William Burkitt's Expository Notes

Acts 7:51

Observe here, 1. How St. Stephen, having finished his general discourse in the foregoing verses to the Jews, comes now to. particular and close application of it to them. All the while he was generally discoursing, they were quiet and still, and made no noise at all; for generals do not affect: but when he came to apply it particularly, and say, "You are the men, ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart, this enrages them, and drives them into the worst kind of madness.

Learn hence, 1. That the efficacy of the word preached lies in. particular and close application of it to every every man's conscience.

2. That it is ministers great duty not to satisfy themselves with delivering general truths to their people, but they must point at their particular sins (though not at their particular persons) and reprove them for the same, what hazards soever they run, and whatever the event may be. St. Stephen's close preaching here, and impartial reproving of sin, he saw would cost him his life; but, nothing terrified by his adversaries, he spares not to tell them, the greatest of them, of their faults.

Accordingly, observe, 2. The particular sins which St. Stephen here convict them of and reproves them for:

1. The stoutness, and stubbornness, and stiff-neckedness of their hearts; Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart:. metaphor taken from. bullock not used to the yoke, who therefore will not submit his neck to bear it. Wicked men are often called children of Belial, because they will not endure the yolk of obedience; but when God comes to put it upon their necks, they lift up their heel against him.

2. He charges them with rebelling against, and resisting the Holy Spirit of God: Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; That is, both the outward testimony of the Holy Ghost, speaking to them in the ministry of the prophets and apostles, and also the inward operations of the Holy Spirit, in that work of illumination and conviction which they had been under.

3. For their imitating their cruel ancestors, who killed the old prophets and crucified the Lord of life and glory; As your fathers did, so do ye.

4. For their wicked violatoin of the holy law of God, which was given them by the glorious ministry and proclamation of angels: Ye received the law by the disposition of angels: that is, the angels were testes and internuncii, witnesses and messengers betwixt God and Moses, in giving of the law, or Jesus Christ the angel of the covenant, who is God's messenger, and the angel that appeared to Moses in the bush: He gave the law to Moses, and by Moses to you, which law ye have notwithstanding violated and never kept.

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William Burkitt's Expository Notes

Acts 7:51

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