Sunday, July 2, 2023  

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Today’s Scripture Reading 
Acts 7:30–43

“Now when forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush. When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight; and as he approached to look, there came the voice of the Lord: ‘I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses began to tremble and did not dare to look. Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have surely seen the mistreatment of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their groaning, and I have come down to rescue them. Come now, I will send you to Egypt.’ “It was this Moses whom they rejected when they said, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’ and whom God now sent as both ruler and liberator through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. He led them out, having performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years. This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, ‘God will raise up a prophet for you from your own people as he raised me up.’ He is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors; and he received living oracles to give to us. Our ancestors were unwilling to obey him; instead, they pushed him aside, and in their hearts they turned back to Egypt, saying to Aaron, ‘Make gods for us who will lead the way for us; as for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.’ At that time they made a calf, offered a sacrifice to the idol, and reveled in the works of their hands.

But God turned away from them and handed them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘Did you offer to me slain victims and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? No; you took along the tent of Moloch, and the star of your god Rephan, the images that you made to worship; so I will remove you beyond Babylon.’ (NRSV)

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Reflection
Although our passage today is entirely focused on Moses and the peoples’ journey out of Egypt, it is best understood in the wider arc of what Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was sharing in the entire seventh chapter of Acts. In recounting the peoples’ resistance to Moses, along with other subsequent examples from Israel’s history, Stephen is highlighting a very human tendency: to stay with what we know, even when the promise of God’s future is set before us.

Moses may have been leading the people to a better place, but it did not take long before “their hearts turned back to Egypt” (Acts 7:39) and they began to reject him. The same is true, Stephen argues, for the new future God has set before us through Christ — and yet far too often we do not trust in the promise of that future.

It can be hard to be led in directions we may not want or expect to go, particularly when the way before us is uncertain or unclear. Most of us have points in our lives when we resist God’s call into new opportunities, new visions, or new aspirations and dreams — preferring instead to stick with what we know. That is certainly true for us as individuals, but the same situation arises in groups as well — and the church is no exception.

As we enter into a time of wider discernment as a congregation, I pray we stay open to the new thing God is doing in our midst — not seeking to recreate what was, but fully embracing what can and will be.

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Prayer
Holy God, help me to trust in the future you have promised us — and may your vision, hope, and love guide me on the road ahead. Amen.

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Written by Matt Helms, Associate Pastor for Children and Family Ministry

Reflection and Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church

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