WWUTT 2577 The Gamaliel Test (Acts 5:33-42)

The Sanhedrin became furious with the Apostles and wanted to put them to death, but a guy by the name of Gamaliel stood up in their defense and gave an interesting test. That doesn't really work today when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Find all our videos online at www .wutt .com, as well as links to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

The Apostles Before the Sanhedrin and the Call to Rejoice in Persecution

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Acts, we're finishing up chapter 5 today. The Apostles have been arrested and let go. They've been arrested again and let go by an angel. And now they find themselves before the Sanhedrin once again, who are charging the Apostles to no longer preach in the name of Jesus.

But the Apostles have responded and said, we must obey God rather than men. This makes the men furious and they even want to put the Apostles to death. But a very famous Jewish teacher is going to come to their defense.

As we read today, Acts chapter 5, this is verses 33 to 42, hear the word of the Lord. But when they heard this, they became furious and intended to kill them. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, respected by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and gave orders to put the men outside for a short time.

And he said to them, men of Israel, take care what you propose to do with these men. For some time ago, Thutis rose up claiming to be somebody and a group of about 400 men joined up with him. But he was killed and all who were following him were dispersed and came to nothing.

After this man, Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away people after him. He too perished and all those who were following him were scattered. So in the present case, I also 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 you may even be found fighting against God. So they followed his advice. And after calling the apostles in and beating them, they commanded them not to speak in the name of Jesus and then release them.

So they went on their way from the presence of the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for the name. And every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.

And oh, that we would be counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew chapter five, verse 11 in the Sermon on the Mount. He said, blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account, rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. And what we're reading about here in Acts, the apostles are doing that very thing. They are rejoicing in that they have been persecuted. They have been counted worthy to suffer for the sake of the name of Christ.

And may we have that same attitude when people revile us or even if we would be physically threatened by those who hate the gospel, we would rejoice that we were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ.

Why Gamaliel's Advice Is Not a Universal Test

But that's not the part that I really want to focus on in this particular section. I want to look at this solution that Gamaliel gave before the Sanhedrin. This is actually something that is commonly misused in our world today.

Let's get to it here as we start once again in verse 33. But when they heard this, speaking of the Sanhedrin, they became furious and intended to kill them, referring to the apostles. Remember, they have charged the apostles not to speak in the name of Jesus, but the apostles went on doing that.

So they arrested them again and are charging them to not speak in the name of Jesus. But Peter and the apostles answered and said, we must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus.

We've seen him. We are witnesses to his resurrection. We cannot help but preach about what we have seen and heard. As Peter had said previously in chapter four, you put Jesus to death by hanging him on a.

Tree.

But this one God exalted to his right hand as a leader and savior to grant repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we're witnesses to this, Peter says. And so is the Holy Spirit whom God gave to those who obey him.

Now that's to say the Holy Spirit is with us. He is not with you. God is on our side. He's not on your side. So of course, this makes the Sanhedrin incensed. And verse 33, when they heard this, they became furious and intended to kill them.

They did not harm them when they arrested them. If you will remember, because the guards feared the people, the apostles have been very popular among the people. And so they didn't want to risk being stoned to death.

But here they're so furious that they feel like we've got to put these guys to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, this is the first time his name comes up, by the way. It appears here in Acts chapter five.

And then it comes up again in Acts 22, when the apostle Paul is sharing his testimony and he talks about learning at the feet of Gamaliel. So he was a student of Gamaliel. And he's also, Gamaliel is respected by all the people.

He stands up in the Sanhedrin and gave orders to put the men outside for a short time. And after the apostles and the other disciples are outside, then Gamaliel is going to present to them a solution here.

Here's what I think you should do. Don't harm them. Because if this is of men, it's just going to fizzle out anyway. If it is of God, then you'll be fighting against God. And we know how that goes, right?

We know how it goes for them. They are fighting against God. But Gamaliel, who is this guy? You've surely heard the name before, only comes up twice in the New Testament. But he's also mentioned in the Talmud.

And he was mentioned by Josephus as well. The Jewish historian that gave a history of King Herod and talked about the history of the Jews, actually wrote that very famous work. I think it's called The History of the Jews, isn't it?

And so Josephus also recalls Gamaliel because Gamaliel is the grandson of another famous Jewish teacher named Hillel, Hillel the Elder. There were two schools of thought among the Pharisees. I actually talked about this at one point.

I think it was when we were studying in Matthew. So this is just a brief recap. There were two schools of learning among the Pharisees, the school or the house of Hillel and then the school or house of Shammai.

Now the school of Hillel tended to be a little more lenient. They had a more compassionate approach to the law, not so terribly overbearing. They still had traditions of men just like the rest of the Pharisees had, things that Jesus would rebuke of them later.

But they were not as strict on the law. And for this reason, the school or house of Hillel tended to be a little bit more popular among the people. This is part of the reason why, as we read here in Acts 5, that Gamaliel was respected by all the people.

They liked the school of thought that he came from. The stricter school of thought was called the house of Shammai. And this school tended toward more rigorous and narrow interpretations of the law. Also adding a hedge about the law, they added their own laws.

There were narrower grounds for divorce. So for example, when Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees in Matthew chapter 19, it was said to Jesus that Moses said we could give our wives a certificate of divorce and send her away.

That would have been the school of Hillel because they were a lot more lenient with the law. So all we have to do is give our wife a certificate of divorce. Now we're out of this marriage. Whereas the school of Shammai would have been way more strict with regards to divorce.

That wouldn't have been enough to get a divorce. It would have had to have been more serious than that. It may have been like the school of Shammai who brings the woman that's recorded in John chapter 8 before Jesus throws her on the ground and says, we've got this woman in the act of adultery.

Now that's a very anecdotal account. It was not actually written by John. But if true, then it was it was the school of Shammai that would have been involved in that most likely. So these are the two houses of the Pharisees and Gamaliel was a descendant of the house of Hillel.

He was a grandson. So he's kind of considered the heir apparent in that particular house. Paul, as I mentioned, was a student of Gamaliel and had more zeal than Gamaliel. Probably surpassed Gamaliel in his education at the time that Paul was going about and arresting Christians, which we'll read about later when we get to chapter nine.

Well, Paul's name comes up in chapter seven, but then his conversion will be in chapter nine. Anyway, Paul had probably exceeded Gamaliel and he was considered like a rock star among Pharisees at the time we join up with Paul's life in the book of Acts.

But as Paul talks about in the book of Philippians, I counted all these things as rubbish for the surpassing greatness of Christ. Once he was called by Christ, he went from being an enemy of the church to an apostle, not just to the Jews, but even to the Gentiles.

But let's stick with let's stick with this account that we have here in Acts chapter.

Five.

That's just to introduce you a little bit to who Gamaliel is. And he says to the Sanhedrin, verse thirty five, men of Israel, take care what you propose to do with these men. For some time ago, Theodos rose up.

We don't know quite who Theodos was, but it's recorded here in Acts. He was claiming to be somebody and a group of about four hundred men joined up with him, but he was killed and all who were following him were dispersed and came to nothing.

This is actually a very common story, especially among the zealots and those who were opposed to the Romans. They might try to stage some sort of revolt, but if their group wasn't big enough, it wasn't that hard for the Romans to then fight them off and the group would be dispersed.

And so Gamaliel shares the account of another man after this man, Judas the Galilean, rose up in the days of the census. Now, this would have been the census that Luke wrote about in chapter two. And this gives us a little bit of insight into that census as well.

It wasn't just something that all the Jews said, oh, we're doing a census now, so let's go back to the places of our lineage and give an account and be counted and and yeah, you know, just just cooperate with Rome.

No, the Jews actually hated that any sort of census would be taken outside of their own law, because to to take a census at a time when God had not commanded a census was actually to break the law of God.

David did this and a great plague came upon Israel because he took the census when he wanted to, and he had very arrogant and self-centered motives for taking this particular census. So this mattered a lot to the Jews.

We don't just take a census whenever. And they even thought of this as some blasphemous act by the emperor of Rome that he would charge a census when our God has not said we're supposed to be taking a census.

So there was revolt. There was rebellion against this census. It was not an easy time in the Roman Empire, especially in dealing with the zealots of the Jews. So you had this man, Judas the Galilean. He rises up in the days of the census.

He drew away people after him, but he, too, perished, likely was killed by the Romans and all those who were following him were scattered. So in the present case, I also say to you, Gamaliel says, 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 you may even be found fighting against God. Now, that seems like a very common sense solution.

If this is of men, they're just going to fall like the rest of those men. This isn't going to go anywhere. It's going to fizzle out. It's stirring a lot of people right now. But remember, it's stirring the people to the point of the Sanhedrin being afraid of the people.

They were even careful in the way that they arrested the apostles because they didn't want to be stoned to death by the people. So if they were to do anything with them now and Gamaliel is coming in and cooling this off like like Gamaliel is acting like a cooler here because verse 33 says the Sanhedrin became furious and intended to kill the apostles.

Well, they're losing their heads here because, you know, the danger that this poses with the people. If you do this, you were afraid of being stoned to death. And here you are losing your cool. And you're going to do something to these guys that you are deeply going to regret.

And it would probably become more than just people being angry with the Sanhedrin. Some of the Sanhedrin may end up dying. The Romans get involved and then the Romans start oppressing the people worse than they're already being oppressed.

Then it turns into the zealots finally mounting up to fight against them. And we've got this war on our hands. So this is a big deal. This fury that has erupted among the Sanhedrin, this is not to be taken lightly.

And Gamaliel is recognizing this. It's wise of him to recognize this and try to cool this off. And he's doing it for the sake of everybody. He's thinking about the Sanhedrin. He's thinking about the people.

He's even got Rome in mind, and he's got the apostles in mind, though he's probably on the side of, yeah, these guys are awful. In fact, I can tell you that is Gamaliel's concern. Like we don't want these guys to be preaching in the name of Jesus.

I agree with you. That's that's the way that Gamaliel would have been presenting himself before the Sanhedrin. But just let this be what it is. And if it's not really of God, it will fizzle out eventually.

Maybe the apostles will end up making somebody mad like the Romans, and then we can let the Romans deal with it. So Gamaliel presents this case and says, let's just wait it out. And it says in verse 40, they followed his advice.

Why the Gamaliel Test Fails in Charismatic and Mormon Claims

Now, this solution, this counsel that Gamaliel gives, this is often twisted and misused among charismatics, especially. We're getting a lot of this as we're going through the book of Acts. We're seeing ways that the things we read about in Acts have been twisted and misused, especially among the charismatic movement.

And when I say this, you know, I'm not disparaging any charismatics. I will qualify this again by saying that I was a charismatic. I was in charismatic churches for about 10 years and was sympathetic to them for even longer than that, both before and after that period of 10 years.

I'm not meaning to deliberately pick on the charismatic movement, but there are a lot of excesses and false teachings that happen in the charismatic movement. I was there and I saw it. I saw a lot more false teaching in the charismatic movement than any other group of believers that I've been a part of.

And in the charismatic movement, it was said, and this was a normal thing. This was not a fringe thing. I would hear this every once in a while, that whenever there was something questionable that would happen among charismaticism, somebody would say, well, let's let's apply the Gamaliel test.

If this is of men, then it's going to fizzle out and become nothing. But if it is of God, then it's going to continue on and thrive. And we don't want to be fighting against God. So let's just let it be and and let things go how God means them to go.

This is a very common test. That's put into the charismatic movement, especially when you start seeing things go a little bit crazy, things are getting off the rails now, we're not just in in practical, charismatic sorts of practices that we have in smaller churches now, it's getting into prophecy and it's getting into claiming to cast out demons and unclean spirits, and it's getting into claims of miracles and all this other kind of thing.

We've got to stop this. We've got to put a stop to this. This isn't even real. It's not genuine. How can we know if it's real or not? And somebody stands up and says, well, let's apply the Gamaliel test or they'll present something that will be like what Gamaliel said in Acts chapter five.

This is specific to this circumstance. You've heard it said many times about the book of Acts that narrative is not normative. So just because we read it in Acts doesn't mean, oh, that's the normative process by which we should handle these things.

This was very specific to the apostles. This is not the way that we deal with things. On a practical or even a wise level. In everyday occurrences, because if we were to apply if we were to apply this test to everything, we would have to say that Mormonism is from God.

Because their leader, Joseph Smith, was killed, but it did not disperse the Mormons. They've grown since then. It's about 15 million Mormons in the world today, and they're still thriving. They have billions of dollars in assets.

They're one of the wealthiest religions in the world. And so if you're going to apply the Gamaliel test to Mormonism, you would have to conclude, well, this is from God, but we know it's not from God because what they preach is heresy, that Jesus is the literal offspring of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother and his brother.

His actual brother is Lucifer, who is Satan. This is what they teach about Jesus. It's a completely different Jesus in the tradition of Mormonism. So you can't apply the Gamaliel test in this circumstance or you're going to have to come away saying that Mormonism is from God.

Jehovah's Witnesses, same sort of thing. It's also been around about as long as Mormonism. It came about during the spiritual fervor that was going on there in the Second Great Awakening in the 19th century.

Jehovah's Witnesses still exist today. But would we say that that was a movement that is from God? Absolutely not. They also preach a different Christ, a Christ who is actually Michael the Archangel and who is not God, but is just an angelic being.

So the test, as we see it here, given in Acts chapter 5, worked in Acts chapter 5, but it doesn't really work in our present context. And so don't make narrative normative in this sense. And don't think that we can apply the Gamaliel test to see if somebody's charismatic claims are true.

Most likely they're false. And the Gamaliel test is not going to get us to the end of that. So let us be sensible. Let us be wise. And the way that we deal with these things and in all things we test, we test it with the word, as said in 1 John 4, 1, do not believe every spirit, for there are many spirits that are not from God and have gone out into the world.

Many false prophets have risen up. So we test all things with the word of God. Now, after the Sanhedrin takes the advice of Gamaliel, they call the apostles in and beat them and command them not to speak in the name of Jesus and then let them go.

But of course, as we've read here at the conclusion, that did not stop the apostles. They did not cease teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ. That brings us to an end of Acts chapter 5.

We're going to jump into chapter 6 tomorrow with the selection of the first deacons. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read today. And I pray, Lord, that we would desire to speak the name of Christ with boldness.

And if people ridicule us or put us down, make fun of us or even physically threaten us, maybe even physically harm us because of what it is that we preach, may we rejoice in this. We rejoice and be glad for great is our reward in heaven, as Jesus has promised to all who love him.

Help us be wise and discerning in these days. Knowing your word and testing all things according to it. In Jesus name.

Amen.

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