Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Acts 7:30–34
“I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their groaning, and I have come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send you to Egypt” (v. 34).
The Sanhedrin was not entirely wrong to accuse Stephen of teaching that Jesus would destroy the temple and institute certain changes to the Mosaic law (Acts 6:8–15). After all, Jesus had said as much during His earthly ministry. Mark 7:14–23, for instance, records our Savior’s declaring all foods clean, indicating that God’s people would no longer be bound by the kosher laws. Furthermore, Jesus in the Olivet Discourse foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish temple in an act of divine judgment on the generation of Jews who rejected Jesus as the Messiah (see Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21). But the Sanhedrin erred in charging Jesus and Stephen with blasphemy for declaring this teaching. Our Lord’s instruction would have been blasphemous only if God had bound Himself absolutely to the temple, the promised land, and the entire Mosaic law. If He had done so, any word suggesting the fall of the temple and the ceremonial law and any reference to the Lord’s speaking outside the Holy Land might constitute speech against God. Otherwise, the Sanhedrin’s charges were baseless.
In today’s passage, we see how Stephen used the life of Moses to show that the Sanhedrin was wrong to bind God to Canaan, to the Jerusalem temple, and to every element of the Mosaic law. He reminded the Sanhedrin that after Moses fled to Midian, God appeared to him in the Sinai wilderness to commission him to deliver the Israelites from Egyptian slavery (Acts 7:30–34). Just as the Lord had done centuries earlier when He first appeared to Abraham in Ur, our Creator spoke to Moses outside the boundaries of the promised land (see vv. 2–3). As with Abraham, this also happened before the temple was built or all the law was given. God was in a redemptive relationship with His true servants before the temple, before the Israelites’ ownership of Canaan, and before the giving of the ceremonial and civil aspects of the Mosaic law. Those things did not define God’s bond to His people in the beginning, so the Lord could set them aside. Jesus was asserting that they could end without undermining God’s grace or faithfulness.
The Lord’s commissioning Moses at the burning bush after the Hebrews’ rejection of him as their leader demonstrated His commitment to them. Even though the people rejected the leader whom God appointed (see vv. 23–29), the Lord sent him anyway. God would not allow Israel to thwart the good plans He had for His people.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Although the Israelites did not at first recognize Moses as God’s commissioned deliverer, that did not stop the Lord from using Moses to bring them out of slavery. God’s grace is so powerful that even our rejection of it cannot stop the Lord from fulfilling His purposes for His people. That is our only hope because our sin makes us apt to reject God’s grace, and only if that grace perseveres do we have any hope of salvation.
For further study
- Exodus 3
- Isaiah 63:7–14
- John 5:45–47
- Hebrews 3:1–6
The bible in a year
- Joshua 1–2
- Luke 1:39–56