Acts 5:17-42

Gamaliel

The apostles were put in jail but an angel released them. The Sanhedrin met the next day to sit in judgment on the apostles but they couldn’t find them. “Somebody” said to try looking in the most public place, the temple courts. Ah, there they are! Finally they are standing before the Sanhedrin and the leaders complain that the apostles are trying to make them guilty of Jesus’ blood. Let’s see... They paid Judas to betray. They condemned Jesus as worthy of death even though He had done no violence and nothing false as found in Him. They roused the crowd to insist that Jesus be crucified. Oh, and they pressured Pilate by saying, “If you let this man go you are no friend of Caesar.” I don’t know why anybody would think they were guilty of Jesus’ blood. Now they want to kill the apostles.

Then the most unusual thing happened, something almost never seen or heard in political environments; a voice of reason came forth. This Gamaliel is mentioned twice in Scripture. Besides this mention we hear his name again in Acts 22 when Paul notes that he studied under Gamaliel.

Basically this is what Gamaliel advised. “We really don’t know if these men are from God or not. What they are teaching isn’t what we are used to and we don’t like it; however, there seems to be considerable reason to suspect that they just might be from God. Here is the real test, if they aren’t from God this thing won’t last long. It will blow over and be forgotten. After all, their leader had been killed already. If they are from God, He can take care of Himself and you for sure don’t want to be on the side fighting Him.”

So often we see something that we think is wrong and our first instinct is to fix it. This goes double for when we see some one that we think is wrong. Most of the time when we act this way the thing, or person, ends up more broken and wrong that before we got our hands on it. God is big and great and alert. He is quite capable of sorting others out. Apart from enlisting our aid in the early years of our children’s lives He really doesn’t need our help in shaping others.

So, the next time we are tempted to set someone straight we should pause to consider the words of Gamaliel. If Gamaliel’s words are too hard to remember I suspect God wouldn’t mind us substituting the words of Benjamin Franklin when he said, “If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.”