Day 35 — Stephen's Defense: The Temple (Acts 7:44-50) | May 30

that he'd spoken against the temple. He's going to address that charge head on. Acts seven, forty four through fifteen. Our ancestors had the tabernacle of the testimony in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses commanded him to make it according to the pattern he had seen. Our ancestors in turn received it and with Joshua brought it when they dispossessed the the nations that God drove out before our ancestors until the days of David.

He found favor in God's sight and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. And it was Solomon, rather, who built him a house. However, the most high does not dwell in sanctuaries made by hands. As the prophet says, Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footsteps. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what will be my resting place? Do not my hand did not my hand make all these things.

So, for most of Israel's history, God traveled. The tabernacle was a tent built to move. Uh it went with the people through the wilderness, crossed the Jordan with Joshua, settled in whatever location Israel called home at the time, Shiloh, Nob, Gibeon. God's presence wasn't planted at one address. It went wherever his people went.

David was the first one to feel uneasy about this. And so he he'd he'd build himself a palace of cedar and it bothered him that God was still living in a tent. And and so he asked uh to build a permanent home for God. And God's answer was essentially I appreciate the thought, but no. David's son Solomon then eventually built the temple. And it became the center of Jewish worship and identity for generations ago. But uh by Stephen's day

It had been standing now for centuries. People just didn't just love the temple. They had organized their entire theology around the temple. It was the axis of their universe. It was the one place on earth where heaven and earth touched. And that's what Steven is trying to to dismantle. He's honoring the temple's history, he's not attacking it.

And so he traces the the tabernacle from Moses through Joshua through David all the way to Solomon. But then he quotes Isaiah, and he's letting God speak for himself in his own words. God said, Heaven is my throne, the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me? Like a God big enough to create heaven and earth cannot be contained by anything built inside. And so Stephen here refers to the temple as made with hands. W which would have felt like a bit of a slap in the face.

to the people who was who were accusing him. Because you see in Jewish teaching, that phrase made by hands refers to describing pagan idols, worthless things that humans constructed and then bowed down. And now Stephen's applying that phrase to the temple. And again, he's not trying to dismiss the temple. He's trying to expose how the Sanhedrin has come to think about it. When a symbol of God's presence gets treated as the source of God's presence, something has gone seriously wrong.

The temple was always meant to point us somewhere, but it was never meant to be the final destination. Solomon understood this at the temple's own dedication. He stood before the assembled people and he prayed, even heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain you. Much less, he said, this temple I have built. The the humility was built into the foundation of this temple on day one. And somewhere over the centuries, Stephen's saying, it got buried.

And now the reason Stephen's saying all this, because the Sanhedrin's accusation against him hinged entirely on the idea that this temple was irreplaceable, that it was inviable. It it was the permanent home of God. And Stephen is showing them From their own scriptures that God never agreed to those.

He he showed up at a burning bush in Midian. He traveled with Israel in a tenth through forty years of desert. He filled Solomon's temple with glory and then centuries later allowed the Babylonians to burn it to the ground. And he kept right on being God. See, the spirit has never been a permanent resident of any address. You cannot manage him, you cannot schedule him, you cannot contain him inside a building's footprint.

The whole argument Stephen has been constructing since Abraham comes into focus right here. God met Abraham before there was a promised land, and God was with Joseph before there was a tabernacle, and God spoke to Moses before there was a temple. And he's saying at every point in Israel's history, when God's people assumed he was tied to a specific place or structure, God moved anyway. The story was always bigger than the setting.

And here's the big point. Now God had come in the flesh, walked through the streets of Jerusalem, died outside the city walls, and rose again. The presence of God, the temple was built to symbolize, had been standing in front of the Sanhedrin in human form, and they had handed him over to be crucified. Stephen hasn't said that yet, but he's about to

What he's always been after is a people, not a place. So what might a step of ordinary obedience look like today? Here's today's challenge. It's an honest question. Have you put God in a box? Maybe it's a location where you think I can only really connect with God at church. Maybe it's a routine. God only speaks to me during my quiet time. Maybe it's a mindset. God couldn't work through that person or that situation or that political party or that mess.

What if today you consciously would invite God into one space you normally consider secular? Maybe it's your commute or