WWUTT 2588 The Prophet of God to Israel (Acts 7:30-43)

The deacon Stephen has been accused of mishandling the word of Moses and blaspheming the word of God. But he shows to his accusers it's actually they who reject the word of God and do not walk in holiness when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Find all our videos online at www .wutt .com as well as links to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Stephen’s Defense of Moses and the Rejected Deliverer

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Acts, we're back to the speech of Stephen in chapter 7, the portion where Stephen is expositing the narrative concerning Moses out of the book of Exodus. Let me begin reading in verse 30 and we'll go through verse 43.

Hear the word of the Lord. And after forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai in the flame of a burning bush. When Moses saw it, he was marveling at the sight.

And as he approached to look more closely, there came the voice of the Lord. I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Moses trembled with fear and would not dare to look. But the Lord said to him, Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

I have surely seen the oppression of my people in Egypt and have heard their groans, and I have come down to deliver them. Come now, and I will send you to Egypt. This Moses, whom they disowned, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge, is the one whom God sent to be both a ruler and a deliverer, with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

This man led them out, doing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years. This is the Moses who said to the sons of Israel, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.

This is the one who, in the congregation of the wilderness, was the angel who was speaking to him on Mount Sinai and with our fathers, the one who received living oracles to pass.

On to you.

Israel’s Rejection of Moses, Idolatry, and the Prophets

Our fathers were unwilling to be obedient to him, but rejected him, and in their hearts turned back to Egypt, saying to Aaron, Make for us gods who will go before us, for this Moses who led us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.

At that time they made a calf and brought a sacrifice to the idol, and were rejoicing in the works of their hands. But God turned away and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven. As it is written in the book of the prophets, Did you present me with slain beasts and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?

You also took along the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Rompha, the images which you made to worship. I also will remove you beyond Babylon. And we'll get at least that far today. So we had read yesterday where Stephen had basically exposited Exodus chapters one and two, showing the people that he is speaking to there in the Sanhedrin that they have rejected those whom God has sent from the beginning.

This has been the nature of the sermon that Stephen is delivering. This is a defense of himself because remember that one of the accusations that was made of Stephen was that he blasphemed the word of Moses and the word of God.

Stephen is demonstrating here, especially with his numerous scripture quotations, that he actually holds in high regard the word of Moses and the word of God. He has more reverence for this word and handles it rightly than the people who are twisting it and twisting it against Stephen to accuse him of things that he is not guilty of.

They are going to put him to death as we know when we get to the end of this speech. But in the meantime, Stephen hopes to pierce their hearts that they will recognize that they have always been in opposition to God's word like their fathers who were before them.

They are not like Abraham. They're not like Isaac and Jacob. They're not like Moses. They're rather like those who oppose the word of the prophet whom God sent. And where Stephen says that Moses once said, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.

It's already been said in the book of Acts, Peter had already preached that that reference was to Christ. Moses was pointing to Christ. Stephen is pointing to Christ, and that's why they have him on trial and why they're going to put him to death.

So Stephen, again, is showing them, I am following the word of Moses when I am preaching of the Christ because Moses spoke of him, but you are rejecting him. Just like they rejected Moses, just like they really reject Moses, they also reject the son of God who was sent to them, whom they put to death.

And Stephen wants them to see that Jesus is the Christ, even praying for their souls as he is put to death at the end of this sermon. But let's come back up to verse 35, picking up where we left off. Moses, whom they disowned, saying, who made you a ruler and a judge, is the one whom God sent to be both a ruler and a deliverer with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

Now, what we had read yesterday was that Moses came and he had defended his brothers. He killed an Egyptian who was persecuting them. Now, the scripture doesn't say that Moses was right to do that, but it was a demonstration that Moses was going to be the one who would deliver them.

Yet they rejected him. And when he tried to reason between two brothers who were treating one another unjustly, the one who was acting unjustly pushed him away and said, who made you a ruler and a judge over us?

That was back in verse 27. So Stephen is making the tie here that these men who had rejected Moses and said, who made you a ruler and judge over us? Well, God. God made Moses a ruler and a deliverer to bring them out of slavery in Egypt.

And what was the response of the children of Israel? They would reject the word of Moses. They would reject that he was sent by God to deliver them. They're even rejecting their own deliverance. Now, that is, of course, what anyone does when they reject Christ.

They reject their own deliverance. And they act like these Israelites did who rejected God. Now, this offense is worse than what Gentiles do. As the Apostle Paul even draws this out in Romans chapters one and two, like it's reprehensible the sins and the evils that are committed by those who do not know God and did not receive the oracles of God.

Of course, that's abhorrent. But it's even worse when somebody knows the command of God and yet refuses to do it. Turns away from it to their own sin, worshiping their own false gods, not obeying the Lord God, rejecting the salvation that has been given to them in Christ.

When they turn from holiness to walk the way of haughtiness, when they turn away from purity to walk in the way of perversion, they are rejecting the Savior who was given to them. And of course, like I said, it's bad when pagans do it.

It's even worse when someone who has the word of God does it. And so it is the case as Stephen is saying these things before the Jews who had been given the oracles of God, it had been revealed to them in miraculous ways, the word of God and the way that they should walk in.

And yet they reject it. They are doing worse than pagans do because they know the word of Moses and yet don't follow it. They know or should see rather that the scriptures point to Christ. And yet they remain blind to it.

They remain deaf to it and will not listen and have stiff necks and hard hearts as Stephen will rebuke them in at the end of this particular sermon. So let me go back up a little bit further to where we started in verse 30.

After 40 years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the wilderness of Mount Sinai in the flame of a burning bush. Now, this, of course, this is a citation as well. This comes straight from Exodus chapter three, where it is also said there that an angel appears to Moses in the burning bush and is speaking to Moses.

Now, there's a couple of different ways to interpret this. A couple of ways this has been interpreted with regards to an angel speaking to Moses from the burning bush. Either this is an angel who is speaking on behalf of God because it's not God's voice directly.

Moses would not be able to stand that, but it is rather an angel who is articulating what God would say. Now, that's not too far out of the realm of speculation to believe that because, as said in the book of Hebrews, the law was received by angels.

So, when you had God speaking the Ten Commandments out of Mount Sinai in Exodus chapter 20, God is actually speaking through the voices of legions of angels that are echoing what God says when he gives his law to his people.

So, when we hear, I am the Lord your God, you will have no other gods before me. It wasn't directly the voice of God that says it, but rather the legions of angels that are echoing what God says and then speaking those things to the people.

It was a terrifying thing for them to witness. And you see that at the end of Exodus 20, the people saying to Moses, we can't stand.

This.

Like, our brains are going to melt out of our ears listening to these blasts that are coming from Mount Sinai, the thundering voice, the way that we hear it. And again, it wasn't God's voice directly, but the angels echoing what it was that God was saying to his people.

And so, it could be the same thing in the burning bush that this angel is actually saying what God is telling the angel to say. It's still God's word. It still comes from God, but it's not directly his voice because Moses would not be able to handle that.

Or at least Moses has not been prepared for that or sanctified to that point yet. We know it would come later that Moses would go into the Tent of Meeting and he would speak with God as one speaks to a man face to face.

That's what Exodus tells us about these interactions that Moses and God would have with one another. But Moses gets prepared to that point. Right here at the burning bush, he's not yet sanctified to the point of hearing the voice of God directly.

And I'm just giving you one interpretation of this, okay? So, some will say that the angel is God's voice through an angel to Moses. But another interpretation, and this one you've surely heard and I've taught it this way as well, is that the angel is really the pre-incarnate Son of God.

It is Jesus. It's the Son of God before he is incarnate and therefore called Jesus. So, Jesus is the one speaking through the bush to Moses. And Jesus is referred to as an angel for he is a messenger.

That's simply the way that word is translated. An angel is what the thing does, not necessarily what the thing is. There are various categories of what qualifies as angel. And where we see the definite article in the Old Testament concerning the angel of the Lord, that's often interpreted to be the pre-incarnate Son of God.

So, the angel of the Lord, which meaning there's only one. It is the messenger of God, the one who is speaking for God. That is, therefore, the pre-incarnate Son of God who is Jesus Christ. As we read about in John 1, Jesus is the one who comes speaking the word of God.

And whatever Jesus said is God's word. And so, therefore, you see that the angel of the Lord, being the pre-incarnate Son of God, puts on flesh as the incarnate Son of God and dwells among us. And what he speaks, therefore, becomes and is the very word of God.

So, that could be the interpretation. That's the one that I generally stick with whenever I speak of these things. Though, it's right to say of the voice of God coming from Mount Sinai when giving the Ten Commandments, that that was the voice of angels.

That was thundering to the people because that's what Scripture says to us that it.

Was.

The law was received by angels. That's coming up, in fact, in Stephen's speech in Acts 7 .53. You who received the law as ordained by angels yet did not observe it. So, here, the angel of the Lord speaking to Moses in the wilderness in the flame of a burning bush.

And when Moses saw it, he was marveling at the sight. And as he approached to look more closely, there came the voice of the Lord. So, it said an angel appeared to him and the voice that he hears is the voice of God.

So, this is a good apologetic to argue for the angel in the burning bush being the pre-incarnate son of God. Some teachers are not yet committed to that idea, but that is expositionally how we can reason that out according to what the Scripture says.

An angel appears to him in the burning bush and the voice that comes to him is the voice of the Lord. And it said here in verse 32, the word of God saying, I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

And Moses trembled with fear and would not dare to look. God is personally revealing himself to Moses and to his people, not just as some God who is way out there somewhere in the far reaches of the universe, but someone who was with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

As your forefathers knew me, so you will also know me. And Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not dead. As Jesus would talk about this, I believe this is Matthew 21, if memory serves, that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

So, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not dead, but are alive with God even in glory. In verse 33, the Lord said to him, remove the sandals from your feet for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

You know, it's interesting at the time that I am recording this, this is right after Pope Leo XIV made a visit to a mosque, an Islamic place of worship in Algeria. And when the Pope visited this mosque, he took off his shoes and walked through that place to show reverence for it being a sacred place.

And this has caused many Christians everywhere to be in an uproar. There are Muslims who are putting Christians to death in Africa and the Middle East and many other places. And yet, the Pope is showing reverence for their holy place of worship.

There's a priest who defended the Pope, Chris Vorderbruggen, and he said the Pope removed his shoes in a mosque and people are outraged? That's not compromise, that's basic respect. If you enter someone's home or sacred space, you honor their customs.

We expect it in our churches. Why pretend not to understand it anywhere else? Well, because this is not a sacred space. Islam is demon worship. It is not reverence to the true God at all. And yet, the Pope is showing reverence to their demon god that they worship when he takes off his shoes and walks through that place.

Of course, Roman Catholics elevate the Pope as the vicar of Christ. And that's the way the Pope regards himself. And I don't regard the Pope that way. He is an antichrist. So it doesn't surprise me that the Pope behaves in antichrist ways.

But this is just to demonstrate the inconsistency of what Roman Catholicism believes. The Pope claims to be the vicar of Christ, and yet he would show reverence to a false god? That is insane. And though it may not be that the Pope is literally bowing to that false god, that is what he's doing.

He's showing reverence to a false god. He is putting another god above God. If he's supposed to be the vicar of Christ and yet shows reverence to another god, that is just absolute blasphemy. And I can't think of a position on Earth that's really more blasphemous than the Pope.

But the Lord here says to Moses, the ground on which you stand is holy ground. And so Moses removes his sandals. When he hears the Lord say, I have surely seen the oppression of my people in Egypt and have heard their groans, and I have come down to deliver them.

Come now, and I will send you to Egypt. This Moses, whom they disown, saying, who made you a ruler and a judge, is the one whom God sent to be both a ruler and a deliverer with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

Remember, this is the man, again, that they had rejected. And now this is the very man that God is sending to them to be their deliverer, to bring them out of slavery in Egypt. This is the Moses who said to the sons of Israel, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.

This was preached by Peter in Acts chapter three, and it is a reference to Deuteronomy 1815, where Moses says, Yahweh, your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers, you shall listen to him.

So we have it said twice now in the book of Acts, Acts 3 .22 and Acts 7 .37, it is said that where Moses made this reference, he was talking about Christ. And this is who the people of Israel rejected and put to death.

And so, again, Stephen is showing to them, I'm the one who holds these words in reverence. I'm the one who handles them rightly and is showing you who Jesus is. You have rejected him just as your fathers rejected anyone whom God had sent.

They rejected Moses, you reject Moses' word and the word of God through his son, Jesus Christ, who was sent to you. And my friends, we must be reverent in our behavior, not showing reverence to what the world demands that we show reverence to, not showing reverence to the false gods of these other religions and what they say that we should show reverence to.

We show reverence to God. We have no other gods before us. We give we give no homage. We do not bow before anyone else's gods. Our reverence is for God alone. The world hates holiness and purity, but God demands of us that we be holy and pure, that we walk in the commands of Christ as he gave them to us.

Jesus saying to his disciples, you will show me that you love me when you obey my commandments. And so it's as if spiritually we take off our sandals and walk on holy ground when we are walking in holiness and uprightness before the Lord.

Where your heart is convicted of your sin, turn from it. Seek Christ for forgiveness, and he will cleanse you of all unrighteousness as we confess our sins before God, as said in 1 John 1 9. Walk in these things no longer.

Do not give to the world what it demands of you. Rather, give to God what he demands of us because he paid such a great price for us. Jesus Christ, who left his throne in heaven, who put on flesh to dwell among us, who lived a perfect life, who died on the cross for our sins, who rose again from the dead so that all who believe in him will not perish but have eternal life.

It is to him who gave all of this for us, gave himself for us on the cross for our sins. It is to him we owe our allegiance and our everything. And we do so because he loved us, and so we love God in return.

Brothers and sisters, turn from your sins to the Lord Jesus Christ and be holy. We'll stop there for now and resume our exposition of the speech of Stephen when we come back to our New Testament study on Monday.

Prayer for Holiness and Uprightness

Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read. And I pray it does pierce our hearts, that it convicts our souls, that we are led to walk in uprightness before you, that we would not sit in the seat of scoffers or walk in the way of fools, as said in Psalm 1, but we would be like trees that are planted by streams of water, yielding fruit in its season, and our leaf does not wither.

Whatever we do, we prosper because we have the Holy Spirit of God with us as we live lives of holiness before you. Forgive us our sins and lead us in paths of righteousness for your name's sake. It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.