When the Sanhedrin heard the accusations against Stephen, they offered him the opportunity to defend himself, and, boy, did he! He takes the Jewish leaders on a thorough walk through the Old Testament, discussing Genesis (Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph) and Exodus (Moses), as well as the prophets through David and Solomon and the building of the Temple, and even the exile to Babylon. All of this was Stephen’s way of revealing that the Jewish leaders are stiff-necked, always resisting the Holy Spirit. And of course, Stephen pays the ultimate price – death – for his truthful, yet condemning remarks. Let’s take a look.
1) V1-19 – 1Then the high priest asked him, “Are these charges true?” 2To this he replied: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. 3‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’ 4So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. 5He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. 6God spoke to him in this way: ‘Your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. 7But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come out of that country and worship Me in this place.’ 8Then He gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs. 9Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him 10and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh king of Egypt; so he made him ruler over Egypt and all his palace. 11Then a famine struck all Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering, and our fathers could not find food. 12When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers on their first visit. 13On their second visit, Joseph told his brothers who he was, and Pharaoh learned about Joseph’s family. 14After this, Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, seventy-five in all. 15Then Jacob went down to Egypt, where he and our fathers died. 16Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain sum of money. 17As the time drew near for God to fulfill His promise to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt greatly increased. 18Then another king, who knew nothing about Joseph, became ruler of Egypt. 19He dealt treacherously with our people and oppressed our forefathers by forcing them to throw out their newborn babies so that they would die.”
The beginning of Stephen’s testimony takes us back to Genesis 11-12. Stephen claims that God appeared to Abraham “while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran.” Genesis does not demand that interpretation, but perhaps Stephen knew something from Jewish oral tradition that we twenty-first century Gentile Christians do not know. Let’s look at the old text. Genesis 11:27-32 says, “Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot. Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. Now Sarai was barren; she had no child. Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.” Immediately afterward, we read in Genesis 12:1-4, “Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.”
When we read, “Now the Lord said to Abram,” we could also read it as, “Now the Lord had said to Abram.” That seems to be the rendering Stephen understands; the Lord had already told Abram to go to the land He would show him, even before he headed out with his father, Terah, to Haran. Beyond that, Stephen reminds the Jewish leaders of God’s promises to Abraham and the sign of circumcision. He jumps quickly from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Joseph and skims over the period of persecution in Egypt, where the Jewish people became slaves for some 400 years (v6).
Why does Stephen bother the Jewish leaders with this information that they certainly knew well? Were there others in the audience who may not have know the history of the Jewish people? Was he setting the context for something he would say later in his speech? I think it amounts to the accusation against him. Acts 6:11-14 records what His accusers claimed: “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God. …This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.” It appears, without reading further in Stephen’s defense, that he is indeed setting the context of his gospel message, in an effort to show that he is not in fact speaking “blasphemous words against Moses and God,” that he is not speaking “words against [the Temple] and the law.” He doesn’t claim that Jesus “will destroy [the Temple] or will change the customs that Moses delivered.” Rather, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Temple, the One who fulfills the law of Moses. But Stephen’s audience, as we will see, is blind to that message and easily offended.
2) V20-38 – 20“At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child. For three months he was cared for in his father’s house. 21When he was placed outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. 22Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action. 23When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. 24He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. 25Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. 26The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?’ 27But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? 28Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ 29When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons. 30After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. 31When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to look more closely, he heard the Lord’s voice: 32‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look. 33Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals; the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34I have indeed seen the oppression of My people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.’ 35This is the same Moses whom they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God Himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36He led them out of Egypt and did wonders and miraculous signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea and for forty years in the desert. 37This is that Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will send you a prophet like me from your own people.’ 38He was in the assembly in the desert, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers; and he received living words to pass on to us.”
Stephen, in claiming that Moses was “no ordinary child” (v20), shows his respect for the primary prophet of the Jews to this point. He tells the story of Moses in 15 verses and again reveres him in v36-38. Should we today remember Moses and revere him as a great prophet? Should we treat him as just one of us, another mere part of the body of Christ? I have set these two things at odds, but the truth is both. Every part of the body of Christ – whether a leader like Moses or a follower like Susie Q or John Doe – deserves to be revered and honored, even more highly than yourself. Yet only Christ is worthy of worship.
3) V39-50 – 39“But our fathers refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. 40They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt – we don’t know what has happened to him!’ 41That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and held a celebration in honor of what their hands had made. 42But God turned away and gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets: ‘Did you bring Me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the desert, O house of Israel? 43You have lifted up the shrine of Molech and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to worship. Therefore I will send you into exile’ beyond Babylon. 44Our forefathers had the tabernacle of the Testimony with them in the desert. It had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen. 45Having received the tabernacle, our fathers under Joshua brought it with them when they took the land from the nations God drove out before them. It remained in the land until the time of David, 46who enjoyed God’s favor and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. 47But it was Solomon who built the house for Him. 48However, the Most High does not live in houses made by men. As the prophet says: 49‘Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. What kind of house will you build for Me? says the Lord. Or where will My resting place be? 50Has not My hand made all these things?’”
Here is where Stephen steps on the toes of the Jewish leaders. To this point, they are probably wondering why he is recounting the most familiar parts of their history, but now he hits them with a jab they can’t mistake or forget. He says, “Our fathers refused to obey him (Moses). Instead, they rejected him” (v39). Though the leadership knew he was speaking of the followers of Moses in the wilderness, they likely saw his linking them to them. And Stephen continues showing the disobedience of the people, all the while pointing to God’s faithfulness to them, even dwelling with them as symbolized by Solomon’s Temple – again displaying his reverence for the concept of Temple worship. Yet, Stephen rightly points out, again something the leadership would have understood and even appreciated, that God “does not live in houses made by men” (v48). Though Temple worship is respected, it is not to be the end-all, according to Stephen. We worship God not only in the Temple, or in the church building, or in our most reverent times of the week. We are to worship God continuously, in every aspect of our lives. And I think Stephen was jabbing at the leaders with this sort of remark, pointing out more subtly and gently than Jesus did how the Jewish leaders were empty tombs and whitewashed walls – they were hypocrites. In the next passage, we’ll see it come to a head.
4) V51-60 – 51“You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit! 52Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered Him – 53you who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it.” 54When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. 55But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56“Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” 57At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep.
Stephen’s jabs turn to knockout blows here. He says, “You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! …You always resist the Holy Spirit… And now you have betrayed and murdered [the Righteous One],” Jesus (v51-52)! The Jewish leaders “were furious and gnashed their teeth at him” (v54). They stoned Stephen as he claimed to see Jesus, “the Son of Man [in heaven] standing at the right hand of God” (v56). Stephen even prayed for his murderers as he died, much like Jesus did as He hung on the cross being mocked (Luke 23:34).
Footnotes
- 7:3 Gen. 12:1
- 7:7 Gen. 15:13,14
- 7:20 Or was fair in the sight of God
- 7:28 Exodus 2:14
- 7:32 Exodus 3:6
- 7:34 Exodus 3:5,7,8,10
- 7:36 That is, Sea of Reeds
- 7:37 Deut. 18:15
- 7:40 Exodus 32:1
- 7:43 Amos 5:25-27
- 7:46 Some early manuscripts the house of Jacob
- 7:50 Isaiah 66:1,2
Bible text from Gospelcom.net. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.