Acts 7 – 8

Verse 7:2 starts off Stephen talking:

 Brothers, fathers, please listen to me. Our glorious God revealed Himself to our common ancestor Abraham, when he lived far away in Mesopotamia before he immigrated to Haran.

From this point forward, Stephen is summarizing the history of the Jewish people and how it all points to Jesus. When you read the OT with the filter of knowing who Jesus is and his story, we see it all points to Jesus. This would take some time to unwrap but it all starts with righteous man and God in paradise and ends with redeemed man and God in paradise. It all points to Jesus.

Verse 7:60 is the end result of Stephen’s speech:

Then he knelt in prayer, shouting at the top of his lungs,

Stephen: Lord, do not hold this evil against them!

Those were his final words; then he fell asleep in death.

While he was being stoned to death as the first martyr for Jesus, this is what he prayed. We have a hard enough time praying for those who wrong us, much less while they are killing us, so Stephen’s act is something to be learned. We need to forgive other LIKE we wish to be forgiven. Imagine if God forgave like we did? We really need to take that part of the Lord’s Prayer to heart!!

Verse 8:19 has Simon asking for gifts:

I want to purchase this ability to confer the Holy Spirit on people through the laying on of my hands.

While Peter got upset, rightfully so, he missed that Simon wanted to accelerate the process and figured he could do so with money. This is something that is not Biblical anywhere, God takes time to groom his workers. If you think about it most are worked with for decades, while the disciples got 3 years of one on one with Jesus himself. Even so it was not purchase with money but rather time.

The key here is don’t expect to save the world with your new found salvation, rather dig in for the long haul and read your Bible!!