Commentary - Acts 7:30-34

Bird's-eye view

In this section of Stephen's defense, which is really a prosecution of his accusers, we come to a pivotal moment in the history of redemption. Stephen is recounting the call of Moses, but he is doing so with a specific polemical purpose. After forty years of humbling exile in Midian, Moses the prince has become Moses the shepherd. It is here, when Moses is a forgotten man in the backside of the desert, that God sovereignly intervenes. The central point is this: God's saving action is not initiated by man, nor is it constrained by geography. God appeared to Moses in a common bush in a foreign land, not in a glorious temple in Jerusalem. This appearance is a theophany, a manifestation of God Himself, and it is God who sets the terms of the encounter. He reveals Himself not as a new deity, but as the faithful covenant God of the patriarchs. He has seen the affliction of His people, He has heard their groans, and He has come down to act. The call of Moses is therefore a powerful demonstration of God's sovereign grace, His covenant faithfulness, and His initiative in salvation, themes that run like a scarlet thread through the whole of Scripture and find their ultimate expression in the coming of Christ.

Stephen's retelling of this story serves as a sharp rebuke to the Sanhedrin. They had accused him of blaspheming Moses and the temple. But Stephen shows that they are the ones who misunderstand both. They have localized God to a building, but the God of glory appeared in a bush in Midian. They claim to honor Moses, but their fathers rejected him, and they are now rejecting the greater Prophet whom Moses foretold. This encounter at the bush is the foundation for the Exodus, which in turn is the great Old Testament type of the salvation Christ would accomplish. God comes down, He speaks, He makes a common place holy, and He sends a deliverer. This is the pattern of redemption.

Outline

Context In Acts

Stephen, one of the first deacons, has been hauled before the Sanhedrin on trumped-up charges of blasphemy against Moses and the temple (Acts 6:11-14). His speech in Acts 7 is his response. But it is not an apology in the modern sense; it is an apology in the classical sense, a reasoned defense. More than that, it is a covenant lawsuit. Stephen takes the role of a prosecuting attorney, indicting the leaders of Israel for the same sin their fathers repeatedly committed: rejecting God's appointed messengers. He walks them through their own history, from Abraham to Solomon, demonstrating two key points. First, God's presence is not and has never been confined to the land of Israel or the temple in Jerusalem. He met Abraham in Mesopotamia, Joseph in Egypt, and now Moses in Midian. Second, Israel has a consistent track record of rejecting the deliverers God sends them, from Joseph to Moses to the prophets. This section on the call of Moses is crucial to his argument. It establishes Moses as God's man, but in a way that highlights Israel's initial rejection of him (Acts 7:27-28) and sets the stage for their later rebellion. By the time Stephen is finished, he will accuse his hearers of being "stiff-necked" and "uncircumcised in heart," just like their fathers, culminating in their murder of the ultimate prophet, the Messiah Himself.

Key Issues

The God Who Comes Down

One of the central lies of all pagan and man-made religion is that man, through his own efforts, can ascend to God. We build our towers of Babel, we devise our systems of righteousness, we perform our rituals, all in an attempt to climb our way up into the divine presence. The story of the burning bush, and indeed the whole Bible, turns this lie on its head. God is not waiting for us to find Him; He is the one who comes down to find us. He comes down to a bush in the desert. He comes down on Mount Sinai in fire and smoke. And ultimately, He comes down in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate "I have come down to deliver them."

This is the essence of grace. Salvation is not a human achievement; it is a divine rescue operation. God sees our misery, He hears our groaning under the bondage of sin, and He initiates the plan of deliverance. Moses was not seeking God out; he was tending sheep, a disgraced and forgotten man. But God sought him. The fire in the bush was not something Moses kindled; it was a fire from heaven. So it is with our salvation. God's grace interrupts our lives, it confronts us in the midst of our ordinary business, and it makes holy demands upon us. The ground of our encounter with God becomes holy ground, not because of what we bring to it, but because of Who has condescended to meet us there.

Verse by Verse Commentary

30 “And after forty years had passed, AN ANGEL APPEARED TO HIM IN THE WILDERNESS OF MOUNT Sinai, IN THE FLAME OF A BURNING BUSH.

God's timing is never rushed. Forty years. Moses spent his first forty years learning to be somebody in the courts of Pharaoh. He spent his next forty years learning to be a nobody in the deserts of Midian. Now, at the age of eighty, he will spend his last forty years learning that God is everybody. The time was fulfilled. God's sovereign clock struck the hour, not a moment too soon or too late. The location is also significant: the wilderness of Mount Sinai. This is not the promised land; it is the back of beyond. God's saving work often begins in the wilderness, whether for Moses, for Israel, for David, or for Jesus. It is in the place of emptiness and exile that God shows up in power. The one who appeared is called an Angel, but as the context makes clear, this is no created being. This is the Angel of the Lord, a frequent Old Testament manifestation of God Himself, likely the pre-incarnate Christ. He appears in a flame of fire in a bush. The fire represents the holiness and purity of God, and the fact that the bush is not consumed signifies that this is a controlled, self-sustaining, divine fire. God's holiness, when it meets sinful man, ought to consume him. But here, in this display of grace, the bush is preserved.

31 When Moses saw it, he was marveling at the sight; and as he approached to look more closely, there came the voice of the Lord:

The strange sight did its work. It arrested Moses' attention. It was a divine curiosity trap. Moses, perhaps a man whose life had settled into a predictable, monotonous routine, sees something that defies the laws of nature. His curiosity is piqued, and he turns aside to investigate. It is when he makes that move, when he responds to the initial revelation, that God speaks. God often works this way. He puts a wonder in our path, something that doesn't quite add up, in order to draw us in. And as Moses draws near, the voice of the Lord comes to him. The sight was to get his attention; the sound was to give him the revelation.

32 ‘I AM THE GOD OF YOUR FATHERS, THE GOD OF ABRAHAM AND ISAAC AND JACOB.’ Moses trembled with fear and would not dare to look.

The first words from the bush are words of identification. God does not introduce Himself as a new, local desert deity. He anchors His identity in His covenant history. I am the God of your fathers. This is the God of the covenant, the God who made unbreakable promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The use of the present tense, "I am," is profoundly significant, as Jesus Himself would later point out to the Sadducees (Matt. 22:32). God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were alive in His presence then, and they are alive now. This declaration immediately connects the present crisis in Egypt with God's ancient, overarching redemptive plan. The effect on Moses is instantaneous and appropriate. Curiosity gives way to terror. He trembled with fear. This is the proper reaction of a sinful man in the presence of a holy God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and Moses' theological education begins right here.

33 BUT THE LORD SAID TO HIM, ‘REMOVE THE SANDALS FROM YOUR FEET, FOR THE PLACE ON WHICH YOU ARE STANDING IS HOLY GROUND.

God's presence consecrates a place. The ground was not inherently holy. It was just common desert dirt. It became holy by virtue of the fact that the Holy One was present there. The command to remove his sandals was a command for reverence and submission. Sandals were filthy, caked with the dust and dung of the wilderness. To enter a home, one removed his sandals. To come into the presence of the Holy God required an act of humility, an acknowledgement of one's own uncleanness. It was a recognition that Moses was not here as an equal, but as a creature before his Creator. This is a principle for all worship. We do not waltz casually into God's presence. We come with reverence and awe, recognizing that it is His holiness, not our worthiness, that makes the encounter possible.

34 I HAVE SURELY SEEN THE OPPRESSION OF MY PEOPLE IN EGYPT AND HAVE HEARD THEIR GROANS, AND I HAVE COME DOWN TO DELIVER THEM; COME NOW, AND I WILL SEND YOU TO EGYPT.’

Here we have the heart of the matter. God's action is rooted in His character. He is a God who sees, hears, and acts. For generations, it may have seemed to the Israelites that God was distant and indifferent. But He was not. He had surely seen their oppression. The Hebrew is emphatic; it is a seeing that is also a knowing, a deep awareness. He had heard their groans. He is not deaf to the cries of His people. And because He sees and hears, He acts. I have come down to deliver them. This is the gospel in miniature. God's deliverance is not a long-distance affair. He comes down into the mess of our bondage. This is what the Son of God did in the incarnation. And then, the stunning commission. Having declared His own intention to act, God enlists Moses as His instrument. "I have come down... now you go." Come now, and I will send you to Egypt. God's sovereign work does not exclude human agency; it establishes it. He calls and equips men to be the agents of His divine rescue.

Application

This passage is a bracing corrective to much of our flimsy, modern Christianity. We have a tendency to treat God as our buddy, to approach worship with a casualness that borders on irreverence, and to think of our mission as something we thought up for God. This story calls us back to foundational realities.

First, we must recover a sense of the holiness of God. When God shows up, the appropriate response is fear and trembling. The ground becomes holy. This does not mean we need to take our shoes off in church, but it does mean we need to take the spiritual sandals of pride, self-sufficiency, and casual indifference off our hearts. We are approaching the consuming fire, and only the grace of Christ keeps us from being incinerated. Our worship should be marked by a profound sense of awe.

Second, we must trust in God's covenant faithfulness and timing. The Israelites had groaned under oppression for a long time. Moses had been in exile for forty years. It is easy in such times to think God has forgotten. But this passage assures us that God sees, He hears, and He has an appointed time. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the promises He made to them, He is still working out for us in Christ. We can trust His delays because His clock is always right.

Finally, we must understand that God's great "I have come down" in Christ is the basis for our "go." Mission is not our idea. It is God's rescue plan, into which He graciously invites us to participate. He saw the oppression of a world in bondage to sin. He heard the groans of a dying creation. He came down in the person of His Son to deliver us. And now He turns to His church and says, "Come now, and I will send you." We are sent with His authority, in His power, to announce the great deliverance He has accomplished.