Jealous religious leaders had a problem.  The apostles continued preaching about Jesus, and many people believed in Him.  This new church was gathering momentum and, wherever the apostles went, crowds gathered to be healed of illnesses and demonic torment (Acts 5:12-16).  It was impossible to ignore this explosion of commitment to Jesus.  So, what were the religious leaders to do?  Their anger burned hot and they threw the apostles into the public jail overnight while they plotted how to eliminate this serious threat to their authority (Acts 5:17-19). 

But the Lord had other plans.  During the night, He sent an angel to unlock the jail gates, and let them out onto the street, commanding them to go back into the temple courts and continue to teach publicly about the new life that Jesus gives (Acts 5:20-21).  Of course, all that was unknown to the High Priests and their team who had already summoned the 70 other members of the ruling council of the Sanhedrin.  They gathered in the temple courtroom, in the Hall of Hewn Stones to the north of the temple complex - the same court that tried Jesus in the same place (Luke 22:66-71) – where they had already threatened Peter and John not to talk any more about Jesus (Acts 4:18-21).

When the court ordered that the apostles be brought before them, officials went to the prison but they were shocked to find that the apostles were not there.  The guards were still at their posts; the doors were still locked but nobody was inside.  Reporting this to the court, they did not know what to do: perhaps they thought about the empty tomb left by Jesus.  More pressing was their obvious inability to control the apostles and the people who actively followed Jesus.  The apostles’ disappearance posed an increased threat to the power of the religious authorities.

God is always in command of everything.  He has the power to do whatever He chooses.  He uses the weak to frustrate the strong and the lowly to humiliate the mighty (Isaiah 40:23; 1 Corinthians 1:27).  He is never prevented from fulfilling His plan, nor is His timetable ever altered.  This passage should be a great encouragement to trust the Lord who can do the impossible in order to achieve His own purpose.  It does not matter if the world is not on your side, as long as you are on Jesus' side (Romans 8:31-32).