Sin and righteousness.
These verses suggest to us some thoughts on the nature and the award of sin and of righteousness.
I. THAT SIN LIES IN THE WRONG ACTION OF THE SOUL. (Acts 7:39, Acts 7:40.) Stephen says that the children of Israel "in their hearts turned back again into Egypt;" they were as guilty before God as if they had actually faced round and marched back into bondage. The sin was in the spirit of disloyalty and disobedience which dwelt within them. "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, blasphemies" (Matthew 15:19). "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" (Proverbs 23:7). It is the secret thought, the hidden motive, the cherished purpose, the lingering desire, the burning passion, that constitutes the essence of the evil in the sight of him who looketh on the heart, and not on the outward appearance. Beneath a fair exterior some men hide a false and guilty heart; beneath a broken and faulty behavior others have a soul that is struggling on and out—on to a better life, out of the entanglements of an evil but regretted and repudiated past.
II. THAT SIN'S WORST PENALTY IS PAID IN THE SPIRITUAL DETERIORATION IN WHICH IT ENDS. (Acts 7:41-43.) For their rebelliousness the children of Israel were punished by being made to wander in the wilderness, instead of being at once admitted to their inheritance; also by being subjected to the rule of foolish and faulty kings like Saul, instead of wise and righteous prophets like Samuel; also by being sent away into captivity, even "beyond Babylon." But the worst effect of their sin was in their being led into darker and more aggravated evil. Their culpable impatience—"We wot not what is become of him"—led them to an act of positive idolatry: "Make us gods go before us;" and "they made a calf … and offered sacrifice unto the idol;" and this act of theirs led on, in course of time, to idolatrous actions more flagrant and. heinous still (Acts 7:42); and their wrong-doing culminated in the worship of Moloch, an iniquity of the very deepest dye. This is the course and penalty of sin. One wrong act leads to another and a worse; one sin to a number of transgressions; and these to a habit of iniquity; and this to a dark, baneful life and a hateful and odious character. By far the worst penalty which sin has to pay is the spiritual damage and deterioration to which it leads—the blinded eyes of the understanding, the weakened will, the enfeebled conscience, the masterful unbridled passions, the foul soul. Suffering of body, exile, loss of worldly prospects, the death of the body,—all these are nothing to this spiritual ruin.
III. THAT RIGHTEOUSNESS IS AN EARNEST ASPIRATION AND ENDEAVOUR AFTER GOD AND GOODNESS. (Acts 7:44-46.) It does not consist in the possession of privilege; otherwise the fathers of the Jewish race—having "the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness" and afterwards in the land where the Gentiles were driven out before them (Acts 7:45), all things having been made "according to the fashion" which Moses had seen—would assuredly have been godly and holy men. True human righteousness is rather found in such Godward aspiration and endeavor as we find in David, the man "who found favor before God" (Acts 7:46). And how came he to enjoy this Divine regard? Not because he was faultless in behavior—we could wish he had been far less blameworthy in certain particulars than he was—but because he strove earnestly to worship and serve God, repenting bitterly when he sinned, struggling on again with contrite spirit, continually seeking to gain God's will from his Word, and honestly endeavoring, spite of inward imperfection and outward temptation, to do what he knew to be right. This is human goodness; not angelic purity, not flawless rectitude, but earnest seeking after the true and good, hating the evil into which it is betrayed, casting itself on Goal's mercy for the past, facing the future with devout resolve to put away the evil thing and walk in the paths of righteousness and integrity.
IV. THAT THE CONSOLATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IS IN THE NEARNESS OF GOD TO OUR SPIRIT. (Acts 7:47-50.) David was not permitted to "build an house for the Lord." It was a deep disappointment to him, but he had a very real consolation. God was near to him everywhere. Was he not, indeed, much nearer to the father who did not build the house, than to the son who did? David might have written (if he did not), "I am continually with thee" (Psalms 73:23). "The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands" (Acts 7:48), and though we do not build him costly and splendid sanctuaries, though we should be deprived of the opportunity of meeting him in his house at all, yet when we survey "all these things" his hand has made and is sustaining, we may feel that he is at our right hand, and that we stand "before the Lord." Nay, if we be "in Christ Jesus," we know that, though no magnificent temple can contain him, he dwells abidingly within our hearts, to sustain and to sanctify us.—C.