The Book of Acts Acts, 5:33-42

Good morning. We will step into this passage, Courtney just read for us, Acts of the Apostles, chapter 5, verses 33 through 42. First, as we did last week, I need to give you a caution. We're continuing an experiment, an experiment with a handout and an experiment with the slides that are up front, and so please bear with us. I also want to comfort you, this is not like some of the experiments I used to run.

Many years ago, in this house that you see here in Los Altos, California, I was discovering the wonders of modern science. And in our garage, we had electrical outlets. We also had a container full of what are known as capacitors of different kinds. And you might be interested, some of them had the brand name Raytheon stamped on them. But anyway, So I just thought, you know, in my young mind, hey, those outlets are electrical and those capacitors are electrical.

I wonder what happens when you put them together. What I found out going through these is a lot of them did nothing and it was rather disappointing. However, that came to an abrupt end. If you could have seen it, one of the capacitors that started off fairly nice looking was suddenly not very nice looking. And if you could have seen it, the outlet didn't look so good either. But that wasn't the only impact, aside from a very large boom and flash in my hand.

There was also complete lights out in the whole house. So anyway, we will not be conducting that kind of an experiment today, you'll be glad to hear. Instead, we'll have a handout that is a bit of a hybrid. It'll be a mixture of some of the way we previously had it with the way that we are doing an experiment with here. And feel free to let me know what you think of the experiment, okay?

Alright, so what we are actually in in this passage here is in round two. The first round with the Apostles, the Sanhedrin, also known as, and you'll see it more in Scripture, the Council, sometimes called the Senate or the Supreme Court. This was the highest court of the Jews at that time. Gave a stern warning to Peter and to John not to teach in this name, and they repeatedly kind of stayed away from saying Jesus. Somehow that bothered them. And then they let them go.

This chapter, this passage we're looking at now, here in chapter 5, it says, in this the second round, the council leaders had tried to keep all the apostles in jail overnight in anticipation of setting up a council meeting, getting all the council members together in the morning.

They had not counted on an angel. And there's a particular reason why. Sadducees don't believe in angels, right? Their plans were ruined rather again and again the Sadducees plans are now being ruined now again with the Apostles all released from jail In the night and by an angel which they don't believe in right back to teaching in Jesus name by early in the morning Which they have of course been forbidden to do the Sadducees had to send the temple guard out to retrieve the Apostles while they were teaching the early morning crowds and It was a very sensitive situation which they had to handle very carefully in order not to get people disturbed and end up getting the council stoned.

But they were indeed hot mad. Think about the Sadducees. Their plan back in spring of 33 AD was to have Jesus get killed so as to get him out of the way. Okay, that sort of seemed to work. There was no thought that Jesus' death might actually be for God's purposes. And the Sadducees didn't believe in a resurrection, so that wasn't a problem, right? Eh, not so much. In spite of placing a Roman guard on Jesus' sealed tomb, Christ's resurrection happened anyway.

Ah! Right? This is terrible. Now there were these twelve apostles who all claimed to be witnesses. Ah! Witnesses! How many witnesses does it take? Two or three. How many you got? Twelve. Ah! Right? Of Christ's resurrection, plus many others. Paul lets us in. on this, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, up to 500 at once. That's a lot of witnesses to a resurrection that's not supposed to happen, right? Okay.

So the Sadducees were showing a pattern in which they would not say the name of Jesus that we'll see so far. It actually seems like towards the end of this that they actually did finally say the name of Jesus, but they were very reluctant to do so. They kept saying, you can't teach in this name. And they used that again and again.

Now, here's one of the best kept secrets of those times. Jesus' name was the exact same name as Caiaphas' son. Isn't that great? And Jesus' father's name was Joseph, and that was Caiaphas' first name. Add to that, his granddaughter's name was Mary. Isn't that wonderful? Anyway, so all these names are just, oh, I wish I hadn't named my kid that, and I wish my kid hadn't named, oh, anyway, you can imagine the nightmare he's going through in this name that is the same name I have in my family again and again, right?

Okay. The other thing we have, and this is on the bottom of page one, and this is to kind of keep a physical sense of where things are happening, and one of the reasons we do this is simply because there are those out there who talk about, you know, Jesus is just a myth and all this is just mythological stories and on and on with that kind of thing. There's even a website and I've been in contact with them. Jesus never existed. That doesn't fly, right?

So at any rate, yes he did, and yes there are specific times and places when these things happened, and so here shown in a model of Jerusalem from that time is the chamber of Hewn Stone. You'll see that on your handout as well. That is the chamber where the Sadducees and the Pharisees would all meet together, that's the council chamber or the Sanhedrin chamber. The place where the disciples tended to gather, and even where Jesus would gather at times, is on the eastern side of the temple courtyard called Solomon's portico, sometimes called Solomon's colonnade or Solomon's porch. And that was on either side of the Eastern Gate. The Eastern Gate is where Jesus came through in a so-called triumphal entry.

And He will come again, by the way, that's blocked off. That's Ezekiel chapter 44, verses 1 through 3, prophesied to be blocked off. The Messiah will go through it. And at least three times that I'm aware of, there have been plans to open that up, and people have been typically told, oh no, you won't. That's where the Messiah is coming back, and that's where he'll come back, and I hope it's seven years from today.

Okay. So here is the real place. It was a real occurrence. This was an actual historical event. that we have a great deal of certainty about the location. We also, in some cases, have a great deal of certainty about these events, sometimes even to the exact day. In this instance, we don't have the exact day, but soon thereafter we're going to get back into the exact month and sometimes the exact day as we go through the book of Acts.

Here is the inside of that council chamber. They would have 71 people gathered. There would be a high priest at the head of that room. There would be gatherings of the other members, 35 on each side of the high priest, for a total of 71. The accused, which in this case would be the apostles, apparently all 12 of them, would stand before the high priest with all these council members around them. And so the apostles were gathered here, not just the one as we show in this kind of typical diagram, but all twelve of them likely here. Here is from last week's, just to give us an introduction to what the circumstance was. And when they had brought them, they stood them before the council, they being the temple guard, bringing the apostles.

And the high priest questioned them, and that was Caiaphas. saying, We gave you strict orders not to continue teaching in this name. Get that? Not in Jesus, but this name. And yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and intended to bring this man's blood upon us. Right? And notice it didn't say Jesus' blood, this man. Here's another one of those impersonal statements. And notice Peter, of course, complies with everything that they want, right? Not so much.

Verse 29, But Peter and the apostles answered, We must obey God rather than men. That's you, right? To the Sadducees, right? The God of our fathers raised up Jesus. And of course, to those words, the Sadducees are going, Ah! Raised up! Ah! We don't believe in that. How dare you? Whom you put to death. Remember what the deal was? They were saying, You're trying to put it on us. whom you put to death by hanging him on a cross.

He is the one whom God exalted at his right hand as Prince and Savior to grant repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. We said repentance was always a change of mind that ends up in belief in biblical terms. It wasn't always used that way out in the common Greek secular culture, but it is used that way consistently in the New Testament. forgiveness of sins.

And we are witnesses of these things, not just two or three as the law requires, but there's a dozen of us here. And so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey. So that introduces us to this passage here. This is on page two of your handout, Acts 5, 33 through 34.

And when they heard this, they were cut to the quick. and intended to kill them, but a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, respected by all the people, stood up in the council and gave orders to put the men outside for a short time." This cut to the quick was a figure of speech. They heard this, that's the apostles. The cut to the quick is a figure of speech. It means painfully wounded. They were painfully wounded. is what this figure of speech says, and intended to kill them. So that was their thought, kill these guys.

A Pharisee named Gamaliel. Now one of the things we run into with these Bible words, there are two things to bring notice to. One, a lot of the words are anglicized, sometimes intensely or extremely so. Jesus' name in the original language would have been Yeshua, right? comes across in the first translation of the King James, Jesus, and then Jesus in our more modern translations. Here, Gamaliel, the pronunciation of the name is very much Gamaliel. That's pretty close, right? And so, with some of these, we put the emphasis on the wrong syllable. You get the idea. Okay, so here's the Pharisee named Gamaliel.

Now, recognize, it was the Sadducees, what were they upset about? These guys were teaching that Jesus was resurrected. And that was getting them very, very, very upset. Did the Pharisees believe in a resurrection? Yes, they did. As a matter of fact, the Apostle Paul, much later on in Acts, is going to use that to light the Sanhedrin on fire. The fact that they are divided on this point.

So here's a Pharisee named Gamaliel. He's a teacher of the law. This is the law of Moses. Remember, we said the law of Moses, 613 laws, 365 of them, like the number of days in the year, are things you're not supposed to do. The rest of them are things you're supposed to do, all 613.

He was respected by all the people. Remember, we said that in the Bible, Old and New Testaments, if you see the people or the nation, that almost always indicates it's Israel. If it is the peoples or the nations, then that's the Gentiles, the non-Jews. respected by all the people, he stood up in the council, that is the Sanhedrin or the Senate or Supreme Court, and he gave orders to put the men outside for a short time. Now, he gave orders so the council members had the option, if it was their turn to speak, to put the accused out of the room for a time. So the temple guard would then take them out of the room and hold them until they were told they could bring them back in. And so that's what happened here.

So this Gamaliel, Gamaliel the grandson of Hillel, was one of the most highly regarded rabbis of all time. He had a designation, Rabbon, that only seven rabbis in all of Jewish history have attained. So this guy was very, very highly regarded and he was highly regarded even in his own time. He was also the rabbi of Saul, who later became Paul, who we're going to find out a fascinating and astounding story about here as we move on in the book of Acts. It's recorded that he had about a thousand disciples over his time. This is the records of the Jews outside of the Bible.

He had about a thousand disciples over his lifetime, and one of those, as we're going to see later, this is Acts 22.3, was the apostle Paul himself, right? He had been a disciple of this very famed Gamaliel.

When Gamaliel died, it is said, and I'm paraphrasing, it is said that the law died with him. Gamaliel, as a Pharisee, was supposed to have gotten married, which apparently he did later, but in his earlier years, they had asked him, why are you not married yet? He says, I'm so in love with the law. So this is Gamaliel. So Gamaliel was never the high priest. So he never had that role. But when he spoke, people really listened. This was a man of not great power, but huge influence. Huge influence. So let's read Acts 5, 35-37 and look at that.

And he said to them, Men of Israel, take care of what you propose to do with these men. For some time ago, Thutis rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a group of about four hundred men joined up with him. But he was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After this man, Judas of Galilee, that's not Judas Iscariot, but Judas of Galilee, rose up in the days of the census and drew away some men after him, and he too perished, and all those who followed him were scattered.

So first of all, this address, men of Israel, was one that started with Moses. He is the first one recorded to have actually used that term to address the Israelites. So that, of course, established a long-standing tradition and well-respected tradition of calling the Jews, when you had a gathering of them, men of Israel. Hey, that's like Moses, right?

Okay. And then, For some time ago, this Thutis, whom we know little more for sure of Thutis, there was another one who also raised a gathering of about a decade after this time, so we know it's not him, although it's an interesting piece of history. This Thutis, nothing more than what is written here in this verse, Acts 5, 36. He claimed to be somebody, but a group of about 400 men joined with him. That would be a significant group of guys. He was killed and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. We'll see how that turned out.

And then in verse 37, this Judas of Galilee, a different person, and also this was during the early time of Christ. You know, people try to speculate about what happened during Jesus' childhood. We have, other than his birth, we have one account there where he's in Jerusalem and his parents can't find him. This is between those times. We're about at the same time.

This infamous census that is written of here in Acts 5.37 So that's how he could say the census, the infamous one, the one that went really, really badly.

That's why he could use that without any qualifiers, because everybody knew what he meant. He drew away some people after him, and he too perished, just like Thutis, and all those who followed him were scattered. So, let's talk about that census briefly. Quirinius' census was just a disaster.

We talked about this briefly in Luke chapter 2, verses 1 through 7. That's where it got mentioned. This was the census in which Mary and Joseph were told you need to go to the city of your forefathers, which was Bethlehem, the city of David. That was the census that took place before this one. Before this one. This one in 6 and 7 AD was so badly done that it started up a rebellion that began the Zealots.

So Dr. Luke wrote about the census and the rebellion from this infamous census here is recorded in Acts 5.37 that's from the mouth in this point in time of Gamaliel.

So Judas of Galilee along with Sadduk the Pharisee, how'd you like that for name, right? Sadduck. Alright, so led the rebellion in the days of that census, but in the end Judas died. Sadduck didn't, but Judas died and his rebellion came to nothing as his followers scattered. These were the founders, however, of the Zealots. The Zealots was even one of the descriptions of one of the disciples. It was this group of zealots that grew and grew over time and later led the rebellion against Rome that failed very badly in which over a million Jews were killed.

So here's Acts 5.38 and 39.

So in the present case, I say to you, stay away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or action is of men, it will be overthrown. But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them, or else you may even be found fighting against God."

What insightful and wise words. The first thing I say to you is something actually Jesus said a number of times. It's the exact same Greek words, and it's a rabbi's assertion. When a rabbi would assert something, often contrary to what others were saying or what others had taught, This is the way they would say it I say to you and they'd use a specific set of words and so this is a rabbi's assertion when you're asserting something contrary to what others have said or taught and So it's these are the words that Jesus used repeatedly and we see it here from the mouth of Gamaliel Says stay away, and that's by the way not I advise you to stay away.

You must stay away. It's an imperative, okay, and for these men, the apostles, and let them alone." So two imperatives here. One, keep away from them, and secondly, let them alone. So this is underscoring two actions, and both are given as imperatives here. Okay?

It's for this, if this plan or action is of men, it will be overthrown. That is, They will be overthrown from an outside force just like these prior rebellions that I gave you two examples of, right? God will overthrow them ultimately because God is sovereign. If it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them or else you may even be found fighting against God. You will not be able to actively overthrow them. So if there is an overthrowing, it is something that God will do. If you try to overthrow them, you will be unsuccessful because God will be the one doing the overthrowing.

See the distinction there? In both cases, look to God's sovereignty. One cannot override God's sovereignty, which is actually, for us, that should be very comforting. And what we see here is Gamaliel who had a lot that he didn't understand. What he did say about these things, however, was insightful. So we see that Gamaliel actually believed in God's sovereignty and his whole statement reflects that.

In Acts 5.38 he expressed belief in God's sovereignty. He also expressed that it is not at this time apparent as to whether or not this movement was from God. He says, you guys are judging this is not from God and so you want it to end.

But guess what? It's not time yet to judge. Let God be the one as to whether this is supposed to continue or not. Right? That's Gamaliel's insight here. Very important one. We know that Christ coming to earth, His life, His death and resurrection were all of God's plan. We know that. As was the appointment of the twelve apostles as witnesses to these things. We know that those things were all of God. From Gamaliel's standpoint, he was telling them, we can't tell yet if this is from God. Be careful that you're not on the wrong side. Here's Acts 5, 40-42.

They took his advice. And after calling the apostles in, they flogged them and ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and then released them. So they went on their way from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name. And every day in the temple and from house to house they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ."

So let's look at that. They didn't pursue then the death penalty as they were inclined to do. Remember earlier it says, and they intended to do that. By the way, some have called into question various things about, you know, what happened to, you know, with the Sadducees and the Pharisees. And they would say, well nobody knows that. These guys made it up. Guess what? Let's look back to when Jesus was before the Sadducees and the Pharisees. I know a skeptic, Bart Ehrman, is written. He says, nobody was there to witness that. Oh yeah?

Peter and John were there. And we know that Peter looked at Christ at one point. That's recorded in the Gospel of Luke. And Dr. Leon Rittmeyer, archaeologist, says he believes he knows where exactly Peter was standing and where Christ was when that looking at one another occurred, when their eyes met.

So that says we know the exact date with some degree of certainty and we know the place where that occurred. Is that made up and mythological? No. Besides that, who are members of the Sanhedrin who are named in the Gospels who would have been present then and here? Nicodemus, named multiple times starting in John chapter 3 throughout the Gospel of John, and Joseph of Arimathea, mentioned multiple times in the Gospels, and more than one Gospel. So these are real events, these are historical events, where the time and place is known with a high level of certainty.

Next, they flog them as opposed to a stern warning. Now, this mentions the flogging briefly, The only pictures of a flogging that I have are Roman floggings where they would make them stand up and they would tie their hands up against a post or a pillar. So that would be a Roman flogging. This flogging was done right there in the chambers and it was done in the synagogues throughout Israel. where they would not be with the man standing up. They would lay the man down.

The law of Moses said forty stripes. They would say, but you might miscount and then violate the law of Moses. So they said thirty-nine. Right? And so up to thirty-nine lashes each. Okay? And two-thirds of them would be on the back. One-third would be on the front. Okay? So really, what do these guys do? They come out. Yeah! Yahoo! Right? They are rejoicing.

So this is astounding news. Don't speak and then finally they said in the name of Jesus. They finally put it out there and said of this name. So they went on the way from the presence of the council rejoicing they'd been considered worthy to suffer shame for his name. This is astounding stuff.

What do you do when something really painful happens? Do you go away rejoicing? Maybe. It can be tough. These guys, all 12 of them, went through a very painful time, possibly as many as 39 lashes. And by the way, sometimes those lashes killed people. It was that severe. All 12 went through this and they came out rejoicing.

Amazing stuff. Finally at the end of the verse 42 ends with the teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ. That is the Messiah, the Anointed One. There's a definite article in the Greek and it's the same the Christ that Caiaphas asked Jesus, are you the Christ? That means the Messiah, the Anointed One.

Now, let's look at the frequency, location, and action. Every day the apostles kept on teaching and preaching. Now, does that mean that the elders should be teaching and preaching every day here? Well, not necessarily, but it does have something to do with how often is our biblical faith relevant every day, right? They did it from house to house. There was no church buildings in those days. So if they weren't in the temple, and there was a point at which there was no temple, right, or they were away from the temple, if they weren't there, they went from house to house, and that was common.

We also have a reference aside from this, an earlier time, Acts 2.46, and we'll see quite some ways down the line here in Acts.

Acts 20.20 is another reference from house to house as the way things were commonly done. They also did in the temple right under the noses of the Sanhedrin. Here they were. They went out from there, having been whipped probably right in the council chambers. It's not for certain, but likely. Right in the council chambers, all 12 of them whipped front and back. Two-thirds of the whippings on the back, one-third on the front, 39 lashes is possible. especially if they were considering the death penalty, probably maximum lashes would be in order, and especially since they ignored the first stern warning.

So they went out and right under the noses of the Sanhedrin, those guys are right there, they would come regularly into the temple courtyard, they were teaching the faith, as we'll soon see it called, this is the beginning of the next chapter, just verses away, They will be teaching the faith.

The faith starts in Acts chapter 6 and continues on into the book of Revelation. Most of the New Testament books having reference, sometimes repeated reference, to the faith, that is the set of teachings of the apostles. The set of teachings of the apostles.

And preaching the gospel was the form of evangelism. Proclaiming the gospel. So they did both. And finally it says Jesus as the Christ. Jesus was the Nazarene. The disciples could tell people about his life and death and burial and resurrection, giving first-hand testimony of these things. And the apostles certainly did it. Probably many others did as well. Are you there? You saw him? Yeah. You saw him resurrected? Yeah, more than once. In different parts of Israel. Different times with different people present.

Jesus also was the Christ what we saw here is the first things that we talked about were his first coming now his second coming Christ was also the Christ that is he is the Messiah the anointed one whom the Jews had rejected but in great part, but he would come again to reign and Those in the church with him and that day is as soon as seven years from this day. I So, one of the things to remember here is the world's got a mold for you, and I'm not talking about that colorful stuff that's in the refrigerator if something sits there too long, right? The world, and by that we mean the world system under the prince of the power of the air. We give the reference of Ephesians 2, 1 through 3.

It's full of a variety of offerings. Do you know that the world keeps generating all sorts of different things? Even these electronic things we hold in our hand and we have, you know, sitting in front of us can even be one of the ways that the world gets a hold of us.

It's all designed for you to conform to its mold. That's the idea. That's exactly what the world wants to do. Your thinking, your priorities, your relationships, everything else about life on this planet is a part of that mold design the world has for you, but it's not Christ.

Now, one of the things that we'll observe here, I show a picture of a lay you who is apparently under great stress. People who do not wish to conform to this world's mold may find themselves under great stress as a result. may find themselves under great stress as a result. Those who are going along with the conformity to this world may not feel all that stressed by the whole thing. Why?

They're going along with the flow. Oh yeah, you want me to take this shape? Sure. And they gladly step into it. It is those of us who look at it and say, I'm not going to conform to that mold. Those are the ones who may in fact be under stresses, at least externally. The apostles refused the worldly mold and kept their focus upon Christ, and that's the evidence that we see here. We see them continuing to do that through the book of Acts.

So, the next slide, there are purposes and then there are purposes, right? All right, so let's take a look at those purposes. The world has its purposes for pressing us into its mold, and all those purposes are terminal. Is this world going to last forever? No. Are all the things that this world wants us to hold on to, glom on to, be shaped by going to last forever? No. Everything that this world wants to accomplish, every way in which the world wants us to be conformed to its mold, All those are terminal. They're all going to go away sometime. Sometimes really quick.

We'll talk about things that are retro. Remember things that used to be popular in the 70s and 80s? And some of you don't remember that. That's okay. So those things were really popular, and boy, that was the thing. But the world says, oh, that was so yesterday. Imagine people saying things like, that was so 90s. Boy, anyway. And so there's this perspective, the world may even have it be terminal long before we're gone, right? God has His purposes for conforming us to the image of His Son, and those purposes are eternal.

That's big. That's big. It means everything that happens here on planet earth for the believer is purposeful. And this is really big. Every time you go through a big pain, maybe you're in it right now. One of the things that I would say to encourage you is that bigger pains have a greater purpose. Bigger pains have greater purpose. If you've been going through something, if you have been through something, and you say, that was a really big pain, Greater pains have greater purpose. It's intended by God for eternal purposes, even if all sorts of people do bad, horrible things.

Now, we have been in and will very soon be in a very pivotal section of the book of Acts. In Acts 5.11, we see the first mention of the church, later called the body of Christ, and that is so critical and so important that it's mentioned all the way to the last book of the Bible, the church or the churches, plural, right? And next we have then in Acts 6, 1-7, there's actually three key words that start in that passage and continue on there through, at least through Acts, and have a teaching anyway that continues through the rest of the Bible. Acts 6, 1-7, we see the words, disciples and the faith regarding the church mentioned first in Acts 511. So these are very important and critical passages that we either have just been in or going to be looking at next. So two Sundays ago we looked at the church and the brethren. Next Sunday we'll take a look at the words the faith and disciples.

Words that are important now and forever. They're words that always count. Let's pray. and to see some difficult times for the apostles, see some times where they, in this last cycle here, where they all went through a tough time and went through both emotional pressures and social pressures as well as physical pain, and yet what a comfort to know that you had purpose in all of it and that we can take those comforts similarly in our own lives, the great pains and great agonies Those greatest ones have the greatest purpose and that's conformity to the image of your son. Thank you for that. Thank you for that assurance that we can have that counts forever. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.