But he that did his neighbour wrong thrust him away, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?
Acts 7:27 belongs to Stephen's account of Israel's history, given as his final testimony before hostile listeners, and its full significance depends on the occasion, time, and place of that address which met resistance from its hearers. In that address Stephen preached Christ from the Old Testament Scriptures beginning with Moses and the prophets, giving inspired prophetic proof that the crucified Jesus is the Son of God and the Messiah through His mission, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension. He proved His identity with the Messiah through the testimony of Moses and the prophets, showing that the voice of Christ spoke through the prophets and patriarchs from the days of Adam to that time, the same truth Paul later proclaimed.
The verse describes Moses trying to intervene to reconcile two Israelites and help one of them, when the man who had wronged his neighbor thrust Moses away and rejected his authority by challenging his right to act as ruler and judge. This happened when Moses was forty years old and before his training as a shepherd, when he had his work of delivering Israel all planned out and began it after his own devising to gain his people's favor by redressing their wrongs. He supposed that his education in the wisdom of Egypt in the best schools fully qualified him to lead Israel from bondage and felt able as one learned in all things necessary for a general of armies.
Acting on his own judgment, Moses killed an Egyptian who was imposing upon an Israelite, and in that killing he manifested the spirit of him who was a murderer from the beginning and proved himself unfit to represent the God of mercy, love, and tenderness. The attempt was a miserable failure and was not accepted, and because Moses had begun rashly he was driven from Egypt and became a fugitive, fleeing from the wrath of Pharaoh. Like many others he immediately lost confidence in God and turned his back on his appointed work, concluding that his great sin in taking the Egyptian's life would keep God from permitting him any part in delivering his people from cruel bondage.
Moses then lived in Midian for forty years doing the work of a shepherd before God entrusted him with leading Israel on their wilderness journey as their emancipator. He was not left alone, for the divine Teacher was with him to help and instruct him through deep and severe lessons, and only after he had learned those lessons could God place him where he should be. The Lord allowed this to teach him the gentleness, goodness, and long-suffering every laborer for the Master must possess to be a successful worker in His cause, so that he learned not to devise plans for God's work by human wisdom but to follow God's direction. Stephen's witness to which the verse belongs ended in his stoning, in which Saul took part, a rabbi and statesman and member of the Sanhedrin who was very zealous for the suppression of Christianity.
Acts 7:27 belongs to Stephen's account of Israel's history, given as his final testimony before hostile listeners, and its full significance depends on the occasion, time, and place of that address which met resistance from its hearers. In that address Stephen preached Christ from the Old Testament Scriptures beginning with Moses and the prophets, giving inspired prophetic proof that the crucified Jesus is the Son of God and the Messiah through His mission, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension. He proved His identity with the Messiah through the testimony of Moses and the prophets, showing that the voice of Christ spoke through the prophets and patriarchs from the days of Adam to that time, the same truth Paul later proclaimed.
The verse describes Moses trying to intervene to reconcile two Israelites and help one of them, when the man who had wronged his neighbor thrust Moses away and rejected his authority by challenging his right to act as ruler and judge. This happened when Moses was forty years old and before his training as a shepherd, when he had his work of delivering Israel all planned out and began it after his own devising to gain his people's favor by redressing their wrongs. He supposed that his education in the wisdom of Egypt in the best schools fully qualified him to lead Israel from bondage and felt able as one learned in all things necessary for a general of armies.
Acting on his own judgment, Moses killed an Egyptian who was imposing upon an Israelite, and in that killing he manifested the spirit of him who was a murderer from the beginning and proved himself unfit to represent the God of mercy, love, and tenderness. The attempt was a miserable failure and was not accepted, and because Moses had begun rashly he was driven from Egypt and became a fugitive, fleeing from the wrath of Pharaoh. Like many others he immediately lost confidence in God and turned his back on his appointed work, concluding that his great sin in taking the Egyptian's life would keep God from permitting him any part in delivering his people from cruel bondage.
Moses then lived in Midian for forty years doing the work of a shepherd before God entrusted him with leading Israel on their wilderness journey as their emancipator. He was not left alone, for the divine Teacher was with him to help and instruct him through deep and severe lessons, and only after he had learned those lessons could God place him where he should be. The Lord allowed this to teach him the gentleness, goodness, and long-suffering every laborer for the Master must possess to be a successful worker in His cause, so that he learned not to devise plans for God's work by human wisdom but to follow God's direction. Stephen's witness to which the verse belongs ended in his stoning, in which Saul took part, a rabbi and statesman and member of the Sanhedrin who was very zealous for the suppression of Christianity.