Acts 7:41–43

Israel took the worship of the calf from their old masters, the Egyptians. That remarkable people were generally clean, even in their idolatry. Israel adopted Apis, the bull, who represented Osiris. To tell the truth, at first glance there seems little harm in it. People more respectable than Israel had worshipped at his shrine for centuries, with no visible harm. Where was the sin? Aaron might think. It was a clean and useful animal, and it represented the valuable principle of Prosperity. Yet God looks down out of the heavens full of anger. He deals with His own people differently from the rest of the world: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities."

reason: "blessing" loses original's "sanctification"; 46-word sentence split Call the sin holy, and the abomination will be held in religious awe. They dedicated the image to God — the God who had commanded them to make no image and to bow down to no image. Calling the festival by Jehovah's name did not change what it really was.

The spirit of false worship is to rejoice in the work of one's own hands — "they made a calf... and rejoiced in the work of their own hands." But in true worship, God Himself is the glory of the worshipper. It is in Him that the soul makes her boast.

It is governed by sight instead of faith, for Israel said, "Make for us gods who will go before us" (40). And it rejoices in its own works instead of the work of God, for after making an idol they "rejoiced in the works of their own hands" (41).

The people are clearly taught that in making any image and bowing down to it, they lowered and corrupted themselves. So when they made the golden calf, the Lord said to Moses, "Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves." It could not be otherwise. The worshipper must be lower than the object of his worship. So in worshipping a calf, they put themselves below the level of the beasts that perish.

This has been called Israel's original sin... First of all, it is the first action of the people recorded after they solemnly agreed to the covenant in Exodus 24. It was their first move on the new footing, in their new standing as a people "under the law." Then, that blow was aimed at the very throne of God itself. It went straight against the first item of the law they had pledged themselves to obey: "You shall have no other gods before me." Again, original sin is besetting sin — the first swing of the pendulum, deciding all the swings to come.

It is said of the people when they made the golden calf, "they rejoiced in the work of their own hands." The Galatian error — adding the law to Christ — is the same in principle. It is what the human heart naturally feels, as though people could serve God with their hands, as if He needed something. The apostle knew of no middle way between the grace of God in Christ and idolatry.

The 'calf', the abomination of Egypt, did not satisfy Israel. They craved objects higher than the works of their own hands, whatever charm that has for man's vain heart. Once they yielded to the snare, Israel had to outdo Egypt. So "God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven." Idolatry that grovels in the dust still reaches for higher things, and puffs itself up with its heavenly imaginations. Stephen is not the authority for so withering a charge, but Amos (Amos 5:25-27). These words stand in the prophets' Book. Would an Israelite contradict them too, or charge Scripture itself with saying blasphemous things about Israel?

They fell away from God until God gave them up. The words come three times: God gave them up to impurity (v. 24); God gave them up to shameful passions (v. 26); and, because they did not want to keep God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind (v. 28)… To be given up is the act of God in judicial judgment. He gave up the Gentiles in this way, and we see what man became. We also know that when the Jews had fully rejected the testimony of the Holy Spirit, God gave them up, for the present, as a people.

When the Spirit of prophecy announced their coming captivity, He does not go back to the wicked kings of Israel, nor to the shameless sons of David who ruled Judah. He goes back to the idolatry in the wilderness — at the very time when Israel openly honoured the tabernacle of Jehovah and the priesthood of Aaron. But all that time God saw how hollow the animals and sacrifices they brought in His name were. In their hearts, in secret, they carried the tent of Moloch and the star of the god Raiphan.

As to their idolatry, I doubt whether Israel offered God a single sacrifice through all the wilderness years, apart from the official ones… They likely kept the official sacrifices up, or could have; and on the whole, what they did offer they claimed was for the Lord. When they made the golden calf, Aaron announced, "Tomorrow is a feast to Jehovah."

God's judgment is sure, even if it seems to sleep. Long afterwards the prophet Amos passes sentence for the sin committed in the desert. Whatever made the sin worse later on, it is the first sin that decides. Evil never gets better and never works itself out. It easily can grow worse, and it always does… Patience may go on for ages, in ways that faith admires; but judgment, however long delayed, is certain.

By nature people are even more idolatrous than doubting. Unbelief is the mother of both these enemies of God and His truth. People love to have gods that go before them. They find the true Deliverer tiresome, and He soon slips out of mind: "we do not know what has become of him." Is not the wilderness history prophetic?

The name of a god in Acts 7:43, which Israel had worshipped (but some Greek manuscripts read Rephan). Stephen was quoting Amos 5:25-26 from the Septuagint, which has Raephan. In the Hebrew the name of the god is Chiun, but why the translators changed the name is not known.

When the Spirit of prophecy announced their coming captivity, He does not go back to the wicked kings of Israel. Nor does He go back to the shameless sons of David who ruled Judah. He goes back to the idolatry in the wilderness. On the outside, at that very time, they honoured the tabernacle of Jehovah and the priesthood of Aaron. But God saw all along how hollow their offerings and sacrifices in His name were. In their hearts, out of sight, they took up the tent of Moloch and the star of the god Raiphan. They had made these forms to worship them.

Worshipping God by the ritual of the law was no security against idolatry. Stephen proved it from the words of Amos the prophet. Amos goes back to the days of Moses in the wilderness. There he finds the sin that carried them off, after long patience, to the lands of captivity. "The holy place and the law" did nothing for God's glory then, and they do nothing now. This was his answer to their boast, and his defence against their accusation.

Man, unbelieving man, is so quick to abandon the living God. He does it despite the daily standing witness of His power and grace. He does it despite the solemn judgments God sends before all eyes from time to time. He is just as quick to take up the idolatry that he had known, only a short time before, to rule the high and mighty, the refined and learned — the world, in short, where he himself had been a slave… The calf, the abomination of Egypt, did not satisfy Israel either. They craved objects higher than the works of their own hands, whatever the charm of those works to man's vain heart. Once they yielded to the snare, Israel had to outdo Egypt. So "God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven."

The prophet reminds them when and where their idolatry began: in the wilderness… Stephen says beyond Babylon, and so it turned out, perhaps to mark it off from the Babylonian captivity. Such was the result of the old sin in the wilderness. No doubt that sin was worse at the end. The dark stream kept gathering more water as it flowed… Still, God always goes back to the source. At last He declares that the final blow came because of the first departure.

The failure in the wilderness is connected here with the Babylonian captivity, though a great number of years came in between. The whole thing failed there. Babylon was the necessary result of that failure in the wilderness.

The Israelites had not worshipped Jehovah for forty years in the wilderness; but they had carried symbols of Molech and Chiun (or Remphan) and worshipped them. The root of their idolatrous course was that they had never in heart made a clean break from Egypt.