The Trial of Stephen, Part 1
Acts 7:1–8 NKJV
Then the high priest said, “Are these things so?”
And he said, “Brethren and fathers, listen: The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, and said to him, ‘Get out of your country and from your relatives, and come to a land that I will show you.’ Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran. And from there, when his father was dead, He moved him to this land in which you now dwell. And God gave him no inheritance in it, not even enough to set his foot on. But even when Abraham had no child, He promised to give it to him for a possession, and to his descendants after him. But God spoke in this way: that his descendants would dwell in a foreign land, and that they would bring them into bondage and oppress them four hundred years. ‘And the nation to whom they will be in bondage I will judge,’ said God, ‘and after that they shall come out and serve Me in this place.’ Then He gave him the covenant of circumcision; and so Abraham begot Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day; and Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot the twelve patriarchs.
In our last study, we covered the things which led to the arrest of Stephen. We do not know exactly what he told his fellows in the Greek-Speaking synagogue in Jerusalem. But we are told that he was full of the Holy Spirit. He was full of faith and power. Many mighty works were done by the Spirit through his hands. We know that he bore a strong spoken witness to Jesus in addition to these works. He got into disputes with them, and the arguments of his fellow Jews could not stand up to what we said. What he did say and do did stir up rage which led to his arrest and trial before the Sanhedrin. Here, Stephen would speak to the charges which were laid against him. In particular, we saw that on of the charges of the witnesses was that he allegedly spoke against the Temple. He was also accused of speaking against the Jewish nation.
The Spirit caused the Sanhedrin and whatever spectators there were to pay close attention instead of acting out in rage. They saw the face of Stephen as the face of an angel. Everyone wanted to know what Stephen would say. So, Stephen was assured a hearing of what he was about to say. The rage would return later, but Stephen provided a very logical and comprehensive defense of the faith, what in theological terms, and apology. But this was not what we think of when we use the word apology. We think that an apology is publicly showing remorse for what one had done to offend someone else. The Sanhedrin might have accepted this sort of apology. Their interest in the matter was to end the Jesus movement as expeditiously as possible. They had seen how much trouble had come from the crucifixion of Jesus which had only caused the Jesus movement called “the Way” to grow all the more. We can see a parallel to this with Martin Luther. They saw the fires which had come from the burning of John Hus a hundred years earlier. They would have preferred a public recantation, after which the monk, Martin Luther would be silenced by having him confined to his monastic cell under a strict order of silence. We also see it in the way Peter, John and the other Apostles were treated before the Sanhedrin, first with threats not to teach and preach in the name of Jesus, and then beatings with threats of further punishment.
If the Sanhedrin was expecting Stephen to apologize for offending his fellow Jews and promise to behave, they were sorely disappointed. If Stephen was looking to get out of his predicament, he certainly would not have answered the charges in the way he did. We have talked about how the ministries of the Apostles and Deacons in the Book of Acts parallel that of the life of Jesus. The true disciple will be treated in similar matter to the way Jesus was treated. This is a kind of backward typology in which the experiences of the Apostles point back to the ministry and suffering of Christ. The Old Testament has many types which are fulfilled in the life,ministry, death and resurrection of Christ. So whether the typology points back or forward to Christ, it is centered in the person and work of Jesus Christ, which is proper. Like Jesus, he was tried before the Sanhedrin. Like Jesus, he was more interested in proclaiming the truth. He was using the opportunity to witness just as Jesus would witness to Pilate. We think of Jesus who had everything in this life to lose and nothing to gain seemed more concerned with the soul of Pilate than His own life. (see my sermon: “Did Jesus try to Save Pilate?” in this sermon archive. What is true for the witness of Jesus and Stephen, our witness to the hostile world is not to save our lives in this world. We have an eternal hope and life which extends beyond this age. Instead, we need to witness to the truth of the Gospel in the hope of winning our adversaries.
Stephen’s defense is a very reasoned speech. It bears some similarities to the Book of Hebrews, to the point that some claim that he was the author of Hebrews. Other than both use excellent Greek and use historical exegesis of Israel as a foundation to their arguments, there is little evidence to link Hebrews to Stephen. It seems that instead of assigning theology to a particular individual, it might better be seen that this was characteristic of Apostolic preaching as a whole, especially to the Jews.
Stephen is deliberate in developing his argument. He does not begin with the current state of affairs. He, instead, goes back to the history of Israel. He starts with God’s promise to Abraham. He does not start with the failures of Israel as a covenant people. Good preaching begins with the faithfulness of God in covenant with his people. We know that Abraham was a man just as we are, although a very special one. We could nit pick faults on his part. But Stephen does not do this. His emphasis was on the LORD who called Abraham to go to the land which He would show him. there seems to be two parts to the call. First Abram’s father and family removed from Ur of the Chaldees which in its time was a very modern city to Haran on the Euphrates River which was upriver and back country in which livestock was bred and raised. City folk all too often look down on country folk as being uncultured and ignorant farmers and herders. This served as a halfway point. Why did Abram;s father leave Ur? We do know that it was the LORD behind this move. Did God speak to Abram’s father or did his father hear what Abram had heard from the LORD. What we do know is that it was from Haran which the final call came to Abram to leave and come to a land which was then called Canaan and today is Israel. Stephen reminds us from the account in Genesis That even though the LORD had promised the land, it was not to Abraham directly, but his descendants when at that time Abram was old and his wife was beyond childbearing age. We also know that the LORD would not immediately make Abram and Sara parents. They would have to wait twenty-five years for that day.
Not only would not inherit the land, it would not be his close descendants either. It would be after four hundred years that his descendants would inherit it, and only after a long painful exile to Egypt. God would judge that nation and bring out the children of Israel to their land. Circumcision was the visible token of God’s promises.
One wonders what Stephen is getting to here. He is not giving a lecture on Israel’s history. He was on trial for his life. One thing we have seen is that what God promises, he will surely accomplish. God remains faithful to the Covenant, even if Israel was not. Secondly, there was an even much longer time for the promised seed to be born and after even more suffering in Babylon. If God was faithful to remember the promise to Abraham after 400 years, He is trustworthy to accomplish it after nearly 2000 years when Christ would come.
From the setting of the context of God’s faithfulness, Stephen would go on in his defense to contrast this to the covenant faithlessness of Israel on repeated occasions. Stephen won’t even provide and exhaustive list of these failures. One might even note from the Book of Joshua that Israel in the Wilderness failed to even circumcise their sons. The had to be circumcised at one time at Gilgal after they had crossed Jordan. They could not even keep this basic act of obedience. But the LORD forgave them, as He often did. At the end of this process, the Father would send His Son, Jesus, to be the ultimate offer of forgiveness and a call to repentance and belief.
To this point, Stephen said nothing which the Jews would not agree with. They believed that Yahweh had permanently given them the land of Israel, from the river to the sea. They saw the Babylonian exile as a severe judgment against their idolatry. They felt they had learned their lesson. The Lord had brought them back into the land. Even the awful bondage of the Romans was but a speed bump to a glorious future. They understood the importance of taking the long view of matters. This is one reason Israel has survived over the centuries. they believed their day to shine was coming under a descendant of David’s rule. Their error would be that they did not understand that God had sent their King. But this King seemed to be different than all the other kings of the earth. They did not understand the Kingdom, this King would bring.
We should also realize that we have been waiting for nearly 2000 years for the LORD to return. During this time, the Church at some times and places seemed to shine. Surely, this was the millennial kingdom! But these human attempts to set up the Kingdom of God on earth have all failed. At times, the Church fell into sin and corruption just like the Israel of old. There have been times of repentance and forgiveness. But where is this Kingdom we read about. Through the toils and sufferings of the Church and its dashed expectations we must remember that God is faithful and that not only are all things possible to God, but also that whatever God has willed shall come to pass. We need to take the long road and be patient. The Holy Spirit will bring these things to our attention just as He did to the Sanhedrin on that day. It behooves us to listen closely, but unlike the Sanhedrin who would go out and stone Stephen, let us repent and believe.
