ACTS 6
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
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.
