Pastor Jeremy M. Thomas
Fredericksburg Bible Church
107 East Austin
Fredericksburg, Texas 78624
830-997-8834      jthomas@fbgbible.org
A0832 – August 10, 2008 – Acts 7:1-8 – The Typology Of Abraham

Acts 7:1-8 Εἶπεν δὲ ὁ ἀρχιερεύς· εἰ ταῦτα οὕτως ἔχει; 2ὁ δὲ ἔφη· Ἄνδρες ἀδελφοὶ καὶ πατέρες, ἀκούσατε. Ὁ θεὸς τῆς δόξης ὤφθη τῷ πατρὶ ἡμῶν Ἀβραὰμ ὄντι ἐν τῇ Μεσοποταμίᾳ πρὶν ἢ κατοικῆσαι αὐτὸν ἐν Χαρρὰν 3καὶ εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτόν· ἔξελθε ἐκ τῆς γῆς σου καὶ [ἐκ] τῆς συγγενείας σου, καὶ δεῦρο εἰς τὴν γῆν ἣν ἄν σοι δείξω. 4τότε ἐξελθὼν ἐκ γῆς Χαλδαίων κατῴκησεν ἐν Χαρράν. κἀκεῖθεν μετὰ τὸ ἀποθανεῖν τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ μετῴκισεν αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν γῆν ταύτην εἰς ἣν ὑμεῖς νῦν κατοικεῖτε, 5καὶ οὐκ ἔδωκεν αὐτῷ κληρονομίαν ἐν αὐτῇ οὐδὲ βῆμα ποδὸς καὶ ἐπηγγείλατο δοῦναι αὐτῷ εἰς κατάσχεσιν αὐτὴν καὶ τῷ σπέρματι αὐτοῦ μετʼ αὐτόν, οὐκ ὄντος αὐτῷ τέκνου. 6ἐλάλησεν δὲ οὕτως ὁ θεὸς ὅτι ἔσται τὸ σπέρμα αὐτοῦ πάροικον ἐν γῇ ἀλλοτρίᾳ καὶ δουλώσουσιν αὐτὸ καὶ κακώσουσιν ἔτη τετρακόσια· 7καὶ τὸ ἔθνος ᾧ ἐὰν δουλεύσουσιν κρινῶ ἐγώ, ὁ θεὸς εἶπεν, καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἐξελεύσονται καὶ λατρεύσουσίν μοι ἐν τῷ τόπῳ τούτῳ. 8καὶ ἔδωκεν αὐτῷ διαθήκην περιτομῆς· καὶ οὕτως ἐγέννησεν τὸν Ἰσαὰκ καὶ περιέτεμεν αὐτὸν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ ὀγδόῃ, καὶ Ἰσαὰκ τὸν Ἰακώβ, καὶ Ἰακὼβ τοὺς δώδεκα πατριάρχας. (NA27)
Acts 7:1-8 And the high priest (Caiaphas or Annas) said (3SAAI), “Are these things so?” 2And he [Stephen] said (3SAAI), “Male brothers and fathers, listen (2PAAImp), the God of glory appeared (3SAAI) to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, 3and said (3SAAI) to him, ‘GO FORTH FROM YOUR LAND AND YOUR RELATIVES AND GO TO THE LAND WHICH I WILL SHOW (1SFAI) YOU” (Gen 12:1). 4Then he went forth from the land of the Chaldeans and lived (3SAAI) in Haran. From there, after his father died, God resettled him in this land in which you now live (2PPAI). 5And he gave (3SAAI) him no inheritance in it, not a square meter (lit. a foot step), but promised (3SAMI) TO GIVE (AAINF) IT TO HIM AS A POSSESSION AND TO HIS OFFSPRING AFTER HIM (Gen 12:7), when he had no child. 6And God spoke (3SAAI) to this effect, that his OFFSPRING WOULD BE (3SFDEPI) SOJOURNERS IN A LAND BELONGING TO OTHERS, AND THEY WOULD ENSLAVE (3PFAI) THEM AND MISTREAT THEM FOUR HUNDRED YEARS (Gen 15:13). 7 BUT I WILL JUDGE (1SFAI) THE NATION WHOM THEY WILL SERVE (Gen 15:14a), said (3SAAI) God, AND AFTER THIS THEY WILL COME OUT AND WORSHIP ME IN THIS PLACE (Exod 3:12). 8And He gave (3SAAI) him the covenant of circumcision (Gen 17:8); and so he became the father (3SAAI) of Isaac (Gen 21:2-3), and circumcised (3SAAI) him on the eighth day (Gen 21:4), and Isaac [became the father] of Jacob (Gen 25:26), and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs. (Author’s Translation)
Acts 7:1-8 The high priest said, “Are these things so?” 2And he said, “Hear me, brethren and fathers! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, 3and said to him, ‘Leave your country and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you.’ 4“Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him move to this country in which you are now living. 5“But He gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground, and yet, even when he had no child, He promised that He would give it to him as a possession, and to his descendants after him. 6“But God spoke to this effect, that his descendants would be aliens in a foreign land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. 7“ ‘And whatever nation to which they will be in bondage I Myself will judge,’ said God, ‘and after that they will come out and serve Me in this place.’ 8“And He gave him the covenant of circumcision; and so Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him on the eighth day; and Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs. (NASB95)

Let’s review some of the principles we’ve learned with the first seven deacons and how God the Holy Spirit was using Stephen at this point in church history in Jerusalem and then we’ll go into Stephen’s defense. Remember that this occurs at the end of the section of Acts dealing with Jerusalem and therefore is a testimony of how the Holy Spirit is using the widow controversy to move the Church out to the remotest parts of the earth. What this shows is the principle that there are situations when the sovereign God is going to take steps whether you are conscious of it or not. And of course the Holy Spirit operates this way in your life. Whether you are conscious of it or not God the Holy Spirit is at work and here the plan of God is to go out and He uses the widows controversy to move out. (NASB95)

The other thing we notice from this by way of principle is that all seven of these men that were chosen were Hellenistic Jews. Stephen was a Hellenist Jew. He represented the group of Christians who came from cosmopolitan type backgrounds. These people were not native to the land; they came from Jewish families that lived in the big cities of the ancient world, Cyrene, Alexandria, Ephesus, Athens, Rome and so forth. Therefore, because these people had this cosmopolitan background they came to the word with questions the native Hebrews were not asking. And this second principle will answer in our life to the fact that each one of you who is a believer brings to the word of God a unique set of questions. There never has been a person in history with quite your background and never will again, and therefore it means that you have the opportunity during your lifetime to ask questions and make applications of the word that no on else may have thought of before. You have a created uniqueness. And Stephen is showing how God uses men who are positive to the word to ask these unique questions. 

In Acts 7 Stephen is going to use two techniques in this address to get his point across. The first was a common method used in Jewish tradition and that’s the historical recital. The basic underlying concept of Jewish thought is God’s involvement in history. What is the Passover but a historical recital of God’s hand in Israel’s history? Because of this concept history had meaning and purpose, there was a pattern to history, it wasn’t just loose marbles. God is involved in the life of Israel. So Stephen operates on the Jewish principle of recitation of history. But Stephen does something else, he uses a second principle and it’s this second principle that Stephen shows his skill as a Bible student, and that’s the literal + typological interpretation of Scripture. I’ll explain more of this in a moment just so you’ll appreciate chapter 7. Because this address is so insightful, nothing compares to this in the NT except portions of the book of Hebrews and to a lesser extent some of Paul’s writings. But obviously Stephen has a command of the OT unlike anyone else in that room, he’s able to apprehend and organize the Scriptures in a way never seen before. 

Let’s start with the method of interpretation and then we’ll understand why Stephen trotted it out on this occasion. Stephen quotes the OT repeatedly and we’ve said earlier in Acts there are four ways a NT author can quote the OT. So let’s review these. This was the common Jewish practice of the day and this was picked up and used by the NT authors. The first is straightforward; you have a literal prophecy +literal fulfillment. The Messiah would be born in Bethlehem and the Messiah was born in Bethlehem. The second way is called literal + application. In this case the author looks back at a historic event and notices one point of similarity so he quotes it. He just wants to pick up the one point of similarity. He’s not trying to identify all the elements. For example, in Acts 2 with the tongues event Peter quotes Joel to explain the tongues phenomena. But Joel doesn’t talk about tongues. Why does Peter quote Joel? Because Joel does talk about the pouring out of the Spirit and Peter wants to make the point that a pouring out of the Spirit has occurred here. That’s the one point of similarity between Joel 2 and Acts 2. So there’s a lot more in Joel 2 but that’s not Peter’s emphasis. The third way NT authors quote the OT is called summary and this is when you’re reading along and the NT author seems to quote the OT but you can’t find what he says anywhere in the OT (e.g. James 4:5). He’s not quoting directly in these cases. He’s just summarizing what the OT taught, so you can look and look and look and you may find some similar passages but never a direct quote and that’s because he’s just summarizing OT doctrine. So you want to be aware of this as you see it on occasion. The fourth and last method is called literal + typological. That’s the method Stephen is using in his speech. What do we mean by this? What this is saying is that the NT author takes a literal historical event from the OT, we’ll call that event A, A is the type, and the author recognizes an association with a second historic event, this one from the NT, we’ll call that event B, B is the antitype. So you have two historical events, A, your type and B, your antitype. And the author is saying “Event A has a set of characteristics and event B has a similar set of characteristics, and even though the two events may be separated by thousands of years but they retain a fundamental similarity.” 

Take for example the life of David, we’ll call that A. First of all David was anointed by a prophet, he wasn’t accepted as king by his people, he went into hiding until king Saul was removed from the throne, then David came back, he was crowned king, and he led his nation to victory. Well whose life does that also sound like? The Lord Jesus Christ, a B event. He was anointed by the prophet, John the Baptist; He was not accepted by His nation, He went into hiding at the ascension, He will come back when Satan is removed from the throne of this world, He will be crowned King and He will lead Israel to victory. So there’s an analogy, there are a set of parallelisms between David and Christ. That’s what we mean when we say typology, David was a type, Christ was the antitype. B corresponds to A.

Obviously to see new patterns like this, new patterns that have never been seen before you have to be a very keen Bible student, and that’s what Stephen’s Hellenistic background brought to the observations. So Stephen used literal + typology. Now before you’re off running with this let me warn you of something. Typological interpretation is not allegorical interpretation. Allegory as a system of interpretation is just based on one’s imagination and you come to the text and read into the text whatever you want to see. In allegorism it’s inconsequential whether the OT event or person was real or the event really happened, that’s not the issue, the issue in allegorism is what I want to see behind the text. It’s not what the text says it’s what I bring to the text. For example Origen, one of the early church fathers, employed the allegorical method so when he came to the story of Rebekah drawing water out of the well he said this meant we have to come daily to the Scriptures to meet Christ. Now, that’s a nice thought but that doesn’t come from the text. That’s just his personal opinion. That’s employing the allegorical method. That’s not what Stephen is doing at all, Stephen, as he looks at the lives of OT saints sees natural parallels in the life of Christ. So in chapter 7 he takes up Abraham and by taking up Abraham you read the historical recital but something else is going on, and what’s going on is Stephen is saying, “Now Sanhedrin, there are parallels here between the life of Abraham and the life of Christ, they’re undeniable, can’t you see this? Are you going to say this is by chance? C’mon Sanhedrin.” Then he takes up Joseph and Moses and does the same thing. So the point of typology that distinguishes it from allegory is that you can take this to a thousand believers and show them this and they’ll all agree, “Oh yes, we can see the similarities.” But you take a thousand believers and read them the Rebekah incident and they can’t all see how that means we are to meet Christ daily in the Scriptures. So there’s a control on typology but allegory there are no controls, there’s no checks, it’s just someone’s opinion and it’s not obvious to everyone.

So let’s come back to the original question, why does Stephen revert to typology to answer in court? Some of you don’t see as you read his speech what this has to do with anything in the Christian life but I assure you it has everything to do with it. Why does he do this? The answer to this has to do with what Stephen’s arguing for. At first glance you think well he’s defending himself but when you look closer that’s not what he’s doing at all, he’s arguing that Christianity is of God and therefore Judaism is not of God, and as long as you stay over there in rejection of Jesus Christ you’re in opposition to God. So as Stephen asked questions of the OT text he saw similarities between the lives of three OT people and the NT life of Jesus Christ. And so he is going to quote and allude to many verses from the OT. Then he’s going to pick those up in sort of an underhanded way, it’s not real clear at first what he’s doing, but what he’s doing is applying those OT patterns to Jesus Christ. This is the literal + typology. So Stephen is seeing exciting new parallels between these OT saints and Jesus and “Surely members of the Sanhedrin, you’re not going to argue these are there by chance, you believe God is involved in history, if that’s so, how do you explain the parallels?” I see Abraham’s life, Joseph’s life, Moses’ life and then I compare that with Jesus’ life and I find all these points of similarity. Is that by chance or divine design? So in one sense He’s arguing for the sovereignty of God over all history, that He controls whatsoever comes to pass, and that’s the only explanation for these parallels. So Sanhedrin, obviously God is taking history in this direction, and you’re going in that direction, why are you rejecting this? Why are you doing as your fathers did? 

So to answer the charges you’ll see in each OT example he picks up someone who spent quite a bit of time outside the land of Israel. And by doing that he’s saying, “Jews, don’t get too stuck on the land of Israel, don’t get yourself all wrapped around Jerusalem. God’s sovereign outside the land too, look at all the work He did outside the land. So he’s going to recite history and he’s going to pick up points of history that occur outside of the land, outside of Jerusalem that have nothing to do with the Temple. Why is he doing that? To show from their own Torah that God is sovereign over that space too, that He’s sovereign over the whole cosmos, including the Gentiles, so you’re too narrow-minded.

So let’s look at the text of v 1. The high priest said, “Are these things so?” Now Stephen can’t answer that question with a simple yes or a simple no. Why can’t he? Well, what are these things? These things are the charges being leveled against Stephen, this Christian man. And in Acts 6:11 and 13 we have those charges. What are the charges that bring against this Christian man? He “speaks blasphemous words against Moses and against God,” verse 11, and verse 13, he “speaks against this holy place [the temple] and the Law [Torah].” So Stephen is faced with this question: we have the Law and the Law was written by Moses, we have the temple and the temple is the worship place of God, so that’s how Moses and God get into the picture. And he’s being accused of maligning these two.

Well did Stephen teach against these things? In a way he did, in a way he didn’t. It depends on your system of interpreting these things. It always goes back to a framework of interpretation. They’re interpreting these things in terms of rabbinic Judaism but Stephen is interpreting them in terms of Christianity, the new revelation. So if he says “Yes it’s so” then obviously he’s going to be hauled off and executed, that was the penalty for blasphemy. But if he says “No” then he’s given no defense for the Christian system. So faced with a question that could be answered by yes or by no Stephen does what every Christian should do and that is not answer the question directly. Instead he goes into a biblical framework of Israel’s history. This is a principle for responding to questions. Don’t answer the wrong question. Don’t incriminate yourself. Just because someone asks a question doesn’t mean you have to answer it. Some questions are the wrong question and therefore you’re not obligated to answer. Lawyers see this in courts of law all the time, some attorney gets up there and asks the witness a leading question and where he’s leading him to is self-incrimination so the other attorney objects to the question. So all Christians are in fact to see this and object to certain questions. And Stephen saw this, he was not an idiot believer, and rather than answer yes or no he starts reciting history. Why does he do that? Because to answer the real issues he has to give the overall context of divine history in which these issues are interpreted correctly. Context provides meaning and so what he’s doing is couching his teaching on God, Moses, the Temple and ultimately Jesus Christ inside Israel’s history. 

So if you are ever faced with a question back off and do what Stephen does in Acts 7; what does Stephen do? He starts going through what appears to be the biggest way around Robin Hood’s barn that you can imagine. What does he do? He goes through event and doctrine, event and doctrine, event and doctrine, event and doctrine. You remember the Biblical Framework? Its passages like these that inspired the Biblical Framework. So you’ve got the call of Abraham and the doctrines, election, justification and faith, you’ve got the Exodus and the doctrines of substitutionary blood atonement, you’ve got Mt Sinai and the doctrine of inspiration, inerrancy and canonicity and so there’s this big recitation of history. And obviously you say “Good Lord, get to the point.” But what Stephens doing is getting all the data out on the table. You see, while he’s doing this he’s providing nourishment for the soul of those people. He’s feeding them the word of God and when you do that the Holy Spirit can work. So this is a technique of apologetics or a technique of answering questions. This way nobody can misinterpret you, you’ve given the larger picture.

Now, verse 2, let’s start his response. And keep in mind that you’re about to see OT quotes, you’re going to see OT allusions and after awhile when you look at this thing you realize, “By golly 50% of this is all OT,” and you come to the conclusion that the NT really isn’t all that new after all, it’s just a rehash of the OT with a few new truths. So this is going to strain some of you who are weak in the OT. If you want some reading material everything this week is going to come from Genesis. And keep in mind as we read his defense this typology bit. I want you to see if you can detect the parallels that Stephen is seeing and when you see this you’re going to be shocked by the effort this man put into Bible study. So let’s read down to v 8 and we’re going to look at Abraham. Then we’ll come back, detail the text and finally draw out the type/antitype similarities.

2And he said, “Hear me, brethren and fathers! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, 3and said to him, ‘Leave your country and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you.’ 4“Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him move to this country in which you are now living. 5“But He gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground, and yet, even when he had no child, He promised that He would give it to him as a possession, and to his descendants after him. 6“But God spoke to this effect, that his descendants would be aliens in a foreign land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. 7“ ‘And whatever nation to which they will be in bondage I Myself will judge,’ said God, ‘and after that they will come out and serve Me in this place.’ 8“And He gave him the covenant of circumcision; and so Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him on the eighth day; and Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs. 

In verse 2, answering the high priest he begins his address, Hear me, brethren and fathers! That’s the proper form of address from a Jew to a Jew. And note the expression God of glory. Those of us who have been Christians for some time see the word “glory” and we kind of just read over it at 60 miles an hour, oh, yeah, glory, blah, blah, blah and it doesn’t mean a thing. So let’s just stop a minute and ask what are we talking about when we’re talking about “glory of God.” The word “glory” would be analogous in our vocabulary today of light, physical light. That’s what the word glory means, it’s something that you can physically see. So “the God of glory” must refer to the radiations of light from His throne. We don’t have to guess at what Stephen means for at the end of the sermon Stephen uses this phrase again in verse 55, Stephen “being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God,” so obviously what Stephen talked about here is the light radiating from the throne of God. Everybody that’s actually seen this, Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, they all report this light phenomena. So Stephen is using the word to refer to God in His divine essence, separate and distinct from creation. Also, where in Jewish history did the glory of God appear? It appeared in the temple, the Shechinah Glory, it dwelled above the Ark of the Covenant. So Stephen deliberately begins with a title of God that would remind his Jewish hearers that the God he speaks of is not just a God of Israel, but He’s the God who is over the entire universe. 

So, The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. Now, there’s a small problem in the text here. Stephen’s got hold of some information that just isn’t in the OT as far as we can tell. Now he apparently got this from bona fide extra Biblical tradition. It’s hinted at in Genesis but let’s look at a map. 

This is the eastern Mediterranean, this is the land of Canaan, this is the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley. Down here is a place called Ur; that’s Mesopotamia, that’s where, according to Stephen, God appeared to Abraham. You know it as modern day Iraq. Then Abram went up to Haran. Some of you familiar with geometry wonder why didn’t you just go across this way Abraham, why did you go all the way up there? Reason: because there’s no water out here, so they followed the trade routes along the Fertile Crescent and that led to Haran. The difficulty we have is with Gen 12:1 or Acts 7:2. Where did God appear to Abraham? So hold your place in Acts and turn to Gen 12 to see the problem.  

Someday you’ll be discussing this with someone and they’ll say, “Oh, but there’s a contradiction in the Bible.” Now 99% of the time when someone says that just ask them to show you one because they don’t know first hand they just know that someone said that somebody else said that somebody else said there was a contradiction. So 99% of its all smoke, they haven’t read the Bible they wouldn’t know a contradiction if they read one. But sometimes you hear this argument. Gen 11:32 “The days of Terah were two hundred and five years; and Terah died in Haran.” So in v 32 they’re up here in Haran, now v 1, “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you;” that’s the exact verse Stephen quoted as happening in Mesopotamia. v 4, “So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.” So it sounds like everything from 11:32-12:4 happened up here in Haran but Stephen said the Lord appeared to him Abraham over here in Ur of Mesopotamia. So either Genesis is wrong or Stephen’s wrong, right? Now, the problem with most people is they’re not interested in solving things, they’re lazy intellectually, they’re just blowing smoke. What they fail to understand is that in the Hebrew language you only have two Hebrew verb tenses; perfect and imperfect and neither one determines whether it’s past, present or future. That’s strange for most people but that’s the rules of the language. Whether something is past, present or future has to be determined solely by the syntax and context. So in v 1 when did God say this to Abraham? In the past. The King James translators translated it correctly, “And the Lord had said to Abram…” He’d already said it before he got to Haran. How do we know that? Turn to Gen 15:7. “And He said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.” It doesn’t say God appeared to him in Ur but why did he take his whole life and move it? What’s the explanation for that? Obviously the Lord did appear to him (also cf Josh 24:3 and Neh 9:7). That’s what Stephen is insisting on. Another thing people fail to realize in Gen 12 is that the Bible doesn’t always speak chronologically, sometimes it will develop a theme and bring that to a close and then come back and pick up on a significant point and develop that. Have you ever seen that in a news story? Of course you have, it’s done all the time. And that’s what we have here. The conclusion of the Terah narrative and the picking back up with Abraham, the whole thing that initiated the move in the first place is the fact that God appeared to Abraham back in Ur. So we don’t have a problem with Gen 12 and Acts 7:2. 

Back to Stephen’s speech. Why does Stephen make such a big deal about God appearing to Abraham in Mesopotamia? Anyone see the significance for the argument? Where did the Jewish people originate? Did God appear to Abraham in the land of Israel or outside the land of Israel. Obviously outside. Way over here, a thousand miles away from Jerusalem in the most pagan place in the world, Mesopotamia, the region of the Tower of Babel, it was the most polytheistic place on earth. That’s where God appeared to Abraham? Yes, it wasn’t in the land it wasn’t in the Temple. 

Let’s move on. verse 4 relates the familiar story of Abraham coming to the land; in verse 5, it relates that He gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground, and that’s a loose quote of Deut 2:5, and yet, even when he had no child, He promised that He would give it to him as a possession, and to his descendants after him, another quote, this one from Gen 12:7. So Abraham’s father dies, he marches down here to the land of Canaan, the place is filled with Canaanites, Girgashites, Jebusites, Hivites, Perizzites, and he never owned a single meter of that ground that God promised Him, not one single bit. But God promised that He would give it to him as a possession even when he had no child. So here you have a man walking about like a nomad just trusting God’s word, he had to apply the faith-rest drill, how else are you going to operate, how else are you going to pack up all your stuff and travel 1,500 miles to a foreign country? You don’t do that because you hallucinated. You do that when you’re certain of a guarantee, there’s a bona fide promise. He didn’t have a burning in his bosom. The living God appeared to him and spoke. So now there’s a basis for moving down to the land of Promise. But he never received an inheritance.
 
Verse 6, But God spoke to this effect, that his descendants would be aliens in a foreign land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. Quote from Gen 15:13. So here’s the prophetic outline of her history, here’s God’s hand in Israel’s history, Abraham’s descendants are going to start off in the land but then have to go down to Egypt and while they’re there they’re going to be oppressed by that nation. But, verse 7, whatever nation to which they will be in bondage I Myself will judge,’ quote from Gen 15:14, ‘and after that they will come out and serve Me in this place.’ quote from Exod 3:12. Lots of OT quotes here. You get the feeling that Stephen knew his OT? What’s his point here? That the nation went into exile, we know they went down to Egypt and there they were oppressed, they were slaves. Then, after that they were going to come out and serve God. 

Verse 8, “And He gave him the covenant of circumcision; and so Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him on the eighth day; and Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs. This is in Gen 17:8, this is the Abrahamic Covenant which is the basis of Israel’s three promises; land, seed and worldwide blessing. And the line here is to bring this historical recital down to Joseph, we’ll look at him next week. 

Alright, so let’s draw this all together in typology. There are several parallels, lets just look at five, each of the OT quotes has a parallel. So, in verse 3, we have our first quote. Where’s it from? Gen 12:1. God told Abraham…“Leave your country and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you.” He was to leave Mesopotamia and come into the promised land. Jesus Christ was sent by God from heaven to come into the earth (John 6:38). Both Abraham and Jesus Christ’s true origin was outside the land of Israel. The Sanhedrin should have recognized the sovereignty of God as operational over the whole cosmos, not just the land of Israel.

Second point of typology, verse 5, quote from where? Gen 12:7. God promised Abraham “that He would give it to him as a possession, and to his descendants after him.” But did Abraham ever receive the land as his inheritance? No. God promised Jesus Christ He would give him the earth as His possession and to His nation, the nation Israel. Did Jesus Christ receive His inheritance? No. He was cut off from the land of the living (Dan 9:26). 

Third point of typology, verse 6, quote from what chapter and verse of Genesis? Gen 15:13, Abraham’s “descendants would be aliens in a foreign land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years.” What’s that a reference too? An Israeli exile. We know they were exiled in Egypt for four hundred years. Where is the nation of Israel now? Where is Christ’s nation? IN Exile. They’ve been there since AD70. Stephen very keenly sees this as an inevitable conclusion to the fact that the nation rejected the Messiahship of Jesus. 

Fourth point of typology, verse 7a, where is this quote from? Check your margins. “And whatever nation to which they will be in bondage I Myself will judge,” that’s quote 1 it comes from Gen 15:14. Did God judge the nation Egypt? Yes. Who is God going to judge in the future? The nations to whom Israel is now in bondage. When, the Tribulation, this is talking about the seal, trumpet and bowl judgments of the Tribulation, that time of judgment for the nations. 

Fifth and final point of typology we will note, verse 7b, quote from where? Exod 3:12, “and after that they will come out and serve Me in this place.” What’s the future event that answers to this? The nation Israel will be gathered out of all the nations, out of the pagan system of the world into their own land and there they will worship Him. This is the Millennial Kingdom.

We could go on and show other parallels, this is the big scheme though, verse 8 looks at the certainty of such events, they are guaranteed to take place because they are the outworking of the promises in the Abrahamic Covenant.

So Stephen is challenging the high priest. “What are these parallels just by chance or do you really believe in the sovereignty of God in history? How do you account for these parallels?” It’s a very potent argument and I hope by seeing this you have a greater appreciation for Stephen’s speech. This is dreadfully insightful, so insightful that these Jews are ticked off to the point of bloodshed. Why? Because Stephen is shattering their whole framework and they know it. They know they’ve been had. There’s no discussion here. They don’t have an answer for this just like Saul couldn’t answer Stephen last week. His argument is just too powerful. So it’s not Stephen who was against God it’s you high priest, get with the program.   

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