Act 7:1-9 Then the high priest asked Stephen, "Are these charges true?” To 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 Harran. ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’ “So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Harran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. He gave him no inheritance here, not even enough ground to set his foot on. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. God spoke to him in this way: ‘For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. But 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.’ Then 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.
In the above focus, Stephen ignores the question asked him: Are these charges true? As with Jesus and Paul, people were recruited to lie about Stephen, violating the commandment, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. These liars were used to contaminated the way the people viewed Stephen. So they stirred up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law. They seized Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin. They produced false witnesses, who testified, “This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us.” (Acts 6:12-14) Of course, to speak against the law and the temple was a threat to the religious leaders and elders, for their livelihood and position of power rested on how people viewed the law and the temple. Belittling or desecrating either would affect the deference the leaders enjoyed in the Jewish community. Therefore, having liars claim Stephen was promoting ideas against the law and the temple identified him as an enemy to Judaism. But Stephen did not address these concerns of him speaking against the holy place and the law. Instead, he diverted from the high priest's question about these liar’s protestations and delved into the history of the Jewish people from Abraham to the present. Their father of Judaism left the idol worshipping area of Mesopotamia, probably today’s Iraq, journeyed to Harran, probably in Turkey, and then settled in Canaan. Idol worshipping was part of the custom of his family, but in Canaan, God came to him and gave him the the promise of a son, and that he would be the father of many nations. He chose to believe God’s words rather than his present circumstance of being childless. He chose to have faith in God’s words and not his own reality. Therefore, Abraham lived by faith in the words of the eternal living God. He proved his fidelity to God’s words by even offering up Isaac as a sacrifice because God requested this of him. Now we see Stephen recounting that story of Abraham as an indictment against the priests and leaders of the Jewish society because they were not really people of faith with the goodness of God in them, but just people following the law and its regulations without the mercy and grace of God. God’s grace and mercy were revelatory in Abraham’s story: calling him out of a world of idol worshipping to his own bosom. Abraham is the prototype of all believers who live by faith and not by the rigidity of law. Even though Abraham's covenant was one of blessings and promises, his descendants would spend 400 years in slavery, living in the darkness of captivity to the Pharaohs of Egypt. God designed this trial so they would experience the darkness of bondage to sin. Esau, Jacobs’s brother, was not bound by slavery for he settled in the hill country of Seir. (Genesis 36:8) He experienced physical freedom; Jacob experienced slavery. But in reality all people are under spiritual bondage to Satan, or the Pharaoh of this world. However, Jacob’s people knew the reality of slavery to a hard taskmaster: Pharaoh. God desired this for the Israelites. They would taste the harshness and darkness of captivity. In their escape from Egypt, they would know freedom from physical slavery. However, the law and its regulations were given to them so that they might know the God who rescued them from Pharaoh. The law from Moses' hand would show them how to be right with God. But this revelation of the law, God’s words to Moses, revealing the nature of God’s holiness, was never fully accepted by the Jewish people. Their dedication to God was often feigned lip service only. Their total dedication to the God who released them from prison was often short-lived. From the very beginning, after experiencing miracles and wonders from God’s hand, they still clung stubbornly to their own way of living, their own gods, a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose hearts were not loyal to God, whose spirits were not faithful to him. (Psalm 78:8) This was the casting, the role of the chosen, who experienced more wonders and miracles from God’s hand than any other people on the face of the earth.
The Israelites were the quintessential example of the stubbornness of humans who fell from God’s blessing in the Garden. When Adam and Eve made their decision to be like God, this attitude of self-interest and self-direction became an indelible part of every human’s DNA. We see Moses in his last words to the Israelites talk about this sinful, rebellious nature within humans. He gives them little hope that they will ever change toward serving God with their whole hearts and.souls. For I know that after my death you are sure to become utterly corrupt and to turn from the way I have commanded you. In days to come, disaster will fall on you because you will do evil in the sight of the Lord and arouse his anger by what your hands have made.” (Deuteronomy 31:29) Joshua in his last words to the Israelites before he dies states the same condition about human nature, their willingness to forsake their Creator and live unto themselves without his righteousness. Joshua said to the people, “YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO SERVE THE LORD. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.” (Joshua 24:19-20) The Israelites, blessed above all people on earth, delivered from slavery, protected in their journey across the wilderness, given a promised land of milk and honey, would be unfaithful to God who chose them out of all the people of the world as his own. Even though so chosen, they could not deliver themselves from their own DNA of rebellion to God. Stephen tells this story to the elite of Israel to highlight the rebellious nature of the Israelites and of all humans. Jesus exposits on this condition of mankind in his dealing with the man blind from birth. As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (John 9:1-5) As with all of mankind, this blind man was sightless from birth. No sin of his mother and father or himself caused this blindness. He was in darkness because that was the natural condition of his existence. People are born in blindness, in complete darkness without God’s light. God placed this man on Jesus’ journey to reveal the works of God in delivering this man from his darkened condition. This is an example of God bringing light to a very dark and sinful world, sightless in knowing God. This blind man made of dust came to know the true light: God through JESUS THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. Jesus combined his spittle of light to the darkness of the dust of mankind to create life. The Israelites could never find their own way out of the darkness through the law and its regulations; their DNA would not succumb completely to God’s authority. They could never be holy enough to please a perfect God. As Joshua said, YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO SERVE THE LORD. Something else was needed for them to be able to serve God with their whole hearts: Jesus Christ. Stephen in his review of the history of Jews to the elders was unveiling the truth of their adversary relationship to a righteous God; they needed a Savior and intermediator.
The children of Israel, even though favored greatly, experiencing miracles and wonders at the hand of God, were always adulterous in their relationship with him. They carried their other gods from Egypt in their satchels through the wilderness. This rebellious people built shrines and altars to other gods everywhere in Canaan. They were unfaithful in their service to God. Stephen, in his account of the Jew's wayward nature, points out that even in the wilderness after they had seen water gush out of a rock to refresh them, they were willing to doubt God’s care and love for them. They limited their God of unending love for them by saying He was not capable of taking care of them in all situations. Sure, God rolled back the Red Sea for us to walk across it on dry ground, sure He allowed us to escape from Pharaoh, and he evidently can bring water out of rock. But water can be found everywhere under the surface of the ground. However, for him to give us food in this barren wilderness is an impossibility. They willfully put God to the test by demanding the food they craved. They spoke against God; they said, “Can God really spread a table in the wilderness. True, he struck the rock, and water gushed out, streams flowed abundantly, but can he also give us bread? Can he supply meat for his people?” (Psalm 78:18-20) This attitude of limiting God’s power made God furious. Sadly, this disbelieving attitude of the Israelites is alive and well in our world. We have made God in our own images; we have built idols to these images in our minds. For so many, even Christians, God is not omnipotent. He could never make a fish to swallow a man; he definitely cannot make a plant that can grow in one day to shelter a man, or make a worm to destroy that plant in one day. The Israelites knew God could not feed them in the wilderness: it was an impossibility, it was unscientific; it is beyond their wildest imagination or dreams. Now we see Stephen's defense of Jesus, that the resurrection is real and he follows that man who will take the place of the temple and the law, something beyond the religious leaders' imagination. And this man can do what the law could not do: make men and women right with God. He alone will do something unimaginable to humans, give people so much love that they will give their lives up for even their enemies, an unheard of concept. But we do know, Moses and Paul said they would give up their spiritual existence with God for the sake of people they loved. Jesus told his disciples that their responsibility to the world after He left them was to love each other so that the world might know the all powerful God is one of enduring love. A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35) Stephen is castigating the leading priests and elders because he knows they have murder in their hearts. They are willing to kill him as they did Jesus, who died for sins of the world. Stephen will lay his life down while revealing his love for all people, even his enemies. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:12-13) Stephen full of the Holy Ghost knew his life was hidden IN CHRIST. A new birth and a new life through the Holy Spirit was his. (Titus 3:4-5) HIs heart was circumcised by God forevermore. Praise God that this new life is yours today or seek him that you may be found. Love, Dad and Mom
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