Stephen’s speech to the Jewish leaders
7
📚Then the high priest said, “Are these things so?”7:1 In the speech which follows Stephen does not refer directly to their accusations. Instead he gives a brief account of Israel’s history beginning with the father of the nation, Abraham, and gives special emphasis to Moses through whom God gave His Law. In this way he answers the charges that he had spoken against God, Moses, the Law and the temple (Acts 6:11, 13, 14) – he shows that his teaching was in accordance with the Old Testament. All along he has one end in view – to show that the nation was always rebellious against its God-appointed leaders, and that this rebellious spirit was displayed to the full in their murder of the Lord Jesus. Stephen showed very great courage in speaking like this before the religious court of the Jews which had condemned Jesus to death. The explanation of his boldness is found in Acts 6:5.⚜
2 📚And he said, “Men, brethren, and fathers, listen. The God of glory 📖 appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, 3 📚and said to him, ‘Go away from your country, and from your people, and come to the land that I will show you.’
4 📚“Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans, and lived in Haran. From there, when his father died, God caused him to move to this land where you now live. 5 📚And he gave him no inheritance in it, no, not enough to set his foot on. But he promised that he would give it as a possession to him and to his descendants after him, when Abraham still had no child. 6 📚And God spoke in this way, that his descendants would be strangers in a foreign land, and that they would enslave them and mistreat them for four hundred years. 7 📚And I will judge the nation to which they are enslaved, God said, ‘and afterwards they will come out and serve me in this place.’ 8 📚And he gave him the covenant of circumcision. And so Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day. And Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs 📖.
9 📚“And the patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt. But God was with him, 10 📚and delivered him out of all his troubles, and gave him favour and wisdom in the presence of Pharaoh king of Egypt, so he made him ruler over Egypt and all his house.
11 📚“Now a famine came over all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and great trouble. And our fathers found no food. 12 📚But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers the first time. 13 📚And during the second time Joseph became known to his brothers and Joseph’s people became known to Pharaoh. 14 📚Then Joseph sent and called his father Jacob and all his family to Egypt, seventy-five people.
7:14 Compare Gen 46:26. There the number in Jacob’s family in Canaan is given as sixty-six, apart from his son’s wives. Counting the nine wives of Jacob’s sons still living in Canaan the figure comes to seventy-five. (Judah’s wife was dead – Gen 38:12, and, according to tradition, Simeon’s wife also).⚜
15 📚So Jacob went down to Egypt and there died, he and our fathers, 16 📚and were carried over to Shechem, and placed in the tomb that Abraham bought for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem.
17 📚“But when the time drew near to fulfil the promise that God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and increased in number in Egypt, 18 📚until another king arose who did not know Joseph. 19 📚He dealt treacherously with our people and mistreated our fathers, making them throw out their infants so they would not live.
20 📚“At that time Moses was born. He was a very fine lovely child, and nurtured in his father’s house for three months. 21 📚And when he was placed outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. 22 📚And Moses was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was powerful in words and in deeds.
23 📚“And when he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel. 24 📚And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended and avenged him who was oppressed, and struck down the Egyptian. 25 📚For he supposed his brethren would understand that God would deliver them by his hand, but they did not understand.
7:25 This is a theme Stephen now begins to emphasize – the people of Israel revealed in their history that they were often ignorant of God’s plans and rejected the leaders God appointed for them.⚜
26 📚And the next day he appeared to two of them as they were fighting, and tried to make peace between them, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why do you harm one another?’
27 📚“But the one who was harming his neighbour shoved him away and said, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? 28 Will you kill me, as you did the Egyptian yesterday?’ 29 📚At this word Moses fled, and was a foreigner in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.
30 📚“And when forty years had passed, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush. 31 📚When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. And as he drew near to look at it, the voice of the Lord came to him, 32 📚saying, ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ Then Moses trembled, and did not dare to look.
33 📚“Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34 📚I have seen, yes, I have seen the oppression of my people in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and I have come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send you to Egypt.’
35 📚“This is that Moses whom they rejected, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’ He is the one God sent to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.
36 📚He brought them out, after showing wonders and miraculous signs in the land of Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years.
7:36 This verse covers Exodus chapters 7 to 17 and parts of Numbers chapters 14 to 21.⚜
37 📚“This is that Moses who said to the children of Israel, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brethren. You must listen to him.’
7:37 Deut 18:15 – this prophet was the Lord Jesus.⚜
38 📚This is he who was in the church in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers, the one who received the living oracles to give to us.
39 📚“Him our fathers would not obey, but rejected, and in their hearts turned back again to Egypt,
7:39 See notes on vs 1,25. Stephen will show that as Israel dealt with the prophet Moses so also they dealt with the great Prophet Moses foretold (v 37). Though the people of Israel left Egypt their thoughts and desires were still there (Ex 16:1-3; Num 14:1-4).⚜
40 📚saying to Aaron, ‘Make us gods to go before us. For as for this Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ 41 📚And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice to the idol, and were happy with the works of their own hands. 42 📚Then God turned away and gave them up to worship the starry host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the Prophets,
O house of Israel,
did you offer to me slain beasts
and sacrifices during forty years
in the wilderness?
43 📚You even took the tabernacle of Moloch,
and the star of your god Remphan,
images which you made to worship.
So I will carry you away beyond Babylon.
7:42-43 Stephen is referring to the Greek translation of the Hebrew of Amos 5:25-27, but does not give an exact quotation. His purpose was simply to show that God gave up Israel to false worship because of their disobedience and rebelliousness. See notes on the worship of stars at Deut 4:19; 17:3-5; Ezek 8:16-18; Gen 1:14-18.⚜
44 📚“Our fathers had the tabernacle of testimony in the wilderness, as God had appointed, telling Moses to make it according to the pattern that he had seen. 45 📚Having received it in turn, our fathers brought it with Joshua to the land of the Gentiles, whom God drove out from the presence of our fathers until the days of David. 46 📚 He found favour with God, and wanted to see to the building of a dwelling place for the God of Jacob 📖. 47 📚📚But it was Solomon who built him a house.
48 📚“However, the Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands; as the prophet says,
49 📚‘Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
What house will you build me?
says the Lord,
Or what is the place of my rest?
50 📚Has not my hand made all these things?’
7:48-50 The Jews attached great importance to the temple in Jerusalem. One of the charges they made against Stephen was that he spoke against it (Acts 6:13-14). Evidently, he had been speaking in a way that indicated his conviction that the temple itself was not the important thing but the God whose name was there, and that lives of holiness and obedience were greater than ritual and ceremonies (compare Isa 1:12-20). He here quotes from Isa 66:1-2 to show that his views were in accordance with the Old Testament. Those verses conclude with the words “But to this man I will look: to him who is lowly and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my word”. Stephen does not quote these words but they may well have been in his mind. Did he not see the huge contrast between the kind of person described in those words and the Jewish leaders before Him? It seems that this (and the inspiration of God’s Spirit in his heart) accounts for the sudden outburst against them beginning in the next verse.⚜
51 📚“You stiffnecked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears 📖, you always resist the Holy Spirit. You are just like your fathers.
7:51 Stephen resolved to speak the truth as the Lord Jesus had done, regardless of the consequences. Stiff-necked means stubborn and rebellious.⚜
52 📚Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered.
53 📚You have received the Law administered by angels, and have not kept it”.
7:53 They accused him of speaking against the law (Acts 6:13), but they, professing to honor the law, had broken it repeatedly and, as it were, trampled it under their feet (Matt 23:1-3; 15:3-9; Rom 2:17-24).⚜
Stephen’s death
54 📚When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed their teeth at him.
55 📚But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadily into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God,
56 📚and said, “Look 📖, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man 📖 standing at the right hand of God”.
57 📚Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and rushed at him all together,
7:57 Learned, religious men when faced with unwanted truth can behave as violently, recklessly and unjustly as anyone else. These men could not stand to hear words that honored Jesus Whom they hated (John 15:18-25). So they refused to hear the very thing they needed to hear and believe.⚜
58 📚and dragged him out of the city, and pelted him with stones. And the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man whose name was Saul.
7:58 They had no right under Roman rule to put anyone to death (John 18:31), but in their rage they ignored this. They thought (or professed to think) that Stephen was a blasphemer and that it was their duty to put him to death (John 16:2; Lev 24:13-16). The “witnesses” were those who had heard and accused him. Here we see Saul in their camp, but soon he would be proclaiming the truth that then he wanted to overthrow.⚜
59 📚And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”.
7:59 Luke 23:46. He evidently believed in the deity of the Lord Jesus. Who but God could receive his spirit (Ps 31:5; Eccl 12:7).⚜
60 📚And he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not put this sin to their account”. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
7:60 Luke 23:34. The fullness of God’s Spirit made him like the Lord Jesus in this also. He fulfilled the law of love Jesus taught in Matt 5:43-48. It should be an encouragement to all of us that Stephen in a very short time became like the Lord Jesus in so many ways. He is a striking example of the truth of 2 Cor 3:18. “Sleep” is sometimes used for death in the Bible – the body sleeps, the spirit goes to God (John 11:11, 14; 1 Cor 15:51; 1 Thess 4:14).⚜