28 Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?
Whoever says that our past does not catch us with us lives in a fantasy world. Sometimes we reap what we sow very soon after sowing it. Stephen is making his defense before the religious leaders of his day. They have thrown him in prison for preaching about Jesus and His resurrection. Many thousands have come to faith in Jesus. They now believe what the disciples are saying and God has put His stamp of approval on their activity by adding some miracles to the mix. The leaders can’t stand that the attention is being drawn away from them. Stephen is recalling the history of deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt by an unlikely man, Moses. Moses was at first rejected, just like Jesus is being rejected by them. Our text today retells his rejection. He was trying to help and his fellow Israelites pin him in a corner with his own actions. Moses killed an Egyptian when the Egyptian was mistreating an Israelite. Moses defended the Israelite, just a God defends us. The word of Moses’ action has spread around the Israelite community. The very next day Moses tries to intervene when two Israelites are fighting and gets ‘yesterday’ thrown in his face. He had hoped his ‘yesterday’ would be forgotten. He was just trying to help. He thought he was doing God’s will. But his ‘yesterday’ gets in the way. Has your ‘yesterday’ ever gotten in the way of today? Perhaps you keep bringing up the past, the hurt, the injustice, and the pain. Maybe you need to let go and not bring it up. Or maybe your ‘yesterday’ was triumphant and you want to continue to ride the wave of success. You want to be lazy today, so you throw your ‘yesterday’ onto the table so as to cover up your lack of initiative today. We can use our ‘yesterday’ as an excuse to either stay in the dumps or not reach as high as we could and perhaps should. Moses got pulled down because of his actions ‘yesterday’. He spent forty years deployed in a foreign country before he could return and finish his mission. What ‘yesterdays’ are keeping you from reaching your potential in Christ? Today, stop using your ‘yesterdays’ as a way to not move forward.