Act 7:17-43 | KingComments | STEP | Stephen comes to the third and longest part of his speech. Moses as picture of the Lord Jesus is central in this. Stephen was accused of speaking slanderous words against Moses ( ). From what he says of Moses it is clear how false this accusation is. In mentioning the history of God’s people, Stephen is now going to speak about the fulfillment of God’s promises. Based on that history, he presents to his audience that a new change was occurring. The situation in which the people found themselves in Egypt did not remain the same. The time of the promise was approaching, that is, the time to fulfill the promise that God would bring them to Canaan. For this He had to lead His people out of Egypt. The circumstances He used for this are again humbling for his audience. In the early days of their stay in Egypt it seemed that the people were greatly blessed. The people grew and multiplied in Egypt ( ). None of this posed a problem, as long as the country was ruled by kings who had known Joseph. They remembered that they owed the existence of their country to him. As a token of appreciation, the people were allowed to stay in Egypt. Then there was a king who had not known Joseph ( ). This king had no connection whatsoever with Joseph and there was no gratitude whatsoever toward him. This king saw in the ever-growing people a threat to his own position. To prevent expansion of “our race”, he resorted to cunning ( ) and began to mistreat “our fathers” and to afflict them ( ). When this did not help to inhibit the growth of the people, he ordered that every son who is born should not stay with their parents, but that they would expose their infants, i.e. that they would be thrown into the Nile ( ). While the people sighed under the cruel domination, God went to work to fulfill His promise by letting Moses be born. Stephen says of him that he was “lovely “, that is, lovely “in the sight of God” ( ; ). His parents did not take him immediately to the Nile, as Pharaoh had commanded, but nurtured him “in his father’s home” for three months. After that he had to share the fate of every little boy. He was taken to the Nile and put there as a foundling. There he was found by the daughter of Pharaoh who nurtured him as her own son. Later, Moses refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter ( ). The nurturing by his God-fearing parents did not miss its goal. God used the criminal order of Pharaoh to bring Moses to his court. By doing so through the daughter of Pharaoh, God mocked with all the power of Pharaoh. That is God’s wisdom. God’s plan with His people was not only fulfilled despite Pharaoh, but even with the cooperation of Pharaoh, of course without him wanting or even realizing it. At court Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians. Moses became learned or wise, but he was powerful in his words and deeds. Learning he acquired through education, power he received from God as a special gift. Both qualities he revealed in Egypt. To God he spoke about the opposite ( ) and felt his incompetence.

‏ Acts 7:17-43

Moses’ Birth and Nurturing

Stephen comes to the third and longest part of his speech. Moses as picture of the Lord Jesus is central in this. Stephen was accused of speaking slanderous words against Moses (Acts 6:11). From what he says of Moses it is clear how false this accusation is.

In mentioning the history of God’s people, Stephen is now going to speak about the fulfillment of God’s promises. Based on that history, he presents to his audience that a new change was occurring. The situation in which the people found themselves in Egypt did not remain the same. The time of the promise was approaching, that is, the time to fulfill the promise that God would bring them to Canaan. For this He had to lead His people out of Egypt. The circumstances He used for this are again humbling for his audience.

In the early days of their stay in Egypt it seemed that the people were greatly blessed. The people grew and multiplied in Egypt (Exo 1:7). None of this posed a problem, as long as the country was ruled by kings who had known Joseph. They remembered that they owed the existence of their country to him. As a token of appreciation, the people were allowed to stay in Egypt. Then there was a king who had not known Joseph (Exo 1:8). This king had no connection whatsoever with Joseph and there was no gratitude whatsoever toward him.

This king saw in the ever-growing people a threat to his own position. To prevent expansion of “our race”, he resorted to cunning (Exo 1:16) and began to mistreat “our fathers” and to afflict them (Exo 1:10-11). When this did not help to inhibit the growth of the people, he ordered that every son who is born should not stay with their parents, but that they would expose their infants, i.e. that they would be thrown into the Nile (Exo 1:22).

While the people sighed under the cruel domination, God went to work to fulfill His promise by letting Moses be born. Stephen says of him that he was “lovely “, that is, lovely “in the sight of God” (Exo 2:2; Heb 11:23). His parents did not take him immediately to the Nile, as Pharaoh had commanded, but nurtured him “in his father’s home” for three months. After that he had to share the fate of every little boy. He was taken to the Nile and put there as a foundling. There he was found by the daughter of Pharaoh who nurtured him as her own son. Later, Moses refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter (Heb 11:24).

The nurturing by his God-fearing parents did not miss its goal. God used the criminal order of Pharaoh to bring Moses to his court. By doing so through the daughter of Pharaoh, God mocked with all the power of Pharaoh. That is God’s wisdom. God’s plan with His people was not only fulfilled despite Pharaoh, but even with the cooperation of Pharaoh, of course without him wanting or even realizing it.

At court Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians. Moses became learned or wise, but he was powerful in his words and deeds. Learning he acquired through education, power he received from God as a special gift. Both qualities he revealed in Egypt. To God he spoke about the opposite (Exo 4:10) and felt his incompetence.

Moses Visits His Brethren and Flees

The first period of Moses’ life at the court of Pharaoh lasted for forty years. But all the splendor of the court of Pharaoh could not prevent that his heart was with his brothers in oppression. One day he visited them. His love for his people burned in all its fierceness. He did not come to tell them what they had done wrong, but to see their “hard labors” (Exo 2:11). The Lord Jesus did not come to judge either, but to save (Jn 3:17).

When Moses saw one of his brethren being treated unjustly, he defended him. He took him in protection, also taking vengeance for him who was mistreated by striking down the Egyptian. He was then still at the court of Pharaoh. By standing up so clearly for the people, he thought that his brethren would see in him their deliverer through whose hand God would give them salvation. But that thought did not occur to them. On the contrary. The next day, when he appeared to his brothers again, it appeared that they were not at all interested in his intervention.

Again Moses observed that injustice was being done. However, this time it was not an Egyptian who wronged an Israelite, but two Israelites who wronged each other. When he tried to reconcile them for peace with the question why they wronged each other, he who wronged his neighbor turned against him. Moses was blamed for the fact that he should not claim to be “a ruler and judge”.

Here we see that from his first action in favor of his people, his authority was rejected, as was the case with Joseph. Moses was dealt with in the same way as Joseph was dealt with before, when he investigated the welfare of his brothers: he was rejected by his own (Gen 37:14 ; 18). Like Joseph, Moses is in this respect a type of Christ Who was not accepted by His own either (Jn 1:11). Christ was hated, rejected, denied and even killed by His people. So it was prophetically the reproach of Christ that Moses took upon himself when he looked after his brethren and wanted to share their fate (Heb 11:26).

The rejection of Moses was clearly expressed in the words of the Israelite who wronged his neighbor: “Who made you a ruler and judge over us?” (Acts 7:27; Exo 2:14). The man added that he saw in him not a deliverer, but a threat to his life. This shows how much the people would rather remain in slavery than acknowledge a deliverer. The people did not want to accept a ruler and judge. The accusation that Moses put himself up to this is quoted twice by Stephen (Acts 7:27 ; 35), through which he accentuates its seriousness. When it had become so clear that his people did not want him, Moses fled.

What Stephen, following the history in Exodus, presents as a flee is presented in Hebrews 11 as an act of faith (Heb 11:27). Thus, on the one hand, the Lord Jesus was rejected by His people, while on the other He went away, back to heaven, waiting for the time when His people will accept Him as their Savior.

During the time that Moses was in Midian, he had a heathen wife as his bride and got two sons (Exo 2:21-22 ; Exo 18:3-4). This can be compared to the Lord Jesus Who receives the church as a bride in this time. The names Moses gave his sons show that he had not forgotten his people in the foreign land either, just as the Lord Jesus, now that He is in heaven, does not forget His earthly people.

God Appears to Moses

Moses was forty when he fled. In the wilderness forty years “had passed”. Forty is the number of trial. In the power of his life God formed him in the wilderness. Who would choose such an education, in the loneliness of the wilderness, when all the challenges of life lie before you? But God taught him lessons there that he could not have learned in any other way.

Moses is called by the Lord when he is eighty years old. That is at the end of his natural life, as he himself says in Psalm 90 (Psa 90:10). Before the Lord can use someone, a person has to learn to renounce his natural capacities. Moses learned that. Yet it is not enough not to rely on one’s own abilities. Now he must learn to trust in God’s power.

Moses is now ready for God to appear to him. He does that as an Angel in a flame of a burning thorn bush. Moses’ attention is drawn to the fact that the thorn bush burns but does not burn up (Exo 3:3). The thorn bush represents man by nature, sinful man. We also see the whole people of Israel in it, which is in Egypt in the furnace of fire. We also see that God is in the fire. That is why the thorn bush is not consumed.

God uses the fire of trial to purify His people, and us. What is not in agreement with Him is removed by the fire. As a result, we are answering more and more to His purpose with us which is that we are becoming like the Lord Jesus. He is with us in the trial (Dan 3:23-25; Isa 63:9).

God sees that Moses is approaching the bush to see that wondrous phenomenon. He makes Himself known to Moses as the God of the covenant with the patriarchs, with Abraham (Gen 15:13-14), Isaac (Gen 26:3) and Jacob (Gen 46:1-3). That is the ground on which He is going to act. He appreciates that Moses shows interest in His revelation, but at the same time He maintains His holiness.

Moses is deeply impressed by God’s appearance and His words. He begins to shake with fear and does not dare to investigate further. He knows himself in the presence of the holy God. Where God is, there is holiness. God makes it clear to him that he stands on holy ground. That is why he has to take off his shoes (cf. Jos 5:15). The awareness of standing on holy ground was completely missing from the Council that Stephen stood before, while they claimed to live in the holy land.

After Moses has taken the right place before God, God tells him what He has seen and what He has purposed. God tells him that He has seen what is being done to His people and that He has heard their groans. He is familiar with their sorrows. That brings Him to act. He has descended to rescue them and bring them to a land that He has chosen for them. And Moses is the man He wants to use to carry out that purpose.

The Lord Jesus has descended to earth to redeem people who sigh under the yoke of sin. As with Israel, He did not speak from heaven, but came from heaven to earth. It is wonderful to read that God calls this wretched slave people in Egypt “My people”! It is like the father falling around the neck of his prodigal son while this son is still wearing his dirty clothes (Lk 15:20).

When Stephen has impressively presented the appearance of God to Moses and His command to him to go to Egypt to deliver His people, he repeats the rejection of Moses as a ruler and a judge (Acts 7:35; Acts 7:27). By speaking in plural, “they”, he thereby turns the sin of one man into a collective sin, that is, the sin of the whole people.

To further underline its seriousness, Stephen speaks of disowning Moses. And that while God had appeared to Moses and Moses had been sent by Him to them to be both a ruler and a deliverer. This is an impressive illustration of the rejection of Christ, the Prince of life, by the Jewish people (cf. Acts 3:14-15 ; Acts 4:10-12).

Moses Rejected; Idols; Judgment

After Stephen has emphatically presented the special nurturing, education and calling of Moses to his audience, he continues just as emphatically with the delivering service of Moses. Again and again he points out what Moses has done or said. This, and no one else, led them out of Egypt. And how: performing wonders and signs. Did not the Lord Jesus reveal Himself in the midst of His people in the same way? Did not the apostles also operate in this way among the people and did not Stephen operate in this way?

And Moses not only delivered them out of Egypt, but also led them through the Red Sea into the wilderness, where he also showed them the way for forty years. It is this Moses who was among the sons of Israel – those who form the Council boasted of being that too, didn’t they? – who said that God would raise up for them a Prophet like him. To the Council it is clear that by this the Messiah is meant, Who, just like Moses, would act as Deliverer and Judge.

Stephen gives even more homage to Moses. He points at Moses and says that he is the one, and no other, who has received the law in the wilderness through the mediation of angels. The law contains the words of God and are therefore living words. They were given by God to Moses on the mountain of God. Moses was the mediator, because he was with the angel in the wilderness and on the mountain and he was with “our fathers”.

He passes on the living oracles or words to “you”, that is Israel then and now. But what did “our fathers” do with all that God gave to them through Moses and with what He said to them through Moses? They deliberately disobeyed him. They refused to obey him. They repelled him. They did not want him to talk about obedience to God.

In their hearts they returned to Egypt. There they could at least do what they wanted. That they lived in slavery and oppression, they didn’t think about that anymore. After all, everything was better than that oppressive obedience to God. And where was Moses anyway? He had been gone for so long that he would never come back.

That’s why they told Aaron to make gods they could see and follow. So in those days, the days of Moses’ absence, they made a calf. To that idol they offered sacrifice, rejoicing in the works of their hands. No more thought was given to God’s honor and work. That is why God turned away. He withdrew from them and as judgment He delivered them up to idolatry (cf. Rom 1:23-26 ; 28).

Stephen tells the Council how throughout history the people have done nothing but serve the idols. Abraham served them before God called him (Jos 24:2), the people served them in Egypt (Jos 24:14) and in the wilderness (Amos 5:25-27).

In his quote from the prophet Amos, Stephen also quotes the judgment on the people that the Babylonians would bring by making the people go into exile. So there is a double judgment: the judgment of God by delivering them to idolatry and the judgment of God by making them go into exile, away from the land.

Again and again in Stephen’s speech it sounds that God approaches His people differently every time, because His people always turn away from Him and become unfaithful to Him. Everything He gives, they have always rejected and chosen the idols instead.