Acts 7:35-53

35 “This is the same Moses they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36 He led them out of Egypt and performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea and for forty years in the wilderness.
37 “This is the Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people.’[h] 38 He was in the assembly in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors; and he received living words to pass on to us.
39 “But our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. 40 They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!’[i] 41 That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and reveled in what their own hands had made. 42 But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the sun, moon and stars. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets:

“‘Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings
forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel?
43 You have taken up the tabernacle of Molek
and the star of your god Rephan,
the idols you made to worship.
Therefore I will send you into exile’[j] beyond Babylon.

44 “Our ancestors had the tabernacle of the covenant law with them in the wilderness. It had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen. 45 After receiving the tabernacle, our ancestors under Joshua brought it with them when they took the land from the nations God drove out before them. It remained in the land until the time of David, 46 who enjoyed God’s favor and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.[k] 47 But it was Solomon who built a house for him.

48 “However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:

49 “‘Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me?
says the Lord.
Or where will my resting place be?
50 Has not my hand made all these things?’[l]

51 “You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! 52 Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him— 53 you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it.”




Dig Deeper
One of the great subtle differences that appear throughout the Scriptures is the difference between building with bricks or stones. It’s an easy detail to miss because there’s really not a big difference in our day and age but that wasn’t so in biblical times. Stones were a natural building material. They were something that was crafted by God, so to speak. They were heavy, strong, and would last forever. They were already formed and so they had to be formed and shaped into place, and could often be built on top of one another without any mortar at all. Bricks on the other hand were completely made by human hands. They had to be produced and fired by humans rather than being formed by God. They were lighter and easier to work with and could be mass produced. But it also meant that they had to be held together with mortar which meant that anything built of bricks would just not last as long as something built of stone.

In fact, if you look throughout the Bible, virtually anything of any spiritual importance like an altar to God or the Temple in Jerusalem were built out of stone. They would be made with the material that was heavier and harder to work with but that could last forever (the pyramids in Egypt, for instance, were built of stone). Things made of brick don’t really receive particularly positive attention in the Bible. In fact, as the people at the Tower of Babel decided to turn away from God and exalt themselves, the author of Genesis gives the specific detail that they decided to build the Tower with brick and mortar rather than the more difficult stone. One could say that mentioning whether something was built of stone or bricks became something of a literary symbol in the ancient biblical world . This detail of making the Tower with brick would have signified in the mind of an ancient reader that they were both turning away from God by using brick rather than stone and that what they were building would not last very long.

This is a bit of a switch for us who live in a time and culture where something that is hand made is usually considered to be of higher quality, but in the biblical world making something by hand wasn’t necessarily a good image. It often carried the connotation that it wasn’t made by God. That was one of the key points about false idols that is made repeatedly in the Scriptures; they were made by hand and thus inferior (Ex. 32:4; Deut. 4:28; Jud. 17:5; 1 Ki. 12:28; 14:9; 2 Ki. 17:29; 22:17; 1 Chron. 16:26; 2 Chron. 13:8; 33:7; 34:25; Ps. 96:5; Jer. 1:16; 2:28; 25:6; 44:8; Hos. 14:3; Acts 19:26; Heb. 9:24). This concept is at the heart of what Stephen brought out here for the Jewish religious leaders. Were they going to follow and be part of a Temple built by God or one that was built by human hands?

As Stephen continued to tell the story of Israel, focusing on Moses for a good part of that account, he reminded them that the people of Israel had rejected Moses as their leader sent by God. They questioned his authority and ability to act as a ruler, judge, or leader of God’s people. But the second time he returned, after experiencing God’s presence in the burning bush, they had no choice but to follow him. It wasn’t necessarily because they had changed or were willing to be led more than they had the first time, it was that through Moses, God had made the signs so clear that they virtually had to follow him. Certainly it would seem that in Stephen’s mind, he felt that the Jews had initially rejected Jesus but through the resurrection of Christ and the miraculous activities of the church that God had done precisely what he had during Moses’ time. He had given signs that were too incredible to ignore and was now giving them a second chance to follow his chosen leader.

After all, it was Moses himself who had predicted that God would one day do on an even greater scale what he was doing through him and for Israel. He would raise up a prophet (Deut. 18:15) that was like Moses but even greater than Moses. But the Jews, rather than truly embracing Moses’ words, chose to turn their hearts back to Egypt. They continued the pattern that would become quite common for Israel by embracing God’s prophet. Their first response was to immediately turn to Aaron and demand the crafting of idolatrous idols. From the very beginning of their formation as a free people on their way to the promised land, Israel continued to indulge in idolatry. They continually turned away from the true God and offered sacrifices to Molek (a god whom it was believed by adherents to have demanded the ultimate sign of devotion; child sacrifices) and Rephan, a god that was associated with Saturn.

What Stephen did was to quickly compact all of Israel’s history into a few quick examples. At virtually every turn the people of Israel spurned God, persecuted and rejected his prophets, and worshipped other false gods and idols frequently. What it all came down to was the simple fact that at every opportunity Israel missed what God was truly doing. They never fully embraced the way of life of God’s people to which they were called. They constantly gave into idolatry and their own desires rather than God’s will.

The tabernacle was built and remained in Israel until the time of David, continued Stephen, but then David became bothered by the fact that he had a better and more permanent house than did the Lord Almighty. But it would not be David’s role to build a permanent Temple. That would go to his son Solomon, who even when he was constructing the Temple, noted that this was not God’s permanent desire. The structure of the Temple would serve a purpose, but Solomon understood that the whole world was the dwelling place of God’s presence. God could not truly be limited to a building, as grand as the Temple was, the way that false gods could be confined to their little shrines and temples.

Stephen finished off his explosive look at Israel’s history by quoting from Isaiah 66:1-2: “‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?’ declares the LORD.” It was not that the Temple was bad in itself but it was never God’s permanent plan. It was the boat that got them across the sea and now it was time to get out of the boat and go on land, not to curse the land and sit on the boat. God had revealed his new dwelling place, his Temple, as the person of Jesus Christ and when individuals died to their own individual identities and entered into the body of Christ, they became both corporately (1 Cor. 3:16) and individually (1 Cor. 6:19), the dwelling place of God’s presence. God’s reign would not be forever confined to one structure that was built by human hands. The only proper place for the fullness of God’s presence was the entire earth that was made by his hands, so to speak. In other words, it was always God’s plan to fill his own promised family with his presence. The Jews thought that the Temple was the final house of God rather than an important step along the way.

After quoting from Isaiah 66, there was little else that Stephen could or needed to say. It’s not hard to imagine that the tempers of those listening to him were at their boiling point by this time. He quickly and unapologetically brought his point home in a crystal clear fashion, just in case they had failed to follow his insinuations. It wasn’t just Israel in the past that was stiff-nicked, hard-hearted, and closed to God’s will. It wasn’t just Israel in the past that had persecuted and killed the prophets and those that spoke of the fulfillment of God’s plans in the promised Messiah. They had become part of that same sad legacy. They were the stiff-necked and hard-hearted. Jesus was the Righteous One. And they had betrayed and murdered him just as their ancestors had done to those who promised his coming.

Had Stephen blasphemed the Law of Moses and God himself as they had charged? No, said Stephen throughout this speech. It was the Jewish leaders who defamed the Law of Moses by not obeying it. It was they who blasphemed God by murdering the one that he had always promised. It was they who were rejecting the reality of God’s kingdom for the mere shadow of it. After being threatened by the Sanhedrin in Acts 4:29, Peter and the other disciples did not pray for deliverance but for God to “consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” Stephen’s words here were a continuing answer to that prayer. He had faced their threats with great boldness. He had held fast to God’s will and the truth of his Messiah. And in doing so, he signed his own death warrant. It has been said that if you having nothing to die for, you have nothing to truly live for. Perhaps it is time for God’s people to pray for boldness once again and preach the truth in our own day as straightforwardly and unapologetically as Stephen did.


Devotional Thought
What do you do when faced with opposition or persecution from sharing the truth of the gospel? Do you pray for and look for deliverance or do you pray for and act in boldness? How does Stephen’s example here inspire you in your own life?