Acts 7:19-53 By shrewdly scheming against our people, he oppressed our ancestors and forced them to abandon their infants to the elements, so that they wouldn’t live.

ISV⁽ⁱ⁾ ¹⁹ By shrewdly scheming against our people, he oppressed our ancestors and forced them to abandon their infants to the elements, so that they wouldn’t live. ²⁰ “At this time Moses was born. He was beautiful in the sight of God, and for three months he was cared for in his father’s house. ²¹ When he was placed outside, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. ²² So Moses learned all the wisdom of the Egyptians and became a great man, both in words and in deeds. ²³ “When he was 40 years old, he decided to visit his brothers, the descendants of Israel. ²⁴ When he saw one of them being mistreated, he defended him and avenged the man who was being mistreated by killing the Egyptian. ²⁵ He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was using him to rescue them, but they didn’t understand. ²⁶ The next day, he presented himself to some of them while they were fighting and tried to reconcile them. He said, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why should you be hurting another?’ ²⁷ “But the man who was harming his neighbor pushed Moses away and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? ²⁸ You don’t want to kill me like you killed the Egyptian yesterday, do you?’ ²⁹ Because of this, Moses fled and lived as a foreigner in the land of Midian. There he had two sons. ³⁰ “After 40 years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. ³¹ When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight, and when he approached the bush to look at it, the voice of the Lord said, ³² ‘I am the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses became terrified and didn’t dare to look. ³³ Then the Lord told him, ‘Remove your sandals from your feet, because the place where you are standing is holy ground. ³⁴ I have surely seen the oppression of my people in Egypt, I’ve heard their groans, and I’ve come down to rescue them. Now come, I’ll send you to Egypt.’ ³⁵ “This same Moses—whom they rejected by saying, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’—was the man whom God sent to be both their ruler and deliverer with the help of the angel who had appeared to him in the bush. ³⁶ It was he who led them out, performing wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for 40 years. ³⁷ It was this Moses who told the Israelis, ‘God will raise up a prophet for you from among your own brothers, just as he did me.’ ³⁸ This Moses is the one who was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai and to our ancestors. He received living truths to give to us, ³⁹ but our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and wished to return to Egypt. ⁴⁰ They told Aaron, ‘Make gods for us who will lead us. This Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt—we don’t know what happened to him!’ ⁴¹ “At that time they even made a calf to be their idol, offered a sacrifice to it, and delighted in what they had made with their hands. ⁴² So God turned away from them and gave them over to worship the heavenly bodies. As it is written in the book of the Prophets: ‘O house of Israel, you didn’t offer me slaughtered animals and sacrifices those 40 years in the wilderness, did you? ⁴³ You even took along the tent of Moloch, the star of your god Rephan, and the images you made in order to worship them. So I will take you into exile as far as Babylon.’ ⁴⁴ “Our ancestors had the Tent of Testimony in the wilderness constructed, just as the one who spoke to Moses directed him to make it according to the pattern he had seen. ⁴⁵ Our ancestors brought it here with Joshua when they replaced the nations that God drove out in front of our ancestors, and it was here until the time of David. ⁴⁶ He found favor with God and asked to design a dwelling for the house of Jacob, ⁴⁷ but it was Solomon who built a house for him. ⁴⁸ However, the Most High does not live in buildings made by human hands. As the prophet says, ⁴⁹ “‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house can you build for me,’ declares the Lord, “or what place is there in which I can rest? ⁵⁰ It was my hand that made all these things, wasn’t it?’” ⁵¹ “You stubborn people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are always opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. ⁵² Which of the prophets did your ancestors fail to persecute? They killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. ⁵³ You received the Law as ordained by angels, and yet you haven’t obeyed it!”