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.
and said to him, Go out of thy land and out of thy kindred, and come into the land which I will shew thee.
Stephen answers his accusers by going back to the beginning. He starts with the day God first spoke to Abraham. The words he quotes raise three questions. Where was Abraham when the call came? What did God ask of him? And what did God promise?
Stephen has just said that "the God of glory appeared" to Abraham. The call did not find a good man in a good place.
"The God of glory" is not simply a Hebrew way of saying "glorious God." From the very start it turns the heart toward One who is entirely above the world. He is above it in Himself and in His purposes, whatever His ways on earth may be in the meantime. "Your fathers lived on the other side of the river long ago, Terah the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods" (Joshua 24:2). It was in sovereign grace that God appeared like this. Even the line of Shem — Abraham's father and relatives — were idolaters. Grace gives what is good; it does not find it. And the God of glory did not only appear. He appeared to Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia. Abraham was then at the furthest point of distance from "the land," and in idolatrous company.
The verse has two halves: a world left behind, and a world entered.
There are two aspects of the call, both clearly set out in the history of Abraham. We read in Hebrews 11:8 that "he was called to go out," which refers to the world he was to leave behind. Then we read, "he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance." Here the new world he was called into is in view. Stephen also points to these two aspects of Abraham's call.
One writer draws attention to the second verb. Older translations read "come into the land" where the ESV reads "go."
From there God, in supreme grace, calls him to come into a land where He would guide him, welcome him and provide for him. Note the word "Come" in Acts 7:3, as in Genesis 7 — not "go."
What God asked for was not improvement but departure.
God's ties up to now had been made by natural order, by family blessings and inheritances. Abram is called out of all this — not only out of evil things. This was God's way of breaking the link with idolatry. The word is not, "Correct your ways in the country where you were born," but "Go out … to the land that I will show you."
For Abraham this meant packing up and moving. For those who read it now, the same claim presses on different ground.
In Abraham's case God called him literally to leave the country of his birth, his relatives and his father's house. For the Christian the call does not take this literal form, but we are no less called to be morally apart from country, relatives and father's house. And if we are morally apart, the political, social and even family circle may push the Christian out. That happened to the blind man in John 9. In any case, the moment comes in our history when we have to decide. Which comes first: the mighty call of God, or the pressing claims of country, relatives, and father's house?
God named what Abraham must leave, but not where he was going. That silence was deliberate.
The land to be shown in due time was as yet unknown, so that he was thrown back on simple-hearted confidence in God. He went out in submission to God's promise, not knowing where he was going. God would show the next step when Abraham took the first. He did not ask, "Where?" He trusted God completely. So his faith was unmixed with calculations of self, resting only but fully on the word of the One who loves and never deceives.
Abraham obeyed — but not all at once.
Even Abraham, blessed as he was, moved slowly on the path of faith at first. He did not leave Mesopotamia and settle 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 striking delay in coming into the land God was going to show him.
- Glory appears. The God of glory came to Abraham in Mesopotamia. He was at the furthest point from the land and surrounded by idols. Grace gives what is good; it does not find it.
- Glory calls out. The word was not to reform Ur but to leave it; the ties broken were natural ones, not only evil ones.
- Glory calls in. Older wordings read "come into the land," not "go" — a land where God Himself would guide, welcome and provide.
- Glory withholds the map. God named the land only as the one He would show, so that Abraham would lean on Him. He showed the next step when Abraham took the first.
- Glory waits. Abraham left his land but lingered among his relatives in Haran, so he came into the land only later — faith can be slow at first and still arrive.