Stephen's Speech

¹The High Priest asked Stephen, “Is this true?”

²Stephen answered, “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! Before our ancestor Abraham had gone to live in Haran, the God of glory appeared to him in Mesopotamia

³and said to him, ‘Leave your family and country and go to the land that I will show you.’

⁴And so he left his country and went to live in Haran. After Abraham's father died, God made him move to this land where you now live.

⁵God did not then give Abraham any part of it as his own, not even a square foot of ground, but God promised to give it to him, and that it would belong to him and to his descendants. At the time God made this promise, Abraham had no children.

⁶This is what God said to him: ‘Your descendants will live in a foreign country, where they will be slaves and will be badly treated for four hundred years.

⁷But I will pass judgment on the people that they will serve, and afterward your descendants will come out of that country and will worship me in this place.’

⁸Then God gave to Abraham the ceremony of circumcision as a sign of the covenant. So Abraham circumcised Isaac a week after he was born; Isaac circumcised his son Jacob, and Jacob circumcised his twelve sons, the famous ancestors of our race.

⁹“Jacob's sons became jealous of their brother Joseph and sold him to be a slave in Egypt. But God was with him

¹⁰and brought him safely through all his troubles. When Joseph appeared before the king of Egypt, God gave him a pleasing manner and wisdom, and the king made Joseph governor over the country and the royal household.

¹¹Then there was a famine all over Egypt and Canaan, which caused much suffering. Our ancestors could not find any food,

¹²and when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent his sons, our ancestors, on their first visit there.

¹³On the second visit Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and the king of Egypt came to know about Joseph's family.

¹⁴So Joseph sent a message to his father Jacob, telling him and the whole family, seventy-five people in all, to come to Egypt.

¹⁵Then Jacob went to Egypt, where he and his sons died.

¹⁶Their bodies were taken to Shechem, where they were buried in the grave which Abraham had bought from the clan of Hamor for a sum of money.

¹⁷“When the time drew near for God to keep the promise he had made to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt had grown much larger.

¹⁸At last a king who did not know about Joseph began to rule in Egypt.

¹⁹He tricked our ancestors and was cruel to them, forcing them to put their babies out of their homes, so that they would die.

²⁰It was at this time that Moses was born, a very beautiful child. He was cared for at home for three months,

²¹and when he was put out of his home, the king's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son.

²²He was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians and became a great man in words and deeds.

²³“When Moses was forty years old, he decided to find out how his fellow Israelites were being treated.

²⁴He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his help and took revenge on the Egyptian by killing him.

²⁵(He thought that his own people would understand that God was going to use him to set them free, but they did not understand.)

²⁶The next day he saw two Israelites fighting, and he tried to make peace between them. ‘Listen, men,’ he said, ‘you are fellow Israelites; why are you fighting like this?’

²⁷But the one who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside. ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?’ he asked.

²⁸‘Do you want to kill me, just as you killed that Egyptian yesterday?’

²⁹When Moses heard this, he fled from Egypt and went to live in the land of Midian. There he 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.

³¹Moses was amazed by what he saw, and went near the bush to get a better look. But he heard the Lord's voice:

³²‘I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and dared not look.

³³The Lord said to him, ‘Take your sandals off, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.

³⁴I have seen the cruel suffering of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groans, and I have come down to set them free. Come now; I will send you to Egypt.’

³⁵“Moses is the one who was rejected by the people of Israel. ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?’ they asked. He is the one whom God sent to rule the people and set them free with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the burning bush.

³⁶He led the people out of Egypt, performing miracles and wonders in Egypt and at the Red Sea and for forty years in the desert.

³⁷Moses is the one who said to the people of Israel, ‘God will send you a prophet, just as he sent me, and he will be one of your own people.’

³⁸He is the one who was with the people of Israel assembled in the desert; he was there with our ancestors and with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and he received God's living messages to pass on to us.

³⁹“But our ancestors refused to obey him; they pushed him aside and wished that they could go back to Egypt.

⁴⁰So they said to Aaron, ‘Make us some gods who will lead us. We do not know what has happened to that man Moses, who brought us out of Egypt.’

⁴¹It was then that they made an idol in the shape of a bull, offered sacrifice to it, and had a feast in honor of what they themselves had made.

⁴²So God turned away from them and gave them over to worship the stars of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘People of Israel! It was not to me that you slaughtered and sacrificed animals for forty years in the desert.

⁴³It was the tent of the god Molech that you carried, and the image of Rephan, your star god; they were idols that you had made to worship. And so I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.’

⁴⁴“Our ancestors had the Tent of God's presence with them in the desert. It had been made as God had told Moses to make it, according to the pattern that Moses had been shown.

⁴⁵Later on, our ancestors who received the tent from their fathers carried it with them when they went with Joshua and took over the land from the nations that God drove out as they advanced. And it stayed there until the time of David.

⁴⁶He won God's favor and asked God to allow him to provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.

⁴⁷But it was Solomon who built him a house.

⁴⁸“But the Most High God does not live in houses built by human hands; as the prophet says,

⁴⁹‘Heaven is my throne, says the Lord, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house would you build for me? Where is the place for me to live in?

⁵⁰Did not I myself make all these things?’

⁵¹“How stubborn you are!” Stephen went on to say. “How heathen your hearts, how deaf you are to God's message! You are just like your ancestors: you too have always resisted the Holy Spirit!

⁵²Was there any prophet that your ancestors did not persecute? They killed God's messengers, who long ago announced the coming of his righteous Servant. And now you have betrayed and murdered him.

⁵³You are the ones who received God's law, that was handed down by angels—yet you have not obeyed it!”

The Stoning of Stephen

⁵⁴As the members of the Council listened to Stephen, they became furious and ground their teeth at him in anger.

⁵⁵But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw God's glory and Jesus standing at the right side of God.

⁵⁶“Look!” he said. “I see heaven opened and the Son of Man standing at the right side of God!”

⁵⁷With a loud cry the Council members covered their ears with their hands. Then they all rushed at him at once,

⁵⁸threw him out of the city, and stoned him. The witnesses left their cloaks in the care of a young man named Saul.

⁵⁹They kept on stoning Stephen as he called out to the Lord, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!”

⁶⁰He knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord! Do not remember this sin against them!” He said this and died.

God's Mercy on Israel

¹I ask, then: Did God reject his own people? Certainly not! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.

²God has not rejected his people, whom he chose from the beginning. You know what the scripture says in the passage where Elijah pleads with God against Israel:

³“Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me.”

⁴What answer did God give him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not worshiped the false god Baal.”

⁵It is the same way now: there is a small number left of those whom God has chosen because of his grace.

⁶His choice is based on his grace, not on what they have done. For if God's choice were based on what people do, then his grace would not be real grace.

⁷What then? The people of Israel did not find what they were looking for. It was only the small group that God chose who found it; the rest grew deaf to God's call.

⁸As the scripture says, “God made their minds and hearts dull; to this very day they cannot see or hear.”

⁹And David says, “May they be caught and trapped at their feasts; may they fall, may they be punished!

¹⁰May their eyes be blinded so that they cannot see; and make them bend under their troubles at all times.”

¹¹I ask, then: When the Jews stumbled, did they fall to their ruin? By no means! Because they sinned, salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make the Jews jealous of them.

¹²The sin of the Jews brought rich blessings to the world, and their spiritual poverty brought rich blessings to the Gentiles. Then, how much greater the blessings will be when the complete number of Jews is included!

The Salvation of the Gentiles

¹³I am speaking now to you Gentiles: As long as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I will take pride in my work.

¹⁴Perhaps I can make the people of my own race jealous, and so be able to save some of them.

¹⁵For when they were rejected, all other people were changed from God's enemies into his friends. What will it be, then, when they are accepted? It will be life for the dead!

¹⁶If the first piece of bread is given to God, then the whole loaf is his also; and if the roots of a tree are offered to God, the branches are his also.

¹⁷Some of the branches of the cultivated olive tree have been broken off, and a branch of a wild olive tree has been joined to it. You Gentiles are like that wild olive tree, and now you share the strong spiritual life of the Jews.

¹⁸So then, you must not despise those who were broken off like branches. How can you be proud? You are just a branch; you don't support the roots—the roots support you.

¹⁹But you will say, “Yes, but the branches were broken off to make room for me.”

²⁰That is true. They were broken off because they did not believe, while you remain in place because you do believe. But do not be proud of it; instead, be afraid.

²¹God did not spare the Jews, who are like natural branches; do you think he will spare you?

²²Here we see how kind and how severe God is. He is severe toward those who have fallen, but kind to you—if you continue in his kindness. But if you do not, you too will be broken off.

²³And if the Jews abandon their unbelief, they will be put back in the place where they were; for God is able to do that.

²⁴You Gentiles are like the branch of a wild olive tree that is broken off and then, contrary to nature, is joined to a cultivated olive tree. The Jews are like this cultivated tree; and it will be much easier for God to join these broken-off branches to their own tree again.

God's Mercy on All

²⁵There is a secret truth, my friends, which I want you to know, for it will keep you from thinking how wise you are. It is that the stubbornness of the people of Israel is not permanent, but will last only until the complete number of Gentiles comes to God.

²⁶And this is how all Israel will be saved. As the scripture says, “The Savior will come from Zion and remove all wickedness from the descendants of Jacob.

²⁷I will make this covenant with them when I take away their sins.”

²⁸Because they reject the Good News, the Jews are God's enemies for the sake of you Gentiles. But because of God's choice, they are his friends because of their ancestors.

²⁹For God does not change his mind about whom he chooses and blesses.

³⁰As for you Gentiles, you disobeyed God in the past; but now you have received God's mercy because the Jews were disobedient.

³¹In the same way, because of the mercy that you have received, the Jews now disobey God, in order that they also may now receive God's mercy.

³²For God has made all people prisoners of disobedience, so that he might show mercy to them all.

Praise to God

³³How great are God's riches! How deep are his wisdom and knowledge! Who can explain his decisions? Who can understand his ways?

³⁴As the scripture says, “Who knows the mind of the Lord? Who is able to give him advice?

³⁵Who has ever given him anything, so that he had to pay it back?”

³⁶For all things were created by him, and all things exist through him and for him. To God be the glory forever! Amen.

Life in God's Service

¹So then, my friends, because of God's great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship that you should offer.

²Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind. Then you will be able to know the will of God—what is good and is pleasing to him and is perfect.

³And because of God's gracious gift to me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you should. Instead, be modest in your thinking, and judge yourself according to the amount of faith that God has given you.

⁴We have many parts in the one body, and all these parts have different functions.

⁵In the same way, though we are many, we are one body in union with Christ, and we are all joined to each other as different parts of one body.

⁶So we are to use our different gifts in accordance with the grace that God has given us. If our gift is to speak God's message, we should do it according to the faith that we have;

⁷if it is to serve, we should serve; if it is to teach, we should teach;

⁸if it is to encourage others, we should do so. Whoever shares with others should do it generously; whoever has authority should work hard; whoever shows kindness to others should do it cheerfully.

⁹Love must be completely sincere. Hate what is evil, hold on to what is good.

¹⁰Love one another warmly as Christians, and be eager to show respect for one another.

¹¹Work hard and do not be lazy. Serve the Lord with a heart full of devotion.

¹²Let your hope keep you joyful, be patient in your troubles, and pray at all times.

¹³Share your belongings with your needy fellow Christians, and open your homes to strangers.

¹⁴Ask God to bless those who persecute you—yes, ask him to bless, not to curse.

¹⁵Be happy with those who are happy, weep with those who weep.

¹⁶Have the same concern for everyone. Do not be proud, but accept humble duties. Do not think of yourselves as wise.

¹⁷If someone has done you wrong, do not repay him with a wrong. Try to do what everyone considers to be good.

¹⁸Do everything possible on your part to live in peace with everybody.

¹⁹Never take revenge, my friends, but instead let God's anger do it. For the scripture says, “I will take revenge, I will pay back, says the Lord.”

²⁰Instead, as the scripture says: “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them a drink; for by doing this you will make them burn with shame.”

²¹Do not let evil defeat you; instead, conquer evil with good.

¹³Any people stupid enough to promise to be responsible for a stranger's debts deserve to have their own property held to guarantee payment.

¹⁴You might as well curse your friends as wake them up early in the morning with a loud greeting.