah. Philip asked, “Do you understand what you are
reading?”
31 The man replied, “How can I, unless
someone instructs me?” And he urged Philip to come up into the carriage and sit
with him.
32 The passage of Scripture he had been
reading was this: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter. And as a lamb is
silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth.
33 He was humiliated and received no
justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the
earth.”
34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, was
the prophet talking about himself or someone else?”
35 So beginning with this same Scripture,
Philip told him the Good News about Jesus.
36 As they rode along, they came to some
water, and the eunuch said, “Look! There’s some water! Why can’t I be
baptized?”
37
38 He ordered the carriage to stop, and
they went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.
39 When they came up out of the water, the
Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away. The eunuch never saw him again but
went on his way rejoicing.
40 Meanwhile, Philip found himself farther
north at the town of Azotus. He preached the Good News there and in every town
along the way until he came to Caesarea.
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