Acts 7:32, commentary and pictures

Acts 7:32 is part of Stephen's defense reviewing Israel's history and God's dealings with the people, tracing from Abraham onward and showing how Christ was foretold in that history and prophecy and its spiritual meaning made clear through him. It belongs to Stephen's answer to the charge of blasphemy before the council. It was spoken in a clear, thrilling voice that held the assembly spell-bound. It was spoken as Stephen's final testimony under the direction of the Holy Spirit before resisting and hostile judges, so its occasion, time, place, setting and circumstances matter for understanding its full significance.

It belongs to a rehearsal of the history of the chosen people that runs generation by generation through the national records from Abraham to Solomon, taking up the most impressive points to vindicate his cause and showing thorough knowledge of the Jewish economy. It occurs in the account of Moses and the patriarchs and the history of God's people. It records God revealing himself to Moses as the God of his fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob speaking to Moses is the voice of Christ, who spoke through the patriarchs and prophets, and that Old Testament testimony identifies Christ as the Messiah. Christ spoke through the prophets and patriarchs from the days of Adam to the time of Moses.

Stephen's account gives prophetic evidence from history and prophecy that the crucified Jesus foretold there is the Son of God. Like Christ, Peter and Paul, Stephen preached Christ from the Old Testament Scriptures beginning with Moses and the prophets to give inspired proof of his mission, suffering, death, resurrection and ascension and to prove his identity with the Messiah. Paul later proclaimed the same truth about Jesus and continued the cause for which Stephen died.

The verse shows God sent Moses to be the deliverer and to lead Israel out of Egypt only after he had been a faithful shepherd for forty years, and that humble discipline qualified him to lead God's people under Jesus Christ. Moses was the prospective ruler of Egypt, but God could not take him from the king's court to do his appointed work; long training amid the humble duties of shepherd life had to come first. The forty years as a shepherd prepared Moses for this encounter and for leadership, as God used that time to humble and train him, clear away the false ideas learned in Egypt, and make him a strong thinker and doer of God's word. God fitted Moses to lead Israel both through his learning and military skill and through forty years as a humble shepherd in Midian, with hardship and adversity preparing him for that leadership.