Cheap Substitutes

Scripture Reading: Acts 7:30-50

“But our fathers refused to obey him, but thrust him aside, and in their hearts they turned to Egypt.” - Acts 7:39

Recently, one of our smoke detectors started chirping in the middle of the night. Of course, it could not do that at 2:00 in the afternoon. As I stumbled through the house trying to figure out which detector was making the noise, I immediately regretted buying the cheap batteries. At the time, they seemed like a great deal. In the middle of the night, they did not feel like such a bargain anymore.

Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7 is really about cheap substitutes.

As Stephen stood before the Sanhedrin, he traced Israel’s history and reminded them of how faithfully God had revealed Himself to His people. God appeared to Moses in the burning bush. He parted the Red Sea before their eyes. He fed them with manna from heaven and brought water from a rock in the wilderness.

He gave them His word and established His covenant with them. He even answered David’s desire for a dwelling place by allowing Solomon to build the temple.

God was not distant from His people. He had revealed Himself again and again through signs and wonders, yet the people continually exchanged Him for substitutes, cheap substitutes.

Stephen reminded them that while Moses was receiving the law from God, the people were making a golden calf. Isaiah later described the foolishness of idolatry in Isaiah 44:9–20, explaining how a man could cut down a tree, burn part of it in a fire to keep warm, and then bow down to the remaining piece and call it God.

People exchanged the living God for something they had created with their own hands.

It is easy to read the Old Testament with a spirit of condemnation and wonder how Israel could be so blind. Stephen’s point, however, is that the same pattern continued. Israel rejected Moses even after seeing God’s wonders in Egypt and the wilderness. They rejected the prophets God sent to warn them. Then they rejected Jesus, the greater prophet Moses promised would come, even after He performed signs and wonders among them.

The problem was never a lack of evidence. The problem was the human heart. Before we criticize Israel too quickly, we should recognize how easy it is for us to do the same thing. Idolatry is not limited to carved statues. An idol is anything we substitute for God.

People still look to money, success, comfort, relationships, entertainment, or political movements to provide what only God can truly give.

Modern idols may look more sophisticated, but they still leave people empty. A person can attend church, know Bible stories, and still slowly substitute other things for Christ. Cheap substitutes always promise more than they can deliver.

Only Christ can truly satisfy the human heart because only Christ is the true deliverer Stephen preached about. John Calvin called human nature a perpetual factory of idols.