Acts 7:50

Hath not My hand made all these things?

Stephen takes up the recital of the various houses of worship among the Jews with a purpose, since he wants to show that the dependence upon the forms of external worship are vain without true faith of the heart. That advantage the children of Israel in the wilderness had: they had the Tabernacle of the witness, where God Himself appeared and witnessed unto Himself. They had made it just as God, in His long conversation with Moses, Exodus 25:40, had shown and commanded him. Moses had seen the pattern and plan of the entire tent and of all its appointments, and so it was made. And this same Tabernacle, the charge of which had been given to the people by Moses, they brought along with them as they entered into the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua, when they occupied the former possession of the Gentiles. For the latter the Lord gradually drove out, expelled, before the children of Israel during a number of centuries, at the time of the judges and of Saul, until the time of David, the beloved of the Lord. At his time the conquest of the country was practically completed, the nations that had not been destroyed having been brought into subjection. David then, since he had found favor with God and was regarded very highly before Him, not only earnestly desired, but even asked to find, to build a lasting tabernacle to the Lord; and if the Temple had actually been of the value placed upon it by the later Jews, it might have been expected that God would have given His consent. But the Temple was not built by David, but by Solomon, 2 Chronicles 6:7, But Stephen wants his hearers to remember that the presence of the highest God is not confined to any building, even though it were of the size and beauty of Solomon's Temple. The builder of the first Temple had himself confessed as much, 1 Kings 8:27; 2 Chronicles 6:18. And the Prophet Isaiah had written in the same strain, (Isaiah 66:1 -. Heaven is to Me a throne and the earth a stool for My feet; what manner of house will ye build to Me, saith the Lord, or what place for My resting? Has not My hand made all this? The absolute foolishness of the Jews in pinning their faith to the Temple which had taken the place of Solomon's, and upon the city in which it had been placed, could not have been brought out with greater force than in these words. The entire worship of the Jews had degenerated to become a mere observance of forms and customs, without life and true power. And Stephen had sketched the situation with a few strong, but fitting words, in order to present it to the eyes of his judges as it actually existed.