And the high priest said, Are these things then so?
Stephen stands before the ruling council in Jerusalem, accused of speaking against Moses, the law and the temple. The high priest's short question opens his long reply — and Stephen answers with a history lesson instead of a denial.
The charges were heavy, yet the high priest opened the hearing gently. One writer ties that to the face the council had just been staring at.
It is striking how mild the high priest's challenge was. Like the rest, he seems for the moment overawed by the radiance that shone in Stephen's face. It could not help reminding them of Moses at a critical point in Israel's history, and in Moses' own life too. And now Stephen faced the charge of speaking against Moses, the sanctuary, and the law — even of threatening to destroy the temple.
That one question gave Stephen an open door. One commentator sets his freedom to speak beside the silence of Jesus at His own trial.
The high priest only asks the question, "Are these things so?" Then God provides room for Stephen to speak without interruption for some time. The Lord Jesus, by contrast, stayed mostly silent before His accusers. Stephen summarises the whole history of Israel in a masterful way. He tells it as the story of God's many visits to the nation, and of Israel's stubborn refusal of God's testimony every time, ending in their rejection of His Son.
His answer does two jobs at once. By the end, the roles in the courtroom have swapped.
Stephen's accusers charged him with speaking against Moses and against God, and also against the temple and the law. Now he must answer them. What he declared before the council shows plainly that the accusations are utterly false. So his speech is partly a defence. It is also teaching, because it draws out certain truths from the historical events he cites. And before he finishes his testimony, the accused becomes the accuser of the nation. The man on trial becomes the judge. As he moves quickly through their past in this great review, arranged by God, his whole testimony is a powerful witness to the nation as well as against the nation.
Stephen starts at the very beginning of the nation's story. That start touches what his accusers boasted of most.
Accused in this way, Stephen answers the high priest's appeal. In his wonderful speech (Acts 7) he sets before them the prominent facts of their history. Those facts bear on the issue between God and the Jews at this moment. God had brought out their forefather Abraham, but He never gave him possession of this land. Why, then, boast of it so much? They boasted loudly of Abraham and of God's dealings on the ground of natural descent. Clearly they were not in communion with God, or even with Abraham.
Commentators differ here. Another writer holds that Stephen is not making a defence at all.
Stephen is not defending himself. He is not answering for himself, nor pleading at all. He is the judge giving sentence. He is the still, small voice of the national conscience roused by the power of the Spirit of God. He is the memory of the people, sharpened as when called into the presence of God.
Some have dismissed the speech as weak or mistaken. Its place in the record, and its effect on the men who heard it, say otherwise.
Clearly the inspiring Spirit attached great importance to it. The book of Acts gives it more space than any other speech. It appealed with force to the conscience of the Jews gathered in council, and Stephen's blood sealed it. That is another proof of its power, terrible as that proof is. Some have dared to charge it with "demonstrable errors". If that were so, it would have collapsed at once through its own weakness, to the contempt of men. It was not so. It was the energy of undeniable truth that pierced through outward forms to their hard hearts. That truth roused their anger to white heat. Scripture proved that their own sad history of unbelief, disobedience and opposition to God fitted their present state as much as it fitted their forefathers long before.
- Question — The high priest asks only whether the charges are true. That mildness fits a court still shaken by the shining face of the man on trial.
- Room — Jesus stayed mostly silent before His accusers. Here God gives Stephen space to speak at length, with no interruption.
- Answer — The speech clears him of the charges and teaches at the same time. Its evidence is Israel's own history.
- Reversal — Before he finishes, the accused has become the accuser: the man on trial is the one passing sentence.
- Weight — Acts gives this speech more space than any other. Its power was undeniable truth cutting through outward forms to hard hearts.
And he said, Brethren and fathers, hearken. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran,
Stephen is on trial before the Jewish council, charged with speaking against the temple and the law. He answers by going back to Abraham — and to a God who appeared far outside the land, the law and the temple.
The council took pride in the land. Stephen's history undercuts that pride.
Accused in this way, Stephen answers the high priest's question, "Are these things so?" God had brought out their forefather Abraham, but He never actually gave him possession of this land. Why then boast of it so much? They boasted loudly of Abraham and of God's dealings in a merely natural way. Clearly they were not in communion with God, or even with Abraham.
The glory that reached Abraham was not housed in any building.
We know that he and his family were serving other gods in that land beyond the Euphrates (Joshua 24:2). They were caught up in the idolatry that had already swallowed the whole land, and there grace met him. He was not the heir of privilege. For him the glory did not live in any place made with hands. It was apart from the world — the world in which that revelation made him a pilgrim from then on. God called him out of the land of his birth and from his kindred, and the land He called him to was unknown. Faith was a necessity to him in every way — slow as he might be, and was, to cut the ties of nature, which were only a hindrance to him.
Stephen's title for God is doing real work.
"The God of glory" is no mere Hebrew idiom for "glorious God." From the very beginning it directs the heart to One altogether above the world. He is above it in Himself and in His purposes, whatever His ways may be meanwhile on the earth.
Abraham lived in a city with a glory of its own.
Abraham is living in great Ur of the Chaldees. Archaeological discoveries make it plain that this was a splendid city of wealth and learning in those far-off days. Men there were still making themselves "a name" and displaying their glory. In the middle of all this magnificence, the God of glory appears before him. God presented Himself to him marked by the glory that belongs to Him.
The where and the when carry Stephen's argument.
"The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia." What unanswerable evidence of sovereign grace! To overlook it springs from a wicked heart of unbelief that turns away from a living God. It hardens the soul in self-sufficiency, so that His voice becomes distasteful, disliked, and dreaded. Yet had they not often heard and read Joshua's testimony? … It was many centuries before the law and far away from Canaan. It was before he lived in Haran, in Mesopotamia — a place infamous as the mother of idolatries.
Stephen puts the cause before the effect.
His story in Genesis begins with God's word to him: "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you" (Gen. 12:1). According to Acts 7, these were the words with which "the God of glory" appeared to him. The revelation and the renunciation were cause and effect. The second was possible in the strength and joy of the first. The glory of Ur of the Chaldees faded before the God of glory. In eagerly stretching out his hands towards the one, Abraham turned his back on the other. This was, as we may call it, Abraham's conversion. Abraham decisively "turned to God from idols," and there is no true conversion without this.
Why does a call like this carry authority?
Here then we discover what distinguishes this call from every other call: it comes from God — the God of glory. It is the glory of the One who appears to Abraham that gives such importance to the call, and gives faith its authority and power to answer it.
The time-marker exposes a gap between the call and full obedience.
Even Abraham, blessed as he was, moved slowly in the path of faith at first. He did not leave Mesopotamia to live in Canaan all at once. Before that he lived in Haran. He got out of his land, but not so quickly "out of his kindred." So there was a remarkable delay in coming into the land God was to show him.
- Glory appears. The words mean more than "a glorious God." They point to One above the world in Himself and in His purposes.
- Glory finds. He appeared to a man serving other gods, far from Canaan and centuries before the law. Grace met him there.
- Glory calls. The revelation came first; the leaving followed. Ur's splendour faded, and Abraham turned his back on it.
- Glory travels. It reached him with no temple and no law in sight. Boasting in the land missed the point of their own history.
- Glory waits. Abraham left his country, but not at once his kindred. He lived in Haran first. The call was complete long before his obedience was.