David Bahn – Reflections

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Acts 7:1, 17-29

And the high priest said, “Are these things so?” ² And Stephen said:

¹⁷ “But as the time of the promise drew near, which God had granted to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt ¹⁸ until there arose over Egypt another king who did not know Joseph. ¹⁹ He dealt shrewdly with our race and forced our fathers to expose their infants, so that they would not be kept alive. ²⁰ At this time Moses was born; and he was beautiful in God’s sight. And he was brought up for three months in his father’s house, ²¹ and when he was exposed, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. ²² And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds.

²³ “When he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel. ²⁴ And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. ²⁵ He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand. ²⁶ And on the following day he appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to reconcile them, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why do you wrong each other?’ ²⁷ But the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him aside, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? ²⁸ Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ ²⁹ At this retort Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.

“Tell me a story about the olden days,” we would ask our grandmother. She would regale us with tales of a late-night encounter when a car turned into her country house’s long driveway. She took her shotgun, went out on her second-story porch and shot into the air. The car quickly left. She told that story many times, and other ones as well. We loved to listen to her stories.

There was an entertainment factor in our enjoyment. We were miles from town when we visited there, and no cable TV back then beckoned for our attention. But there were also morals we learned. There are bad people in the world. You need to defend yourself without hurting others if possible. These and other lessons were embedded into our hearts as we grew up – even though she never really said, “The moral of that story is…”

As Stephen recounts the story of Joseph and Moses, and the Hebrews in Egypt there was also an entertainment factor. Not mind-numbing distraction, but engagement in the hearer’s hearts and minds. There were also morals to these sagas. God was at work in Joseph, Moses, and even Pharaoh. They were living their lives as best they could. But they likely had little knowledge of the far-reaching impact of their actions. Surely they didn’t think that Stephen or anyone else would be reciting these accounts centuries later.

But here he is. And the stories he is recounting are of eternal consequence. They are part of the grand sweep of the story of God’s redemption. That grand story is rooted in real people, over real time, facing real challenges, and serving to advance a narrative that would climax in the birth, life, teaching, suffering, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Stephen will get to that soon.

This story is all one long woven tapestry stretching from the first moment of creation when God said, “Let there be light,” to the final day when Jesus returns and restores all broken, lost, and fallen things to their full beauty and glory. This story is not only true, or even most certainly true, it is eternally true and of the most profound significance of any story ever told.

Let’s lean in and listen well!