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Stephen’s Defense – Acts 7

I. High Priest: “Are these things so?” “These things” were the accusations of blasphemy against Moses (no such biblical prohibition against blasphemy toward a deceased person), blasphemy against God, blasphemy against “this holy place,” & blasphemy against the law. Specifically, the men contending with Stephen said he said that Jesus would destroy this place & change the customs delivered by Moses. While reading Stephen’s brilliant defense in chap. 7, listen for any blasphemy of the type of which he’s accused. His 53-verse speech is a historical survey of the Jewish people. Along with evidence of blasphemy, listen for references to the temple & to what he focuses on in Israel’s history.

II. Who was Stephen? Stephen was not one of the 12, yet he performed miracles after being commissioned “to wait tables.” How does someone do that? We don’t know, but he might have been a follower in the crowds around Jesus, or he might have been someone who while visiting during the Feast of Pentecost, became a believer as a result of Peter’s preaching. Luke doesn’t tell us a lot about him or the message he shared with people in Acts 6, but we can figure out how much truth to the accusations there may have been by reading carefully to his defense in chap. 7.

III. He caught the vision of the Kingdom, a vision of Christ as High Priest (Heb. 3:3-6, 7:12, Greater than Moses & the true High Priest) and the temple as obsolete (Matt. 24:1-3, temple destroyed). As a recent convert, he seemed to have had a better understanding of the direction in which Christ wanted His Kingdom to go than the apostles had when Jesus ascended to heaven. (“The last shall be first.”) He understood the bringing in of the Gentiles, he understood grace but not just the grace of salvation/forgiveness but grace as it applied to a new world, he understood the historical setting. He understood there was a new high priest who had radically changed not just Israel, but the world. And he understood that Jerusalem was doomed, and the gospel would expand into the entire world. Do you understand the historical situation you live in today? Or are you wishing for the end of history?

IV.  Certain Features of the Speech itself:

A.  Longer than other speeches to Jewish audiences in the book of Acts.

B.  See focus on Jews’ rejection of God or rejection of God’s messengers: vss 9, 25, 27-8, 35, 39-43, 49-50.

C.  Blasphemy against temple? See II Chron. 7:21. He spends 5 verses on the temple, half of which was God’s critique of the      temple.

D.  References to Moses, of whom Stephen speaks highly – Moses was 40 yo when he went out to check on his brethren, 80 yo when     called to his ministry. Think you’re too old to be called to something?

E.  Pharoah’s daughter knew that the baby Moses was a Hebrew,      and so did Moses & the rest of the royal court. Apparently, the   power religion/politics of Egypt didn’t accept that one baby was a         threat that could take the entire military/cultural/governmental         edifice down. But he did.

F.  Saul didn’t seem that impressed with Stephen’s manner of death – he became the most zealous          persecutor of all Christians after he         witnessed it. I Corinthians 1-2 shows that the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God. “They are folly to him.”

V.  Stephen’s vision: He saw beyond Israel to the New Testament Church of Jew & Gentile, beyond the temple to the Church of Christ, beyond his own death to the eternal, invincible kingdom of Christ and life with Him.