Acts 7:1-53 Then said the high priest, Are these things so?… Technically the description of a defense may very justly be applied to the long stretch of these verses. They no doubt do stand for Stephen's formal defense. He has been very mildly challenged by the high priest to say whether the "things" laid to his charge "are so." And he loses not a minute in replying. He replies, however, in his own way. That way is somewhat indirect. His tone betrays some sense of his being in some sense also master of the situation. He tempts us much to feel that much may be read between the lines, and we soon come to convince ourselves that the real drift of the personal defense is laid on the lines of a national indictment - and that national indictment very little else than the barest recital of the pedigree of the nation in question. Stephen does not make it too apparent at first - any mere than once on a time Nathan did, when he appeared to condignly judge David - but he puts before himself and hearers the nation of Israel as it now is, and takes in hand to say what it came from and along what way it has come to this present. The places of judge and judged almost seem turned, both in the matter and the manner of Stephen. It is very possible that (as Stephen never lived to put in writing nor to repeat what he now said) there is some disjointedness in the language as it is now before us, and some lacunoe, and (though many doubt the suggestion) that interruptions, especially just at the close, determined the form of some parts of Stephen's strong accusation. On the other hand, we have to remember that probably nowhere do we read language fresher from the dictate of the Holy Spirit. The recital of the spiritual lineage of this nation reveals - I. A SERIES OF PROVIDENTIAL INTERPOSITIONS OF THE MOST MARKED CHARACTER. These occur in more shapes than one. 1. There is the originating sovereign choice and sovereign call of Abraham (ver. 2). 2. The express command to him whither he is to go and where awhile to dwell (ver. 3). 3. Express promises vouchsafed to him and his seed, and covenant, made with him (vers. 6-8). 4. An unfailing, providential guidance of him and his linear descendants, Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. This name Joseph does not fail to lead Stephen to recite (1) the providence that wonderfully overruled the worst of the work of envy; (2) the providence that exalted Joseph, an alien, to Egypt's highest place; (3) the providence that was aiming at and that did secure the more remote result of settling awhile the nation in Egypt. 5. The providential saving of the life of the infant Moses, educating of him, endowing him with a spirit of both goodness and power, preparing him well by chastening delay and discipline, and finally calling him to see and know and take up his mission, after an interval of forty years (vers. 23, 30, 35). The name of Moses, again, does not fail to lead Stephen to commemorate (1) the chief features of his work, in leading the people of Israel out of Egypt and through the Red Sea, and in his own life's remaining forty-years wanderings with those people in the wilderness; (2) the distinct prophecy with which his lips were charged, relating to the "Prophet," the Messiah, the late well-known Jesus (ver. 37); (3) the typical "tabernacle in the wilderness," so carefully and in minute detail designed in heaven, yet so temporary in its use for the service of the wilderness and the early settlement under Joshua in "the possession of the Gentiles" 6. By two hurried touches, the reason of which is scarcely far to find, Stephen implies rather than mentions the providence which raised up David to conceive and Solomon to execute the building of the temple (Acts 6:14; ver. 48); when, for whatever exact reason, the climax of the occasion is reached. The moment has come for the dropping of the mere recital of history, every step of which, however, was telling its own very plain and very significant tale. In words of flame and impassioned thrusts, the solemn, unanswerable, conscience-stinging charge is flung at the packed body of accusers and sympathizers. And the force came, not of bad spirit, but of the Spirit, the Spirit of truth and conviction, of light and life, and, when needs be, of "consuming fire." So far Stephen's recital of the moral lineage of the people is crowded with the tokens of providence, Nay, it is one chain of tokens of Divine love and Divine care. But on reading again the recital we find - II. A SERIES OF PERVERSE THWARTINGS AND "CONTRADICTIONS OF SINNERS," To us the things working in the mind of Stephen are not obscure, but even to those who heard him, light must have glimmered in before the final disclosure. When this came, no man doubted what it meant nor to what it was equivalent. Not exactly side by side, and not exactly paripassu with the originating, directing, overruling, and protecting "dispositions" (ver. 53) of Heaven, but certainly in many a most mournful and untoward conjuncture appeared the perverseness of human insubjection and ingratitude and presumptuous opposition. The worst growths of ingratitude sprang up where had fallen the richest showers of heavenly grace. The worst forms of resistance assorted themselves in front of the kindest and most distinguished of heavenly leading. And it had been thus too systematically. It had been so once and again, and the indications were to the effect that," So my people love to have it. Thus the whole length of exceptional and most beneficent grace was disfigured by the intrusion of surprising ingratitude and rebellion; and of late, Stephen has to show, things have grown worse, nay, they are come to a climax. The seed of evil grew up into plain sight. 1. In those patriarchs, moved with envy," who "sold Joseph into Egypt" (ver. 9). 2. In the two cases, that grew upon one another in degree of blindness, when Moses himself was so taken by surprise in that his own brethren did not perceive his mission, and that it was one for their benefit, at whatsoever risk to himself (vers. 25, 28, 35). 3. In the rebellion and fickleness of Israel under "Mount Sina," and their patent idolatry there, a career of crime, Stephen implies, which begun there never got purged out of their system, but brought on the crushing punishment of the Captivity. This was a marvelous stroke of Stephen's just rhetoric - suggestion of the Spirit's light and force - to run up in the compass of one sentence that initial act of idolatry into the flourishing continuation of it which both courted and caused the captivity of ever-memorable shame (vers. 38-43). 4. But never so plainly, never so terribly as now; the present generation complete the circle of the evil works of their fathers. They "resist the Holy Ghost;" they are "the betrayers and murderers" of him for prophesying of whom men were both persecuted and slain by their fathers; they have not honored their own "Law," so boasted in, in the only acceptable way of honoring it, viz. in the "keeping" of it; and they have branded themselves with the names "stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and in" their very "ears." These are the formidable interruptions to the purity, honor, nobility of their lineage. They are stains on their escutcheons - ineffaceable in themselves. But even all this is as nothing, for they now drag their glory in the dust, and are for flinging it away for ever. The recital shows - III. A SERIES OF SUGGESTIVE RETRIBUTIONS. This aspect of his subject, it may be supposed, Stephen purposed to keep in some check for a time. Yet: 1. It is implied, for those who certainly well knew all the history of Joseph and his brethren, in the allusion to the exaltation of Joseph, and his brethren's repairing to him for corn, and finally his father and family becoming as it were his permanent guests (vers. 9-14). 2. It is again implied (see the manifest hint of some kind of ver. 35) in the justifying of Moses' unconscious taking up of his role as reformer and deliverer of his brethren (vers. 24-26), and in the parallel condemnation of those whose blindness, not seeing it, led them to say tauntingly, "Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?" 3. It is most emphatically stated of the idolatrous Israelites. God "turned, and gave them up (ver. 42). And the fact of this being able to be viewed either as one long-continued course of retribution or retribution frequently repeated shows that, as Stephen approaches the end of his speech, he is preparing to give greater prominence to this matter. So far, then, the striking moral features of this history consist of unparalleled opportunity, reckless disregard of it and Heaven's own distinctest and most impressive kind of warnings. But the whole case of Stephen is not over till it is observed how he either purposely exhibits or is made the means of exhibiting - IV. THE AIM, THE USE, THE LESSONS OF THAT FAMILY LINEAGE, MADE TO BE ILLUSTRIOUS, ALL MISERABLY FORFEITED, AT LEAST FOR THE FAMILY ITSELF. For: 1. The aim and use of all, if they had not been absolutely lost, would have obviated the necessity of any defense at all on the part of Stephen; and in particular would have rendered unnecessary his allusion to David, to Solomon, and to the nature of the dwelling-place of the Most High," as also his quotation of the prophet's rapt, inspired, and foreseeing language (vers. 46-50). It seems evident that Stephen was far from being supremely anxious on the subject of his own personal defense; he is bent on something fir beyond and above this. But so far as he was at all anxious about it, it was here that the point of it lay. Whatever he had said about "this place," and about "the customs of Moses," and about "this Jesus of Nazareth," who had power to "destroy this temple and build it up in three days," and who was the end and aim and substance of all "the Law and the prophets," was near to finding its solution, for those who had "ears to hear," at the point at which Stephen is found quoting that prophet (ver. 50). But all was lost on those whose nation had been educating fourteen hundred years if haply they might see this very thing and not lose it. 2. The lessons of a moral and individual nature are now to be yet more shown spilled on the ground. Yes, spilled, as Stephen's blood itself was spilled. Instead of having learnt or now learning, they are "cut to the heart;" they gnash with their teeth; they cry out with a loud voice; they stop their ears; they run upon Stephen with one accord; they cast him out of the city; they stone him. It was the evening of hope for many of that audience when Stephen began to speak. When he has ended evening has declined into a mournful, dark, despairful night. A hundred times they have been warned in their own family history, and their fathers cry to them from the very tombs. But what can they hear who "stop their ears "? And what can any hear who do likewise? - B. Parallel Verses KJV: Then said the high priest, Are these things so? |
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