Acts 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.

THE FIRST OF THE MARTYRS (Acts 7:54-60 ; Acts 8:1)