Acts 7

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While Stephen is on trial, he begins defending himself by speaking about what happens in the five books of Moses. In this time, if Jewish men received an education, all of their learnings revolved around the Torah and Jewish laws. Stephen obviously learned these when he was young and committed them to memory. His accusers claimed he slandered Moses, so he showed them how amazing he really found Moses and his writings. He speaks of Jewish history starting with when God promised Abraham that He would give him descendant that outnumbered the stars in the sky. At the time, that promise seemed impossible to keep because Abraham did not even have a son. Lo and behold, generations later, the Israelites threatened to outnumber the Egyptians, who were the most prosperous people on Earth at the time. God also promised Abraham that his descendants would eventually become slaves to a foreign people for 400 years before God would send someone to lead them to the Promised Land. Long after Abraham's death, his grandson, Jacob, had twelve sons. They were all jealous of Joseph, one of the younger sons. They sold him into slavery, but he found favor with the Pharaoh, and Pharaoh put Joseph in charge of the land and the palace. Later, when famine struck, Joseph's brothers and father took refuge in Egypt where Joseph took pity on them and allowed them to live in the palace with him. God fulfilled another promise: he sent Abraham's descendants to a foreign land. Years later, long after the deaths of Joseph, his brothers, and that Pharaoh, another Pharaoh took over Egypt, and he hated the Jews. Because he hated the so much, he enslaved them and forced them to leave their newborn babies outside to die. God fulfills another promise. However, Moses's parents saw that their baby boy looked so beautiful that they hid him for three months, so he could grow strong. Stephen spins his Biblical knowledge to show that he does not slander Moses but supports him. When they finally left him outside, the Pharaoh's daughter found him and raised him as her own son. He continues to show that he knows God favored Moses and used him to lead his people out of slavery. Stephen admits in open court that Moses did right by God even when the other Israelites did wrong, and Moses paid for those wrongdoings with the Israelites. At the end of his story, Stephen asks how the Pharisees could be so stubborn, heartless, and disobedient. He says that the actively oppose the Holy Spirit just like their ancestors before them. The Jewish leaders always opposed the prophets for the same reason they oppose the apostles. The Jewish officials are afraid of Jesus because when the people begin to worship and follow Him, they will no longer follow the Jewish leaders. Therefore, they killed all of them in order to try and stop the word of Jesus' coming from spreading, but God did not let that happen. He even had it included in His Holy Book. Furthermore, these Jewish leaders killed Jesus, the man who all of the prophets, including Moses predicted. God promised the world a savior, and Stephen says that if God came through in all of His other promises, then He had to come through in this promise, too. The Pharisees were so stubborn, however, when they felt their power diminish that they executed Jesus. The Pharisees claim to uphold Moses' teachings, but they do not even follow them.

While Stephen testified, the council refused to listen to what he had to say, but the Holy Spirit filled Stephen so much so that when he looked up, he saw God in Heaven with Jesus at his right hand. When he tried to tell the officials, shouted at him. The council members and the crowd grew so furious with what Stephen had to say that they rushed at him. They threw him out of the city where they began to stone him. Stephen, as a true believer, knew that Jesus would give him eternal life, so he did not fear death. He would have much more feared changing his opinion and rejecting God. As he knelt, prepared to die for his cause, he asked Jesus to accept his spirit. Finally, right before he died, he asked the Lord not to hold this sin against the people because they are misled. All the while, the Jewish men in the crowd lay their coats at the feet of a man named Saul. Saul was a Jewish official whose main intent was to destroy the church. The people laid their coats at his feet to signify that they supported him and his cause.