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Acts 7 Commentary
by Brad Boyles
I can vividly remember the old seat belt PSA that was shown on TV all the time when I was a kid. Vince and Larry, the Crash Test Dummies, would facetiously admit that they don’t wear safety belts because, well, they were dummies. But the brilliance of the commercial was that it engrained a phrase in my mind that I can still remember today. After every clip, these words would appear on the screen as the narrator read the, “You could learn a lot from a dummy. Buckle your safety belt.”
Here in Acts 7, we read the story of the first martyr for the testimony of Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus had tried to warn the Pharisees of their pride and hypocrisy, Stephen does much of the same here. Incredibly, a Holy Spirit-led Stephen retells the story all the way back to Abraham and Moses. These men would have been familiar with the history, however, Stephen’s speech ends boldly by challenging these men very directly.
The main point he makes here is that they can’t simply rely on the fact that they are priests within the nation of Israel as a claim to their Salvation. This very simple reasoning, as he documents, is because the nation has never followed God with true obedience. For that matter, no one has! That’s why we need Jesus Christ. These religious leaders thought they were representatives of God through their ancestry and inheritance instead of their obedience to what God had asked of them.
Do people still do this today? Yes. Just think about the Christians who believe they are saved because they grew up in the church and “prayed a prayer” at one point in their life. There are people who still think that Christianity is based on doing more good works than bad works. There are fruitless “Chrisitians” today who claim they are saved because they speak in tongues or because they have been baptized.
All of these scenarios revolve around trusting in a false idol for your Salvation instead of grace through faith. They also make the fatal mistake of assuming that following Christ is a passive experience where we can rely on ritualistic religion to save us.
The strength of Stephen’s point was solidified in the prophets of old. God sent them to speak truth and to call the people to repentance. Time and time again, they didn’t want to hear it and repeatedly fell back to disobedience. Stephen tells these men to actually look back at history and face the facts. They were blinded to God just like the people who whined and moaned to Moses and Aaron.
This statement struck the hearts and minds of the Pharisees like a sledgehammer and Stephen lost his life for it. However, they weren’t Stephen’s words. The Holy Spirit was doing the hammering. Stephen was just the messenger. Jesus Christ stood in heaven to honor the man who delivered this bold message and willingly gave of himself, just like Christ, for the sake of the kingdom.
Are there things in your life you assume are not a problem because of your “Christian title” or family traditions? Does it fill you with rage when a Holy Spirit filled believer points out a truth in your life that may be hindering your walk with Christ? As the old Crash Test Dummies PSA used to say, “You could learn a lot from a dummy.” Don’t be a Pharisee.