Acts 7:23-44

23"When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. 24He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. 25Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. 26The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?’ 27"But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? 28Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday? 29When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons. 30"After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. 31When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to look more closely, he heard the Lord’s voice: 32’I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look. 33"Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals; the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.’ 35"This is the same Moses whom they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36He led them out of Egypt and did wonders and miraculous signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea and for forty years in the desert. 37"This is that Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will send you a prophet like me from your own people.‘38He was in the assembly in the desert, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers; and he received living words to pass on to us. 39"But our fathers refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt.40They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!’ 41That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and held a celebration in honor of what their hands had made. 42But God turned away and gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets: " ‘Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the desert, O house of Israel? 43You have lifted up the shrine of Molech and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to worship. Therefore I will send you into exile’ beyond Babylon. 44"Our forefathers had the tabernacle of the Testimony with them in the desert. It had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen.

Devotion (by Jana Goebel): Stephen amazes me. He is facing death at the hands of his own leaders. Yet, he is able to prove his understanding of scripture by telling them their own story. He reminds them of the great leaders of the past, and at the same time sends them an important message. As God’s followers, we often don’t get it. God sends us His messengers, like Moses in this passage, and instead of heeding their warnings we turn our backs on them. Why do we do this? I think it’s because we want the easy way out. The Israelites would rather have worshipped false gods made of metal and stone than the true, holy living God Moses taught them about. I’m sure they realized that a false god could not challenge them like God did through Moses. A statue wasn’t going to ask them to do the hard thing.
Sometimes that’s exactly what I want in my life – the easy way out. But when I take it, it never turns out quite as great as I think it will. When I do the hard thing and remain obedient to God’s word, He blesses my life.

Prayer: Father, being obedient to your word can be hard sometimes. Often I want to ignore the messenger you send to me, whether it’s scripture or other Christians. Help me to be obedient to you even when you ask me to do the hard thing. In Jesus’ name, Amen.