06.24.2015 New Testament: Acts 7.11–12

To read the Bible in a year, read Acts 7.1–19 on June 24, In the year of our Lord 2015

By Don Ruhl

Why do we come into hardship? The answers vary as much as the situations vary, but sometimes hardship keeps us from something worse. Consider the Israelites, as Stephen reminded the Jewish leaders,

“Now a famine and great trouble came over all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and our fathers found no sustenance. But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers first” (Acts 7.11–12). 

Jacob and his family experienced the hardships of a famine, but when they heard that food was available in Egypt, they went down there, and the family stayed, growing into a nation over a four hundred-year time span. During that time, they lived in a place that the Egyptians had given them, which means the children of Israel did not live in the Land of Canaan where some of the vilest people on Earth lived.