Acts 7:37-53

Third Division of Stephens Speech.

Acts 7:37-53. Moses and the Prophets. Moses is again the central figure of the history, but now he stands forward as the great deliverer of the people. Stephen has described (Acts 7:36) his marvellous powers, and now shows how, in his constant communion with unseen beings (Acts 7:38-53), he stood alone in his strange, weird grandeur above other men. On two of his supernatural gifts the speaker dwells (1) on his likeness to the greater Prophet (the Messiah), whose coming he foretold; (2) on his friendship and communion with the Almighty Being of Mount Sinai. It was this man, their benefactor, the friend of their God, whom they again and again refused to obey; but this folly and sin of Israel was speedily avenged, for, instead of serving the one true God, who hitherto in so marvellous' a manner had been their deliverer and guardian, they worshipped the host of heaven, and took up the Tabernacle of Moloch, the created instead of the Creator. It was as though their God had given them up as slaves to the unworthy objects of their shameful adoration. But the mention of the Tabernacle of Moloch, that false idol to which in their desert wanderings Israel had transferred its homage, brings Stephen to speak of another Tabernacle, that first sacred model of the house on Mount Zion he was accused of despising and speaking lightly of the Tabernacle of Witness, made after the very pattern which the Most Highest had given to His servant Moses. He rapidly sketches the history of this sacred tent, the first earthly resting-place of the visible glory, and goes on to speak of the building of the Temple not, however, accomplished by David, the man after God's own heart, but by Solomon. Now, Stephen was charged with teaching the transitory nature of the Temple, so he shows them how a far holier sanctuary than the one then glittering in all its stately beauty in their loved city had already passed away. The minds of his audience, too, he well knew were remembering, as he was speaking of these things the lost ark of the covenant, the tables of stone written in by no mortal hand, and other holy things now lost to them for ever, which had formed the furniture of the Tabernacle which existed no more. Was not the transitory nature of all these things in accordance with the Eternal's own words, ‘Heaven is My throne.... What manner of house will ye build Me? saith the Lord.' And here it was, in God's good pleasure, that the wondrous argument closed; perhaps the church was not yet fully ripe to receive so broad a view of its destined work and office as Stephen would evidently have painted in the exordium of his long discourse. It was one of Stephen's audience who in later years really spoke the close of that famous sermon before the Sanhedrim the young man Saul. Then Stephen spoke a few more sentences, but they were hurried, unfinished, deeply tinged with righteous anger. He was entering on the story of the prophets of Israel, and what they wished to teach the reluctant, stubborn people; but the thought of the sufferings of these brave and persecuted soldiers of his Master, whose history was closed by the murder of ‘the Just,' whose fate he read in the fierce, unrelenting countenances before him he was doomed to share, carried him away, and the calm and skilful advocate of a hated cause, the persuasive, winning orator, became the accuser of his judges and his erring countrymen; and so the speech was brought to a sudden end, the words of the speaker being lost in a loud indignant clamour. The martyr's death soon followed.