Acts 7:41-43

God is our Father. There is nothing above Him. We can make our work, our finances, our reputation our gods falsely believing that we can control our lives. Life has a way of showing us the truth…we do not. When we relinquish control  to Him He gives  us peace that no amount of personal success or failure can give. He will not force us to love Him.

I am the Lord thy God: thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.

These must be understood in relation the “law of Love”: morality is based on love of God and neighbor. The first principle and source of moral law is the law of love. It includes “all the law, the prophets” (Matthew 22.40).

COMMANDS: faith, hope, love, and worship of God; reverence for holy things; prayer.

FORBIDS: idolatry; superstition; spiritism; tempting God; sacrilege; attendance at false worship.

At Calvary's cross, God's divine wrath and judgment collided with His mercy and love as Jesus bled and died for us. "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed" (1 Peter 2:24). For those who trust in Christ, our sinful disobedience is not punished by God's wrath because Jesus took the punishment for our sins that we deserved. The nails driven into His hands and feet were my nails; the cross upon which He hung was mine. First5 

Acts 7:41 And they made a calf in those days, offered sacrifices to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. 42 Then God turned and gave them up to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the Prophets: ‘Did you offer Me slaughtered animals and sacrifices during forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? 43 You also took up the tabernacle of Moloch, And the star of your god Remphan, images which you made to worship; And I will carry you away beyond Babylon.’ The New King James Version

Yahweh allowed the people to continue the path they chose for themselves, giving them over to their idolatry. God had warned the people through Moses that they must not turn away from exclusive devotion to Him and begin worshiping or trusting in heavenly bodies and false deities like all the other nations did. The history of the nation proves that they frequently failed to heed His warning. This is a reference to the twelve minor prophets (Hosea to Malachi) being transmitted on one scroll, as seen among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Faithlife Study Bible

Stephen challenged the religious leaders of his day either to believe all of what Moses taught or none of it. our fathers would not obey: The Talmud, the Jewish commentary on the OT, calls the rebellion involving the golden calf “that unspeakable deed.” The rabbis did not want to talk about it, forbidding a translation of the account in the vernacular for the synagogue services. The Jewish religious leaders wanted to bury the incident, but Stephen wanted to dig it back up. The NKJV Study Bible

This Jesus, whom they now refused, as their fathers did Moses, even this same has God advanced to be a Prince and Saviour. It does not at all take from the just honour of Moses to say, that he was but an instrument, and that he is infinitely outshone by Jesus. In asserting that Jesus should change the customs of the ceremonial law. Stephen was so far from blaspheming Moses, that really he honoured him, by showing how the prophecy of Moses was come to pass, which was so clear. God who gave them those customs by his servant Moses, might, no doubt, change the custom by his Son Jesus. But Israel thrust Moses from them, and would have returned to their bondage; so men in general will not obey Jesus, because they love this present evil world, and rejoice in their own works and devices. Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary

Exodus 32:4 And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf.Then they said, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!”

Psalm 106:19 They made a calf in Horeb, and worshiped the molded image.

Amos 5:26 You also carried Sikkuth your king and Chiun, your idols, the star of your gods, which you made for yourselves.