Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, but he could not lead the Israelites out of the darkness of their souls. Stephen tells these leaders of Israel who intend to murder him that their souls are full of darkness. No miracle from God in the desert, no physical phenomenon, no prophet could disperse the darkness that presided in the souls of these former captives of Pharaoh. As they journeyed through the wilderness, they carried the Egyptian gods in their satchels. They were constantly looking for a chance to rebel against Moses and Aaron who were following the God who delivered them out of Egypt. As with Adam and Eve in their disastrous decision to be the designer of their own lives, the children of Israel also wished to carve out their own way in life. They made images of gods they desired to follow, gods of war, fertility, prosperity, safety, and so on. This desire led them to serve idols founded on their own wayward imaginations. These idols were made of wood, stone, gold and silver. They were silent gods, unresponsive gods, gods demanding horrendous sacrifices from them, even their firstborn. Their little ones were burned on altars or cooked in the searing hands of idols like Molech. Yes, Moses by the hand of God led the Israelites out of Egypt, but their souls were still laden with Egypt’s abomination of idol worship. They rejected him (Moses) and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. Make us gods who will go before us. They (Aaron) made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and reveled in what their own hands had made. Even though the Israelites saw with their own eyes the plagues that God placed on Egypt, they still desired gods who would allow them to be as their hearts desired: wicked. They chose to serve Ashtaroth, a deity that would supposedly bring many children into families, and also make them successful in war. They worshipped Rephan, an astrological god, who supposedly would guide their lives, giving them blessings and direction. They bowed before the idol of Baal, a supreme god who demanded them to sacrifice their children, insuring them peaceful and happy lives. These gods the Israelites desired to follow rather than serve the only God who made the heavens and the earth. By constructing their own gods to follow, they attempted to fulfill Satan’s words. The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:2-5) But rather than living as God exists in peace and harmony, humans slid into a caldron of darkness, violence, and chaos. Eventually a flood of destruction terminated this existence, except for Noah and his family. Stephen recounts that the ancient Jews' lack of fidelity to God and their concomitant adulterous behavior, getting in bed with false gods, revealed to his present murderous foes that their hearts have not changed. They are still rebellious to God’s authority. Estranged from him, they intend to violate one of the Ten Commandments, murdering an innocent man.
Moses delivering the chosen people out of Egypt is analogous to the creation story. God’s chosen work, humans, his masterpiece that he called "very good,” would go astray. He had prepared a land of milk and honey for them, the Garden of Eden, but instead of abiding in peace and harmony with God, they chose independence from God. In choosing another way to live, the idols of self-indulgence crafted from their own imaginations became their gods. We see them in the promised land cloaked with worshipping these no-gods. In Judges we see idol altars, shrines and memorials on every hill, under every tree, and at every crossroad. The people of Israel were impacted by the degrading behavior of the wicked people who God intended for them to destroy. They picked up many evil behaviors from these wicked people, even as with the Ammonites, sacrificing their firstborn to Molech. In the history of Judea and Israel, many wicked kings ruled the land of Canaan. They did evil in the sight of the Lord, conditioning their people to follow after the gods of the formerly displaced inhabitants of Canaan, but a remnant of these people always existed with the Israelites. In king Manasseh’s reign, evil flourished. Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. And he did evil in the sight of the LORD by following the abominations of the nations that the LORD had driven out before the Israelites. For he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed, and he raised up altars for Baal. He made an Asherah pole, as King Ahab of Israel had done, and he worshiped and served all the host of heaven. Manasseh also built altars in the house of the LORD, of which the LORD had said, “In Jerusalem I will put My Name.” In both courtyards of the house of the LORD, he built altars to all the host of heaven. He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced sorcery and divination, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did great evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him to anger. (2 King 21:1-7) Stephen is telling his Jewish enemies that their hearts never changed from their waywardness in the wilderness to their inhabitation of the promised land. Their hearts’ allegiance was to their idols, their gods, not to the One who delivered them out of slavery. This new beginning and this new insight of the God who made them, given to Moses on the Mount of Sinai, did not alter their love affair of other gods and of their own evil choices in their lives. But God would eventually bring a final judgment of dispersion from the land of milk and honey because of the hardness of their hearts. I will send you into exile’ beyond Babylon. God harshly treated the Israelites many times to drive them away from their adulterous affairs with other gods. Both Israel, made up of ten tribes, and Judea, made up of only two tribes, were eventually dispersed from Canaan because of their lust of other gods. The prophet Ezekiel describes God’s judgment against his chosen people who were given a start to a new life in the promised land. I am about to bring a sword against you, and I will destroy your high places. Your altars will be demolished and your incense altars will be smashed; and I will slay your people in front of your idols. I will lay the dead bodies of the Israelites in front of their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars. Wherever you live, the towns will be laid waste and the high places demolished, so that your altars will be laid waste and devastated, your idols smashed and ruined, your incense altars broken down, and what you have made wiped out. Your people will fall slain among you, and you will know that I am the Lord. (Ezekiel 6:1-7) As with all people from the beginning of time, humans chose gods to satisfy their own wicked nature. Even under horrendous judgment from God’s throne, the chosen people would not change; eventually they were dispersed from Canaan. Stephen is now facing angry men who in a few years will feel the heavy hand of Rome on their land, experiencing the diaspora from Israel. God’s judgment of his wayward loved ones is an ongoing experience. The Lord disciplines the one he loves. (Hebrews 12:6)
Stephen is a man who knows God through the love of Jesus Christ in his life. He is filled with the Holy Spirit, so when he recounts the history of the Jews, the Holy Spirit is giving him the words to say to these rebellious foes. Their hearts are touched so much that they cannot contain their anger. His words expose the sickness of their hearts. They know they are just like their wayward ancestors. They know their religion is based on rituals and ceremonies, not emanating from the heart. Their allegiance to God is based on heritage, not on a relationship to God in an intimate way. Now Stephen’s words reveal the darkness in their souls and lives. But Stephen is serving the source of light, life itself personified: Jesus Christ. Jesus said, I am the light of the world; I do only what the Father God tells me. All light and all life originates in the hands of God. The children of Abraham, even though chosen, even though experiencing God’s mighty hand of deliverance from their captivity in Egypt, served their own desires, depicted in the gods they chose to worship. Now, as Stephen faces his adversaries, they no longer serve idols, for that practice stopped as the Israelites came back into their home land, but they still served themselves, and they were still in need of repentance. John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus, but his message to the Israelites was to repent, repent of their self-willed lives, of their lack of caring for the poor and the disadvantaged, of their coldness to God. Stephen is facing the leaders of the Jewish community, the Sanhedrin. John the Baptist castigated them, calling them a brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matthew 3:7-10). Rather than produce the fruit of righteousness and goodness, they murder Stephen, setting the stage for their eventual demise, carried out by the Roman government. The priesthood would disappear and the time of the rabbis would become the source of spirituality in the dispersed Jews in foreign lands. Stephen’s narrative about the children of Israel illustrates that the Jew’s waywardness in serving God with their whole hearts and minds is the quintessential example of all mankind. No matter how wonderfully God treated them, no matter how many miracles were performed before their eyes, their instinctive desire was to serve themselves, first through idol worship and later in their self-indulgent lifestyles. They were designed to be God’s chosen people, qualified in every way to be children in his household, but instead the history of the Jews depicts a wayward people, a recalcitrant people, unwilling to come under the dictates of God's law and its regulations. Even if Moses were standing in place of Stephen, they still would raise their arms to slay the mighty prophet Moses. But as Paul states: A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God. (Romans 2:28-29) We who are around this breakfast table seek the praises of God and not of men, for we have been circumcised by the hand of God through the work of Christ on the cross, carried out by the power of the Holy Spirit in us. Let us give thanks for the mighty power of God at work in our lives. Amen.
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