Acts 7:1-16

Stephen’s Speech to the Sanhedrin
1 Then the high priest asked Stephen, “Are these charges true?”
2 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. 3 ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’[a]

4 “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. 5 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. 6 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. 7 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.’[b] 8 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.

9 “Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him 10 and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh king of Egypt. So Pharaoh made him ruler over Egypt and all his palace.

11 “Then a famine struck all Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering, and our ancestors could not find food. 12 When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our forefathers on their first visit. 13 On their second visit, Joseph told his brothers who he was, and Pharaoh learned about Joseph’s family. 14 After this, Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, seventy-five in all. 15 Then Jacob went down to Egypt, where he and our ancestors died. 16 Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain sum of money.



Dig Deeper
The other day I happened along a television commentator who was defending himself against charges that he disliked American poor people and did not care about their struggles because he opposed the new health care initiative of the President of the United States and he was also opposing a proposal in Congress that the United States government would once again extend unemployment benefits well beyond the usual time period because of the economic recession in which the US currently finds itself. Without making comment personally on any of those issues, I found his response interesting to those charges. Did he oppose the health care bill and the unemployment extension? Did he hate average Americans? In his estimation those charges, while somewhat based in truth still had to be qualified as false charges because of the interpretation given to his positions. In his response to these “false” charges, the commentator did not just simply state his position against these two government programs. Instead he told a story that, on the surface, appeared to have little to do with the questions on his current positions. He told a story about the founding of the United States of America. He crafted his story of America in such a way as to stress certain aspects of America’s story that connected it to what he wanted to say. The story that he told, if you were paying close attention, demonstrated an America that was built to give freedom from outside intervention to every human being. It would be their lot as Americans to succeed or fail on their own with no handicaps but no helps either. His point soon became clear. His America was one that created the environment for every American to make it through life by their own two hands with no government interference or support. That’s why he opposed these two ideas. They simply did not match up with his story of America. And sometimes, you can only make the truth of your point known through a story.

In the previous passage Stephen was charged with opposing the Law of Moses and Israel’s God. It was being interpreted by the Jews who were opposing him as a disdain for Israel. So as we turn to this chapter, the question on the mind of the high priest, presumably Caiphas, was whether or not these charges were true. Did Stephen hate Israel, Israel’s Law, and God himself? Like the example above, Stephen felt that the charges against him were false because the interpretation of his position was incorrect. A simple answer would simply not explain his position. The only way for him to truly explain his position was to go back to the beginning and tell a story. Stephen would go back through Israel’s story and highlight certain events to show that he was not an enemy of Israel at all. He was, in fact, the one that was clinging to the ideals of the true story of Israel. He was continuing in that story and his opponents who were making serious charges against him were the ones that would find themselves on the wrong side of history if they would but go back and get the story right from the beginning.

From Stephen’s opening words, he makes it clear as he addresses his listeners as brothers and fathers, that he is not trying to be contentious. He is trying to build a camaraderie with them and find common ground while still declaring the truth. He continues to establish common ground as declared their common foundation as coming from the God of glory, a phrase that appears only in Psalm 29:3 in the Old Testament. He was not going to blaspheme God but uphold his glory as the one who is “enthroned as king forever.” (Ps. 29:10).

Stephen wanted it to be clear to his audience that he was not holding Israel in disdain. He was not denouncing the fact that God had called Israel to be his people, something that was a great point of contention between the Jews and Christians of the first century (The Jewish claim was that Christians were denouncing Israel as God’s people altogether, while the true Christian position was that God had indeed called Israel to be his true people, but that the status of “Israel” as God’s true Son had passed from the nation of Israel to Jesus and those who entered into the life of the Messiah). Rather, Stephen confirmed the fact that God had called Abraham for the special purpose of righting what had gone wrong in the world as a result of sin. As Stephen tells, the story, however, he does so by stressing themes that were not just important to Jews, but things that were vital parts of the gospel message as well. His story has everything to do with being called to be God’s people who would form the promised family and receive the inheritance of God’s people. He will also stress the fact that Israel had a long history of ignoring or mistreating those called by God to be guardians of the inheritance, which was a theme that would bear significant importance when it came time to specifically show the role of Jesus in God’s story.

The call to Abraham, from the very beginning, was to leave his people and family and go to a new land to be the beginning of a new family that God would form (a call that would have been rather familiar to those who were called to “hate” or reject the status of their blood family as their identity as God’s people and to embrace Jesus alone to bring them into God’s family as Jesus made clear in Lk. 14:25-27). Abraham obeyed God in faith and came into the promise that God had given him. When he arrived at the land that God had told him to go to, Abraham did not receive it. He was called to live in a land that was promised to him as his inheritance but which he did not really fully possess (a theme that would have struck a chord with Christians who were a people called to live the life of the age to come as their inheritance while still in the present age, meaning they were called to live in an inheritance that had been promised to them but that they will not fully possess until the resurrection). Abraham obeyed God by faith and lived as though God’s promises of a great family of all nations and the inheritance were his even though he could not see any of it and didn’t even have a son let alone a nation of his own descendants (again, the Christian would have heard echoes of their own call to live by faith in the life of Christ and the promise of the age to come even though they could not see it or take hold of it just yet, a topic that Paul discussed in great detail in Romans 4). God had given Abraham a sign of his covenant in circumcision, showing that he really had called them to be his people. It would be the uniform, so to speak, of their status as God’s people (just as the uniform for the Christian is faith in the life of Christ).

As we can see, Stephen masterfully spun this tale in such a way so as to affirm the story of Israel as God’s people, while at the same time bringing out certain themes to show that what God had been doing all along with Israel was now being fulfilled and brought to a head with the people of the Messiah.

As Stephen continues his tale, he was showing the Sanhedrin that he was not denying God’s calling of Abraham as the beginning of the story of God fixing what had gone so terribly wrong in the world, he was affirming it. It wasn’t that the story was all wrong, it was just that they were missing some important aspects of properly understanding it. The story that Stephen was telling of Israel was different from what he was being accused of but no less dangerous in its potential to incite the crowd to anger. He was wasn’t trying to soften the truth, he was clarifying it so that he could declare it even louder and clearer than he had done before.

As he moved into the time of Joseph, Stephen stressed that Joseph was the brother through whom God had chosen to work and through whom the promise would be preserved. Yet, Joseph was rejected by the rest of his brothers and sent packing to Egypt. Rather than this rejection showing that Joseph was not God’s chosen instrument, the truth revealed quite the opposite. God used Joseph to become the the de facto ruler of Egypt and over the palace of the Pharaoh. When the hard times of famine struck the land, the brothers had no choice. They went to the brother that they had rejected, a man that they did not even recognize as their own brother and they had to ask him for food. The one that they had rejected in jealousy and hatred was now the only one that could save them.

Again, Stephen’s point was to affirm their common heritage and identity but his more subtle point would likely have been clear as well, and if wasn’t it would soon become clear. The very roots of the nation of Israel involved the larger group rejecting the very one that they would be the source or their salvation. God had worked in such a way to bring events about so that they only way that they could be saved from certain death and continue to be God’s people was to humble themselves before the rejected one who had become the rightful ruler.

Stephen’s underlying point was that what God had done through Joseph was a pattern for what he was now doing through Jesus the Messiah. Jesus had been rejected by his own people, but now the one that had been rejected was the only one through whom they could find life and the continued status as God’s children. They must humble themselves before the very one that they had rejected.

Stephen isn’t done yet, but he has brilliantly laid the foundation for his big finish when he reveals that the story that they think he’s telling, a rather run-of-the-mill recounting of their common history, albeit one that stressed some very specific themes, has a very different ending then the one that his listeners would have imagined.


Devotional Thought
Stephen was willing to step up and speak boldly in some pretty intimidating circumstances. Are you just as willing to boldly proclaim God’s story to those around you even if it won’t be received well? What venue has God given you today to tell someone his story of what he is up to to make things right in the world?