From Death to Life - Pastor Tom Loghry
After being imprisoned in Philippi, Paul and Silas are freed by the power of God while singing praises in their bondage and share salvation with their jailer.
Transcript:
How do we respond when it appears we are defeated? When all appears lost? What hope can be found? Perhaps some of you, kind of like myself, are brooding types who look out on life and maybe sometimes think this is just one big long defeat.
That's what J.R.R. Tolkien, author of Lord the Rings, once observed, writing, writing to a friend. He said, actually, I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect history to be anything but a long defeat-- though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.
We suffer a long defeat in life, but along the way, we do enjoy samples of final victory and we hold the hope of the appearance of that final victory. We encounter a, a sample of final victory here in Act 16, as well as the hope of final victory itself. And with that encounter, we find an example to follow and an invitation to receive as we live in the midst of a long defeat. So looking at verses 25 through 27, in Acts 16, you'll recall the situation that Paul and Silas are in. They are in a jail in the city of Philippi. I'm not sure if we've got the map here. I may, we do. That's awesome. Philippi is in Macedonia. You'll recall from last week that Paul and Silas and their company were called to bring the gospel to Macedonia. And in going there, they originally received a very warm welcome by Lydia and those others who gathered for prayer outside the city gates by the river, but that as Paul and Silas were ministering there, there was a slave girl who told fortunes. And we talked about how in the original Greek it indicates she had a Python spirit, a Pithian spirit, like the Oracle of Delphi, she was demon possessed. And she was following Paul and Silas around telling, declaring that these men bring the message of salvation. And Paul became so annoyed that he cast the spirit out of her because she was trying to rob God of his own glory. It's a kind of a parasitic sort of presence that she had there.
And as a result, Paul and Silas were beat, beaten as ordered by the magistrates of Philippi, and they were imprisoned. And so now we find here in verses 25 through 27, an extraordinary series of events. It's about midnight now. We might think that they've, they've been in jail perhaps for 12 hours at this point. Wouldn't have been unusual for matters to be adjudicated by magistrates sometime in midday. So they've been in there a while. And remember, they're in stocks. They're literally sitting on the floor like this, and they're all beaten up. Now, you could do that for a little while, but the floor isn't nice and carpeted like this. It's stone, it's miserable. And so it's no surprise that they have not fallen asleep. A lot of us have a hard time falling asleep on our nice cozy beds. And so they decide the better thing to do here is to pray and to sing hymns. And now you might think that the other prisoners might be annoyed by this, but the text doesn't say that.
It says that they were listening to them. They might not have been so bothered 'cause they were probably uncomfortable themselves, but they were probably also inspired by the example of these two men, perhaps filled with wonder. They, they may have understood, you know, some of these prisoners were in prison rightly so, they've committed crimes, but Paul and Silas haven't done anything here.
Rather than despairing they're praising their God, they have about them a sort of defiant joy. It actually recalls some of the words of of Psalms, go to Psalm 42: 8. It says, by day, the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me-- a prayer to the God of my life.
In Psalm 119 61 through 62, it says, though the wicked bind me with ropes, I'll not forget your law. At midnight I rise to give you thanks for your righteous laws. So quite literally, Paul and Silas are are doing those things in this situation.
Now what follows after here is that as they are singing, an earthquake suddenly strikes. Now an earthquake occurring is not unusual on its own, but it's the timing of it, it's very providential. As these two men who've been declared to be messengers of God are imprisoned and praising their God, all of a sudden earthquake strikes, which breaks their chains, but not just their chains, the all, all the prisoners' chains.
It kind of brings back to mind the day of Pentecost a bit when we're thinking about God's presence in Acts 4: 31, it says, after they prayed, the place where they were meeting was, was shaken. And we don't know the extent to which the place that they were meeting was shaken, but this was quite a serious shaking here in the case of Paul and Silas to have this effect that the doors were opened, that they could in fact make an escape if they so desired.
And we've seen God offer this sort of deliverance before, the Apostle Peter and for the Apostle John. But in this case, Paul and Silas have not left, but the jailer doesn't know that. He's awakened by everything that's transpired, and when he sees that all the, the prison doors are open, he concludes that of course the prisoners would've escaped, and it's going to be his head if that's the case. You might recall from Acts 12:19 after God had delivered Peter from prison, it says that Herod cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed. Now, it was an earthquake that happened here, but perhaps, you know, he was sleeping. Maybe he shouldn't have been sleeping. Maybe he didn't, maybe the authorities would've expected that his guards would be diligent even under those circumstances. So he is in a position of despair and he figures it'd be better if I just end my life now. Now, when you consider all that Paul and Silas have suffered, you might expect them to be vindictive and not give 2 cents if the jailer killed himself, but that's not their attitude at all. They have mercy and compassion for the man. So we continue on in verse 28. Says, but Paul shouted, don't harm yourself! We are all here! The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? They replied, believe in the Lord Jesus, and you'll be saved-- you and your household. Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized.
So just as this jailer's ready just to end it all, Paul shouts out and says, hold up, hold up. We're all here. No one has left. Now you wonder, how is it that all the other prisoners remained? You could imagine maybe Paul and Silas staying, staying, but the rest of them fleeing. I think this speaks to the influence that Paul and Silas must have had over these men, kind of reading between the lines here. They must have told them, Hey, don't go, and given everything that happened, the fact that these men were singing, praising their God, circumstances that led to their imprisonment and then this earthquake happens. We can imagine the prisoners saying, I think I'm gonna listen to those guys. Maybe they told them, Hey, if you leave here, you're gonna end up dead, they're gonna try, just stay with us. And perhaps in doing so, they earned some favor, some clemency in the face of the authorities.
However it is, they're all there. And in response. The jailer falls trembling, saying, sirs, what must I do to be saved? Now you might be wondering, why would he ask that? It almost seems kind of at first glance, maybe it seems artificial. How does he jump immediately to asking this gospel question about how he can be saved? Well, it's not an artificial thing here. Remember the context of everything that's happened. What was the message of the fortune telling girl who is following around Paul, remember in verse 17, she's saying, these men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.
The jailer knew that she was saying that, and so he's connected the dots. He's like, these guys know the way to be saved. Given everything that's happened here, I want to know what they know. Tell me. He falls at their feet trembling with this question, and their response to him is this, believe in the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved, you and your household.
They don't say that he has to do an act of penance for imprison, playing a part in their imprisonment. They don't tell 'em that, well, you better do your best to live a good life here on out given everything that's happened here. They say believe in the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved. Faith in Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation. This is no innovation on the part of Paul. Many of you are familiar with John three 16. For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. That's what Jesus says. If you believe in me, you'll be saved. When the crowd asks him in John 6, 28 through 29, what must we do to do the works God requires? Jesus gives them this answer. He says, the work of God is this: To believe in the one he has sent.
Salvation only comes as a gift in Christ. And just to kind of take a step back here, we could dive really deep into how the work of just, justification operates, how Christ's sacrifice makes amends for the wrong that we'd done. But just to look at the big picture here, in Adam and Eve's rebellion, they decided they wanted to strike out on their own, that they didn't need God, that they could take care of themselves. I want you to notice here about what God has done in Jesus Christ. He has brought us back into the place of recognizing we need God, that we cannot save ourselves. That salvation can only be received by faith, by trust. That trust that we should have had all along in obeying God, but which was broken when we decided we wanted to believe the word of the devil. Now we believe the word of God, which is this. If we have faith in Jesus Christ, if we abandon our rebellion and throw ourselves upon his mercy offered us in Christ, we can be saved.
And that's, and that's what the jailer's going to do here. But first also notice, just an interesting kind of cultural element here. They say, and you'll be saved, you and your household. Now, they're not presuming that the jailer can save his family by his own faith. Every person has to have their own faith in Jesus Christ. But what they're picking up on here is that this guy is the head of the household. The term used to kind of describe this is called pater familias, and the idea is this, is that as the father goes, so too goes the family, and so they're anticipating that as this guy goes, his family, too, is going to have faith in Jesus Christ.
And so the jailer takes Paul and Silas home to his house, which is incredible. This guy was so upset when it seemed that the, that the prisoners had escaped, but now he's taking this radical risk and bringing these prisoners into his household. Again, another example of hospitality. We noted how Lydia showed hospitality by welcoming Paul and his company into her house, this jailer shows similar hospitality. He washes their wounds, and it's, it's kind of a, a funny follow up here. One commentator had picked up on this is that he washes their wounds and then they wash him and his family and baptism.
Just as a side note here, some people look at this passage and wonder is this a proof text potentially for infant baptism? They like to speculate, well, maybe there was babies in the household, but the text doesn't say that. And everything else in the New Testament indicates that those who are baptized are those who actually profess their own faith in Jesus Christ. I don't deny the legitimacy of those who have been infant baptized, so if you're here and you've been baptized, that's great. You have faith in Christ, that's what the text says is necessary.
But that point aside, the, the primary point here is this, is that they believe, and the direct follow up to belief is baptism. Anyone who believes, anyone who has faith in Jesus Christ should be baptized. And if you haven't been baptized, that's something else we'll do this spring besides welcoming members and if you, if you haven't been baptized, we'll baptize you.
Now, notably, Paul prioritizes, baptizing the household before he even receives a meal from them. In verse 34, we see that that meal does come eventually, and you imagine they're probably starving at this point, says the jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them. He was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God, he and his whole household. When it was daylight the magistrate sent their officers to the jailer with the order, release those men. The jailer told Paul, the magistrates have ordered that you and Silas be released. Now you can leave, go in peace.
We see some of the fruit of salvation here on, by Luke's account of what the experience of the jailer was. In all of this, it says that he was filled with joy because he believed in God and especially joyful because his whole household does as well. So while there would be a cultural kind of anticipation that the family would go in the same way, not a absolutely certain assured thing and so he's, he's taking joy in that, that salvation has come to his household, that he has been restored to God, that he no longer has to live in, in fear being on the precipice of being ready to. To kill himself. Now we can have courage in the face of death because he knows that he's been delivered from the power of sin and death through Jesus Christ.
Now, it's interesting here, it says that the magistrates send a message to the jailer that Paul and Silas ought to be released. We wonder here in terms of whether Paul and Silas were here at the house the whole time, or they may have been transported back to the jail, whatever condition it may have been in at this point, 'cause they were still prisoners. They couldn't just walk off. Now this may lead you to wonder why did the magistrates decide to release them just because all this happened? Again, we have to put ourselves in that cultural context. While in our time, you know, authorities may not necessarily be impressed by an earthquake. They might just say, oh, that's just a coincidence. People in the first century did not think that such things were just mere coincidences. In fact, everything that happens here with Paul and Silas has a weird echo to a myth that would've been familiar to these people that's recorded, that, that's told by, the Greeks.
It's the story of Dionysus and Bacchae. You can look up the, the story on YouTube, See You in History. It's an interesting kind of cartoon telling of, of this myth. Very gruesome, I won't get into all the details of the myth, but the, the short of it is this is, is that there's this king named Pentheus and the god Dionysus shows up to his, his city and believes he hasn't received the worship that he's deserved, and Pentheus is stubborn about recognizing Dionysis and decides that he's in fact going to imprison the god Dionysus. But while he imprisons Dionysus, all of a sudden an earthquake occurs and Dionysus escapes. So, and then some really gruesome things happened. Pentheus is torn limb from limb.
So given all of that, you can imagine the magistrates thinking, these guys are not worth the trouble. They don't know who they are, they don't know what they're about. They know what the slave girl has said, and they, they probably kind of take her seriously. So you add it all together and yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna let these guys go. And so the jailer comes and says, go in peace, which is very kind of, it's interesting, it's very kind of Jewish Christian thing, thing to say. It's interesting to see how he's already kind of picked up on that sort of language. And you think, great, right, you, if it was you and me, we'd probably be, all right. We're, we're out of here now. Nice. Nice. Nice seeing you Philippi, we got other places to go. Not Paul though. He's like, not so fast. Not so fast. Verse 37, Paul said to the officers: they beat us publicly without a trial, even though we are Roman citizens, and threw us into prison. And now do they want to get rid of us quietly? No! Let them come themselves and escort us out. The officers reported this to the magistrates, and when they heard that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens, they were alarmed.
Now as we hear this detail about the fact that Paul was a Roman citizen, maybe you're wondering, well, why didn't Paul raise this from the very beginning to avoid all of this trouble? Well, it may have been that he didn't have sufficient opportunity to, that the people were so riotous and so loud about saying these, these people, they're, they're, these are Jewish men that are upsetting, you know, our society here. They didn't have adequate opportunity, kind of combined with the magistrates, perhaps didn't demonstrate adequate curiosity and diligence in trying to find out, are you a citizen? They never asked the question. And so Paul didn't give, give them that information.
It is, it is one of those things where you wish you knew all the details that happened, but in any case, he hadn't told them. And it puts the magistrates in a real bind because you're not supposed to punish Roman citizens without a trial. It's very interesting. You know, we think about kind of, ancient era, I think like it was just brutal across the board. It was, you know, kind of just disordered, might makes right. But the Roman Empire actually had quite a bit of order in it. If you're not a Roman citizen, well you're really outta luck there. But if you're a Roman citizen, you do have some rights and you had a right to a fair trial. Now you might wonder, okay, Paul's made this claim. How can he back it up? In all likelihood, the proof of his, of his citizenship might be back in Tarsus, so it would take a while to get there. The magistrates could make that demand. They could say, okay, you know, prove it to us. But just think about the situation here. They've already told Paul and Silas they can go free. What benefit would it be for Paul and Silas to lie about this? There's no benefit. They could just walk out. Instead, they wanna stay here and and make a point, and if their claims are correct, it's gonna be devastating for the magistrates. Again, just an indication of the negative assessment of punishing Roman citizens without trial.
Cicero, which would've been 150, 200 years before, about 150 years before, says this. To bind a Roman citizen is a crime, to flog him is an abomination, to slay him is almost an act of murder: to crucify him is -- what? There's no fitting word that can possibly describe so horrible a deed.
If they are found to be Roman citizens, if it's found to be that these magistrates punished them without a trial, they could lose their position. They'd be kicked out, kicked out of power. Now what we see here, kind of from the example of Paul and Silas is that it is right and good for us to stand up for our rights at times. We can be willing to, to suffer, but that doesn't mean that we have to be silent in calling out injustice, particularly when it comes to the, to the gospel witness.
Think about everything that's happened here. The way that Paul and Silas were shamed before the citizen, citizenry of, of Philippi, they were given a bad name. The gospel was given a bad name. If they just sneak outta town, that, that remains. They wanna see that rectified for the sake of Jesus Christ. And so, again, Paul has all the leverage here, and they're more trouble than they're worth. And so the magistrates make that concession. Continuing on in verse 39 says, they came to appease them and escorted them from the prison, requesting them to leave the city. After Paul and Silas came out of the prison, they went to Lydia's house, where they met with the brothers and sisters and encouraged them. Then they left.
And so they get what they want. They're released with an escort. The, the jail is presumably in proximity where people can see the magistrates paying them this honor of escorting them out. And they go back to the house of Lydia, and you can imagine how they would've been encouraged by everything that happened. This is, again, this is a marginalized group. They don't have a synagogue within the city. You, you can imagine how they would feel very vulnerable and maybe sheepish, you know, after seeing Paul and Silas in imprisoned like this, like, okay, we're not gonna speak up, we're not gonna do anything. But now that they see Paul and Silas here, imagine how much courage they would have to be able to continue in sharing the gospel with others when they've seen God back them up in this kind of way. And so after offering that encouragement, Paul and his his company depart.
Moments like these, moment, momentary defeats that are suddenly overcome by God in victory give us in miniature what we anticipate will transpire at the threshold of eternity, at the end of the age. We suffer a long defeat, that will suddenly be overcome in victory. The apostle Peter ably captures the experience of faith, trial, and salvation that Paul, Silas, and the jailer experience here in Acts 16.
1st Peter one verses six through nine. Peter says this, in all this [the coming salvation] you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith-- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-- may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
We experience trials, we enjoy occasional victories, we suffer a long decline, but all gives way to victory when Jesus Christ is revealed on the day of his return. We persevere. We sing in the jail cell until the chains are broken. Like Paul and Silas, we carry the message of salvation so that people can know the inexpressible, glorious joy of salvation, the joy that comes from faith in Jesus Christ.
Will you walk in the way of Paul and Silas? Will you follow their example? In all the trials that will arise, will you believe like the jailer? Will you share in his joy, the salvation that breaks all slavery to fear?
By God's grace, may your answer be yes.
Let us pray.
Dear Father, we give you thanks for this testimony. Like Lydia's household, Father, we are encouraged by it. We are encouraged because it reminds us that we are not abandoned, that you are with us in every trial, in every hardship, and Father, in accordance with your will, we are assured that you can give us moments of, of great victory as we serve you Father.
Father, we recognize that sometimes our path will lead to a cross which ends in death, but in all things, Father, we rest assured because of Jesus Christ, our Savior, who has overcome every power and is who has overcome death itself. And so Father, we thank you that because of him we can be brave, we can be courageous because we know that we will share in the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Father fill us with the joy of this salvation and remind us of the goodness of the gospel message, that we are trying to bring joy to people's lives. And bringing this message so that they may believe and know God and and know this deliverance. Father, we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we worship God and hear the preaching of his word. It's our joy to welcome you into our community
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)