Stephen Finally Lets Lose With the Rebuke
[David] enjoyed God’s favor and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. But it was Solomon who built a house for him.
“However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:“ ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me? says the Lord. Or where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things?’
“You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him— you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it.””
Acts 7:46–53 NIV Read More
You knew it was coming. Stephen is giving a great history of God’s people and building up to show where Jesus fits into that history as primary and foremost.
Remember one of the main accusations against Jesus? They said that He said that He would tear down the temple and rebuild it in 3 days. It was more accurate to say that He told them “If you tear down this temple, I’ll raise it up in 3 days.” He was talking about Himself!
When David said “the Most High does not live in houses made of human hands,” did anybody suspect that he might mean that God would live in His people? God lived in Jesus as a man, who was also God at the same time. That showed that God could actually live inside a person.
Then, that person, Jesus, became a sacrifice for the rest of us, so that with our sin taken away, God could live in us!
But Stephen doesn’t get that far.
He’ll leave that for a guy named Saul.
He brings a flat out rebuke that the leaders today (that he is talking to) are as bad as the leaders were throughout the time of the prophets. Men come from God, work miracles and preach the truth, but the powerful don’t want to listen and lose their power.
You can also see his love for Jesus in this. We don’t have intonation in the writing, but instead of reading it like he’s pointing the finger and mad, read it like somebody who loved the Law, loved the Jewish way of life and traditions, and then watched the leaders kill beloved Jesus. We know that Stephen has been around for a while and that Peter and the 12 considered him full of the Holy Spirit. (They nominated him to ‘wait tables’ instead of preaching the Word, after all.)
Stephen feels betrayed because he knows that Jesus is the Messiah that the Jewish people have longed for, but here are the Jewish leaders persecuting him for following Jesus. Stephen is reaching out to them. God is reaching out to them through him. But as he can see their faces and know their hard hearts, he can tell they are just like those that killed off the prophets.
They haven’t obeyed the law any better than those that were hauled off to Babylon, and he tells them so.