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.
Then going out of the land of the Chaldeans he dwelt in Charran, and thence, after his father died, he removed him into this land in which *ye* now dwell.
Stephen is on trial. He answers the council by retelling Abraham's story: a call in Mesopotamia, a long pause in Haran, then arrival in the land his accusers were standing on. The verse turns on two things — why the delay, and who did the moving.
The stop between Ur and Canaan was a real city on a trade route, and it is named in both Testaments.
An ancient city in Mesopotamia. Terah and his family moved there from Ur of the Chaldees. Abraham stayed there on his way to the land of Canaan, until his father died... It appears in its Greek form as CHARRAN in Acts 7:2, 4... The name means 'road' in Accadian. It was probably so called because the caravan routes of Syria, Assyria, and Babylonia crossed there.
Abraham left his country but kept his father with him. The verse marks how long the delay lasted: until his father died.
He sets out, but he takes Terah, his father, with him, and goes and lodges in Haran (he could not carry Terah with him into the land of Canaan). Now God had called Abram, but not Terah. He left everything except Terah, and entered into possession of nothing. But he tried to carry something with him which was not of God, and he could not. It is not until after Terah's death that he removes into Canaan, to where God had called him.
The same writer turns this into a warning for anyone whose heart is divided.
Just so it happens to a heart which has not understood that it must give itself wholly to God. It gives up a great deal for duty, it receives nothing. When the question is of following God, it keeps something for itself. Still, grace acted towards Abraham.
Some say Stephen contradicts Genesis, which puts Terah's death before the command to leave Haran. One commentator answers that there was more than one call.
Stephen says that the God of glory appeared to Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran... The effect of this was that he left his country, and possibly many of his relatives. But his father went with him, along with Sarah and Lot, and they settled in Haran... Then it seems God called him to get out from his country, kindred, and father's house, and come into a land that He would show him (Genesis 12:1). The effect of this call was that he departed out of Haran. Stephen confirms this when he says, "after his father died, God removed him from there into this land." This shows beyond question that God acted a second time.
Terah died at 205. Abraham left Haran at 75. One writer uses those numbers, with this verse, to work out when Abraham was born.
Genesis 11:32 states plainly that Terah died in Haran aged 205 years. Genesis 12:4 states just as plainly that Abram left Haran aged 75, with Terah already dead (see Acts 7:4) — not 135, as we should have expected. So Terah's family began when he was 70, but Abram was not born till Terah was 130. Abram is named first in Genesis 11:26 because Terah's other children mattered little compared with him. These things should teach us that God is concerned with moral and spiritual matters, not with dates.
The verse credits the move to God. Abraham had no inherited privilege and no sacred building — only the God who called him out and moved him on.
He was not the heir of privilege. For him the glory did not live in any place built by human hands. It was outside the world, and by that revelation he became a pilgrim in the world from then on. From the land of his birth God called him out, and from his kindred; and the land to which He called him was one unknown. Faith was a necessity for him at every point. He was slow to cut the ties of nature, but those ties were only a hindrance to him. After his father was dead, God removed him to the land which was to be his own.
Stephen ends the sentence with "in which you are now living" — addressed to men whose whole confidence rested on that ground.
For though he went out of his land, he did not get out of his kin, but dwelt with his father in Haran till Terah died. Then only God removed him into the land in which the Jews gloried as their dwelling.
The same writer notes what this does to their argument in the wider speech: the fathers they boasted of held the land only by promise, never by possession.
God had brought out their forefather Abraham, but He never actually gave him possession of this land. Why, then, boast of it so much? Those who, according to nature, boasted loudly of Abraham and of God's dealings were clearly not in communion with God, or even with Abraham.
- Called — God appeared to Abraham in Mesopotamia. He was not the heir of privilege; grace found him first.
- Delayed — He obeyed halfway. He left his country but took Terah with him, and he entered into possession of nothing.
- Freed — Only his father's death loosened the tie. A heart that keeps something back gives up much and receives nothing.
- Removed — God moved him; Abraham did not move himself. The second call came after the first was half obeyed.
- Rebuked — Abraham never possessed the land his accusers boasted of, so their boasting proved nothing.