Stephen continues his little history lesson, attempting to provide his audience with some insights into their not-so-stellar past that reveal that their spirit of rejection and resistance was inherited. They were fruit that had not fallen far from the family tree. But Stephen's goal in all of this was to get them to realize that they were worse off than their ancestors because they were resisting their Messiah, the very one promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and who alone, could make them acceptable before God. They had killed Him, but He had returned. He had risen from the dead and, upon returning to heaven, sent the Holy Spirit to indwell and empower His disciples. And in rejecting them, the high priest, the Sanhedrin and the Jewish nation, were really rejecting Jesus, their Messiah. Jesus had come to bring release to those held captive by sin and death. He had come to open the eyes of the spiritually blind and to provide a means for the spiritually lame to walk in the ways of God. He was active in their midst, in the form of the signs and wonders performed by the hands of the apostles. He was in the miraculous conversions of thousands of Jews who had come to believe the apostles' message of redemption made possible through His death and resurrection. And Stephen is trying to get his jaded, highly prejudiced audience to understand that all their adherence to the law of Moses, their love for the Temple and their pride in their Hebrew heritage meant nothing if they continued to reject the Redeemer God had sent to them.
