In the first half of Acts 6 Stephen along with seven others was chosen to service the Grecian widows of the Jerusalem church.  In the second half of Acts 6, the focus stays alone on Stephen with his courageous gospel disputations in the Hellenistic Jewish synagogues.  He is charged with blasphemy by them, which then gains the attention of the Sanhedrin.  When he is called before that august council in Acts 7:1, Caiaphas asks him a question about the charges of the synagogue leadership:  “Are these things so?”  The rest of the mammoth chapter records Stephen’s answer to the high priest’s question.

The accusation against Stephen was blasphemy and he turns that on its head against his accusers.  The English word “blasphemy” transliterates the Greek noun, blasphemia.  BDAG says that it is “speech that denigrates or defames, reviling, denigration, disrespect, slander,” and in particular denigates or degrades God.  The Hebrew word that translates “blaspheme” means essentially the same.  Very often blasphemy is associated with taking the name of the Lord God in vain, breaking the third of the ten commandments, which is blasphemy.

In Acts 6:11, Stephen is accused to have spoken blasphemous words against Moses and against God.  Part of what Stephen is doing in Acts 7 is defending himself, but he does it in a cohesive manner so as to prove that his accusers were the ones guilty of blasphemy.  He uses the entire Old Testament to prove the apostasy of Israel and its leaders.  Blasphemy and apostasy come together, but what is it?

Key to understanding the sermon of Stephen in Acts 7 is in the conclusion to it in verses 51-53:

51 Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. 52 Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: 53 Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.

This is the theme of Stephen’s presentation.  His audience, he says, always resists the Holy Spirit, as their forefathers did.  They did that by persecuting the prophets, ending in the slaying of the Just One, Jesus, so having received the law, they have not kept it.

Stephen’s present accusers and their forefathers denigrated God, blasphemy, by not hearing or heeding the voice of God through His spokesmen.  They denigrated them all the way up to the greatest spokesman of and for God, the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is something Jesus also had proven to them while He preached during His ministry.

What I’m writing here reinforces a theme I’ve been asserting in recent posts here on apostasy, authority, and heresy.  In his epistle about apostasy in 2 Peter, Peter equates the apostasy with the despising of government and speaking evil of dignities, and in Jude’s epistle also about apostasy, “despise dominion.”  “Despising,” “speaking evil,” and again “despise” are to “denigrate” or “defame.”

A person, including a professing Christian or Israelite, can imagine or fancy himself respectful of God.  He has formed or fashioned his god in his imagination into one who accepts his lifestyle.  This is what Jude calls ‘turning the grace of God into lasciviousness.’  Meanwhile, this person defames actual God by denigrating God’s representative human authorities that this person cannot morph into what he wants.

The denigration of the human authority is what Stephen specifies to evince blasphemy of God.  When Jesus came, He was God in human flesh.  They couldn’t get away with this separation of God from human authority.  Jesus was human.  They had to deal with something concrete with which they were unable to pass off through their fancies and mere imagination.  Here was God before them.  Who was it before?

Well, according to Stephen, before it was first Joseph.  Yes, Joseph.  The last fifteen chapters of Genesis  areabout Joseph.  Stephen said about Joseph, “God was with him.”  I looked into who else that was said about in the New Testament.  One time.  Acts 10:38.  It was said about Jesus by Peter.  Joseph and Jesus.  God was with them.

The parallel for Stephen among the Patriarchs were the twelve tribes, the sons of Jacob, who envied Joseph.  This related to lust, another theme for Peter in 2 Peter and Jude in Jude.  They weren’t getting what they wanted and Joseph was in the way.  What they wanted wasn’t what God wanted and God was with Joseph.

At the end of Genesis, Joseph says God meant it for good (Gen 50:20).  That didn’t relieve the responsibility of the twelve, according to Stephen.  They were opposing God nonetheless, like whom?  Like Judas for one, another apostate, whom Stephen’s accusers used to betray Christ.

There are thousands and thousands of millennials today, who feel justified in changing their own views about God, because of their problem with human authority, maybe a parent or a pastor.  The human authority is the one saying, no, and punishing them when they do wrong.  They want their way.  Instead of succumbing to the human authority, whom God is with, whether they like it or not, they speak evil of it and despise it, while thinking they are loving God.  This is blasphemy.  They are blaspheming God by blaspheming, denigrating and defaming human authority.  I know about this personally and painfully.  They are not loving God, because this is how God works — through people, human authority.  They have merely shaped a new god in their minds who rejects their human authority — like Joseph’s brothers.  Their new god, who isn’t actual God, agrees with them, and actual God, Who speaks through human authority, doesn’t agree with them.  They are blaspheming Him.

Stephen moves on from there, but that’s how he makes his case in Acts 7.  It would be good for you to understand that.