40. saying to Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go in front of us, for this Moses, who led us out of the land of Egypt – we do not know what has happened to him!’
41. At that time they made an idol in the form of a calf, brought a sacrifice to the idol, and began rejoicing in the works of their hands.
42. But God turned away from them and gave them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘It was not to me that you offered slain animals and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, was it, house of Israel?
43. But you took along the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Rephan, the images you made to worship, but I will deport you beyond Babylon.’
44. Our ancestors had the tabernacle of testimony in the wilderness, just as God who spoke to Moses ordered him to make it according to the design he had seen.
45. Our ancestors received possession of it and brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our ancestors, until the time of David.
46. He found favor with God and asked that he could find a dwelling place for the house of Jacob.
47. But Solomon built a house for him.
48. Yet the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands, as the prophet says,
49. ‘Heaven is my throne,and earth is the footstool for my feet.What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,or what is my resting place?
50. Did my hand not make all these things?’
51. “You stubborn people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are always resisting the Holy Spirit, like your ancestors did!
52. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold long ago the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become!
53. You received the law by decrees given by angels, but you did not obey it.”
54. When they heard these things, they became furious and ground their teeth at him.
55. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked intently toward heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
56. “Look!” he said. “I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”