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UST ACTs Chapter 7

7 Then the high priest asked Stephen, “Are the things that these people are saying about you true?” 2 Stephen replied, “Fellow Jews and respected leaders, please listen to me! The glorious God whom we worship appeared to our forefather Abraham while he was still living in the region of Mesopotamia, before he moved to the city of Haran. 3 God said to him, ‘Leave this land where you and your relatives are living and go into the land to which I will direct you.’ 4 So Abraham left that land, which was also called Chaldea, and he arrived in Haran and lived there. After his father died, God told him to move to this land where our people are now living.

5 At that time God did not give Abraham any land to own here, not even a small plot of this land. But God promised that later he would give this land to him and his descendants, and that it would always belong to them. However, at that time Abraham did not have any children who would inherit it.

6 Later God told Abraham, ‘Your descendants will go and live in a foreign country. They will live there for four hundred years. During that time, the rulers will mistreat your descendants and force them to work as slaves. 7 But I will punish the people who make them work as slaves,’ said God. ‘After that, your descendants will leave that land, and they will come and worship me in this land.’

8 Then God commanded that every male in Abraham’s household and all of his male descendants should be circumcised to show that they all belonged to God. Later Abraham’s son, Isaac, was born, and when Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him. Later Isaac had a son named Jacob. Jacob was the father of the 12 men whom we Jews call the patriarchs, our forefathers.

9 You know that Jacob’s older sons became jealous because their father favored their younger brother Joseph. So they sold him to merchants who took him to Egypt, where he became a slave. But God took care of Joseph. 10 God protected him whenever people caused him to suffer. He enabled Joseph to be wise, and he caused Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to think well of Joseph. So Pharaoh appointed him to rule over Egypt and to look after all of Pharaoh’s property.

11 While Joseph was doing that work, there was a time when there was very little food anywhere in Egypt and also in Canaan. People were suffering badly. At that time Jacob and his sons in Canaan could not find enough food to eat. 12 When Jacob heard a report that there was grain in Egypt that people could buy, he sent Joseph’s older brothers there to buy grain. They went and bought grain from Joseph, but they did not recognize him. Then they returned home. 13 When Joseph’s brothers went to Egypt again, they bought grain from Joseph once more. But this time he told them who he was. And so Pharaoh found out that these men who had come from Canaan were Joseph’s brothers. 14 Joseph sent his brothers back home to tell their father Jacob that Joseph wanted him and his entire family to come to Egypt. At that time Jacob’s family consisted of 75 people. 15 So when Jacob heard that, he and all his family went to live in Egypt. Later on, Jacob died there, and our other ancestors, his sons, also died there. 16 Their descendants brought their bodies back to our land and buried them in the tomb that Abraham bought from Hamor’s sons in the city of Shechem.

17 Our ancestors had become very numerous by the time God was about to rescue them from Egypt. That is what God had promised Abraham he would do. 18 Another king had begun to rule in Egypt. He did not know that Joseph had greatly helped the people of Egypt long before his own time. 19 That king tried to get rid of our ancestors in cruel ways. He oppressed them and caused them to suffer greatly. He even commanded them to abandon their newborn babies outside their homes so that the babies would die.

20 During that time Moses was born, and God saw that he was a very beautiful child. His parents secretly cared for him in their house for three months. 21 Then they had to abandon him outside the house. But Pharaoh’s daughter found him and cared for him as her own son. 22 The Egyptians taught Moses the many things that they had learned. When he grew up, he spoke and did things powerfully.

23 One day when Moses was about forty years old, he decided to see how his relatives, the people of Israel, were doing. 24 He saw an Egyptian mistreating one of the Israelites. So he went over to help the Israelite man. He avenged him by killing the Egyptian. 25 Moses expected that his fellow Israelites would understand that God had sent him to free them from being slaves. But they did not understand. 26 The next day, Moses saw two of his fellow Israelites fighting each other. He tried to make them stop by saying to them, ‘Now you two are both Israelites! You must stop hurting each other!’ 27 But the man who was injuring the other man pushed Moses away. He said to him, ‘You have no authority over us! 28 You probably want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday!’ 29 When Moses heard that, he fled from Egypt to the land of Midian. He lived there for some years. He got married, and he and his wife had two sons.

30 One day forty years later, the Lord God came to Moses in the form of an angel. This was in the desert near Mount Sinai. He appeared in the flames of a bush that was on fire. 31 When Moses saw it, he was amazed because the bush was not burning up. As he went over to look more closely, he heard the Lord God say to him, 32 ‘I am the God whom your ancestors worshiped. I am the God whom Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob worship.’ Moses was so afraid that he began to shake. He was afraid to look at the bush any longer. 33 Then the Lord God said to him, ‘Take your sandals off to show that you honor me. Because I am here, the place where you are standing is especially mine. 34 I have seen clearly how the people of Egypt are continually causing my people to suffer. I have heard my people when they groan because of it. So I am taking action to rescue them from Egypt. Now get ready, because I am going to send you back to Egypt.’

35 This Moses is the one who had tried to help our Israelite people. But they rejected him by saying, ‘You have no authority over us!’ Moses is the one whom God himself sent to rule them and to free them from being slaves. He did that with the help of the angel who spoke to him from the bush. 36 Moses is the one who led our ancestors out from Egypt. He did many kinds of miracles in Egypt, at the Sea of Reeds, and during the forty years that the Israelite people lived in the wilderness. 37 This Moses is the one who said to the Israelite people, ‘God will cause another man from among your own people to be a prophet like me for you.’ 38 It was this man Moses who was among the Israelites who were together in the wilderness. God spoke through the angel on Mount Sinai to give Moses our laws. Moses was the one who told our ancestors what the angel had said. He was the one to whom God gave commandments and who passed them on to us. Those commandments are still powerful today.

39 However, our ancestors did not want to obey Moses. Instead, they rejected him as their leader and wanted to return to Egypt. 40 So they told his older brother Aaron, ‘Make idols for us who will be our gods to lead us. As for that fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him!’ 41 When the Israelites rejected Moses, they made an image that looked like a calf. Then they offered sacrifices to honor that idol. They sang and danced to worship something that they themselves had made. 42 So God stopped correcting them. He left them to worship the stars in the sky. This agrees with what one of the prophets wrote:

God said, ‘You Israelite people repeatedly killed animals and offered them to me with grain as sacrifices during those forty years that you were in the wilderness. But you certainly were not truly offering them to me!

43 On the contrary, you carried with you the tent that contained the idol representing the god Molech that you worshiped. You also carried with you the image of the star called Rephan. Those were idols that you had made, and you worshiped them instead of me. So I will cause you to be taken away far from your homes to regions even farther than the country of Babylon.’

44 While our ancestors were in the desert, they worshiped God at the sacred tent that showed that he was there with them. They had made the tent exactly like God had commanded Moses to make it. It was exactly like the model that Moses had seen when he was up on the mountain. 45 Later on, other ancestors of ours carried that tent with them when Joshua led them into this land. That was during the time when they took this land for themselves, when God forced the people who previously lived here to leave. So the Israelites were able to possess this land. The tent remained in this land and was still here when King David ruled. 46 David pleased God, and he asked God to let him build a temple where he and all of our Israelite people could worship God. 47 But instead, God told David’s son Solomon to build a temple where people could worship him.

48 However, we know that God, who is greater than everything, does not live in temples that people build. It is as the prophet Isaiah wrote:

49-50 49-50God said, ‘I created everything in heaven and on earth. My presence fills all of creation. So you human beings cannot make a place good enough for me to live in!’

51 You people are disobedient to God, as if you did not even know God! You are exactly like your ancestors! You always resist the Holy Spirit, just as they did! 52 Your ancestors caused every prophet to suffer. They even killed those who long ago announced that the Messiah would come, the one who always did what pleased God. And the Messiah has come! He is the one whom you recently turned over to his enemies and insisted that they kill him! 53 You are the people who have received God’s laws. Those were laws that God caused angels to give to our ancestors. However, you have not obeyed them!”

54 When the Jewish council members and others there heard all that Stephen said, they became very angry. They were grinding their teeth together because they were so angry at him!

55 But the Holy Spirit completely controlled Stephen. He looked up into heaven and saw a dazzling light from God, and he saw Jesus standing at God’s right side. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see right into heaven, and I see the Son of Man in human form standing where God rules!”

57 When the Jewish council members and others heard that, they shouted loudly. They put their hands over their ears so that they would not hear him. All together they ran up to Stephen and grabbed him. 58 They dragged him outside the city of Jerusalem and started to throw stones at him to kill him. The people who were accusing him took off their outer garments in order to throw stones more easily. They put these garments on the ground next to a young man whose name was Saul so that he could guard them. 59 While they continued to throw stones at Stephen, Stephen prayed out loud, “Lord Jesus, welcome me when I die!”

60 Then Stephen knelt down and cried out loud, “Lord, do not punish them for this sin!” After he had said this, he died.

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