Verses 1-60
Chapter 7
When Oliver Cromwell was outlining the education he thought necessary
for his son Richard, he said, "I would have him know a little history."
It was to the lesson of history that Stephen appealed. Clearly
believing that the best form of defence was attack, he took a bird's eye
view of the history of the Jewish people and cited certain truths as
condemnation of his own nation.
(i) He saw that the men who played a really great part in the
history of Israel were the men who heard God's command, "Get thee out,"
and were not afraid to obey it. With that adventurous spirit Stephen
implicitly contrasted the spirit of the Jews of his own day, whose one
desire was to keep things as they were and who regarded Jesus and his
followers as dangerous innovators.
(ii) He insisted that men had worshipped God long before there
ever was a Temple. To the Jews the Temple was the most sacred of all
places. Stephen's insistence on the fact that God does not dwell
exclusively in any temple made with hands was not to their liking.
(iii) Stephen insisted that when the Jews crucified Jesus they
were only setting the coping stone on a policy they had always followed;
for all through the ages they had persecuted the prophets and abandoned
the leaders whom God had raised up.
These were hard truths for men who believed themselves to be the
chosen people, and it is little wonder that they were infuriated when
they heard them. We must watch for these ever-recurring notes as we
study Stephen's defence.
7:1-7 The high priest
said, "Is this so?" And Stephen said, "Men, brothers and fathers, listen
to what I have to say. The God of glory appeared to Abraham our father
when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Charran. He said to him,
'Get out from your country and from your kindred and come here to a land
which I will show you.' Then he came out from the land of the
Chaldaeans and took up his residence in Charran. After the death of his
father he removed from there and took up his residence in this land
where you now live. God did not give him an inheritance in it, not even
enough to set his foot upon. But he did promise him that he would some
day give it to him for a possession and to his descendants after him,
although at that time he had no child. God spoke thus--that his
descendants would be sojourners in an alien land, that they would make
slaves of them and treat them badly for four hundred years. As for the
nations to which they will be slaves--God said--'l will judge them, and
after these years have passed, they will come out and they will serve me
in this place.'"
As we have already seen, it was Stephen's method of defence to
take a panoramic view of Jewish history. It was not the mere sequence of
events which was in Stephen's mind. To him every person and event
symbolized something. He began with Abraham, for in the most literal way
it was with him that, for the Jew, history began. In him Stephen sees
three things.
(i) Abraham was a man who answered God's summons. As the writer
to the Hebrews put it, Abraham left home without knowing where he was to
go (Hebrews 11:8).
He was a man of adventurous spirit. Lesslie Newbigin of the Church of
South India tells us that negotiations towards that union were often
held up by people demanding to know just where such and such a step
might lead. In the end someone had to say to these careful souls, "A
Christian has no right to demand to know where he is going." For Stephen
the man of God was he who obeyed God's command even when he had no idea
what the consequences might be.
(ii) Abraham was a man of faith. He did not know where he was
going but he believed that, under God's guidance, the best was yet to
be. Even when he had no children and when, humanly speaking, it seemed
impossible that he ever should have any, he believed that some day his
descendants would inherit the land God had promised to them.
(iii) Abraham was a man of hope. To the end of the day he never
saw the promise fully fulfilled but he never doubted that it would be.
So Stephen presents the Jews with the picture of an adventurous
life, ever ready to answer God's summons in contrast to their desire to
cling to the past.
7:8-16 "So he gave him
the covenant of which circumcision was the sign. So he begat Isaac and
he circumcised him on the eighth day. And Isaac begat Jacob and Jacob
begat the twelve patriarchs. The patriarchs were jealous of Joseph and
sold him into Egypt; but God was with him and rescued him from all his
troubles and gave him grace and wisdom before Pharaoh king of Egypt. So
he made Joseph the ruler of Egypt and of his whole house. There came a
famine upon the whole of Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction; and our
fathers could not find food. But Jacob heard that there was corn in
Egypt, and he despatched our fathers there on their first visit. On the
second visit Joseph's brothers discovered who he was, and Joseph's
family became known to Pharaoh. So Joseph sent and invited Jacob his
father to come together with all his relations, in all seventy-five
persons. So Jacob came down to Egypt; and he himself died there and so
did our fathers. They were brought over to Sychem and they were laid in
the tombs which Abraham had bought at the price of silver from the sons
of Emmor in Sychem."
The picture of Abraham is succeeded by the picture of Joseph. The key to Joseph's life is summed up in his own saying in Genesis 50:20.
At that time his brothers were afraid that, after the death of Jacob,
Joseph would take vengeance on them for what they had done to him.
Joseph's answer was, "As for you, you meant evil against me; but God
meant it for good." Joseph was the man for whom seeming disaster turned
to triumph. Sold into Egypt as a slave, wrongfully imprisoned, forgotten
by the men he had helped, the day yet came when he became prime
minister of Egypt. Stephen sums up the characteristics of Joseph in two
words--grace and wisdom.
(i) Grace is a lovely word. At its simplest it means beauty in
the physical sense; then it comes to mean that beauty of character which
all men love. Its nearest English equivalent is charm. There was about
Joseph that charm which is always on the really good man. It would have
been extremely easy for him to become embittered. But he dealt
faithfully with each duty as it emerged, serving with equal devotion as
slave or as prime minister.
(ii) There is no word more difficult to define than wisdom. It
means so much more than mere cleverness. But the life of Joseph gives us
the clue to its meaning. In essence, wisdom is the ability to see
things as God sees them.
Once again the contrast is there. The Jews were lost in the
contemplation of their own past and imprisoned in the mazes of their own
Law. But Joseph welcomed each new task, even if it was a rebuff, and
adopted God's view of life.
7:17-36 "When the time
for the fulfillment of the promise which God had told to Abraham drew
near, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt, until there arose
another king in Egypt who had no knowledge of Joseph. He schemed against
our race and treated our fathers badly by making them cast out their
children so that they would not survive. At this point Moses was born
and he was very comely in God's sight. For three months he was nurtured
in his father's house. When he was put out Pharaoh's daughter took him
up and she brought him up as her own son; and Moses was educated in all
the lore of the Egyptians. He was mighty in his words and in his deeds.
When he was forty years of age the desire came into his heart to visit
his brothers, the sons of Israel. He saw one of them being maltreated
and went to his help; and he struck the Egyptian and exacted vengeance
for the man who was being ill-treated. He thought that his brothers
would understand that God was going to rescue them through him but they
did not understand. The next day he came upon the scene as two of them
were fighting. He tried to reconcile them and to make peace between
them. 'Men,' he said, 'you are brothers. Why do you injure each other?'
But the one who was injuring his neighbour pushed him away and said,
'Who made you a ruler or a judge over us? Do you intend to murder me in
the way you murdered the Egyptian yesterday?' When Moses heard this he
fled and he became a sojourner in the land of Midian. There he begat two
sons. When forty years had passed, when he was in the desert in the
neighbourhood of Mount Sinai, an angel appeared to him in a flame of
fire in a bush. When Moses saw it he was astonished at the sight. When
he approached to see what it was the voice of the Lord came to him, 'I
am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of
Jacob.' Moses was afraid and dared not look. But God said to him.. 'Take
your shoes off your feet for the place on which you are standing is
holy ground. In truth I have seen the evil that is being done to my
people in Egypt and I have heard their groaning. I have come down to
rescue them. Come now--I will send you to Egypt.' This Moses whom they
rejected saying, 'Who made you a ruler and judge over us?' this very man
God despatched as ruler and rescuer by the hand of the angel who
appeared to him in the bush. He led them out after he had performed
wonders and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for
forty years."
Next upon the scene comes the figure of Moses. For the Jew,
Moses was above all the man who answered God's command to go out. He was
quite literally the man who gave up a kingdom to answer God's summons
to be the leader of his people. Our Bible story has little to tell us of
the early days of Moses; but the Jewish historians had much more to
say. According to Josephus, Moses was so beautiful a child that, when he
was being carried down the street in his nurse's arms, people stopped
to look at him. He was so brilliant a lad that he surpassed all others
in the speed and the eagerness with which he learned. One day Pharaoh's
daughter took him to her father and asked him to make him his successor
on the throne of Egypt. Pharaoh agreed. Then, the tale goes on, Pharaoh
took his crown and jestingly placed it on the infant Moses' head; but
the child snatched it off and threw it on the ground. One of the
Egyptian wise men standing by said that this was a sign that if he was
not killed at once this child was destined to bring disaster on the
crown of Egypt. But Pharaoh's daughter snatched Moses into her arms and
persuaded her father not to heed the warning. When Moses grew up he
became the greatest of Egyptian generals and led a victorious campaign
in far-off Ethiopia where he married the princess of the land.
In face of that we can see what Moses gave up. He actually gave
up a kingdom in order to lead his people out into the desert on a great
adventure for God. So once again Stephen is making the same point. The
great man is not the man who, like the Jews, is thirled to the past and
jealous of his privileges; he is the man who is ready to answer God's
summons and leave the comfort and the ease he might have had.
7:37-53 "It was this
man who said to the sons of Israel, 'God will raise up a prophet from
among your brothers, like me.' It was this Moses who was in the
gathering of the people in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to
him in Mount Sinai, and with your fathers. It was he who received the
living oracles to give to you. But your fathers refused to be obedient
to him. They rejected him. In their hearts they turned back to Egypt.
They said to Aaron, 'Make us gods who will go before us, as for this man
Moses we do not know what has happened to him.' So in those days they
made a calf and they sacrificed to the idol they had made and they found
their joy in the works of their hands. And God turned and gave them
over to the worship of the host of heaven; as it stands written in the
Book of the Prophets, 'Did you not bring me slain victims and sacrifices
for forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? But now you have
accepted the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Remphan, the
images you have made in order to worship them. I will take you away to
live in the lands beyond Babylon.' Our fathers possessed the tent of
witness in the wilderness, as he who spoke instructed Moses to make it
according to the pattern which he had seen. Your fathers received it
from one generation to another, and brought it in with Joshua at the
time when they were gaining possession of the lands of the nations whom
God drove back from before your fathers, right up to the time of David.
He found favour with God and he asked to be allowed to find a dwelling
place for the God of Jacob. But it was Solomon who built a house for
him. But the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands. As the
prophet says, 'Heaven is my throne, earth is a footstool for my feet.'
'What kind of house will you build for me?' says the Lord, 'or where is
the place where I will rest? Has not my hand made all these things?'
Stiff-necked, uncircumcised in hearts and ears, you have always opposed
the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets
did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who told
beforehand the tidings of the coming of the Just One, whom you betrayed
and whose murderers you became--you who received the Law by the
disposition of angels and who did not keep it."
The speech of Stephen begins to accelerate. All the time by
implication it has been condemning the attitude of the Jews; now that
implicit condemnation becomes explicit. In this closing section of his
defence Stephen has woven together several strands of thought.
(i) He insists on the continued disobedience of the people. In
the days of Moses they rebelled by making the golden calf. In the time
of Amos their hearts went after Moloch and the star gods. What is
referred to as the Book of the Prophets is what we call the Minor
Prophets. The quotation is actually from Amos 5:27 but Stephen quotes not from the Hebrew version but the Greek.
(ii) He insists that they have had the most amazing privileges.
They have had the succession of the prophets; the tent of witness, so
called because the tables of the Law were laid up and kept in it; the
Law which was given by angels.
These two things are to be put side by side--continuous
disobedience and continuous privilege. The more privileges a man has the
greater his condemnation if he takes the wrong way. Stephen is
insisting that the condemnation of the Jewish nation is complete because
in spite of the fact that they had every chance to know better they
continuously rebelled against God.
(iii) He insists that they have wrongly limited God. The Temple
which should have become their greatest blessing was in fact their
greatest curse; they had come to worship it instead of worshipping God.
They had finished up with a Jewish God who lived in Jerusalem rather
than a God of all men whose dwelling was the whole universe.
(iv) He insists that they have consistently persecuted the
prophets; and--the crowning charge--that they have murdered the Son of
God. And Stephen does not excuse them on the plea of ignorance as Peter
did. It is not ignorance but rebellious disobedience which made them
commit that crime. There is anger in Stephen's closing words, but there
is sorrow too. There is the anger that sees a people commit the most
terrible of crimes; and there is the sorrow that sees a people who have
refused the destiny that God offered them.
7:54-60 As they
listened to this their very hearts were torn with vexation and they
gnashed their teeth at him. But he was full of the Holy Spirit and he
gazed steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus
standing at God's right hand. So he said, "Look now, I see the heavens
opened and the Son of Man standing at God's right hand." They shouted
with a great shout and held their ears and launched themselves at him in
a body. They flung him outside the city and began to stone him. And the
witnesses placed their garments at the feet of a young man called Saul.
So they stoned Stephen as he called upon God and said, "Lord Jesus,
receive my spirit." Kneeling down he cried with a loud voice, "Lord, set
not this sin to their charge." And when he had said this, he fell
asleep. And Saul fully agreed with his death.
A speech like this could only have one end; Stephen had courted
death and death came. But Stephen did not see the faces distorted with
rage. His gaze had gone beyond time and he saw Jesus standing at the
right hand of God. When he said this it seemed to them only the greatest
of blasphemies; and the penalty for blasphemy was stoning to death (Deuteronomy 13:6
ff.). It is to be noted that this was no judicial trial. It was a
lynching, because the Sanhedrin had no right to put anyone to death.
The method of stoning was as follows. The criminal was taken to a
height and thrown down. The witnesses had to do the actual throwing
down. If the fall killed the man good and well; if not, great boulders
were hurled down upon him until he died.
There are in this scene certain notable things about Stephen.
(i) We see the secret of his courage. Beyond all that men could do to
him he saw awaiting him the welcome of his Lord. (ii) We see Stephen
following his Lord's example. As Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of his
executioners (Luke 23:34)
so did Stephen. When George Wishart was to be executed, the executioner
hesitated. Wishart came to him and kissed him. "Lo," he said, "here is a
token that I forgive thee." The man who follows Christ the whole way
will find strength to do things which it seems humanly impossible to do.
(iii) The dreadful turmoil finished in a strange peace. To Stephen came
the peace which comes to the man who has done the right thing even if
the right thing kills him.
The first half of the first verse of chapter 8 goes with this
section. Saul has entered on the scene. The man who was to become the
apostle to the Gentiles thoroughly agreed with the execution of Stephen.
But as Augustine said, "The Church owes Paul to the prayer of Stephen."
However hard he tried Saul could never forget the way in which Stephen
had died. The blood of the martyrs even thus early had begun to be the
seed of the Church.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)