Acts 7

Guest Blogger: Aaron Miner

Question: How will we respond to God when we don’t like what he has to say?

Stephen, full of grace and power, confronted the ruling religious power at the time with an amazing speech about God working through Israel’s history. Stephen repeatedly emphasizes God’s active role in the history as appearing, removing, speaking, judging, promising, delivering, forsaking, and dwelling with them. The majority of the speech is pretty innocuous but the “yet” in verse 48 directly confronts the Jews and their beliefs.

For 1st Century Jews, the law and the Temple was central to their cultural. To be accused of speaking against either the law or the Temple as Stephen was in Acts 6:13 was a serious charge. Stephen explains that it is not the law or the Temple that he is confronting but rather the idolatry of the Jews. The Temple was not intended to confine God but to center Jewish worship on Yahweh alone. Stephen essentially attacks them as failing to worship God and murdering the Righteous One who would deliver them (v. 52). The Jews’ response to this charge reflected their spiritual condition—hard heartedness. Stephen called the Jews to repent from their heartlessness toward God and to believe in Christ. Instead of repentance the Jews killed the messenger.

Just as God worked in Israel’s history he works in our lives. Sometimes he leads us to situations where we are confronted by our sin. The question for us is: When we are confronted with our own sin how do we respond? Do we shoot the messenger or do we humbly repent from it? Will we allow the grace of Christ fill us as we give up the sinful desire?