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Read (and listen!) through the amazing story of Luke and Acts!
Immerse: Luke and Acts is part of Immerse: The Reading Bible, which takes you on a new and unique journey through the books of Luke and Acts in the New Testament. This fresh arrangement of the books highlights the depth of the New Testament’s fourfold witness to Jesus the Messiah. The Son of God, who fulfills all the longings and promises of the collected Scriptures. The goal of Bible reading is to understand the sacred writings in depth so we can learn to live with them. Using the text of the New Living Translation (NLT) from Tyndale Publishing, now you can experience Luke and Acts the same way the original readers did and be fully immersed in the most amazing story of all time!
Samantha: Welcome to Immerse Luke
and Acts, Day twenty five, Week five
.
Stephen, a man full of God's
grace and power, performed amazing
miracles and signs among the people.
But one day some men from the
synagogue of freed slaves, as it was
called, started to debate with him.
They were Jews from Syre.
Alexandria, Cilicia, and
the province of Asia.
None of them could stand against
the wisdom and the spirit
with which Stephen spoke.
So they persuaded some men to lie
about Stephen, saying, We heard
him blaspheme Moses and even God.
This roused the people, the elders,
and the teachers of religious law.
So they arrested Stephen and
brought him before the high council.
The lying witnesses said, This man
is always speaking against the Holy
Temple and against the law of Moses.
We have heard him say that this
Jesus of Nazareth will destroy
the temple and change the
customs Moses handed down to us.
At this point, everyone in the high
council stared at Stephen, because his
face became as bright as an angel's.
Then the high priest asked Stephen,
Are these accusations true?
This was Stephen's reply.
Brothers and fathers, listen to me.
Our glorious God appeared to our
ancestor Abraham in Mesopotamia
before he settled in Haran.
God told him, Leave your native
land and your relatives and come
into the land that I will show you.
So Abraham left the land of the Chaldeans
and lived in Haran until his father died.
Then God brought him here to
the land where you now live.
But God gave him no inheritance here,
not even one square foot of land.
God did promise, however, that
eventually the whole land would
belong to Abraham and his descendants.
Even though he had no children yet, God
also told him that his descendants would
live in a foreign land where they would
be oppressed as slaves for 400 years.
But I will punish the nation that
enslaves them, God said, and in
the end they will come out and
worship me here in this place.
God also gave Abraham the covenant
of circumcision at that time.
So when Abraham became the
father of Isaac, he circumcised
him on the eighth day.
And the practice was continued when Isaac
became the father of Jacob, and when
Jacob became the father of the twelve
patriarchs of the Israelite nation.
These patriarchs were jealous
of their brother Joseph.
And they sold him to be a slave in Egypt.
But God was with him, and rescued
him from all his troubles.
And God gave him favor before
Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
God also gave Joseph unusual
wisdom, so that Pharaoh appointed
him governor over all of Egypt, and
put him in charge of the palace.
But a famine came upon Egypt and Canaan.
There was great misery, and
our ancestors ran out of food.
Jacob heard that there was still
grain in Egypt, so he sent his
sons, our ancestors, to buy some.
The second time they went, Joseph
revealed his identity to his brothers,
and they were introduced to Pharaoh.
Then Joseph sent for his father,
Jacob, and all his relatives to come
to Egypt, seventy five persons in all.
So Jacob went to Egypt.
He died there, as did our ancestors.
Their bodies were taken to Shechem,
and buried in the tomb Abraham
had bought for a certain price
from Hamor's sons in Shechem.
As the time drew near when God would
fulfill His promise to Abraham, the number
of our people in Egypt greatly increased.
But then a new king came to the throne
of Egypt, who knew nothing about Joseph.
This king exploited our people and
oppressed them, forcing parents to abandon
their newborn babies so they would die.
At that time, Moses was born, a
beautiful child in God's eyes.
His parents cared for him
at home for three months.
When they had to abandon him,
Pharaoh's daughter adopted him
and raised him as her own son.
Moses was taught all the wisdom
of the Egyptians, and he was
powerful in both speech and action.
One day, when Moses was 40 years
old, he decided to visit his
relatives, the people of Israel.
He saw an Egyptian
mistreating an Israelite.
So Moses came to the man's defense
and avenged him, killing the Egyptian.
Moses assumed his fellow Israelites
would realize that God had sent him
to rescue them, but they didn't.
The next day he visited them again
and saw two men of Israel fighting.
He tried to be a peacemaker.
Men, he said, you are brothers.
Why are you fighting each other?
But the man in the wrong
pushed Moses aside.
Who made you a ruler and judge over us?
He asked, are you going to kill me as
you killed that Egyptian yesterday?
When Moses heard that, he fled
the country and lived as a
foreigner in the land of Midian.
There his two sons were born.
Forty years later, in the desert near
Mount Sinai, an angel appeared to
Moses in the flame of a burning bush.
The When Moses saw it, he
was amazed at the sight.
As he went to take a closer look,
the voice of the Lord called out to
him, I am the God of your ancestors,
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Moses shook with terror
and did not dare to look.
Then the Lord said to him,
Take off your sandals.
For you are standing on holy ground.
I have certainly seen the
oppression of my people in Egypt.
I have heard their groans and
have come down to rescue them.
Now go, for I am sending
you back to Egypt.
So God sent back the same man his
people had previously rejected
when they demanded, Who made
you a ruler and judge over us?
Through the angel who appeared to
him in the burning bush, God sent
Moses to be their ruler and savior.
And by means of many wonders and
miraculous signs, He led them out
of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and
through the wilderness for forty years.
Moses himself told the people of Israel,
God will raise up for you a prophet
like me from among your own people.
Moses was with our ancestors, the assembly
of God's people in the wilderness, when
the angels spoke to him at Mount Sinai.
And there Moses received life
giving words to pass on to us.
But our ancestors refused
to listen to Moses.
They rejected him and
wanted to return to Egypt.
They told Aaron, Make us some gods who can
lead us, for we don't know what has become
of this Moses who brought us out of Egypt.
So they made an idol shaped like a
calf, and they sacrificed to it and
celebrated over this thing they had made.
Then God turned away from them
and abandoned them to serve the
stars of heaven as their gods.
In the book of the prophets, it is
written, was it to me you were bringing
sacrifices and offerings during those
40 years in the wilderness, Israel?
No, you carried your pagan gods,
the shrine of Molech, the star
of your god Rephan, and the
images you made to worship them.
So I will send you into
exile as far away as Babylon.
Our ancestors carried the tabernacle
with them through the wilderness.
It was constructed according to
the plan God had shown to Moses.
Years later, when Joshua led our
ancestors in battle against the nations
that God drove out of this land, the
tabernacle was taken with them into
their new territory, and it stayed
there until the time of King David.
David found favor with God.
And asked for the privilege of building
a permanent temple for the God of Jacob.
But it was Solomon who actually built it.
However, the Most High doesn't live
in temples made by human hands.
As the prophet says, Heaven is my
throne, and the earth is my footstool.
Could you build me a
temple as good as that?
Ask the Lord, could you build
me such a resting place?
Didn't my hands make
both heaven and earth?
You stubborn people, you are heathen
at heart and deaf to the truth.
Must you forever resist the Holy Spirit?
That's what your ancestors
did and so do you.
Name one prophet your
ancestors didn't persecute.
They even killed the ones who predicted
the coming of the righteous one, the
Messiah whom you betrayed and murdered.
You deliberately disobeyed God's
law, even though you received
it from the hands of angels.
The Jewish leaders were infuriated
by Stephen's accusation, and they
shook their fists at him in rage.
But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit,
gazed steadily into heaven and saw the
glory of God, and he saw Jesus standing
in the place of honor at God's right hand.
And he told them, Look, I see the heavens
opened and the Son of Man standing in
the place of honor at God's right hand.
Then they put their hands over
their ears and began shouting.
They rushed at him and dragged him out
of the city and began to stone him.
His accusers took off their
coats and laid them at the
feet of a young man named Saul.
As they stoned him, Stephen prayed,
Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
He fell to his knees, shouting, Lord,
don't charge them with this sin.
And with that, he died.
Saul was one of the witnesses,
and he agreed completely
with the killing of Stephen.
A great wave of
persecution began that day.
Sweeping over the church in Jerusalem.
And all the believers except the
apostles were scattered through
the regions of Judea and Samaria.
Some devout men came and buried
Stephen with great mourning.
But Saul was going everywhere
to destroy the church.
He went from house to house,
dragging out both men and women
to throw them into prison.
This concludes today's
Immerse Reading Experience.
Thank you for joining us.