Two Forms of Intervention

Introduction:

At morning/sunrise, they obeyed the Lord’s angel, entered the Temple, and were teaching.

When the priests met, the high priest called for the apostles to be brought before all of the religious and political leaders that mattered.

They apostles could not be found.

It was the people who protected them.

The court feared they people might stone them.

Why didn’t this stop easily?

How would we react to having to account for our continuation to preach the truth?

Growing Intensity of Opposition

The “sagan” lead the apostles into the official Council, where, as described earlier the “elders” also met.

The High Priest takes the lead in questioning the apostles.

He reminds them, in a Hebraism, of their previous orders/commands to the apostles.

They have defied those commands in two ways:

They have filled Jerusalem with their teaching.

They are counseling/thinking to lay the fault for the blood of Jesus (note, “this man”) on them.

The apostles were recounting what happened rather than trying, intentionally, to point people in that direction.

The Council members may think the apostles are trying to stir up a local rebellion against the priestly and political class.

Peter’s and the Apostles’ Reminder

Peter already made the case for why they could not stop teaching in the name of Jesus.

Acts 4:19-21.

With the other apostles, he now reiterates what he had explained to them earlier.

“It is necessary to be obeying God rather than humans.”

He then gives a standard explanation of the message that compels them to live and speak the way they do. (We should ponder this for a bit because we might have the most depth of thought in the passage here).

Acts 5:32 brings the court back to the apostles as eye witnesses of these sayings.

He now places their witness alongside the witness of the Holy Spirit which God had given to those who obey him.

No doubt this points to the miracles and signs that were done.

It also points to the witness of the Spirit, perhaps, in their liberation from prison.

Again, these were not private events.

They involved the most important religious and political figures in Jewish life.

Gamaliel’s Counsel

The response of the Apostles angered, intensely, those who heard, and they called for the execution of these men.

At this point, Gamaliel intervened with a brief reminder of the recent past.

Jos. AJ 18.13: and when they determine that all things are done by fate, they do not take away the freedom from men of acting as they think fit; since their notion is, that it hath pleased God to make a temperament, whereby what he wills is done, but so that the will of man can act virtuously or viciously.

He reminds them of a revolt under Theudas, no doubt intended to be someone earlier than Judas, not the later Theudas.

Judas the Galilean led a revolt in 6 AD against the Jews being subjected to Roman taxation.

We will notice, yet again, that no one considers hearing them out and considering that Jesus is raised from the dead and Messiah.

The Apostles rejoice in their opportunity to suffer for “the name.”

This is interesting choice of terms given the Jewish significance.

They continued teaching and proclaiming the Messiah to be Jesus.j