Stephen, Listen To Me, he does not defend himself by attacking his accusers. Instead, he tells the story of God’s Covenant from Abraham through Moses and the prophets, showing how God repeatedly remained faithful while His people repeatedly resisted Him. Stephen then points directly to Jesus Christ, the Righteous One they betrayed and murdered. Even as Stephen is dying, his words reveal truth, grace, forgiveness, and faith.
Obedience, God’s Covenant, Judgment, Fell Asleep, Anger, Truth, It Was Written, Grace, Redemption Plan, Jesus Christ
📖 Acts 7:1 (NIV)
“7 Then the high priest asked Stephen, “Are these charges true?”
Acts 7 is Stephen’s final testimony.
When the high priest asks whether the accusations are true, Stephen begins with Abraham and traces God’s work through generations.
God called Abraham, made a covenant with him, and promised that his descendants would possess the land.
Joseph was rejected by his brothers, yet God was with him.
Moses was rejected by his own people, yet God called him to become their deliverer.
Stephen’s message is not simply a history lesson.
It reveals a repeated pattern: God speaks,
God sends, God delivers, and people sometimes resist the very person God has chosen.
The people rejected Moses before God sent him back to deliver them.
Their ancestors turned to idols even after God brought them out of Egypt.
Stephen stands before people who are angry with him, yet he does not change the truth to save himself.
Filled with the Holy Spirit, he looks toward heaven and sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
His final words are not words of revenge.
They are a prayer: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Then he falls asleep.
📖 Acts 7:1-4 (NIV)
“7 Then the high priest asked Stephen, “Are these charges true?”
“2 To this he replied: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Harran. 3 ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’[a]”
“4 “So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Harran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living.”
Stephen begins with a simple request: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me!”
Yet he does not respond with fear or hatred. He speaks the truth.
Listening matters because truth cannot change a heart that refuses to hear it.
Throughout Scripture, God repeatedly sends His message through people who are willing to speak.
Stephen understands that his responsibility is not to control the response.
His responsibility is to tell the truth.
” 5 He gave him no inheritance here, not even enough ground to set his foot on. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. 6 God spoke to him in this way: ‘For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. 7 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.’[b] 8 Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.”
God appeared to Abraham and told him to leave his country and go to a land God would show him.
He did not receive everything immediately.
God was building something much larger than one man’s lifetime.
This is part of God’s Covenant.
God’s promises often begin before we can see how they will be fulfilled.
Faith means trusting God while continuing to walk forward.
📖 Acts 7:9-12 (NIV)
“9 “Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him 10 and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh king of Egypt. So Pharaoh made him ruler over Egypt and all his palace.”
“11 “Then a famine struck all Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering, and our ancestors could not find food. 12 When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our forefathers on their first visit. “
Abraham had no child when God promised that his descendants would possess the land.
God’s Covenant did not depend upon Abraham seeing the entire promise fulfilled during his lifetime.
Isaac came, then Jacob, then the twelve patriarchs.
Human circumstances change. People die.
Kingdoms rise and fall.
But God’s Covenant stands because God is faithful.
📖 Acts 7:13-16 (NIV)
“13 On their second visit, Joseph told his brothers who he was, and Pharaoh learned about Joseph’s family. 14 After this, Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, seventy-five in all. 15 Then Jacob went down to Egypt, where he and our ancestors died. 16 Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain sum of money.:”
Joseph’s brothers were jealous of him and sold him into slavery.
Yet Scripture says, “God was with him.”
Jealousy can cause people to hurt someone who has done nothing wrong to them.
It can turn a relationship into competition and eventually into rejection.
But God can work even through circumstances created by human wrongdoing.
📖 Acts 7:17-20 (NIV)
“17 “As the time drew near for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt had greatly increased. 18 Then ‘a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.’[c] 19 He dealt treacherously with our people and oppressed our ancestors by forcing them to throw out their newborn babies so that they would die.”
“20 “At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child.[d] For three months he was cared for by his family. “
The important part of Stephen’s story is not simply Joseph’s success. It is that God was with him.
Joseph’s life demonstrates that God’s plan can continue even when people try to destroy it.
What appears to be a setback to humanity does not mean God’s Redemption Plan has stopped.
📖 Acts 7:21-24 (NIV)
” 21 When he was placed outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. 22 Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.”
“23 “When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. 24 He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. “
But the people questioned his authority: “Who made you ruler and judge over us?”
Moses fled to Midian.
Yet rejection did not cancel God’s purpose for Moses.
Forty years later, God appeared to him through the burning bush and sent him back to Egypt.
Sometimes people reject what God is doing because they cannot yet see what God sees.
📖 Acts 7:25-28 (NIV)
“25 Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. 26 The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?’”
“27 “But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? 28 Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’[e] “
At the burning bush, God identified Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Moses was standing on holy ground.
The message is important: God had not forgotten His Covenant.
God’s story is connected.
The promises made in one generation can become part of the work God completes in another.
📖 Acts 7:29-32 (NIV)
“29 When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.”
“30 “After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. 31 When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to get a closer look, he heard the Lord say: 32 ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’[f] Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.”
God told Moses that He had seen the oppression of His people, heard their groaning, and had come to set them free.
Deliverance came according to God’s timing and God’s purpose.
This teaches us that silence does not mean God is absent.
There are times when we cannot see what God is doing, but His Covenant continues.
📖 Acts 7:33-36 (NIV)
“33 “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34 I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.’[g]”
“35 “This is the same Moses they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36 He led them out of Egypt and performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea and for forty years in the wilderness.”
Stephen points out something remarkable: the same Moses whom the people rejected was the one God sent back as their ruler and deliverer.
The pattern becomes clear.
God sends a deliverer.
God continues His work.
Stephen is preparing his listeners to understand that this same pattern reached its greatest fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
📖 Acts 7:37-40 (NIV)
“37 “This is the Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people.’[h] 38 He was in the assembly in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors; and he received living words to pass on to us.”
“39 “But our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. 40 They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!’[i] “
Stephen repeatedly connects the events of Israel’s history to what God had already spoken.
They turned toward idols. They were eventually sent into exile.
Stephen says, “This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets.”
God’s Word was not something Stephen invented to support his argument.
It had already been written.
Truth does not become truth because people accept it.
God’s Word remains true whether people listen or resist.
📖 Acts 7:41-44 (NIV)
“41 That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and reveled in what their own hands had made. 42 But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the sun, moon and stars. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets:”
“‘Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings
forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel?”
“43
You have taken up the tabernacle of Molek
and the star of your god Rephan,
the idols you made to worship.
Therefore I will send you into exile’[j] beyond Babylon.”
“44 “Our ancestors had the tabernacle of the covenant law with them in the wilderness. It had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen. “
The tabernacle was made according to God’s direction.
Solomon eventually built the temple.
But Stephen explains that the Most High cannot be contained inside a building made by human hands.
God created heaven and earth.
This reminds us not to confuse a place of worship with God Himself.
Buildings can serve God’s people, but God is greater than anything humanity can build.
The Creator cannot be reduced to His creation.
📖 Acts 7:45-49 (NIV)
“45 After receiving the tabernacle, our ancestors under Joshua brought it with them when they took the land from the nations God drove out before them. It remained in the land until the time of David, 46 who enjoyed God’s favor and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.[k] 47 But it was Solomon who built a house for him.”
“48 “However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:”
“49
“‘Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me?
says the Lord.
Or where will my resting place be?”
Stephen finally stops simply recounting history and speaks directly to the Sanhedrin.
He tells them they are resisting the Holy Spirit just as their ancestors did.
This is the turning point.
Knowing God’s Law is not enough if the heart refuses to obey God.
Religious knowledge without obedience can become another form of resistance.
He wants hearts willing to listen and respond.
📖 Acts 50-52 (NIV)
“50
Has not my hand made all these things?’[l]”
“51 “You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! 52 Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him—”
Stephen makes the accusation unmistakable.
The prophets had pointed toward the coming Righteous One.
Stephen is speaking about Jesus Christ.
The Redemption Plan was not stopped by the crucifixion.
What appeared to be defeat became the path through which God would bring salvation.
Jesus Christ was rejected by humanity, but raised by God.
📖 Acts 53-55 (NIV)
“53 you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it.”
“54 When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. 55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “
He looked toward heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
Stephen did not die believing a theory.
He saw the risen Christ.
His faith was not based upon what the crowd around him believed.
His eyes were fixed on Jesus.
Even when people rejected him, heaven had not rejected him.
” 56 “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
“57 At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58 dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.”
“59 While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep.”
The final words of Stephen may be the greatest lesson in the chapter.
Then he fell on his knees and prayed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
He did not ask God to destroy his attackers. He asked for mercy.
Stephen’s death reflects the heart of Jesus Christ.
Even while suffering, he chose forgiveness instead of revenge.
Then Scripture says Stephen “fell asleep.”
His physical life ended, but Stephen’s faith did not end
He entrusted his spirit to Jesus Christ.
His final words show that grace is not merely something we receive.
When God changes the heart, grace can also become something we extend to others.
Acts 7 shows God’s Covenant moving through generations of imperfect people.
Abraham was called.
Joseph was rejected.
Moses was rejected and later sent to deliver God’s people.
The prophets were persecuted. Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, was betrayed and murdered.
Yet God’s Covenant never failed.
Human beings may resist God, reject His messengers, and even reject Jesus Christ, but their rejection cannot cancel God’s Redemption Plan.
God remained faithful through Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the prophets, and ultimately Jesus Christ.
The Covenant stands because God stands.
Acts 7 teaches us that knowing God’s Word should lead us toward obedience, not resistance.
Anger can prevent people from hearing truth. Pride can cause people to reject the very message they need.
Stephen also shows us how a believer can respond when treated unjustly.
He tells the truth, remains faithful, looks toward Jesus, and refuses revenge.
Only God and Jesus Christ are perfect.
We are imperfect people who need grace.
Stephen’s final prayer reminds us that forgiveness does not erase the seriousness of sin.
It places judgment in God’s hands while leaving room for mercy.
Stephen’s entire speech points forward to Jesus Christ.
Abraham shows God’s Covenant.
Joseph shows God’s presence through rejection and suffering.
Moses shows God’s deliverance through a rejected leader.
The prophets point toward the coming Righteous One.
Then Stephen identifies Jesus Christ as the One whom they betrayed and murdered.
But the story does not end at the cross.
Stephen sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
The risen Christ is alive, and Stephen entrusts his spirit to Him.
Acts 7 therefore moves from Covenant to rejection, from rejection to Jesus Christ, from judgment to grace, and from death to the hope of eternal life.
Stephen’s final prayer leaves us with a choice: will we resist the truth, or will we listen?
