Stephen continued dealing with the Mosaic period of Israel's history, but focused more particularly now on Moses' teaching, the Mosaic Law. This is what the Jews of his day professed to venerate and follow exactly, but Stephen showed that they really had rejected what Moses taught.
7:37-38 Stephen stressed the fact that "this"Moses was the man who had given the prophecy about the coming prophet (Deut. 18:15) and had received other divine oracles for the Israelites.326Stephen clearly respected Moses, but he noted that Moses himself had predicted that a prophet like himself would appear (cf. Acts 3:22). Therefore the Jews should not have concluded that the Mosaic Law was the end of God's revelation to them.327
". . . preaching Christ was not disloyalty to an ancient tradition, but its fulfilment. This was powerful argument, and a continuation of Peter's theme (iii. 22, 23). (This truth was to be more fully developed for similar minds in the Epistle to the Hebrews; see iii. 1-6, ix. 18-20, xii. 24).)"328
Jesus had spent a time of temptation in the wilderness (40 days) and had heard God speaking audibly from heaven at His baptism. He too had rubbed shoulders with Israel's leaders and had received revelations from God for His people.
7:39-40 The Israelites in the wilderness refused to listen to Moses and repudiated his leadership of them (Num. 14:3-4; Exod. 32:1, 23). By insisting on the finality of the Mosaic Law so strongly, as they did, Stephen's hearers were in danger of repudiating what Moses had prophesied about the coming prophet.
The Israelites refused to follow Moses but sought to return to their former place of slavery. So had Israel refused to follow Jesus but turned back instead to her former condition of bondage under the Law (cf. Gal. 5:1).
7:41-43 The Israelites turned from Moses to idolatry, and in this their high priest, Aaron, helped them. Consequently God gave them over to what they wanted (cf. Rom. 1:24). He also purposed to send them into captivity as punishment (Amos 5:25-27).
By implication, turning from the revelation that Jesus had given amounted to idolatry. Stephen implied that by rejecting Moses' coming prophet, Jesus, his hearers could expect a similar fate despite the sacrifices they brought to God.
"Stephen's quotation of Amos 5:27, I will carry you away beyond Babylon,' differs from the OT. Both the Hebrew text and the LXX say Damascus.' The prophet Amos was foretelling the exile of the northern kingdom under the Assyrians which would take them beyond Damascus. More than a century later, the southern kingdom was captured because of her similar disobedience to God and was deported to Babylon. Stephen has merely substituted this phrase in order to use this Scripture to cover the judgment of God on the entire nation."329
Israel had turned from Jesus to idolatry, and her high priest had helped her do so. The Israelites rejoiced in their idolatry in the wilderness and more recently since Jesus was out of the way. God had turned from them for their apostasy in the past, and He was doing the same in the present. They did not really offer their sacrifices to God, and He did not accept them since they had rejected His anointed Ruler and Judge. The Israelites were heading for another wilderness experience. They adopted a house of worship and an object of worship that were not God's choice but their creations. God would remove them far from their land in punishment (i.e., in 70 A.D.).
Stephen had answered his accusers' charge that he had spoken against Moses (6:11, 13) by showing that he believed what Moses had predicted about the coming prophet. It was really his hearers who rejected Moses since they refused to allow the possibility of prophetic revelation that superseded the Mosaic Law.
"Joseph's brethren, rejecting the beloved of their father, Moses' people, turning with scorn and cursing on the one who only sought to give them freedom--these were prototypes which the audience would not fail to refer to themselves."330
