GOSPEL MEDITATION # 22

Acts 7:1-22

Stephen’s Speech part 1

1. Find a quiet place, alone and apart from distractions.
2. Be comfortably alert, still and at peace.
3. Say the Lord’s Prayer. Sing or cant the Jesus Prayer.
4. Pray for family, friends, neighbors, and yourself.
5. Slowly and carefully read the passage of Scripture.
6. Reread it. From memory, determine the central points.
7. Stephen standing on trial before the Council of Israel, the Sanhedrin, is invited by the high priest to explain himself.
8. He gives a summary of the history of the nation, beginning with Abraham (the story begins in Genesis 12), and in this part one of Stephen’s entire speech, we read of the history of God’s people up until the time of Moses.
9. From the account of Abraham, from verses 2 through 8, Stephen speaks of Joseph, one of the sons of Jacob making Joseph Abraham’s great-grandson. Joseph has long been recognized as a type of Christ and thus serves Stephen’s purpose that Israel, God’s chosen people, have continually rejected His purpose.
10. Joseph is envied by his brothers, is sold into slavery in Egypt, falsely accused, put into prison, and is miraculously released via God’s intervention. Then Joseph becomes the second in authority in all of Egypt, which results in the temporal salvation for the entire Abrahamic family.
11. Joseph is rejected, killed (imprisoned), raised from the dead (released from prison), and then is responsible for saving his family and bringing them to Egypt. It is a fore-shadowing, a dramatic historical prophecy, of what Jesus the Messiah would one day accomplish.
12. In Egypt, God’s people were in slavery, and through another type of Christ, Moses, they are freed.