Acts 7:1-36

The high priest said to Stephen, “Is all this true?” Stephen answered, “My Jewish fathers and brothers, listen to me. Our great and glorious God appeared to Abraham, our ancestor, when he was in Mesopotamia. This was before he lived in Haran. God said to him, ‘Leave your country and your people, and go to the country I will show you.’ “So Abraham left the country of Chaldea. He went to live in Haran. After his father died, God sent him to this place, where you live now. But God did not give Abraham any of this land, not even a foot of it. But God promised that in the future he would give Abraham this land for himself and for his children. This was before Abraham had any children. “This is what God said to him: ‘Your descendants will live in another country. They will be strangers. The people there will make them slaves and mistreat them for 400 years. But I will punish the nation that made them slaves.’ And God also said, ‘After those things happen, your people will come out of that country. Then they will worship me here in this place.’ “God made an agreement with Abraham; the sign for this agreement was circumcision. And so when Abraham had a son, he circumcised him when he was eight days old. His son’s name was Isaac. Isaac also circumcised his son Jacob. And Jacob did the same for his sons, who became the twelve great ancestors of our people. “These ancestors of ours became jealous of their brother Joseph and sold him to be a slave in Egypt. But God was with him and saved him from all his troubles. Pharaoh was the king of Egypt then. He liked Joseph and respected him because of the wisdom God gave him. Pharaoh gave Joseph the job of being a governor of Egypt. He even let him rule over all the people in Pharaoh’s house. But all the land of Egypt and of Canaan became dry. It became so dry that food could not grow, and the people suffered very much. Our people could not find anything to eat. “But Jacob heard that there was food in Egypt. So he sent our people there. This was their first trip to Egypt. Then they went there a second time. This time Joseph told his brothers who he was. And Pharaoh learned about Joseph’s family. Then Joseph sent some men to tell Jacob, his father, to come to Egypt. He also invited all his relatives, a total of 75 people. So Jacob went down to Egypt. He and our other ancestors lived there until they died. Later, their bodies were moved to Shechem, where they were put in a tomb. It was the same tomb that Abraham had bought in Shechem from the sons of Hamor. He paid them with silver. “The number of our people in Egypt grew. There were more and more of our people there. The promise that God made to Abraham was soon to come true. Then a different king began to rule Egypt, one who knew nothing about Joseph. This king tricked our people. He treated them badly, making them leave their children outside to die. “This was the time when Moses was born. He was a very beautiful child, and for three months his parents took care of him at home. When they put him outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him. She raised him as her own son. The Egyptians taught Moses everything they knew. He was powerful in all he said and did. “When Moses was about 40 years old, he decided to visit his own people, the people of Israel. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he defended him. Moses hit the Egyptian to pay him back for hurting the man. He hit him so hard that it killed him. Moses thought that his people would understand that God was using him to save them. But they did not understand. “The next day, Moses saw two of his own people fighting. He tried to make peace between them. He said, ‘Men, you are brothers! Why are you trying to hurt each other?’ The man who was hurting the other one pushed Moses away and said to him, ‘Did anyone say you could be our ruler and judge? Will you kill me just as you killed that Egyptian yesterday?’ When Moses heard him say this, he left Egypt. He went to live in the land of Midian, where he was a stranger. During the time he lived there, he had two sons. “Forty years later Moses was in the desert near Mount Sinai. An angel appeared to him in the flame of a burning bush. When Moses saw this, he was amazed. He went near to look closer at it. He heard a voice; it was the Lord’s. The Lord said, ‘I am the same God your ancestors had—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ Moses began to shake with fear. He was afraid to look at the bush. “The Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, because the place where you are now standing is holy ground. I have seen my people suffer much in Egypt. I have heard my people crying and have come down to save them. Come now, Moses, I am sending you back to Egypt.’ “This Moses was the one his people said they did not want. They said, ‘Did anyone say you could be our ruler and judge?’ But he is the one God sent to be a ruler and savior. God sent him with the help of an angel, the one Moses saw in the burning bush. So Moses led the people out of Egypt. He worked wonders and miraculous signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and then in the desert for 40 years.