What does it mean that God gave them up to worship the host of heaven (Acts 7:42)?

Alas! the baptized soon forsook their own mercies and denied the special testimony for which they were responsible to God's glory before the world. They got weary of dependence on an exalted but absent Lord; they ceased to wait for His return from heaven; they practically superseded the presence and free action of the Holy Spirit in the assembly, they gave up their bridal separateness for worldly influence and favour, and they swamped grace under a system of law and ordinances: so that the word of God became of little or no effect through tradition, as departure from the truth became more and more the state of those who professed the name of the Lord. Insubjection to Him speedily bred alienation, and the heart soon turned toward that world out of which grace calls and severs to God. Men are even more naturally idolatrous than sceptical, unbelief being the mother of both these enemies to God and His truth. Men love to have gods to go before them. The true Deliverer being irksome passes readily out of mind: 'we know not what is become of him.' Is not the wilderness history prophetic? Did not these things happen as types of us that we should not be lusting after evil things, as they also lusted, nor be idolaters, as some of them? Indeed all the things recorded happened to them as types, and were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages are come.

'And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice to the idol and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. But God turned and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven; as it is written in [the] book of the prophets, Did ye offer Me victims and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your [or, the] god Remphan, the forms which ye made to worship them; and I will transport you beyond Babylon' (vers. 41-43). So prone is man, incredulous man, to abandon the living God, in spite of daily standing witness of His power and grace, as well as of His solemn occasional judgments before all eyes; so readily does he take up that idolatry which he had but lately known to dominate the high and mighty, the refined and learned — the world, in short, where he himself had been enslaved. So powerful an adversary is 'public opinion' to the will and glory of God, even in the face of the grandest exhibitions of His favour to His people, and of stern unmistakable punishment on their enemies, and, not least, of shame on their gods who could neither help their votaries nor screen themselves. Nor did the 'calf', the abomination of Egypt, satisfy Israel; they craved after objects higher than the works of their own hands whatever the charm of this to man's vain heart. Once yielding to the snare Israel must outdo Egypt. So 'God turned and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven.' Grovelling idolatry aspires to higher things and inflates itself with its heavenly imaginations. Not Stephen is the authority for so withering a charge, but Amos (Amos 5:25-27). In the prophets' Book it is written: would an Israelite gainsay them too? or tax scripture itself with saying blasphemous things against Israel? The forms of Moloch, 'horrid king', and of Remphan, they made to worship, and they did worship them.

And not the least repulsive feature of this early corruption among the chosen people was that they offered all the while victims and sacrifices in the wilderness to Jehovah. To be lavish in honour of false gods the poorest can afford, who complain of what is due to the true God, as if He were a rigid exactor and not the Giver of every good and every perfect gift.

During all these years of wandering in the wilderness circumcision was not carried out (Joshua 5:2-5). What else happened during this unrecorded period in the wilderness may be learned from a number of passages. "But the house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness; they walked not in My statutes, and they despised My judgments, which if a man do, he shall live in them; and My sabbaths they greatly polluted. Then I said, I would pour out My fury upon them in the wilderness to consume them" (Ezek. 20:13, etc.), "Have ye not offered unto Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel ? But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves" (Amos 5:25, 26). "Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan (worship of Saturn) figures which you made to worship them" (Acts 7:42, 43). They continued in stubbornness and rebellion and became idolators. But oh! the mercy of God! He continued to feed them and gave them water. "These forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee, thou hast lacked nothing" (Deut. 2:7). "And I have led you forty years in the wilderness; your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot" (Deut. 19:5). What marvellous compassion! And thus He still deals in mercy with His wayward wandering people. (Psalm 90, standing at the beginning of the fourth section of the book of Psalms (Numbers) was written by Moses, no doubt, when he saw them dying.)

Stephen lays great emphasis on the history of Moses, certainly showing that he had more respect for Moses than the Jews actually did, though they had so boasted in Moses and charged Stephen with blaspheming him. This was the same Moses, he says, who was with the assembly in the wilderness, and through whom, at Mount Sinai, they had received the living oracles, the ten commandments. How had Israel responded to him then? At the very time Moses was receiving the two tables of stone on the mount, Israel was again refusing him and demanding of Aaron some type of gods they could see, putting folly into execution by their making a golden calf, offering sacrifices to it, and taking pleasure in their idolatrous works.

Verses 42 and 43 cover a long space of time, indicating Israel's persisting in wilful, selfish ways, neglecting in their forty year wilderness history the honest offering to God of their slain beasts and sacrifices. Likely they killed beasts and offered them in sacrifice, but not to God. Later, in the land, they adopted the gods of the dispossessed idolaters, Moloch and Remphan making images of these to worship. Stephen says little more than this about Israel's history in the land, but adds the solemn warning of God that He would carry them away beyond Babylon, which the Jews knew had been fulfilled in the days of Nebuchadnezzar. This history of rebellion and of God's often intervening in discipline ought to have taught the Jews to learn by their fathers' experience.

Consider the serious lesson in what Stephen quoted from the Greek Version of Amos 5:25-27. When the Spirit of prophecy set forth their coming captivity, He goes back, not to the wicked kings of Israel, nor to shameless sons of David who ruled Judah, but to the idolatry in the wilderness at the very time when they outwardly honoured the tabernacle of Jehovah and the priesthood of Aaron. But God saw all the while the hollowness of their victims and sacrifices in His name; for in their hearts and secretly, they took up the tent of Moloch and the star of the god Raiphan (or, Romphan), the forms which they made to worship them. However God may wait in His admirable patience, it is the early unjudged sin that decides, though the execution of judgment may not come for many centuries afterward. The writings of the earliest uninspired men of the Christian era prove the fallen state which undermined and destroyed the apostolic teaching; whilst the centuries that followed kept ever growing worse and worse, till the highest arrogance sat enthroned on the ruin of the church's heavenly association with Christ in entire separation from the world.

Here we have this principle applied to the judgment of Israel. It is not merely the calves that Jeroboam set for politico-religious purposes at Dan and Beth-el. They are reminded when and where their idolatry began, that is, in the wilderness. False gods were objects of worship there, the Moloch and the Chiun, that they took up all the time that the Levites were carrying the ark of the tabernacle, with the sons of Israel so demurely following. They had not got rid of the gods of Egypt then. They brought these vanities along with them into the wilderness; and now this is charged upon them. "But ye have borne the shrines of your king, and the basis of your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves." Mark the circumstances. "Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity" (the deportation to the cities of the Medes) "beyond Damascus." Stephen says beyond Babylon (and so indeed was the fact) perhaps to distinguish from the Babylonish captivity. Such was the result of the old sin in the wilderness. No doubt that sin was more glaring at the end; the dark stream was always gathering further contributions to its volume. The mass of waters flowed more mightily down at its mouth than at the beginning of its course. Nevertheless God always goes back to the source, and at last declares that because of the first departure did the final blow come. The captivity of Israel was the consequence of their forefathers' sin in the wilderness, and not merely of the sins they had added to it in the land God allotted them. Of course there were many and bitter aggravations in the land; but the evils which abounded in the land were the consequence of a failure to judge the wickedness in the wilderness. It is the same thing practically with every Christian.

No doubt grace can and does act in the case of a Christian now, even where he might have slipped seriously aside, but where there followed deep and thorough repentance, and the sense of forgiveness which the Spirit grants. This would become the last starting point, so to speak, and grace if it went back beyond it would use it for good. Not only is He faithful and just to forgive and cleanse, but He loves to bring him who has failed when restored into a better condition than he had ever known before. Witness Simon Peter at the end of the Gospels and the beginning of the Acts. And so it will be with Israel in a future day. But self-judgment, wherever it is thorough, wherever there is a vindication of God against one's own sin, always brings one in the measure of the repentance into a corresponding measure of depth in God's grace never possessed before. There are few things more common than to see a person converted in what may be called a superficial manner. Where this is the case, there is commonly a falling into open failure of one kind or another, sometimes a shameful break-down, by which the man really becomes nothing less than a bag of broken bones, thoroughly brought to nought in his own eyes. After this, when grace has lifted him up, he will be incomparably humbler and will have a more grateful as well as chastened sense of what God is than he had when first converted. Hence, although it be a shame to him that he required such a humiliating process, it is the triumph of divine grace to use his folly for putting him that is restored into a better condition than before he went astray.

The expression 'the tabernacle of your Molech,' Amos 5:26, is quoted in Acts 7:43-44. 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.

But this departure from Him was not a new thing in their history. They were always a stiffnecked people. Even in the wilderness did they not bring Him sacrifices and offerings, but instead they bore the tabernacle of Moloch and Chiun (or the booth of your king and the pedestal of your images, the star of your gods). Then follows the verdict, "Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, saith the LORD, whose name is the God of Hosts."

During Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness, time and again Moses had to intercede with God to spare them from destruction because of their unbelief and murmuring. They were outwardly in relationship with God, but in heart they were far from Him. At the foot of Sinai they worshipped the golden calf, singing and dancing, and calling it a feast to Jehovah. The Spirit of God, through Stephen, quoting from the prophet Amos, tells us what happened while Israel passed through the wilderness, “Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them.”

We have seen how the name of God was mixed up with their false worship. Laban could speak of God; Pharaoh, that the Spirit of God was in Joseph; and the idolatrous revelry of the Israelites at the foot of Sinai was called a feast to Jehovah. So in Micah's mother is another instance of this blasphemous mingling of the name of Jehovah with the image of silver she made. The silver was dedicated to Jehovah, and the manner of dedication was to make it into an idol and then worship it. The man Micah himself had a house of gods. And the ephod which God had provided for His own priest was used for idolatry. When Solomon was in the zenith of his power, his many wives led him to build high places for their gods. Indeed idolatry was the besetting sin up to the time of the Babylonish captivity. Something of it was learnt in Jacob's family; his beloved Rachel had her images; it was better learnt in Egypt; and never did the Israelites cease to be idolaters until removed from the land — perhaps not until the remnant were brought back to Jerusalem. Both Joshua and Stephen are witnesses that they were not free from it even in the journey through the wilderness. For Joshua bid them "put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood and in Egypt." They had brought idols from Egypt and had retained them up to that time. And Stephen lays it to their charge in words which throw further light upon God's ways with them in the wilderness. They made a calf in those days, and worshipped it. Then God turned and gave them up. That sin of the calf was the primary cause of their captivity beyond Babylon. But the point I would specially notice now is that Stephen charges them with idol worship while in the wilderness: "Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made." (See Acts 7:41-43.)

But divine judgment is sure if it seem to slumber, and the prophet Amos at a far later day pronounces the sentence for the sin perpetrated in the desert. Whatever may have been the aggravation afterwards, it is the first sin which decides. Evil never gets better, never works itself out, though it may easily, and always does, wax worse. The evil heart of unbelief departs more and more from the living God. Patience may go on for ages in ways admirable to the eye of faith; but judgment, however deferred is certain, and in due time is revealed though it may be long before it is executed.