When the spirit of God began to actively work through the apostles of the early church, he performed amazing miracles, signs and wonders through them. Spiritual power flowed through their work in such visible and tangible ways that people flocked from all around Jerusalem, bringing with them their sick, as well as their spiritually tormented relatives, friends, and neighbors. Some of those people were so profoundly drawn by those wonders that they bore the ailing members of their communities into the streets, desperately hoping that just the shadow of Peter would fall on them and generate a healing miracle (Acts 5:12-16).
The growing popularity of the apostles, along with clear evidence of their divine work, threatened the established influence of the chief priest and the Sadducees. In fact, those religious leaders were so threatened by the successes of the apostles that they became filled with jealousy to the point of wanting to kill them (Acts 5:17-18, Acts 5:33). Rather than seeing the apostles as fellow workers in God’s family, they saw them as rivals for power, authority, status, and influence. This tells us much about the condition of their hearts. Consider how Paul teaches us in Galatians that among other things, unbridled negative emotions like enmity, strife, envy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, and jealousy are the works of a fallen human nature (Galatians 5:19-21). The jealousy of those religious leaders illustrated for us that their hearts were not aligned with the spirit of God, but with the selfish drives of their sin-prone animalistic flesh. Paul contrasts that state-of-being with the condition of those who are aligned with the spirit of God. Such people produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-24).
In the midst of their jealous and murderous rage, a wise leader of the Pharisees rose up from among them – the great teacher Gamaliel (Acts 5:34). He ordered that the apostles be released, and allowed to go about their business. He cited past instances where people claimed they were doing the will of God but were later killed, their followers scattered, and their toils brought to nothing. He argued that the same would happen to these men if God was not the power behind their work. Then, he warned them not to wreck their own lives by succumbing to jealousy. Opposing these men, he explained, might very well be opposing God.
Gamaliel’s fear of God was a living illustration of the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). This wisdom allowed him to be naturally aligned with God's spirit as evidenced by his kindness, his calmness, his patience, his goodness, his apparent lack of jealousy, and his self-control. Any time negative emotions arise in your heart and threaten your behavioral control, remember that Paul tells us that they arise from a rotten place. Call to mind the wisdom of Gamaliel and always take the opportunity to check yourself before you wreck yourself.
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