A STUDY GUIDE ACTS 7:42-60

1. A Study Guide

a) A study guide of Acts of the Apostles. It is intended to be expository — to explain and bring out the meaning of the original text. You may use this for your personal bible study or even group bible study.

2. Acts 7:42-60 

a) The verses describe Stephen’s rebuke to the Sanhedrin and his death at their hands.

#1) Acts 7:42-43
42 But God turned away and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, ‘It was not to Me that you offered victims and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, was it, O house of Israel? 43 You also took along the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Rompha, the images which you made to worship. I also will remove you beyond Babylon.’

i) Tabernacles and idols. Stephen has been accused of speaking against the temple by teaching that Jesus will destroy it. Stephen now turns this upon the Sanhedrin as he continues to use the disobedience of their forefathers as a parable against them. The generation in the wilderness insulted God and the tabernacle that he gave them (cf Acts 7:44). They carried with them the tabernacle of Moloch and worshiped stars and idols. When they offered sacrifices at the tabernacle of God, their hearts were with the pagans. God turns away from those whose hearts are not truly with him.

#2) Acts 7:44-47
44 “Our fathers had the tabernacle of testimony in the wilderness, just as He who spoke to Moses directed him to make it according to the pattern which he had seen. 45 And having received it in their turn, our fathers brought it in with Joshua upon dispossessing the nations whom God drove out before our fathers, until the time of David. 46 David found favor in God’s sight, and asked that he might find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. 47 But it was Solomon who built a house for Him.

i) A habitation for God. The forefathers thought that God needed a house in which to dwell. It is dangerous for people to build a house for God out of their own heads and with their own hands. Next, out of their own heads and with their own hands, they'll make a god to dwell in the house. God therefore did not let the forefathers invent the house: he provided the pattern and commanded every detail. The tabernacle (the travelling ornate tent of meeting) was eventually replaced by a temple in Jerusalem based on the same pattern. David wanted to build it for God, but God did not grant his wish. It is instructive to read God’s message to David (2 Samuel 7).

#3) Acts 7:48-50
48 However, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands; as the prophet says:

49 ‘Heaven is My throne,
And earth is the footstool of My feet;
What kind of house will you build for Me?’ says the Lord,
‘Or what place is there for My repose?
50 ‘Was it not My hand which made all these things?’

i) Earth is my footstool. Stephen is pressing the point that it's an idolatrous belief that God dwells in an earthly building, no matter how grand the building seems to human eyes. The earth is God’s footstool, and nobody can build a house on a footstool, unless it be a house for a mouse. The tabernacle and the temple, and God’s special presence in them, were only symbols or shadows of God’s eternal and heavenly dwelling place (Hebrews 9:1-28, Hebrews 10:1). It was time for the Sanhedrin to see that the symbols were only until Christ came, and that Christ had now come. But they refused to see. They admired the shadows of the good things that had come, but shut their eyes to the good things themselves.

#4) Acts 7:51-53
51 “You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did. 52 Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become; 53 you who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it.”

i) Stephen ceases to speak parabolic-ally about the Sanhedrin’s ancestors. He now turns directly upon the Sanhedrin with five accusations...

@1. Stiff-necked. They were “stiff-necked” in the sense of prejudice, bigotry, and pride. This characterized the hearts of most of the Sanhedrin. "God resists the proud, but gives grace unto the humble" (James 4:6, Prov 3:34).

@2. Uncircumcised in heart. Being circumcised according to the law was of great importance to a devout male Jew. However the Sanhedrin didn't seem to realize that you could be a circumcised Jew in the flesh, whilst an uncircumcised heathen in heart. Paul speaks of this spiritual circumcision: ¶ "In him you were also circumcised, but it wasn't a circumcision done by human hands. Rather, it was a removal of the sins of the flesh in the circumcision that Christ does." (Colossians 2:11).

@3. Resisting the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was revealing the gospel, but the Sanhedrin were not listening. By shutting their ears to the word, they were resisting the Holy Spirit. They were acting toward Stephen’s message as they had acted toward John the Baptist’s: "The Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God's purpose for themselves" (Luke 7:30). People can do no worse than resist the Holy Spirit and reject God’s counsel.

@4. Killed the Messiah. Just as the fathers killed the prophets who foretold of the Messiah, now the Sanhedrin has killed the very Messiah himself. You cannot do worse than crucify Christ the Son of God (cf Hebrews 6:6).

@5. Didn't keep the Law. This accusation would have angered the Sanhedrin possibly more than all the others. They regarded themselves as experts and exemplars of the law of Moses. But Jesus himself had said to them, ¶ "You cleverly set aside the law of God in order to keep your tradition" (Mark 7:9).

#5) Acts 7:54-56
54 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him. 55 But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; 56 and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

i) Cut to the heart. This is the same phrase as in Acts 2:37. However there is a difference. When the Holy Spirit convicts people with the truth, cuts them to the heart, they can either accept or reject that truth. Those who were baptized on the day of Pentecost accepted what they'd been convicted of. Those listening to Stephen rejected, repudiated, resisted, and wanted to destroy what convicted them.

ii) Gnashed their teeth. The phrase “gnashed their teeth” is an idiom for the kind of frenzy or anguish that might cause people to bare and agitate their teeth in a threatening or agonized manner —as a mad or ferocious dog might do. One does not take the phrase too literally. It's like we said, “They were hopping mad” or, “They did a Vesuvius”.

iii) I see the heavens opened. Stephen was granted a vision of the risen Lord, the man Jesus, who sits at the right hand of God (Acts 2:34). But in this vision, the Lord stood. The Lord honors those who are willing to die for him. This vision encouraged Stephen, but could it have also convinced the Sanhedrin, had they dared to look and also see?

#6) Acts 7:57-60
57 But they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears and rushed at him with one impulse. 58 When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him; and the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59 They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” 60 Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” Having said this, he fell asleep.

i) Rushed at him. The Sanhedrin, the august assembly of Jewish scholars and high priests, behaves with disgusting indecency. The veil of dignity is cast away; the whited sepulchers are broken open and the dead men’ bones come rattling out (Matthew 23:27).

ii) The witnesses. Under Jewish law, the witnesses were also the executioners. Consequently, if they were false witnesses, they became also murderers.

iii) A young man named Saul. This was the man who was to become Paul the apostle.

iv) Stephen’s prayer. Stephen asks the Lord to receive his spirit and to forgive his murderers. Stephen echos his Lord’s own prayers when his Lord was crucified (Luke 23:34,46). 

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