Acts 7:40
Saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us: for as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. Saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us: for as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
Acts 7:40 belongs to Stephen's review of Israel's history and God's dealings with them, given as his final testimony before the council amid resistance to his words. It recalls that while Moses was absent on the mount, the people grew weary of waiting for the instruction he would bring, though they had already been given what God wanted them to have. Because he had not returned when they expected they concluded something had happened to him, even that he had been killed.
The demand was pressed by men who were not truly converted, who invented groundless reasons for Moses' continued absence and spread deceptive ideas about his detention. Leaders in self-assurance joined the call. Wanting something visible to represent God under Egyptian idolatrous influence, they told Aaron to make gods to lead them.
Despite their promise to obey all the Lord had said, by that demand they virtually threw off the charter by which they were incorporated as a nation. By that demand they exchanged the living God for gods produced by apostasy, and in heart returned toward Egypt. They even considered returning there with the image.
Stephen used the incident to show Israel's idolatry and resistance to God and that the law in which the people trusted had not kept them from it. He charged that his hearers repeated their fathers' pattern by rejecting and crucifying Christ, the Just One foretold by the prophets. His discourse reasoned from the Old Testament Scriptures beginning with Moses and the prophets to give inspired proof that the Scriptures and ceremonies point to Christ, who is the key to understanding them.
It proved from Moses and the prophets that the crucified Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah, in His mission, suffering, death, resurrection and ascension, which fulfilled what was foretold. It revealed the voice of Christ speaking through the prophets and patriarchs from Adam's day. The witness ended in Stephen's stoning, in which Saul, later Paul, took part and gave approval before his conversion and before becoming a persecutor of Jesus' followers.
After Christ was revealed to him Saul remembered Stephen's sermon, recognized its words as truth, and understood its fulfillment in Jesus, including His rejection, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension as fulfilling what the prophets had foretold. He himself presented its prophetic evidence to show that the crucified Jesus was the Son of God.