The whole purpose of the Church is to lead people to salvation. So when the Church is seeing people get saved there is nothing that compares to the joy and the vitality that comes with that.
The book of Acts is full of people getting saved as the Brand New News – the GOOD NEWS – is spreading. For the first time in history, the name of Jesus Christ is being proclaimed and heard. Acts begins with the ascension of Jesus back into heaven, then the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the disciples, the preaching of Peter leading to 3,000 Jews being saved. The first 7 chapters sees the Gospel contained in Jerusalem and the reaction of the Jews to it, then in chapter 8 it starts spreading out as believers are persecuted. Then in chapter 13, the official sending of the Apostle to the Gentiles – whom we know as the famous Apostle Paul – happens and we then follow along in all his missionary journeys to all the cities God sent him to.
One of those cities is Philippi, the city that Paul wrote to in that beloved letter we know as “Philippians.” In Philippi, in Acts 16, Paul and his companions led a small women’s prayer group to faith in Christ and they began to meet together for prayer together. Our story begins with Paul heading to prayer and it ends with him getting out of prison. The marvelous thing to see in this passage is the freedom that comes inside a prison. Not Paul getting out of prison – but the spiritual freedom a man experiences inside the prison. This story builds to the climactic salvation of the jailer who was overseeing Paul’s imprisonment. What a story this is.
FROM PRAYER TO PRISON (Acts 16:16-24)
Our first point is “From Prayer To Prison.” Paul sets a slave girl free and it gets him put into prison. Read verses 16-24
After Paul led Lydia and the ladies prayer group to Christ, he and the other missionaries started joining them down by the river to pray regularly. Can I plug here the priority of praying together as believers? Apparently as Paul would go about town this slave-girl was tailing him and wouldn’t stop yelling to everyone what Paul and the others were doing. Let me just point out here that Paul didn’t seek her out – she sought him out. As we go about our business worshiping God we don’t need to look for the enemy. He is going to come to us. Let’s look at two things.
First, she was a slave girl who was possessed by a certain demonic spirit that enabled her to predict the future. The phrase “a spirit by which she predicted the future” in the Greek literally means “a python spirit”. In other words, she was a slave girl with a python spirit is all it says in the Greek. Well, everybody back then who spoke Greek knew exactly what that meant. It meant that person has the ability to tell the future by some spiritual agency (MacArthur pg 96)
If you own this girl and she can predict the future then buddy you are sitting on a gold mine. And that’s exactly what she was: a money-making slave who was enriching her owners. It’s interesting it says “owners” – plural. Maybe these kinds of fortune-telling slaves were pricey and so several people invested together to afford her. Certainly their ROI was proving well worth it. And like anyone protecting their investment, they wanted that demonic spirit to stay with her. Losing that spirit would mean losing huge profits. That can’t happen.
Second, why would Paul be annoyed with her? After all, she was yelling the truth to the public. Paul & Company were in fact servants of God and they were in fact telling everyone the way of salvation. Why wouldn’t Paul see her as a welcome supplement to their ministry? This always made me curious.
- First, Paul did not want anyone hearing him preach to think he spoke by the same spirit the slave girl spoke by. Application: the enemy is perfectly willing to use truth to advance lies. The most effective way to give credibility to a lie is to surround it with a lot of truth. The one falsehood is taken as truth because everything else being spoken is true.
- Second, Paul did not want anyone to mistake him for a profiteer. Her message was sold for money and Paul did not want anyone to believe for a moment that salvation could be bought. Therefore, he could not have this commercialized prophet confusing the public into thinking Paul was all about profit.
- Third, Paul did not want this girl preaching anymore because the ministry is done by the power of the Holy Spirit – not another spirit. We are not to yoke ourselves to unbelievers for service to God – there is no fellowship between darkness and light, between Beelzebub and Christ. We don’t rely on unbelievers or worldly tactics to carry out the Great Commission. We serve God in the power of the Holy Spirit.
What are we seeing here? We are seeing how Paul robbed this girl from Satan. She was delivered from the dominion of darkness and became a citizen of heaven, of the kingdom of light. He released her from the grip of this demonic spirit and if Jesus’ exorcisms are any indication she would have come to faith and salvation afterwards. I believe – and it’s just my speculation – that she would have become a believer and joined them at their place of prayer and fellowshipped with Lydia, the other women, and the budding local church.
But not only did Paul rob Satan, he robbed the owners of their lucrative exploitation of the girl. In other words, their money-making days were over. If you want to get on someone’s bad side go for their wallet. So what do they do? They want payback. They grab Paul and Silas and drag them in front of the magistrates. Notice here they didn’t grab Luke or Timothy, just Paul and Silas. It might be safe to say that since Luke and Timothy weren’t Jews they weren’t grabbed also.
Notice the accusation of the slave-girl’s owners. It wasn’t that they lost money. They pointed out that Paul and Silas were Jews (v20) and were advocating Jewish customs which Romans were not allowed to adopt. The charges were religious and racist – not commercial. The owners stirred up the crowd and pretty soon the magistrates were following the crowd and not the law.
What do I mean? Well, in order to appease the crowds the magistrates had Paul and Silas stripped, beaten, and imprisoned. No trial. Just reacting to the mob. Here’s the problem: Paul and Silas were Jews, yes, but, they were also Roman citizens. To beat and imprison a Roman citizen without a trial and subsequent determination of guilt was a serious violation of Roman law. What does that mean? The magistrates were in serious trouble
APPLICATION: Can I draw an application here? Do we listen to the crowds? Or do we listen to Jesus Christ? We need to be very careful we don’t let the crowd determine our actions. If it means standing alone to stand with Christ then stand alone. Besides, you’re never as alone as you think you are. Don’t get an Elijah complex. Others are standing for Christ too. More importantly, Jesus Christ stands with you.
But the slave-girl’s deliverance is actually the first in a series of successive events culminating in the salvation of one man: the city jailer. A lot of people are being set free in this episode – but it is coming at the cost of Paul’s freedom.
APPLICATION: Be willing to lose your freedoms to set others free. Am I willing to go to jail and lose my freedom so that someone else can be saved and set free in Christ? What about other ways of giving up freedoms? Am I willing to set aside my political freedom to save someone? What about my freedom in Christ? Paul teaches us in the NT that we have freedoms in Christ that some other Christians don’t understand becuase they’re weaker in their conscience. Am I willing to set aside that freedom for their sake? That’s maturer levels of the Christian walk we’ve unpacked before and can’t here. But what of me and what that is rightfully mine am I willing to forsake for the freedom of someone else? Some people forsake the financial freedom of some lucrative career to become a missionary or serve God in some way. But taking Paul’s example here: if some sort of freedom of mine was the price tag for someone else coming to salvation in Christ am I willing to give it up?
APPLICATION: Be willing that others should suffer for the Gospel. Paul didn’t care that the demonically driven business of these owners was cancelled. If that was the consequence of preaching the Gospel, that was a consequence he was ready for them to suffer
TWO: PERSISTENT PRAISING (25)
So we see how Paul goes from Prayer to Prison. and how that landed him in jail, and cross paths with the jailer, but, now, we come to the second episode and hear our beloved prisoners in their “PERSISTENT PRAISING”. Notice verse 25 with me, “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.”
Midnight! You would think after getting the tar beat out of them they would be snivelling, not singing, or passed out – not praying! But nope. They missed prayer meeting earlier in the day so the prayer meeting was moved to the prison. All night long. Can I plug the importance of prayer again? And added to the prayer meeting was an all-night hymn sing. What hymns do you think they were singing?
What truth can calm the troubled soul?
God is good, God is good
Where is His grace and goodness known?
In our great Redeemer’s blood
Who holds our faith when fears arise?
Who stands above the stormy trial?
Who sends the waves that bring us nigh
Unto the shore? The rock of Christ
Oh, sing hallelujah
Our hope springs eternal
Oh, sing hallelujah
Now and ever we confess
Christ, our hope in life and death
Unto the grave, what will we sing?
“Christ, He lives, Christ, He lives!”
And what reward will Heaven bring?
Everlasting life with Him
In the dark of night, civil rights violated, physically beaten, publicly humiliated (stripped), unjustly imprisoned, bleeding and aching and these men are relentlessly singing praise to God. Not humming quietly to themselves but belting it out because it says all the prisoners listened to them.
How would we be in their situation? Would we be in their prison choir? When we go through hardships and we are in the darkest hour of our own trials are we praising God still? For that matter how are we when lesser things happen to us?
Application #1: This points us to a very important truth about the Christian life: God is to be praised in the good as well as the bad of life. When under the severest testing of his faith, suffering badly, Job refused to curse God and said, “Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?” The reality is bad things happen in this world. Out there. And, to us. But there is a time when all will be made right, the tears will be wiped away, and perfection will come. We do not hope in this world, but, we hope in God. And we praise Him on the mountain top and in the valley.
Application #2: Also, it is a fact that God allows trials to come as a way of testing our faith. What will we say about God in the midst of them? Will we still praise Him? Obey Him? Worship Him? Not to long ago I came across a quote by Epictetus, “Were I a nightingale I would sing like a nightingale; were I a swan, like a swan. But as it is, I am a rational being, therefore I must sing hymns of praise to God.” Will we still be rational and praise God in the midst of our trials?
Application #3 Also, we may even find that difficulties come as a way of reminding us not to look to the things of the world – circumstances, looks, success, money, pleasure, possessions, even good things like physical health, spouses, and kids – as the stabilizers of our joy. Only God, who never changes, who is always constant, is to be the One in whom we find our ultimate joy. He is the Stabilizer of our joy.
Illustration: H. Taylor pg.316-317 on his peace in trials.
The balance is this: that while we find joy in things of the world we must never find less joy in God than any of them. That’s what is meant in loving God with all your heart, and that is what is meant in the statement whoever does not love me more than son or daughter is not worthy of me. That is what is meant by first love. That is even what is meant in you shall have no other gods before me. God is our all in all, all our joy, all our delight, all our love, all our supply.
How might all of this been affecting our main character? As the jailer, he was not a sissy. He sees the underbelly of society all day every day. He is responsible for keeping the criminals locked up tight. He understands authority, structure, order, rules and no-nonsense, black and white views of the world. He probably had carried out the flogging of Paul and Silas, or, supervised it, or, at least witnessed it. He probably sneered at them for being Jews, hating them for bringing Jewish customs to stain his glorious Roman city, and was therefore happy to give them what they deserved.
But, what was it about their attitudes as the evening wore on? They weren’t like any other prisoners he’d had before. They weren’t defiant or bitter. They weren’t crying “foul” and claiming they were “innocent”, like all inmates always do. They just took what was given them – not with a defeated and beaten countenance, but, more like they were above it somehow. Like their dignity was not overcome. Could it be a growing contrast was felt in the jailer’s heart between himself and his two prisoners? They had something he didn’t. They seemed more free in that prison than he felt himself. Their chains couldn’t bind something deeper about them, yet while free to come and go he felt chained in his soul. With each prayer and each hymn as the night went on the jailer saw ever more clearly the difference between himself and them. Like Iago said of Cassio, “He hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.”
And they spent their time praying. What did he hear them saying to their God again? Something about God forgiving the magistrates – which seemed very odd indeed. And their singing. They just kept singing. The songs were quite beautiful actually, and seemed to beautify the dank, dirty, dungeon like atmosphere of the jail. Everyone else thought so too since all could hear them and no one said anything. How did that one go? “In Christ alone, my hope is found….” The songs were so pleasant the jailer was able to have the best sleep he’d had in awhile.
Yes, as he dozed off, with the hymn in his mind, he thought to himself something about these guys was different.
CONCLUSION: SILENT REFLECTION