Acts 7:42-43 :

But God turned, and gave them up to serve the army of the sky, as it is written in the book of the prophets,

‘Did you offer to me slain animals and sacrifices
forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
You took up the tabernacle of Moloch,
the star of your god Rephan,
the figures which you made to worship.
I will carry you away beyond Babylon.’

One of the accusations against Stephen was that he claimed that Jesus was going to destroy “this place.” Here we see that it wouldn’t be the first time that God brought punishment on the Jews. Stephen reminds that them God punished them for 40 years in the wilderness and they still worshiped other gods. God, seeing their idolatry, promised to punish them by sending them “away beyond Babylon.”

The sin problem of Israel was a common thing in history and it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anybody that they could be punished for sins they were committing.

This is true for us individually as Christians too. We still have these bodies of flesh that we live in that are quite capable of sin. We should take warnings from God seriously too. God wants us to live in the power of the Holy Spirit each day so that we are able to keep living good lives and avoid falling into sin. If someone warns us about a potential problem ahead, we shouldn’t attack them, we should look out for ourselves because we may have a real problem.