The Tent of Witness in the Wilderness

Exodus 32 records Israel’s worship of the golden calf in the wilderness not long after God powerfully rescued the people from slavery in Egypt. This was a key moment in the history of Israel that bore even more rotten fruit later on in the nation’s continual worship of other gods alongside Yahweh, the one true God. Stephen makes this point in Acts 7:38–43, and he continues to defend himself against charges of blasphemy in today’s passage.

In verse 44, Stephen reminds the members of the Sanhedrin that their forefathers “had the tent of witness in the wilderness,” which Moses constructed according to the blueprint that God had given him. Stephen’s reference to the tabernacle here achieves several purposes. First, it points out the foolishness of the golden-calf incident, which occurred after the Lord revealed the pattern for the tabernacle in Exodus 25–31. God was gracious enough to provide a visible representation of His presence among the Israelites by giving them the portable sanctuary of the tabernacle, but Israel rejected this, at least temporarily, for an idol.

Second, the Lord’s provision of the tabernacle in the wilderness demonstrated God’s willingness to speak to His people outside Canaan and to enter into a relationship with them that ultimately could not be confined to the promised land. We have seen that the Sanhedrin’s charges of blasphemy against Stephen assumed that it would be speaking against God to suggest the end of the temple and changes to the Mosaic law, the idea being that God was absolutely bound to the temple and Canaan. But if God could enter into a relationship with His people outside Canaan, then His presence could not be limited to the promised land and Stephen would not be guilty of blasphemy.

Finally, the Sanhedrin well knew that the tabernacle was only a temporary structure that gave way to the more permanent temple in the days of Solomon. If the tabernacle, a divinely appointed structure, could give way to the temple, another divinely appointed structure, then it should not have been so alarming to the Sanhedrin that the temple might give way to yet another divinely appointed structure—namely, the new covenant church. Matthew Henry comments, “As it was no dishonor, but an honor to God, that the tabernacle gave way to the temple, so it is now that the material temple gives way to the spiritual one, and so it will be when, at last, the spiritual temple shall give way to the eternal one.”