Acts 7:37-40 (NIV)
“This is that Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will send you a prophet like me from your own people.’ He 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.
“But our fathers refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. They 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!’”
Moses himself had looked forward to the days of Jesus, past the line of all the other prophets that God would raise up in the intervening centuries to speak to the Israelites on His behalf. These they would need to listen to as well, although, ironically, the Sadducees themselves rejected all the Scriptures except the Pentateuch, Genesis through Deuteronomy, including the words of these prophets that Moses had spoken about in the words that they did accept.
Looking forward, Moses saw one prophet in the far-off distance, one that would need special attention, one that the people were intentionally told to listen to (Deuteronomy 18:15), because He would speak the words of God directly to them. This was Jesus.
But the people were stiff-necked and hard-hearted. They turned away from even the words that they had heard directly from the lips of God and made for themselves a golden calf idol that they bowed down to and worshiped. This was a sin so grievous that it nearly caused the extermination of the whole nation and would have if Moses had not interceded.
Now Stephen was sitting before the leaders of the nation of Israel, men who were just as stiff-necked and hard-hearted as their forefathers. They had rejected Jesus, just as many of them had rejected the prophets from the previous centuries. Instead, they had made the law, and Moses, and even the temple into idols that they worshiped, and were now trying Stephen for supposedly speaking against them.
Father, it has been said that history never repeats itself, but it rhymes. Here are the leaders of Your people inexplicably repeating the errors of their ancestors in new ways and oblivious to the fact that they are doing it! Keep my eyes open, Lord. Never let me blindly run in old sinful ruts, neither my old ruts nor those of my forefathers. Instead, let me take the new tracks that You have made for me, so that I can faithfully follow You in every way. Amen.
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